Walking Without Cold Or Sweat

It’s just another dull Friday for the Most Boring Couple In The World, but that’s just fine with me. Today was the first time we actually ventured out into the big bad world when the temperature was in the double digits, a SCORCHIN’ 11 degrees outside. It was one of those days that reminds that I still have a lot to get used to about being back home again.

Just like my trip to Los Angeles last year, it was a bizarre experience to be out on the streets of Toronto (although in this case, it was just a couple of blocks down to the grocer) without breaking into the kind of sweat that saps your will to live. It was also nice to be outside and not be freezing to the bone, and I think it’ll be another couple of months yet before I finally accept the fact that This Is The Way It Is From Now On. Not that I’m complaining. It’s the same thing with the days. My body clock is now undergoing a mild sense of confusion as the days get longer, since sunset (especially thanks to daylight savings time) has already surpassed the usual sunset time of Singapore, where it was normally pitch black before 7:30 pm.

It’s also time to watch the last of the films we rented from Suspect Video before returning them tomorrow. We’ve actually already seen some of this, but mean to complete it tonight. Jiri Barta is a Czech film maker that plays around with various kinds of animation, and Labyrinth of Darkness is a collection of his shorts (though one of them actually runs nearly an hour) compiled into a very weird melange of ingenious and some times disturbing film anthology. In particular is one stop-motion story that acts as the cover of the DVD, called The Club of the Laid Off which chronicles the lives of a bunch of cast off mannequins as they live boring, repetitive, pointless lives, not unlike the people they are built to mimic. All of that changes when more stylish, urbane mannequins get dumped in their abandoned building, but I won’t go any further than that.

It’s not the laugh-fest that Robot Chicken is, but it makes a great case for animation being more than just entertainment or “feel good” films.

Oh yeah, shouldn’t I be writing a book?

Another Boring Sunday

All I did was update my DVD catalog (something that I apparently hadn’t done since 2003 according to the program’s record) write a bit of Lost in Loveless, do up a last minute GameAxis article and watch some bizarre Japanese film by the same guy that did Audition, Ryu Murakami only this wasn’t some horror film, so much as a confusing, arty sort of film called Tokyo Decadence that seemed like it was about Japanese S & M hookers until it took a hard left into tangential land 3/4 of the way through and just became odd and pitifully tragic. At least until that brick wall of an ending. I get the feeling that the Murakami just had no idea how to end the film after he made his statement clear about his feelings on modern Japan…

Getting What Is Deserved

This is something I’ve been meaning to mention for a bit now, and today is as good a time as any. Anyone that grew up in the 80′s might remember the animated film The Last Unicorn, based on the novel of the same name by Peter S. Beagle. There are all kinds of interesting bits of information surrounding it, such as the fact that Rankin/Bass Animation actually farmed out the animation to a Japanese company called Topcraft, that would eventually become Studio Ghibli. Or the fact that they got some really big names to provide the voice work, like Mia Farrow as the perfect, ethereal, delicate unicorn, or Christopher Lee as King Lir.

But probably the biggest thing that’s come from this movie is the fact that it was enormously mature in its theme and, for the precocious child, really gave you a lot to be monumentally depressed about. Over the decades this film has continued to traumatize intelligent, sensitive children (and merely confirm how complex and depressing the world is for adults) and it was all thanks to remarkable insights of the author, Peter S. Beagle. And the part of this story that really kills me is that despite the fact that this work has moved leagues and leagues of people throughout the years, Beagle has never seen a dime of it.

This has changed.

There is a publisher, Conlan Press, who has championed the abuse that Beagle has received at the hands of the money people over the years. The Last Unicorn was re-released in February on DVD, and though the transfer isn’t perfect (being taken from a remastered German PAL version, meaning that the animation is about 4% faster than normal) this is the best that movie has looked. In particular however, is the fact that Conlan Press has cut a special deal and when you order this DVD directly from them, they give HALF of the profit from that sale to Beagle himself. In return, Beagle is actually signing the DVDs, even taking requests for small personal messages.

It goes without saying that we’ve already gone and ordered this DVD for ourselves. The movie traumatized the Wife in particular as a child, and I can’t say that I was immune to its depressing charms growing up either. If you remember this movie at all, liked it, and want to do something for the creator, who is actually not that financially well off (especially in comparison to guys like King, Rowling and Gaiman) then do a good deed and help the guy out. Order your DVD from Conlan Press right here.

Work, Movies and Velma

As you can see, the Wife suddenly got motivated to finish the sketch of Velma that she did in black & white way back when we were still in Singapore. I don’t remember Velma looking quite this slinky, but I sure ain’t gonna’ complain about it.

Other than that, this was another delightfully boring Friday where we didn’t hit the town and do all kinds of urbane, cosmopolitan things. Instead, I finished up my articles for GameAxis for the month and then after that, powered through Tetsuo The Ironman, which is another Japanese WTF film that I simply cannot describe. Except to say that only the Japanese would decide to give a man a giant drill as his new genitalia, and only they would be curious to see what it would look like were he to use it on a woman.

‘Nuff said…

The other movies that were viewed were all existing ones in our collection, simply because I’m slowly going through all our films now that we can watch them in widescreen and high definition, just to see what they look like. Today was bits and pieces of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (okay, I admit it, once again, the Spock dies scene moved me to tears, dammit…) and The Matrix, which, since I hadn’t seriously looked at it in years, actually had improved. I mean, I liked it a hell of a lot before, but in light of recent “science fiction” efforts like The Island, The Matrix is a freakin’ masterpiece in that it does manage to combine some amazing action with some actual intelligence and a really, REALLY interesting idea.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch Clash of the Titans.

Tomorrow, The Last Unicorn and how you can help Peter S. Beagle…

Another Quiet Day

The only things that happened of note were that I finally got around to watching Rubber’s Lover, a WTF movie if ever there was one. Kind of a Japanese combination of David Lynch with Stanley Kubrick’s clinical inhumanity. And screaming. Lots of screaming. And rubber suits. And people’s head’s exploding. And more screaming.

And in other news, I finally got around to filling out all those scary legal documents from IGN. I suppose it’s just for record keeping purposes, but I felt a bit weird filling out an American W9 Taxpayer Identification Number contract when I don’t actually pay taxes in the USA. Still, they sent it out to me, so I signed it, despite the fact that somewhere in the fine print, the signature is supposed to acknowledge that I am a lawful citizen of the USA. Uh… yeah. Sure. Just gimme’ the job and I’ll make freakin’ Apple Pies come out of my mouth when I belch, whatever it takes…

This… Is… Yet Another Quote From The Movie 300!

Yep, today was the day that I finally broke my 10+ year fast and stepped into a Canadian movie theater. Fortunately the experience was somewhat mitigated by the fact that I was watching a 4:00 pm matinee showing on the fringes of southeastern downtown Toronto. I think that made the whole affair far more palatable than it would have been otherwise, because, at least in this one regard, Singapore wins hands down over Canada in the theater going experience. I don’t know why neither America nor Canada has adopted this, but in Singapore, they have a much, MUCH more sensible mechanism for handling the “Want a ticket/Have a ticket” lines of North America. For Singapore readers, this may be a bit shocking, but the sad fact is, when you buy a ticket in North America, all that entitles you to is admission into the theater. So, especially if it’s a popular movie, this entails getting into a SECOND line hoping to be near the front so that when the theater doors open, you can make a mad dash for the better seats, ie, the center aisles. In Singapore, when you buy a ticket, the cashiers have a monitor built right into the bottom of their counter that displays a floorplan of the theater once you’ve told them which movie you want to see. On the floorplan, all occupied seats are graphically marked out, so you pick the empty seats and then the ticket is printed, WITH YOUR ROW AND SEAT NUMBER ON IT. This way, if you went in the afternoon to buy a ticket for the evening show, you can walk away, do some shopping, hang out with friends, whatever… and just casually stroll into the theater minutes from showtime to find your empty seats waiting for you. This is something I have actually done for myself on many an occasion and it’s BRILLIANT.

This is sensible and convenient, and I completely fail to understand why North America has not adopted this.

Idiosyncrasies of North American film culture aside, I was very happy with what I saw on the screen. I would go so far as to say in many ways, 300 the movie actually surpassed 300 the graphic novel. The graphic novel, while a truly impressive and visceral experience, was almost one-note in its constant emphasis on Duty, Honor, Glory. While it was obvious in the movie that these were still fundamental concepts for the Spartans, Snyder wisely interlaced this with a heavy dose of humanity. The Spartans here weren’t simply amazing killing machines looking for glorious death, as they appeared in the original graphic novel. Gerard Butler–as King Leonidas–managed to convey a sense of the Spartans actually fighting for something they cared about. They weren’t peerless combatants because they were sadists that reveled in war. They were expert soldiers because they wanted to defend a land and people they loved, and this was evident even in their strategy, which involved unity and working together as a cohesive unit. I found myself marveling at the visuals (then again, I suppose EVERYBODY is) but was caught off guard when I realized that even the Old Friend was moved to tears by what she saw on screen. This is a girl that cried at When Harry Met Sally and loves Lady & The Tramp, so to see her actually moved by a bunch of hyper-testosterone infused guys fighting for Sparta, Honor and a Glorious Death was more than a little surprising. Or maybe she was just overwhelmed by the amazing amount of male cheescake on the screen. That was a LOT of perfectly sculpted abs and pectorals…

More Stuff In The Mail

I’m quickly beginning to realize that internet and credit card access pretty much connects you to whatever toys you’re into, without necessitating you having to live in a big city with access to all the amenities provided by metropolia on that scale. To whit; despite the fact that Suspect Video and Beguiling are just a few blocks away, the winter weather still makes a leisurely stroll down to these areas unappealing at best.

However, thanks to Amazon and other mail order services, it’s all pretty much irrelevant. There’s no particular drama for me, though the Wife continues to be thwarted in her attempts to get her scanner. Today, her laser printer arrived–a big ol’ thing weighing in at 60 pounds–despite the fact that she ordered that much later, so I suspect if a few more days goes by and the scanner doesn’t turn up, she’s going to bite the bullet and order it again, hoping this time it’ll actually survive the trip.

On my end, I was messing with my new toys, the first things I’ve ever ordered with my very own credit card. The big one was a movie I’ve been meaning to watch for the last few years since the Wife first mentioned it. It’s a precursor to the Japanese horror ambassadors like The Ring and Juon, and this one was called Kairo, which–surprise, surprise–got recently remade into an American horror film called Pulse. The story (and in particular the continuity, with people suddenly appearing in different clothes for no apparent reason and no perceptible jump in time) was disjointed, but on eof the things that seriously creeped me out about this movie was a serious use of dark and camera movement to creep you out. There were no long haired ghosts crawling around in this one, and none of the typical jump scares or gore as typified by American horror. Instead, the film relied on causing excruciating amounts of tension by letting you see shadows and things moving here and there, but rarely letting you actually see anything. Basically the director relied on the truism “It’s what you DON’T see that scares” to in order to achieve his goal, and it worked.

I now also have the Southpark movie (something else that was, you guessed it, illegal in Singapore!) and will be viewing it shortly. It’s terribly appropriate to be watching this film now, considering its plot. My only opportunity to watch it in Singapore, years ago, was aborted by the fact that it was on an extremely bad pirate copy burned to CD, and the disc jammed up about a half hour into the movie, so this will be a much more pleasant viewing experience.

And the IGN assignment is tentatively on. I’ll have to see about more details and nail down deadlines and the exact scope of the job, but I told “I’m interested” and they said, “Great,” so I guess it’s on.

Last Night

Just watched Clerks II and strangely feel as if I’ve grown up a little bit by watching it. But I loved it.

And this is the last night without The Wife. She got on her plane hours ago (or so goes the theory) and should be enduring the most horrific part of the flight, crossing the Pacific. If she’s very lucky, she’ll manage to get some sleep, something I was unable to do.

I’m looking forward to this, since, in a clear sign of my weakness and co-dependency, it feels really, really, really weird without her around. Now as along as I remember to bring that hat, scarf, pair of gloves and coat to the airport, she might just survive the trip across the frozen arctic wastes of the Pearson International parking lot…

Seeing The City

Morning was spent having brunch at some amazingly charming little restaurant called “Noon.” Where I met the Old Friend’s newer friends. They were a very easy going, extremely likeable bohemian style artsy couple and with any luck I will get to know them better, because they just seemed like two really nice people that you should be friends with.

After watching it on TV during my youth, I finally got to stand in front of the Muchmusic building on Queen Street West, and watched some of the high falutin’, “Cooler Than Thou” cosmopolitans buying coffee (with super cool upturned collars!) at the Starbucks across the street.

I also found at least one promising comic book store which has already won me over. Also in the same area, it’s called “Silver Snail” and when I was picking up the next trade paperback of Fables that I didn’t have (that being Book 5) I was pleasantly surprised when teen-ish, female cashier behind the counter with the red streak in her hair informed me “We charge American prices for Marvel and DC books. Not for indie publishers though, sorry.”

Still. Here I had thought that comics were actually cheaper in Singapore, and now, at least over at Silver Snail, they actually end up being surprisingly affordable.

Watched Black Dahlia. I’m trying to decide whether the parts I really liked outweigh the parts I really disliked, and vice versa.

Also, the Wife is sick and I feel bad about that, and miss her horribly, but at least she will now own some decent gloves and other assorted bits of winter wear after a visit to some place called the Mountain Equipment Co-Op. Or something like that. It seems horrifyingly Canadian though, in that everything seems designed to keep you alive and comfy in an igloo submerged under the Arctic ocean with an enraged polar bear scratching away at the roof…

Drills, Del Toro & Dinner

The Wife is currently harboring the opinion that Singapore, now realizing we are about to escape its grasp, is now doing everything in its power to make our final days as annoying as possible.

Case in point, waking up at 10 am on Saturday morning to the sound of drills and hammers tearing out chunks of wall of the apartment below you.

The odd thing about this is the Wife actually heard the noise from this sudden renovation yesterday and, duly alarmed about it, went down and asked the superviser of the fun whether this would continue over the weekend and was told, absolutely, positively in no uncertain terms, NO, there would be no construction over the weekened. But then you have to remember that in Singapore there is a tendency to simply tell people whatever they want to hear, rather than get into a conflict about it, so everyone agrees with everyone else verbally, but then continues to actually screw each other over in action and fact. This resulted in a hasty coffee and then retreat into town for the afternoon. As you may have already guessed, the afternoon was spent catching an evening sneak preview of Pan’s Labyrinth. Of course, for people in North America, this is hardly a sneak preview since the movie’s been out since December, but I’m still currently living on an island where V For Vendetta was heavily censored to keep it from giving anyone the wrong idea about government, remember that.

Still, after watching it, I liked it a lot. I didn’t love it, though I can completely see why it has garnered so much critical praise. There’s a little something in the film for everyone, and the script is very tight, the story is well told, the parallel narratives nicely balanced, and the performances are universally excellent all around. The imagery (particularly the fantasy elements) were gorgeously composed, lit and shot, and there were some very significant themes, both politically and socially. It’s an extremelly well put together movie, and I cannot for the life of me understand why I don’t unabashedly love it, despite the fact that I have nothing but good things to say about it. I see many parallels here between what Del Toro did in The Devil’s Backbone, his other movie that takes place in the Spanish Civil War era that also centers around children, paranormal events and military instability running concurrent with the occult plot. This film however, was a much more elegant and mature attempt and what he had done in the other movie, and I generally prefer it more, though I like both.

In a weird sort of way, I’m beginning to think that the way Del Toro manages to weave the supernatural, macabre and humanistic story elements all into one movie might actually make him a good contender to do a worthy Death and/or Morpheus/Sandman movie. His visual sensibility is very poetic and I could see Dave McKeans visuals sliding quite nicely into Del Toro’s methodology.

And finally, there was a nearby eatery which had recently opened, and the Wife and I have been dutifully ignoring it until tonight. It’s a “steamboat” restaurant, which, if you’re not Chinese, means that every table has a small gas stove sitting on it. When you sit down to eat, they give you a big pot of chicken stock and turn on the stove so that the chicken stock can simmer. You order assorted meats and vegetables and then toss them in when the stock approaches boiling and thus, just keep adding to the soup and heaping more into your bowl as you see fit. Simple, filling and decent tasting. Also likely the first and last time we will ever eat this place.

And now, after all this pedestrian blogging, I’m going to be even more boring and scamper off to watch My Neighbor Totoro again. It’s been years…