The fake empire

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

.:.

Met up with T-Bone today for lunch at Volo before our movie. Our screening was at the Ryerson theatre at 3:00, and we figured if we left around 2:10 we’d get in line with lots of time to spare, so we met at 1:00. Lots of time, right? Not so much. Just like the last time I was there they were short-staffed, and 45 minutes after ordering our food still hadn’t arrived. It showed up a few minutes after 2:00…but they brought me the wrong dish. Fortunately it only had salmon in it (and it wasn’t half bad) but T-Bone’s food wasn’t great. They knocked the price of my meal off the bill and forgot to charge me for my first drink, but I didn’t feel too bad about it. We wouldn’t have had time to correct it anyway. As it was we had to scarf down food and drink, and got to the Ryerson just in time to join the end of the line entering the theatre. Too bad; T-Bone’s first experience at Volo wasn’t a very good one, and it’s gone from being one of my favourite places to being a little sketchy.

The movie we saw, however, pretty much made up for it. I was kind of worried about Battle In Seattle (imdb | rotten tomatoes)…the title seemed corny (it was later explained in the film), it was a director’s debut film, I’m not typically a big fan of either Charlize Theron or Woody Harrelson…I’d kind of set it up in my mind to be rather bad. However, it turned out to be the great film festival movie. Not a great film…a great film festival movie. I’ll explain.

This was, according to Noah Cowan, the world premiere of the film. As such the director Stuart Townsend was there, as were some of the actors: Woody Harrelson, Martin Henderson, Michelle Rodriguez, Andre Benjamin and Charlize Theron, Townsend’s girlfriend. This is one of those experiences you have at the festival that you don’t get when watching a movie normally, when a director is living or dying with his cast and crew, surrounded by hundreds of movie fans. You get to see a visceral, engaged audience react to a film, and you get to see the director absorb that reaction. For Townsend today, it was quite a reaction indeed.

The film was about the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and the violent confrontations that resulted…dramatic and emotional subject matter, to be sure, and particularly interesting to me as the issue of WTO patent regulation was the topic of my big paper last year. At the end of the film, as The National sang “Fake Empire”, the crowd stood, turned to Townsend and applauded. They stood and clapped for five minutes as he waved, thanked the crowd and hugged a weeping Theron. That, that moment is what you get at a film festival and nowhere else…seeing a man who has worked for five years to perfect a vision, and is witnessing for the first time the realization of that vision. It was pretty moving; not quite like seeing Hotel Rwanda a few years ago, but emotional nonetheless.

I’ll be interested to see how the film is received outside of that situation. Was it a great film, technically speaking? Not really. But for two hours this afternoon, it was a classic.

[tags]brian mulroney, volo, battle in seattle, stuart townsend[/tags]

Wouldn't a sky god prefer, I don't know, an ostrich or something?

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I hereby declare tonight “the calm before the storm.”

.:.

Quechup sucks. I say that not because of their actual social networking site (ever tried it) but because of their dickish ways of spreading themselves around. They screwed my brother and several other friends, all of whom accidentally spammed every contact in their address book thanks to Quechup. A quick Technorati search finds lots of other pissed off victims too.

Quechup sucks. Spread the word.

.:.

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, has a new book out called Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. There’s a short film that accompanies the book, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (who also directed the excellent Children Of Men). It’s only 6.30 in length, so I urge you to pop over to YouTube and spend a few minutes with it.

.:.

This story about Nepal’s state-run airline boggles the mind and turns the stomach:

Officials at Nepal’s state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.

I find it horrifying that any religion would call for animal sacrifice. I find it equally horrifying that a mechanic could believe strongly enough in the sky god that, just maybe, they skimp on the actual mechanical repairs ’cause they figure old SG has it covered.

Separation of church and aviation industry. You heard it here first.

[via Rick Segal]

.:.

I think Rick Rubin may have been possessed by the ghost of Johnny Cash when he tore a strip off his own record label, and trashed the music industry as a whole.

.:.

Injury update: my wrist is nearly healed. I’m about 99% pain-free, feeling twinges only when I jam my hand on something or flick it sharply (like when I’m making the bed and I snap the sheet). It’s still a little swollen, so I can’t push my hand into a right angle with my arm without pain, but for the most part it’s ok. My first broken bone, and I’d have to say I got off pretty easy.
[tags]quechup sucks, naomi klein, alfonso cuaron, shock doctrine, nepal, akash bhairab, rick rubin, broken wrist[/tags]

I can't believe it's already half over

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

We just got home from our first (and, in Nellie’s case, only) festival film. Since we’re only seeing two this year there wasn’t a lot of room for error, and I felt some pressure on tonight’s pick. Fortunately we lucked out. Starting Out In The Evening (imdb) was a great film.

It was fitting that we sat in the same theatre as last year’s opening night (when we saw Requiem: my review), another pleasant surprise. It was even a surprise in the same mould…a story told with no effects, no devices or gimmicks, just sharp writing and superb acting. The director described star Frank Langella as a giant. You’d need no further proof of that than to watch this film.

[tags]starting out in the evening, tiff, tiff07[/tags]

Dan's labyrinth

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

So I’ve been trying to sign in to my school’s website. It’s felt a little like an Edgar Allen Poe story. Follow along, if you dare:

I go to the course website (which I’ll call site A) but it won’t take my username and password. Fair enough; it’s been months since I signed in so there’s a chance (a small one; I’m pretty good with passwords) I’m just forgetting what it is. That’s why god invented the ‘Forgot your password’ link. I click it. It takes me to site B.

On site B I’m asked for an email address to which the password can be sent. I input every email address I might have used, but it tells me none of these are valid. Clearly there’s something wrong with the system, so I email the administrator.

The administrator, very unhelpfully, emails me a link to site C where I can reset my password. It tells me I need my student ID, my netID (also known as my username) and an “alternate email address” where the password will be sent. I try this form several times using a variety of email addresses, but none of those work either. I am told that I need to visit another site, site D, to establish an alternate email address.

At site D I am told that I need my student ID and a PIN to sign in. PIN? I know no PIN, and have no recollection of setting one up. Never fear, there’s a PIN reset. I enter my student ID and click ‘Forgotten PIN’. I get the following message: “Authorization Failure – Security Question is not setup.” Ummm…ok, maybe I never set up a PIN in the first place. I click on the ‘create PIN’ link and jet over to site E.

At site E I am forced to enter my student ID, full name, date of birth and SIN (!) only to be told that my PIN has already been created, and that I should use the ‘Forgotten PIN’ tool instead. Thanks for that. I would, but I don’t have a security question set up. Of course, none of this would matter if any of the 6 email addresses I tried were recognized by the system, if there were some phone number I could call for assistance, or if some competent human at the school would just help me rather than point me to a Gordian knot of credential reset screens.

To think, this is the institution from which I’m seeking a post-graduate degree.

[tags]password reset, bad usability[/tags]

Better than nothing

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Despite server problems (seriously, they’re hosted by Bell…you’d think they could put together a decent webserver or two) I managed to grab a couple of TIFF tickets this morning. Tomorrow night Nellie and I will see Starting Out In The Evening and on Saturday I’ll see Battle In Seattle with T-Bone.

[tags]tiff07[/tags]

Empty promises, phallic symbols, indie darlings and a state of readiness

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Some issues are important to society at large and legitimately worthy of changing/swaying someone’s vote. Others are not.

.:.

Torontoist has a good piece on the CN Tower, which will only be the world’s tallest free-standing structure for a few more days or weeks.

.:.

I don’t know why, but I feel guilty for liking Vampire Weekend. And really, I only like three songs (“Walcott”, “Campus” and “A-Punk”) but I’ve been listening to them a lot lately. Still, I feel like a bandwagon jumper.

.:.

As of tonight I have finished all my pre-work for my course. Well, 99.9% of it. ~15 minutes tomorrow night and I’m set for Sunday. I also picked up a French road map today, and bought a new shirt & tie…finally starting to feel somewhat prepared for everything.

[tags]religious school funding, february holiday, cn tower, vampire weekend, mba[/tags]

There will be no rocket science

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This is all the detail my brain can muster today:

  • The Matador (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was ok, but not great.
  • I think it’s time for The Ex (the Canadian National Exhibition, for those of you not living in Toronto) to just close up shop. It’s looking it’s age.
  • If you know use an RSS reader and you have some basic technical skill, you should really check out Yahoo Pipes. I’ve been playing around with it since it came out, but now I’m finding it useful and not just kind of cool. For example, I aggregated all my various Montreal Canadiens news sites into one feed, and I found a patched Pitchfork feed so that I don’t keep seeing the same stories over and over.
  • I hope the film festival puts more tickets on sale. The few that I have a chance to see and that look interesting are already sold out after the advanced draw.

[tags]the matador, the ex, cne, yahoo pipes, tiff07[/tags]

The air show wasn't yesterday after all

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It was today. I tried taking a few pictures but I’m not quite skilled enough to manage a good picture of silver objects against a bright blue sky moving at hundreds of miles per hour with a point-and-shoot. I did manage to get a half-decent one of the F-22, F-16 and P-51 (that I mentioned yesterday). Click on the image to see it bigger or download the original.

By the way, BlogTO has much better pics.

[tags]canadian international air show, F-22, F-16, P-51, blogto[/tags]

I am constant as the northern star

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Fatblogging, ho:

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 224.5
  • Weight this week: 223.5

Another week, another pound. At this rate I should be 67.5 pounds in just three years.

.:.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was messy, intricate and very funny. It’s a film about a film about an essentially unfilmable novel, and I think I may have missed one or more “a film about…”s. Michael Winterbottom is quickly becoming one of my favourite directors.

.:.

There’s an excellent piece in Esquire this month entitled “God’s Not Watching Baghdad” that you should read if you have 15 minutes.

I was back in Iraq to see the president’s surge, to see if pushing more troops into Baghdad had made a difference. I had last been in Iraq two years before as a sergeant in an infantry company, patrolling its farm fields and city streets. On a good day, the country looks the same as it did during my deployments. Usually it looks much worse. Being back in Iraq, I hoped, would be a brief sojourn to reality, a break from America’s version of the war, where the battle lines had been drawn by fearless sloganeers: “Cut ‘n’ Run” or “Bring ‘Em Home,” depending. Where the debate no longer has much to do with Iraq and its people — other than the shitty smorgasbord of daily violence touted as evidence of either the mission’s futility or the dangers of quitting. Mostly, I wanted to make sense of why this had gone on so long with so little progress and see how the war looked to those tasked with the salvage operation.

Read the full article.

.:.

An article popped up in my feeds this week that resonated on a couple of levels. The Coast, the Halifax alternative weekly paper I used to read all the time in university, recently ripped off Passive-Aggressive Notes, a blog I quite enjoy. P.A.N. reposted the article, including this picture, which made me laugh my ass off. Ha ha ha ha. Soyfucker.

It also reminded me of an east-coast delicacy: donair pizza. I never liked donairs themselves (that sauce always made me sick) and I couldn’t eat the pizzas, but I used to loooooove eating the donair meat. I don’t even know what kind of meat it was (ostensibly I think it was meant to be lamb) but I still crave it every time I’m in Halifax.

.:.

Finally, after my brain being rendered mush by work and school for many months, it has sunk in: I’m going on vacation in two weeks. My thought priorities now seem to be as follows:

  1. Vacation
  2. The film festival, even though I’m missing it this year
  3. Work
  4. Scarlett Johansson
  5. Rehabbing my wrist
  6. Losing weight
  7. Keeping my fingernails tidy and well-clipped
  8. School

[tags]fatblogging, tristram shandy, the coast, passive aggressive notes, donair, france, scarlett johansson[/tags]