A few of us went to a matinee this afternoon after our early soccer game to see Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. This movie was fucking hilarious. The reviews of it have been through the roof so far, scoring a 96% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty much unheard of. We watched it in Ancaster as oddly it was the only place around that was showing it. Either way, the showing was absolutely packed and we showed up about 15 minutes before the show, so we got some prime 3rd row seating as you might expect. Even though I knew the movie would do a good business, it kinda shocked me how packed it was for a matinee.

First and foremost, I’ll state that I hate overselling a movie to people, but this movie was quite possibly the funniest movie I have ever seen. If you’re not familiar with Borat, he is the creation of Sasha Baron Cohen, best known up until now for Da Ali G Show. The character is a journalist from Kazakhstan who’s comedy is derived from exploiting his percieved cultural differences with people. He uses his cultural ignorance to his advantage, often disarming people with his foreign charm. This causes people to drop their guard and say things they wouldn’t usually say, exposing ingrown prejudices in the process. In this movie Borat takes his show to America in a cross-country road trip, lampooning much of Conservative America in the process. Pretty much nothing is taboo, with Jews, gypsies, gays, women, Christians and right-wingers being the brunt of many of the jokes. I’m sure some people will be offended by this movie, but if you enjoy no holds comedy, this movie is for you. It has laughs pretty much from start to finish. And not like most American movies that make this claim. This movie actually delivers on that claim. And, if you love fat man-ass, this is also the movie for you. So much so that you might not be able to scrub the image from your brain for awhile.

“I can still taste you in my mustache”

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This year Corina and I don’t really have any plans for Halloween evening, so we’re going to bust out some Shaun Of The Dead. I’ve owned it for quite awhile now after ordering it when I got suckered into joining Columbia House. Analog Giant gave me the idea on that one the other day and it definitely sounded like a good plan.

The Noel Gallagher performance I mentioned last week sold out in a blink of an eye and I didn’t get tickets. The part that I found was bullshit about it was that the tickets actually went on sale before 10am, which caught me napping a bit. The time on my computer is set by the Apple Server, so I know my time wasn’t fast. When I refreshed my browser it was 9:57am and they were already on sale. This is total horsecrap on the part of TicketBastard. Any other time I’ve ordered tickets to a show they were actually after 10 according to my clock, so what gives?

I can now officially say I’ve taken to watching Heroes. Last week I downloaded all the episodes and watched them to catch up with the season and watched my first “live” episode yesterday. It’s so much better without commercials. So far I think the show is interesting and worth watching week-in, week-out, but I’m really not falling all over myself with praise for the show like many other people I’ve heard talk about it. I like how the show has veered away from having that comic book campy feel to it, but I figure it’ll eventually veer down that path. People like to compare the show to LOST, and while I can see the parallels, it isn’t as engrossing as what the first season of LOST was.

David Bowie – Heroes [MP3 from Merry Swankster]

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I lost this post yesterday as I tried to upgrade my Pivot installation, so I thought I would quickly recreate it.

I found this movie Flight Of Dragons on Google Video and thought I would share. This is one of my all-time favourite movies, though it isn’t too well known. It’s from the producers of The Last Unicorn, so people who remember that movie will probably be interested in checking this out. It features the voice talents of James Earl Jones(Darth Vader), Harry Morgan(MASH) and John Ritter(Three’s Company), among others. So safe to say the quality of voice acting is top shelf. I watched this movie last week and found it’s still as good as it was when I was 6.

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I was just watching some TV and saw an ad for a new movie called “The Prestige“. Now watching the preview I was thinking it was an ad for a movie that came out in limited release a couple weeks ago called “The Illusionist“, but the more I watched it I realized that it wasn’t the same movie, even though they look uncannily similar. Both movies are set in what I would guess to be the 1910-20s. They both seem to sport that dark earthy feel to the cinematography. And most importantly there is lots of bad ass mustaches, as you would expect in any period piece of the sort. So given these movies seem so similar I’m going to break it down in head to head, battle royal of magician movies.

Direction: Christopher Nolan vs. The guys who produced Sideways and Crash

This one seems pretty easy to me. Christopher Nolan directed Memento and Batman Begins, so he’s definitely got the upperhand in this battle. While Sideways and Crash were pretty decent movies in my estimation, they just don’t stack up to Memento.
Advantage: The Prestige

Lead Actor: Christian Bale vs. Edward Norton

This one is a little tighter of a battle. Christian Bale as Batman definitely earns himself some brownie points. But in all reality he’s got nothing on Edward Norton. There are very few people in Hollywood that have the credentials to matchup to the man that brought the cringeworthy term “Curby” into the mainstream. I can still hear the sound of teeth on concrete in my head.
Advantage: The Illusionist

Secondary Actor: Hugh Jackman vs Paul Giamatti

Hugh Jackman gets points in my book for being Wolverine, but then gets knocked down a few pegs for starring in Kate & Leopold with Meg Ryan. Paul Giamatti gets some kudos points from me for being the voice of The Amazing Screw-On Head and for being the son of former baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti. Where he loses some points is that his dad was the guy that banned Pete Rose from gaining entrance into the Hall Of Fame, which I’ve always viewed as an injustice.
Advantage: The Prestige

Eye Candy: Scarlett Johansson vs. Jessica Biel

This one isn’t even close. Scarlett wins this category hands down. Even though this is about the 100th movie she’s been in in the last month, I’m not complaining.
Advantage: The Prestige

Mustaches

From what I can tell from watching the previews it seems that the facial hair in The Illusionist seems much more prevalent throughout the cast. Christian Bale sports a stylin’ ‘stache in the movie, but looks to remove it at some point along the way, so points have been deducted.
Advantage: The Illusionist

Conclusion

So as you can tell, by a verdict of 3-2 The Prestige has come out victorious in the battle of old-timey magician movies. And if by any chance you weren’t convinced by my verdict, the fact that Ziggy Stardust himself, David Bowie also makes an appearance in The Prestige has to be the tipping point in it’s favour. It is undetermined at this point whether he is still in fact the goblin king in this movie though.

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I just got back from seeing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth at the Rainbow in Brantford. I have to say I was blown away by this movie. Actually it’s less a movie then an edited lecture on the topic of global warming. It was definitely an eye opener.

I’ve found it weird of late to find my politics have been shifting a bit. I’ve become more conscious of the environment and energy usage. These issues have started to matter to me as essentially I’ve had to deal with these issues myself. I’ve never aspired to be a tree-hugging environmentalist by any stretch of the imagination, but these issues start hitting home when you have to pay the bills. Already I’ve fit most of the lights in our apartment(those that don’t require weird sized bulbs I haven’t sorted yet) and haven’t installed an air conditioner in the apartment this year, even though it’s been quite hot at times. With the price of energy going up it only makes common sense to do it. Instead buying more gas, I just spend the same amount as I would have previously, just getting less. All it takes is doing about 1/4 less travel in your car to make it work.

In looking stuff up online I found a couple of dissenting articles, looking to disprove items from the movie. Even if there are fudged facts in this movie, it’s hard to disprove the sentiment. I know myself it’s pretty dead obvious that global warming is occuring, and happening fast. Living in Canada it’s pretty easy to see the changes. We have shorter, milder winters then we did even 10 years ago. Being fare skinned I’m finding summer arriving a lot quicker in recent years, with warmer temperatures. It doesn’t take a genius to notice the small climate changes.

Now I try not to get preachy on people, but I would high recommend this movie to anyone. It relates many of the concepts you probably already know, but in terms that are easily digestible. It’s not like the topic is new, but it’s brought to you with a perfectly blunt delivery that really puts it all into perspective. The movie tends to be scary, and at times hopeless, but manages to bring the topic back to you personally and what you can do as an individual to help the problem. And to help the problem I’ve opted to blog about it and spread the word.

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Last night I went out and saw the movie The Benchwarmers, featuring an All-Star cast from comedy’s b-list.  This included the likes of Rob Schneider, David Spade, Jon Heder, Jon Lovitz and Tim Meadows in a Happy Madison production, Adam Sandler’s production company. Now with all those ducks lined up in a row you’d figure this movie would be a stinker, and in fact it was. Now going into a movie like this I didn’t have high expectations, but I found I was letdown by some of the humour in this movie.  From a movie like this you expect lots of gross out jokes, physical humour and stupid one-liners and the movie had that.

Where I found the movie lacked, and this is what would have made it a good movie, was clever nerd humour.  The whole movie revolved around the theme of a couple of older nerds sticking up to all the jocks that tormented them growing up and making a statement for all nerdkind.  Now with a premise like that you would figure the movie would have an upper crust layer of humour that would fly over a lot of people’s heads.  This method of writing is used all the time in shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy, where there are certain jokes that only hardcore geeks and nerds actually get.  This movie didn’t have anything like that. With a movie featuring lots of characters as nerds, it simply relied on stereotypes.  Things like nerds love Star Wars. Jon Lovitz character was the nerd who used his smarts to become a billionaire. His mansion was loaded with Star Wars paraphernalia because he could afford anything.  Funny huh?  That was it.  There were a bunch of Star Wars mentions, but none of them were any more clever then calling a short guy Yoda.  That just simply doesn’t cut it.  Kevin Smith writes his movies and there are always clever Star Wars jokes embedded into the dialogue.  That’s why his work is so popular among the geek and nerd population.  There are jokes that will only be funny to a certain part of the audience, and that’s okay.  There were also plenty of other nerd references to Star Trek, goths etc. but none of it was actually funny. It’s really a shame. I think there might have been a half decent movie to be made from the stupid premise they laid out.

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Just thought I would point this out. I’m sure many of you have seen the recent commercials for the new Silent Hill film, the movie based on the popular video game series for PlayStation. Well, some of the shots in the derelict town of Silent Hill are downtown Brantford. Now you might be thinking, they probably dressed it up to make it look like a boarded up hell hole. Nope, that’s what it actually looks like. The makers of the film must have thought they struck gold when scouting locations. So Browntown-ians can bask in the pride generated by having the worst downtown in Canada appear in a Hollywood film. Almost brings a tear to my eye.

True story. The mayor of Thunder Bay tried to claim a couple of years ago that Thunder Bay in fact was the worst downtown in Canada. The mayor of Brantford invited the mayor of Thunder Bay to come visit Brantford and see first hand the downtown. The mayor did just that and did concede that Brantford did in fact have the worst downtown in Canada, well worse then that of Thunder Bay. We’re number #1! True story.

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Yesterday my little town was abuzz with the makings of a movie.  The movie, "Away From Her" directed by Sarah Polley is being shot in my quaint little town.  Traffic through the downtown is bad on a good day, so when the streets are closed off it makes for some interesting detours.  In my attempt to circumvent the traffic glut of the detour I managed to end up right where they were filming a scene, so I got to watch a couple minute scene being filmed.  The part I found amusing was the inconspicuous cars being driven through the scene by burly teamsters.  It was funny mainly because they most definitely didn’t look like they were from around here at all, with one guy having a really big neck and the other being quite tanned, which kinda sticks out among the pasty folk of South Western Ontario at this time of year.

Last night Corina and I had to drive to Pearson to pick up my parents from the airport.  We left our apartment building at 7:30 only to find the whole downtown being lit-up by a huge spotlight.  The thing had to be about 70 feet in the air and cast light across a good portion of the whole town.  I grabbed my camera and managed to get a couple decent pictures of the whole thing.  It was quite the sight to see, though I don’t think my pictures really did it justice.

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On the weekend I had a chance to check out the movie 16 Blocks.  It wasn’t a movie I was jumping out of my skin to see, but all the same it was entertaining.  Corina and I went with a group of friends.  We managed to barely avoid seeing Failure to Launch.  Now I have to admit I am a hardliner when it comes to romantic comedies.  I don’t like seeing them in theatres mainly because normally I would rather see a movie that deserves a big screen viewing during my rare trips to the cinema.  My main criteria for watching romantic comedies is that the lead actress meets my exacting standards of being hot.  Using this criteria I rule out all movies starring Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan and in this case, Sarah Jessica Parker.

Now with that all cleared up, here’s my thoughts on 16 Blocks.  It was definitely a different role for Bruce Willis.  Instead of playing the hero of the film, he’s more of an anti-hero.  It was a welcome change.  His character is a washed-up, alcoholic police detective with a bad leg and a mustache.   It seems to be a role that fits what Willis should be playing at his age.  Unlike Sylvester Stallone.  Mos Def was a bit annoying, but his character eventually grew on you as the story progressed.  The story is pretty much Willis’ character transporting a witness(Mos Def) to a trial.  It quickly comes out that the witness is going to testify in an inquiry into police corruption, so the New York police do whatever it takes to keep him from testifying.  It was kind of a cliched cop drama, so I’d give the movie 6 frozen meatballs out 11.

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Most people who appear in Star Wars are indelibly marked as the character they played. I highly doubt this will occur to Ewan McGregor. People won’t remember his defining moment as Obi-Wan Kenobi(everyone knows that’s Sir Alec Guiness), he will forever be the guy who crawled into a toilet to retrieve his drugs in Trainspotting.

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