Saskatchewan Plates

I’m somewhere over the Pacific between Sydney and Vancouver. It’s almost 4am PST now. I’ve tried to sleep, but lack of medication has made it ineffective. I also realize my sleep techniques are incredibly juvenile. Definitely not impressing any ladies.

To pass some of the time, I’ve watched every good movie on top, three of which included George Clooney. Pro tip: never watch George Clooney movies back to back or else you won’t be able to separate the plots in your mind. It’s weird not be able to draw the line between Up In The Air and Men Who Stare at Goats (neither of which were that good). Someone recommended Up In The Air to me specifically at one point. I’m not sure why. Maybe they knew my weakness for non-happy endings or maybe they just thought I’d identify with George Clooney’s character (thanks a lot). Then I switched gears to get my romantic comedy on with Couples Retreat and The Invention of Lying, both of which were pretty mediocre despite all star casts. But not all was lost as Fantastic Mr. Fox (Clooney number three) was most excellent. Damn you Wes Anderson for continuing to make me identify with other hipsters everywhere.

I’ll also admit that I got a little misty during the opening scenes of Star Trek despite having seen it what is probably close to ten times now. I blame the second bottle of airplane red wine.

Oh yeah, context. I’m flying back from Sydney after spending a week there for work. Sydney’s an absolutely beautiful city. I’d love to spend more time there exploring. Very nice people, great weather, beautiful location. I plan to get back at some point in the not too distant future. But that’s adding to my growing list of unscheduled travel plans (Vancouver Island, BC Interior, Saskatoon, Toronto, Halifax, Seattle, Portland, Vegas, Ireland, South America, Zurich – holler if any sound enticing).

Before Sydney was a 48 hour trip to Cabo. And before that was four days in Austin. Both trips were absurd in a number of ways and both trips make me miss traveling with friends. Sydney was great, but it was more solo than I’d like. Also, needless to say, I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.

Before the trip, there’s the last three months which has not been well documented on this blog. You didn’t miss too much though as they’ve been hectic with work. The next two are expected to be worse to the point where I’m officially grounded upon my arrival back in San Francisco later today.

Work is an interesting beast in its own right. It’s going much better than I could have imagined, even since Christmas. But as always, San Francisco could be treating me better. I briefly revisited the idea of an office switch to Tokyo or even Sydney, but I quickly realized that being separated from my primary support group by an additional six hour time difference is unworkable. I’ve actually been spending a fair amount more time chatting over IM with various folks back home(s) that have been unwittingly been keeping me sane. Hopefully when May wraps up and work calms down, I can take my social life in San Francisco a little more seriously. Or at the very least, schedule some of those flights.

I have a rather interesting theory in the oven which, I need more to give more time to bake. In its place, I wanted to expand on last week’s post about the big movie soundtracks by mentioning two video game soundtracks that had similar effects.

Up until the CD-based Playstation, video game soundtracks had relatively limited influence on expanding my listening habit. Everyone who was born knows the Mario Brothers theme song and there’s an endless list of similar classics, but it wasn’t until the Playstation (or that generation for purists) that CDs opened up the door to actual musical soundtracks. There were a couple remarkable games that took advantage of this new ability.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater (1 & 2)
Both of these albums helped me explore beyond Blink 182’s shadow deeper into Punk. Bands like Bad Religion, Millencolin, and Lagwagon spent a lot of time in my CD player. And Superman by Goldfinger single-handedly opened up Ska, a massively influential genre in my formative highschool years. Rage Against the Machine made another appearance and Styles of Beyond showed up to support the growing presence of hip hop I was getting from the great Dustin Baillie parties.

Gran Turismo
There is a song by Ash called Lose Control on the soundtrack for Gran Turismo. The title is appropriate because it remains, to this day, the most dangerous song to listen to driving. Garbage, Fluke, The Dandy Warhols, and a spectacular Chemical Brothers remix of Everything Must Go by The Manic Street Preachers rounded out the list. The game has maintained a healthy audio accompaniment for every iteration. The most recent release – Gran Turismo 5 Prologue – picked up home town favourites Justice, as well as The Mars Volta and DJ Shadow.

Command & Conquer (and Red Alert)
C&C was actually PC based so it belongs in a slightly different category than the two Playstation epics before it. Nonetheless, I would be remissed If I did not mention these soundtracks. Both (+ their expansions) were written by Frank Klepacki and both were good enough to listen to outside the game. This game, besides wasting a significant fraction of my childhood, opened up the entire genre of instrumentals for me.

Bonus! There was one movie soundtrack that I scolded myself for forgetting to add to last week’s list:

Beavis and Butthead Do America
I had this album on cassette. I listened to it while working my paper route. With LL Cool J and Madd Head on the album, this was easily the first album I owned that had Hip Hop. It also had the Red Hot Chili Peppers, AC/DC, and No Doubt (which was just about to blow up with Tragic Kingdom). It also had I Wanna Riot by Rancid and the Stubborn All-stars which did not receive the Ska love-inspiring credit it deserved until much later. All in all, an extremely eclectic soundtrack and a very young age.

Written and directed by Anthony Hopkins. He even did the score (my immediate reaction, “Oh that’s why the music sucked too”.

Only redeeming moment: George Bluth Sr. saying “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I’m not spoiling the punchline. Watch it before reading the rest!
Read the rest of this entry »

Seems like awesome video for a rave. Maybe it was because I was listening to Trance at the time.

Dear god why won’t time move faster!

Also, if anyone is running into weird errors when they’re trying to post comments, let me know. It should be fixed now.

In the background on the right hand side:

Fuck Yes.

I’ve seen more movies in the last two months than I likely did in all of 2006. I’m trying to quickly remember all of them, but likely this list is incomplete. Update: After going over the list, I think I’ve over estimated in my mind just how many movies I’ve seen.

First, my sequel boycott continued with me not seeing Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Fantastic Four 2, and 28 Weeks Later (See rant), though I did crack once. Anywhat, on to the reviews:

Smokin’ Aces
Jeremy Piven (Ari from Entourage) is wasted in this movie. It’s like they wrote this whole great stylish movie plot out, filmed it, and then realized they need another hour of content at which point they outsourced it and cashed in.

Children of Men
One I need to go back and actually as the plan landed before it could wrap up. This was what V for Vendetta would have been if the Wachowski brothers didn’t suck. Dark, gritty, harsh, good.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2
I was bored, this movie just made that worse.

Knocked Up
I saw this movie three times in theatres in the first three weeks of its release. I’d likely go see it again before it’s out of theatres. The writing is unbelievably good. I now have a man crush on Seth Rogan.

Talk to Me
I managed to get a ticket to a pre-screening of this and I really enjoyed it. It’s along the lines of the recent trend of semi-historically factual movies (Ray Charles, Jonny Cash, etc) except with Don Cheadle taking the lead role. I think this movie solidifies my opinion that Don Cheadle is the best actor in the business today.

Live Free or Die Hard
Alright, I cracked. It’s a sequel, a fourquel actually, but it was July 4th and I was feeling patriotic. Ignoring some monumentally awful lip-syncing on Justin Long just after the power plant blows up, it was pretty damn enjoyable. I’d recommend seeing it once.

Transformers
It was crap. Yes, there were bad ass fighting robots and that was great, but that filled all of 15 minutes of the movie. The rest was spent on a GM commerical you just paid to see and crappy teenage plot lines about how the kid is so desperate to be accepted he pawns off family heirlooms on eBay. Best acting in this movie goes to Mojo the chiwawa with a broken leg. Optimus was a big pussy.

Still need to see:

Grindhouse
Yeah it got off reviews. I doubt it was meant to get all the hype it did. But then again, I haven’t seen it so maybe it does actually suck.

The Bourne Ultimatum
I have a vested interest in this. And the new trailer kicks ass.

Super Bad
More Seth Rogan and Jonah but now with Michael Cera. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Sunshine
By Danny Boyle of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later (!!!) fame. Cillian Murphy also makes an appearance. It’s in also in space. I’m !!!

Let me speak on this

28 Days Later is one of my favourite movies. It’s solid acting on all accounts, it has a unique story (alright a unique twist) and perspective, it’s extremely well filmed, and it contains the best and only use of a Godspeed! You Black Emperor song in a soundtrack, like it was written for it. I re-watch very few movies, even fewer are not comedies, but I watch 28 Days Later at least once every few months.

Let me also add that the ending of “28 Days Later” in no way sets up a sequel.

The announcement of “28 Weeks Later” preping for release in two months time makes me absolutely livid. I’d link to the trailer, but I don’t want to give some Fox exec the idea that the blogosphere somehow approves of the sequel. Here’s the plot, the infection has been wiped out, but they manage to reintroduce it. Same shit happens all over again. Weeeee. Oh except this time the US Army is involved, so in the end they blow everything up. Seriously, there is more fire and explosions in the trailer for “Weeks” than “Days” contained in its entirety.

If you’ve been avoiding the local theatre lately, you may not have noticed the massive influx of sequels and remakes (28 Weeks Later is nowhere near the first). The last time remakes and sequels were this popular was the 50s when movie viewership was at a 10 year low due to the introduction of the TV (thanks Music 246!). This is because remakes and sequels are “safe” movies. Proof: “The Matrix Reloaded” did $92 million in its opening weekend (Second only to “Spiderman” at that point). Have you ever met anyone that said they liked it?

It’s no different this time around. Movie companies are scared. Ticket sales are in a massive slide, because a substantial number of people are investing in home theatres and choosing to take a flick in at home rather than paying $10 to pay $5 for $0.50 worth of popcorn, and then be forced to watch 30 minutes of commercials before seeing the movie they came to see. The expensive food and commercials ironically are an attempt to boost revenues in response to less people coming because of the expensive food and commercials. More importantly though, there’s just not that many great movies.

So instead of taking a risk and coming up with new ideas for movies, the movie companies go with the tried and true stories, remakes and sequels. Any unique movie plot that actually makes money is labeled a “Surprise Hit” and is promptly greenlighted for sequels. Frustrating, but the public eats it up.

This all brings me to my point: Stop being stupid consumers. Stop going to see remakes and sequels. Please for the love of god stop.

I’m begging you.

Rent (and watch) “Death to Smoochy”

If Death to Smoochy was any better, Catholics would protest it.

City of Delusion by Muse

I’m pressing start on the counter. I’ve officially got one month left to go until I wrap up my year in Vancouver (and five month vacation in Waterloo/Saskatoon). It’s been a several blasts and I will be very surprised if I dont’ come back.

I went and saw the new Bond movie tonight. I think they did a brilliant job. Really well done movie. This wouldn’t be a blog if I didn’t piss and moan about something though:

• A little heavy on the product placements. I suppose it’s unavoidable to get Sony in there since they on the production company, but it’s sacrilege to have Bond driving a Ford Focus.
• That Mathis character is a flaming bag of douche. I hate the JarJar-esque role of having him chime in every five minutes during the poker game to fill in the “stupid” American public about what’s going on. Everyone knows what’s going on. The only people who don’t would sure as hell not be watching a Bond movie.
• That atrocity of Casino Royale’s main theme song. The song is called You Know My Name by Chris Cornell. I provide this information not so you can download it (please for the love of Deity do not download it!), but because hopefully someone who Googles it, thinking it’s good will find this and realize that they are screwed up in the taste department baaaaaaaiiiiiig time. If you’re this person, please do me a favour: Stop buying music. You’re the stupid American I was refereing to in the last point.

Exercising my Demons is fun!

Fun fact: “Mad World” is number two on iTunes top selling songs right now. I can only assume it’s because of the placement on the Gears of War trailer that’s been getting a lot of playtime. Someone’s going to be pissed: They’re buying the wrong version (Original Sacre version over Michael Andrews Gary Jules cover).

Oh and last but not least, the worst Pitchfork media review ever (too bad it’s for a good album). No word of a lie, I had two seperate people come up to me today and say “You have to read this Pitchfork review. It is awful.”