when you were a kid and you watched the landspeeder scene of return of the jedi, did you ever re-imagine it as a hoverbike battle between sexy skintight-suit wearing clones and ex-navy seal corporate mercenaries in a futuristic downtown los angeles? well you should see ‘the island’ anyway, cause michael bay did re-imagine that scene. and it is glorious.

‘the island’ is actually a really fascinating blockbuster movie, even with all dem purdy explosions. lots of cloning issues raised, and what it is to be a human, and how medicalized and routinized we already are, and social engineering, and the lottery, and the price of stem cell research and…

and then there are the explosions and the running and the car chases. all wrapped up in a nice little package. im surprised it tanked at the box office, its got something for everyone.

those are just a few good reasons to see the movie, the real reason is

[basically this movie just renewed my scarlet johansson obsession and i wanted to share, i’ll return to my regular self obsessed content now]

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jonny’s really coming thru with the old-school budget camera pics. the plus side of non-digital is you dont do the whole ‘look at the screen to see how it turned out’ thing, but you gotta wait till they come back for the wonderful surprise, or in this case, wait till your friend emails them out. way to be a buddy.

for reasons beyond my comprehension, my old friend aaron from high school got married this weekend. apparently people still get married in their early twenties these days, as if it was still 1950. at least it wasn’t arranged. the upside was, of course, those 2 magical words: open bar. and to set the scene, this is my very religious friend who just graduated school in the bad ol U S of A.

eight of us loyal high school friends made the journey down to grand rapids michigan. laughing (politely and quietly to ourselves of course) through the ceremony, the reception started immediately after. we were the first there, and the first at the bar. needless to say, we would also be the last.

by about 6, the wine and beer had been flowing for about an hour, and the boring dutch speeches were in full swing. feeling the need to add a little spice to this intimate gathering, we wrote a song. a song set to the tune of o canada, and with a delicate introduction: “hi we’re aaron’s friends from highschool, and we’d just like to say that we didn’t want to come to this war-mongering country, but we’re honoured to be here for our friend’s big day.” for a room of about two hundred conservative church people, about half of which are republicans from the bible belt, they took it surprisingly well. at least i think they were friendly boos. aaron’s dad told me later that paige’s (the bride) parents were ’staunch bush supporters’. the song ended with the line ‘o aaron our beloved canuck, we know you just want to… kiss’.

after that, the night sort of spiraled into randomness, as it tends to do. my buddy dan, who has clearly spent too much time with yanks, showed us his bb handgun, that looks a little too much like a real gun. he then proceeded to shoot my in the leg a few times, the welts are slightly less than a paintball welt. we have plans to all get one, a sixer of coors light, and run around in our skivvies with goggles on and shoot the crap out of each other. there will probably need to be some lynrd skynrd involved as well.

speaking of redneck stupidity, i got into a bit of an argument, as i tend to do, with some yank about iraq and terrorism. it was very enlightening. did you know that saddam was responsible for ‘90% of the terrorism in asia’? thats right, not even the middle east, all of asia. the xenophobia is almost worse than the homophobia. and im pretty sure the exact opposite was proven. but dont worry, he still holds out hope that wmd will be found. oh wait, again, the exact opposite was proven. not that i would ever hit anyone, but i had to leave after this prep school asshole said everyone in america had equal opportunity, for fear that the mass alcoholic consumption would bring out some sort of violence in me.

back to the happier times on the wedding dancefloor, much dancing with friend’s moms and sisters occured. in retrospect, im kind of disappointed in myself for not telling a friend’s mom that i love her, as i tend to do. around midnite, the crowd had thinned out to just us. church was bright and early for them the next day apparently. last song of the nite was stairway to heaven, and it seemed like a very good idea to do interprative dance to all 8 minutes of it. grabbing the rest of the submarine sandwich, we took the courtesy bus back to the hotel, indebted to the friendly driver who stopped to let us buy a case of miller high life at a variety store.

after the party was the hotel lobby, as tends to happen, followed by some drunken wandering outside. settling on the curb of the entrance to a salvation army (?), i all so briefly nodded off, causing my buddy jonny to huck a full can of miller high life at me. whether or not he intended to hit me in the forehead causing a bloody cut is unknown, but i do know that i didn’t even wake up.

and because the toilet was occupied, i do remember later on trying to pee in the shower of the hotel room, but kev turned the shower on. foiled again!

its been awhile since i posted pics of my darling nephew tommy boy. here’s some fresh ones from my sis, in all the glory of his pink high tops. he’s got at least one cool uncle…

the upside to working at a theatre, besides the copious amounts of free chemically-soaked popcorn and rolled-to-perfection hotdogs, is that i get to see a lot of movies that i might not otherwise bother with. if i work friday, i get to watch the whole thing (or both if there are two) to make sure there are no mistakes (we gotta splice them together, so there are occasionally errors), and other nights i just watch bits since i gotta wait to close down the the-atre. i also get to sit in the projection booth typing this while watching, so its a good deal.

the concept of just watching your favourite parts of a movie is interesting. for instance, we’re playing cinderella man this week, and while the whole depression story bores me (ie im a heartless bastard), the boxing scenes are incredibly kinetic and intense. i’ve watched the final fight like 4 times now. but wouldn’t it be great if you could actually just watch the best parts?

i dont wanna spend 2 hours watching the same expository crap again. in two hours i could watch a collection of pure action, not just scenes strung together by lame dialogue (although the lame dialogue is pretty amusing sometimes). im talking about the highway battle in matrix2, the crazy 88 slaughter in kill bill, the lion fight scene of gladiator, the epic battle at helm’s deep in two towers, the yoda lightsaber scene from episode 2. etc etc etc. or how about a comedic collection: the opening weed scene of supertroopers, the first bowling scene in big lebowski, the ‘jerk-the-wheel-into-a-goddam-bridge-embunkment’ scene of tommyboy, the photocopier beatdown scene of office space, will ferrell hit by a tranquilizer dart in old school. these ‘best-of’ collections are bound to happen.

the mp3 revolution in large part is about people not wanting to buy a whole album for just 2 or 3 good songs. the mixed tape was turned on its head, and everybody is listening to mixed cds or ipod playlists of just their favourites. with broadband (and eventually internet2), movies are now being widely circulated for free as well. could the remix happen to cinema?

after the disappointing star wars episode 1, die hard fans decided to take action, and created the phantom edit, an illegally re-edited version of the movie. jar-jar’s annoying scenes were cut, as were pointless bits of dialogue and exposition. it was acclaimed as being a more focused and better paced version of the film. there was also a version created called ‘balance of the force’ in which the soundtrack was changed and characters were completely re-dubbed, massively changing the feel of the film. similarly, dissatisfied tolkien fans created two towers: the purist edit, a version more accurate to the original book.

walter benjamin, in his landmark essay the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, talks about the changes in art with the rise of mass media and its technologies of production and reproduction. not only is old art being reproduced and made easily acessible (ie van gogh poster), but new forms of art are made that are based on reproduction (photography and film). with this mechanical reproducibility, benajmin reckons art loses its ‘aura’, its uniqueness and originality. benjamin saw this as tremendously democratic; art was available to the masses, not just high culture. the downside is theodor adorno’s the culture industry, as “culture now impresses the same stamp on everything”. with the mp3 revolution, and the coming cinematic revolution (with the spread of film digitally, and the growing availability of video and editing equpiment), you can see the democratic process of mechanical reproduction striking back at the culture industry.

obviously i dont want all movies in fragmented form, just as i dont want all my music in singles (i dont think the album is dead just yet). the artistic intention is still important. but for popcorn movies, and gwen stefani albums, just give me the good stuff. the rest is b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

a) im sorry, with all due respect to the families of the victims, but its only 37 people dead (edit: 50 now?). the real tragedy is that for once, the media had turned its attention to the g8 and the plight of africa and the millions of people who die there senselessly every year. it seemed as if some progress was to be made: some debt relieved, some increase in aid, some increase in awareness. now the attention is back to this so-called war on terror.

b) al qaeda (if it exists, the suggestion that these loosely organized islamic radical groups have been assigned the term ‘al qaeda’ by the bush administration just so the public has one coherent boogeyman to be afraid of seems more plausible), or whoever these terrorists turn out to be, are not thinking very rationally. the g8 summit’s main topics are climate change and poverty in africa, why would you want to disrupt that? i guess its a message that they mean business, by picking one of the biggest events of the year. but all they want is the withdrawal of troops from iraq and afghanistan, that could have been done at a different time. ive read stuff by osama bin laden and basically all he wants is the US to not fuck with arab nations, understandably. this attack is senseless, and counter to that goal, so it makes you wonder what the real motive was?

c) not only will the progress in climate change and africa be hurt tremendously, but now bush’s approval ratings will go way up, as americans get more and more afraid. unfortunately, nothing better could have happened for the bush administration. they need to shift focus away from their bungled war in iraq and bring it back to the all-encompassing war on terror. and this attack does just that. karl rove must be beaming. the conspiracy theorist in me thinks they had a hand in it, but i’ll have to keep that one to myself…