Spin Doctors

So I'm going to skip the requisite "I promise to write in here more often" statement.

I think we're past that point now. We'll just play it by ear from here on in.

Anyhow, read something hilarious in the Globe and Mail's "Report on Business" today. Something that made me question the very nature of my business pursuits.

Here's the lead-up: Rafael Nadal is a famous Spanish tennis player, won the men's title at Wimbledon, won Gold in the Olympics, but looks a bit sleazy with long dirty hair and his ever-present sleeveless shirts and quite long shorts.

So recently Nike's marketing machine said they were going to give the poor boy a "makeover". Cut his hair. Give him actual shorts. They were even going to make him wear a T-SHIRT with sleeves! He was supposed to premiere his "New Look" at the U.S. Open in New York.

It didn't happen. He was wearing the usual old stuff. Nike's explanation is bloody hilarious, and I quote:

“Given the condensed time-frame leading up to New York, with Nadal just coming off the Olympics, there has not been adequate time for Nadal to fully transition to the new apparel, which introduces a fundamentally different silhouette in both short and shirt,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?

He didn't like wearing the new shorts and shirt! What the hell does this "silhouette" thing even mean?!? This kind of spin drives me nuts, and apparently it's not restricted to politics anymore.

Is this what being successful in business is all about? Knowing how to spout garbage and make it sound like a Shakespearean soliloquy?

My comfort comes from the fact that I am both a Business Major and an Arts Major. I always felt I was learning the ways of business to "work on it from the inside": make it do some good things, and maybe even to prove that it is possible to be successful without outright deception. We're all people here, can't we just act and talk like normal human beings, even in business interactions?

I certainly hope so.

Winter Update

I really don't write in here enough.

Work and life (and sleeping and eating and laughing and learning and all other necessities) seems to get in the way at every turn.

I quickly glanced back at what I wrote back in August and the words have a strange new resonance after the events that followed. That day in Oakville, Ontario at the end of August when I was resting and reading the paper and catching my breath between two conventions feels a lot different now. As I wrote and passed the time that day my young cousin was upstairs, peacefully sleeping in until the late afternoon.

It's a teenager's right in the summer: to stay up all night and sleep in until the sun is well on its way past noon. I envied him that day; I used to love when the pressures of life weren't so heavy on my shoulders.

He's gone now though, my cousin James, taken away far too early by an incomprehensible infection that no one could see coming. I was lucky to have had time with him, though I didn't know how precious it was then. We watched Heroes and talked movies, and TV shows, and music, and all those comfortable conversation topics you cover when you think you'll see this person again and again throughout your life.

A lot of things are different now.

I'm single again, and I'm doing surprisingly alright. Devoting a lot more time to my endless watching of DVDs, you could even say I have a bit of an addiction. The DVD series of the moment is the Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition, and it's amazing to have the whole series (Pilot included!) in one massive and beautiful set. I'm devouring it really, and it's even better than I remembered.

Twin Peaks is one of those shows that used to keep me up at night in my teenage years, in the summer. It used to come on A&E really REALLY late and the lateness combined with the odd nature of the show made it the ultimate guilty pleasure. It opened my mind to a lot of the strange and wonderful movies and shows that I live on today. I'd watch and laugh and get scared and marvel at all the twists and turns that the human mind could fathom. Most of all, I'd wonder what was going to happen next.

Then I'd go to bed and sleep in until the late afternoon.

End of Summer Musings

A Blog Post in 3 parts over multiple days probably defeats the purpose of a blog, but I've been traveling a LOT over the past 2 weeks, and my internet time has been limited at best.

From August 24-26 I was in Toronto working in a booth for AbbyShot at a convention called "Fan Expo". The weekend after that (August 31 - September 4) I was off to Atlanta for ANOTHER convention called "Dragon*Con" (which I fondly mentioned on this very blog last year).

I'll probably post soon with full reviews of both cons, but here are a few random thoughts from along the way.

Part 1 - Monday, August 27, 2007 - 10:00pm

Starting a new blog post, because Karen reminded me.

On the GO Train to Oakville now, after a crazy 4 (or was it 5?) days in Toronto. Karen's actually a good friend that I met 2 years ago during an amazing 4 months in France during an exchange term. It's cool that after all this time (2 years!), we're talking like that time in Rennes was only yesterday. We're both in agreement that it was one of the best times in both of our lives. I could say SO much about it all, but it's something you can only REALLY get if you were there. You know how it is.

It was funny, myself and Karen had a dinner of great pasta and went for a quick drink at a pub afterwards. Her boyfriend Mike (who she met during those 4 months in France) text messaged while we were at the bar, with an inside joke. Good times, the memories definitely live on. We discussed going back to Rennes, but we decided it would have to be a reunion trip. It wouldn't be the same place without the same people there. The people and the place have just been so intertwined in my mind that one without the other would feel not-quite-whole. Hard to explain, but true.


Part 2 - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - 1:25pm

Quote of the day, from the Toronto Star:

"The original score is balls to the walls; it just doesn't stop as the orchestra is sawing away like they're clearing a forest. We're trying to let the film breathe a bit more."

- Andrew McPherson (of the band Eccodek) discusses his new score to Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction classic 'Metropolis'

I'm gladly taking the day to relax and read the paper.


Part 3 - Sunday, September 2, 2007 - 8:30am

Wow, Atlanta is certainly a city of contradictions. Especially in Dragon*Con season. Yesterday we went from the aforementioned "con" (one of the biggest sci-fi / fantasy conventions in the USA, and probably THE best for costuming) to the Atlanta Underground area (which is known for its cheap market by day, and known for its layers of clubs by night). It's impossible to describe the difference between the two extremes, but interesting that everybody worships 'something' in their off-hours. Whether it's the movie "Evil Dead" or the latest rap tune, it's just good to get out there with a few like-minded people to enjoy it.

I'm beginning to think I've over-analyzed my night. Perhaps it's the beverages I was drinking.

Speaking of contradictions, I was talking to a girl at one of the bars we visited (an Irish pub playing ONLY rap music - go figure, it's Atlanta), and she was named "Portia" after the Shakespearean character. She thought her name was ghetto because everyone thinks she was named after the sports car. It's all about your perspective, isn't it?

Where Does the Summer Go?

Once again, it's been far too long since I've thrown my stream-of-consciousness onto this little blog. After a jog this morning (running always gets the thoughts going), I basically realized that summer is nearly over! With work and life and all that, I guess I didn't realize the very obvious.

So there's no better time to start blogging again!

So let's look at the state of the world in terms of entertainment. I'm not talking about which blonde starlet is going to prison this week (I honestly can't keep track). I'm talking music, books, and most importantly (for me): MOVIES!

Books

Actually, we can cross books off the list because I'm so out-of-touch with the recently published that it's appalling. My (literal) pile of "books to read" is so massive that I've had to self-enforce an embargo on buying new books until I pare at least half of the pile down.

The current book I'm taking on: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke. I bought this brick of a book when it was first published (back in '04!) and I think its 782 pages scared me off. Well, I'm 291 pages in and I must admit that I was scared over nothing. It's an incredibly well-written book that flows effortlessly from chapter to chapter. It's all about "English Magic" in the very early 1800's when the Napoleonic Wars raged on between Britain and France. Until 1807 (according to the book) magic was a forgotten art that was much discussed by stuffy gentleman scholars but heaven forbid it should ever be practiced!

All of this changes when a reclusive magician named Mr Norrell starts actually performing magical acts. He becomes a London sensation when he helps with the war effort, despite his anti-social tendencies and his extreme fear of other magicians.

Eventually he does get a pupil in the form of the talented and charming Jonathan Strange. Of course, he turns out to be everything Norrell is not: Strange is a very social person, attracted to the more showy and dangerous types of magic. A rivalry is certainly being set up for the next few hundred pages, and I'm looking forward to seeing how these complex characters progress. This is definitely not a novel for those low on patience as the plot points wander by at a comfortable pace; one review said that this is a book to be "lived in for a few weeks" and I really have to agree! It creates an entire world that I love coming back to again and again.

Music

Okay, I'm going to REALLY cross this one off. Me and Music are having some troubles lately. If I see one more emo, bangs-in-front-of-the-eyes, "guyliner" coated singer, I'm actually going to rip my radio out of the car. Next.

Movies

Even the movie scene has been rough over the past few months! Although, what can I expect? It's summer right? Most major blockbusters were entertaining and action-packed fluff-pieces (Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard and Harry Potter immediately come to mind) while some were just plain disappointing (I'm thinking Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3). The only "summer movie" that really blew me away was The Bourne Ultimatum, a slick, well-executed, and above-all SMART action film.

The good movies are all LONG out of the theatres by now, and just hitting the DVDs by this time of the year. There's a triad of Mexican directors that I'll talk about next time that are taking Hollywood directors to SCHOOL right now in terms of artistic vision in their films. All three of these films just came out on DVD recently and all are amazing. I'm talking about Pan's Labyrinth, Babel, and Children of Men. I don't know what they're putting in the water in Mexico (and I probably don't WANT to know), but apparently if you can survive it, then you're bound to make good movies!

There's a final note that I just have to mention here, as I continue to work for AbbyShot Clothiers and drool over their coats. They now offer what is quite possibly the best-looking leather coat EVER, based on the jacket that Wolverine wears in X-Men 3. Check out the AbbyShot version below!

Very nice! I tried it on and for a few fleeting moments I felt just as rugged and manly as Wolverine. If that's not worth the price tag, then I don't know what is! So if anyone you know needs a sweet leather jacket that just happens to be inspired by Wolverine, then you know what to tell them: check out AbbyShot! There's my shameless plug for today.

I must go and continue my Sunday activities of reading and lazing around. I'll be writing again soon. For real this time!

Mark Makes a Movie for AbbyShot!

I know it's been too long. I know I really should write in here more often. I will.

I had to post this up here because I'm proud. I shot and edited together a video for the release of a brand new AbbyShot coat called the Squall Jacket. Anyone who's played (or seen) Final Fantasy 8 should recognize it! We managed to find a model that looks EXACTLY like the character from the game, it was crazy.

If anything, it was well worth a (rudimentary) video. Hey, I'm still proud of my work! Please watch and let me know what you think. Could this be the start of a new career? Mark as a film director!

A guy can dream, can't he?

December Post

December is always a wonderful month, even though one December is rarely the same as another. This time last year I had just said goodbye to a fleeting time in France, and even now, a full year later, I still treasure that time and miss it intensely. This time last year I was still in University (just about to begin my last term), and now I’m a regular working man in a FAR from regular job that I love. If you’re wondering why I haven’t been blogging much lately, well, I HAVE been blogging. It’s just for work instead. Check it out if you’re interested in the wonderful creations AbbyShot has in store for 2007, it’s called the AbbyShot Clothiers Blog. There are a lot of wonderful plans being made at my work for 2007, so it should certainly be an interesting year on that front. As for me personally, let’s just say that I don’t like to plan too far ahead – we’ll just have to see what the next year brings!

So, back to the month of December.

The first great thing this time around was: NO EXAMS! Distilling half (or more) of your final mark down to a stressed-out two hours never made any sense to me. Plus, I never remember anything I studied once the exam ends, so it’s just kind of a waste for me. Good to be done with that, unless I go completely mad and end up in school again. You never know.

Second bit of goodness this past month: MY BIRTHDAY! It was a laid-back affair held at my house earlier in the month where everyone got pleasantly drunk and hung out. My friend Keith brought on an obsessive streak in some party-goers with a game called “Petals Around the Rose” played with five dice, where you need to figure out a certain pattern in the numbers to (sort of) win. Actually, you just join the elite club of people who managed to figure out the game. But wow, did some people ever get obsessed with this thing! I won’t mention any names. Other than that, the barbecue was lit, lots of food and drink were consumed, guitars were played, darts were thrown (at a dartboard luckily), and everyone seemed to have fun. Good times.

Thirdly, of course, is what everyone enjoys in this last month of the year: CHRISTMAS! Lots of great gifts given and received, great times spent with family and friends, and huge amounts of food eaten that would scare even the hungriest competitive eaters. Except for that Japanese Tsunami guy, he’s crazy. I even have a nice break from work that I’m enjoying as I write this. It feels amazing to do absolutely nothing for a little while. I’ve been staying up late, sleeping in to ungodly hours, doing lots of Sudoku (my parents got me a HUGE book of the puzzles for Christmas), playing a 60’s spy-themed game for the computer called No One Lives Forever that features hilarious random conversations between nameless henchmen, and reading three books at the same time.

Two of the books are by Neil Gaiman of course, an older graphic novel about childhood memories called Mr. Punch and his newest book of short stories called Fragile Things that features, for one, an INCREDIBLE short story melding Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft called “A Study in Emerald” which is generously available online from Neil Gaiman’s website. I’m also re-reading Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting which is familiar to movie fans as a disturbing yet darkly funny story of heroine addicts in Edinburgh. The book is even better than the film, with different characters relaying little vignettes in a strange phonetic Scottish style of writing that is remarkably effective once you get into it. The stories are passionate, dark, yet still humourous, and so personal that it really does feel like each character is whispering it into your ear. This can be unsettling, however, since a few of these guys you would NOT want to meet even on a good day in Edinburgh.

All in all, the Christmas season has been a blast for me, and I hope it’s been great for everyone out there reading these words (insert obligatory joke along the lines of “all five of you” here). I’m wishing everyone all the best in 2007, and my first New Year’s resolution will probably be to write in here more often! Until next time…

Conversation in a Montreal Cab

- I’m trying to remember you now; I didn’t recognize your voice when you called. You were here over the summer, yes?

- Yes I was. I was visiting my girlfriend. You dropped me off at Rue St-Dominique.

- Ah! I remember now! But I pick you up at a hotel this time, you are not broken up I hope?

- No, no. I’m here on business this time. She’s back home in Newfoundland finishing off her studies. She came to Montreal to work just for the summer.

- That’s nice – Hey! Thanks for cutting me off, jerk!

- Some people are just crazy on the roads. I have no idea why, it just happens.

- It does happen. My aunt, her sons moved away to Germany to study not long ago. Her and my uncle got tired of living alone in a big house, so they move to Egypt. They get a nice place, well, not a nice place but they find a place they like. She just moved to Egypt a few months ago. She was out walking and a car hit her and she died. I just found out today, it’s been a tough day.

- Oh my god, I’m so sorry to hear that…

- No, no, it’s okay. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. Her time was up. It’s just strange how the best people always go too soon. She was only 52.

- That’s too young. You’re absolutely right, a lot of good people are gone much too early. Are you from Egypt?

- No, no, I come from Palestine. The West Bank. That is where I am from.

- How long have you been over here?

- Here, you mean Montreal? Four years. But before that it’s a long story. I came to Canada first in 1989 to study. I was in Vancouver. I studied hard and did well, and I got two degrees. But just after I finished, my mother died. My father owned a farm back home and he was all alone. I had to go back to help him, for my family.

- That must have been a difficult decision for you.

- Not really. I have brothers and sisters, yes. But they were all married and had already started their own lives. I was the designated one, it just had to be me that went back.

- Not everyone would have so readily gone back because of family duties, I really respect that.

- Oh it was nothing. It had to be done. It really became clear to me how important family is. I never respected my mother enough, I was in my twenties, you know? But my attitudes changed quickly. And like I said, I wasn’t married. But hopefully the next time I’m talking to you, I will be.

- Really? You and your girlfriend are getting married soon?

- Well, not quite. Have you ever had a blind date? No, wait, it’s not really like that! And not really an arranged marriage. My friends back home really want me to get married. And there are two girls from good families who have not yet found husbands. One is only 21, so that is too young! But the other is 28, and there is an age difference there but it isn’t so bad.

- No, 28 is a good age.

- Yes, so I must meet the families, meet the girls, it’s all very well-supervised but with any luck…

- It should work! You have a better chance at a good relationship that way instead of meeting some random girl in a club.

- Yes! I’m not really big on the night-club thing. It’s like ‘putting on your snake-suit’ I call it.

- It’s fake.

- Yes, exactly, it’s so fake. I guess I could have met a nice girl in University, there were lots of nice people there to meet. Where would I meet someone now, I just drive people around in a cab! University is a great place to meet people.

- That’s true, I met my girlfriend in one of my French classes. Much better that a night-club!

- See, a class. That’s nice. I never really found anyone at University. But maybe it’s for the best. She probably would not have wanted to come back home with me when I had to go back.

- Your life would have been completely different. Sometimes I think everything happens for a reason.

- Yes, I believe so. We’ll see what the future holds. Maybe you’ll call me next year if you’re back in Montreal and I won’t be here anymore! Maybe I’ll be married back home! My niece will probably keep my phone, she’ll tell you where I am.

- I will definitely call you when I’m in Montreal again. Hopefully everything works out for the best.

- I think so. Well, Air Canada is right through this door here. Have a nice trip back to your home.

- Good luck with everything. I hope it all works out.

- Thank you. Good night.

Quick post from Reykjavik

I wasn't sure if I was going to get time for this.

I'm a little sad here on my last day in Reykjavik. I came on a Canadian Trade Mission with AbbyShot and everything went VERY well, the Icelanders we met were so friendly and direct and lovely to deal with; we really couldn't have asked for a better time in a foreign country.

And then last night, the business dealings were all finished! We went to the Blue Lagoon in the evening to chill in the geothermally heated waters and then afterwards a few of the fellas came to my room for pizzas and various types of "beverage".

Then we hit the town in Reykjavik, and it is far FAR livelier than I would have imagined for a country of 300,000! The highlight was definitely chatting and giving my business card to Eli Roth, who's in town filming his newest horror movie, Hostel 2. He assured us that it was going to be the sickest thing ever put on the screen, and I have to believe him! We was a nice guy and didn't mind talking to his fans and the legions of ladies hanging around. Also in the bar: Hyde from That 70's Show! Now that was random.

AbbyShot has a lot of good connections now in Reykjavik, along with one particular ladies boutique called Spaksmannsspjarir that will carry our beautiful yellow Kill Bill Leather Jackets. If there's a place to get noticed, it is right here! It should be a great stepping stone for AbbyShot's expansion around the world.

What a trip. One last walk around this beautiful city waits for me before we have to go.

I think I'll be back soon.

It Always Goes By Too Quickly...

How is THIS going to work? A complicated situation in Alfonso Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien.

It’s a movie about teens who drink, smoke up, and try to have sex with anything that moves. We've seen this all before, right?

The thing is, every frame of Y Tu Mama Tambien is filled with a real melancholy that few films are able to evoke. You can feel that these "glory days" of youth are slipping away forever, as youth tends to do, and no matter how much time you spend trying to hang onto them, the world will continue to move along without you.

The two leads play teenage boys who are charming and charismatic despite their selfish and obnoxious behaviour (amazing performances by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna), as they con an attractive older lady (Ana Lopez Mercado) into joining them on a road trip to a beach that they invent just to impress her. Of course, male hormones dictate that along the way the two boys are going to try to have sex with her. Undoubtedly, the older and wiser woman will somehow turn the tables on these two arrogant specimens.

However, the film transcends the “teen road movie” genre by taking a huge step back from its own subject matter. The movie runs along normally, with two people conversing back and forth for example, when all of a sudden the soundtrack cuts off and everything goes silent. An omniscient narrator then cuts in to describe, calmly and logically, the histories of certain characters, previous events that have happened at the Mexican locations seen in the film, or even matter-of-fact glimpses into the future of certain characters or situations. This narration, combined with a camera that sometimes lifts up with a mind of its own to roam around a particular setting, give the actual main plot of the film a feeling of triviality and insignificance compared to the innumerable stories in the country of Mexico where it all takes place.

Don’t let the unabashedly explicit sex turn you off (for some it may even be a selling point!), Y Tu Mama Tambien is a moving look at friendships that can never last, road trips that you never want to end, and good times that slip through your fingers the more tightly you try to hold on.

The Fall TV Season Part 2: LOST all over again...

Jack (Matthew Fox) is locked away while newly-introduced Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) looks on in the Season 3 premiere of LOST.

The third season of LOST has begun in much the same way as the second: with a tantalizing look into a world that we're dying to understand. The massive question hanging over Season 1 was "What is in the hatch?", a question adressed enigmatically in the Season 2 opener with a look into the daily life of the man who was living down there. Season 3 opened in much the same way, with the nagging question of "Who are these Others?" adressed this time with the daily life of a sad homemaker in a seemingly normal suburban neighborhood whose book club meeting gets interrupted by the crash of Oceanic Flight 815. Normal suburban neighborhood this is NOT, it's how the others live: the camera pulls back to reveal a small patch of suburbia on the otherwise savage Island we've shared with the castaways these past two seasons.

A more intriguing opening teaser you'd be hard-pressed to find this season, saying so little and yet so much. The Others live with all the comforts of urban civilization, including CD players, electric ovens, and plumbing. Yet whenever we have seen them in the previous season they have disguised themselves as a ragged, worn-down tribe, complete with fake beards. They seem peaceful and intellectual; as we open the "homemaker", Juliet, is preparing for a book-club meeting with her neighbors. Yet we have seen them kidnap people viciously and know they are quite well-versed in fighting and survival skills. Once everyone runs out of their houses to see the plane breaking apart overhead, the man known (up to this point) as "Henry Gale" is quick to order people to the crash sites; they are obviously no strangers to hapless travellers landing on their shores. And creepiest of all is the fact that through the crowds of people coming out of their "suburban" homes, not one child is to be seen. Any long-time watcher of the show knows how the Others are obsessed with kidnapping children, for reasons unknown.

"For reasons unknown" describes a lot of the plot points on LOST actually, and the only saving grace is that, for me at least, I feel like the writers know where this is going. Whenever a dangling plot thread rears its ugly head, I feel pretty confident that it will be resolved, eventually. A lot has been written in blogs and otherwise saying basically that TV is now the best visual medium for telling rich, meaningful, and original stories, and I believe it. Two or three hours in the cinema versus the 20-plus hours in a TV season, it's easy to see how formerly-lowly television can dig deeper into characters and settings than the movie-screen. A big sea-change in television writing is here: audiences are now assumed to have attention spans and everything isn't tied up with a nice moral every week. The cinema, meanwhile, keeps churning out remake after remake (come on, Scorsese's new film is a remake of an Asian movie?!?), and few movies lately have connected the visual to the emotional like the classics of the past.

So let's hope that the sure-hand of the LOST writers continues to lead us through Season 3, because there is a lot of potential waiting here! Jack, Kate, and Sawyer had been taken prisoner by the Others at the end of Season 2, and it is still unclear as to why those three were chosen. One very big possibility is that they are the most prominent love triangle on the island; when emotions are involved people can be made to do VERY irrational things. The Others are certainly into manipulation, and there really is no greater threat than that of pain unto someone you love.

Doctor Jack is being held in a glass cell, looked over by Juliet and stubbornly refusing to eat or do much of anything. Kate is forced to shed her jeans and t-shirt look for a slightly demeaning flowery dress, and has a creepy breakfast on the beach with "Henry Gale" in a classic dinner with the enemy scene. And poor Sawyer is trapped in a cage not unlike that of a lab rat where, if you push the food button too many times, a huge jolt of electricity will throw you across the cage. Eventually Sawyer does figure out this food conundrum and in one of the funniest scenes of the premiere he earns himself some feed and a fish biscuit.

What are the Others trying to do here? Is it behavioural testing? Cult indoctrination? Sadistic torture? Are the Others the remnants of the Dharma Initiative, a group of idealistic 70's scientists who, bent on improving the world, built an array of research stations across the island? There is so much history here that we need to trust that the writers will give it to us, someday. Patience is already wearing thin for some viewers, it seems, who believe that the writers are just pulling things out of the air as they go along. Perhaps the complete mythology-meltdown of the later seasons of The X-Files still scares these people to this day. I think the beauty of LOST is that the background mythology is only one part of the tapestry of the show; the characters and their development are really what make the show work so well. The slower pace of the storytelling allows us to dig deeply into the daily life on the Island while flashbacks illuminate the lives of our beloved characters and tie into their current trials in interesting ways.

All I know is that The Powers That Be behind LOST have hooked me in for another season with these prominent questions about the Others. But even without the riddles, after two whole seasons viewers have bonded with the castaways on the Island. We care about these people and we want them to survive. Peeling back the layers of these mysteries should help them do just that. That's really where the balance of mythology and character-drama should be, and I hope that LOST can walk that tightrope for a while longer.

The Fall TV Season Part 1, or: What New Show is Worth my Precious Time?

"Look, it's me in a comic-book I found when I teleported to New York City! Hey, why don't you believe me?" Masi Oka from Heroes on NBC.

Yes, it's that time of year again: the days are getting shorter, the leaves are getting ready to let go of the trees, and TV networks are throwing shows at us like each one is the second coming of MASH. Yes, I'm sure Brothers and Sisters is great, and surely Kidnapped is gripping... no wait, that's been cancelled already. Much like the leaves, a few "new" shows are dropping off already. And some arrive pretty old and tired to begin with. So the question I'm always faced with at this time of year is: how will I spend my limited time in front of the TV?

See, some shows have already earned my trust. We've already got a good relationship going, had a few good times in the past, and they've left me on a good note before they went off for the summer. These shows have proven themselves already, and I'll be catching up with them again. I'll also be writing about their new season premieres soon, I'm talking about LOST and Battlestar Galactica here people, and their season openers have both been amazing in different ways. But more about that later!

Now we must look at the new crop. The mysterious strangers that give you tantalizing glimpses into their potential, promising you everything under the high heavens, begging you to watch. It's kind of intimidating, starting a new relationship with a show. You've got to be ready to make the leap, to invest yourself fully in this new world it's creating in front of you. It really does take a lot to get me to jump into a new show from the beginning: it has to be intriguing, it has to be different, it has to jump out at me somehow. LOST managed to hook me two years ago; something new has done it this year when I was least expecting it.

The best new show of the 2006 TV season is Heroes on NBC, Monday nights. Two episodes in and I am completely hooked already. Right off the bat many have compared it to LOST with its large, interconnected cast of multicultural characters and deep sci-fi style storyline. Others have compared it to Unbreakable because of its serious treatment of seemingly normal human beings coming to terms with the fact that they are, in fact, superhuman. The comparison to Unbreakable is justified here, even though I didn't enjoy that movie. It took itself FAR too seriously, while Heroes finds the perfect balance for me.

It is a show about a diverse group of seemingly normal people discovering that they have superpowers. An average-joe male nurse is convinced that he can fly. A drug-addicted painter creates images of the future. A beat cop discovers that he can read people's minds. A pretty cheerleader throws herself from a bridge in front of her friend's video camera to prove that she is... UNBREAKABLE! Sorry, I had to.

So some are shocked, some are scared, some are downright disturbed. And one in particular is REALLY freaking excited. He is Hiro, one of the best characters to hit TV screens in a long time. He is an excitable Japanese cubicle-dweller who discovers (somehow) that he can bend the space/time continuum. As we meet him, he's staring down the clock in his cubicle to try and make it go backwards. Once he manages to do it, he proceeds to run around his office, arms flailing, screaming and yelling. He is continually telling his friend about how he will use his powers for good and not evil, and wonders if he should use a secret identity. He is honestly a joy to watch, and works as a complete antithesis to the usual burdened and tortured superhero: this guy knows the comics, embraces the "destiny" of a superhero, and runs towards the challenges before him with open arms. Masi Oka does a wonderful job with this character, pulling off a complete innocence that is so natural, funny, and above-all, watchable.

Not that Heroes is all fun and games mind you! In the second episode we are introduced to the gruesome works of a super-powered serial killer who likes to cut open the heads of his victims. And there is already the looming image of a nuclear detonation in New York City that our heroes will have to contend with. And those cliff-hanger endings! The show is only two episodes in and it's already becoming known for throwing some incredible twists into the last few minutes of the show. Episode 2 in particular blew me away with a much closer view of that "looming" nuclear blast than I was expecting. The real beauty here is that these twists don't feel tacked-on and stay an organic part of the story, just ramping it up a notch at the end of the episode like good TV is supposed to do.

This is certainly going to be an interesting series, and I was glad to hear that the show has already been picked up for a full season. Wow, smart TV executives, who would have thought? The true appeal of Heroes is that it seems to have found the balance between character-driven stories and a deeper over-arching plot, the same balance that I hope LOST will find again in its third season. But that is a subject for the next time! Until then, I will be keeping the streets safe with my own super-power, the ability to flare my nostrils on command! It impresses my girlfriend anyway, although I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm NOT the only one who can do it. Anyone out there have any super-powers to tell of? Be sure to let me know, you never know when they might come in handy...

Musings from Dragon*Con 2006

Wow, I don't even know how to begin to describe Dragon*Con.

It's a convention that's all about the people you meet, so I guess I'll start there.

Every person you will meet at Dragon*Con is interesting. Normal, boring, run-of-the-mill people will not wait the entire year for the one weekend where they can pack into sweaty hotels in Atlanta to dress like their movie hero of choice. Let's say, Jack Sparrow. Or Boba Fett. Or a Stormtropper with a hawaiian shirt on. There isn't time enough in the world to see all the costumes that pass through the halls of Dragon*Con, and I never stopped marvelling at the creativity of it all.

But I wasn't in Atlanta to gape around looking at costumes (as exciting as that is), I was on the job man! All business, no time for fun whatsoever. Not one smile was to be seen on anyone from the AbbyShot team the WHOLE weekend. Of course, I'm only joking, if there's one thing Newfoundlanders know how to do, it's how to do a good job while having the best possible time doing it! We worked hard in our lovely (if a bit small) booth each day, meeting lots of interesting people who stopped in from places all over the United States. Many were very pleased to see the astounding movie-inspired AbbyShot coats in person instead of just on the net. And those who hadn't heard of AbbyShot before left with a brochure and a smile on their face. And if my super-human sales skills were sharp enough for certain stretches of the day, some people even bought coats off me! Yes, yes, team effort and all that, but this is my blog so: I sold some coats! *ahem* I mean, team effort, team effort. Seriously though, everyone did really well for the FIRST time AbbyShot ever sold coats at a con.

Although the booth did dominate our time at Dragon*Con, when we were out of the Exhbitor's Hall these ridiculous stores of energy came out of lord-knows-where to let us all take in lots of fun/hilarious/exciting stuff in the evenings. On our first night there, for example, we went to a lovely Japanese restaurant not far from the Con where the chefs would come out and fry up your food right in front of your eyes while spinning and throwing their utensils in complicated-looking ways.

One of the coolest things happened Saturday morning: the parade! Yes, Dragon*Con has a full-scale fan parade every year where different groups dress up according to the theme of their choice and march through the streets of Atlanta. The streets of Atlanta obviously fill with onlookers who can't believe what it is they're seeing. Myself and my coworker Justin went out bravely on Saturday morning, decked out in our AbbyShot Mad Max jackets, to join a Mad Max fan group for the parade. We went to the park where the parade was supposed to start and we were blown away. The amount of people in costume, along with the detail of the costumes and the variety of inspirations, was just astounding. The amount of people in full Stormtrooper gear on a hot Atlanta morning still boggles my mind. And those guys who recreated the Ghostbusters car! And the group who covered pretty much the entire cast of Monty Python and the Holy Grail complete with monk holding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. And the list goes on. But we were in for a treat when we finally found the Mad Max group hanging out like badasses WAY in the back of the procession. A huge Road Warrior fan named David had done up an old truck he apparently got for 200 bucks into a rolling symbol of anarchy. There were skulls painted on it, a gun mounted on the back, and two bodies attached to sticks on the front bumper. And then he provided a bunch of people with armour made partially out of old car scraps. This was FINE work, and I was proud to be marching with this crazy bunch! Once the truck's engine finally started (after a few good old college tries) and we were rolling down the street, with David in full bad-guy mode making fun of puny hybrid cars, we already knew we'd never forget this Dragon*Con.

Saturday night was the Browncoat Shindig (a "Browncoat" being a fan of Firefly/Serenity) and it was so fun it pretty much graduated past shindig-level to become a hootenanny. Definitely better than a hoedown. Anyway, AbbyShot had helped a group of entreprising Browncoats to promote their documentary about Firefly fandom (called Done the Impossible) so we were already a pretty popular crew in this particular circle. That and we make a kickass leather replica of the browncoat. So one of the girls, inspired by the Celtic music that was playing, decided to teach Brian, one of the makers of the documentary, how to play the spoons like a Newfoundlander. Much to the general mirth of the rest of the team, I was hit on by a girl who thought she was Firefly's resident tough guy, Jayne Cobb; she was drinking vodka like it was water, she demanded to try on the leather Mad Max jacket I was wearing, and then stuck her wool cap on top of my head. I just didn't want to get hurt really. I'm sure she's a nice girl though! Many laughs were had in the room later about how this girl could have eaten me for breakfast. It's funny because it's true.

Sunday night was even more fun for one obvious reason: Karaoke! It's not just for Asian businessmen anymore folks! And this was karaoke at a sci-fi/fantasy convention at that, so the weirdest mixture of songs I had ever heard in one night were soon running through the room. Everything was represented, from AC/DC to Johnny Cash to Nine Inch Nails to 90's white guy rap (House of Pain and Vanilla Ice Ice baby!). Somehow, the joy (huh?) of hearing Vanilla Ice at a Dragon*Con karaoke night even got me up in front of the whole crowd of people to do my own white-guy version of the running-man. Don't ask me why, it just kind of... happened. The AbbyShot ladies tried to one-up me by singing an awesome rendition of the Dixie Chicks' Goodbye Earl that brought the house down, but I wasn't finished my night of embarassing dance moves yet. No, eventually the last song came along, and some genius (I mean that) decided to sing the David Lee Roth version of Just a Gigolo. Myself and two of the friendliest Browncoats you'll ever meet (John and Joe!) ended up in the front of the room doing some strange "Jazz Hands" type move to the classy beat. Oh, and I can't forget the finger-snapping and leg-kicking (and I do mean those in terms of dancing and not violent fighting, although the casual observer would probably have been unsure of what exactly we were doing). If there weren't any pictures to prove it, it's the kind of night I would have thought was too fun to actually have happened.

There was so much crammed into this one long weekend that it would take another long weekend to tell it all (sneaking into the pool anyone? Glass elevator races?) and I'm only just getting my sleep schedule back to normal after being home a week. It was madness, but in the best possible way: everyone at Dragon*Con drops their pretensions and their everyday defenses to celebrate those obsessions that, for the rest of the year, they probably hesitate to admit. I guess it just feels good to wear your heart on your sleeve sometimes.

Hopefully I'll be back again someday.

Getting ready to go...

Well, it's off to Dragon*Con in a few hours with the AbbyShot crew. I've had my baptism by fire by getting ready for this big convention, and now I really feel like I'm becoming a part of the team. I'm sure the upcoming bonding experience of many, many people crammed into one hotel room will further strengthen our resolve. I honestly can't wait; selling coats from a booth to the diehard fans at Dragon*Con will be quite the adventure.

I can't believe we're leaving soon. I can't believe I'll be walking around Atlanta, Georgia in a perfect replica of Mad Max's original jacket. I can't believe how lucky I am to be working for a company like this.

I'm running over the mental checklists in my head, printing off every possible map or document that I might possibly have to glance at, and basically just keeping myself up when I should have been asleep LONG ago. As always, I'll be taking my camera with me to get it all in pictures. Bring on Atlanta, bring on Dragon*Con!

I'll be back September 6th...

It's an update! Don't worry, the pictures will be explained...

Treadmills have never been this cool before.

Okay, so it's been a little over a week since the last update. Many apologies to my rabid fanbase of... well... at least three people that have left comments! Thanks so much for that, I will be leaving comments on your blogs soon, once I think of some witty stuff to say. It's interesting too that my first comments haven't even come from here in Canada; I've got two from France so far and one from the Netherlands. I'm glad to see that my plan of slowly taking over the world is working well so far.

So what have I been up to since the last entry? It's been busy! Adjusting to my new job has been taking up a good bit of time lately, but I have to say that I'm REALLY enjoying it so far. It's the kind of job where I'm excited to go to work every morning, and believe me, I know how rare that feeling is! However, anyone fearing that I may become a stuffy, holier-than-thou business man (as my friend Mélanie may have mentioned), you can now rest easy. AbbyShot is a very relaxed place to work, the people are super-nice, and it's just a friendly atmosphere overall.

And I'm not just saying all this lovely stuff because they're taking me to Dragon*Con! Yes, as part of my marketing duties I get to be one of the AbbyShot contingent to hit one of the biggest sci-fi/fantasy conventions in the world, held every year in Atlanta, Georgia. I scrolled through the guest list for this event alone and I had a little geek-out moment. Number one person that caught my eye: James Callis from Battlestar Galactica. Before you go asking me why, it's just that this British actor's performance as Gaius Baltar is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a LONG while on television. His ascent from scared, anxious traitor at the beginning of the series to his current slick and charming political animal has to be seen to be believed. Beyond that, they've got people from Firefly/Serenity/Serenifly, Sulu and Tasha Yar from various Star Treks, and wait, I almost forgot Billy West, the voice of Fry and more importantly ZOIDBERG from Futurama!

Alright, I probably should bring this geek moment to a close. Right after I say that equally as exciting as the 'special guests', I am stoked to be able to go down to represent AbbyShot: meet lots of current (and hopefully future) customers, talk to lots of movie fans, discuss the goings-on with fellow exhibitors, see all the wild and crazy costumes that people will be dreaming up for this show, the list goes on. I'm sure it's going to be an amazing experience. I will certainly keep track of my thoughts and impressions about Dragon*Con to post up on this blog. I owe it to my (at least) three readers!

Now, before I head to bed there are two obvious things to mention: what the heck are these two pictures I've decided to randomly slap in this post?

Good question. The first is from one of the coolest things I've seen on YouTube in a while; it's a music video for a great song by a band called "Ok Go". But you don't want to watch this video to listen to the song (as good as it is). I don't know how long it took to choreograph this thing, but it's craziness! Seriously, you need to stop what you're doing and watch this.

And to end off, a picture from last weekend. Myself and a few friends took a camping trip to a beautiful little area of Newfoundland called Lamanche. Even though it rained and then rained some more on Saturday evening, we toughed it out, ate lots of food, and were treated with a beautiful day on Sunday for our troubles. This is the kind of picture that reminds me of why I love Newfoundland so much (as if I could ever forget). Until next time...

Lamanche, Newfoundland and Labrador, August 13 2006

Intense Job Hunt Comes to an End!

It's a celebration! Mark's got a job!

It's Sunday afternoon now and I'm in the backyard basking in a surprisingly warm and sunny day. My legs are still throbbing from an all-day Ultimate Frisbee tournament that rolled on yesterday through a mainly rainy and wet day. But it was still a great time! My randomly-picked (but amazingly fun) team went all the way to the finals, through six hard-fought but exciting 45-minute games. By the last game my legs felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each. We lost in a true battle of a final game, but each member of our second place team still got to drink a shot of Jagermeister from the toilet-shaped trophy. After a day of running around it was even less appetizing than it sounds, believe me. So I'm suffering today from aching muscles in just about every part of my body except for possibly my eyebrows, but I don't care! And there is one good reason for this:

I managed to get a job!

And not just any job either, this is an amazing, interesting, heart-stoppingly exciting job. Especially for me. It's with a company called AbbyShot Clothiers and they make incredibly detailed, screen-accurate clothing based on cult movies, TV Shows, and Anime. Say you wanted Silent Bob's coat from Clerks 2 or Neo's jacket from The Matrix. They can custom-make it for you, right here from their offices in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland. Just from meeting with them a few times they have already made me a huge believer in their company, and hopefully I can help them out over the next year. Finally my dorky movie-obsessed tendecies have come in handy in a job situation!

And speaking of movie obsession, I went to see Clerks 2 last night. I'm a big fan of Kevin Smith's films; he is a movie geek who makes hilarious films for other movie geeks. The bigger the movie geek you are, the more you'll get out of his stuff. And Clerks 2 is no exception: there is some insanely funny stuff in here about The Lord of the Rings, Transformers, Star Wars (of course), and many subtle nods towards the original Clerks. Obviously, being a Kevin Smith film, there is also the requisite raunchy humour all fans expect with a few jokes based on obscure racial slurs, a poor dork named Elias who has a VERY strange reason for not having sex with his girlfriend, and a finale that revolves around an erotic donkey show. Despite all this, the whole piece still has an honest voice about relationships and the important turning points in our lives, and all the characters end up being people we still care about in the end. I don't care if Kevin Smith went back on his "promises" in returning to these characters again because the movie is one of the funniest I've seen in ages. Hopefully Mr. Smith can return to the New Jersey we all know and love a few more times if it stays this fresh and honest.

Strange and Wonderful Weekend...

Everything that's worth doing in St. John's begins on (or around) George Street.

Friday night at the Republic. It started out as a few rounds of drinks between our Ultimate Frisbee team to celebrate our friend Dave's birthday. Yes I play Ultimate Frisbee and it is a damn fine sport! Anyway, between conversations about TV shows, music, and Internet videos that are probably better off forgotten (except for Terry Tate: Office Linebacker, that one gets me every time), it became increasingly clear that I wasn't going to get home by 1am as I had so optimistically planned. I even took my car, just so I could fool myself into thinking I was going to drive home early.

By 4:30am myself and nine other Ultimate freaks were chasing a glowing frisbee around Larch Park. No, there were no drugs involved; this frisbee actually DID have red glowing lights in it. I swear! It was probably the most fun I've had while still sober, and my level of play was better than in any other game all year. Then again, everyone else was drunk. I will proceed to get down off my high horse. What a great time though, someone had a camera-phone so hopefully there'll be pictures floating around soon.

The rest of the weekend also seemed to spring from that initial Friday at the Republic. Sitting around in the pub, we were all invited to a house party by another one of our Ultimate frisbee teammates who also happens to be the frontman for the best new band on the local music scene, Hey Rosetta! And yes, the exclamation point (!!!) is always required. Talented and eclectic frisbee team we have, indeed.

So Saturday night I ended up at the house party where I saw lots of people I expected to see and even MORE that I didn't. But therein lies the fun of house parties in St. John's. Well, that and confounding a random drunk guy by busting out a reference to James Joyce's wife. But once again, confounding a drunk guy is not the pinnacle of worldly achievement, so I will once again move on! The party shifted into the basement eventually, and an impromptu jam session broke out with a few of the guys from Hey Rosetta! alternating through a few different instruments for a laugh.

Cut to Sunday night, and I was standing with a huge crowd on George Street watching Hey Rosetta! rocking out from the outdoor stage. A bit of alcohol was flowing through my system by now and their powerful music and poignant lyrics sounded more epic than ever, floating up through the open air and into every closely packed pub on the street. The energy on the street seems to rise up through the cobblestones and infect everyone adventurous enough to join in the revelry. You can meet everyone you know on a single night of the George Street Fest, yet you still feel close to those strangers that are standing like yourself, wrapped in the wondrous enjoyment of... wait. This is the alcohol talking. Let's be realistic here and say it was a fine night with great people.

The second act was Matt Mays and El Torpedo, they're a solid rock band, they love Newfoundland, and they are definitely not new to the street. What happened halfway through their set, however, drove every lucky audience member absolutely wild and is now forever engraved into George Street legend.

Gazeebow Unit came out of nowhere to perform a song.

Now, for anyone not familiar, Gazeebow Unit are a hilarious Newfoundland rap posse who hail from Airport Heights. They are as elusive as the Yeti, and are learned about only by rumour and hearsay. I hear, for example, that they're still in High School and are not actually the wife-beater-wearing fake rappers that they pretend to be and are only making fun of this type of person that we Newfoundlanders for some reason call a skeet.

Whoever/whatever they are, they are HILARIOUS and got the whole street pumping with their much-talked-about song Ski-Doos, Ski-Doos, Trikes, and Bikes. Apparently those are the recreational activities enjoyed in the local area of Airport Heights. Oh, and also, at da gazeebow, dey likes ta fight. You just have to click on the link and listen to the song.

Amazing weekend, amazingly long-winded wrap-up by me! But here it is, recorded for posterity. And as my lovely friend who shares the name of James Joyce's wife told me: "Posterity is a good reason." Works for me.

Oh noooo!!! Spellcheck everything people.

Sony's new PS3 controller?!? Something just doesn't seem right...

I never thought I'd feel bad for mega-corporation Sony. But first it's the angry (yet hilarious) Sony fanboy going wild on a radio talk-show.

And now this. The picture is apparently real, coming from an actual Playstation 3 model at a recent videogame expo. All I can say is OUCH...

Favourite Movies, Part 3: Love the Sin, Love the Sinners

Former cop Hartigan (Bruce Willis) in the bar with a very grown up Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) in Sin City

In keeping with the film noir theme of my previous posts, I’ll dive right in: Sin City is a movie that instantly blew me away. Not even halfway through the first act I was ready to sign up for the fan club. Sin City is not only a perfect page-to-screen adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novels, it is film noir taken to dizzying, larger-than-life heights. The men of this movie are not hard-drinking, cynical, tough-talking anti-heroes just like the protagonists of any classic film noir, they are film noir anti-heroes raised to the purest god-like form. When Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe goes to bed at night, this is who he dreams he could be. Archetypal heroes face off against sickening villains in mêlées that defy gravity and reason, but still remain rooted somehow in a gritty logic that controls the Sin City universe.

Mickey Rourke’s built-like-a tank tough guy Marv can bust down doors, take more than a few bullets, and get hit by a car more than once and still get up a dust himself off, but in Sin City you take one look at the imposing fella and you believe he can handle just about any pain. Clive Owen’s slick Dwight is certainly not built like Marv, but he’s got a cat-like agility (along with at least nine lives) that make you believe that he can jump out of his girlfriend’s four-story (at least!) apartment window only to execute a perfect landing on the ground below. And my personal favourite is Bruce Willis in the role of Hartigan, quite possibly the only good cop in Sin City, who takes more than one bullet from his crooked partner only to be brought back from the brink of death to be tortured some more. These three can die, absolutely, but only when they’re good and ready.

Sure, no human being could survive HALF the punishment these men go through in the course of the movie, but that is missing the point. These are the film noir anti-heroes of dreams of fantasies; now thanks to Robert Rodriguez they have now broken out of the frames of comic panels and onto a completely new medium. Technology has finally come to the point where film noir can follow the rules of comics: if it looks cool and raises that thrilled feeling in your gut, then it works!

The three men inhabiting the three stories of Sin City are all driven forward by a classic quest: to protect the women they love. Marv is trying to avenge the death of a hooker with a heart of gold, appropriately named Goldie (Jaime King), and is doing it the only way he knows how: beating lots of people up. Dwight is trying to protect the still-breathing hooker that he loves, Gail (Rosario Dawson), who may not be breathing for long after her lady friends accidentally kill a cop. Finally, Hartigan is trying to keep a young stripper, Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), who he saved from a serial rapist years ago, out of the clutches of this same vengeful (now deformed and yellow) rapist.

Yes, these women are all beautiful and either strippers or ladies-of-the-night. But these are the ideal women that the heroes of Sin City will kill for and sometimes even die for. These women make them feel like more than just thugs blowing things up, spitting out monologues, and generally leaving a wake of destruction wherever they go. To protect these women drives these men to self-sacrifice: they put the burden on themselves so the women can remain (somewhat) safe, or in Marv’s case, so revenge can be exacted. In Sin City, the only victory comes after a lot of pain, and in the logic of the world Frank Miller created this makes perfect sense.

Of special note is the amazing performance of Elijah Wood! Who knew that guy could go from Frodo Baggins to something as creepy as the Bible-reading cannibal, Kevin? All I know is that I can’t wait for Sin City 2.

Favourite Movies, Part 2: Off the Record, On the QT, and Very Hush-Hush

Bud White (Russell Crowe) holds back the inquisitive Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) in Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential

L.A. Confidential is a movie that lives and breathes. Starting from the credit sequence, Danny DeVito's sleazy Hollywood tabloid reporter gives us a voice-over knocking down the "wholesome" image of 1950's California to show us a world of gangs, drugs, sex, and a whole host of other illicit activities. Illicit activities that are his bread and butter, as owner/head writer/photographer for the infamous ‘Hush-Hush’ magazine. The Mickey Cohen gang rules the town, but is quickly losing its strangle-hold over L.A.’s streets as its top members are being assassinated one by one by mysterious shooters. With Mickey Cohen’s crew decisively pushed out, the question then becomes: who will take their place?

A disparate band of cops have this problem to deal with, along with a host of others, on a sleepy Christmas that will take no time to heat up. The three main players are Bud White (Russell Crowe), a burly grunt of a cop who is known for his especially vicious behaviour when protecting women, Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), a slick celebrity cop who acts as police counsel for the Dragnet-styled black-and-white show “Badge of Honor”, and finally Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), a political animal who would do anything to move up in the ranks but who, unfortunately, looks a little too much like an accountant for some to fully trust as a cop.

The beauty of the movie lies in the differences between these characters. They all start off following completely different tangents, and have no particular fondness or respect for each other. They feel like real people, not guys stuck in a cop movie. Seeing how each of these different men face similar challenges or talk to the same people with wildly different approaches and results gives the story a multi-layered effect for one of the most cohesive “webs of intrigue” in the movies. Cop killings, hookers surgically made to look like movie-stars, celebrity arrests, kidnappings, and dirty politicians tie together into one nefarious scheme, only to end in one of the most exciting, vicious shootouts ever put to film. The plot moves briskly, but the film is always about the characters and how they deal with their world. Of particular mention (apart from the three amazing leads) are Kim Basinger in the role of the hooker who finds the humanity in the gruff Bud White, David Strathairn in the steely role of a rich magnate who owns half of L.A. (along with the highest-priced hookers in town), and James Cromwell who plays the fatherly police captain who seems to get a little too zealous in his fight against crime.

This is a movie of secrets and those who desire more than anything to get to the bottom of a case, no matter where it might lead. “Rolo Tomasi” is a name that encapsulates this drive to solve the case at any cost. Ed Exley’s father was a policeman, shot dead by a purse-snatching thug who was never caught. No one even knew who the killer was. Exley gives him the name Rolo Tomasi just to give him a bit of personality. His entire life was then devoted to getting to the truth and catching those guys who think they can get away with their crimes. If you share any bit of Exley’s drive and ambition, then Rolo Tomasi is here to be found.

Favourite Movies, Part 1: Just Don't Ask Why It's Called Brazil

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) in a bit of a bind in Terry Gilliam's Brazil

Terry Gilliam's movies, to start out simply enough, are definitely not for everyone. All of his works are not confined by the normal constraints of movie storytelling, say, logic, rationality, and reason. Watching a Gilliam film is more like opening the lid on top of the man's head (much like one of his funky Monty Python cartoons) to see what's inside. Gilliam worked on his film Brazil in 1984, and originally worked under the title of 1984 & 1/2 as a simultaneous tribute to George Orwell and Federico Fellini. In the year 1984 it's sure that the totalitarian planet of Orwell's book was on the minds of many people; many were surely wondering how close the world was coming to the bleak, paranoid, government-controlled future described by the British author.

Gilliam was certainly among those questioning the state of the world, and Brazil became his personal take on Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four mixed in with Gilliam's own recurring theme of the importance of dreams in human life. The film's protagonist is a meek, mild-mannered government official named Sam Lowry (played brilliantly by Jonathan Pryce) who is working a dead-end job in a dead-end department, working under a brain-dead boss. But as it turns out, that is just the way he likes it. You see, in this world the government is everywhere, watching everyone; as ubiquitous as the ducts that run through every confined living-space in the film. To not get noticed is a safe way for Sam to live out his humdrum life, his only solace being in his adventurous, gravity-defying dreams. Yes, in his dreams he's a flying warrior, saving a fair maiden from the perils of a fantasy world. However, once Sam sees this fair maiden in the flesh on a normal day at the office, dreams and reality start to overlap and the world starts crashing around our poor hero's head.

This is a film noir world of constant paranoia, forever under threat by unknown terrorists, and the government takes extreme measures to keep the public "safe". Citizens flagged as terrorists can be arrested at any time and held without trial, until the imposing Department of Information Retrieval gets what they want from the suspect. The driving force of the movie's plot is a mistaken arrest that happens at the very beginning of the film, when a bored government employee squashes a bug which then falls into the gears of a printing machine, changing the name on an arrest warrant from "Tuttle" to "Buttle". One letter makes all the difference however, since a normal family man has his home busted into by stormtroopers on Christmas Eve. He is wrapped up in a strange canvas straight-jacket while his wife and kids are left screaming in horror. In one of the film's most darkly comic moments, a calm, stereotypically British inspector trots in and shoves a form to be signed into the hands of the frantic wife. He points at the places for her to sign, then declares officially "Here is the receipt for your husband! And here is my receipt for your receipt." The first of many stabs at a stifling bureaucratic system that Gilliam obviously abhors.

The movie continues to show the ridiculous nature of this red-tape world, while also showing the inspiring signs of rebellion against the system. Sam Lowry gets dragged indirectly into the "Buttle-Tuttle" debacle through both his dream woman who happened to live above the wrongfully arrested man, and also the rogue heating inspector Harry Tuttle who swoops in like Spider-Man when he hears of a heating problem that the government is taking too long to fix in Sam's apartment.

Did I mention that the movie is complicated? That there are almost a dozen interesting things going on in every frame? That the humour is (for the most part) pitch black? That dreams and reality overlap to a level (especially near the end) that may drive some viewers crazy? But it all comes down to a perfect bittersweet ending that brings the battle between bleak reality and incredible dreams to a sensible conclusion. It's far from an upbeat ending, and Gilliam had to battle with the studio for quite some time to even get his movie released at all (as documented in the excellent Criterion Edition DVD's extras).

Brazil is not quite a perfect movie: the dream sequences sometimes drag on a bit too long, a few plot points are conveniently brushed aside, and the relationship between Sam and his dream woman seems a little unnatural in its development. This movie, however, is all about the experience: the little moments that accentuate the strange nature of its world. The moment where Sam sneaks past a security team practicing their Christmas Carols. When a man belatedly tries to get off a public tram and get his arms slammed in the doors. When Sam gets promoted to a closet-sized office and has to wage a tugging war over the desk he shares with the man next door. It all comes together into a slightly disturbing but very effective indictment of a bureaucratic world seasoned with Gilliam's dreamlike sensibilities. And I won't even get into the parallels with the current state of the world, because that could probably fill a whole book. Overall, Brazil is a great trip that you'll want to take when you're in the mood for something different.