atomicfern

I'm hacking around in the data binding code right now, and I got a wonderfully saucy error message:

bad property 'serviceRequest' in path 'serviceRequest.patient.sex' type=Patient

While I was in Europe last year, I was registered for the local site mailing list, and I have not had myself removed. I enjoy knowing that a car has it's lights on 6000km away, or that some FIEND has not paid his sandwich club dues.

This morning I got this wonderful email.
Looks like a SPAM message for a creepy Voyeur website:

Dear colleagues,

May I ask you all to pull up the blinds every night?

Please do so in the meeting rooms as well, even if you did not use them.

If you do not pull up the blinds, they will blow open and they will be torn apart. As a result, this is very expensive to mend.

Can I rely on everyone to pull up all these blinds?

The repair costs for each blind can amount to 800 euros. Therefore, I hope I can count on the cooperation of each one of you.

Our poor beleaguered performance analyst just dropped by my desk. He asked how to restore the state of the database after the DELETE_ALL_STUDY_DATA() stored procedure was invoked.

First I asked if he had run that on MY database. Once he had said it was his server, and my heart started again, I told him that the Recycle Bin isn't an Oracle thing. If he starts sending studies in now he might be done by the end of the week...

*phew*
I can't get that lucky twice in one day, time to head home!

I have better than 20/20 vision!
(with my glasses on)

Optometrists have a fun way with words :)

Rotten Tomatoes has given Lake of Fire
100% (so far). Finally, the best film I saw in 2006 is in theatres for everyone else to see.

For a bit of nostalgia you can check out my review from last year's Toronto Film Festival.

The people who work at this company can be awesome.

There is a tin foil Sputnik satellite hanging in the cafeteria, with a collection of rare Soviet era pins and posters displayed around it. When I returned from lunch the following email was waiting for me (500k with it's included message: thanks NOTES)

50 years of the SPACE AGE!

Come to the cafeteria and celebrate with us!
Free Popsicle Rockets , WOW! OUT OF THIS WORLD
Come and get yours under Sputnik 1 !!!!!!
Hurry up before they decay and burn up!

Guess which PACS vendor...

If anyone is interested in seeing the conversation with Jimmy & Rosyln Carter that I saw at the Film festival, then tune into TVO tonight between 10 and 11pm! As an added bonus you can see me in the fourth row clapping like a crazy person!

Reclaim your Brain
There seems to be quite a bit of Austrian buzz around this movie. When I was racing to get into line for midnight madness on Tuesday night I passed by a white limo with "Reclaim your Brain" scrawled in spray-paint across the side. You can tell how proud the producers were from the way the film flows as well, but I fear it's a local phenomena, and doesn't work well for me outside of Teutonia.

Not to damn it with faint praise, but it had a real Canadian feel: you know, the we are very clever and against corporate culture thing. Not that that is bad, but it weighed down the film in the middle.

The movie starts well: the main character, Rainer, is quite an anti-hero, and prior to his transformation not much of a hero at all. He's actually quite an asshole. He's a trash TV producer in Germany, and makes many horrible low brow shows. For instance, the show that he is producing at the start is "Super Baby", which is a twist on the Dating Game. Three men compete for the opportunity to send 9 months in a luxury spa with the bachelorette. Why 9 months? Because the contest is a race: first sperm into the egg wins! Intercut with Rainer's coke fueled road rage it's a solid start to the movie.

Rainer's car is soon hit by a vengeful orphan of a man slandered by one of Rainer's shows. Her grandfather killed himself in shame and she finally gets her revenge against Rainer. This is the turning point in the movie, both for the main character, and also for the preachiness of the film. Rainer realizes to his horror that people really are as dumb as the ratings would imply, and goes about rigging the ratings system with a band of misfits to make Germans smart again!

The movie starts well and ends well, but it really kinda meanders in the middle. I have a feeling that if I spoke German than the dialogue may have made the middle bit more palatable. Based on reading the subtitles it landed up feeling preachy and forced. I would probably recommend the movie to German speaking film fans, but then again they have probably already heard of this film and have seen it.


Jar City
This movie is basically CSI: REYKJAVIK. It's a bleak and depressing murder mystery that takes place in Iceland. Erlendur, the detective who is the main character in the story is a humourless man who's daughter is a pregnant junkie and his life has long since left him. He is investigating the murder of a man that no one knows or likes, and eats the most horrible things you can imagine along the way.

Paula suggests an alternative title: 'Icelandic Culinary Horror'. If you have never seen a man eat a take-out stewed goats head, then take my suggestion: CLOSE YOUR EYES, you can't unsee a man gouging out stewed eyes and eating them. Erlendur's younger partner asks about getting something that's not on a buffet and the owner says "We don't serve your Guacamole shit here" ... his request for a latte didn't go over well either :)

This is a very good movie. Well made, excellent tone and pacing. You really feel the hopelessness of life and death in the cold desolate areas that the movie takes place. There is a line early in the film that sums it up: after seeing the body of the murder victim Erlendur says "“typical Icelandic murder… messy and pointless.". I would recommend it to crime drama lovers who are not culinarily squeamish.

Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case
Russia is fucked up. While I was on a ferry in Argentina I read an amazing article in the New York Times Magazine about Putin's succession after four years in power, and how far into Monarchy the Russian system had fallen. This movie makes it pretty clear that the Russian government has been a dictatorship since at least 2000, and that Putin and his supporters are very very bad people.

The movie is built around the story of the director's friendship with Litvinenko, and retelling Litvinenko's life right to it's tragic end. Litvinenko was an FSB (previously the KGB) agent who came forward to call out the corruption within the FSB and Kremlin. He came out in 1998 to claim that the bombings of apartments in Moscow were not a terrorist attack but rather a cynical and callous act to start a war with Chechnya. He further claims that Russian soldiers that were sent to the front were really being sold into slave labour, and they would be 'captured' and put to work by anyone who could pay the officers enough money.

While following Litvinenko's life right up to the point where he died of Polonium poisoning in London, the movie piles up years and years of horrible atrocities on the Putin government. It's one of those films that is hard, because it seems like it is only the word of the protesters against the government, and the level of inhumanity is so high that it defies plausibility of civilized people. Sadly, I fear that was has been said is true, and that the removal of communism really only removed the last barrier to a complete take over of a nuclear power by the forces of corruption and cruelty.

Flash Point
HK action at it's best. Last year I did retro HK action with Election 1 & 2 back to back, this year I'm seeing the latest from the director who did SPL. An explosive way to finish the festival this year!! This movie showcases MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), with some amazing stunts and fight choreography. Fans of the UFC will see some of their favourite movies being used in some spectacular ways in this film.

Damn I love to watch martial arts films at Midnight Madness! There is a fairly generic plot line that works to introduce you to the under cover cops and the colourful gang of villains that they have infiltrated. Soon covers are blown and gang members are put on trail ... if the cops can stay alive that long ...

There is only one scene with wirework in it, and it was for a comic scene, otherwise the movie involves only physical action and excellent choreography. The director commented that he felt that martial arts films had developed into a give / take sort of fight design: punch, dodge, kick, hit, punch ... but in real life people don't take turns when hitting. This movie is a flurry of action. Punches, kicks, tables, chairs, bottles, guns, pretty much anything that could be thrown at a person is. Some fast and exciting chase scenes round off the action buffet.

Highly recommended. The audience was screaming and clapping all the way through. Go see this movie for some kick ass action.

I've got a day off from my vacation today! I've been catching up on email and debating how to spend the rest of the day in Toronto. Any suggestions? I could rush either "Stuck" or "Pope's Toilet", but I'm feeling a bit filmed out at the moment. Right now reading Harry Potter and drinking tea is looking pretty damn good :)

Damn good day. It was running really tight between my movies all day, and had a volenteer take-down on my way to Man from Plains. I was running from the Paramount to the Varsity to make a movie that started in less than 15 minutes. I made it with 5 minutes to spare, and got stopped by a volunteer as a ran past waving my ticket wildly: The movie had not let in yet, and I passed the film reel coming up the stairs as I tried to find the end of the line. So I managed to get decent seats in all my films, but I have to say that if I choose to cut it this close again I'm wearing running shoes rather than sandals.

( Reviews: WORMS!, JIMMY!, exploited children, and MIIKE! )

I was disappointed by the fact that both of the movies that I saw today were not completely full, although it benefitted me since I spontaneously decided to get a ticket for the second movie at the box office. Guess it's the Monday afternoon thing, but come on people it's Jimmy Carter we're talking about here!

( Reviews for Day Four )

My Enemy's Enemy
Now this is a Dictator movie! Klaus Barbie was a gestapo leader who was known for his ability to find and torture the enemies of the Reich. He sent 44 children to the the death camps. He tortured the members of the French underground. He was called the Butcher of Lyon. He also lived free for more than 30 years after the war.

How does a well known and unrepentant Nazi manage to evade capture for so long? Two words: cold war. The Americans wanted to keep an eye on the Communists, and the Nazi's had the documentation and organization to track these people. So the CIA entered into a secret pact with Barbie and other Nazi's to keep communism down. The French didn't like this, but the Americans managed to keep him fighting communism (terrorizing teachers, labour leaders and authors with leftist views) in Europe and Latin America for years.

So basically the American government has sucked as much as it does now for many years. Asshats. Governments in Latin America were toppled for no better reason than the US wanted to destabilize anything that wasn't a manipulable dictatorship. This is movie is everything that makes documentaries great: thorough research, a disturbing story and tight editing. The life of Klaus Barbie is an indictment of not just the Nazi's, but any form of totalitarianism.

Diary of the Dead
George Romero said that the inspiration for this movie is the proliferation of blogging communication in the world. What would happen if the first day of the zombie apocalypse happened now that everyone is a reporter? Since a big part of the story is about communication outside of the establishment, the story was put back in the beginning, but in the contemporary setting.

The hook of making a documentary 'The Death of Death' is present through-out the movie with the constant (and sometimes foolish) attempt to record the experience. The 'documentary' aspect is used to keep the story more personal, but it maintains enough production values to keep it from devolving into a messy Blair-Witch type of blur and giggle. This made the gore effects more immediate, and although there is less gore than recent movies like 28 Days Later, the shots are closer and allow the quality of the physical effects to be shown off.

The Q&A was great fun, George Reminds me of Stan Lee (without the whole 'banging Jack Kirby's wife' thing) it's probably the big old glasses and grey hair though :) He started his post-movie speech with enough thank-yous that it sounded like the Oscar acceptance speech he will never give :( His answers to questions were philosophical and intellegent --- he gives good Q&A!

Overall this was one of those magical film festival moments. There was a contingent of zombies walking up and down the line outside, and who chanted before the movie started: "What do we want?" BRAINS! "When do we want it?" BRAINS! Good energy, great director and a fine film. Good times.

Day Two: LONG, WONG, STAREY and SCAREY

Every year I seem to relearn the lessons I learned in previous years. The rule I relearned this year is one of travel logistics. Despite the fact that having a midnight movie being followed by a noon movie being TECHNICALLY 12 hours between starts --- which seems like a long time --- the reality is that after travel time, Q&A, and meals are taken into account, it's only 4 hours sleep.

I really needed more than 4 hours to keep my eyes open for most of today's films...

Terror's Advocate
Very disappointing. The fact that the AC was out in the theatre and the temperature was >30C and humid didn't help. Jacques Vergès is a morally ambiguous character who has lived an amazing life. The problem is that the movie was too long, and meandered through his life / defendants in the second half. They couldn't even spin his 8 year disappearance in an interesting way.

Not a good start.

Hollywood Chinese
Amusing, educational and entertaining. This would have been an excellent 'bridge film' if it had been sandwiched between two solid movies. It wasn't, which tested our patience. The movie was filled with clips from many incredible movies over the years, and I left really wanted to go to the Flower Drum Song dialogue later in the week :)

The story of chinese americans in Hollywood is an interesting contrast to the history of blaxpliotation. There have been chinese american movies being produced since 1917, yet they never really broke out into their own genre like black film in the 70s. It remained acceptable to have an actor in 'yellow face' right into the late 60s, and the leads in 'asian themed' american films were usually white with a supporting cast of actual chinese americans. Facinating history, but honestly I needed something a bit wilder in this slot.


Man from London
Artsy, beautiful and mediative. Paula will love this movie, and in fact she was the one who recommended it as a MUST SEE. I won't say this is a bad movie: it was just more artsy than I could take when we saw it. It is entirely shot in black and white with very little dialogue. The camera works is excellent, with long graceful steady cam shots that give it the feeling of watching a stage play, or even reality unfolding in realtime.

TARR is a great director, and quite famous for his films in Europe. Like American Chinese, it was on the wrong day at the wrong time for us. He likes to focus the camera on a single unchanging shot for long periods of time: 2 minutes of staring at a wall or an unmoving face was not uncommon. Despite my tired and impatient state, it's hard not to be beguiled by his techniques, but it was frustrating for Dave and I who really wanted to eat by the 90 minute mark. Probably not the best movie for the N.A.D.D generation.

The Orphanage
Endearing, Creepy and Wonderful. The comparison in the review to Pan's Labyrinth is a good one, despite the fact that the movies were made in parallel and could not have directly influenced each other. This movie lives and breaths 70s horror. It's not just the shot for shot homages to earlier films that make you think of The Omen, Rosemary's Baby or the Shining: it's the atmosphere of it. It seems like someone has been able to steal back the creepiness of 70s american horror back from the Japanese.

The only way that this movie could have been better is if Dave's speculation about Eugenics experiments came through. As it was the movie was tight, well shot, and bounced between taunt realism and creepy hints of the paranormal. Top notch child acting and people who look like PEOPLE made the movie work too. Very few stupid things were done by the actors, and as the two timelines come together the audience realizes simultaneously what has really happened seconds before it's revealed on screen.

See this movie.

If you are still hungry for sarcasm fueled movie blogging, you should head over to Josh's Festival Reviews Blog. He's doing a 30 book, so it's more bitchin' / typin' per day!

NOTE to future self: having a noon movie following a midnight madness SEEMS like a lot of time, but all the travel time to Scarborough is accounted for it's like four hours sleep ...

Dinner with the President: A Nation's Journey

This was an intellectual look at the situation in Pakistan right now, from the point of view of a educated liberal couple. I hate to admit but my ignorance of Pakistani history prior to the coop that put Musharraf into power, somewhat hindered my appreciation of this movie.

The documentary was built around a dinner that was arranged with President Musharraf, his wife, his mother and the documentarians. The scene of the meal is cut with interviews with people representing the different points of view in modern Pakistan. Very interesting, but it felt a bit too short for the ground they were trying to coverr.

Half the audience left after the first documentary. BOOOOO, that's rude even if you are going to a PAR-TAY.


Please Vote for Me
The second documentary of the evening was a hilarious romp! Chinese school children are given the chance to vote for their classroom monitor ... but who will they choose? The nice girl who wants everyone to like her? The incumbent bully who buys votes through his parent's contacts or asian Cartman?

Yeah, you read that right. This movie has a little chinese Cartman, who doesn't like wearing clothes. I kept hoping someone would sing 'I'm sailing...' during the talent contest.

Oh yeah, that's right. Tiny democracy has a talent segment. Which is cute / excruciating / hilarious all at once. Go see this movie!!


The Mother of Tears
Dario Argento bless your heart, you write movies that make no sense, and really just string together gore and nekkid women into an occult script. *sniff* it was beautiful. There is little ambiguity about the type of movie you are watching: right from the start a woman gets cut open by cultists and then strangled with her own intestines.... and then you meet a crazy monkey!

Dario and Asia were there too, and since it was Dario's birthday we got to SING to him!!

The funny thing about this year's choices is how little there is that is funny. I forgot to add the comedies. I'm happy with my choices, but I do wish I had found a way to fit in a funny memorable crazy movie in there somewhere.

I landed up in box 5 of 75, and box 66 got chosen to start assigning movies from this year. Good placement, and I got all the movies I asked for. Let's hope my first choices are all good! Here they are listed by date, with a hyperlink back to the TIFF website. No NSFW hot-links this year, they have gone with a silly flash doodad rather than a nice easy to steal JPG!

Thursday 6th

8:45pm

Please Vote for Me
I'm starting off cute with this lovely little documentary. First year that a chinese class gets to elect their classroom monitor. Cute turns to politics pretty quickly from what I've read...

Midnight

The Mother of Tears
Dario Argento's latest movie. He is a master of horror, and there are boobs in the picture. Plus his daughter is in it.... and they are her boobs. Suffice to say this was a first choice for me.

Friday 7th

11:45am

Terror's Advocate
Ever wonder about the sort of scum that would represent Klaus Barbie and other horrible dictators and genocidal maniacs? Me too.

4pm

Hollywood Chinese
Documentary about the portrayal of chinese people in movies. They show clips from movies featuring such great asian actors as John Wayne and Christopher Lee. Before reading the review I didn't actually know there was a term playing yellow. Should be very interesting.

6pm

Man from London
Hungarian Film Noir. It's shot entirely in Noir and White. Looks amazing. It outlived it's original director. Can't wait for this one: I haven't seen a genuinely good film noir movie in ages.

10pm

The Orphanage
Gothic Horror! I'm hoping this movie lives up to my expectations. The review keeps citing the similarities of the film to Pan’s Labyrinth and the director's work with Guillermo del Toro. I really loved Pan's Labyrinth last year, so I hope this movie can stand up to the comparisons that have been drawn!

Saturday 8th

8:45pm

My Enemy's Enemy
Klaus Barbie was a Nazi who did terrible things during the war, yet became an agent for the CIA afterward. This documentary explores his life in the Reich and how it changed as the world entered the cold war. Second of my dictator documentaries this year...

Midnight

Diary of the Dead
X of the Dead, where X='Diary'Guess who's back?!? George Romero. First indie movie in 20 years. This movie will be what Midnight Madness is all about: gore, crazy crowds and a hardcore director. This will be a blast. I can't wait to pick apart the social commentary in the car afterward!

Monday 10th

1pm

Everything to Gain: Conversation with Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter
I am over the moon to have gotten this pick. I am a big fan of Jimmy Carter: people may question is handling of issues during his presidency, but you can't belittle his work afterward. He will be in conversation about his amazing life since being the president. I am working on some questions for him: I am dying to address a question with 'Mr President...'.

Tuesday 11th

Noon

Vexille
Japanese soldiers return to an isolated futuristic Japan where biotechnology has run amuck. I know it's lame to see midnight madness at noon, but I still feel burned after seeing Renaissance last year, and I'm playing it safe this year. Looks pretty and action packed, here's hoping it delivers.

2:15pm

Man from Plains
More Jimmy Carter! I'm showing a bias. This documentary follows him as a he does a press tour for his most recent and quite controversial book. I'm hoping he'll drop by for the Q&A, but that's a long shot!

6:45pm

Very Young Girls

9:45pm

Babysitters
This movie might be the movie that I can't unsee this year. It is a movie about young teen prostitutes and the scum bags who exploit them.
I must apologize in advance for how late I'll be coming out of this movie and running to see Miike. I shall try to be in line early enough for my previous midnight madness movies to tip the karmic balance in advance.

Miidnight

Sukiyaki Western Django
Japanese western. Takeshi Miike's first English language film. Quentin T has (what I hope is) a bit part to pay homage to this living master of awesome. I can't wait to see this movie.

Thursday 13th

12:30pm

Reclaim your Brain
I work with crazy Austrians, so I really had to see a crazy Austrian movie now didn't I? Think Running Man but funny, with the villian becoming brain damaged and fighting back against the trash TV industry that spawned him. Hopefully it's funny, I'm going need a bit of humour at this point :)

4:30pm

Jar City
Creepy Islandic murder mystery. Hopefully it manages to be atmospheric without being sucky.

9:30pm

Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case
This one is a real risk for me. It feels like the ink hasn't really dried on the whole Litvinenko murder yet, so this documentary might be premature. I am fascinated by what it will say about Putin and his democratically elected dictatorship.

Midnight

Flash Point
HK action at it's best. Last year I did retro HK action with Election 1 & 2 back to back, this year I'm seeing the latest from the director who did SPL. An explosive way to finish the festival this year!!

Phew. I've got my preliminary picks for this years film festival done. Time to fiddle around with second choices and decide on the reality of getting my choices :)

TIFF 2007

I discovered while dicking around with our product that our default panning keyboard short-cuts are W, A, S, D.

Nerdtastic!

I've had enough of trying to reuse this magical class that only works during a full moon. It's time to apply the greatest Design Pattern left out of the Go4: Cut'n'Paste Polymorphim!!