Category: Reviews

Want to see a kid have the fear of God put into him? Go to Blockbuster and have the clerk tell you that if you don’t bring in that video game you rented, you owe Blockbuster $60 for the game. But you get to keep it.

Wanted to rent The Devil’s Rejects, sequel to House of 1000 Corpses (only one of the cooler horror films I’ve seen in awhile), but they were out. So why not purchase a few films while I’m there? I rarely rent movies anymore because it’s just as expensive as buying previously viewed ones.

Picked up The Machinist and Sin City. The Machinist has Christian Bale (aka the American Psycho, aka the dude behind the Batsuit with the big gruff voice) who is a favourite actor of mine. Eric and I sat down to watch the movie on a cloudy Sunday afternoon where we proceeded to get freaked out from the movie soundtrack. It didn’t help when a picture fell down behind us (which was leaning on top of the couch) and scared the bejeezus out of us.

Anyhow, the movie is excellent. For a long, long time, I didn’t know where the movie was going. But once again, one of those movies that pulls you in throughout the entire 2 hours and then the big payoff is the ending where you go “NO WAY! I can’t believe they did that!”.

5 stars, 2 thumbs, whatever you want to use to measure a success. Go see this flick.

Matt picked up a new pair of leather mitts while in Montreal at Simon’s. This was before he got told he wasn’t supposed to take pictures within the store.

Query: That’s the second time that day that he was told ‘No pictures tabernac!’. What’s up with that? Are they scared of us stealing fashion secrets. Pssst…you have a flyer! We can see your clothing outside your store!

Anyhow, Matt left these mitts in my car and so I thought I would let you all know how they fare in certain scenarios.

Scenario #1: Cold Weather Testing
Well, I put them on and walked outside for awhile. My fingers did not get cold at all. Two thumbs up (literally. They are mitts!). However, to give the ultimate test I went down the street to pick up some liquid nitrogen. I dipped these bad boys in and am happy to say that my fingers survived the ordeal.

Scenario #2: Hot Weather Testing
Chances are, you don’t wear your mitts outside in hot weather. But you never know. So I went ahead and fired up the BBQ to put a steak on and decided to use the mitts to flip the steak. My only beef with the mitts is that licking the BBQ sauce off your fingers doesn’t really taste that great when your fingers are leather. Other than a few grill marks on the mitts, I would say that the gloves protected my hands, but they did become very hot and sweaty. One (mitt) thumb up for that test.

Scenario #3: Cleaning up Dog Poop.
What can I say? I didn’t get any on my fingers. The mitts did their job.

There you have it. Matt’s mitts are excellent and I’m sure he will be happy with them as soon as he picks them up.

What can I say about Medieval Times? It was great!

You eat a chicken dinner with your hands, watch a show of horses running around an arena with knights battling each other. What more can you ask for?

Each section is assigned a knight to cheer for (we cheered for Louis du Rouge – the Red Knight) who didn’t fare too well, but we thought had the greatest potential of becoming the greatest knight there ever was.

They had full out jousting along with knights somersaulting off of their horses and taking their swords to each other’s throats. Excellent!

All in all, I thought $75 would be too much to pay for something like this, but I was not disappointed. Louis even threw Vero a rose! Awww.

Click on the photo above to take a look at the rest of the photostream.

Saturday morning, haul my ass out of bed and get going to Toronto for the weekend.

Picked up a few albums on the way there however to tide myself over on a music fix.

My Chemical Romance: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge – As you know, I downloaded this a few weeks ago as per Mike’s suggestion and felt it was worthy of a purchase. If you know me, you’ll know I’m not into downloading from an artist. Hey, let’s be honest, I’ve done it without purchasing. But I try not to. I like the system of how I can listen to an album and decide if it’s worthy of my cash.

Matt Mays & El Torpedo – What can I say about these guys? Saw them open for Sam Roberts last year and they rocked. Bought his album that night and frankly, it blew. It wasn’t bad persay, but it was more of country-rock like Neil Young and not the rocking show that I saw that night. So when their new album came out, I was hesistant. But then I kept hearing some great singles. Then I realized that his cohorts in crime (El Torpedo) came on board AFTER his first album which he recorded on his own. Great! This must mean that the second album will have some more rock than country. Upon first listen…meh. I’ll have to give it another try as it was more background music to a car trip than a real listen. But…I noted a lack of rock throughout the entire album.

Car ride to Toronto was great. Vero turns out to be a good traveller…you never know if someone might up being super annoying and trying to change the music all the time.

Dropped into the aunt’s place where I had a nice surprise of seeing Rick and Dwayne since it was Rick’s birthday. Unfortunate that I did not know that beforehand or I would have passed on Medieval Times. They are trying to convince me to come down next weekend for a little gettogether (read: party till I bleed) but we’ll see. Two essays are calling my name, but I’m making an honest effort to get them done so that I can go down to Toronto again. I wasn’t originally going to, but the itch is within me after seeing them for a short time.

And off we went to Medieval Times…alas, it’s getting late. I’ll write more tomorrow.

We’re going to see Saw 2 tonight at SilverCity if anyone wants to join. We’re also meeting up at Moxie’s at 5:30. Need a reservation so if you want in, let us know so we can up the reservation number.

Heck, why make a new entry when I can just edit this one?

Alright, so Joe, Trish and I went to Moxie’s for some great grub. I recommend the Shanghai Fat Noodles. They were tres fat. AND THE WASHROOMS! My Lord! I now want a urinal with a tv in front of it. This washroom had tvs, a fireplace and I’m pretty sure that dude would have wiped my ass if I asked him to. It was great.

Shopped around Future Shop and Chapters and then headed to the movie. Picked up the new Star Wars Insider. I must get the Star Wars Fan Club membership instead of picking up these magazines at the newstand. I think the membership costs $50, and six magazines a year cost $60. You do the math. PLUS, I get access to the archives on their website. Sweet.

What can I say about Saw II? Throughout the movie I felt that it wasn’t holding my interest quite as it did as the first movie. It was decent, but not what I was expecting for a sequel.

Until the end! In true Saw-fashion, the ending kicked ass and I left the movie satisfied.

I recommend this movie to only those not of the faint of heart. I don’t think Trish particularly cared for it. I think Saw was pretty gruesome, but I think Saw II got pretty crazy at the end. Don’t know if the kids would care for it.

Question of the night: Does the ending of a movie make the movie? Let’s analyze…did I care for the entire movie up until the end? It was decent. Not the best, but decent. Nothing really happened. A few crazy scenes here and there, but nothing over the top. What the heck am I saying? It was all over the top…but in between the crazy scenes it didn’t really engage me. But here I am saying to go see this movie because I thought overall it was great, but the ending may be telling me to say that.

So, can you think of movies you’ve seen where you thought the film was mediocre, but the ending made up for it?

I can think of one. My fave Matrix movie – The Matrix Reloaded. I am more satisfied if I just cut to the scene where they visit the Merovingian. That’s where the movie takes off for the last hour. Non-stop action. Maybe this is a bad example considering an entire hour of a movie can’t be considered an ending.

nowplaying: Pennies by The Smashing Pumpkins (Billy’s Gravity Demos I)

I picked up the new album from Default the other week. Default is one of those bands that aren’t on the top of my list, but don’t piss me off either.

However, I’ve found through the years that I tend to like it when a band changes their style from time to time. Their second album ‘Elocation’ was more of the same. I thought that maybe the third one would be different. Nope. More of the same.

Is more of the same a bad thing? Let’s take AC/DC for example. They’ve spent years and years and years figuring their ULTIMATE RAWK FORMULA and now that they’ve found it, they stick to it. Is this a bad thing? Depends on who you ask. On one hand, if people like adventure movies, they’ll keep watching adventure movies. So, if I like the AC/DC formula, I’ll keep buying their albums. Will I say that they are revolutionary and “YOU HAVE TO GET THIS ALBUM!!!” to everyone I see? Probably not. So, as long as Default sticks to their formula and doesn’t release a shitty album, I’ll keep buying. The only band I ever stopped buying albums from were the Cranberries. After their album “Bury The Hatchet” I realized it was a message to me to stop buying their music because that album was really really REALLY bad.

Miscellneous Ramblings/Updates/Questions:
– watched ‘What The Bleep Do We Know?‘ at Ben’s last night. Decent documentary on how humans and interactions and reality, and basically…quantum physics.
– My friend is in search of a Pumpkin costume. To not ruin the surprise, I won’t let you know who is looking for it. Let me know if you have one.
– Any takers on that iPod Photo I’m selling? It’s a steal baby. Christmas is coming up. Buy your loved one something.
– Leave some comments if you would like! I tend to check out James/Ferda’s blog as well as Matt’s every day and we leave each other our own little community notes. You should check out their blogs because they give you a snapshot of their (exciting?) lives.
– School is going well. I handed in my first essay a few weeks ago so if it comes back with a fail grade, I’m dropping out now! I can’t hack it! 😉