Category: Reviews

Saturday afternoon after I watched Benjamin Button, I headed over to Vero’s to pick her and up and drive over to Denny’s.  Alex, Holly, Trish, Vero and I had some excellent food there (probably the best philly steak sandwich I’ve had since the days when Broadways had them) and we talked about the concept of time travel in Terminator with Holly (which seemed to escape her).  This is also when Holly’s famous ‘Live Long and Posture’ line came about.  It was nice seeing Alex and Holly as they had just returned from Jamaica where they were married.  They had a marvelous time but mentioned that the second week was a little lackluster as they had changed resorts and preferred the first one.

Trish also got her birthday gift from Vero and I.  I had stumbled upon quite the find months ago on the CBC Shop.  A brooch with the castle of The Friendly Giant on it!  I had a good laugh at this and realized that Trish would have loved it.

We then headed over to the South Keys Cinemas to catch Star Trek.  Benoit and Cinthia showed up for this showing as well.  I was quite excited to see Star Trek.  Not only was it directed by one of my faves…J.J. Abrams (of Alias and Lost fame), but Vero had agreed to come along as well knowing that there were no robots in this film!  That’s one thing I love about the Star Trek universe…minimal robots.  Sure, some show up now and then (well moreso with Commander Data in the Next Gen, but that’s straying off-series) but all in all, there’s no droids in this film.

I had high hopes for the film and the film paid off well.  I thought it was fantastic.  I loved every bit of it.  It brought the original Enterprise crew characters together…Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty…there they were in all their glorious rebooted forms.  What one must remember with shows they love is that it is the CHARACTERS that people love, and the actors are secondary.  James Bond is a great indication of this.  Sure, William Shatner can be the one and only Kirk, but it’s nice to see some more adventures of the crew even if it means bringing in flesh blood.

I thoroughly enjoyed Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto’s take on Kirk and Spock.  Scott was done well also.  I found something missing from Bones’ character but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Plus, they change some character traits (very minimal) within the storyline which makes you realize that this isn’t your parents Star Trek.

***minor spoiler alert***
The greatest part of the film is how J.J. Abrams managed to not reboot the franchise, but to integrate it somehow with the old universe into the new.  It was very cleverly done using theories of alternate realities and such.  So you never know…technically there could be old characters emerging in this new universe that they’ve created.
***minor spoiler over***

I enjoyed Eric Bana’s villain character and I thought the action throughout the entire film was great.  I don’t think I’ve seen that much action in a Star Trek film before.

Plus, it passed the Vero test.  She didn’t say whether she liked it or not which really means that she loved it.  So you should do yourself the favour and watch Star Trek.  I’m looking forward to seeing it again.

iplaying: Honey, Please – The Tragically Hip (We Are The Same)

Anne-Marie and Steve gave me this gift over Christmas.  Anne-Marie described it as a story about a guy who was going through some radical brain surgery which changed him from a mentally retarded person to a person with the brain of a genius.  I was intrigued!  Radical surgeries from the 60s/70s?  Sign me up!

Unfortunately for myself, I thought this book was non-fiction until someone pointed out that they were pretty sure it was fiction.  I went through the same scenario with Life of Pi thinking the book was non-fiction.  Clearly, if someone thinks a book is non-fiction, they will find the story that much more entertaining (for the sole purpose that some fantastical things can happen in fiction, whereas in non-fiction…generally not the case), but alas, all I was stuck with was a fiction book.

But in the end, the book was great.  It followed the diary entries of the main character as he went from being mentally retarded to a super genius.  The novel brought up questions about messing around with nature as this person surely had some grand intellect going on, but he didn’t have the emotional capacity to handle all these new developments and he seems a little crazy.  On top of it all, they notice that the mouse (Algernon) who they performed the experiments on is acting strangely so there is also the notion of not knowing if your brain is going to give out on you or not and facing mortality.

Two thumbs up for this novel, especially if you go in there realizing it’s a work of fiction.

In my Image and Communications class we watched this film which is a propaganda film chronicling the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremeberg (thanks Wikipedia!).  Leni Riefenstahls cinematography was quite forward thinking at the time…moving cameras (dolly), telephoto lenses, aerial photography, music within the film (thanks Wikipedia!).

The film mainly consists of footage of the arrival of the Nazi party in Nuremberg parading through the streets, waving hello to their fans (and I do mean fans), speeches made to various assemblies of people (the youth, the Labourers, Party members, etc.) and overall documentation of the a day in the life of the Nazi party going through town.

While I can say that I wasn’t blown away by the cinematography because I’ve seen it all before considering the techniques have been replicated many times over, I was blown away by various other aspects of the film.

*Note that I don’t know a lot of cold hard facts about the Nazi Party and WWII.  So if I mix up something, go ahead and let me know.*

The fact that I was watching a piece of history documented before WWII was quite strange.  Here was a film about a political party who was rising to power in Germany and hoped to bring Germany back to grandeur…back to the times before the first World War.  It was a simple black and white film with minutes upon minutes of filming a parade down the street and of people raising their arms in salute of Mr. Hitler and company driving through the streets.  The people seemed happy…it was probably a good time in Germany.

Once in awhile, the National Socialist party would stop in and make a speech.  These were intriguing as they were very similar to speeches I’ve seen over the years…general comments about how the country will be strong again and it’s people will be powerful and they will not bow down to failure.  This could be any politician’s speech when you think about it.  It’s only because we know of what happens afterwards that we may look at it with a little fear.  Heck, I’m sure I heard President Obama talk about how their nation needs to rise up and become powerful again.

But it’s the little things near the end of the film that become a little haunting.  The final speech says “The Party is Hitler – and Hitler is Germany just as Germany is Hitler!”  Those are some pretty powerful words.  It shows how fanatical his followers were becoming.

It’s strange to watch a film like this and remember the fanaticism during Trudeaumania, or what is happening now down in the United States of America with President Obama.  Am I trying to say that these politicians are all comparable?  Heavens no!  But the devotion to their political leaders is comparable…at least in the beginning as seen in this snapshot from 1934.

A sidenote about some of the scenes…there was one part filmed in Nuremberg where there were 160,000 soldiers lined up while Hitler, Himmler and Lutze walk down a path between them all.  This is a very powerful and iconic image.  I immediately thought of the scene in Star Wars where the Emperor walks amongst the storm troopers.  Lo and behold, not one minute after I made this comment did Adolf Hitler refer to his soldiers as Storm Troopers!  That was a surprise to me.

I must admit that there were a lot of parts of this film which dragged on.  Twenty minutes of a parade is a little mind-numbing.  But overall I was excited to see this piece of film history.  I think the most interesting part of it was seeing Germany in 1934 before all hell started to break loose.  What am I saying?  This was clearly the genesis of hell breaking loose and it’s captured on film.  Haunting.

In my quest to read everyone’s favourite books, I asked my colleague Mark to pass me his and it was a doozy. At 609 large pages with small print, this book took me a couple of months to finish. It was written by Derrick Jensen who seems to be an activist, environmentalist, concerned citizen of the world.

The subject matter is quite dark, but I guess that’s a given when it looks at the world we live in and what is happening in it. It specifically focuses on examples of hatred within our world and how it in turn, destroys the natural world. It’s pretty heavy stuff and I must admit it was the first time I’ve read a book of this nature.

That’s not to say that it wasn’t interesting. I found his writing style to be quite entertaining. He would attempt to bring up a point of view from different story angles. If he didn’t get his point across to you in one fashion, then he would attempt it from a different anecdote until he covered enough to make us realize what he was getting at.

Specific topics ranged from how the African slave trade started, to how corporations killed 8,000 people in Bhopal. It speaks of the questionable justice system in which a man (usually a black man) can end up in jail for breaking into a car, while heads of corporations who destroy eco-systems around us which lead to birth defects, deaths and general nastiness walk away with a proverbial slap on the wrist.

I found the book to be quite interesting in the first half as he was introducing new concepts and his stories were quite entertaining. The later part of the book dragged on for me…I couldn’t figure out if it was the fact that he was just tying together concepts he had been introducing throughout the book, therefore making me read concepts that I had already linked together…or the fact that it was two months into the book and enough was enough!

I forgot to mention how the later half of the book specifically targets the rise of the Morgan family within the United States and how the essentially ran the country. It was an interesting analysis in how the politicians do not have a real say in how the country works, but more so the big players of the economy drive the direction in policy changes, etc. I’m sure for some of you reading this, you already knew this and I had some inkling of knowledge but nothing concrete.

If you are up for the task of reading some pretty dire stuff about the world in which we live in, then I highly recommend reading this book. I found it to be entertaining and when the time is right, I may even pick up another one of Derrick Jensen’s books. In fact, even if you’re not up for reading about the truths of the world we live in, perhaps you owe it to the world to do so and not live in a culture of make believe. Wow, I am clever in using his title of the book in a sentence. Hee hee.  I’m making light of some heavy stuff and that’s not right.

Over the past few nights I’ve taken some time to watch Blade Runner – The Final Cut while Vero worked on her competition for her job.  This was an opportune time to watch it as she has a fear of robots.

I just looked up what the medical term for ‘fear of robots’ would be and suprisingly, I cannot find any!  There are phobias for spiders, frogs, dead things, long words, robbers (close!), but no robots!  That’s interesting.  The closest thing I could find is that in Isaac Asimov’s books, he refers to the phobia as the ‘Frankenstein complex’.

Anyhow, I haven’t seen Blade Runner in YEARS.  I must have rented it from Video Station because they had a great science fiction section.  I remember renting Dune there and wondering what the heck that film was about.  It wasn’t until years later when I read the book that I got really interested in the series (but have yet to see the film again.  I remember it was quite random.).

If you don’t know about Blade Runner, it takes place in 2019 where there are robots who look like humans doing some hard work on different planets.  However, the new-age robots are becoming smart as humans (as in they are conscious of themselves as robots) and sometimes escape back to Planet Earth to escape the horrors of the other planets.  Because of this, there needs to be a force to go hunt down these robots and ‘retire’ them.  These guys are called Blade Runners and Harrison Ford plays one who is called back into action when six robots (actually called Replicants in the film) escape and hit Planet Earth for a grand old time.

This film was really interesting to watch again as I had forgotten about the specifics of the film.  I had forgotten how noir the film was (or as I’ve read in a few reviews…neo-noir).  It’s interesting to see the film’s version of the future…advertising everywhere, overpopulation, robots doing man’s work.  It’s a simple tale but has a lot to offer in thinking about the future of robots (these themes play out in a lot of science fiction films/novels that I’ve read over the years).

I can’t really comment on the ‘Final Cut’ of the film as I don’t remember the original film that I watched so I don’t know what was edited/changed from the older versions.  At least it’s the definitive cut of the film as there were about seven of them beforehand through various releases.  Imagine being a director of a film and you aren’t even allowed to have a say of what version of your film is released to the mass market!

If you haven’t watched Blade Runner before, it is a must for science fiction fans.  Go nab it right now at HMV for $8 like I did.

iplaying: Ohio – Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (So Far)

On Sunday morning I noticed it stopped raining so I knew what that meant.  Time to get cracking on winterizing the house.

First stop – Home Depot.  I was determined to finally fix the eavestrough.  I had determined that the leak was not coming from the eavestrough at all, but from the siding next to it.  I did pull out the ladder to examine it once again (an annual task at this point.)

It turns out that half my theory was correct and that the bottom of the siding leaked but also the eavestrough was still leaking.  The problem with the eavestrough leaking is that it hits the concrete slab beneath it and over the years it has now become waterlogged.  Not a good situation.

Hitting up Home Depot I bought a bunch of stuff…a new end cap, some screws, some random metal pieces that I figured I could fashion to divert some water…and some new caulking for good measure.  Lord knows I love caulking.  Actually, it’s impossible to deal with outside in the eavestrough and I really hate using it.  Even later today, it haunted me as I squeezed the trigger and nothing was coming out so I squeezed again and of course I didn’t realize there would be a delayed reaction and the stuff went everywhere.  Sigh.

In the end, the end cap was of no use as it was harder to pull the old one off so I decided to remove all old caulking and try again but this time screwing in the end cap into the eavestrough.  After spending an hour on the eavestrough, I would like to think that it will finally be fixed but that is wishful thinking.  I also worked on a corner joint which was also leaking but the caulking job was to be desired.  Vero had a good laugh at it later.

After the job with the eavestrough was completed, Vero and I hit the town again for various items which also brought us to the mall where I picked up the film Once and The Beatles: A Hard Day’s Night film.  We headed home and settled into watch Once which was an excellent, excellent film about a busker on the streets of Dublin who meets a girl whom he proceeds to make beautiful music with (no really, that’s what they do, it’s not an analogy) and it’s really a touching film.  It almost seemed like a promotional film for the soundtrack as all the songs were played in full for the camera.  It’s quite moving and it specfically looks at how love can be more than physical.  I will definitely watch it again and recommend it to all music lovers out there.

After Vero left I went ahead and assembled the filing folders I bought and finally got around to putting all my papers into files.  This has probably been a 10 year project but was finally completed.  Now I can say I have all my old cellphone bills in one spot!  Actually, I was shaking my head wondering why I was actually keeping old cellphone bills considering I don’t even have a cellphone anymore but I said to myself “Self, you are here to file things away, not to question why you have them.”

I’m sure Vero would be shaking her head at this thought process as she made me bring a box of clothes to the Salvation Army as it had been in my closet for three years now.  Procrastinator?  Nah.  Then she started questioning if I needed all my stuff in my house.  I avoided that question like the plague with the simple truth…yes.  I definitely need every item in the house.

On Thursday and Friday I went to a Business Process Notation course which was actually quite interesting.  It deals with mapping out business processes (as in, the steps used to accomplish a task.  This could be as simple as the business of brushing your teeth (take brush, apply toothpaste) which are quite complex in a larger setting (such as the application of a passport for example).  The notation used is fairly common and I was there to learn the actual notation used in mapping these out.  It was quite enjoyable and one of the first times at work that I didn’t mind going on a training course as I felt I gained some knowledge from it.

Friday evening, because of the late hour I escaped the building, I spent some time with Krista on the bus as it chugged slowly down the core of Ottawa.  I was not impressed with how slow the buses took at 5PM.  I decided to head over to Vero’s to escape this dungeon on four wheels.  We had dinner and then headed back to Orleans so I could buy some picture frames.

Buying frames has been a quest all last week as I stumbled across a 50% coupon from Michael’s craft store that I could use each day.  I recruited Mike, Eric, Annie and Vero to accompany me in buying some frames and giving them each a coupon.  I had quite a few concert related items to frame.  In fact, it is quite shameful to realize that it’s been two years since the last thing that has been put up!  I am quite the procrastinator (Dad of course knows this from the dent which is still in my car door.  Luckily, I am inquiring about this now.) and I had a few reviews that had accumulated.  Unfortunately, I realized that I had grown lax in cutting out reviews from newspapers and I think there are quite a few that I missed over the years.  I will go to the public library with Vero one weekend and scour the archives and print some out.

After Vero and I picked up some picture frames, we headed to Blockbuster to see if we could rent Fame as Vero wants to see this musical but thought it would be good to see the film also.  Unfortunately, Blockbuster does not carry this hit (praises!) and we bought a few films instead.

We hunkered down at home with some popcorn and watched the Sex and the City film.  I actually quite enjoy the series but have never seen the whole thing (which doesn’t take away from the show).  It follows loose plot lines over it’s span of five years and now they have returned to continue where they left off.  It was an extended cut so the film was 2.5 hours long.  Being cozy on a cold night beckoned a little scotch to be brought out of the cupboard so I had a few of those.  The film was decent.  I thought the plot line about Steve went against his established character in the series, but I guess they needed something to build the movie out of.  I also found that the characters were out of their regular element and I thought this is a great thing to do in a film setting.  If they were just doing the same old things that they did in the television series, it wouldn’t have been a great film.  It would feel like an extended tv show.  But with them put into bigger, crazier situations that seem out of place, it made it stand out more.

*spoilers*

Here’s my review of Hunters of Dune: http://palmer.grumpster.com/?p=810

I ordered Sandworms of Dune a few weeks ago from Amazon, thinking I ordered the paperback version for $7 but it turns out that I ordered the hardcover version.  Isn’t it crazy that hardcover books drop in price so much within a year of release?

Sandworms of Dune is the final Dune novel…chronologically.  Originally, the seventh Dune novel was to be written by Frank Herbert but he passed away and years later his son and Kevin J. Anderson wrote Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune to become the final books of Dune.

I was absorbed by the novel and with good reason…we were at the climax of the entire Dune series.  It all comes down to this point.  We have the return of the classic characters from the series, coming back in ghola (clone) form.  We have the return of the thinking machines which the Dune universe was against for the entire series.  We have the final battle which had a satisfying conclusion.

All in all, how did I feel about the final two books in the series?

As novels themselves, I found the characters and the storytelling to be engaging and it was quite the page-turner.  As for how it fits into the Dune series…it doesn’t feel like it fits entirely, especially from some of the revelations that occurred at the end of the novel that I didn’t see coming.  I now question whether some of the elements REALLY appeared in an outline for Frank Herbert’s final novel or did his son have to really go the extra mile into making a great novel worthy of being the conclusion to the series.

In the end, they did the best they could.  And it turned out decent.  Writing the final Dune novel after the author has passed away is like having John Lennon’s son record his final album which is based on lyrics and snippets of music lying around at the time of his death.  It will never be as good as it could have been.

But it is a good ending to the series and I thoroughly enjoyed the project they undertook in fleshing out the Dune series with prequels and now they are working on novels which will bridge the gaps of the original story so it will be good to read about some old characters.

I will say this about old characters…I found it odd reading about the clones of all these characters I loved over the years and realizing that they weren’t the same.  They never did resonate with me and they were merely placeholders for the final battle.  A little more character development would have been appreciated on these classic characters returning!