Category: Reviews

Before I start off this next review of the other film we watched on Friday night, I have to send out a salute to our good friend James who came up with the title Fast and the Curious as to what this movie’s title would be if it were a pornography film.

Anyhow, if you’ve seen the previous Fast and the Furious movies, you know you’re in for a treat full of high paced race sequences.

I was not disappointed. It was cool to see this film introduce the term drifting into my vocabulary as I had been oblivious that vehicles could glide across the pavement so easily (at least in Tokyo they can. I have not seen evidence that you can do this sort of thing in North America).

I liked the characters and the classic story of the young one who knows nothing but then learns everything and kicks some ass at the end of the film. You can’t go wrong with an underdog story! Recommend this film if you want to zone out and think of nothing else but a car chase.

On Friday night, Mike and Mel had a slew of people over for Movie Night (which was excellent by the way).

The men retired to the basement to avoid any lame women films and poppped in Nacho Libre – the newest work to star our favourite Jack Black.

Unfortunately, this is the first Jack Black movie which didn’t live up to the hype. Both Mike and I have been waiting a LONG time to watch this film and were disappointed. I had only got through an hour of it a few months ago so was glad to catch the ending of it this time around.

Overall, it had some funny parts. The wrestling was pretty funny. But the rest of the cast is lackluster and if people were expecting a Napolean Dynamite all over again are in for a disappointment.

This also falls into the dreaded ‘best parts are in the trailer’ scenario. Perhaps we shouldn’t watch trailers over, and over, and over again as Mike and I did.

Yesterday, I picked up Help! A Day in the Life which is a compilation produced by Raine Maida (of OLP fame) with proceeds going towards War Child.

So far, it is an excellent disc as seen from the amazing lineup of artists who contributed some rare tracks. Take a look at the tracklisting here.

Let’s be honest, it’s all about the Sam Roberts track, Magic on My Mind.

But the album has got me thinking about charities and whatnot…as you may or may not know, I donate to the White Ribbon Foundation via my paycheque. The White Ribbon Foundation is a group of men promoting the end of violence towards women.

While I agree and support their cause, I started to think if this was the best choice of my money towards a charity.

I mean, looking at the liner notes of this album, it indicates that the amount I spend in a year can can support one war-affected household for a year, including education for women and their children, counseling and school support.

That’s pretty heavy when you think about your money going to helping actual people. Yes, yes, I know that the existing charity I’m giving money to is helping people also, but in some ways, it seems a little more concrete with War Child.

I suppose I’ll have to think about what I want my money to go towards when it comes to renewing my charitable donations form this year. I think that any charitable donation helps and that no one’s choice are wrong, as long as they put some thought into it. For those who don’t think too much when giving to charity, I suggest you start funnelling your money into the PPF (Palmer Pleasure Fund). 😉

So if you feel like helping out a good cause and getting a killer compilation album at the same time, pick up this album! $12.99 at Music World.

Heh heh heh…we all knew it was coming. SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!

We finally managed to go and see this film, and even though Benoit thought it was the worst movie ever (or was that X-Men 3?) we decided that we would embrace this movie in all the goodness that it could provide.

Mike, Vero, Trish, Sena, Jennie, Sophia and Spencer hit up the movie on Wednesday night at the World Exchange Plaza. Because it was a movie that’s been out for awhile, it got shifted to the smaller theatre. I would say 100 people could fit inside this room. It was good times laughing at the fact that we were the only ones in the theatre but then two poor souls came in behind us. I hope we made their stay enjoyable.

The movie has everything that is good in this world. Crummy dialogue, bad acting and a whole lot of snake gore. If you can think of any way a snake can kill you, well, it’s been done in this movie. I also appreciated the fact that Samuel Jackson’s famous LINE from the movie looks so out of place in the entire film considering he is always calm and serene up until that point.

We laughed, we cried, we heckled the screen. I have never been to a movie where a word comes out of my mouth in respect for the rest of the audience, but when the audience are your friends out for a good time to see SNAKES ON A PLANE, you can’t go wrong by laughing out loud at the screen everytime a snake slithers by.

Two thumbs up for this movie EXPERIENCE. I say this because most of you will be disappointed if you rent this thinking it’s a good movie. It’s a really good B-Movie. Watch it with friends and just laugh!

Favourite Line: “What we need to do, is make a barrier between US and the SNAKES!” – Captain Obvious himself, Sam Jackson.

On another note, Trish gave me my belated birthday gift which turned out to be a sweetass thermos with a picture saying “I *heart* Thermos Dogs!”. Ugh. Trish grew up on Thermos Dogs (as opposed to what she writes in this blog entry, which describes thermos dogs.). I don’t think she’ll ever convert me, but I’m glad I have a trusty thermos to carry them in, in case of an emergency. Thanks for the ingenious gift Trish!

SOMEONE told us the wedding started at 2:30. Always keep your invitations so you don’t show up there an hour ahead of time.

Jason and Monique’s wedding was spectacular. Mike, Vero and I arrived not knowing what to expect, but once you enter Bean Town Ranch it’s like you’ve entered a movie set. It’s an entire ranch with lakes, and barns and overall goodness.

They had a horse and carriage bring us over to the spot where the ceremony was going to be. Pretty cool!

The ceremony was beautiful, outside and sunny. Jason is the biggest crier (cryer?) in the world and proceeded to bawl when he thought he would see Monique. I don’t mind when a dude cries during his own wedding but there’s no excuse for further crying when you’re delivering a speech to thank everyone for coming. Step up to the plate man! Show them what you’re made of! 😉

The pastor was amazing as he reminded me of a cross between Guy Smiley and some game show host. I felt like I was at a movie and this was some badly scripted dialogue. There were some parts where Vero and I could not stop laughing our asses off.

After the ceremony, we walked over to another barn where they had cocktails and numerous snacks. Annie saw us and whisked us over to a table (she was part of the bridal party, much like her husband Eric who was the best man) and we hung out for awhile, meeting a few good gents in the form of Joseph and Darcy. These guys were good times. Coupled with the fact that they had a pianist and a flute player playing for us, the atmosphere was fantastic.

If there’s any indication on how cool geeks can be, it’s when you discover that everyone loves Star Wars (no, I did not bring it up). We actually wanted to request the Mos Eisley Cantina song from Star Wars. I proceeded to leave a napkin with our request when they musicians had a break but no dice. We were pretty bummed.

With a ring of a church bell, that was our indication that supper was on so we moseyed on over to the hall, and realized that our new friends were actually sitting at the same table as us. BONUS! After loading our glasses with wine, we noticed that the nametags at the table were from UNICEF and indicated that our gifts were made in the form of a donation. The funny thing about this is that they first sentence on the name tag said “The Gift of Health has been given to the needy from Tables 12-14”. But mine was off-center so it read “The Gift of Health has BEER given to the needy from Tables 12-14.”. Here I thought we hit the goldmine and were getting free drinks for the rest of the night, but alas, only myself and Christina had these magical Willy Wonka tickets in our hands and someone had to ruin our night by proclaiming they were off-center.

Salad was served and someone was mentioning how someone at the head table had gone into labour. WHAT THE HECK? Mike, Vero I start freaking out as we know this can only be our good friend Annie and we look frantically around to see where the heck she is. We end up getting Vero to go talk to the bride and it turns out that they have left the wedding to head for the hospital. Holy mackerel…this was a sobering thought. You know, I’ve seen people have kids before, but I haven’t been entirely close to them, so for my friends Eric and Annie to have a kid on the way…it just shook me up and make me realize “Whoa, Annie isn’t just getting big all of a sudden for no reason.”

Considering the drive to the hospital would have been an hour long, we figured we would call the hospital later considering no water had been broken; only contractions that were 5 minutes apart.

The rest of the wedding party stepped up to the plate to read Eric’s speech as he had to rush off with Annie. It was an excellent speech and it was interesting to hear Eric’s words being read by others.

The highlight of the night came from the first dance. The sun had gone down, there was a campfire outside and we all stood on the edge of this pond. In the middle of this pond was an island where the bride and groom danced the night (or 3 minutes) away with spotlights on them and fireworks going off in the distance. Pretty slick I must admit. I’ve never seen a first dance this crazy before. Afterwards, we entered the hall again where the pianist and flute player had been joined by a drummer/singer and they played some old school music where Jason and Monique showed off their ballroom dance lessons.

After watching some dances, we called the hospital and found out that they didn’t know what was really going on as the doctor had to do an evaluation. So we figured we would call back later to find something more concrete.

The dance was decent. The trio played for a good hour and then they brought in a DJ for the rest of the night to spin some tunes. Overall, not many people were up dancing but I would have to note the following:

• The stereo kept cutting out to the point where you would wait five minutes to hear another song. Must have overheated?
• The DJ blew. I’m sorry if Jason and Monique are reading this and taking offence but the fact that he would slap a CD on once in awhile and leave the dance area is not a bad thing, but it is when your CD is full of slow dance tunes and 10 songs later he comes back in.

In fact, when we were leaving the wedding later that night, I kind of said “Man, the wedding was awesome, but the DJ sucked.” and Mike proceeded to say “Yeah. Sucked donkeyballs!” and then I noticed that sitting alone by the campfire was the DJ who definitely heard us. Do I feel bad? Maybe a little. But come on! It’s your job to be in there DJing buddy!

Highlights of the dance floor include me doing a running leap into a guitar rocker stance on my knees in front of some woman I didn’t even know. I slid at least a good four feet onto my knees and was very impressed with the slick floors. I didn’t bother looking up but I heard this woman was a little bewildered at why I was playing the guitar solo to “You Shook Me All Night Long” on my knees but then she gave into the the rock gods and realized she should be honoured. Please note that after the wedding in the car I realized I had split my pants to the point where an entire fist could reach in down below. I can only imagine that this is the event which ripped those pants. 😉

Also, Vero and I decided to have a dance-off since there was no one on the floor dancing. I must admit that she kicked my ass bigtime because I proceeded to have a very lame move in which I was pretending to golf. However, I redeemed myself later where I was pretending to bowl and then I woudl run to the opposite end and pretend I was the bowling pin and get knocked down. Definitely should have been the winning move but Vero beat me with her re-enactment of the shopping cart.

Two thumbs up for the wedding and two thumbs up for Bean Town Ranch. We were very impressed and we’re pretty sure that everyone had an amazing time. Jason and Monique, you were beautiful. I hope you have a good time in Vancouver and that last Alaskan cruise!

***To rewind a night, Mike and I hung out with his family who were up for another wedding this weekend. It was good times and we jammed a bit and came up with an impromptu song called The Wedding Day Jitter Blues. I cringe to listen to this tune sober so the next time I’ve had a few glasses of wine, I’ll play it back to see how it was. Thanks to the Losiers for showing us a good time!***

Now, I suppose I should write an entry about whatever happened to the best man and his wife that night…

Last night after MaryAnn’s farewell (let’s be honest, she’s going to NFLD for three weeks and coming back part time…it’s not a REAL farewell), Krista and I ventured over to the Ottawa side of the river to check out the Parliament Pub. She had told me wonderful things about this pub but I had never heard of it.

After grabbing some street meat we entered the establishment – right across from the Parliament Buildings. It was a neat setup. Not a pub that I’m used to as we ended up in some cushy lounge chairs where I felt I needed a pipe along with my drink, but it was pretty cool. They had pictures of all the Prime Ministers, and they also had some good caricatures of the cool ones. Also, you can tell that this pub must have been built in the hay-day (hey-day?) of the Grits as they had an entire half of the pub sectioned for them, whereas the other half had to share the Torys, NDP, Bloc and the Pink Elephant party (I’m joking). It was interesting to think of the many battles fought in this pub depending on who sat on what side.

All in all, an enjoyable experience with good company. I even found a sweet Mountie cardboard cut-out in the mall below the pub which I know Krista wants for her place. It reminds her of Due South.

Last night after volleyball, Mike and I watched Land of the Dead which is the fourth film in George Romero’s Dead series.

I was pretty excited to see this film as I had only see the other three parts and the third one was made in 1985. 20 years later, I’m sure a zombie film can be beefed up immensely with the aid of something I like to call the ‘puter.

When we last left the Dead, they had infiltrated an army bunker where some scientists and army types were hanging out trying to figure out how to get out of this mess.

Fast forward to sometime in the future where the Dead seem to run rampant around the countryside (if not the world, although it sounds like Canada fared well during these times. Go Canada!) and humans rarely go outside of their barricaded cities. However, with any civilization, someone at the top has to screw it up for all of us (read: Bush) and so the rich live in luxury, while the poor live in the dregs.

As for the Dead, they happen to evolve during this movie – learn how to use crude tools to get to a goal, learn to communicate together, etc. It was interesting to wonder if they’ll make it so the Dead actually become human again over time. That would be wild.

There as an interesting part of the movie where they used fireworks to make the Dead stare up into the sky so the humans could go about their adventures since the Dead didn’t even bother with them while there were some cool lights in the sky. I read how Robert Epert compared this to the shock and awe tactics used by the Bush Administration. Interesting. What’s also interesting is the fact that the Dead finally realize the fireworks mean nothing and keep on doing their zombie thing; eating people and wreaking havoc. Take that!

Also read on the Internet (I’m just cribbing a bunch of this stuff from the Wikipedia entry) is that George Romero stated that the movie was a statement on the current Bush administration. Wild.

My favourite part was when they cut to some underground gambling/bar/general human mayhem establishment and the humans were paying money to get their picture taken with two chained up zombies. NO WAY! That hit home as to how humans can ignore the actual danger that’s out there by making a mockery of it. Fast fact: I missed it, but it turns out that the two chained up zombies for the picture taking were none other than the two guys from Shaun of the Dead. I want to see the movie again just to catch that!

I give this 5 bloody killings out of 5 because I thought the idea portrayed in the film were excellent, the zombie mayhem was coolness (and they realize they can breathe (do zombies breathe?) in the water!) and overall, I would say the best of the series (next to the original of course).

One day, I’ll have to check out the remakes of Dawn and Day, but for now, I’ve filled my zombie quota for the month.

Thanks to Marc-Bernard for lending us this flick!

Awhile back I had picked up the Karate Kid box set for the sole reason of watching The Karate Kid. Heck, you can’t go wrong with picking up the second one also.

I had never seen The Next Karate Kid which did away with Daniel-san and introduced Hilary Swank as Julie-san.

Overall, I would put this film at par with Karate Kid Part III which wasn’t the best film in the series. I enjoyed the humourous elements of pitting Mr. Miyagi with a girl instead of a boy but other than that, it was your run of the mill ‘coming of age’ story. Heck, there wasn’t even a tournament of some sorts! Where’s the Cobra Khans? All they had is some lame-ass security force at a freakin’ high school (who had a bunch of high school students who were security detail? We sure didn’t have that in Kapuskasing!) run by some old-timer war vet with a chip on his shoulder. I always like it when you see these dudes run around and say “Finish him.” to the students after a brawl and the students are thinking “Wha???” and I’m also thinking “Wha??? Is this Mortal Kombat?”

I give this 2 karate kicks out of 5.

Hard rock, metal, nu-metal, screamo? Call it what you will (not screamo!) but Breaking Benjamin lie in the same vein of the hard rock acts nowadays – Three Days Grace, Finger Eleven, Trapt, etc.

I picked up a Breaking Benjamin album We Are Not Alone a few years and was blown away. Amazing stuff on this album, only to be outdone by their previous album Saturate which I had picked up at a used CD store.

So with this knowledge in hand (and downloading every live track known to man – did you know that they started out as a Tool cover band? If you can cover Tool, you are amongst the rock Gods.), I, along with Eric and Mike have been anticipating the release of the third album Phobia.

The other day I was thinking there must be something new coming out so I dropped by Music World to discover I was correct and there it was, priced at a modest $12.99, you can’t go wrong!

Hard rock is best delivered in the car so I ended up listening to this album quite a bit in the next few days. What’s the verdict?

Undecided at this point. At this moment, I have to say it’s not as good as the first two albums but have you ever had those albums that you listen to and you think “Well, it’s alright…” but the more effort you put into it, the more you fall in love with it and then you realize it is the best thing you’ve ever listened to and it ends up on your list of albums to take with you to a deserted isle? Who knows if it will end up this way for me? At this moment in time, every time I listen to it again, the songs get more dynamic and pull on some musical heart strings of mine. That’s a good indication that this may become one of those albums.

I find this happens a lot when you get used to a certain sound from an artist and then they change it on you. Let’s take Metallica’s Load for example. Sure, it sounds different than their previous albums. Does this make it a bad album? HECK NO! This is a diamond in the rough and once you get the whole “It ain’t Metallica like we know and love!” out of your head, you learn to appreciate it a whole lot more! But I won’t apply this argument to St. Anger. Gak…what a pile of bantha poodoo. Kirk, where are the solos man? The solos!

So, if you’re into the new hard rock/metal scene and enjoy the new stuff coming out from all the bands, pick up some Breaking Benjamin – preferably the first or second album to get you started. Then when you’re hoooked, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed by picking up Phobia. I’m not. It’s not like it’s Everclear’s last album which has prompted me never to buy another Everclear album before listening to it. I felt the same way after The Cranberries Bury The Hatchet. Ick.

iplaying: Breath – Breaking Benjamin: Phobia

James and Ferda dropped by to pick up some French language test books (you shall rock that exam Ferda!). But the true gem last night is I got a taste of what my youth.

Back in the day, I was a hardcore video gamer. I knew it all, I played it all, but more importantly, I knew the secret codes to the Konami console games. 😉 I don’t feel that I lost out on my youth because I was inside playing video games all the time…that’s the way I was and I think I turned out alright. Hogwash to all these people saying kids should get outside…as long as I’m not stuffing my face while playing video games, things are good! Heck, we all know I was a think stick of a man back in the day. Hmm…I’ve gone off on a tangent but now I’m wondering if there was a correlation of my sleek physique and my video game playing…

Anyhow, back to last night. Ferda mentioned she was a Tetris champ so we had a challenge and she was pretty good. Although I don’t think any of us in the room are of Carrie/Annie calibre. They are Tetris masters. Definitely.

But then while playing James pulled out his Nintendo DS (Dual-Screen) and showed it to me. At first I was thinking “Alright, I’ll give this a look since James is really into this.” but I didn’t think I would be super impressed since Benoit had showed me one before and I really wasn’t impressed.

Well.

Was I wrong.

The Nintendo DS is the latest in an evolution of the Gameboy. Gone are the small black and white screens of the handheld generation of video gaming. This screen was huge, it was colour and the graphics were magnificent. I played a little Tetris which had a few new features (which I consider cheating features but who’s counting, right?) and then checked out some Super Mario Kart which was amazing.

But the truly mind-blowing feature was that it could connect to the Internet so you could play certain games (like Tetris and Mario Kart) against somebody out there in the world. AWESOME! Let’s think back to those days where you’re sitting down alone in your room playing some game and thinking “Dang, it would be great to have someone here to play against at this moment.” and see the lone controller sitting next to you so then you start up a two player game thinking that you can manage one with your set of hands and then one with your feet…alright, no one as actually tried this, right? 😉

Anyhow, I thought that was the greatest part of the DS…multiplayer via the Internet. Incredible. I had heard about it, read about it, but never really tried it out.

Plus, the other good point about it all is that it seemed like the games were simple…they went back to the old school type gaming – side scrollers in particular. Gone were the ‘Doom/Quake’ style games where you just hunt everything and kill them. We’re talking Mario going around kicking some Goomba ass! That’s what people love. At least, that’s what I loved. I gave up gaming a long time ago because I just didn’t find the new games interesting. They were more about their special effects, their spectacular moves, but rarely about their gameplay.

Is the Nintendo DS cool? Definitely. Is it cool enough to bring Ryan back into the gaming world? Unsure. We all know I’ve travelled down this path before when I got the Xbox for Christmas and sadly, didn’t find it all that interesting. It turned out to be an amazing media center though that I use every day, but the games on the Xbox sucked. I don’t think I’ll be rushing out anytime soon to pick up a DS, nor do I want it as a gift (as Vero thought I was hinting towards after raving about it last night on the phone and she said “Are you saying all of this because your birthday is coming up?”), but I will try one out a little more and see if I’m interested.

So far, I give the thing 2 thumbs up, but I’m sure if I have third thumb and the Game Boy Advance Adapter for it, there would be three thumbs up just for the coolness of backwards compatability. I dig that kind of thing.

This post is dedicated to Carrie and Philipp who I know would love to play this…especially Mario Kart, and ESPECIALLY the fact that they could play Mario Kart against each other in different cities via the Internet, or if they were in the same room together.