STUPID, INANE, PICAYUNE OBSERVATION
Okay, so our house in lovely suburban Pincourt is a 2-storey bungalow, with a family room, garage, laundry room, secondary bathroom and one bedroom/den downstairs, and everything else upstairs and the front door on a landing between the two storeys, and, when I'm at home, I spend the majority of my time in the family room, so I'm always going up and down the stairs. We got a new front door when we renovated the house about 6 years ago, and this one has a little window on it. So, when I'm coming up the stairs from downstairs, as I'm walking towards the front door, from the angle at which I usually approach the landing, I can see, through the little window on the front door, a perfect view of our across the street neighbours' living room through their picture window, since they never draw their curtains. I don't know what it is about these neighbours, but it seems like there's always something in there to distract me. First thing, their colour TV is facing the window and it's large enough a TV for me to be able to see what they're watching, and they often leave it on all night. Then, a couple of weeks back, they got this coat rack and they put a black coat or jacket on it, so, in the right light, it looked like there was this guy in a black jacket standing perfectly still, like the Terminator standing guard at the gas station as it fades from night to day in that shot in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day.. Now they have this Easter Bunny stuck on the window with a lightbulb inside, so it flashes on-and-off constantly. I'm going insane because of these distractions... I think I've gotta paint over the window in the front door, just so I don't have to notice!
What is it with the dodgy sites that are showing up in the BlogSpot advertising bar at the top of this page today? Now I'm seeing this page called
"Islam and Social Justice"... The fact that right at the top of the
main index page is a quote from "Guilty Mc Cop-Killer" himself,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, tells me all I need to know about how seriously to take anything on that site...
THE "SPIRITED AWAY IS OVERRATED" WORLD REPORT
Since I last checked
the RottenTomatoes.com review index for Spirited Away, I noticed they've added two more "rotten" reviews, by
Rob Blackwelder of Spliced Online (who, like me, prefers
Kiki's Delivery Service) and
David Cornelius, of the Amazing Colossal Website (who thinks the entire middle hour should have be trimmed drastically), for a total of 4 "Rotten" reviews (out of 136 reviews, though there was an additional "Rotten" review that was changed to a "Fresh" review after the critic upgraded it by half-a-star after someone sent him an e-mail with the theory that the film is really "about" juvenile prostitution... I think that theory is total "Barbra Streisand" (B.S.) since I think Miyazaki was being facetious when he said that in an interview, but neve mind). So 2 more brave, brave souls are stepping up to the plate to express a contrary opinion, and their e-mail boxes will probably soon be flooded with missives from angry anime fanboys calling their reviews "unprofessional" since it is, of course, impossible that there might be a few people out there that don't have the same opinion as "everyone else" as
Spirited Away is objectively the "bestest thing evar" and it has deep subtexts so people have to like it otherwise they're ignoramuses because things with subtexts are always better than straightfoward fun films. It's a scientific fact. Of course I'm kidding around... this time, I don't see anything in either review where you can possibly make the claim that the reviewers are "unprofessional"... they just have a different subjective opinion that in no way should affect anyone else's love of the film. This is just basic common sense, but I'm surprised how many anime fans (a vocal minority, I'm sure) there are out there that simply can't tolerate the concept that there are people out there that just don't enjoy the same sorts of things they do.
A WORD OF WARNING ABOUT MY "SPONSORS"
Folks, I'm afraid that I can't do anything about which links show up in the BlogSpot advertising bar at the top of the screen, but, today, for some reason, I'm seeing links to sites that are clearly selling bootleg anime DVDs, like the notorious fake
Cowboy Bebop "Perfect Collection" set on 3 disks you see all over eBay going for around $40 (U.S.)**. Good rule of thumb...
Anime
+ Chinese & English subtitles
+ Region 0/Region Free disks
________________________
Chinese bootlegs.
A lot of legit disks of Hong Kong films are Region Free, but almost never anime DVDs... the legit Hong Kong and Taiwan DVD releases of anime are Region 3. If you want legit import anime DVDs, for Region 2 anime DVDs straight from Japan, I suggest
CD Japan and, for legit Region 3 anime DVDs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, I suggest
HK Flix. Of course, you can get Region 1 anime DVDs from places like
AnimeNation or
DVD Planet, or, for Canadians,
DVD Box Office, though, in all honesty, I buy 90% of my anime locally in Montreal these days. For more information on how to spot bootleg anime DVDs and why you shouldn't buy them, please consult the
Pirate Anime F.A.Q..
**There
was a legit limited edition Region 1 (North America)
Cowboy Bebop "Perfect Collection" set, but it was 6 disks, and the suggested retail price was $200 (U.S.), though it's out of print and routinely sells for $300 on eBay because of the
stupid obsession some anime fans have with collectors' boxes for DVDs. If you want to get the entire 26-episode
Cowboy Bebop TV series (excluding the movie) on DVD for relatively cheap, Amazon.com has a bloody fine offer of
all 6 Region 1 Cowboy Bebop DVDs in a bundle for just $98.90 (suggested retail price for all 6 disks combined: $180). The only things from the "Perfect Collection" set you're not getting are the first soundtrack album (which you can get
from AnimeNation for $30... some other anime sites sell it for less, but it's the Taiwanese bootlegged version from Son May or Ever Anime, not the legit CD from Victor Japan) and the stupid box.
Also, yesterday (Tuesday), I went on a shopping spree with the money from my GST/HST Rebate cheque, and bought
Kiki's Delivery Service and
Revolutionary Girl Utena volume 3, "The Black Rose Blooms". I went to Metro Video in the basement of the old Simpson's building (the one with the Paramount Cinema) to get
Kiki's Delivery Service and I had mentally rehearsed possible dialogue options in case the cashier assumed I really wanted to buy
Spirited Away, since that's the one that most of the critics went goo-goo over and which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar while
Kiki's Delivery Service is widely seen,
I think unfairly, as one of Miyazaki's lesser films. But the clerk was boring and took my money without challenging me over my purchase. I did, however, get into an interesting conversation with a clerk at HMV shortly after because I had left the store without buying anything and I was trying to get a copy of the Free Montreal
Mirror alternative newsweekly which was awkwardly behind the open glass door to check showtimes for
Anger Management. I assumed at first he thought I was shoplifiting**, but, in fact, he noticed I was carrying around my Game Boy Advance and just wanted to chat about that, for some reason. (I showed him a tiny bit of
Phantasy Star II, since
Phantasy Star Collection was in my GBA. Of course, "I Want to Eat a Nut of Laerma!" is a
Phantasy Star reference, so you can tell I'm a big fan of those old Sega RPGs...)
Also, I got 88% on a storyboard test!
By the way, I intend to write a review of
Kiki's Delivery Service at some point, though I got some animation assignments I need to
start complete first.
**Which I wasn't, I was just checking to see if HMV had either the
All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku DVD or the first volume of
Fruits Basket (which are both anime series), but they didn't, so I left and decided to get the
Utena DVD, which I had spotted at the big Archambault store at Sainte Catherine's & Berri 2 weeks back, instead. But, awkwardly enough, the Paragraphe bookstore tote bag I carry around contains several DVDs (
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
Urusei Yatsura TV vol. 15,
You're Under Arrest vol. 1 and
Abba: The Definitive Collection, if you must know, plus the
Kiki's Delivery Service DVD I had bought a couple of minutes before) I like to watch if I'm somewhere where there's a place I can play DVDs, though the DVDs weren't wrapped in cellophane, so, hopefully he would have figured out that these were
my DVDs if he inspected my bag, which he didn't.
ANGER MANAGEMENT (SPOILERS)
Don't have too much to say about this one. On a flight from New York to St. Louis for a business trip, the mild-mannered Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler) finds his seat taken and as a result has to sit next to a man who insists on being as loud and obnoxious as possible. While Dave is trying to sleep on the plane, the guy won't shut up about how funny the generic-looking comedy that is the in-flight movie is, and, in order to placate him, Dave tries to get a pair of headphones from an uncooperative filight attendant who misinterprets his polite requests as air rage, and, soon, an air marshall is on the case, using a taser to quiet him down. Back on the ground, after the plane is turned back to JFK airport because of the "incident", Judge Brenda Daniels (the late Lynne Thigpen**) sentences him to pay a fine and attend an Anger Management support group, headed by a wacky but famous pop psychologist, Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson), who (surprise, surprise) was the same guy Dave sat next to on the airplane. Among the crazy memebers of the support group is Chuck (John Turturro), a macho brute guy who snaps over the samllest things, and Buddy decides to pair him off with Dave. One night, when Dave is just trying to have a nice night at home with his girlfriend Linda (Marisa Tomei), Chuck rings the apartment buzzer and pretty much coerces Dave into going to the bar with him, where Chuck quickly gets himself into a fight and Dave accidentally assaults a waitress with a blind man's cane. For this, the judge doubles Dave's time in the Anger Management support group, and Buddy decides to move in with Dave in order to "observe" him in his natural habitat, and Buddy turns into the houseguest from Hell though Dave cannot lose his temper otherwise Buddy will report on him to the judgem and Dave will spend the next couple of years behind bars.Among the things Buddy does with Dave are visiting Dave's childhood tormentor (
Magnolia's John C. Reilly), who pulled down Dave's pants before dozens of people and who is now a Buddhist monk opposed to all violence (or is he?), pulling the keys out of Dave's ignition on the middle of a busy bridge (the Brooklyn Bridge?) and forcing him to sing "I Feel Pretty" from
West Side Story while passing motorists heap insults at him, picking up a transvestite prostitute "Galaxia" (Woody Harrelson) to help him deal with his "homophobia", and making him hit on a lovely girl at a bar with the crudest possible pick-up line, which works much too well and he ends up in her house trying to keep himself from cheating on Linda (who Buddy conveniently phones). Will Dave be able to complete his anger management training without exploding, and can he keep his relatinship with Linda intact so he could propose to her at Yankee Stadium (or is Buddy interested in her too)?
One weird thing I noticed: Kurt Fuller, the character actor best known (to me) as "Russell" from
Wayne's World has a bit part in this as Dave's boss, and, at one point, Dave calls him "Colonel Klink", as in the character from
Hogan's Heroes played by Werner Klemperer, whom Fuller portrayed in
Auto Focus, the (alleged) biopic of Bob Crane. I don't know if that was an intentional in-joke, or just a joke that happened because Fuller really does look an awful lot like Klemperer.
Also, the denouement was a bit too facile, and strained credibility highly. Since people would bitch that I reveal the main plot twist here, even with the spoiler warning, I shall write the rest of this paragraph in "Al Bhed" (the transliteration system from
Final Fantasy X).
Cut-and-paste here to translate. (N.B. "ctrl c" or "ctrl x" to copy/cut and "ctrl v" to paste.) Cu dra ahdena drehk fyc y cad ib po Mehty zicd du kad dra ehtaleceja Tyja du bnubuca du ran? Dra fusyh ryc dryd silr suhao dryd cra lyh yvvunt du ryja ymm druca yldunc fung vun faagc yd y desa, ryja yh ahdena yenmeha vmekrd dinhat ynuiht, puug y luindnuus, veq y pynvekrd yht pio y Maqic zicd du dnycr ed? Ev cra ryc ymm dryd suhao... fro'c cra tydehk Tyja?
Like
Old School it's probably not a film I'd remember much of in a year or so, and, on the Sandler character scale, Dave Buznik is no Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore or even a Barry Egan, though this is more because this time round, Sandler is the "straight man". Last year, I loved both Jack Nicholson in
About Schmidt and Adam Sandler in
Punch Drunk Love, and this film doesn't come close to touching either one, but it's a decent enough comedy and was a pleasant enough way to kill an afternoon.
***1/2/*****
**I wrote a small tribute to Ms. Thigpen, whom I mainly knew as the "Chief" on
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego but who was a character actress in movies and on TV and also a Tony-winning stage actress, the day after she died last month, but, for some reason, I can't seem to find it in my archives right now...
BON VOYAGE, YURI-CHAN!
Oh yeah, since I don't know if I'll get another chance to say, since I don't know exactly when she's leaving, but, anyhow, to my Singapore-Chinese friend with a Japanese name living in Houston, Texas, named Yuri Wong, good luck on your trip to Mexico and my thoughts will be with you always... please try to find an Internet caf� in Mexico and send me an e-mail or, even better, a postcard!
For the very first time, drivers in the Province of Quebec will be able to
turn right on red lights, except on the island of Montreal and where otherwise indicated. So, on Saturday, in the
Montreal Gazette, there was this little information booklet from the Quebec Ministry of Transport and the Soci�t� de l'assurance automobile de Qu�bec (the Quebec auto insurance society) filled mostly with information about turning right on a red light, but, on this one page in the back, there are these PSAs written in a weird sort of English I called "Joualish" (
joual = Quebec street slang), which is when we see something translated directly from French with no regards to English usage.
I put a picture of the page here.
The one on the bottom is a PSA about drunk driving... it says "Don't let your friends drink and drive.
Insist!"
Insist on what? I think the point is, Insist they take a taxi or something, or, at the very least, not drink and drive, but if you're looking at it and you're not familiar with the eccentricities of Quebec translators, it really does read like "Don't
just LET your friends drink and drive, INSIST that they drink and drive!" In English, the imperative form of "Insist" doesn't really work by itself... it needs at least an accessory verb to say what exactly you're insisting that people do.
GIVE THE ENTARTISTES A BOOT IN THE HEAD FOR EACH PIE IN THE FACE
Yesterday, five or six miscreant ne'er-do-wells from the
Les Entartistes group assaulted
Quebec Liberal leader Jean Charest and Action Democratique du Qu�bec leader Mario Dumont with pies in the face on the second to last day of the Provincial election campaign, though, amazingly enough, they left the separatist/linguistic-fascist Parti Quebecois party leader (and current Premier of the Province of Quebec) Bernard Landry unassailed. (Shocked, I am, shocked by that.) While the party leaders brushed it off as a minor nusiance, if it happened to me, I'd call it what it is: assault, and would indeed press charges to the full extent of the law.
Why I don't like the Entartistes:
1) They're a bunch of radical communist, and, in the Province of Quebec, invariably separatist wackos. Don't believe me about the communist part? Fine... check out the page where
you can vote for which politician, celebrity or other person in the public eye gets pied int he face next, as well as who should receive a "cake of honour"... the names on the "cake of honour" list (in red) are pretty much a "who's who" of the celebrity activist left, locally and abroad (well, at least I don't see cop-killer
Mumia Abu-Jamal on their list, but, unfortunately, that's probably more an oversight on their part).
2) At best, what they do is assault, and, at worst, low grade terrorism, because you really can't be sure what's in those pies, and each successful pie in the face is an indictment againt the security team for each candidate, because the pie could just have easily been a bat or a gun.
3) They claim "freedom of speech" as some sort of magical amulet of immunity against criticism and against pressing charges for their criminal activities.
4) Pies in the face aren't funny, and they haven't really been funny for several generations... that's the sort of slapstick comedy they had in the early days of cinema when people were a lot more easily amused. Of course, most of the entartistes are in countries (or, in the case of Quebec, a PROVINCE) mainly populated by "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" or their domestic cousin the "poutine-eating separation monkeys" and they find Jerry Lewis, and, locally, that Hi-Ha Tremblay guy funny, so that's just more a subjective taste thing, I guess.
5) Also, they wear stupid clown noses... clown noses aren't funny; they're just "Patch Adams" maudlin.
Okay, here's the official
I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA GUIDE FOR WHAT TO DO WHEN ASSAULTED BY AN ENTARTISTE:
1) Deck them (by which I mean punch them real hard in the chin) like George McFly did Biff Tannen at the climax of the first Back to the Future film. Or have your security team pepper spray or taser them. This is self-defense.
2) Have your security team or the cops drag them away to the paddy wagon while they bitch and moan out loud about welfare cuts and the "right-wing" media or whatnot.
3) Press assault charges.
Here's what not to do, but I think it's funny, so I'm writing it anyway:
1) Deck them, pepper spray them or taser them.
2) When they're on the ground writhing in agony, kick them in the head until they're bleeding so much that the blood pools inside the clown nose and starts oozing out onto the cold, cold pavement.
3) Laugh like Nelson Muntz. ("Ha-ha".)
4) Resume kicking them in the head until they're dead.
5) When their souls turn into angels and start ascending to Heaven, shoot them down to Hell, like you could in the old Sega Master System game Gangster Town.
6) Drape a Canadian flag over their body if they were Quebec Entartistes...
