[20 Dec 2009|09:31am] tylerpistol + I bought a Blu-Ray player just over a year ago for two reasons: to buy Wong Kar-Wai films in high definition, and because there were a whole slate of Shaw Brothers Blu-Rays coming out in 2009...or so we all thought. As it turns out, I got three Wong Kar-Wai films (two Hong Kong imports and the Criterion Collection's spectacular remaster of Chungking Express) and the Shaw Brothers classic Opium and the King Fu Master on BCI Eclipse. Then BCI Eclipse went under for recession-related reasons, or so they tell us, and none of the movies they were slated to release showed up. In the meantime, some other really great stuff materialized. There was Criterion's already out of print version of The Third Man, that spectacular looking (and even better sounding) release of Akira, and the Hong Kong versions of Red Cliff 1 and 2 were practically like seeing them in the theatre. And as it turns out, now the Deadly Duo, and the 36th Chamber of Shaolin are both coming out! I have a place in my heart for the 36th Chamber seeing as how it's the first kung fu movie I ever saw, and it still holds up as one of the best. + I spent part of the morning watching shiny, overproduced CGI-drenched movie trailers on Apple.com. I am meaning to see that Avatar movie, but after Christmas. I don't know how I feel about it so far. I don't know about a bunch of blue people and CGI effects in 3-D and so much hype. I also watched the trailer for Iron Man 2, which looked decent, and will probably end up being good. I am mostly concerned about the upcoming remake of Clash of the Titans. I saw the original in theatres way back whem, and I loved the crude stop-motion effects. However, the new one looks super fast-paced with a tonne of CGI and seems like an insult to Ray Harryhausen. It doesn't much seem like anything I couldn't wait to rent. + This is going to be a weird Christmas for me, since I'm not actually going home this year. I am, however, going to White Rock to be with A Dub's family. Apparently there are going to be hilarious games on Christmas Eve, and then some serious lounging around and such. Possibly with soy egg nog! In preparation, A Dub and I went to Earl's for a nice dinner and then to Starbucks for drinks and to see a production of White Christmas at the Stanley Theatre. We paid $25 for "crappy" seats, and wound up in the second row next to the orchestra, which was actually quite nice. The only problem was that you could see microphones taped to people's heads in weird places and you could see how sweaty everyone was getting. Other than that, I was fine with the cheap seats, as it didn't change the content of the play very much. I think I've seen the entire movie, but out of sequence. I wasn't crazy about the movie, but it was decent, and the play version was fun. It was way more entertaining than that goofy production of "It's A Wonderful Life" we saw last year, and one of the lead actors was actually the same! + Last night I had a dream I got a Wii for Christmas. post comment

[14 Dec 2009|09:25pm] tylerpistol + Since I haven't done Christmas cards in a long time, here's my gift to anyone who may still read this blog: Sy Mann "Switched on Santa" (13 songs in MP3 format, ripped from a vinyl LP purchased at Value Village). "The merriest MOOG synthesizer plays Christmas favorites" 3 comments|post comment

Please, call me Winter. [12 Dec 2009|08:56am] tylerpistol + I've been sick for a week and a half, and it's been hitting me in stages. First, I took a pre-emptive sick day and felt like garbage and tried to sleep it off. Then I was just tired and tired and tired for days, until this week when my nose started running. Then yesterday I lost my voice a bit and my nose turned all red and painful from blowing it so much. I feel a bit better today, but I'm actually a bit depressed and frustrated from being sick so long especially considering Amanda has two injured feet. However, I am cramming myself full of vitamins and Cold-FX pills and hoping that this nonsense is gone by Monday. Really, I don't even get sick too often so this is extra hard for me. I guess I should just be happy that this isnt H1N1 and that this nose of boogers, like all things, will pass. + I have been watching a ridiculous amount of Christmas cartoons. I still enjoy the Rankin-Bass ones the most, although there hasn't been much else on TV. Oh, I did watch A Charlie Brown Christmas in HD this year, and it looked insane. The colours were almost eye-stabbing! I still have to watch that Christmas themed episode of Kamen Rider V3, although I must admit, I am slightly terrified of Japanese people these days. I had this weird dream that a Japanese man with a Toshiro Mifune voice was instructing Amanda in Japanese how to back out of a parking spot. She dinged his car and he came running at us shouting angrily in Japanese. I freaked out and told her to peel out of the parking lot so we didn't get roughed up. And by the way, CBC is back on my blacklist for hacking out the song "Put One Foot In Front Of The Other" out of Santa Claus is Comin' To Town to make room for more commercials. + I think I'm going to pick up the 20th anniversary CD of Nirvana's "Bleach" today. I read the 33 1/3 book on "In Utero, and it's inspired me to listen to some Nirvana again. However, I've always felt like Nirvana lyrics were pointlessly negative and the book gave me the impression that Kurt Cobain tried to write negative lyrics that even he didn't care about. It's kind of a joke that such a sloppy band became such a ridiculous success and that people still worship Kurt Cobain. It's even weirder to me that Dave Grohl is the surprise success story of that band. I've tried to like the Foo Fighters, but I can never get very far with that. They're good, but maybe the radio ruined them for me. + For those of you who wanted to see my Christmas tree, here you go. I got one more ornament for it from the Japanese hair salon when I got my hair cut this week. 17 comments|post comment

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