a broken lull.

only one day left!!! i can't believe it's finally here!
i'm not expecting to be blown away but it's the first time in a few years since i've wanted to buy a PS2 game. and it has the cast, producers and some of the writers working on it. it will at least be really good. and maybe it's just me but since the announcement of the game last year, i've noticed that this season has had a Splinter Cell-like vibe to it (might have something to do with Dennis Haysbert doing voiceover for a Splinter Cell game i played last year, giving us clues and routes). and i think Future Shop dropped the price from a couple of weeks ago by $10. now i know where the ex-roommate's gift certificate will go :) i've been holding on to it since xmas because there wasn't anything special i wanted to buy.

fuck: here are some initial reviews for it (and they're looking pretty damn good...! :)
scratch that. the linked sites actually have no review for the game yet. hopefully the stars they awarded are for real, though.

here's the Metacritic page. right now there are only two reviews but more should pop up once the game is out.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:08 PM |

THE WEATHER MAN
Gore Verbinski, USA 2005

8.0
the film is an emotionally complex study of a mild and modest weatherman disconnected from his life. very down-to-earth, low-key, with controlled atmosphere, The Weather Man is not a comedy. the marketing strategy was, once again, trying to sell us something completely different. the stuff about David getting stuff thrown at him? yeah it's there, but it's used as something more profound than a simple joke. shame on them for thinking this film would not find its audience. the film does have some funny moments but it is not a loopy comedy as was advertised. what it is, though, is a surprisingly fine existential drama about an unambitious man trying to figure himself out and finding his place in life. the film's emotional core is reserved rather than being sentimental (it is never manipulative) and the few moving moments are borne out of honesty. Hans Zimmer also drives the film by keeping it in check with a very subdued score. other composers would have energized the film with bombastic moments but Zimmer only adds a slight click-track when he needs more drive. it is a very minimal but truly effective score. greatly appreciated. which segues into the other important aspect of the film - the cinematography. Phedon Papamichael shoots the film in worn out colors, mostly using grey tones. and it looks astonishing (especially on dvd). the winter settings couldn't have been more perfect for this cold and dreary story to take place and Papamichael makes full use of the Chicago and New York landscapes. brilliantly smooth, isolated, and detached look. i have no idea what director Gore Verbinski brings to a film. he doesn't seem to have a particular style, but he does seem to bring out some unique traits in his cast and crew because this film is tightly controlled. not overly so, never. but the subdued nature of the film is beautifully handled through every aspect. an entertaining film from everyone.

Posted by Anonymous | 3:14 PM |

waking up on sunday morning.
the roommate just left for work so i have a full day to myself. finally :)
should watch a couple of films today. and run some errands.
what are your plans for the Day of God?

Tim has the best photos.

Posted by Anonymous | 11:08 AM |

24, Day 5
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

WOWEE!! what a fucking ride--and we're back, baby! the bland stretch was a bit longer than i expected (about 3 episodes) but we're back in full form now! glad to see the 24 staff back in shape again. this episode did not disappoint -- and they left us with more than one cliffhanger! i'm actually excited about the season again and can't wait until the next one. btw, teaming Jack and Nathanson up, even that swiftly, was both invigorating and brilliantly executed. and Nathanson was brought out of his Bad Guy Lair long enough to let him show a very human side of himself. huge thumbs up.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:30 PM |

after many tries and exhausted hope, we're finally gonna get Big Ideas (Don't Get Any) !!! i can't wait. and it does sound like they're close to finishing it off this time. hurrah.

... and Billy Corgan gets closer to making me crap my pants ... (of course it's gonna happen :)
please read the rest of that thread. i also couldn't find the post in question. very weird. but it is coming :)

awww....

oh, hey -- i haven't watched 24 yet. shit, yeah. tomorrow.

i went to the bank to see if i could potentially get a mortgage for a condo. turns out the answer is nope. close, but it would be too close for now. although it was kind of a letdown, i was expecting it. i will work on it for next year, though. i would love to have a place to call my own.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:54 AM |

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
Roland Emmerich, USA 2004

6.5
to my eyes, Roland Emmerich is Michael Bay without the arrogance and the A-list sluts stars (Emmerich gets Dennis Quaid). his stories are filled with emotionally empty characters thrown into some type of adventure setting. i have a hard time trusting a filmmaker and the story he's telling when the only possible moments of emotions are used to cover up the artificiality of his characters. thank god we have Jake Gyllenhaal to follow for some time here, though. he injects his characters with some depth and personal space. his is the only story i cared about (also big thanks to wide-eyed Emmy Rossum). his father, Dennis Quaid? not so much. the film's a pretty closed up, sterile environment (filled with implausible plot holes--oh, the plot hole--they made damn sure i didn't get into the film for more than a minute at a time:) Emmerich's characters' sole purpose in life is to serve the plot points. go from a to b to c. you don't exist if you don't have something that could be used in a line somewhere down the road; and, if you're not one of the two leads, your existence is limited to that extent only. these characters don't have identities outside of the framework of the film. it's paint-by-the-numbers filmmaking. the lowest of the low on the art ladder, imo. highly predictable. but being an action flick, you'd think this would at least have some outstanding special effects. well, there are. but things start out surprisingly bad with some obvious effects. but things get straightened out as we go along and we get some pretty spectacular stuff. i don't regret watching the film. hell, i'd even watch it again to see if it holds up a bit more than the first time. it was okay. i'm just tired of films falling below certain standards of storytelling, is all.

Posted by Anonymous | 1:58 PM |

well, it's the weekend. yay. what did you do today? me, i slutted around deviantART looking at really cool pictures and artwork (link to my page down on the right; no pics, just my favorites) and trying to find more wallpapers. that's pretty much it. lol. talked to the ex-roommate. we decided either of us wanted to make the drive to the other's apartment today. it's fucking COLD!! seriously so (which is also part of the next item). i'm gonna assume the roommate and his gf are staying at her place tonight and try to cook myself a meal and start a movie before it's 10PM. i can be really bad about stretching the laziness under these conditions :)

there you go. José Théodore is out for 6 to 8 weeks after falling outside of his home this morning. i believe this is the point where all the naysayers feel bad for the guy. can't catch a break this season and now this. i believe it gives him more time to get back into game mode and a fresh start once he comes back, and it gives us more Huet for about a month once the Olympic break is over :) everyone wins. come back healthy, José.

Posted by Anonymous | 6:54 PM |

just a quick note to all of you Garbage fans. Tim directs us to the newly-minted Garbage Disco Box with sweet words about their daily downloads. although i don't really care for old videos, or live versions of the band's own songs, i gotta say their videos kick ass :) go check them out.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:45 AM |

24, Day 5
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

'DAMMIT!'

well, this episode picked up a bit of the slack of the last hour. this was officially our first lull of the season, folks. it's bound to happen. we can be hopefully as, although this one wasn't up to par with the stellar start of the new season, it was quite an improvement over the banality of the previous one. now if we can only avoid the clichés we'll be on our merry way to full satisfaction once again. it did still drag a bit, thanks to some tedious killing of the only person who can help you out. but that's only a front because someone comes in to help right after the jump. oh hum. aside from that... what else? still no sign of Kim. i guess Audrey decided to let her die in the city. the mall thing was nice, although i would have liked for that little to die instead of giving Jack a superfluous Superman moment. Jack's kidnapping was a cool twist and i would have him in gas mask, carrying that gun, for the rest of the season. über-coolness. that's it. things are looking up.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:38 PM |

the Vice President of the Unites States of America, one Richard Cheney, shoots a man in the face while at a hunting party (yay!), without the required $7 license, but the White House waits before telling the public only once the wounded man is out of intensive care.
now that's class for ya.

related: was Cheney drunk?

in happier news (no, thank you, Insound):

Posted by Anonymous | 9:31 PM |

OHMYGOD...everyone should check out tonight's NHL Highlights and see what HUET did for the Habs with 3 seconds left in overtime!!! seriously. they brought out the pixie dust for this one.
just...wow!

the game ended with Atlanta winning 2-1 (check out Kovalchuk's comment on the Huet save:) and a cool one from Lehtonen towards the end), with Kozlov scoring in the shootouts.

btw, i was happy to hear we'd signed Koivu to a 3-year contract. despite his recent lack of offensvie production (he has been down with the flu lately), he is well worth the money, plus, above all else, his leadership is priceless in Montreal. no one could argue with that. he's our captain, and i, for one, am ecstatic he'll be on for at least the next three years. congrats to Saku.

Posted by Anonymous | 9:33 PM |

Tim's request.

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Dish washer
2. Convenience store clerk
3. Maintenance
4. Artist for a magazine (one set of icons that lasted a year, i think)

Four movies I can watch (and have watched) over and over:
1. Fight Club
2. Almost Famous (love to pieces.)
3. Memento (i fall in love with Guy Pearce's Voice Over everytime it starts in that film.)
4. The Empire Strikes Back (probably. i just haven't thought of this film in that way before today.)
** i can also quote along with the following (it'd be called saturation if they weren't so much fun): Pulp Fiction, Mallrats, Thelma & Louise, True Romance, Reservoir Dogs, Terminator 2, Go, A Life Less Ordinary, and Natural Born Killers.

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Rock Forest, QC
2. Ottawa, ON
3. Sherbrooke, QC
4. Sherbrooke, QC (different address. it counts :)

Four TV Shows I love:
1. 24
2. The Colbert Report
3. Family Guy
4. Minuit, le soir

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Virginia Beach, VA (spent every summer vacation there. hey, i might have even crossed paths with Missy, Timbaland, and the Neptunes! :)
2. Myrtle Beach, SC (after a few years we switched to this place.)
3. Vancouver, BC (won a Musique Plus contest to go see Garbage over a 3-day weekend :)
4. Salmo, BC (for two weeks. group exchange student thing. loved it.)

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Pizza
2. Poutine
3. Fish
4. ... wtf. it's been ages since i went to a nice restaurant but i know i also appreciate fine food :)

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Hotmail
2. Chromewaves
3. Goldenfiddle
4. deviantART (since this weekend but i see it could get really addictive.)

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. on vacation, on a beach somewhere
2. Whistler, AB, visiting my brother 'cause it would be beautiful and i haven't gone yet and he's been out west for the past 4 years and he visits us every 15 months.
3. London, England
4. Scotland

Four bloggers I’m tagging:

kathie, afterglow, watty, and mishie.

Posted by Anonymous | 11:06 AM |

24, Day 5
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

was that Senator John McCain???

well, that was certainly Jack Bauer's less memorable hours, wasn't it? i mean, i believe i even saw him doze off a bit during the episode. i'm not taking the writers to task because there's bound to be a lull or two in a full 24 hours, but that was weak writing. every twist and turn was predictable because it had already been done to death for the past four seasons. it wasn't a horrible episode but you know you're scraping the bottom of the barrel when the mere suggestion that Kim Bauer might make an appearance makes you jump with glee. when you can pull that off, you know the rest of the episode isn't anything special. the mugging was cool, though. (but that Guy Pearce impersonator looked like he came straight out of those Kya commercials.) i was bored watching the episode. i know things'll pick up by next week. i'm just meh about this hour.

omg, yes it was!!

Posted by Anonymous | 3:13 PM |

i left a message on the ex's machine saturday afternoon. i wanted to tell her i was sorry things got out of hand with our conversation the day before. well, almost 48 hours later, she timidly calls back. first she tells me she didn't have time all weekend. i know she was in Montreal saturday and had stuff to do sunday but a two-minute call doesn't take too much time. then she says she didn't wanna see me angry again. well, fuck. what the hell do you expect? that things'll be better after not calling for two fucking days?? i'm pissed right now. and although her not calling is part of the reason why, i only have a vague idea about the rest of the reason. we almost got into another argument just now over homosexuality. she stills says it's as much a sin as stealing. of course it is, but she doesn't see why i would be insulted by acomment lumping together people who steal and homosexuals. i mean, come on. btw, she still had no reason beyond than "God said it was" to justify homosexuality being wrong. so she believes it because God said it, not because she has a belief or a reason. just because God does. and she brings up Adam and Eve being created and not Adam and Adam. for fuck's sake. she truly believes homosexuality is unnatural. she still likes and respects homosexuals, but believes it is a choice, a temptation, or something happened to these folks to make them attracted to people of the same sex. fuck. i'm pissed. *shakes head* lol. we're both working tonight but i'm not picking her up. she mentioned she was working the same time as i would. i didn't say anything because she has a tendency not to ask but have people come ask her for what she wants. that was the closest she came to asking me. i know things'll be cold from my end when i see her tonight, and for at least the next few days, but will i be able to talk to her normally again - even if we don't bring up the subject of homosexuality? i hope we can overcome it but right now i'm too outraged to see much of anything :)

god.
... lol.

any comments, suggestions, or appeasing thoughts are more than welcomed :)

2:51 PM

a few minutes have passed now and i'm already a bit more calm about the whole situation. lol. i guess writing it out really does work like magic. i do feel i could speak with her more calmly now. and i do think i will be able to have her over tomorrow to watch 24. but a few minutes ago it was totally out of the question, and i would only have lended her the episode for her to watch on her own. lol :)
suggestions are still welcomed, though :) i'm more reasonable now but i'll never truly be over it. i mean, it would be the same if one of my friends was be racist (which i guess some still are; the subject is just left alone) or sexist. you accept them for who they are but there's always this ugly side of them that you know about. (which i guess is how the ex views homosexuals? i have no idea how her mind works so i'm totally working on assumptions here but maybe she accepts them but still knows they are sinning. which, btw, i asked her if she was having sex outside of the marriage and said yes and that she was also a sinner. everyone was. i guess her view on homosexuals isn't Nazi crazy because she said she wasn't holding herself higher than anyone. but what fucks with me with these religious folks is how their way is The Way and people are just gonna wake up and get it one day. that is what pisses me. or one of the things ;)

3:43 PM

i phoned her up and called a truce. i found out i was ready to move on from this (funny how quickly we can recover from intense shit :). we won't bring the subject up, but then again, we rarely did in the year-and-a-half we've known each other, and i do believe we'll be fine. thank god i broke up with her, though :P and you know what she told me? her views on gays and gay marriage was what i told her did it for me to decide to break up with her back then. lol. i'd totally forgotten about that. it's still only a vague memory. although that was not the main, that might've had something to do with it, yeah. that's when i realized we had a lot different views on a lot of stuff and there wasn't much hope left for a relationship with such opposing views on issues i felt so strongly about.

Posted by Anonymous | 2:34 PM |

game on! the Habs' 2nd game of the Superbowl Weekend is a few minutes away and i'm psyched :D have fun.

5:52 PM

...and the Habs win 5-0 against Philly??? fuck yeah, they did! what the fuck's going on with this team?? the best they did in their two-month-plus suckfest was maybe get away with a one-goal game a couple of times. but yesterday they not only got a win, but a shutout, for christ's sake, by beating Boston 2-0 (with Huet in goal) and today they beat (an admittedly weakened) Philadelphia team 5-0 (with Huet in goal; and Ryder scoring a hat trick??). i love this team. yeterday they looked like the sluggish team sprinkled with a few good moments, but today was a whole other ballgame. the whole team was playing with confidence. everybody was much more willing to throw themselves into the plays rather than wait sheepishly for something to happen, but who most impressed me this weekend were Plekanec and Perezhogin, who both played so boldly this afternoon --not recklessly, just with spirit, spunk, and a fearlessness i hadn't seen in this team in a long time-- and Higgins too. it looked like they all took their game up a couple of notches overnight and were playing with leadership. all of them. it was quite something to see. and i also would love to know what Koivu told Huet after the game :) he went straight to him, as all the players did, and talked into his mask for more than the requisite congratulation pat on the back. it looked lovely :)
it's time to trade Théo.

oh! the Habs nabbed the top two spots of NHL.com's Daily Three Stars! :P

Posted by Anonymous | 2:57 PM |

well, it's the weekend. and what that usually means is two things. one, i go out of the city and spend the afternoon with the ex-roommate and our cat. two, a Habs game is one saturday night. but this weekend it's different (no, not the Superbowl. i actually don't care about that). the ex-roommate is spending the day with a friend *and* the Habs are playing today at noon :P so even if the roommate's here, i'll still be able to watch the game. the Canadiens are also playing tomorrow at 3 pm! what a weekend :) btw, two great pieces of news this morning -- Huet seems to be going in goal -awesome- and Markov is back, baby! :) so i'm gonna take this one easy and enjoy the game this afternoon. i hope you have a great day too.

2:43 PM

Habswin 2-0 over Boston!!! what a refreshing turn of events. and Huet was incredible. Montreal played well for the first 5 minutes of the game but then somehow slept through the rest of the game... until the 5-minute mark of the third period, where they suddenly woke up and started overpowering the Bruins' zone. they shot at Botson goaltender Thomas (who was spectacular through the whole fucking game) for what felt like 10 minutes until Markov finally slipped one in. Souray then scored in an empty net with about a minute as the Bruins were buzzing around the Canadiens' zone. a brilliant turn of events, indeed :) let's hope they give us more of this kind of play (the good one - not the boring first 45 minutes of the game) tomorrow afternoon against Philly.

ps. you better watch tonight's SNL. Steve Martin is hosting. (that's more than enough reason for everyone to tune in tonight, but Prince will also fill out the musical side of the show.)

6:32 PM

Melissa Auf der Maur mentions Billy and Jimmy are working on songs for the next great Pumpkins record. hopefully they'll also bring her back in the band.

Sunday Morning - 9:04 AM

how anyone can fuck up so much and be so fucking inept at comedy, something you've been hired for and paid to do, that even the great Steve Martin can't come and save your ass is beyond me. i felt bad the man went on national television and ended up having to host that shockingly trite shit for a complete hour-and-a-half (on the other hand, Prince rocked! but he didn't have no lame sketches to work through). i thought you'd bring your game up, this being Steve Martin and all. but no. maybe it was the presence of the real deal, but the writing felt even more painfully anemic than usual (the opening monologue and the SNL Digital Shorts were good, though; but, Lorne, tell me something - what does Digital have to do with it? wanna sound hipper than what it actually is? it's a sketch, for christ's sake). the show was a sorry display of incompetence and a cruel way to welcome back a legend. embarrassingly amateurish. the contrast to the good old days of the show was made more than obvious tonight. SNL, you are officially dead to me.

Posted by Anonymous | 11:13 AM |

Brokeback Mountain is making me fight against the ex. lol. it started out with her roommate wanting to watch the movie with her mom. they're religious. and she's against gay marriage. but they know about the film and still wanted to check it out because people are talking about it. then our conversation went into Bible talk (she's also a (semi-)practicing baptist) and how God said homosexuality was a sin (she quoted the passage from the bible to me). i asked her why God said that, why she believed that. i honestly wanted to know what it was that people who believed homosexuality was a sin saw as evil. i wasn't gonna change my mind about it, but i was definitely curious. that's when it started deteriorating. she kept going back to 'God said it' but couldn't come up with a reason why he'd said that. she said that she'd get back to me with an answer. i harped on the fact that people are simply attracted to whoever they're attracted to, and to some of us, that means people of the same sex. i argued that it wasn't a choice. that's when she likened being attracted to people of the same sex with feeling the need to steal and do shit.
and that's when i hung up on her. lol :) been trying to call her back to say hanging up wasn't cool but what she was saying was horrible but the line has been busy ever since :)

have a good day.

update: i finally got a hold of her on the phone and apologized for hanging up on her but i also told her i felt what she was saying was terrible.

Posted by Anonymous | 2:45 PM |