10 February 2008, late morning
Since I last wrote about Akarimentari, the movie managed to come out on DVD. Akarimentari is a documentary about the Nobuyoshi Araki, one of Japan’s most notorious photographers. I’ve always had mixed feelings about his work, but after watching this movie I feel like I appreciate what he does a lot more. Watching him work is intense. I also like his breezy attitude about photography, art, and pornography. The movie showcases a lot of his work, interviews with the man himself, and interviews with art critics, models, and fans. The movie also features an original score by DJ Krush, which is hype. Really though, there was so much nakedness in this movie there was no way it couldn’t be good.
Reviews of Arakimentari at MetaCritic.
Movies
Whenever he calls my name, sounds slow, sweet and plain,
Right here, right there, I feel the burnin’ flame.
There’s a hot lookin’ dresser got a hold on me
Or is this the way love’s supposed to be?
— Heat Wave by Martha and the Vandals. (I feel so nostalgic whenever I hear this song.)
9 February 2008, lunch time
Shima and I watched God Grew Tired of Us last night. The movie tells the story of a group of Sudanese refugees, the Lost Boys, who leave the refugee camp they have been living in for the past 10 years to immigrate to the United States. The story is tragic, but also up lifting. It’ll certainly make you want to slap the next person you meet moaning about their 90210 problems. It’s a good film, well worth watching.
The official God Grew Tired of Us web site.
Movies
8 February 2008, the wee hours
In high school we shot yearbook photos on bulk rolled spools of Ilford ISO 400 B&W film. Sometimes we’d grab a roll to shoot our own stuff, there was so much of it laying around. I did this twice. The first roll I shot Rishi developed for me. The second roll I never got around to developing.
9 years is a long time to let a roll of film sit around. The only picture I can remember taking on this roll of film was of Matt’s sister Rachel. I remember her looking sideways and me snapping the shot. The rest of the roll is a blur. And so it remained till today.
On my snow day I decided to go downtown and get this 9 year old roll of film developed. The picture of Rachel is exactly how I recall it — well minus the harsh light and all the grain I guess; in my mind it had become this brilliant lost photo. The rest of the roll is a strange look back in time.
[5] Life | Photography
6 February 2008, lunch time
Wedding Daze is a romantic comedy. Dude from American pie and the crazy chick from the Wedding Crashers decide to get married after meeting at a cafe. It’s got its moments. As romantic comedies go I quite enjoyed it. Update And I watched it again with Shima. She liked it.
The official Wedding Daze site.
Movies
6 February 2008, early morning
It’s a snowday at work, which is strange, because I don’t see any snow outside. I’m not sure if they feel bad for making us trek to work the day it was actually snowing like a mofo, only to send us home when we got there. Word on the street is it will be snowing a lot later. I patiently wait.
Update: Yeah, that is a lot of snow.
[2] Life
6 February 2008, the wee hours
I’ve been posting photos to Flickr for the past little while. (Photos of note are this photograph of Carvill, T&T, and Shima at Spadina ) Despite saying i’m not happy with how Flickr presents things, I do have to admit it’s about a bajillion times easier to put a photo on Flickr than it is to make a post on We Must Abuse the Broadband. I have some ideas for what I want to do with the photoblog here, but they can wait. For now, Flickr wins.
[1] Weblogs | Photography
1 February 2008, mid-morning
SPL is in many ways a precursor to Flash Point. In the few fights featuring Donny Yuen you can see where he wants to go with martial arts fight sequences. Moving beyond the fights, SPL is a very gritty and dark film. It is pretty bleak. I love hard boiled cop movies, and this one doesn’t disappoint in that regard either. Simon Yam, who is in every god damn movie to come out of Hong Kong, does a great job as the leader of a group of hard-ass detectives. Sammo Hung plays the villain in the film, an evil mob boss Yam is trying to bring down. The movie works well. It’s a classic Hong Kong action film everyone needs to see.
This comment from IMDB sums up the film nicely:
Donnie yen did a spectacular job with the choreography and MMA fans will be glad to know there is an energetic mix of all types of fighting styles including Jiu Jitsu complete with take downs and arm-bars. One of the main fight sequences is the most spectacular upon first viewing and then more-so on reflection as you find out that Donnie Yen and Wu Jing had no rehearsal and no direction; simply, they were told to “go for it”. To this point, the baton that yen wields in this fight scene was replaced three times as it was broken on Wu Jing’s head while filming.
[1] Movies
1 February 2008, mid-morning
Offside is about a group of Iranian girls trying to watch the Iran vs Bahrain world cup qualifier. In Iran, girls aren’t allowed to go to soccer matches, so this is not so simple. The movie begin following one girls very lame attempt to sneak in, which leads to her capture. She ends up in a small pen with a few other despondent (and in some cases insolent) girls, guarded by equally morose soldiers. The movie basically critiques Iranian society, the girls auguring the absurdity of this soccer stadium ban with their captors. It’s an interesting film. Like other Iranian films I’ve seen, it is very slow and the plot is very light. I think because of all the censorship Iranian film makers need to deal with they are forced to either make light fluffy films or incredibly obtuse films. The director of Offside was actually not supposed to make this movie: he had to lie and say the assistant director was the one making the film, and the script he submitted to whatever ministry is in charge of these things was not the script they actually shot. I guess if you are a famous Iranian director and don’t insult the Ayatollah you can play some games with the government. One thing of note: the very end of the film may be a subtle suggestion that if the people band together they have more power than the army and government; that’s one way to see it anyway.
The official Offside web site.
Movies
29 January 2008, evening time
I was planning on waiting till I read the book before watching I Am Legend. I couldn’t wait. Will Smith plays the last man on Earth. The movie is good, though the ending is very Hollywood.
Movies
28 January 2008, late evening
I just finished watching 3:10 to Yuma. Russell Crowe plays an outlaw, Christian Bale plays a regular man trying to escort him to a prison train. They both deliver great performances. It’s being billed as the best Western since Unforgiven. I think Unforgive is a better movie: this one is far more traditional. The ending and some of the characterization is a bit hollywood, but all in all it’s a pretty solid western. It’s really well done, certainly well worth watching.
The official 3:10 to Yuma web site.
[1] Movies
24 January 2008, late evening
I blitzed through a roll of film as fast as I could just to see how stuff would turn out. I probably should have been a bit more paitent considering how many lame photos I ended up with. I have a roll of XP2 in my camera right now; that I paid 8 bucks for the roll — 8 god damn dollars! — so I expect I’ll be more careful with it.
Photography
22 January 2008, late evening
Looking through some old photographs, I stumbled on this picture of Liz, Matt, and Shima. They’re all wearing their planning shirts. (The t-shirts were for the FEDS campaign — which they won.)
[5] Life | Photography
In the 80’s, MAD magazine responded to every complaint letter with “thanks for your concern, the person responsible has been fired.”
— Adam Koford
18 January 2008, early morning
I saw Magneta Lane at the Rivoli on Wednesday. I went to the show after buying a new camera. I don’t go to as many shows as I used to, primarily because my concert going friends don’t live in Toronto anymore. To quote an email I sent out in regards to this show:
Some of you may have got this email and thought, “wait, I don’t even live in Toronto anymore.” Yeah, move back to the damn city already. Punk ass sons of bitches.
And so it was that I went to the Magneta Lane show by myself. I’ve become quite good at going to shows alone, mind you, a skill I think everyone should have. I bought a beer, walked to the front, and waited. Usually I’ll just people watch; now I can also fidget with my phone. I had my old Yashica on me, so I also tried snapping some photos with that.
The girls took the stage at 8:00 or so, and were done just before 9:00. It was a short and sweet set. I think the show was a chance for them to test out their new material: they played a few new songs, mixed in with some of their older tracks. One change from previous shows was the addition of a keyboard player for a few songs. He also played guitar for one song so that the young Ms Valentine could focus on singing. I’m not sure they had the same energy I’ve seen them play with in prior shows, but they may just be out of practice or nervous. All and all it was a very enjoyable concert. I like the band though, so I’m probably pretty biased.
After the show various women tried to talk to me. I told them I was engaged and punched them in the face, which is usually what I do. Don’t try it ladies, my ass is taken.
[1] Music
17 January 2008, mid-morning
Yesterday evening was busy. After having decided to buy a Bessa I found one used on Craigslist going for $450: If that’s not a sign I don’t know what is. $450 may sound pricey for a camera without an LCD display and Mega-Pixels and all that junk, but you’ll have to believe me when I tell you that $450 is a deal. Still, being an avid negotiator I emailed the seller asking if he’d sell it for $400. He replied with $425 and we had a deal. I was off after work to grab my new camera.
I asked the seller why he was getting rid of the R2A. I think when buying used gear it’s good to find out why the person doesn’t want it anymore. (I have faith in people not to lie out their asses.) When I bought my 17-40L the seller wanted to buy some prime lenses to take photos of his baby indoors — clearly he didn’t need a slow wide-angle zoom anymore. This fellow was selling this range-finder because he never used it’s auto-exposure modes. Also, he already had not one, but two Leicas. Son of a bitch.
Actually no, the fellow was quite friendly. We met in the lobby of his building and he explained the ins and outs of the Bessa, and compared it to his Leicas. All three cameras had very bright viewfinders, though the 50 year old M3 seemed to be the winner in that department. The controls are what’d you’d expect from any old film camera. Of course, I need to grab a lens and start taking photos to really form an opinion on the camera. The R2A is a nice solid camera, but the Leicas he had were really something else: you could bludgeon someone to death with that M3.
After parting ways I was off to see Magneta Lane play at the Rivoli.
[13] Life | Photography
15 January 2008, lunch time
The MacWorld Keynote has been kind of dull for the most part, as pretty much everything rumored to be in the works was in the works: the iPhone Firmware update, iTunes movie rentals, a new wireless hard drive / base station, and of course, the new MacBook ultra-portable. That said, damn the new Powerbook is looking good. (Also of note for the environmentalists out there, the computer features: a fully aluminum case (good for recycling), the first fully mercury and lead free display, circuit boards are BFR free, retail packaging has 56% less volume than that of the MacBook.) The MacBook Air page is up, and I have to say that computer doesn’t look real.
[6] Apple Computers
14 January 2008, mid-afternoon
There are three things I really like about GoogleReader: all your unread entries appear on one page; when you scroll past an entry it is marked as read; your reading history — read vs. unread stories — is always up to date since the application is hosted online. Any feed reading application that doesn’t beat GoogleReader at these three things really isn’t worth using.
NetNewsWire is awesome. First off, it’s fast — oh so fast — and works incredibly well. It has the single page view that GoogleReader has, and it also can be set to mark stuff as read as you scroll past it. I have it set up so that clicking on links opens pages up background; pressing the right arrow will open the news item you are reading in the background as well. This way, when you are done reading your feeds you can switch to your web browser to look over the links you thought were most interesting. NetNewsWire is by far the best newsreader I’ve used. I like it a lot more than GoogleReader. Sadly, all is not well in the world. NetNewsWire’s biggest fault doesn’t lie with the program itself, but with the cruft it is forced to play with: Newsgator’s online service, and FeedDemon.
FeedDemon is a RSS newsreader for Windows. Like NetNewsWire it is owned by NewsGator, and the two programs can be kept in sync using Newsgator’s online service. As far as I can tell, FeedDemon is a pile of junk. It is slow — oh so damn slow. GoogleReader running inside Firefox works much better. Worse still, there seems to be no way to view all your unread feeds on one page — I’d even settle for an easy way to view each unread article one after another. Reading feeds in FeedDemon is a slow cumbersome process.
NewsGator’s online service is also incredibly lacking when compared to GoogleReader. In my opinion it works better then FeedDemon, but that isn’t saying much. You can view all your unread posts on a page, but unlike GoogleReader, it paginates them if there are too many unread items. (NetNewsWire also paginates your news items into multiple pages, but it will automatically switch to the next page when you get to the bottom of the current page.) NewsGator also doesn’t mark stories as read when you scroll past them: you can set it to mark everything as read when the news page loads up — this is how Bloglines used to work — or when you click a ‘mark all as read’ button. The site is slower than GoogleReader to boot.
NetNewsWire is so nice to use I’ve been putting up with FeedDemon and NewsGator for the past few days. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up.
Weblogs | Technology
10 January 2008, mid-morning
I was at chapters with a gift certificate in my hand informing me that if I spent more than $50 in the store, i’d get 40% off my purchases. Well, that’s a good way to get me to pad out my shopping. I bought The Gum Thief because it had a nice cover and I thought i’d give Douglas Coupland another shot. Also, the book was already 30% off. Oh Hells Yes. The Gum Theif was great. I liked it so much more than JPod, the only other book by Coupland that i’ve read. The story revolves, more or less, around two people, a depressed middle-aged man and a goth girl, both working at Staples. The story is told via letters and diary entries passed between the two protagonists, and other characters as the case may be; mixed into this is a novella being written by one of the characters. Unlike JPod, you feel for the characters, they are interesting and illicit your empathy. It’s a very enjoyable read. Another plus with this book is that the actual book, once you take of the dust jacket, is a beautiful pink. It’s an awesome book to carry around.
Comics and Books
Ramanan: It’s really slow. The first part is alright. Then there is a lot of nothing. Then the end.
Mezan: Just like life.
— discussing Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
3 January 2008, early evening
Shima and I finished watching Heroes Volume 2 a few days back. Volume 2 consists of the first half of Season 2, episodes 1 through 11. I’m not sure if this was intended, or if the writers strike caused them to cut the story short. From speaking to my friends, I wasn’t expecting much from the season. Tyler’s comment when I wrote about season 1 was particularly damming:
the start of season 2 is so bad that it retroactively ruins season 1. it’s kinda like Weezer’s 2005 release Make Believe, it’s so bad that it makes you re-evaluate the quality of their previous albums.
Harsh. I’m not sure season 2 is as bad as Tyler thought it to be, but it certainly isn’t very good. For starters, pretty much every single new hero they introduced is really annoying. I really was hoping they’d all be dead by the end of the season; sadly, this wasn’t to be. The season as a whole doesn’t really get going till episode 6 or 7. That’s kind of dumb pacing on their part. With season 1 you knew what the heroes were all fighting to stop by the 2nd episode. More than that, season 1’s ending was really exciting. Season 2 just didn’t end with that sort of drama; it was a bit of a let down. I still like the show, and i’m hoping for the second half of the season (assuming the show comes back) they do more with it. I like Heroes.
[1] Television
2 January 2008, the wee hours
Shima and I watched Juno at the Varsity tonight. It was a pretty packed house. Juno is about a teenage girl who finds herself pregnant, and decides to carry the baby to term and give it up for adoption. The cast is great: the lead is played by Ellen Page, Michael Cera plays the father, Jason Batemen and Jennifer Garner play the adoptive parents to be. The movie is witty and sarcastic throughout, but ends on a sweet and touching note. It’s a very good film, well worth watching.
The official Juno web site.
[4] Movies
1 January 2008, the wee hours
Happy New Years everybody. I’m playing Bang! Right now and it is awesome.
[10] Life
31 December 2007, lunch time
Shima and I watched Volver together a few days back. It’s a film by Pedro Almodovar. It was surprisingly lacking in nudity and strong sexual content. I’d say it is the least of all the films I’ve seen by him, making it a much more accessible movie. The story starts with a murder (and another death) and moves on from there. It’s a good film.
The official Volver web site.
Movies
24 December 2007, early morning
Shima and I watched Spkie Lee’s last film — joint? — Inside Man last night. It’s a heist film: Clive Owen is robbing a bank and Denzel Washington is the detective sent to try and sort things out. There are some twists and turns along the way to keep you guessing as to what’s going on. Denzel and Owen are both entertaining. I think one of my favourite scenes in the film is Waris Singh Ahluwalia complaining about the cops giving him shit and calling him an Arab. There are a lot of cool scenes in the film. My biggest complaint with the movie is the ending: as the story goes I think it works well, but it plays out way too slowly. It ruins the whole pace of the film. (It’s like the end of Lord of the Rings III.) I thought the film would have worked better had Lee tightened up the ending. All in all its a good film, well worth checking out. (Also, the film features Kim Director who is hot. Meow.)
The official Inside Man web site.
[2] Movies
