Two Posts in One Day? It's a Festivus Miracle!

That's right, I went there. I am officially the 1,487,234^th* person to mention Festivus on his blog. I like to fit in.

Anyway, the reason for actually posting twice in one day after a week away:

Over the past...oh...week and a bit, I have seen four movies of rather high quality, after weeks and months of utter cinematic tripe. They are, in order of watchification:

Syriana (finally)
Must Love Dogs (not actually as terrible as it has been made out to be)
He Died with a Felafel In His Hand (oh, those crazy Australians)
King Kong (yes, King Kong)

I saw the first three with Carley, and the last with a group that including Ben and Nancy, among others.

Strangely, the most skillfully cast of the four movies were Must Love Dogs and Felafel, etc.. The other two were cast well right up to one person in each - Matt Damon and Jack Black. Other than that, they were both cast quite brilliantly (particularly Syriana - George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper). In the other two, everyone just seemed to fit perfectly into their roles (even if, in John Cusack and Diane Lane's cases in Must Love Dogs, they've done it over and over and over again).

As for Matt Damon and Jack Black, I actually like both of them very much, and am hard-pressed to find one of their movies that I do not enjoy. But, they just couldn't pull it off in these movies.

Matt Damon was poorly cast because he's not very good at not being Matt Damon. His adolescent inability to grow facial hair or get a decent haircut has damned him to always looking like himself. In a movie where the actors dissolved into their characters (George Clooney was barely recognizable), Matt Damon was just Matt Damon.

In Jack Black's case, Peter Jackson spent far too much film on closeups of old Jacky boy. The problem with that is that Jack seems to know when he's in closeup. And makes this face:



So, as he's trying to convince Naomi Watts to come to "Singapore" with them, . As he presents the audience with Kong, . Yeah, a little distracting.

But I do highly suggest that you see all four movies. But, be warned:

Syriana - Wicked brutal torture scene where George Clooney's fingernails are quite graphically pulled out
Must Love Dogs - Romantic comedy alert
He Died with a Felafel In His Hand - Australians alert
King Kong - DO NOT, under any circumstances, order a large drink if you plan on sitting through the entire movie

* - Unofficial results

The More You Know

I learned something very interesting today, while waiting in line at the bank to withdraw some more of my mostly imaginary money. Two small children were informing their mother that Santa has apparently accumulated the technological wherewithal to shoot kids with two guns at once. I crap you not, two...guns...at once.

This, I believe, answers the eternal question, "What if Mr. T and Mrs. Claus had a baby?"

(For the record, the kids were a little hazy as to whether the children getting shot had been naughty or if they were just out enjoying a nice winter stroll. Also for the record, the mother: completely unphased by this breaking news.)

Я буду гигантским идиотом

It is another story entirely, but I will be moving into a new place in the very near future. It's not like I have a lot of stuff right now, but I'm slowly moving what stuff I do have out of my old place and into storage at my new place.

The first things I moved were my game systems, games, and DVD player. I did not move my DVDs because I ran out of room in my modest cardboard transportation vessel. So, for the past two weeks, I have sat, looking at my DVDs thinking, "Gee, I wish I hadn't moved my DVD player, I really want to watch (insert movie title here)."

For two weeks.

TWO WEEKS.

Are we clear on the time frame?

Now, here's why I am, more or less, the title: I have a DVD-ROM!!

Syriana

It's actually been a while since a movie came out that I honestly, really wanted to see. Jarhead was one, but has been relatively difficult to find in theatres.

Then there's Syriana. And I forgot that it came out! It's been out for two freaking weeks! Why didn't anyone tell me?

(Editor's Note: Actually, I think it was in limited release, and only this week has it been widely released. You're off the hook. For now.)

Beavis & Beelzebub

I have recently changed my opinions about insurance companies.

Where once I considered insurance companies to be, collectively, Satan himself, I have now re-thought that interpretation. The Devil's actually a pretty bright dude. The same cannot be said for insurance companies.

Oh, they're definitely in league with the Prince of Darkness, they're just nowhere near as highly placed as I once thought. Not quite Vice-Presidents, they're more the middle management type, probably holed up in the Petty Annoyances division with Gap ads and Donald Trump.

As my faithful readers know, my poor little car is no longer performing the basic functions of a car; rather it is performing the basic functions of a oversized novelty paperweight.

Today I had the (surprisingly surreal) task of cleaning absolutely everything out of my car and taking the license plates off - which I did myself, by the way, and not with the tool that the woman at the impound lot told me, but rather with the one that we thought to bring ahead of time. So there.

I realise it's just a car, but it was kind of weird to know I'd never be driving it again. I mean, we've gotten rid of two cars before this, but in both of those cases, I was not unhappy to see them go. Now I don't really know what (or if) I'll be driving. Plus, lest we forget, the car was mine. The insurance companies didn't know that, but my bank account sure did.

Now, back to the brazen blockheadedness of insurance companies.

I had the accident two weeks ago this coming Wednesday. The insurance appraiser came last Wednesday (from Ottawa due to the volume of recent crashes). Apparently, since then, the insurance company has been bugging the hell out of the impound lot to release the car (license plates, ownership, and personal effects in tow) so that they could haul it away. As such, that bugging has been passed along the line to my parents, and through there to me - who has not been floating in free time recently*.

Permit me to walk you through my logic as to why they should not be bitching about me not cleaning the car out:

1. It took them a week to get to the car, too
2. My world did not stop revolving when I got into my accident; other things were happening
3. They...have...our...phone...number

Needless to say, my concern over their time is not at an all-time high.

But, my car has been emptied, save for a pen, a metal coat hanger, and an empty case of bottled water. Feel free to drag it away. I'm sorry I have irrevocably altered the courses of your lives.

* - I do, in fact, deserve a good chunk of blame for the delay. Had I known that the gates would be unlocked and cleaning the car out would take all of 15 minutes, I would have gone earlier. But I didn't. Somehow, though, I'm not sorry.

For those that are interested/bored

I covered the women's and men's basketball games on Wednesday night and made ample use of the gym's camera. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much of a zoom on it and the lighting in the gym is a little wonky, so some of the pictures look a little strange (i.e., the fifth picture down, where Baris looks to be suffering from the effects of a liver disease).

I'm still working out the kinks in trying to find a good shutter speed to capture the motion but get good lighting. My 35-mm camera was always great for the light, but the pictures tended to be a little on the fuzzy side.

But anyway, here are the pictures, I'll post more of the ones I like as I take more (assuming they let me continue taking the camera home to play with).





The Centennial Colts - Ugliest...uniforms...ever!