Tederick.com: December 2007 Archives
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I came out of the house this morning and the world was dead silent, and completely white, from the when-did-that-happen? new snowfall on the ground to the pearly glowing sky, and all with the "hush, hush, hush." So I whistled, and smiled a lot, and walked down the middle of the street.
Happy new year, planet. 2007 was just dandy, wasn't it?
Once again we're in a year where everyone knows what #1 is going to be and nobody's gonna be happy about it, so let's start from there and work our way down. In spite of what the critical community might be waxing, '07 wasn't the best year for movies ever ('03 and '99 still kick its ass by a landslide), nor was it the worst ('04 was pretty thin, so was '01). Comfortably of the middle ground, '07 featured a lot of variety, some real standouts, a wealth of solid base hits, and the best worst movie I've seen in a very long time.
In most cases there aren't reviews to speak of, cuz that thing where I was gonna stop reviewing movies kinda almost sorta worked out. But I've linked out to whatever I've got on the blog (or blogTO) that can provide a little context.
#1: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
The word "masterpiece" gets tossed around so much these days. I'm not even going to attempt to use it here, because at no time have I tried to deny that this thing's got flaws so fucking huge that my fondness for it is genuinely embarrassing. But then, so is my fondness for most things that I am fond of, so fuck it and fuck you (with hugs and kisses!). Really, the reason I just can't stop going on about this thing is onefold: I have seen exactly four movies in my life that have made me feel this unabashedly, ludicrously happy. And while this one may not replace one of the others at the top of the list of my favourite films for too much longer, it's been sort of enjoyable to seat it there for the time being.
I blame the wedding among fish people.
Hey, while we're here, let's hand out another award: best score of the year. Remember when I used to be a Hans Zimmer hater? Well that's over and done with. Zimmer flips the theme structure of the first two movies right on its back here, and writes a musical counter-argument to the original material that does precisely what I love most about the film itself: says "this is film three, and we are in a new place." I have burned a hole in this CD (metaphorically) this year. "Up is Down" might actually be my favourite score track of the past ten years.
Hey, why not stab out with an arthouse Argentinian flick about gender identity that nobody will ever see as my second film, to redeem the sector of the audience that took off two sentences into the #1 entry above. Right, welcome to the polar opposites of my filmic inclinations. If the world was made up of nothing but overgigantic movies featuring ship-to-ship gun battles in the midst of swirling maelstroms, and tiny little character pieces about 15-year-old he-she's dealing with whether or not they want to be un-hermaphrodited (surgically), I'd be happy as a pig in fucking slop. And though it's probably declassé to say, the teen girlguy-on-guy defloration scene in XXY is definitely one of the hottest sex scenes I've ever seen. But that goes to my predilections in rather a straight line, so let's leave it off right there.
The sentimental fave that got a bit too oversentimentalized in the time between seeing at TIFF and its actual release into the world, Juno is still a big walking smiley face much more kindly than Gregg Araki's actually-titled Smiley Face, and it's about teen pregnancy without being tragic about it, and it's got pretty much every actor in the world who was ever a genius in it, plus the one who's now potentially going to define the next ten years of "female star." Soooooo... good movie. Actually, let's just leave it with the title of Roger Ebert's review: "No wrong scenes, no extra scenes, and characters you want to hug." There ya go. So far "I want to make sweet sloppy love to this movie" is leading "this movie is really good" 2 to 1.
Trying to place this in the list is like trying to find a seat for a sociopath at Christmas dinner. Who cares where he sits, as long as he isn't near the knives? Actually I'm sort of nervous leaving Blood sitting next to Juno. That's an odd pairing. Technically, Blood is probably better than Juno, but it's also hard to sort out how I feel about it, given that I only saw it last night and when I was done watching it, I mostly just felt like Paul Thomas Anderson had pulled apart the lobes of my brain like he was splitting open a grapefruit, and then proceeded to take a shit in the crevasse he'd made. A good shit, mind you, and satisfying, but was anyone having fun? Hey. What?
Zodiac's a tough little son of a bitch, too. It's perfectly made, of course; if there's a sure-thing filmmaker working in Hollywood today who's more reliable than Fincher for sheer command of craft, I don't know who it is. Unlike most of the rest of his flicks, though, Zodiac ain't enjoyable, and is dedicatedly trying to frustrate your every narrative need throughout, so the film can leave you in a decidedly muddled state when its final frames unfold in a Canadian airport. Still, for geek fetishism of both the actual 1970s and the look of 1970s American filmmaking, it's second to none, and it almost makes Mark Ruffalo not an asshole. So that's something.
Masterful existentialist Western. Actually, this raises a good point: 2007 was full of these things - simple genre pieces, easy base hits, that in many cases the director elevated nicely to a honed point by applying some common sense and taking the material seriously. Economical expression, classical dramatic composition, and a kickass cast make 3:10 one of the most engagingly flawless cinematic experiences of the year. I suppose the only really sad thing about any of these is that they've become so fucking rare in the last ten years that now, they're standing out as genuine masterpieces when really, they should just be one among the crowd. This flick had a lot going on under the hood, too, but let's not get too pretentious about Batman vs. Maximus, cuz that's really the whole point.
What can I say, I'm a sucker for a movie that can make sex work, and make it awesome. The ultimate flick (and whoa, so accurate) about what it's like to fall jealously, obsessively, and above all inextricably, in love with absolutely the wrong girl, Maîtresse owns balls like nothing else I saw this year, made Asia Argento appear to actually know how to act, and put a flush on me right down to my 12-year-old soul. Jeez, I'm blushing just thinking about it right now. Does anyone want to lick fresh blood off my throat?
Sure, it's a genre exercise, but fuck howdy, it's a hell of a genre exercise. The least of Quentin Tarantino's work is still a gleefully exuberant smack out of the park compared with the best of his contemporaries (sadly including, for the purposes of this double-feature, Robert Rodriguez), and Death Proof is just so fucking fun it makes you want to get really drunk on Jack and drive around in the desert with a girl on the hood of your car. Wait, that can't be the intention, can it? Well, whatever. I want that car.
Well, now the "movies to hug" have tied "movies that are actually good" 4 to 4 (Maîtresse counts toward the former, by the way, for its naughty-feelings-causing-ness). So before the ratio slips too far down towards some kind of critical respectability, let's toss Across the Universe in there with a whole lot of tongue. In many ways too long and too ingratiating, this flick's every note is obvious, literally and figuratively. But it's got that demure glow about it that makes the coyness of its sixties mythologization fade away under the simple premise: this music is part of every single one of us, and apparently, we needed reminding of what that means. Yeah, it's a love-it-or-hate-it, and unsurprisingly, big cheeseball me loved it. And besides, I've just seen a face.
This is kind of an odd choice for me - a documentary about a cemetery which, at various parts I admit I had difficulty determining whether it was staged or real. And it doesn't so much end as fade out. But it's still often sublime, occasionally profound, and otherwise always otherworldly and beautiful. Also the first movie that ever actually made me want to go to Paris. Take that, Bertolucci!
Honourable Mention: Naissance des pieuvres
I think I've spent every day since I saw this flick at TIFF apologizing for not liking it more at the time. It got by my radar that day, and then proceeded to ferment in my subconscious for the following five or six weeks until it popped out as one of the most important films I saw all year. Naissance is clean, simple queer cinema, but that's actually the source of its charm: seeming artlessness meets precocious emotional nakedness and leaves the soul haunted. We'll look for more work from Céline Sciamma in the future.
The Worst Movie Of The Year: Spider-Man 3
It has been a long, long time since I've enjoyed a worst-of-the-year this much, and this is also easily the most I've ever enjoyed one of Sam Raimi's Spider-flicks. I know that makes me an odd hairy freak, but there it is. This movie is just so coherent. Not in terms of plot or dialogue or performance or anything like that, but just in the bricklayer-like reliability with which, with an almost Kubrickian dedication to construction, each successive scene is in fact worse than the one that came before it, building mistake on top of mistake with such outrageous blindness to any kind of aesthetic decency that by the third act, the film has become a towering pyramid of awfulness that reaches a zenith on top of a skyscraper with a dead Harry Osborn, an almost illiterate Dumbfuck MJ, and, of course, a Spider-Man who just can't stop crying like a little girl with a skinned knee. Honestly: this was one of the best movie-watching experiences I had all year, and I recommend it (and the rum) to anyone. Bravo.
Yesteryear Award: The Prestige
It's only a year old, but the fact that I somehow left Prestige off last year's top ten list is pretty much inexcusable. This is one of those movies that, at the end of the decade (which is now precariously close), I will look back on as one of the great achievements in the medium over these mercurial ten years. My fondness for the flick has only grown in the three viewings (!) that followed the time I saw it in theatres. I just keep going back, and my esteem only grows. What a joyful little clockwork, this.
And that's yer year. And officially....
...2008's gonna make me smile.
I've been handing out Man of the Year here on the ol' blog since way back in 2000, when this utterly inconsequential no-prize was awarded to the conceptual godfather of the whole deal, Richard Hatch. At the time I was proud - yes, proud! - that no non-dude would ever win the entirely uncoveted "of the year" title here on the site, but from the very early goings in 2007, I was fairly aware that the ship was about to capsize. Men are just so uncompelling these days! And if we're trying to note the person who had the biggest effect on the Tederick.comverse for the calendar year of the award, cast your eyes no further than the little category we like to call h-pot: did anything else in 2007 even come close?
There was a whole lot of Potter prattle over the summer, but I think the entry called Dumbledore's Army does the best job of getting into exactly why this all mattered so much to me. Rowling created a book series; Rowling's book series created a culture. That culture is, beyond compare, the warmest, kindest, most inclusive, most exclusive fan base I've ever had privilege to be even remotely associated with, and it brought the big hugs n' happy for the majority of my year. That's really something.
Doesn't hurt that the book was the best I've read in a long, long time, either.
J.K. Rowling is the very first winner of Tederick.com's Woman of the Year. Previous recipients of the now-defunct Man of the Year include the authors of Civil War, Matty Price, Woogie, Peter Jackson, Master Yoda, Mark, and Richard Hatch.
Well, all in all I'd say it's a good thing I'm so gall-darned dumb, otherwise all this crazy awesome shit would never happen to me. Smrt cars and train stations and a Johnny Depp hand. Also, it must be said, there's a serious upside to teenage tomfoolery when you don't actually have to worry about zits. Or curfews. Or whether Carrie "did it" with Jim in the cot bed at the back of the stage crew workshop.
My life is painfully satisfying.
Hey, it's late, let's throw this one over to Max Price:
Max: "You're never gonna have kids!"
Me: "Thank you, Max. Make sure you tell my mother."
You know what Bex gave me for Christmas? A goddamned rum jug. An actual earthenware jug, for rum. Obviously (as the title of this post indicates), she also gave me a rug. Together, these things make a fine little roll-off-the-tongue phrase which would be suitable for an album name or perhaps a sex act. I'm quite pleased.
More good news: Bex and I finally got around to Suck It: Two! OK, I admit I didn't quite twig to the fact that it has actually been nearly three months since we did Suck It: One. That's shameful. But it's out there now.
While on the subject of podcasting, right after I wrote that thing about how moviesTO had hit its hundredth show and was doing fine, moviesTO got shitcanned. Well maybe shitcanned is the wrong word and maybe it will rise phoenix-like yet again, but for now, it's taking a breather. Which should demonstrate to you why I should never say anything out loud, ever, for I possess the secret of the Deplorable Word.
I got the last tickets to tomorrow night's sneak of There Will Be Blood. I am so fucking proud of myself you'd almost think I'd fought zombies.
What the hell, since comics have pretty much completely overtaken all other media (almost even movies!) in my idolatry, it's time to start passing out some Tederick.com awards for them, too.
Best overall: Umbrella Academy
Good bloody lord I don't think I could enjoy this thing more. From neck to nuts, this was apparently exactly what I was looking for in a comic this year, in every category: writing, characters, tone, design, art, colouring, lettering, letter columning.... Four issues into the six, I'm willing to call it perfectly, splendidly, Favourite Thing Ever-y, superbly sublime.
Best ongoing: Immortal Iron Fist
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Best single issue: Sensational Spider-Man Annual
With the abhorrent artistic cowardice of One Last Day looming, Matt Fraction did something that this comics world sorely needed: he did a comic about why being in love with someone so much that you can't imagine your life without them... isn't tragic. After all, it's too easy, isn't it, going for the quick dramatic kill of the doomed love affair. Staying put - staying married, and making it work, and showing what that love means - that's the real challenge. Way to go, Matt Fraction. You're owning this list.
Other shit what was great: Zombies Calling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike: Shadow Puppets, Astonishing X-Men, Powers, The Boys, All-Star Batman & Robin, Mighty Avengers
Still waiting: Serenity Rose, Vol. 2. Must I get another tattoo??
Although I made protestations and claims this way in the years preceding, 2007 was definitely the year my toy collecting went "smaller, more awesome" which is something that probably should have happened way sooner. Now, I have bins and bins of old Hasbro Star Wars figures under my bed that I'll probably never drag out again. But in the plus column, the stuff currently on my shelves rocks all kinds of the socks. Here are the highs:
#1: Jabba the Hutt (Sideshow)
It's big, it's barely articulated, and the throne weighs more than my girlfriend (and I had to carry it home from the Silver Snail on the TTC in lousy Smarch weather). But if I own a single thing that fully expresses my lifelong love affair with the sheer gorgeousness of Return of the Jedi, it's this. Absolutely, in every way, a flawless rendition of a piece of my soul.
#2: Big Fucking Megatron (Takara Masterpiece series #05)
When I was a lad, Megatron was my favourite Transformer... in fact, I can't recall owning any other Transformers although I suppose I must have. Well anyways, with the new movie upon us with its abysmally redesigned Megatron, I got sentimentally oldschool on the leader of the Decepticons, and since buying a vintage Gen-1 Megatron toy costs about as much as buying this Masterpiece Series edition from Japan, I went with the latter because he is, after all, BIG FUCKING MEGATRON. Now I have the Megatron my grandmother bought me when I was 10, and the sheer fricking awesomeness of this toy which does, in every way, express every single thing I thought was cool about the character when I was a kid, right down to the glowing red light in his arm-cannon. Takes too fucking long to transform, but otherwise brilliant.
#3: Sao Feng, the Pirate Lord of Singapore (Hot Toys At World's End Series)
Oddly enough, the Hot Toys Pirates toy I almost didn't order ended up being the one I like the most. The Jack and Elizabeth are both somewhat disappointing, but Sao Feng is fucking spectacular. The costume, the sculpt, the accessories... this couldn't be done better. Oddly enough the Will Turner being released in the spring looks to be along the same line... now let's have a Barbossa to complete the set, yeah?
#4: Boromir, Man of Gondor (Sideshow)
After stumbling awkwardly with Aragorn and, to a lesser extent, Leggy, this Boromir is actually the best human Sideshow toy I own. It's perfect. The costume detailing literally boggles the mind (even if it did take me a solid hour to figure out how the fuck they tied their belts in Middle Earth, because it didn't come assembled), and I can't imagine a better Sean Bean sculpt if I tried.
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#5: Ace and Ion (Kidrobot)
Aw c'mon. They're just so gall-darned cute!!
Chris got me the new My So-Called Life boxed set for Christmas, which I guess now replaces my old My So-Called Life boxed set, battles won notwithstanding. Really, sentimentalizing DVDs must be my worst feature. Or at least, the worst of my many "I oversentimentalize ________" bad features. (My nose still sucks more.) Well anyways, I'm glad to go up to v2.0 on this thing. It looks good, the essays in the book actually made me feel like a teenager again, and right now I'm eating pizza and watching the show on "play all," which is apt given how much I've been feeling like a stupid teenager lately anyway. It's a little piece of happy.
The booklet, by the way, opens with exactly what Winnie Holzman was going to do for season 2, which I've spent thirteen years studiously avoiding. (And it doesn't suck.) Oh well. I'll not spoil it, for those still hangin' on. So much fanfic rests on not knowing!
You know, I know it wasn't the sixties or nothin', but I was thinking yesterday while listening to some Nirvana and wearing a lumberjack shirt (OK, not the latter) that I'm fairly content to have been a teenager in the 1990s. We had our fair share of moral borderlands to conquer, and we did all right. The music didn't suck and the clothes weren't thoroughly embarrassing. The movies coulda been better, I guess. But yeah: good decade to call my own.
How the fuck ya doin', Internet. Apparently I feel the need to greet the entire cybercommunity every time I start a blog post now.
Recappin', Coles Notes style!:
On Christmas Eve, me and Bo and Adam went to Best Buy and I bought a TV. A fucking terrific TV, thankyouverymuch, a TV so large and lovely that my eyes actually started to water when Elizabeth met up with Tai Huang in the Singapore harbour. I gotta say, I enjoy impulse buying super expensive high-end electronics. It suits my temperament to walk into a store, point at a TV, let the Best Buy employees fight it out for five minutes about whether or not I actually want it, and then roll it on out to the car. Research is for wusses and their mothers.
Christmas at 108 was the usual deal-ie-o. Among other things my sister got me a game for the Wii called Trauma Center - the surgery game! So I spent a lot of Christmas Day trying to save the life of a guy who got brought into the E.R. with a gunshot wound to the chest (Dick Cheney shot him), but I only managed to get all the way through surgery when my brother tag-teamed in and helped me out. There's a lesson in that! I admit my medical knowledge is crude but I find it faintly hilarious that the realism of the game should be so shoddy, like how you can heal cuts with antibiotic gel. It's amusing that the video game industry is not only desensitizing the world to the effects of violence, but now to the treatment of violence as well. If you go by this thing, a grizzly bear attack can be treated by a guy (me) on his first operation ever, and reconstructing broken bones is like a game of pick-up sticks.
I made my second major attempt to break the Mom/Adam gnocchi monpoly on Christmas Day by having a go at making it myself; I was definitely nailing the finger-roll by the end but I've got a lot of practice ahead of me in kneading the dough. Plus the gnocchi log totally frickin' mystifies me at this point, although I know I've done it successfully before so maybe I just need to try again with instructions. Something was off about the sauce, too, but that wasn't my area of involvement this time. I blame Adam. Why not? Still, it's fun to learn new things and get marginally better at being awesome. Next up: global conquest.
Further to that end, me and Sarafina (because Sarafina and I sounds so weird!) abducted Boxing Day. We have it, and you can't have it back. In this case the abduction mostly involved watching Invader Zim and Harry Potter and doing a good bit of sleeping, plus that thing where I show someone some of my movies for the very first time which is awesomely terrifying. But it worked out. (Of course.) All in all I'm dusty and satisfied. Now I've got several days of absolutely nothing to do, which is rather novel. I may go into my cave and not come out. It's all to the good right now, Internet. I'm happy. It feels like a whole new thing, even if it's more just a better version of the old thing.
"I've been eating speed for the last three days and every time I close my eyes I see centipedes." - The Séance
Honestly: I never sleep. What's sleep? Bloody pointless, is what. Even when the things that usually keep me from sleeping aren't around, there's always still one more thing between me and pillow. The wheel never stops turning, does it Badger?
How ya doin', Internet? I'll tell you one thing, the Christmas season is not lacking for things to do. Movies with Matty Price. Lunch with Langs. Defenestration with D-Coc. (If only.) Saturday night the North Toronto posse had its sort-of annual reunion; we went to the cash-grab formerly known as Marché and pretended it was a semi-formal. (Mark and I even wore suits, mostly because I wanted to wear my new suit again.) We visited the spitting man, looked for the pornography (but did not find it), and foodwise, the girl and I had waffles and sushi. Together. Take that, planet. Your rules? I spit on them.
Then me and Sarafina went to see Sweeney Todd, and it was pretty much excruciating from frame one. Well, at the least, from frame one it was clear that this thing had so completely missed the boat that the fact that frame one includes a boat was pretty fucking funny after the fact. Yesterday afternoon I opened a vein on the bastard, and wrote what is not so much a review as an utter renunciation:
"One of the things I like least about my job is the ocasional seeming need to psycho-deconstruct filmmakers who, in the paraphrased words of Sick Boy, "had it, then lost it, then it was gone forever." Doing this head job is (of course) pointless, because really, how the fuck do I know what went wrong with Tim Burton? I don't know anything about him. He might look at his recent work with the same mortified contempt that I hold for it, and spend his lunch hours crying uncontrollably in an increasingly small series of bathrooms."
Rest of the deal is here, and I am done with Tim Burton. I will never see another of his films. How sad is that? The dude was one of the three filmmakers who, when I was a teenager, made me want to spend the rest of my life in the movies. And now he's just an asshole. Fuck you Tim Burton. I'm off the ride.
I drove Sarah to Brantford yesterday in my dad's new Land Rover, which, after three years of the Smrt car, felt appreciably like stretching my legs, though I could have done with more highway drive time. Got home and nipped over to the Brown Family Christmas, which kicks off the 96-hour eat-a-thon that is the next few days of my life. Actually I did all right, eating-wise. I think my stomach has shrunk. I also kicked Trevor's ass in the annual roundtable game (it was "Things" this time), although he then gave me some payback on the lightning-round follow-up.
It was warm and rainy when I woke up yesterday, and cold and lonely when I got home. Two more things kept me up late, one very good, one not so good, and I don't remember sleep, though I have faith that it was there.
"She represents the Lollipop Guild." - Mark
"The Lollipop Guild?" - Trevor
"The Lollipop Guild." - Mark
Now that I'm officially half in the shadow world, let's do some blogging upon the miscellany.
Last night turned into a big impromptu Yorkie reunion when I got caught up with Joel at Los Iguanas, and then we went to a Christmas party at D-Coc's place whereupon Jeff, Chris, Brandy, Dave, and Travis were also caught up with. (Awkward sentence!) Travis and I reflected upon how our starring roles in York Film second-year editing assignment fodder (Good Cop Bad Cop and Earthquake, respectively) have made us legends - nay, gods - in our own times, and then we laughed merrily. And boomingly, for that is how gods laugh. And then, perhaps, we poured beer on the floor.
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Work-wise, this has seemed like the longest week ever. There's apparently some psychological effect at work here, because everyone is just done right now, waiting for the end, and most of us aren't even taking next week off so there isn't even actually an end. Sure, Monday will be all Bailey'sed up and hilarious, but still, it'll be officeable. I don't mind so much. I'm only ever really going about one thing anyway, and I can do that anywhere.
I have composed a haiku to describe my unease at the Peter Street B-boyz's shifting hours:
Once open always,
Peter Street Burrito Boyz
Now I'm just not sure.
I know it was never actually "open always," but poetry is about expressing feelings, not facts.
Hey, my Zombies Calling post got linked on Whedonesque due to its Joss-ish content, and I didn't even have to do anything. Thank you, interwebs, for your endless ability to annex and propagate my work! It's nice when I don't have to exert. The Faith Erin Hicks signing last night was good; I got a FEH-original Sonnet-kissing-Joss doodled on the inside cover of my ZC copy. So yeah-ya.
It has been the longest work week ever. Everybody's sort of grounded out to doing nothing - today at the office, about ten of us spent a good quantity of time trying to figure out how we'd disrupt an awkward one-on-one taking place behind closed doors in our kitchen. Also, for a solid portion of the afternoon I just wandered around with my Constable Odo action figure, making him look at stuff and say "hmmmmm." I found it amusing; others, less so.
I am tired and happy, and wearing purple and green.
Fudge. I feel kinda wonky today. Headachey stormclouds in my head.
The other night me and my tapeworm went to see I Am Legend. I liked half of it. I like movies that are entirely situational for a really long stretch of time - though inevitably when the engine of the story starts turning and you begin to get that creepy trickle on the back of your neck related to just how desperate Americans can be to believe that God is on their side, it all tends to fall down. My Mamo brain is impressed, though - can't see how a movie that quiet made that much money in a weekend, since I don't really feature people coming out and saying "hooo-ah, that was some fun movie." But then, I don't know people; I like Will Smith but I find the idea that he carries seventy-five million dollars' worth of people around in his back pocket kind of unnerving. (Like the Chinese.)
Also, they played The Dark Knight trailer before the flick, which caused a brief spasm of fearish glee. Good news on the trailer: kinda sucks! As much as I firmly believe that anyone can cut a good trailer and therefore any crappy movie can be made to look cool, I have also found repeatedly that flicks I really enjoy tend to be un-trailerable a lot of the time. Heath fucking freaks me out already, not in the way I was expecting, but yeah, I think there are bones of a flavour in there and I like it. Now I'm going to not think about it for seven months. Watch me go.
My cyberview with Faith Erin Hicks is up over at blogTO. She's at the Beguiling tonight; I wanna go to the Snail. Life is choices.
I ate a serving and a half of perogies last night. And the other day, I had fish! That's something.
Peter Jackson is making The Hobbit. Let's all go to New Zealand and help him. Who's with me???
(And for the inevitable gloat, as Mamo prophesied, so it was done. Boy, Golden Compass musta scared Bob Shaye's shit white, huh?)
Apparently I can take 25 five-year-old kids in a fight. That number sounds suspiciously arbitrary to me, but I guess it's in the ballpark because childrens' bones would probably break like twigs beneath my man-mitts. The best part is when you grab one of them by the slender kid-ankles and use him as a club against the rest.
"Hey Berle! You know what you're doing wrong? You're standing too close to the audience!" - Statler
"How far back do you want me to go?" - Milton Berle
"You got a car?" - Statler
I'm still sort of fucked up by the fact that when I was a kid, I had Statler and Waldorf backwards. Honestly: doesn't Statler look a whole lot more like a Waldorf? Everything about him from demeanor to eyebrow length says "Waldorf" to me. Shit now I'm starting to freak out.
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As for me, I'm hardly eating and I'm rarely sleeping. And yet I live. When I put on my brown hoodie this morning, I looked in the mirror and said "hmmm... cloakier than usual." I know I'm in there somewhere, but you can't tell from the outside. Anyways, I'm sure it'll even out sooner or later, and when it does I'll eat a whole bushel of apples. Till then, I'm unslakeable.
Speaking of things that I am. I don't know what makes me queasier: that the second page specifically references Jason, or that its thing about the "if X then Y" approach to dating so painfully describes my last first date. It would be lovely if anything that I do were not being done by a bajillion other like-inclined losers around the world. Must I wear eyeliner every day? Shiesh.
WHY THE FUCK didn't I think of that to use as the title of my review. WHY. FUCK. Stupid Matty Price and his genius wordplay. Well anyways, file this under things to do on a snow day.
GUESS WHAT, INTERNET! Turns out you can't move on a day like this! Which, I guess, is why I love Matty Price: a) he tried, and b) he called it off the moment it seemed untenable. He is both charmingly courageous, and reliably pragmatic. That's what we all need in an associate.
So now, I am officially snowbound. I may play tauntaun for the girl later, if things work out; if not, it's me and the Pirates and making the pizza guy bring me food because MWA HA HA I am the ruling class and he is the servant, although truly, he shall be tipped like a king. Ohhhhhhhh I wish I had Spider-Man 3 on blu-ray. I could get stoned and watch that motherfucker twice in this kind of weather.
You know what else I wish I had? Predictive text entry, that's what. Never thought I'd see the day that would matter to me but I am fucking tired of pounding out letters one by one. PREDICT, CELL PHONE, PREDICT! It's not too much to ask. I work for a fucking telecommunications company. I like my phone because it's a flip and flips amuse me greatly, but I'd not say no to a BlackBerry Pearl, not least because of what you get when you remove the word "berry."
So now I'm just jiving my way through some blogTO posts, including yet another snarl at the TTC, and an interview with Faith Erin Hicks that I'll be putting up on Wednesday in advance of her Zombies Calling signing at the Beguiling. (Plug plug.) Hey it's neat when I can use my quasi-journalistic status to talk to people I'd be talking to anyway. It feels like whiskey.
Oh hey: I saw Little Shop of Horrors yesterday. At that point I realized that I had only had one complete night's sleep since Tuesday, and so the second act veered more towards the hallucinogenic than perhaps the director had intended, but I stayed awake through most of it and even really enjoyed some of it. So there's that. Then there was Googmas and 150-proof rum - which, ordinarily, I'm all for, because it's what the pirates drank! but with the fatigue was a real downer - and then getting home from Googmas and now this Even More Snow jive. They had damn well not have the RT working in the morning. Matt wants a snow day.
[fists skyward] BURNETT!!!
OK I know I'm the last man to the party on this thing, but holy fucking CHRIST this is the funniest thing I've seen in a year:
Me and Bex just watched H-Pot 5 in Blu-Ray. She showed me this video. It's snowing. I have a party to go to. And I have a Johnny Depp hand.
That's wall-worthy, that.
After a hem and haw or two, I've come down on the side of hating this glut of full scene previews of movies that seem to be all the rage these days. So I guess I'm not going to see I Am Legend in theatres, nor its Dark Knight teaser scene. In fact based on Pirates 3 I'm going to say that never seeing trailers for movies you want to see anyway is probably a really good idea. I've heard him laugh; I don't wanna see shit till the movie. True story.
(We'll see how long this lasts)
So that happened. 
And then,
I pretty much ignored the pressing need to buy Christmas presents until right around now. There are two problems with the entire holiday shopping process as far as I can discern:
1. I suck at it
2. I always end up buying shit for myself at the same time.
(1) is inevitable and unavoidable, but I've managed to keep (2) down to a dull roar this year. But because I've left just so dern many things behind lately, a fairly decent list has accumulated in my wake:
Matt's Christmas List, Vol. 31
OK, time to sift through the rubble.
The events of the weekend did one thing rather brilliantly: they completely erased my memory of seeing The Golden Compass. Like, on Monday morning I saw the poster on the way to work and was like, "oh yeah, that movie." Now I'm (finally) reading Lyra's Oxford again, which is a dessert course that should not have been preceeded by the stew, but whatever, it's still lovely, if far too short. You know, someday someone should do all of these things film-wise. Three features, and however many shorts Pullman ends up writing (there's one about Lee and Iorek coming out in the spring), plus the apocrypha and the lantern slides. That would make one hell of a DVD.
(At this point I'm presuming that New Line will never in a million years bankroll Knife and Spyglass after the pantsing Compass took at the box office this weekend. If we ever get around to a Mamo, I might explain more. Meantime, here's a good bit about the scripts, including the Hollywood bullshit line of the year: “The aim is to put in the elements we need to make this movie a hit, so that we can be much less compromising in how the second and third books are shot" - way to go Chris!)
There is now a floating theory that I am in fact from a parallel reality. This replaces the previous theory that Daniel is the central hub of a web of alternate worlds that only he can interact with, because now not only does Daniel not remember seeing Antenna with me, but I have no memory of seeing Spider-Man 2 with Chris. Since I am clearly the common element in these divergent histories, I must be the one who tumbled in from an alterna-cosmos. Which is fine, but I do miss our old morning ritual of eating cake before breakfast while wearing knit caps. It's the little things that make a home a home, y'know?
It is dead terrific to be out of DVD bankruptcy, internets. Still feels a bit strange though, like I was doing something naughty yesterday when I bought Lost. I also picked up some shiny blu Harry Potter 5, which looks fan-frickin'-tastic. Looking forward to watching that again and seeing whether I actually liked it, or just liked it because it wasn't as godawful as Goblet.
For my next trick, I shall write an entire instructional design plan in just north of 150 minutes. SHAZAAAM!!!
Chris and I got our yule on last night, trimming the traditional 3QF yule tree and making many jokes about our yule logs. No wait: that was just me. Anyways the living room now smells appropriately pine-fresh, even if I've come to the conclusion that my ornaments pretty much suck at this point and are in dire need of cooler, ironically-viable replacements. The girls threw a Christmas party last night, too, at which I tried (and failed) to turn Beckers crap-ass egg nog into something drinkable. It's my own fault for not making real egg nog this year, but still: gwwahhahhhhh.
Here's a dude who got Neil Gaiman to propose to his girlfriend for him. (Yet another of my patented steal-a-link-from-Jocelyn moves.) This opens up a raft of possibilities. Things I would like to get Neil Gaiman to do for me:
Meanwhile, I hate Drew Struzan. Well "hate" is a strong word, but that poster sucks. I don't think I've really loved one of his since Last Crusade B, though there were design elements of Phantom Menace B that I liked even if the whole thing didn't quite get there. Anyways: this thing couldn't look more Photoshoppy in a million years of trying. I do, however, admittedly admire their fortitude in including a giant crystal skull. "Oooooh, it's crystal! You can see clean through it!" Why couldn't they get Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio to write the Indiana Jones movie? Seriously.
Points against Indy IV: 7
Points for Indy IV: 4
Indy IV is getting its ass kicked.
Keel over topsails, and always with the spinning, spinning, spinning. So:
Last week was hard, but really awesome. I learned so much. Everything from simulation structure to how to eat rasmalai. My ducklings were terrific company even if they did keep me on my toes from about 8 a.m. Monday to just before five on Friday night. So 2008's goal has pretty much become "come up with a business case that gets you to Mumbai." It's only fair; I inflicted a week of Scarborough winter weather on these guys, plus two sixteen hour flights. If I time it right I can hit a rainy season and be as stunned by climate divergences as they were.
Saturday was the office Christmas party.
Holy god it was like the wedding from hell. I took off after the Rod Stewart impersonator kicked the Supremes impersonators off the stage and started singing "Maggie May." Plus there was the whole conspiracy/ambush/"I sense Count Dooku" aspect, to which I dutifully replied "spring the trap." Even ended up getting my goddamned prom picture taken. (Which I never did at my actual prom, now that I think about it, so at least I finally have one.) Damned if nearly the best thing about the deal was that I bought myself what I would enthusiastically describe as a fucking kickass suit. (I also found a oddly uncanny imitation of the Emo Spider-Man suit, i.e. the one he buys and then starts dancing in the street, but I chose not to purchase it, for its use is limited.) Anyways, ultimately this neon-nightmareland was at the very least an opportunity to drink scotch, and a twelve dollar martini, and red wine, and white wine, and rum, in that order, so I guess it was all right. Plus my people were with me. So I give the office Christmas party an A+ for effort, and acknowledge that the competition for my engagement was fierce.
Here's me and the Cannonball:
Me and Al and Al:
So thennnnnnnn, I went back to 3QF and found it once again without power. Which is hilarious in summer but vaguely alarming in winter. Rachie came home drunk and proceeded to give Chris and I about twenty minutes of the funniest fucking free-associative comedy I have ever heard, about her life and her problems. Then Sarafina came over and we decided, yeah, survival wasn't in question and even in a blackout 3QF has charm. So that turned out all right, even if we couldn't watch DVDs. Plus, candles: enjoyable and can make for impromptu, unintended profundity. (Let's go with..... imprunitendundity.) We made up for the movie-watching the next day when the power came back and we spun up Pirates 1 and then Pirates 3 (and it wasn't even my idea!! holy crap), with sushi in between and rum for the latter one. Plus there were crepes and waffles with caramel, and a hoodie. Right: that kind of heaven. It doesn't sound like a lot, but somehow it gobbled up the back half of the weekend, so here I am now. Cripes on a swizzle stick, who is writing my life?
I took today to slow things down, work from home, do some group-support with Jessi, and take a deep, solid breath.
Don't need to watch all of it because it's fairly repetitive, but I suspect this is what our first contact with alien life will actually be like:
Why doesn't the dog give a fuck? It's a poser.
Well, here goes...
The only time the daemons truly impress, ironically, is when they die - each of them vanishes in a dangerously aestheticized explosion of fiery Dust particles, which positively reeks of a studio saying "we could do something really cool here!" rather than thinking that, perhaps, a human life being snuffed out ought to be played as horrific rather than wondrous. But I'm sure some spreadsheet somewhere proved that golden baths of dusty colour sell more happy meals than souls being pinched out of existence by the brutal finality of death.
I'm not particularly happy with this review but I had to get it done or my brain would have slowly dissolved in this mediocre little bastard of a movie. In a lot of ways I wish it had been significantly worse if it could not have been significantly better; its utter blandness makes even writing about it a challenge, and even less fun than watching it, which is saying something.
Well, now we've had our Bakshi version.
Hey neat, I just slept for 12 hours straight. Man I love my bed. I spent yesterday working with the ducklings on almost no sleep at all, but I think we got a lot of really solid stuff done, so I'm all right with it. (The ducklings are training designers, they are from India, and they are a) hilarious, b) superintelligent, and c) thoroughly overwhelmed by this thing we call "cold.") Together we are writing scenarios for simulations, which is a lot like coming up with the characters for a movie or comic book except that you care a lot more about their income bracket and disposable wealth and what phones they'd buy. It's Character Writing For Demographics. And yet I still got my mid-teen turbo-wise girl character into the mix yesterday. I CANNOT BE STOPPED.
Tonight's Golden Compass, and I have abandoned all faith. Tomorrow night, hilariouser and hilariouser, is the office Christmas party slash ambush, and boy howdy are they in for a surprise. Gotta buy a suit, and keep spinning the wheels.
Say what you will about Evil Qui-Gon, but that Batman flick doesn't work without him. Remember that the next time you make fun of his flowing hair, churlish goatee, or casual disregard of the pallies.
Frick I'm hungry. How does that happen? Cut down too many ninjas with my glowing green lightsabre blade on the slopes of K'un-Lun in my sleep? That makes me hungry now? Sure, it was cold out, but I was well dressed for the weather.
Still goin'.
Today I took the ducklings to Pickering and the Shwa to conduct store visits, and then just sat merrily back with AC and had a day-long connection meeting. I can pretty much live like this. I was driving a freakin' Lincoln the size of my apartment (I even checked the trunk to make sure Billy Batts wasn't in there) and it was cold and pretty in the wildlands outside T.O., and it was nice to see all the planning planning planning of the last few weeks finally hone down into a single achievable "YES. And... DONE." I've got a few more days of the crazy, capped off by the hilarity that is the Christmas party on Saturday night, and then I am officially taking a nice long nap.
Pirates 3 on Blu-Ray. I would mainline that shit.
I'm deep in the reeds. Enjoy this for your Monday:
SPIDER-MAN 3 IS THE BEST BAD MOVIE EVER MADE. I mean oh my god, Internet. This is a miracle of spectacular awfulness! This is the crowning kingpin of "so bad it's good!" It's REALLY good! It's so artistically coherent in its fundamental pursuit of complete and irrevocable awfulness that it is among the highest achievements in the art form of human creation that has ever been undertaken! HOLY GOD I MUST OWN THIS MOVIE ON BLU RAY DVD SO THAT I MAY WATCH IT REPEATEDLY AD NAUSEUM WITH EVER WIDENING CIRCLES OF DRUNKENED FRIENDS AND ALSO THE USE OF DRUGS WOULD BE GOOD!!! I mean you have no idea how superior picture quality and sound improve your experience of the moment where Peter Parker comes out of the clothing store and starts doing some blaxploitation strut, live in the streets! Or later when he begs Harry to team up with him in his fight against evil AND HARRY DOES IT!! Or like how everyone in the movie gives great advice - like Dylan Baker saying "don't get any of that stuff on your skin" or the crazy old Eastern European dude giving Peter advice about girls! OR WHEN THE BUTLER SHOWS UP! And also: YES! Oh I am very, very impressed. If you have the means I highly recommend getting a blu-ray player and getting drunk and getting Spider-Man 3, maybe not in that order but in something like that order and FUCKING ENJOY, INTERNET. The God Raimi made this for your pleasure. Why do you mock the God Raimi? You are mere bitchhumans in the glow of his superior awesomeness. Only the God Raimi would see Superman 3 and declare unto the world, "we can do better." And he did. Oh sweet glorious creation, he did.
Do not mock the God Raimi. He has blessed us with his many potent gifts.
The tower is broken, DVD bankruptcy is over, I have a blu-ray player in my house, I have replaced my last VHS tape, and Pirates 3 comes out on Tuesday. I ran into Brandy on the street while carrying the blu-ray box and she said "it's the end of the world!" to which I replied "IT'S THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD!!"
Yeah, I caved to the Sony. Got fucking sick to death of waiting for the Panasonic, and the Sony came down in price and I just don't care enough about the new profile to wait a single day more when it's right there in front of me in the store. The player itself reminds me powerfully of the first VCR my family ever owned, the old iron war-horse. It's big and ugly and slow and dumb. But the pictures are so pretty. Me and the kids are going to watch Spiderman 3 and get drunk. (You know: Spiderman 3. The one with the Spidermans, the Solomons, and the Berkowitzes.)
What else happened? Well, I finished His Dark Materials this morning; that was significant. I feel like I sort of got to know a little more about Phillip Pullman this time around than I had before; when I was gorked out of my mind on Friday night and quasi-stoned with fatigue I was making all kinds of weird connections between him and Mary and the Mulefa and everything. And there's a particular challenge question in the Amber Spyglass Lantern Slides that made me feel like a foolish kid on the first day of school. Just a marvelous experience from top to bottom.
I finished the book over coffee and then went down on this particularly yucky weather day; hung out at the Snail for a while because I hadn't talked to Sheila in for ever, and then I grabbed a burrito and hit the Cinematheque for a screening of Bunny Lake is Missing - which was pretty damn good, except that "Keir Dullea is a psychopath" isn't really as surprising a turnaround as the filmmakers obviously thought it was, because yeah, that guy ain't right.
When the movie was done the weather nasties were really in full force so I jogged over to the Best Buy, made the crisis-support phone call to Matty Price re: the Blu Ray, and made my decision. Now I'm all wound up in HDMI cables and sippin' on rum.
Yup. That went well.
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Would you - yes you, reader - be wearing the exact same thing twenty years from now that you're wearing right now?
Even if you had a special outfit that was expressly "for raiding lost arks, liberating temples of doom, going on last crusades, and visiting kingdoms of crystal skulls" that you thought was pretty damn nifty, would it really go totally unmodified in the decades betwixt your thirties and your sixties? I mean, not even a little scarf or something? Exactly how many pairs of those particular slacks did Indy buy that day at Macy's? Because you know he had to have got through a few in his time. Fuck, the tank chase in Crusade would level any pair of pants I own to such an extent that I would have ended up hitting the bevvy with the Grail Knight wearing nothing but my boxers.
Yeah, yeah, I know. If they'd changed one molecule of fibre on the entire outfit the fan community would have marched on Washington. (Which is weird, because the filmmakers were in California.) But something about this just makes me feel like they feel it's really important to remind us who we're looking at, particularly in this picture with Shia: "See? It's Indiana Jones! Still the same old guy! Except now he's actually an old guy. But otherwise he's the same." Surely to fuck, Indy did not have a day in 1934 where he looked at himself in the mirror and said "yeah, this is what I'm going to wear for the rest of my life." I can accept the hat and even the jacket, but he woulda changed the shirt by now.
Points against Indy IV: 6
Points for Indy IV: 4
"...as plate after plate of fluffy poached eggs, cartilaginous peameal, and lakes of sunshiney goo continued to pile up over time, I realized that if I don't start catalogueing these excursions in some formal manner, a great field of human knowledge would be lost. Hence, the Benedict Chronicles..."
"Do you serve eggs benedict?" - Home Fries
"The best in the city." - An Original's employee who obviously had no idea who he was up against
Me and Home Fries went to Original's for an impromptu benny a few months ago, but I didn't have my camera, so no review. Nonetheless the gap between the waitstaff's promise on that day, and the reality of their serving, became a sort of mini BenChro legend, so I resolved to go back. Home Fries abandoned me this morning (worst sidekick ever) so I went to Original's all by my lonesome, fully intending to rip those bitches a new puppet-hole.
Now here's the irritant: the benny was a lot better this time. In fact I worry about this a lot with BenChro because there can be such variance in quality from month to month on certain bennies (the Sharkey's experience still sticks in my craw) and there was a demonstrable improvement between this Original's benny and the last. It still wasn't great. The hollandaise was mealy and over-citrused, and the side of pineapple and tomato was just goddamned baffling.
Nonetheless, the eggs were well cooked - maybe slightly overdone, but I can live with that. And the peameal was decent, as were the home fries, though the latter weren't among the best I've ever tasted. They let me keep my Starbucks coffee instead of subjecting me to theirs. So it was a pretty satisfying meal, I guess.
On a normal review I'd therefore be compelled to give Original's three eggs out of four, but for sheer hubris I'm still knocking them down to two.
Original's Santa Fe Saloon is located at 1660 Bayview Avenue in Toronto, mere steps from The Big Stretch. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.
Editor's note: the error that lead to Home Fries' failure to appear at this morning's breakfast was later determined to be mine.
Firstly and gladly, we recorded a long-delayed Mamo this week which you can enlisten here.
But somewhat more significantly though less personally important, ye olde moviesTO just crossed the triple digit barrier with its hundredth show. This means a few things:
1. If we keep Mamoing a the rate we're Mamoing, moviesTO will lap us before the end of the year.
2. Shortly there will be more non-Matt moviesTO's than there were Matt moviesTO's.
3. Baby's alive and well, and with a good mommy.
Yeah I'm proud. Andrea's done a kickass job with the show since I left at the end of last year. It's gone to places that, really, I always wanted it to go but had none of the wherewithal to achieve myself when I was running it off my computer all alone in my bedroom. So pretty much, I'm pleased as punch with the whole situation. I think it's brilliant, and I'm looking forward to seeing episodes 200, 300, and more.