musings

This coming weekend is a holiday weekend in Canada (Canada Day, July 1) and the USA (Independance Day, July 4) so I’m taking a couple of days off on either side of the weekend and heading south to hang with some friends. I’ll be back next Wednesday. I hope you all have a great weekend.

The other day I got a couple of photos of a sun dog near my house. Neat stuff.

There are a few new photos in the 2005-06 (Oakville) gallery.

Go see Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s a fantastic movie and, like all of Miyazaki’s work, visually arresting.

I speak, of course, of Batman Begins. In fact, if it weren’t for Sin City, I’d have said it was the best comic book movie ever. Excellent casting, pacing and writing, and great direction (mind you, again I was forced to endure fight scenes shot from too close with too much shaky handycam style direction). The title of the movie, “Batman Begins” is apt – this is less a movie about Batman than it is about the birth of Batman. The trauma, and the psychological underpinnings that turned Bruce Wayne into Batman. It never felt forced or awkward – and unlike the first of Tim Burton’s Batman movies (which, by the way, I’m happy to consign to the Trash bin of my mind, along with the abominable Joel Schumacher disasters) the writer didn’t feel like obliged to tie in the origin of Batman with his nemesis – that is to say, the Joker wasn’t the guy who killed Wayne’s parents. If you’ve not done so already, go see this movie. Forget the Burton movies, forget the campy 60’s series (okay, don’t – it was fun) and for God’s sake, forget the Schumacher films. This movie is the definitive Batman film. If they can keep this level of quality up, I’m actually looking forward to the (inevitable) sequels.

My long-awaited copy of “Heartache” by Jesu arrived last night. Two tracks for a total of 40 minutes. The first track, “Heartache” is reminiscent of Godflesh – it’s a lot harder than the second track, “Ruined”. It’s “Ruined” that really puts this EP over the edge, though. It’s beautiful – mournful and melancholy trapped in a wall of guitar and feedback. Truth be told, though, neither track maintains either the heavy edge nor the mournful sadness throughout – each song is rife with changes in tempo and mood. I paid a stupid sum for such a short CD, but I don’t regret it at all.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I’ve added a link to my friend Maki’s site (TraumaQueen). Maki and I used to work together at Square, back in the late 90’s. She’s got some great art, an online comic, and a blog. Go now!

Paula, Cy and I went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith tonight. It’s not a great movie – my major complaint being the start-stop pacing – but it is a heck of a lot of fun. There are some awkward puns, some neat in-jokes, and about 15 million bullets, but mostly there’s the Brad Pitt – Angelina Jolie chemistry. I’m not actually a particularly big fan of either of them (but now that I think about it, Brad Pitt was truly amazing in Twelve Monkeys, Kalifornia, Snatch, True Romance, and Fight Club, so I guess I’m letting some of his poorer movies, like the truly awful The Devil’s Own, taint my opinion of his skills) but they had great chemistry in this movie.

And I don’t care what Cy says, Angelina looked dead hot. I don’t think she’s ever looked better.

I just got in from the VNV Nation show, with openers Soman and Imperative Reaction, and I’m just utterly blown away. VNV’s touring for their new album, and it’s another stunner of a record (yes, I still say record – I’m old, sue me). The two openers were pretty damn good too – Soman’s one guy with a Powerbook, but he played some of the best industrial dance techno I’ve ever heard. Imperative Reaction were good too – some of their songs sounded a bit derivative, but they had some really great songs in their set.

VNV were, simply put, amazing. Normally I don’t go for the “everything is sequenced” type of concert, but they brought two touring keyboard players (with Powerbooks too, naturally) so the show wasn’t as sequenced as it could have been. Add to that the fact that Ronan Harris is one of the most charismatic guys I’ve ever seen on stage – he talked to the crowd and it didn’t seem cheesy, he joked around and generally seemed to be having a really great time. And he’s got the most … I don’t know … romantic delivery when he sings. Great performer.

And the audience ENTHUSIASTIC GOTHS! IN TORONTO! No kidding! And, unlike the really enthusiastic but RUDE audience I saw at the Caribou show in Montreal, these guys were happy, friendly and polite. Did I mention they were GOTHS? And that they were ENTHUSIASTIC?

Before the show we had dinner at Rashnaa, one of my favourite restaurants in the city – South Indian & Sri Lankan food, yum! Hooked up with Cy, Paula, Michelle (whom I’d not seen in something like seven or eight years) and met a new friend, Stephanie, and we had a blast. Tonight’s been one of the best nights I’ve had in ages. Great dinner, great friends, great music. What more can you ask for?

New photos in the gallery! Some macro-focus stuff of some flowers, and a couple of shots of an amazing silver lining over my street this evening.