Palmer's World

What are you looking for?

Blog

  • Review: Death Proof

    Death ProofOn Saturday, I relaxed and sifted through some more recordings. I also hit up the Mongolian Village for some dinner with Vero, Matt, Karilee, Joe, Danielle and Danielle’s brother and company.

    I enjoy the Mongolian Village. You go up to their buffet table, put your food in a bowl and they cook it for you and bring it to your table. I was quite stupid in the fact that I got two separate helpings and Vero pointed out that the minimum they would have charged me would have been $5 per bowl anyhow so it would have been smarter to load up the first bowl. I then pointed out to her that she is clearly the smartest of the two of us and should speak up when these things enter her brain so I don’t end up with a bill for $30 at the end of the night instead of $20.

    I ran over to the movie theatre as everyone else had picked up their tickets earlier in the day. Unfortunately, it was too late to do anything good with the tickets. As soon as we entered the theatre, it was every man for themselves as it was packed. I must get out of the Kapuskasing mentality of going to the theatre. In the end, Vero and I ended up in the third row from the screen. After debating whether or not we should just get a refund or not, a woman came to the front and announced that the Cloverfield film is filmed with shaky handheld cameras and would be reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project.

    That sealed the deal for the two of us as we figured we would not be able to see much in the third row with a shaky camera. This man gets a little motion sickness from those kind of things.

    We left the theatre, got a refund and went to Rogers Video where I picked up Death Proof – Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie which is a homage to the old 70s drive-in films as well as a homage to the American muscle car films of the 70s.

    It had been awhile since I’ve seen a Tarantino flick and I fell in love with it within 5 minutes…with the random conversations and the intriguing characters. The film revolves around a sociopath in the form of Kurt Russell playing Stuntman Mike who drives around in his stunt car which is deemed Death Proof; as in, no one inside it can die. The movie is split into different halves, one where Stuntman Mike meets some women in a bar, and then the second half when he appears again meeting another group of women who are looking for the car that appears in Vanishing Point. Interesting sidenote in that I have never seen Vanishing Poing but had heard about it from Rob’s old roommate Grant in which he claimed it was the best movie ever but it has never been released on film.

    A good portion of the film is dedicated to Vanishing Point where they obtain the car and they enjoy a test drive in it.

    The car chase scenes were amazing and Tarantino has outdone himself in creating something original in the form of the great classics of car chases.

    Vero and I thoroughly enjoyed this film and recommend it to all if you’re into that sort of thing.

    iplaying: Louie Louie – The Kingsmen

  • The Lies of the Media

    So it turns out that Sir Paul McCartney did not have angioplasty over the holidays (as incorrectly reported by the media).

    What has really become of the media?  Where’s the fact checking of yesteryear?  Nowadays, it’s a rush to get the scoop even without knowing if the scoop is true.  With the Internet, the world has become a hyper-real environment where a simple hoax can turn into this evening’s news at six.

    When will people grow up and realize that the qualities of a good journalist is to present a story that is based in reality?

    Next up: My video of a monster attacking Ottawa.  You’ll probably see it on the news faster than you’ll see it here!

  • Review: Duel (By Michel Ouelette)

    After work yesterday, I headed out to the OC Transpo Lost and Found depot to look for my stray glove and after scouring through a garbage pail (one of the large ones) full of stray mittens, I could not find it.  I suppose I shall go again next week in hopes of finding it.  I also dropped some money in the donation box as I didn’t have any change the last time I went there to get my lost bus pass.

    I then headed towards Milestone’s with Mike while picking up some Tragically Hip albums at CD Exchange which is YET ANOTHER record store shutting its doors in Ottawa.  Gak!  When will it stop!?

    Milestone’s was fun times with Maren and Krista.  Although I must admit that our service was pretty horrible (having an empty drink on my table for five minutes irks me).  In the end, I enjoyed the Shanghai Noodle Stir Fry once again but we may opt to try out a new place in the future.

    I then headed over to La Nouvelle Scene to see a play with Vero – a play in which our friend Steve was acting in.  The play was called Duel and it was written by Michel Ouelette.  What was interesting about tonight’s spectacle is that it was performed in a laboratory environment, where two different groups chose the same scene to act out and you get to see what the Director has as a vision for the scene.

    Thing is, in theatre, there’s always reinterpretation going on.  You don’t always see the exact same play.  The director puts some thought into how they envision the play ~ the visuals, the mannerisms, the characters, but the dialogue remains the same.

    So the first scene had Steve and someone else do a very stylized interpretation and I thought Steve’s performance was probably one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.  He played a transvestite who had a mean streak…I thought of the Joker when seeing him perform and I thoroughly enjoyed his actions throughout the scene as well as his speech pattern.  Very cool.

    The next group that came up were actually doing the scene in the Romanian language.  Now, after a few beers at Milestone’s, the french was hard enough to comprehend, but there’s no chance in Hell that I would understand the Romanian one!  The funny part was that I didn’t catch that they were doing the same exact scene because it was definitely different in style and I only caught the characters names in the Romanian language which tipped me off that it was supposed to be the same exact scene.

    They had an interesting Q&A session at the end where the two groups came together and talked about how different it was to see the scene they did reinterpreted in such a vast way (for example, the transvestite makes no appearance in the Romanian version).

    All in all, I enjoyed it purely for Steve’s performance and the manner that the laboratory works (as in, seeing two different takes on a scene).  It would be like giving Troy and I a lyric sheet and asking us to write a song.

  • Cloverfield

    So JJ Abrams (of Alias, Lost fame) has come up with another idea and it comes in the form of Cloverfield.  All we know about the film (opening Friday) is that there are people having a going away party for someone and then they see an explosion in the distance on Manhattan and everyone freaks because the city is on fire, there’s debris flying everywhere and then the ultimate showing of some great chaos – the head of the Statue of Liberty rolls into the street.

    Awww yeah!  What a trailer!  I love watching that thing over and over again.

    From reading interviews with JJ Abrams on the subject of his new film, he’s more interested in keeping a film secret in the connected world we live in nowadays.  Too often is every little detail of a film shared with the public, whether it is intentional or not.

    In the end, is this film going to be revolutionary?  Probably not.  I think it will end up being a decent monster movie where a Godzilla type creature wreaks havoc on the city of New York.  You know what?  I’m alright with that!  Sometimes we need to just sit down and enjoy a decent monster flick.  Krista mentioned to me that someone on the radio said the movie was pretty bad.  That’s what I’m hoping for!  A return of the B-Movie!  We’ll have to see what it offers this coming Saturday.

  • Inspirado

    Jack BlackI think knowledge from the educational institutions expands my mind and lets me capture thoughts into a coherent form.

    I also think Socrates felt the same way with his philosophy in life…the way he thought that the ultimate pleasure one can have is to keep learning…to keep thinking…I’m enjoying this Great Philosophers course right now.

    But that’s not the point of this entry…last night while driving home I was hit by inspiration again for a song…this happened before with The Stomper where the lyrics were scribbled out in a manner of minutes and didn’t change too much afterwards.

    When I sit down and try and write lyrics to a song, I find it hard.  But when these moments happen, you have to run up to your room and jot down everything spilling out.  Pick up the guitar and find the tune you are humming in your head.  The voice recorder comes in handy in the car ride home in case you forget this special moment.

    Everything came together in the manner of 45 minutes.  I still need to write a few more verses but the main structure is there.

    I’m kind of excited about the song but I suppose everyone is excited about a new creation that comes from the ether and gets channeled through your own body.  I find that I can’t write lyrics that I want to write…I want to be mysterious, I want double-entendres, I want a lot from my songwriting but throughout the history of music, time and time again I am shown that it just takes time to develop your songwriting craft (as Troy has said to me many times).  However, instead of making the perfect song, I want to try and capture every moment as it passes me by onto tape.  Even if it’s crap, it’s still recorded and out of ten lame demos, maybe I can find a great song.  I guess that’s how a lot of artists work.

    So who knows what this new song will become?  Feels like a rocker though…I’m channeling Sam Roberts and Matt Mays jam sessions into this song, although it exists only on my acoustic right now.  We’ll see if it’s better on the electric when I plug in.  The song is about my Dad and his life in Sudbury back in the 70s but it has a feel of living in Anytown, Northern Ontario.  We’ll see what happens with it.  I guess most of you hate me right now because all you can do is read about it and may never end up hearing about it.  Ah well, dems de breaks!

  • Good Grades Eh?

    Well the grades for last semester are finally posted.  I got a B+ in Critical Thinking and a B in Sociology.  Sociology is a welcome surprised considering I got a D+ on the first assignment.  I recruited some smart people to help me with the follow-up report and managed to bring up my mark.  Thanks Krista, Trish and all the other people I can’t think of right now!

    Turns out that in the end, I will always be a ‘B’ student, which is fine by me.  It takes a special kind of person to not strive to get that ‘A’ Grade.  Or, at the very least, realize that it’s impossible and you should focus half of your efforts on socializing in the school system.  Hello Frathouse!  Actually, I have yet to find a Frathouse while on campus.  Are they hidden away somewhere in Sandy Hill?  I definitely remember going to a few Frat parties back in the day with Danny.  This brings back a memory when I was waiting for the washroom and Danny comes out with a giant icicle in his hand.  What the heck?  He said someone passed it to him!

  • Def Leppard Music Videos

    In preparation for Def Leppard coming to town (!!!), Vero and I had a good laugh last night watching some old music videos from the band. Considering we’ve never seen any of them (wait, that’s not true…I was introduced to Def Leppard when they released When Love and Hate Collide which spearheaded their greatest hits album back in ’95. What can I say? I wasn’t musically conscious during the 80s), we were anticipating some killer 80s videos.

    Well…they were killer alright. Here is some recaps on the videos in question.

    Bringin’ On The HeartBreak Music VideoBringing on The Heartbreak – Alright, this video ain’t too shabby. Standard rock band music video fare with shots of them performing. This was actually the more decent of them.

    Rock of Ages – “It’s Labyrinth!” proclaims Vero while watching the video for Rock of Ages. Yes indeed, it definitely had some Labyrinth details like an owl in the video as well as some mythical imagery. Let us not forget the knight who crushes a glass of wine only to see it reform in his hand minutes later in the video! Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a screen shot from this legendary video. WAIT! Let us not forget when Joe Elliot grabs Excalibur and it transforms into a guitar. Sweetness. Let us also not forget the drummer appearing only in some Union Jack underwear.

    Foolin’ – I remember us watching this one and can’t really remember what happened. I’m pretty sure the drummer appeared in his Union Jack underwear again. Was that his thing back in the day?

    Pour Some Sugar on Me Music VideoPour Some Sugar on Me – This was definitely the cream of the crop. Everyone knows this song. So I expected an amazing video. What I received was Limburger cheese. The band appears playing in a house that is being demolished by women who are working in construction. They have sledgehammers with them, they have cranes, they have grubby old construction hats and boots, they are not a pretty sight. I guffawed at many a scene, especially when the building they were playing in was being destroyed and in one scene I’m pretty sure we saw a bag of flour fall from the ceiling (or was it sugar?) to emulate some dust. It fell into the category “It’s so bad, it’s good!” Highly recommended video to see your favourite Def Leppard in a new light.

    Love Bites – Ah, this one we were excited for. With lyrics like “When you make love, do you look in the mirror?” we only assumed that there would be amazing imagery in this video. Not so much, but hey, it has classic 80s ballad video fare such as:

    • singer singing into the microphone
    • multiple angles of the singer morphing into one shot
    • random women walking across the screen. The same shot used twice in many cases! Hey, was that Cindy Crawford walking by?
    • classic full band shot once they hit the second verse. Stop hogging the screentime Joe!

    We had to shut this one off as it was just getting worse and worse. You know, November Rain popped into my head right now and I love the stories that Guns N Roses told in their videos. Why can’t more videos be like that?

    Anyhow, there’s my recap of some Def Leppard music videos from the classic 80s. Let us not forget the excellent outfits and hairstyles. OH! I almost forgot about Rocket. That was pretty good actually. Very forward thinking on that video…reminded me of the ZooTV tour by U2.

    Later on, I’ll try and embed these videos into YouTube so you can see for yourself. Or do yourselves a favour…sit back with some popcorn, type in Def Leppard into YouTube and laugh at the grandness which was the Def Leppard phenomenon. I can’t wait to see them here in Ottawa on April 12.

  • I Love MacWorld

    I love MacWorld.  I’ve never been, but I enjoy refreshing my browser every 30 seconds to get the lowdown on what’s being announced in Steve Job’s keynote speech.

    This year, here’s the goods and what I feel about them:

    1) Time Capsule – a wireless external hard drive.  Probably my favourite of the bunch because it’s something I could use.  Nice.  Although, the price seems a little extreme.  For example, the 1TB model goes for $499 whereas I just checked and you can get the wired model on Tiger Direct for $330.  However, it does seem cool to have it as a wireless drive, but when you think about it, we already have that at home with Mike’s drive which is hooked up to the wireless router.

    2) iPhone and iPod Touch update – While many others are probably saying “Heck yeah!” to the additional software coming for these products, I am not as I do not own any of them.  However, I think the $20 fee for the iPod Touch software upgrade is kind of lame.

    3) Apple TV + iTunes Movie Rentals – Yet again, another thing that doesn’t impress me too much.  Sure…it’s cool that you can rent movies online now.  I think this will be interesting to see how it works out, but I know a lot of people who order Payperview or Rogers-On-Demand instead of going to their local video store, so it may end up being just as popular.

    4) MacBook Air – The world’s thinnest laptop.  While initially impressed (heck, it came out of an envelope!  AWESOME!), the price has scared me away.  $1800 USD for something that a) Only has one USB port b) Has no optical drive to read CDs/DVDs seems a little excessive to me.  However, there are always ways around these things for the savvy…you could always get a USB hub to plug in so you quadruple the amount of inputs you have.  The optical drive can be bought external for another $100, or if you ever need to desperately get something off of a drive, you just find one in the house (or close to you I guess) and there is some software that will search for the drive and then use it for you.  I would definitely have to see this in action to believe it.  I find it hard to believe that it will be a simple matter of just finding a cd-rom drive to pop in your Smashing Pumpkins cd and it scans the room for it and then transmits it wirelessly.  I’m scared of the practicality of this option actually.

    Benoit and I had a good amazing look on our faces when we saw that there was an option for a Solid State chip of 64GB as your hard drive but then had a good laugh when it would cost an extra $1,000 to install it.

    So there you have it.  While I’m not overly impressed with any products (I don’t even think I would buy the MacBook Air if I were purchasing a laptop at this point), I am impressed with certain trends that they are moving forward with:

    1) The Wireless World ~ It’s made blatantly obvious when they don’t even install a CD/DVD drive into a laptop that Apple wants everything to be wireless.  Want your music?  Buy it wirelessly/digitally from the Internet.  Want to watch/purchase a film?  Buy it off of iTunes.  Want to access a tv show you downloaded but it’s not on your laptop?  Just wirelessly connect to the Time Capsule external hard drive and voila!  In some ways, there needs to be Apple in this world to bring out these products before they are perfect so it gets the industry thinking even more into the future.  Remember all those blue CAT5 cables running around your house so everyone could have the Internet?  You would laugh if you saw those in your house nowadays considering there is the wireless router.

    2) The Solid State Industry ~ Hard drives will go the way of the do-do bird soon enough.  Solid state (flash) drives will be the future and the future says “Heck, it’s going to take a lot for me to break down because I have no spinning parts.”  That’s the problem with hard drives (although it’s been quite a few years since my last hard drive conked out so they must make them pretty sturdy nowadays) and why the world will be governed by flash drives in the future.  Already we are seeing the iPod touch have a 16GB flash drive inside of it.  It’s small and can’t really break on you.  While I laugh at the idea of paying $1,000 for a 64GB drive, I can see that in a year’s time, the iPod touch will probably be available in a 64GB model for $500.  I bought a 60GB iPod 2 years ago and it was a hard drive for the same price.  Think about that.  I’m excited by the solid state future.

  • Review: Zatoichi

    Zatoichi PosterNow the second film we watched on Samurai Sunday was even better…Zatoichi! This is what I want from a samurai film…honour, blood, swords, ronin…you name it, they got it!

    Zatoichi follows a blind swordsman around. But don’t be put off because he’s blind. He uses his other senses to kick some evil ass. In the end, the film revolves around some Yakuza hassling the people of the town for protection money and then the blind swordsman comes to their aid. Is this a common story? It’s seems that there is always the theme of taking down the man (or the bad man) in all movies and it involves the bad men taking money from little old ladies.

    Anyhow, I loved the film. It was amazing. It was funny, it was serious, it had a great style to it…even the kids raking the fields tapped their rakes to the dirt in time to the music. The battles between samurai resulted in some stylized computer generated blood which was neat. The story was decent too and it kept my interest. For an introduction to a samurai film, it was top notch.

    After reading about Zatoichi, I found out that he is the Japanese equivalent to our James Bond. He literally has 30+ films about the character, as well as a television series! What’s even crazier is the fact that the actor Shintaro Katsu was the sole actor who played Zatoichi until he passed away and then Takeshi Kitano took over the mantle in the 2003 film version of Zatoichi (which is the version we saw). I would be interested in seeing a few of the old Zatoichi films because of the lore that it has on the samurai culture. I wonder if my uncle Gerry has seen all the Zatoichi films while in Japan? Maybe it’s one of those things where it airs every Saturday night…

    Two samurai swords up for this film. Highly recommend as part of your mandatory samurai film watching.

    After the film, we ended up picking some Chinese food up from the Lucky Star Chinese place down the street from us. It was pretty good and we were all stuffed afterwards. All in all, Samurai Sunday was a success and I will definitely think about holding another one in the future.

  • The Pounds

    You’re going to find this thought a little strange, but hey, it went through my head this morning.

    So I get on the weight scale this morning and wasn’t too surprised that the usual weight had fluctuated by an increase of 4-5 pounds.  Not too worry…heck, we had Chinese food last night.  A LOT of it.

    But then I was urinating and while standing there I was thinking of the weight of liquid and wondered if this would have much effect on the weight of my body.  Sure enough when I hopped back on the scale, there was a decrease of 4-5 pounds.

    Granted, probably everyone reading this is saying “How could you not know that?” but I just wanted to share that with you.  I thought it was neat to have this revelation that my bladder can hold 4-5 pounds of liquid.