I am a leaf on the wind
Sep 30 2005 - 5:09 p.m.

Well, here we are. Some of us didn't make it. Those that did are bleeding more than they'd like, and some don't look to stop any time soon. But we got through, got to this place. We're standing where we meant to be all along and if that's good for less than a handful of dirt, then at least it marks the time and the distance in a way not easily overlooked. We've come a long way to get to this point. Kept it in the air when we needed, crashed it to the ground when we had to, fought and climbed and spit and bled the whole lot of us just to keep going.

Storm looks to be getting worse, but we'll be clear of it soon.

Let's fly
Sep 30 2005 - 8:41 a.m.

Others, brother
Sep 28 2005 - 10:03 p.m.

The shark had the Dharma logo stamped on its damn tail!!! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!?!

It smells like sex in here
Sep 28 2005 - 3:23 p.m.

So today, NYX finally comes crashing to a halt. This is a real ass-kicker. It's issue #7 (they started adding the "of 7" to the cover around #5, when they realized that they'd completely screwed the pooch on this whole thing), and as much as it certainly works as a capper to the unrefined madness that preceded it, the book mostly just serves to illustrate that something that could have been really good went really, really badly. NYX was Joe Quesada's attempt to redefine his artistic street cred by stepping away from his Editor-in-Chief duties for a few days each month and write a mature, gritty take on the mutant universe of the X-Men titles. As much as New X-Men and now Astonishing have done credible work in returning the whole X-metaphor to where it works best, as a rallying cry for disenfranchised youth, NYX goes a step further and puts mutant powers back on the street, in the hands of screwed-up tweens and teens who have absolutely no idea what to do with them. That's a great concept, and the first three issues of this title were superb... and then it all went to shit. Quesada stopped meeting deadlines, issues trickled out at an abysmal pace of about one every eight months, and finally, they decided to terminate the run... and couldn't even get that done on time. Well, it's all done now, and if #7 feels more than a little slapshot in its efforts to tie up a host of storylines that were obviously intended to play out over a much longer timeframe, it also succeeds better than issues #4, 5, and 6 combined in really defining the principal characters and giving them something interesting to do besides whinge about their lives. And no doubt, it's a very pretty book... the artwork by Robert Teranishi, and the cover by Joshua Middleton, always a bigger seller than the muddled content. Teen nymphs with superpowers, drawn shit-hot. What more do you need?

I need to get the hell away from Angel, is what. They're onto issue #4 of this new "The Curse" mini-series, and it continues to suck major balls. If it weren't for the fact that the next mini-series looks interesting enough that I'm willing to keep struggling through "Curse," I would have walked after issue #1. Insipid, uninspired plotting, and not enough story to fill two issues, let alone five. Finish. The fucking. Story.

Meanwhile, check out my Bendis love. I think two years ago I wouldn't have given Bendis a drop of water if he was dying in the desert, and now I'm reading three of his titles with something approaching zealous fervour: Powers, House of M, and Daredevil. He's wrapping up Daredevil in a five-part arc, of which Daredevil #77 is issue number two. It's dandy. Sure, I realize that dealing with Elektra in a non-Miller universe is technically heretical, but it's damn fun to see her turn up, and Black Widow too, and also Milla Donovan. Because Murdoch is the single biggest slut in the whole superhero roster, and that makes him cool. I still don't like the hyper-Photoshopped artwork that Bendis and Maleev cooked up for the Daredevil run, but I'll sit through it. The story's getting good.

I topped off my reading today by going back and doing the entire Serenity 3-issue arc back to back. I never reviewed issue #3 on the site because of other traumas, but on the whole my opinion is not good. It concludes the story, I suppose, but does so very unimaginatively and with almost none of the sort of twisting of conventional narrative that Firefly (and the first two issues of this comic) were notable for. The result is that it makes the story as a whole feel a lot thinner than it felt in issues #1 and 2. It's a shame. Still (obviously), I can't help but hope that there will be more Serenity-based comics to come. The material between Book and Mal was superb here, as was what little we got of Wash, and of Inara. Plenty left to do in the 'Verse, as far as I'm concerned.

Miranda
Sep 28 2005 - 9:32 a.m.

I thought my review of Serenity was pretty good. It's always really hard to review anything that you have so much of an emotional connection to (my Star Wars reviews are the frickin' bane of my existence, for example), but I thought I did an adequate job of summing up why Serenity is awesome when I wrote that epistle back in June. Well, I was wrong. THIS is the best Serenity review I've read so far, and I've read plenty. There's a notable "they either get it or they don't" slide going on in the reviews so far, and that's to be expected; I don't highlight this review because it's a rave, but because it's a rave that pretty much nails why I, for one, think Serenity is a freakin' classic. A masterpiece. Yes, an Act of Joss.

Man howdy, let's all go to the movies on Friday. I'm pimping this one pretty hard. I talked about it in one of yesterday's two Mamos, and then went over to blogTO and whined about it again, and on Friday I'll slap my Serenity review up on blogTO as well, and wear my shiny hat. Doesn't look like any of the Browncoats are actually going to be able to assemble for a Friday screening, but heck, there's no reason why I can't just abduct twelve people and force them into the theatre late on Friday night. And then again on Saturday, and maybe twice on Sunday. Because we Browncoats may be noted for our crocheting skills, but are even more so for general tenacity and willingness to brawl for a good cause. Am I sending enough signal yet? We'll see.

Change the formula much, Keoghan?
Sep 27 2005 - 11:14 p.m.

They aren't racing around the world! That is so annoying!!

Possession
Sep 27 2005 - 7:37 p.m.

Four hundred whole DVDs to my name, thanks to a birthday gift this aft from Matty Price of the Criterion edition of Ikiru... strange, because were I to have run a "400th DVD" poll like I've done in the past, that would have been the disk I would have wanted to win. Now I've skipped the legislation and gone straight to fulfillment. You know, kind of like ducking around the UN to invade a foreign country. (But no one ever does that.)

Chris also Kurosawaed me, and I'll doubtless Kurosawa myself at some point in the next couple of weeks as well, just for the naked fun of it. (Man howdy, I can't wait till Ran.) Add to that a Darth Sidious lightsabre from Steve, the very-hard-to-find first season of This is Wonderland from B-HAM!, the forthcoming fourth volume of Simpsons episode guides from the ex-X chromo, one piece of comfort food from Tederick.com's Middle East division, a Star Trek season and the Hellboy director's cut from the siblings, and I'd say I own just about everything. Ever.

Toys for tots
Sep 27 2005 - 1:21 p.m.

Hasbro's been cheapening down in the wake of Revenge of the Sith's closing the Star Wars doors forever... here's a look at that long-awaited Obi-Wan with Baby Luke figure, and it's just a redress of an existing toy, with the addition of a little plastic Luke. For my part, I'm gladly watching my interest in the toy line dwindle. I'm restricting my focus to fewer and fewer items as the months go on, and I expect that 2006 will be a virtual ghost town. I just got a glut of Anakins (the Evolutions 3-pack, plus the crispy critter version from the Mustafar shore) and I'm still hunting around for the operation table Vader... and I'm very much looking forward to the Astromech 10-pack that should be shipping out of Entertainment Earth before the end of the year, but that's about it. A couple of Obi-Wans here and there, but otherwise, things have quieted down nicely. And I've been selling stuff out of my bins. I've sold less than fifty figures since the beginning of the summer, but it's a start, and occasionally the money's decent. Hey, remember that girl at Wal Mart in 2000? Star Wars really is over.

I forgot the eggs
Sep 27 2005 - 8:34 a.m.

108 is all the numbers added together (which explains why the house I grew up in is evil), and Rutherford is Shannon's last name. BASTARDS!! At least we have Amay-Ray family-styles to keep us occupied tonight.

Wait a minute, wait a minute... want to freak your Lost mind right out? Check this.

Come on now sugah! Bring it on bring it on
Sep 26 2005 - 8:16 p.m.

Does anyone want to lend me the first season of Veronica Mars?

Now I'm making banana bread. It's one of the things I'm good at, a "specialty of the house" in the Robert Rodriguez sense. Perfect for a rainy day and for making the house smell not like dying. Now, for the curious, I shall list off the sum total of these specialties of the house, all of which I am really good at making. It's a bit like that time two years ago when I made a list of a bunch of other things I'm good at, which included oral sex and making peanut butter sandwiches... both of which, as I recall, were vehemently challenged by multiple parties who were not technically in a position to have an opinion. Let's see how this one goes:

1. Banana Nut Bread - I am so good at this it is actually scary. In fact, when I was first living on my own, I essentially subsisted on this stuff because I just couldn't get enough of making it. The "nut" in question is walnut. And if you slice it thinly, nuke it up in the microwave, and cover it in either a) butter, b) peanut butter, or c) cream cheese, it's better than anything, except maybe my oral sex.
   
   
2. Stuffed Chicken Bread in Pastry - cribbed heavily from Jamie Oliver, this devine motherfucker stuffs mushrooms, garlic and cilantro into a chicken breast and then wraps it all up in puff pastry. There's also a sinful white wine and mustard sauce that goes with, and if you goo it all up with a bit of olive oil to boot, forget about it. Oral sex should be so lucky.
   
   
3. Uncle Matt's Burn Your Face Off Chili and its distant cousin, Uncle Matt's Hazparat-Hot Soft Tacos. I do loves them spices. I went a bit too far with the chili last time and had to back it off with some yogourt because what I came out with was technically inedible by anyone who wanted to not be dying of colonic pain the following day. But when it works, it really works, and it lasts forever (oral sex)... a month for the chili, or a week for the tacos.
   
   
4. My Mother's Nuclear Risotto - My Mom came up with this recipe for microwave risotto, which I've appropriated; make it with vegetarian stock if you must, but the real deal is with real chicken stock - the kind you make when you actually boil the shit out of a chicken carcass for three hours, rather than buying the little cubes. The fine dining equivalent of Kraft Dinner: perfect comfort food, and too damn easy to make.
   
   
5. Pasta Carbonara à la Lawson (vintage style) - Nigella Lawson came up with a brilliant carbonara recipe about ten years ago and then went and revised it in one of her most recent books... big mistake. The original is way better. This is one of my trickier meals because sometimes, it just plum doesn't turn out right. (It's still tasty, but it looks like shit.) But man, when that yolky cheesy goo turns into golden sauce just from the sheer heat of the pasta, and the bacon is chunky but not too chunky, it's about as good as it gets without involving tongue-play.

There are other things I'm still working up to perfection, and other things still that I haven't quite been able to sum up nicely in bloggable form, but whatever, that's the general list. Now the bread's coming out of the oven... gotta go.

The failures of the universe
Sep 26 2005 - 11:02 a.m.

No, you're not wrong, it all sucks right now. What can you do? Sometimes the rogue wave just knocks you on your ass... and while you're still down, the next one comes and chokes you, and the one after that drags you along the bottom until your ass is a rash of blood, and then maybe there's razor-sharp coral, and who knows, a shark. And that, as they say, is life. Pretty shitty endorsement strategy.

This is the part of the post where I nominally put in the "BUT," except that there's no mighty "but" coming this time around. Guess what, 2005: you kicked all of our asses. Now is all for the wound-licking, and the waiting for sunnier skies and fairer winds.

And then she got MEAN
Sep 25 2005 - 1:46 a.m.

I cannot accurately answer Ebay questions when liquors have drunk3eened me! Btu that's okay. Steve got me a ligttle lightsabre and people say it's like a little sex toy but for who? Who would have it in themselves.?That's crazy. Helooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

No we 3!Fers are not a morbid people by nature but sometimes life kicks you in the ass and yo sit around with the fairy lights on talking about how the shit is. And that's goo dtimes.

(Yeah okay so I left the typos in.)

Clemency
Sep 23 2005 - 5:20 p.m.

GOD DAMMIT I CANNOT FUCKING STAND HOW GOOD ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND IS

Not just a Spike movie
Sep 23 2005 - 9:45 a.m.

...but a Spike & Illyria movie. Amy, don't be lyin'.

And also out of left field, the news that Joss will be directing a flick called Goner, from a spec script her wrote for Uni. Not clear whether this falls before or after Wonder Woman, but are you like me? Do you feel like the Wonder Woman thing ain't never gonna happen anyway, and should never gonna happen anyway?

And why isn't Mirrormask premiering in Toronto on the 30th? Bastards. Well, we'll all be seeing Serenity that weekend anyway.

Identity theft
Sep 22 2005 - 9:41 p.m.

We humans are rather miserably obsessed with putting things into categories. The other night my brother and I were talking about this because he recently quit vegetarianism, a subcultural clique he didn't even necessarily feel he had joined in the first place (preferring to say only that he didn't eat meat), but which had been rather dismayed with him for having left it. The trouble with any identity-based subculture (we were talking vegetarianism, but sexual identity is nicely parallel and often even worse) is the rigidity with which you're expected to play by their rules: you have to be the same kind of vegetarian as every other vegetarian on earth or you're not a vegetarian; they'll give you an obscure modification of the term if you're lucky (pescetarian, etc.), or kick you out of the club altogether if you're not. It's not enough just to be able to say that on a basic human level you get to choose what you do and do not want to eat; you need to be forced into the box because the box gives meaning to most of the other people inside it, and by challenging its boundaries you're threatening their hard-won identities. Similarly, whenever I get described as a carnivore, I become a bit rankled; I am no such thing. I am an omnivore. I occasionally eat meat products and more often eat non-meat products. Truth be told, I in fact choose what I am going to eat, every single time I am going to eat something, unless it is being served to me by someone I want to impress (like the girl's mother, for example). My dietary choices are being used as an oppositional force against someone else's subcultural identity, as a method of reinforcing themselves, and I don't particularly enjoy being used that way. It's enough to say that I know who I am and what I want to eat, and that I don't seat my entire sense of self in categorical boundaries made up by someone I've never met. Not, of course, that everyone in one of the cliques does so, or has even thought about this; merely that there is an uncomfortably large number of people in a growing number of cultural categories - personal, political, sexual - who are becoming so dogmatic about the legislation of their cultural selves that they're creating hive mentalities where once were freedoms of choice. If it is these people who have taken the greatest strides in popularizing their identities to a mass audience, then my principal fear is merely that we've forgotten what choice is, in the headlong rush to make sure that we're on a team, like kids playing Red Rover. Or maybe I just don't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member, because it seems a bit sloppy to let someone else's idea of self become my own.

Clobberin' time
Sep 22 2005 - 3:31 p.m.

I've been out of the week-by-week on comics for a while now, on account of the apocalypse and all, and I know I missed a few issues of things I did not want to miss (Powers #13 being high on that list). Today I thought I'd test the waters with one or two titles, and ended up buying five. Stupid compulsive comic-book buying. Here goes:

I bought Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual #1 mostly because of the cover. I've been following UFF for two issues (now three) and the artwork was the primary selling point for the book at first; here, the artwork is really all the book has going for it because the storyline in this annual didn't exactly blow my skirt up. (I'm told it will lead into the upcoming UFF arc, so maybe it was necessary lifting.) The plotting was pedestrian enough to make me wonder if I should just cut UFF from my reading roster altogether. Fortunately, next up was...

Ultimate Fantastic Four #23 concludes the 3-issue arc that brought me into the title, and it's pretty damn nifty. We're still in that alternate universe where the muties are all evil and zombified. Lots of fun having Magneto in the good guys' corner, awesome reveal when the heroes show up to do heroic deeds, and to top it all off you've got Thing pushing Magneto aside when zombified Hulk shows up... because Thing "always wondered if he could take that freak." Artwork is superb, and Sue Storm remains unbelievably comic-book-superbabe-y.... er, I mean, the characters are well repositioned for this FF spinoff (younger, more intense). Looking forward to the next arc already.

Next up was Runaways, still on borrowed time thanks to the Whedon endorsement, but with issue #8 actually manages to become something I'd read on my own time. Why? Because Karolina - an alien teenager who glows the most attractive shades of green and pink - fesses up to her sexual identity in spite of the fact that the whole freakin' galaxy hangs in the balance of her marrying some creepy dude from outer space. And just when I realize that that means I'm in love with her, they go ahead and yank her out of the gang and send her off to unite worlds and bring cosmic harmony. Enter "the pain." And as we all know, no teen melodrama saga can survive without generous, well-thought-out helpings of "the pain."

Hence Supergirl, issue #2 in this case, pissing me off because I just can't get into the head of this thing. There's way too much talk about all the various competing super-leagues in this strange DC universe I've been dropped into, and not enough credence given to what I wanted the book to be about... which is a teenage Super-person trying to figure her shit out. I just can't keep up with it any more. Like Faye Dunaway says in the Supergirl movie, "Goodbye, Supergirl... for ever... and ever... and ever...." or at least until something tells me that the book has stopped sucking and started kicking ass.

Finished things off with Hellboy: The Island #1, which was actually published many months ago. I've read #2, never got #1. (It's a 2-issue mini-arc, only.) I know that the second one revealed major details about the Right Hand of Doom and why it exists, but I can't remember what those details might have been... and I don't really care. As usual, Mignola's spare artistic style is the greater attractor to this title than any of the actual storylines, although it's always fun to see Hellboy say "crap" and beat the shit out of large, tentacular monsters. Oh, and he drinks rum with skeletons and sings sea shanties in this one. That's cool.

Gah. I should do this for a living.

Just supposin'
Sep 22 2005 - 8:31 a.m.

I have done a lot of rumination in my time about what's down that hatch, but "homo" was not on the list. Shoulda been. Stupid lack of foresight!

It's worse than you know (it usually is)
Sep 21 2005 - 1:20 p.m.

The good news is that Fox decided to make a download-only Firefly Official Soundtrack available today. The bad news is that they released it through their own web site, created an online buying system that is impenetrably difficult to use, encoded all of the tracks in password-protected WMA, and somehow managed to convince my Windows Media Player to crash outright whenever I attempted to burn the tracks, which I do after all legally own. (I'm convinced that they are responsible for this last one, just 'cuz.) Oh: and if you have a Mac, you're apparently SOL. Ditto if you live off-continent. Sooooooooo.... yeah. I've got mine, and I guess I'm gonna be burning a lot of copies. Way to go, Fox... couldn't have made this worse if you dumped it on Friday night and played the tracks out of order.

Programming
Sep 21 2005 - 8:37 a.m.

So clearly it's not enough on House to have a dying little bald girl with cancer, but they have to find the most adorable and heart-tugging dying little bald girl with cancer in the whole damn planet full of dying little bald girls with cancer. Man, that whole thing set my bio-clock (I know, I know, "Boys aren't allowed to have one!" yeah yeah yeah women are so interesting) strumming like an upright bass. House didn't exactly ace the Season Two Premiere rule last week (by definition, a show that is brilliant and lasting will have an incredible second-season premiere episode) but it did well enough; frankly I'm pleased with just how easily we've slipped right back into the milieu like there was no summer break. All of my television watching seems to be increasingly ruled by pornographic pleasure principles. With Lost it's visual pleasure, and with House it's aural; rapid-fire dialogue with undecipherable medical jargon and ferocious "bad daddy" quips, and the continual, unimaginative rephrasing of the American Beauty musical score as House's weekly musical accompaniment. Meanwhile, after watching three deadend pilots in a row (Bones, Reunion, and Threshold), we finally got something good this week with Kitchen Confidential, which is porn-y in a whole new way... the way where I want to have gay sex with Bradley Cooper. A lot. (And I think I want to be the top.) It was certainly weird to have a no-longer-patchy Xander going up against newly-patchy Willow in the Kitchen Confidential / How I Met Your Mother match-up, and equally weird that you also have two former Freaks & Geeks grudge-matching each other across the same battle line (John Francis Daley and Jason Segel), but on the whole I like the casts of both shows so much (John Cho chopping fingers! Doogie Howser playing himself playing himself again, but as someone else this time!) that I'm willing to forgive the various weaknesses and "Network" rubber-stamps in both cases, and dutifully set my PVR to gather all the shows together.

And while all this was unfolding in its hermetically sealed TV world, we had the last formal programming meeting for the One Minute Film & Video Festival last night. Which I think brings our grand total on entries up near 175, making this the steepest cutoff year we've had so far. It's good, because it forces the overall average up quite a bit; it's a slicker, sexier year on the whole. The final programme is still being noodled out, and I have yet to really nail down my favourites and least-favourites for the year in my own mind, but we're getting there.

Lost tonight. No killing!

Solitude
Sep 19 2005 - 9:22 a.m.

Once bitten, twice shy; good dreams last night though, probably my rotting subconscious' little endorphen gift to myself. I've woken and it's very quiet at 3QF again; Chris' brief sabbatical from the new job has ended and Zam is taking repeated shwipes at me without really having earned the privelege, so I think I'm going to go get coffee and croissants and try to suffer through that episode of American Dad from last night, just because Simpsons and FG were so good that there might actually have been some kind of magic spell worked on Fox for the evening of Sunday, September 18th 2005. (Such spells are not to be missed.) Are you like me, did Homer dancing in his sleep make you think of Bex? No, you're probably not that much like me. On the subject of spells, though: happy birthday Miss Granger, thank you for being fictional and thereby keeping me out of prison. I'm going to go see a man about a lightsabre today, and do what I can to bring peace and justice to the galaxy, but first I need to stretch.

Now you can do more at Wal Mart than just take a shit
Sep 18 2005 - 8:44 p.m.

As I've mentioned previously, I found out this year that in a few of the states down south, it's actually illegal to sell sex toys. I can't even begin to imagine the reasoning behind a law like that, so I'm not going to try. I'm merely going to report, with some joy, that here in Ontario, Wal-Mart and Shoppers Drug Mart have agreed to stock sex toys, hopefully right alongside the Trojans and Astroglide in their euphemistically-brilliant "family planning" sections. It'll fan out to Loblaws, PharmaPlus, and Zellers, too. The article's best line has the head of Wal-Mart Canada calling interest in sex toys a "mainstream taste" here in Canada.

Yes, yes, and double-yes. Because we rock.

Oh sure, it's a baby-steps intro to the process (with the products being described as a line of "freshening cloths" - huh? - and "intimacy gel" - just call it what it's called, for cryin' out loud - and a vibrating ring), but it's a start. And a damned funny one. Two of the last institutions in the world that I ever thought would be endorsing sex products, and here they go. And just last month, I was all embarassed because a poorly-timed wind and rain storm caused all of the old Come As You Are paraphernalia that I'd put in the recycling bin to be wallpapered all over the street in front of my house like a big neon sign saying "SEX TOYS WITHIN." Mighty.

This would also be a good time for me to declare my least favourite word in the English language, in the James Lipton sense: it's "crotch." I fucking hate that word. I had long refused to answer the Lipton question, because I'm a writer and I love all words and all words, no matter how ugly, are expressive and therefore useful. But I just fucking hate crotch. I don't think this really fully donned on me until this summer, and then when I hit on it, I realized that I not only hate the word crotch, but I have always hated the word crotch, ever since the very first time I heard it (an event which I can actually remember). Crotch is just such a phenomenally ugly word to describe something that shouldn't ever be described uglyly. I can find expressive uses for cunt, twat, prick and tube steak long before I'd ever want to use or hear the use of the word crotch. I mean sound it out: "crawwwwwwwwtchhhh." That sounds like something you do to a dog that just took a shit on your pillow: you crotch him till he won't crotch no more. Doesn't tally with the penis/vagina yesness, so I'm calling fatwa on the motherfucker.

There. I'm done.

Dark, gusto-less sex
Sep 18 2005 - 7:04 p.m.

I was back on the soccer field today after a twelve-week absence, and I was notably rusty. I'm captaining the team this season, and took it upon my captainly self to rename the team THAT YELLOW BASTARD - both in deference to Sin City, and also to reflect my general mood of late. But I guess the je-ne-sais-quois was lost on most of the players. Zuh. Anyways, we lost 2-nuthin' but I think we did pretty well, considering a deficiency of subs and a strong opposition. We kept the game scoreless until well into the second half, so I'm calling it a successful trial run. And I do enjoy playing the fall season. You go from playing in 30-degree weather and full sun to playing in snowdrifts. It gives you a real sense of the timing. Like walking out my front door last night and getting hit in the face with a full moon so bright it might as well have been a spotlight saying "This is you now. This is how long it's been."

Some post-soccer tuna and I'm back to new.

Why not smile?
Sep 16 2005 - 6:45 p.m.

I rode out to the fest today in the absolutely pouring rain; I thought I could handle it, but I was just fundamentally mistaken about how much rain I was up against. (My bike does not yet have mud flaps.) I can say this, though: my anus has never been so clean; I got a fourteen-block colonic that did wonders. Everything else is pretty mucked up, though.

Twelve and Holding was my final film of the cycle, and I was certainly ready for this affair to be done. At the beginning of the last reel there was a projection error, and after only two seconds of the theatre staff's attempt to fix the problem, some American wanker hollered out "BOOOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of his lungs, which caused me to yell back at him for being so very helpful. His reply: "It's just so Canadian, you'll all just sit here and take it." Because, of course, the American response would be "Attack! QUICK!!!" Still, he might just have been ticked off because we'd spent the whole movie laughing about the running gag about how much fat American parents feed their fat children. Heh heh. Americans are fat.

On the whole I'm calling it a good year. I saw... let's check the notes... an even dozen movies, and I'm pretty happy with the average. I saw one flick that blew me away (Tideland), a couple that were really decent (Bettie Page, Sarah Silverman), a bunch of amiable base-hits (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Twelve and Holding, 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous, Seven Swords, Lucid, Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés), a couple of failures that were nevertheless interesting to deconstruct (Battle in Heaven, Les Saignantes), and only one piece of utter crap (Douches Froides). That's a good year.

IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME
Sep 16 2005 - 12:14 p.m.

...and can't come soon enough.

Sex and violence
Sep 15 2005 - 11:48 p.m.

It's been the film festival for too long when they release the trailer for Memoirs of a Geisha, and you're not just angry for all the normal reasons (shitty adaptation, mindless director, completely misses the point of the book, racist as all getout), but also because it just looks so normal. Yep, I'm having fun with the fest this year, but its fiendish intricacies have me on my last nerve. And everyone else, apparently: watched a fistfight break out on the balcony of the Ryerson last night, and (in my Superman shirt, no less) I was at the top of the stairs ready to tumble in before I even really knew what was happening. Heady times.

The trailer has to stop (the TIFF trailer, not the Geisha trailer). Do you think maybe a $20+ ticket price could buy us the right to not have to sit through Barry Avrich's latest brain fart? And it took me today to notice poor Alex Shuper's name next to the "editing" credit. (Former client.) He was always such a nice man.

And I'll tell you, I don't know who I want to punch out more, the Scientologists (who have been using the fest as an excuse to hand a red flyer to every single man, woman and child in the city not once, not twice, but forty-five times) or the Audience Choice ballot people. I don't vote on the films I see. It's just a bit too far, for the filmmaker in me. I feel comfortable in that choice; what I don't feel comfortable with is having those stupid ballots literally forced into my hand at the theatres. This is not a Separatist referendum. I have the legal right to not give a fuck about the Audience Choice award.

So today I got the first film all week that completely and utterly sucked: Douches Froides (or Dootches Froydies, as I've been calling it all week). Go read the description, and then let me let you in on a little secret: there ain't no fuckin' fuckin' in this movie. Which, having now read the description, you'd have to admit is not your immediate impression based on the writing. I mean, there's a 30-second three-way right in the middle of it that is, admittedly, about the hottest 30 seconds I've ever seen on the big screen ever. But the rest of the movie is absolutely the most bland, uninvolving piece of crap I've seen at any festival of anything in a very, very long time. Not that I turn against a film merely because it doesn't delivery the porntasm, but when something falls this far afield - intellectually, artistically, entertainmentally - of the description that made me buy the ticket in the first place, I begin to think that I want to punch Noah Cowan in the mouth.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, at the still-glorious Elgin theatre ("Visa Screening Room" my ass) was much more enjoyable, though not quite a grand slam. With one film to go, though, I'm calling this one of my best years at the fest, in terms of overall average: until today, even the ones I didn't like were at least bad in an interesting way. Which is its own kind of fun, and apparently creates racial controversy and horrible sentence structure.

Yeah, this is one pissed-off town.

Defeated
Sep 15 2005 - 12:01 p.m.

In a flurry of post-nastiness ticket buying the other day, I snatched up a few more films for the rest of the week; last night it was The Notorious Bettie Page, and now, I did not yell "Mol you were the bomb in.... something!" because I hadn't seen the flick yet. Mostly, Gretchen Mol is just the bomb in this movie. She's pretty startling, particularly in just how well she carries off the Bettie Page mojo in and around the actual snapshots we all remember. It got Kate even more riled up about Bettie Page than she already was, and that's saying something. Me, I don't know yet if I actually like Mary Harron or just think Mary Harron is a good idea, like the world needs for there to be one even if the contribution she makes is somewhat insubstantial. It shall take further thought.

Snake was there
Sep 13 2005 - 10:19 p.m.

And also, Stefan Brogren was at the screening of Lucid, my first post-I've-seen-Degrassi cast member sighting. I did not yell "SNAKE YOU WERE THE BOMB IN THAT EPISODE WHERE YOU AND JOEY WERE IN YOUR UNDERPANTS!!!" because that would have been uncouth. (I remain couth at all times.)

One of the good guys
Sep 13 2005 - 9:40 p.m.

It's been fairly entertaining watching people fight it out in the comments sections of my reviews over at blogTO - because I've never had comments on this site, and never will. Man alive it's amazing what someone will post in a comment. Things that you would never, ever have the balls to say to someone's face, you'll put down in black and white for all the world to see on some sort of weird assumption that the internet is a kind of invisible wall protecting us all from reprobation. It's quite interesting, and actually quite a bit funnier than I expected!

I met up with Matthew this afternoon for a quick Mamo (which should be online later tonight), before heading up to the box office to switch my ticket for Tsotsi for one for Twelve and Holding - because a flick about the violent and sexual nature of 12-year-olds, how could I not?

I fucked around for a couple of hours reading about Seven Samurai, and then went and saw Lucid, which was fun in spite of everything I'm going to say in that review. And now I'm sort of "actively percolating" the script for Glow in my head... it's very nearly ready to start pouring out. And this one ain't gonna be fun for anyone.

I can talk for 21 minutes and 45 seconds without a sip of water
Sep 13 2005 - 11:12 a.m.

I don't think I've mentioned it yet but in addition to the ongoing Mamography of the fest (which can be found here or in iTunes by searching for "mamo" in the podcast directory), and in addition to the fact that all of my Tederick.com reviews for the festival will be mirrored at www.blogTO.com, I am also doing a whole darned second podcast, also at blogTO, the second installment of which I recorded this morning and should be posted later today. (The first one is here.) I think you can get the complete blogTO podcast series in iTunes too, if you're so inclined, and have not yet heard enough of my voice.

Stuff, stuff, stuff.

The world is not a bad place
Sep 12 2005 - 1:53 p.m.

"I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character, so let me make this abundantly clear: I do the job, and then I get paid." - Malcolm Reynolds

I was at the drug store just now, trading in my lottery ticket from last week for a free quick pick for this week, when a second free ticket popped out of the machine, to the surprise of both myself and the cashier. She handed it to me and I said "Must be my lucky day." She had no idea of the context, obviously, nor why I walked away laughing.

"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck." - Obi-Wan Kenobi

High and low
Sep 11 2005 - 10:19 p.m.

Vast, destructive existential crisis apparently does not mesh well with epic martial arts movies. I struggled my way through Seven Swords today, but the sounds of Everything Falling Apart were a bit too loud for me to enjoy the film properly. Poor movie. Sometimes they get caught in the midst of the worst possible circumstances. I gave up altogether on The Well, partly based on the bad word of mouth from people who have already seen it; I'm irritated only because it was, rightly or wrongly, one of the films that I was most looking forward to. But there was just no way I was going to be able to get through that one, not after all this shit.

In the plus column, I'm told that Matthew recently handed a Mamo business card to Steven Soderbergh.

That goddamned TIFF trailer music is eating through my brain like fucking audible acid, on an endless loop. Someone buy me a shotgun!

Hope and fear
Sep 11 2005 - 8:43 a.m.

I didn't get to yell The Line at anyone today, because (as predicted) I didn't see anyone to yell at. I might have done, if I had actually followed one of the fifteen invitations I received to go to the Tommy Chong party on Friday night, but I roundfiled them. Now I'm stuck with the unerasable image of a brownie-stoned Andy expounding to Bono on his theory of how intergalactic stellar winds intersect with the creation of great films on Earth in 2005. But let's face it, stoned or not, there's no meaningful conversation I ever could have had with that man. And I suck at parties.

I managed to break my own rush line curse while waiting outside the AGO to get into Battle in Heaven yesterday. Invariably, when I'm in a rush line, I get stationed in the midst of a sausage festival - nothing but dudes, dudes, dudes for twenty feet on either side of me. Yesterday, though, the clouds parted and I found myself chatting up the most apallingly cute grad student who, like me, had no particular idea why she'd chosen to see Battle in Heaven at all... until we remembered that there were tits in the programme photo, and that's more than enough to sell out Jackman Hall and create a hundred-person rush line. Oh, and the fellatio. Note to sexually-minded filmmakers everywhere: if you're going to buy a falsie cock for your lead actress to fellate, make sure you check the circumcision status of your lead actor. God is in the details.

After the flick, Matthew and I walked a big, hour-long circle around the neighbourhood trying to find a place to eat, before ending up back at Burrito Boys and tossing off a quick Mamo, live on the ground, about our festival experience so far. We also have adorable little business cards, which would have been so useful in the aforementioned rush line. Oh well. I'll try to pepper the world with them a bit today.

We got back to the Paramount and saw Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés, which was officially when I noticed that I'm too tired for this shit. And, of course, I am making no claims to any vast volume of films this year; maybe your breaking point adjusts itself to the 55% mark, no matter how many films you're seeing? Whatever, Saints-Martyrs was really difficult to get through without drifting into a mental la-la land where my life is actually worthwhile. As soon as the movie was over I jumped on the bike, rode home, freaked out for a solid hour, and slept.

Until the end of the world
Sep 10 2005 - 1:14 a.m.

I was in the rush line for Tideland by twenty minutes to three; the film started at six. At 5:30, Terry Gilliam buzzed the line in his limo; I waved back at him. At around a quarter to six, the celebs started showing up; when Jeff Bridges got out of his limo, I yelled "BRIDGES YOU WERE THE BOMB IN LEBOWSKI!!!" at the top of my lungs. The guys around me began chanting "the Dude abides!" in stoner voices. At this point, for me anyway, the question is merely becoming which celebrity, on each day of the festival, I will yell the Jay line at. "_____ you were the bomb in ______!" It's a tough call, because as far as I know, I'm not seeing any more celebs at the fest.

By 6:00 the five or six people ahead of me had already entered the theatre due to some of those last-minute passes that always turn up at the front of a rush line; I was the sole survivor, or so it seemed, first in the rush line and last man in. I got my ticket, and rabbited up to the balcony, where I found a single open seat in the dead center of the first row - easily the best seat I've ever had in that theatre. It couldn't have worked out better if I'd reserved it.

Gilliam gets up before the movie and does his thing; he says "'Enjoy' is not the right word, but I hope you survive the film." Smart man. I barely made it. The flick just about ripped me in half. As soon as it was over I hauled ass down to the Victoria Street exit and caught Gilliam on the way to his limo. I grabbed him by the hand and said "Dude, you just completely fucked me up. I'm still shaking." (I really was.) He said "Wait till morning. It'll still be with you. And the next day, and the next day..." We grinned at each other. Then he was in his limo and gone. I saw little Jodelle Ferland standing nearby; I went up to her and said "Excuse me miss, you were wonderful." (She really was.) She's the most adorable tiny person ever, and when she looked up at me with those big lantern-like brown eyes and said "Thank you!" like no one had ever told her that before, I pretty much wanted to invent cloning on the spot so that I could populate the world with little copies of her. Because every town needs one.

Still vibrating like a tuning fork, I rode up to the ROM, my least favourite theatre on the festival circuit, to watch Les Saignantes, which sucked. Really, ferociously, astonishingly sucked, and yet proved rather winsomely that I will sit through any movie, no matter how much it sucks, if they show bush in the first three minutes. Well, that and with only ten tickets this year I really didn't want to do any walkouts, and I had plans after the flick anyway. But holy hannah, what a terrible fucking movie.

And that's the fest. You take a chance sometimes on something that just might maybe manage to carry off the inherent intrigues of its programme description... and even if it goes tits-up far more often than it succeeds, at least you took a shot. And really, nothing could ever have followed Tideland. One of the best movies I've seen all year.

Blast! This is why I hate flying...
Sep 9 2005 - 2:52 a.m.

I'm in my first movie of the festival, a movie so "first" that they forget to play the goddamned TIFF trailer beforehand - which is a blessing, because I end up seeing it later at the midnight show, and it is the worst one ever. It's like an amped-up version of all the bad TIFF trailers of years past, except twice as long and three times as self-congratulatory. Thank criminy I'm only seeing ten films.

But anyway, I'm in my first film of the festival (50 Ways of Saying Fabulous) and while I'm in there, someone steals the mirror right off of my bike. This is the second such bit of random bullying that my poor bike has fallen victim to this summer, the first one being when some yob actually took a screwdriver to it and removed my headlight, on Richmond Street and probably in the midst of a crowd of a couple hundred people. So after the film I go to move my bike and discover this itsy bitsy travesty, and I'm pretty much just stunned to the wall by the sheer freakish nihilism of it all. I'm standing on the corner of Yonge and Bloor sucking a lollipop and thinking to myself that this has just about been the stupidest week of my life, when I make the crucial decision to ditch the bike at home, take myself out for a very, very, very large dinner at Spring Rolls, and read my Kurosawa book.

It ended up being the decision that saved the evening; hell, I think it saved the whole week. I sat at a table alone and read about filmmaking while attractive Asian women with poor command of English served me over-sweetened noodles and twice as many spring rolls as I'd ordered. And at absolutely no point during this process did I think "Now this is the film festival," but it really was.

I went down to the newly-revamped Ryerson to catch the first Midnight Madness of the cycle, Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, and after an ass-biting hour-and-a-half wait outside the theatre while they tried to clear out the lollygagging crowd from the previous show, I went ahead and had about as good a time watching the Silverman flick as I've ever had at any Midnight Madness, ever.

Now here's the bad news: yes, she's that hot.

So it's entirely possible that when Colin was doing his song-and-dance number before the movie, someone in the front row of the balcony (whose associates will neither confirm nor deny the action) may have yelled "SILVERMAN YOU WERE THE BOMB ON STAR TREK!!!" at the top of his lungs. It could also be described that after the show, the same person may or may not have approached Silverman in the lobby with the vague, unformed intention to either tell her that she's brilliant or somehow propose marriage, while in fact only managing to offer half a word of "thanks for coming" before the festival staff hustled the swarmed star out of the room. I make no claim to these things; I only observe that they might have happened.

The dead sleep well.

Fancy pants
Sep 8 2005 - 11:44 a.m.

Can you imagine this? People have been renting it, wearing it, using it in The Mummy for crying out loud... and probably thinking it was a particularly ratty, poorly-made knockoff of the real thing. It was like that when I met up with the real, on-set R2-D2 in Indianapolis - standing next to the more pretty home-built replicas, the real R2 just looked plain shabby. Film: she is a horrible mistress of illusion.

Off to TIFF in a little bit. Two films tonight, at least one (and possibly three) tomorrow, and then a few more on the weekend, all before starting a new job at the *** on Monday... which will effectively curtail my coverage for the rest of the week, so get it while it's hot. In addition to the usual news n' views here on Tederick.com, I'm also contributing reviews and podcasts to blogTO's coverage of the festival, because apparently I just can't find enough things to keep my hands full. Mamo, the One Minute Film & Video Festival... if I wasn't so gorramned bored all the time I might describe myself as busy.

Salt water
Sep 6 2005 - 7:20 p.m.

Lost is such great porn. Such utterly vacuous, pleasure-driven visual fantasy. It means absolutely nothing and yet it's just so damned fun to look at that I not only like it, I full-out love it. I'm drenching myself in it. It's the cure-all for the September blahs, the perfect antidote for the guy who only wants some kind of a break from having to live inside his head every minute of every day. I can just hit "Play All," and bam: my brain finally, mercifully disengages for hours and hours at a time. And forget the whole week-to-week thing, too... this show was born for longform. If I had the means, I'd watch all 24 episodes back to back right now. (I've already downed six.) It works sooooooooooooooo much better when you're not getting it meted out in tiny little droplets every two Wednesdays or so. It just takes you completely inside. And this perfect, packaged little fantasia of a life that should by any right be so much more awful than ours and is, by extension of the show's market-friendly demo-baiting, so much better than ours, is the porniest aspect of all. It forgives your every demon, erases every sin. The highest peak of Lost's ecstatic visual frenzy: making you feel like even though you may really be sitting on your couch in your living room, the real you is on a beach somewhere, watching the clouds roll in.

Superman
Sep 5 2005 - 1:21 p.m.

Alcohol and cereal, together at last
Sep 4 2005 - 7:13 p.m.

Yesterday I watched a whole buncha Samurai Jack and a whole buncha Ren & Stimpy to get myself all pumped and primed to work on the animation for E-Watchamacallit Un-amation... nicely disparate influences, I think, but it shouldn't matter too much given that neither of them can dramatically colour my approach to the film at this point. (I do, however, wish I'd kept the animated jumping fish.) For a first animation project I have to say I'm really pleased with this one. Doing the second-pass renderings across the board took about two hours last night, wayyyyyyy less than I'd budgeted time-wise, and most of it is entirely usable. Dandy.

I woke up this morning feeling fairly glum and haven't been able to shake the feeling since; going to see The Constant Gardener didn't help much because if that isn't the most depressing movie ever made, I don't know what is. Then I got home to find my film festival lottery results returned. I did all right, but not in the areas I wanted to, leading to many grrrrs and aarghs. It'll be plenty of rush lines on Friday, Monday, and Wednesday, which I suppose is all right; I do rather enjoy them. At least I got the Sarah Silverman ticket.... my only Midnight Madness.

Gonna make pasta and read my dragon book.

Feel good
Sep 3 2005 - 9:27 p.m.

People often ask me - okay, no one's ever asked me but I'm going to espouse anyway - what my favourite feel-good movies are. The movie equivalents of Kraft Dinner: no matter how worn out or depressed I might feel, they make me feel right back to new. They go like this:

1. Bend it Like Beckham
   
   Never thought this would be on the top of the list when I first saw it, but I shoulda figured it out. There's hot East Indian girls, hot London girls, hot East Indian girls with London accents, soccer, hot girls playing soccer, a be-yourself message, a dude in a turban, Jonathan Rhys-Myers, and britpop. Every feel-good movie should have britpop.
   
   
2. Good Will Hunting
   
   This was my feel-good standard for about six years. It still sorta sets the bar for me. We've all been guilty of more than a bit of self-destructiveness over the years, and this flick does a mighty fine job of reminding me to get my head solidly out of my ass. Plus, B-ffleck's hair is brilliant.
   
   
3. Field of Dreams
   
   When Kevin Costner's voice breaks when he says "Dad... wanna have a catch?" I pretty much just dissolve into a fit of tears. A few moments later, when Amy Madigan flicks on the stadium lights, I'm probably rolling around on the ground bawling in righteous emotional might. Perfect for getting the ya-yas out. (Don't ask me why it's the lights.)
   
   
4. Flight of the Navigator
   
   It was a favourite when I was 12 years old, and crises tend to respond well to being reminded of what it was like to be 12 years old. And that is one phenomenally kick-ass '80s synth score.
   
   
5. Return of the Jedi
   
   Well duh.

They expected me to blog
Sep 3 2005 - 6:54 p.m.

After months and months of incredible procrastination, I finally completed the animation tests for E-Watchamacallit Un-Amation last night... and not only found it incredibly easy, but indescribably brilliant. Holy doodle, this movie's gonna kick some hard yellow-green ass. I snagged a final composite plate this afternoon in a little garden just off the Bloor Viaduct. I love living in the digital age.

Meanwhilst, Mamo #10 - a real, honest-to-god, normal Mamo - is online, and I think it's one of our best shows ever. It felt really good to get back into the podcasting swing last night, after over a month of alternate venues, cross-planetary Skype attempts, and Frameline guest-hosting gigs. I also put together a sample podcast this morning for a local blogging outfit that I might end up podcasting regularly for; that too was a lot of fun, but severely lacking in the Siskel-and-Ebertishness that makes Mamo just so damned entertaining.

There are so many things going on, someday soon I might even start to feel excited about them.

Apparently you and I are in the same karass
Sep 2 2005 - 4:58 p.m.

Bex and I got together to commiserate about all the scleroses and heartache and whatnot, and she took me to a new bookstore on Bayview called The Flying Dragon, which is particularly excellent and green and leafy, and definitely where I'll be spending my Harry Potter 7 midnight opening, after the obnoxio-ludicrosity of the Book Six launch at Indigo. Then she bought me a book called Dragonology, which is just about perfect, for no good reason other than that she thought I needed it. And I really do! Bexcellent. Shit, there's two dragons in here that I want tattooed on my forearm right now. But I'm really saving the whole dragon thing for tattoo #2.

Ah, books and bookstores. So many pretty things I can no longer afford to buy myself, and so much buy-urge in these troubled times. If you want to see how hard I've been depriving myself you can zing over to my Chapters wish list by entering my e-mail address, and see the one thousand damn dollars' worth of books that I'd love to be owning, and just cannae. And while we're at it, my DVD wishlist is all buffed up to its pre-birthday splendour, as always. Not that giftage is ever expected or required. It just makes things smilier.

Isn't that interesting: I have a book "wish list," but a DVD "wishlist?" Language, man. That's some good shit.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmoney.

Box 24
Sep 2 2005 - 11:59 a.m.

My legs astonish me right now. I've done plenty of summer bike riding in my time but for some reason this year, it flipped over to the other side because this year, rather than just making the muscles still hidden by layers of flab become somewhat bulgier, the muscles actually stand out all on their own. Add that to the post-weekend leanness of my upper body and suddenly, I'm spending way too much time wandering around naked, hoping to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. It's like a whole other person or something. It's like passing a storefront window in the Smrt car and not being able to believe that that's what you look like from the outside.

Up at 7:30 and sitting on the curb reading the Kurosawa book by 8:00, next to a guy who was wearing way more cologne than was technically necessary, and chatting about being brought home from the hospital in a Volkswagon Beetle. Rest of the morning sorta vanished after that.

Nothing ends
Sep 1 2005 - 8:21 p.m.

I have to disagree with Alan Ball right off the top here. Not that the Sfoo finale wasn't incredible, nor possibly one of the best final episodes of anything ever... but his own show gives ample contradiction to the "everything ends" mantra, by the simple fact that even when characters die, they keep on talking! "Everything ends" is bullshit. I know this now more clearly than I ever have before, and that's that nothing ends. Everything in your life is permanent as long as you are alive, and when you're gone, your shit will be permanent to everybody else. You can fly halfway around the planet and sling sheep shit till February 28th and still, nothing ends. Things change shape, change colour, turn from liquid into gas. Entropy increases, but matter can be neither created nor destroyed. It's all still in the system, the river keeps flowing. Nothing ends.

So yeah, I'm the guy who got moody during The 40 Year-Old Virgin. (I'm also the guy - the only guy - who started clapping after the Serenity trailer.) I'm the guy who read Astonishing X-Men #12 cover-to-cover not once not twice but thrice, but had waited a full day before doing it. I'm the one on the bike that needs about a zillion different things done to it, with no ability to get it organized and looked after. I'm the one who knows where Hell is, right here in Southern Ontario. (It's not where you think.) I'm the one waiting for D:TNG, who's craving that Lost box so badly he can already taste the sand. I'm the guy who brought two new babies into the world - Far, Far Away and Nuns That Fuck within hours of each other, and wrote a short script too, and finally knows where to start Glow, the next feature screenplay. I'm the one who finished four books in five days... and one of them was Ulysses. I'm the guy dangling by his finger nails, who nevertheless cannot be killed.

But bless my parents for ever and ever: I spent the whole day freaking out, and when things seemed bleakest they bailed me out, gave me half a chicken, a package of prosciutto, four tomatoes, two mangoes, two peaches, and a jar of fluid that will take Sammy's piss out of Chris' futon. And emotional support. Sweet.

The Deeper Well