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Content by Brian Maitland
Commentateur n° : 605
Votes Utiles:
93
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Reviews Written by
Brian Maitland (Vancouver, BC, Canada)
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Cast of tens = train wreck you have to see, Nov 28 2009
Who knew Kris Kristofferson was "Friends" Rachel's (Jennifer Aniston) father? Who knew the youngest bride in "Big Love" (Ginnifer Goodwin) had a thing for the Mac guy (Justin Long)?
Trust me, you'll be doing this during this movie and wondering why when you have Scarlett Johansson in this movie, why Ginnifer Goodwin gets more screen time. Oh yeah and what happened to Jennifer Connelly since "Career Opportunities"? Jennifer, eat a burger or something, please!
Anyway, any movie where Drew Barrymore says "He 'My Spaced' me" cannot be taken seriously. Come on, has anyone who uses My Space or Facebook ever said that? If you can't even get the lingo right, how are we to take this script seriously.
Ridiculous train wreck of a flick that is worth watching just to laugh at how bad it is and the ridiculous cast of thousands (tens actually).
Extras are nonexistent so forget buying this DVD unless it's less than the cost of watching it on demand or some such.
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Megan Fox is Mommy Teresa--a ha!, Nov 28 2009
I was half expecting Lola Heatherton (Catherine O'Hara) of SCTV fame to show up in the film trailer parody (watch the end credits) within this movie. That's how bizarre it is.
Honestly, until I watched the "making of," I had no idea this was a comedy. Simon Pegg has some funny bits--loved the Dracula scream when his fingers get caught in the power windows and the "Ingerlund, Ingerlund" drunken lout impression--but this is more a off-kilter drama with funny bits thrown in.
It cops out as as much of an entertaining tool that Pegg's character is, the typical Hollywood love story where the two who will end up together start off by hating each other is almost as if Hollywood believes adult relationships are like ones we all had in elementary school.
Other than that, this is basically "Devil Wears Prada" the male version. It's entertaining but ultimately total fluff.
DVD is junk with just a "making of" and the usual commentary tracks.
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High Crimes
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de Michael Kodas
Édition : Hardcover |
| Price: CDN$ 18.24 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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almost Krakauer-like, Nov 24 2009
Although the story of how crime and greed have pervaded the whole Mt. Everest scene is mindblowing, this book is about so much more really. It's mainly about exploring the personalities who act as guides on the mountain and the Sherpas, both good and bad, and how this all plays into the life and death scenarios played out on the world's most famous mountain.
Having said that, the book gets a bit repetitive in parts and is more a 90 compared to Jon Krakauer's 100 for any of his books on mountain climbing.
What's scary is basically anyone can pretty much be a mountain guide on either border of the Himalayas as both Nepal and China do not have any certified guide, let alone strict, standards as Europe does.
It's also completely shocking to learn how some people in the industry exploit others to degrees unimaginable on what is supposed to be a scared mountain (and the native Nepalis are no angels in this regard either) and often leave their clients to die on the mountain.
Any climber who wants to climb Everest needs to read this first before making their decision to tackle that Wild East frontier.
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pre-Hotel Rwanda, Nov 19 2009
The DVD has nothing but the movie itself--not a single extra. They could have done a documentary on the 1972 expulsion of people of Indian descent from Uganda which is where this movie starts. It certainly got me interested to wiki info on that especially given we had many Indian immigrants at that time move to Canada from Ugnada.
The story itself is a wonderfully layered look at cultures in collision, ethnic identity and traditions old and new. I felt the weakest link was the female lead Sarita Choudhury. This was her first ever movie so I'll cut her some slack but if you check her imdb filmography that covers 44 appearances in TV and film since then and nothing spectacular stands out. So maybe it was just her. I just wasn't drawn to her character as much as the other Indians in the flick.
Also, considering this came out in 1991, the whole out of Africa setup seems almost eerie when you consider what has happened on the African continent since from Rwanda to the Congo as far as people being displaced (and outright slaughtered in their millions).
Anyway, a very young Denzel Washington is superb in this and strikes just the right tone of a young man trying to make his way in a Mississippi still struggling with its racist past.
The whole racist card, too, is flipped and twisted all around with Indians and blacks in the Deep South having so much in common yet the mixing of these two races causes no end of unintended trouble for both sides in this movie.
This movie sort of bombed at the box office only making $7 million at the time but it deserved a far better fate.
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come for the movie, leave with an architecture degree, Nov 19 2009
The main character of this movie really is the architecture. It imposes itself into the story making the main actors little more than pawns to be moved between fantastically futuristic looking buildings.
The budget to shoot this movie in such locations as the Volkswagon HQ/"theme" park in Wolfsburg, Germany, to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey, via Berlin, New York City and Milan must have been blown on flights. I won't give anything away but the Guggenheim scene is unreal but watch the extras on how they did it is even more mindblowing.
Having said all that the acting is terrific from Clive Owen's world weary intensity to Naomi Watts' single mindedness and, unlike mail-it-in Hollywood movies, they don't end up in bed together which makes their working realtionship seem far more real.
The bad guys all seem like fairly normal family men which makes them all the more evil.
The movie sort of falls down a tad on the plot as you wonder how a large bank (it's loosely based on the real BCCI banking scandal) is brought down by just two people. Seems quite implausible no matter how good Watts and Owen are in portraying their roles.
The DVD is worth getting as the extras offer a tour of the architectural delights, the whole Guggenheim scene explained and a 30-min behind-the-scenes makin of as well as the usual commentary track.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
depressing and hilarious even for us non-Make Belief fans, Nov 14 2009
The book covers most of the ground as to why the Laffs fail season after season with a strong focus more on the post-Pal Hal era. This is both good and bad. I found the whole discussion of the current Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund ownership of the Leafs dull as reading any business report.
It's also laughable to learn that even 4th line plumbers are fawned over by women and men alike in T.O. The comparison with Cubs fans also worked for me as I've always considered Make Belief fans as such without the "lovable" losers part really but with that myopic faith in the blue and white.
Overall, though, this book really offers not much new, if you live anywhere in Canada, you get all the Leaf news you can stomach on TSN, Sportsnet and Hockey Night in Tarrana (oops, Canada).
I actually found the short blurbs on various Leaf trades far more interesting than the main text of this book. The main problem is although the cover shows the publisher had humor, the authors do not. It's written in such a dry style you now realize why newspapers are dying. This is the way these two sports journalists write anyway and it's not really riveting text.
Sort of like the Leafs themselves, a fascinating soap opera but in the end annoying to those of us who live outside of southern Ontario and can't escape news on the team no matter how hard we try.
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Freakonomics in soccer form, Nov 13 2009
Simon Kuper wrote one of the best books on modern soccer (Football Against the Enemy) while Stefan Szymanski cowrote one of the worst (National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball And The Rest Of The World Plays Soccer). Maybe because the economist Szymanski teamed with an actual sports journalist this time, Soccernomics actually works on so many levels.
You may not agree with all of their conclusions (i.e., economic might + large population base = soccer success) but they do make strong arguments and give soccer fans a better, and more modern, way of looking at the sport. I don't really get there referencing the Moneyball approach done by the Oakland A's GM Billy Beane in baseball as a comparison. As anyone who has read Michael Lewis's excellent book, the theory works better than the actual results (Oakland having made the playoffs previously under Beane's reign failed in the first rd every postseason and the main player held up as an example in Moneyball of Beane's genius made hardly a dent at the MLB level).
Then again that has to be Szymanski who seems obsessed with comparing soccer to baseball. He really needs to get off that jag.
When the economist and the journalist focus exclusively on soccer they do get much of it spot on especially about how World Cup qualifying records having no correlation to World Cup Finals' success or failure, the reasoning behind England's record at tournament play, how penalties are less of a crapshoot than we think and so much more.
As Freakonomics now begat Super Freakonomics, hopefully these two are writing Super Soccernomics as you read this.
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consistently good for hours of time killing, Nov 13 2009
This is the third edition of the same book I've purchased and I still find it one of the best books to read while traveling because it's not really a book at all. It's a well-organized and well-researched collection of baseball stats, trivia and wonder.
He's the only author (possibly besides Bill James) I've found who lists the most interesting teams in different eras. As baseball fans, it's the characters and teams with character and characters that truly are memorable. Let's face facts Atlanta can win a zillion division titles but they will remain the Atlanta Blands. I'd sooner take the wild 'n' wacky '93 Phillies squad over any of those Chipper Jones' teams.
Let's just say this is a book you can pick up and read from any page and find something new and interesting about baseball records that may lead you to investigate further on your own.
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slight change of pace but better overall for it, Nov 7 2009
I wouldn't say there are any killer singles a la "Love In A Trashcan" or even standout tunes like "Dead Sound" or "Hallucinations" off the last album but I like the direction the band is taking. They still have that solid fuzzy guitar sound with the pounding drums but there are more nuanced (if that's the right word) songs here.
Then again someone is angry as there are also songs called "Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)," "Suicide" and "D.R.U.G.S." on this. In fact "Boys" message is presented in a pop ballad so it has far more impact than some grungy angry post-feminist rant. But I do worry about the lyrics as I sure hope Sharin did not have to draw from experience to come up with this.
The download version has an extra track ("Echoes") as well as a 16-min. video of their Chelsea sessions. Plus the thing is less than half the retail price and you still get the digital download of the booklet and cover artwork.
Also, having just seen them live two nights ago the band are still on form live. They've even added a wicked Jesus & Mary Chain-like light show where the lights strobe out on some songs at the audience
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this director "gets" it, Nov 7 2009
I was expecting a typical teenage/high school rom com and what I got was something far better. This movie comes as close to capturing EXACTLY what it was like to be young, into alternative music and how many nights ended up like this.
Without giving to much away, the casting was perfect bar maybe the ex-girlfriend of Michael Cera who comes across as way too vacuous and not remotely the alt girl type. Anyway, the chemistry between Nick and Norah seems pretty spot on as does the chemistry between the guys in the band and how they interact with each other. The ability to cast gay characters without making them flaming stereotypes was a good move.
There are other nice touches--the Yugo Nick drives, the clubs they hit in NYC, the goofy late night corner store owner and the empty Port Authority bus terminal all just work to create the feeling of "oh, yeah, I remember being 20 and doing that and being there at 4 a.m." without all this urban angst and fear that movies seem to want to portray New York as having.
On the extras I enjoyed Norah's puppet show version of the movie. Other than that the outtakes, video diary, etc., are just filler.
In the end, Kat Dennings is a star period who knows how not to overact and Michael Cera finally plays a role more suited to his emo-ness.
A pleasant gem.
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