What I Watched in 2014

As I posted recently, my blogging has been at an all-time low this year, even if I’ve been keeping up things on Facebook. I wrote about The Walking Dead, The Leftovers, The Knick, and Game of Thrones (just so I’d have one show that didn’t begin with “The”).  But I’ve seen a lot of film and television in 2014 that I didn’t share with y’all, and so here are some of my favourites:

FILM

Whiplash: Probably my favourite film of the year, this is a dark and gritty look — think Black Swan for musicians — at the pain and suffering that classical and jazz musicians must endure at extremely high performance levels. When a guy strives to be the next Buddy Rich and makes it into the most elite band of New York’s most elite music school, he meets a teacher who believes that breaking down a person’s resolve, self-confidence, and self-esteem are the only ways to make them build themselves back up again. The performances by JK Simmons and Miles Teller are utterly stunning. I think Simmons has the Best Supporting Actor Oscar wrapped up. I can’t recommend this movie highly enough.

Locke: A much quieter film, it takes place almost entirely in the worst car ride one man could possibly have without getting into an accident. While the premise doesn’t sound like much, you have to watch this film for one of the most remarkable one-man performances you will ever see. Tom Hardy (yes, Bane) delivers a sublime performance as one man falling apart, while constantly using his dashboard phone to call several people to try desperately to maintain the foundation of a building he’s overseeing while his real world crumbles to the ground around him. Other than Hardy, you only hear the voices of the other actors, but it’s a who’s who of the best British stars today, and Hardy puts in such a stunning performance I half-wish no other great movie had come out after this one so he could just take that Oscar for himself. 

The Imitation Game: I’ve spent a lot of time this year with Benedict Cumberbatch (as mentioned, and what my publisher would like me to continue mentioning, I’ve written a book on Sherlock that will be out in fall 2015), and he never ceases to amaze me. In this film he plays Alan Turing, the brilliant young mathematician who created the machine that eventually deciphered the unbreakable Nazi code machine, Enigma, which ended up shortening the war considerably and saving innumerable lives. But what the justice system did to him following the war — having absolutely no knowledge of his incredible contributions to saving their lives — is nothing short of inhumane and horrific. The final moments of the movie will have tears streaming down your face for what was done to him. In 2012 at the opening games of the London Olympics, the British brought out the father of the Internet to show all of their great achievements; they decided to hide the horrible thing that was perpetrated upon the father of the modern computer.

Boyhood: One of the best part of movies is discussing them with friends afterwards, but after my husband and I saw this film I was left awed, heartbroken, moved, overjoyed, and speechless. By filming a boy in real time, for several weeks every year from age 6 to 18, Richard Linklater (who never seems to disappoint me) has created a masterpiece of quiet subtlety. I felt like I was watching the next 12 years of my son’s life, and it was heartbreaking to see it move so fast, and see how life can be like sand falling through our fingers, with no pause button. An extraordinary achievement in film.

Only Lovers Left Alive: This might be the best vampire film I’ve ever seen. And it stars Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. I don’t really need to say anything more. Just go see it.

TELEVISION

Derek: My brother bugged me to watch this show for ages, and I finally sat down and watched season 1 in a single afternoon. Despite starring Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington, it’s not a comedy. It has hysterically funny moments, but it’s meant to be a drama about a mentally challenged man — Gervais — who lives in an old folk’s home and is the heart of the place, along with Hannah, the woman who singlehandedly seems to run the place when funding runs out at the beginning of the first season. Being a nursing home, it’s inevitable you’ll lose people, but when they die, it’s the effect of their loss on Derek that is so heartbreaking. I just watched all of season 2, along with the Christmas special, yesterday, and it’s equally devastating. I think the finale of season 1 and the special are the two highlights of the series (and as my friend Dave warned me, there’s an episode involving a dog in S2 that will make you cry), and they both had me laughing out loud while tears streamed down my face. I think this is Gervais’s crowning achievement.

Black Mirror: I’ve only watched a handful of episodes, but if you haven’t watched this show yet, YOU MUST. It’s an even weirder and creepier Twilight Zone, all showing the dangers of technology. One is an indictment of Facebook, another of Twitter and social media in general. The Christmas episode that just aired (starring Jon Hamm) explores even deeper things that I can’t talk about without spoiling, but the show is a brilliant and satirical look at the world we have created around us.

Orphan Black: Each week of the second season, I couldn’t wait for a new episode and thought S2 was even more brilliant than S1. Tatiana Maslany continues to be utterly genius in every scene, and the cloning took on more symbolic and emotional significance in the second season. I’m probably not 100% on board with the Tony character, but the rest of it was amazing, including an hysterically funny and shocking homage to Pulp Fiction that might be my favourite TV moment of the year.

The Affair: The first season just wrapped on this one, and I loved it. It was the best pilot of all of the fall shows that I saw, and the performances by everyone in it — Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, Joshua Jackson, and Maura Tierney — are stunningly real. The main premise is that West and Tierney are a married couple with four children who go on summer holiday in Montauk. Wilson and Jackson live there, and Wilson (Alison) and West (Noah) begin a torrid affair. What makes the show so great is that the first half of each episode is told through the perspective of either Noah or Alison, and the second half by the other. Watching the story twice is never boring, but instead offers a wealth of clues: in his version, her hair was down and sultry, her skirt skimpy; in her version it was pinned up neatly, and his wife was rude to her and dismissive of Noah. The reason they're retelling the story is because someone has been murdered, and they're involved. SUCH a good show that dips a little in the middle, but roars to the end in a rather explosive manner.

Transparent: A show available on Amazon, it’s rightfully appearing on many best-of lists because it is so damn good. Jeffrey Tambor plays a dad who knows she’s been a woman trapped in a man’s body her entire life, and now that her children are grown and she’s moving into her twilight years, she’s decided she’s going to live the rest of her years as a woman, Maura, and needs to tell them. Her caustic ex-wife, Judith Light, is hilarious and amazing, the kids are all messes, and it’s only when Maura’s secret comes out that you discover the family is riddled with them. Another transgender friend of hers says that when she was making the change, she was told to look around her, and that none of those people would be with her in five year’s time. “Was it true?” Maura says, a look of desperation on her face because of how much her family means to her. She simply quietly nods. While there are very funny moments, it’s a devastating show at times, and it has the best ensemble cast of any other series this year.

Utopia: No, not the reality show that bombed, but the genius British sci-fi miniseries about a group of graphic novel fans who stumble upon a massive global conspiracy involving how the world’s population is ballooning, and one person’s horrifying solution. Season 1 was riveting, but season 2 was even better. When Channel 4 announced shortly after the second season had wrapped that they were cancelling it and there would be no S3, I was heartbroken. This one will go down with Firefly and Pushing Daisies as one of my great cancellation upsets. Still, watch the first two seasons if you haven’t already. They really can stand on their own, but I just wanted more.

So what did I miss? Any stellar television or films that you saw this year that I should check out?

A Life Worth Watching: Roger Ebert

I first became serious about filmgoing when I was in high school. Before my husband and I started dating, we went as friends with a couple of other people to see a film (War of the Roses) and then once we began dating a couple of weeks later, films became our main source of entertainment, aside from concerts. I was still in high school, and Siskel & Ebert’s At the Movies came on every Sunday, and I watched it religiously. I often disagreed with them (and often agreed with them) but whether you loved or hated them, you could tell they were passionate about what they did.

When I went to university, I was probably going to see three or four films a week. I graduated from At the Movies to reading Ebert’s film criticism books. I started taking film courses. And then I went to grad school in Toronto and started seeing even more movies, sometimes more than one a day. By the time I was working, I would take a week off to go to the Toronto International Film Festival, doing 30 films a week and writing about them. And inevitably, I’d cross paths with Ebert. He was usually focused and heading to his next film, but he’d always smile at people and give them his time if they walked up to him. I heard stories of him walking out of screenings and complaining about the way things were run, but so did all of the other critics. The Ebert that I saw on the street seemed to be a nice guy.

And then I had kids. And we all know what happens to your regular movie-going then.

Recently I went to see the film Life Itself, a posthumously-released documentary about Roger Ebert’s life, and his final months. As many know, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, and eventually lost his entire lower jaw and all of the skin attached to it. In his final few years, his throat would be bandaged and his bottom lip would just hang there, with his mouth perpetually looking like it was pulled up into a massive grin.

The documentary is beautifully done by Steve James. Ebert probably had his pick of who would be the director to recount his life, and the director of Hoop Dreams — one of Ebert’s all-time favourite films — seems like an obvious choice. Steve handles his subject matter carefully but honestly. There are interviews with people who worked with Ebert in the early days at the Chicago Sun-Times, a paper he refused to leave even when he was getting lucrative offers from other outlets over the years. Drinking buddies, fellow journos, and even directors and actors whose careers he made (or broke) through his reviews all weigh in on this man.

But of course, the one we associate most closely with Roger Ebert would be his partner and frenemy, Gene Siskel. Theirs was a volatile relationship both on-screen and off. At one point I leaned over to my friend and whispered, “You should see the YouTube video with the outtakes of them” and I barely had the sentence out of my mouth before they showed it in the movie. If you want to see the height of two guys hating each other, check this out.

And yet, make it to the three-minute mark and you can see the good-natured ribbing and the deep caring they had for one another. In Life Itself, it’s revealed that Roger was deeply hurt when Gene died, because he died not having told anyone — including Roger — that he was ill. Roger refused to do the same thing. You can tell that Ebert misses Siskel terribly, and they have several other people in the documentary talking about how close they were, despite their prickly nature towards one another. However, that closeness was, of course, laced with antagonism, and it’s in the interviews with Gene Siskel’s widow that this comes out the most. Despite how many times she talks about them being close, she usually has one barb or another about Ebert, as if the pain Siskel felt from their relationship outweighed the good. She tells a story of Ebert grabbing a cab in front of her when she was eight months pregnant, then waves it off as if she’s past it, but clearly she still carries around her annoyance of him.

Ebert’s wife, Chaz, is the hero of the film. I adored her. They married when he was 50 years old, and she stuck by him right to the end, and even now you can see how protective she is of him in her interviews. You can see him getting frustrated with various medical procedures in some scenes, and she remains calm throughout. She was clearly his rock throughout their marriage, and he hers. The portrait of them as a couple was one of my favourite things about this documentary.

But the stand-out interview is with one of his granddaughters, who talks about how she grew up sitting on the couch next to Grandpa Roger, watching one film after another. In one of his final weeks, he uses his voice software on his computer to chat with her, and tells her excitedly about the new documentary he was watching, 56 Up (I am obsessed with the Up Series, so I was thrilled to see that this was one of the last movies he reviewed). She sits by him, hanging on every word, asking excited questions as he passionately nods and gestures at her, then begins furiously typing to her again. She talks to the camera of how her entire childhood is marked by watching films with him, and that he taught her everything he could about film when he could. Her voice catches with emotion as you see the waves of reality wash over her face, knowing that her days of watching films with Grandpa Roger are numbered. But I thought, could you imagine learning about the history of 20th century film with Roger Ebert at your side as your personal film-viewing companion?

His was an extraordinary life, and this is a beautiful film.

The Trip to Italy

There’s a word in the English language that I relish. Often, when my husband and I are away somewhere hot, sitting at an upscale restaurant, one of these beauties will appear on the side of my plate as a garnish, and I never fail to pick it up, look at him and say, “kumquat” in as clipped a fashion as I possibly can.

So imagine my delight when, in their latest film, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon turn that word into the funniest back and forth gag since the “Gentlemen, to bed!” fake dialogue they improvised in their first film, The Trip.

Now, in The Trip to Italy, they’re back, riffing on everything from Alanis Morrisette to who was more unintelligible in the Batman films: Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne (not Batman, but Wayne) or Tom Hardy as Bane?

As one account has pointed out, if these guys were sitting beside you at a table in a restaurant, you’d first poke their eyes out with a fork before doing yourself in. But onscreen (and edited) they are wildly funny, if still occasionally annoying. I know Rob Brydon is very popular in the UK, and the people I went to see it with are big Brydon fans, but I’m still a Coogan gal myself, and think his comedy is very understated and hilarious. Brydon is known for his impressions, and he so rarely uses his own voice that you wonder if he ever forgets who he actually is. And, oddly, whenever Coogan corrects him and does the impression himself, he almost always does it better. There were times when Brydon was doing either Sean Connery or Hugh Grant for the billionth time that the woman behind me in the theatre would groan, “Oh no...” and I couldn’t blame her. But then he would say something so off-the-wall hilarious that all is forgiven. And he does pull off an extended riff on his “man in a box” routine that is so funny I was doubled over throughout the scene.

As in The Trip, the two men are sent on a foodie holiday by a newspaper — in the first film it was to northern England, and in this one it’s Italy — and the images of the countryside are so gorgeous it’ll take your breath away, and the food will just make you hungry for the entire film. But the real meat of the movie is in the conversation between the two men. I can’t imagine how many hundreds of hours of improv director Michael Winterbottom had to edit to winnow it down to the 90 minutes of the film, but he must have had a hilariously fun time doing so.

Yes, they do try to shoehorn in a plot. In the first film, it was about Steve Coogan having a midlife crisis, trying to figure out where he is in the world, why he’s not more popular as an actor than he is, why no one recognizes him on the street, why women no longer look at him the way they once did, what happened to his marriage, and why his son won’t speak to him. Brydon, on the other hand, was happily married and had a newborn baby, and was recognized everywhere they went. In this outing it’s Brydon who’s unhappy: his wife is so caught up in their three-year-old daughter that she doesn’t have time for his phone calls, and his mind and eyes begin to stray to other women. The problem is, if you’ve ever been left at home alone caring for young children while your spouse travels, you know how exhausting and time-consuming it is, and that he’s living his life’s dream while his wife toils away at home with the youngster. So, unfortunately, he was utterly unsympathetic to me as he worked through his issues, and I thought the subplot was handled better in The Trip.

That said, I would recommend this to anyone who loved The Trip (and if you haven’t seen that movie, do), if for no other reason than to hear them riff on the word kumquat.

Stuff for a Wednesday

I haven't really chatted on here for a while, so I thought I'd check in. The kids have gone back to school, with my little baby moving into grade 1, and my older baby into grade 4. "I'm not in primary anymore, Mummy, I'm a junior now!" So what have I been up to...

Breaking Bad
IlovethisshowsomuchIdon'tevenknowwheretobegin. I can't believe we only have four episodes left of this magnificent series. If you've been hearing all the hype and rolling your eyes and thinking, "Oh GOD it's like when the frickin' Wire was on," believe it. It's really as good as everyone says it is. Bryan Cranston is sublime, Aaron Paul turns in one jaw-dropping performance after another, and this season, Dean Norris as Hank has been incredible. At the end of the first episode back, there was a scene that will easily be the scene I remember most from this year (the same year I saw the Red Wedding, I might add), and it was FANTASTIC. In the next episode, I screamed when they ended it (DAMN YOU, CLIFFHANGERS!!!) And in the third episode, I was ready to storm creator Vince Gilligan's house and demand he show me the fourth episode right now!!! It's that good. So please check it out, and if you're watching, I hope you're loving it as much as I am.

The Vampire Diaries
I mentioned in a recent post that I had finished season 3 of The Vampire Diaries and was crazy hooked.  I had been thinking ahead and had recorded all of season 4 onto my PVR since last September, so I finally sat down and watched it, finishing up just a few days ago. And while it probably didn't make me screech with delight quite as much as season 3 did, it was freakin' addictive. Why? It's still The Originals for me. Klaus is just magnificent, and whenever Elijah shows up I sigh the sigh of the obsessed. Rebekah is fantastic, but Klaus has my heart. (And I want him to have Caroline's, too.) Caroline still remains my favourite Mystic Falls person, mostly because she's just so damn earnest!! No matter what is happening or who just died or what apocalypse was just averted, Caroline stomps one fashionable foot and screams that the prom/formal/semi-formal/other lavish school event/graduation was almost ruined and GODDAMMIT she's not going to stand for it!! And I heart her so much for it. This fall I might be looking forward to the new CW series, The Originals, even more than season 5 of The Vampire Diaries. Because if they're the highlight of the show for me now, and they've been transplanted elsewhere, I'm keen to see who they keep on as viewers. That said, Damon and Stefan and their eternal struggle to get the girl to love him and not his brother is crazy fun to watch, and Damon usually has some quip that makes me laugh out loud. Elena I still don't care much for, but there are enough other characters that I'm happy happy happy. So for the first time, I'll be watching the season premiere of TVD alongside everyone else. Yay!

Other Shows on my PVR
I've mentioned this before, but I don't just have one PVR that holds 200 hours of programming; I have two of them. I'm simultaneously recording up to four shows at one time, and I figure I'll watch some of them now (anything on cable, basically) and some of them later (network comedies and the handful of dramas I actually watch that aren't on HBO or AMC). But the problem is, I was a little too recording-happy last year, and now I still have the following shows there staring at me:
*Revolution (which I have every intention of watching, because I really enjoyed the first three episodes, but then I erased those and I've been trying to get into the fourth episode recently and I don't quite remember where I am in the show!)
*The Mindy Project (love every episode I've watched but I've only watched about 10 of them)
*Modern Family (with so much else on the go, this took a back seat. The entire season is sitting there)
*The Neighbours (watched the first episode and LOVED it, and I don't know a SOUL who watches it. So the entire season of this one actually got the dump earlier this week)
*Elementary (watched the first episode and thought it was great, but decided to go back and watch Sherlock first, and then never caught up on Elementary)
*Under the Dome (really liked the first episode, but haven't watched beyond that. I guess I liked it, but didn't love it, and with so much else on the go it takes a lot to get me to watch something)
*The Following (watched the first episode and thought it was corny and utterly unbelievable — really? A bunch of internet psychopath wannabes were able to organize themselves and fool the FBI?? — and when I started watching Hannibal, it felt superior in every way, so I've never watched the rest of it. But, again, it's all right there if I want it)
*Arrow (watched the first episode and loved it, and never had the time to watch the rest. Oh, well, and the fact my husband went and erased the first 10 episodes just as I was about to marathon them didn't help)
Instead, I've gotten a lot more reading done this year than in the past. So maybe I need to curb my TV viewing? Or figure out a better schedule for it? See, I'm currently working through Sons of Anarchy on DVD, and have bought The Good Wife and really want to watch Parenthood and have put on hold at the library all of Castle and Luther, so there are a ton of other good shows that have proven themselves that I'd like to watch. Maybe I just have to accept that I can't watch everything.

BUT... Fall shows!!!
But yeah, the fall shows are starting. And on my list to watch are (* denotes new):
Boardwalk Empire
*Sleepy Hollow
*Blacklist
*Marvel's Agents of SHIELD (Duh)
Revolution
Nashville
Big Bang Theory
*The Millers
*The Crazy Ones
*The Michael J. Fox Show
Once Upon a Time
Homeland
*Super Fun Night
The Vampire Diaries
*The Originals
*Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
The Walking Dead
*Dracula
*Almost Human

So, um... OK, I don't know how I'm going to do this. But I will try!!

The Hunt
Speaking of Mads Mikkelsen (wait, I wasn't? Well, I should be!) I went to see his latest film, The Hunt, last week, and it was mindblowingly good. It's in Danish, as are most of his films, and in this one he plays a kindergarten teacher who has a friendly disagreement with a five-year-old girl, who goes to the head of the kindergarten and says that he showed her his "willie." And... who's going to question a five-year-old girl, right? The movie shows exactly what happens to a man in a small town when an innocent little girl says something foolish, and everyone believes her. It was heartbreaking, and his performance is tremendous.

The World's End
And from frightful to frightfully hilarious, I saw the third instalment of the Cornetto trilogy this past weekend and thought it was fab. If a little depressing at times. See, basically this guy remembers a night of wild drinking in 1990, when he was 17 (the exact age I was in 1990), as the best night of his life, so he decides to re-enact it with his buddies, but now, they're old. Old. They're about 40. My age. And therefore, old. Oh, fuck off, stupid "40 is old" bullshit.

But whatever.

Aside from that, the soundtrack was fantastic, it had some hilarious lines, and I loved loved loved seeing so many of them back again. When they walk into the eighth or ninth pub and Brian from Spaced was standing there, I literally squealed out loud. SO HAPPY. I really enjoyed this movie; Simon Pegg is just... so... funny.

Sigur Ros
I know I talk about my love of Sigur Ros a lot, but if you want to know what they're like live, they played a show in London UK on Monday, and it was live-streamed around the globe as part of the iTunes festival. Follow this link and when you click on it, it'll open the show in your iTunes and you can watch the entire thing. This tour was the best time I'd ever seen them, so it's worth it if you have the time. :)

Pacific Rim: Plot? No. But who cares?!

I still remember going to see Independence Day. The trailer was awesome, and it was one of the first movies I remember to open early in the week, on a Wednesday, and run into the weekend rather than opening Friday night. My boyfriend and I went to see it at midnight on Wednesday, lining up in advance... and at 2:30 am we walked out of there, disappointed and wishing we'd just gone to sleep like normal people.

The plot was terrible. The acting... was terrible. Sure, it was a visual spectacle, but that wasn't enough.

Fastforward to... whatever year Avatar came out (not feeling like hittin' the Google today). ;) It was just before Christmas, shortly after it had come out, the kids were at daycare for the day and we sneaked out to go to a glorious matinee. 3D, high price, ENTERTAIN ME... and three hours later we came out thinking that was the biggest disappointment since... well, since Independence Day. During the movie, I enjoyed it. It was like a rollercoaster ride, a spectacular-looking film unlike anything I'd ever seen. But after? We tried to retrace the plot and realized that James Cameron had actually spent 20 years imagining what the blue people would look like, and probably hastily wrote out the script on a paper napkin the night before production began and they just went with it.

He is the king of the world, after all.

Like I said, it was a rollercoaster ride, but when you get off the ride, you say, "Well, that was fun," and think nothing more of it. And that's pretty much Avatar. I had no desire to ever see it again.

Now... fastforward to last weekend. My husband and I went to see Pacific Rim. I'd heard good things about this, even from people who hated Avatar. It was co-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, who made one of my favourite movies of all time, Pan's Labyrinth. And it had Jax Teller and Stringer Bell in it. Nuff said.

I know my standards haven't lowered; if anything, I'm tougher on movies and books and TV shows now than I've ever been. And this movie had plot holes in it so big you could drive a kaiju through them.

But OH MY GOD I loved it. Loved loved loved it. The fights in the Pacific Ocean, the awesomeness of the jaegers (and despite a certain British professor friend of mine always telling me that I overuse that word, "awesome" could be correctly used to describe nearly every minute of this movie), the terrifying look of the kaiju, the pounding music... I just loved it.

Even during the movie there were questions that flitted across my mind: why are the two people in the jaegers talking out loud if they've mind-melded and can read each other's thoughts?... Why did they open the movie with such a long explanation of the rise of the kaiju and the origin of the jaeger program when that would have made an incredible film all on its own?... Is Idris Elba supposed to be British or American?... In order to determine which two people can accurately 'drift' together, shouldn't they be doing some sort of mind tests rather than martial arts?... If the kaiju have been rising for 15 years now out of the Pacific, why haven't the civilians all moved inland and leave the Pacific coast as a military state?... Why are they worried about killing those five people in a boat when they just went on land and trampled hundreds of people to death?... How can I get my hairdresser to go see this movie so I can tell her I want Mako's hairstyle, right down to the blue streaks on the side?!

But then there would be a fight, or the jaegers would get flown out to the ocean by the helicopters (if the jaegers weigh several hundred tons, how are four helicopters flying them through the air?!), or the kaiju would rise up, or Jax would get into a fight with Sean Slater from EastEnders, or Idris would just just speak, and I would just forget every question. The fights were mindblowing, the visuals were AMAZING, and I loved it. Every single second of it.

And I walked out, and I still loved it. And my husband and I discussed the plot holes as we walked down the street, and I still loved it. And I thought about it more the next day, and I still loved it. And I want to go see it again. And then I found this excellent writeup by my Game of Thrones co-author, Christopher Lockett, who pretty much asked every question I had, and then some, and then talked about it at length (seriously, go read it, it's hilarious and amazing) and even HE said despite all this, he loved it.

What is it about this movie that makes us love it so much that we're willing to forgive everything wrong with it? Maybe it's Guillermo, that fan favourite director that we all adore for Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth and Cronos (OMG remember Cronos??) and somehow forgive him for Hellboy 2 and Blade 2. Maybe it's because Ron Perlman is in this and is SO FREAKIN' HILARIOUS in every scene. Or that I recognized the Scarborough Bluffs in the scene where the jaeger lands on the beach near the beginning and that reminded me that he was filming a lot of it out in the Beach in Toronto last summer and then I began spotting Toronto landmarks all over the place.

Yes, it has plot holes in it. But Independence Day was too overblown and "USA!! USA!!", and pretty much the reason Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote the Team America theme song (The audio is NSFW if anyone unwittingly clicks on that song). And Avatar was done by James Cameron, a 20-year pet project that just felt like the director did it because he could.

But Pacific Rim is smarter than all of that. It actually had me thinking at one point, "Wow, what would we do if this actually happened?!" What?! Why was I thinking that? Because it was so real, and the devastation so giant. It was fun, a LOT of fun, and you had to follow the origins of the war, the alien technology being used; there were goofy scientists played by Owen Harper from Torchwood and Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and you had to follow their research. This wasn't about America coming to save the day, but about the world coming together to stop an invasion from underneath, not above as with every other alien film. And frankly, in just about every scene I was on the edge of my seat, my palms were sweaty from anticipation, and I couldn't wait for the next scene to happen.

I loved it. Loved loved loved it. Plot holes be damned.

Stuff for a Monday

I used to do these jumbled posts all the time, and haven't done one in a while, so here's a brain-dump of Stuff Nikki's Been Up To.

Vampire Diaries Season 3
So, I watched the entire third season of TVD in a week. Booyah!! For someone who barely has time to watch four hours of TV a week, this was a major, major accomplishment, spurred on by two things: One, that I'd taken the discs out of my beloved library (I love the London library SO MUCH) and they were due back in one week, and two, that the season was SO FREAKIN' AWESOME. I have a long and complicated history with TVD. I watched the first episode before it even aired, and thought it was just OK. I thought Stefan was like Angel (once-bad vampire gone good, broody, heavy brow), and Damon was like Spike (still-bad vampire but deep-down he's good, cute, witty, a thorn in the side of the other one, both love the same girl). Couldn't much stand Elena. Her best friend was a witch (Willow?) and of course along the way there's a werewolf and the ditzy friend (who was never a Cordy; I loved Caroline right from the start). Of course, THEN I discovered that TVD was based on a series of book that predated Buffy, and that these ideas were formed independent of Joss Whedon's show. But I just couldn't help but think it was a far too serious vampire show with absolutely no sense of humour, and therefore I couldn't get into it. I gave up. Everyone else in the office I worked at loved it. One friend of mine started writing amazing books about it. I tried again after they told me I HAD TO. I watched up to about episode 16 of season 1, and nope, just couldn't find it. Where was the humour? The darkness? A female protagonist that wasn't a damsel in distress? Couldn't do it. I realized I was becoming a social pariah in the office. A year later, I tried again. Nope. Continued to listen to the chatter in the office and wish I could be a part of it. A year later (now no longer in the office, so I was doing this for myself, kids), I was determined to figure out what all the fuss was about. Finished season 1, pretty good ending. Then watched season 2. It took a few tries out of the library, and I finally finished it, and I enjoyed it a lot more than season 1 because it had gotten more complicated and the characters were tighter and I was really starting to warm up to these Salvatore boys. And I could just ignore Elena because there were so many other more compelling characters. And Caroline continued to rock it. I put season 3 on hold and waited an eternity for it to come in. Knowing it was going to take a while to get it back, I dug in my heels and was determined to get through as much as possible.

And OH MY GOD it was amazing. I couldn't stop watching it. Kids are outside playing? TVD. Off at swimming lessons? TVD. I had the added bonus of my husband being away for the second week in a row, so I'd get the kids into bed and bomb through two or three episodes a night. The Originals were stunning (love love love them), the love triangle got complicated and more exciting, Elena was just a little less annoying and I actually felt for her because I know she means well, and I was emailing my friend who writes the books, who I think was happy that FINALLY I'd come around and realized the goodness that had been in front of me. And then she introduced me to Price Peterson's photo recaps and they were awesomely hilarious. I still think the show could do with a dose of humour, but it definitely had its moments in S3. Damon stepped up the taunting of his brother to very funny levels, and Klaus has a dry sense of humour that I adored. By the end of the season, I could find a line or two from each episode that made me chuckle, if not laugh out loud. And the season finale featured a stunning final scene, edited so beautifully to bring together a tragic flashback sequence overlaid with a similar event in the present, all with Sigur Ros quietly playing over it. GORGEOUSNESS.

I am SO happy that I recorded all of S4 on my DVR all season, and it's waiting downstairs for me. Problem is, I watched all of S3 on my computer, pretending Mommy was "working" all week. How do I get away with actually watching the TV? Hm.

Monsters University
I went with the kiddos last week to see Monsters University, with all of us being big fans of the first one. It was a lot of fun, although I think the first movie was stronger. Also, knowing that that movie ended with the message that (SPOILER) the screams don't actually create half as much energy as laughter, it rendered all of the scaring school and scream-inducements kind of flat. But there were a few scenes that made us all laugh out loud, including a hilarious fraternity initiation that goes terribly wrong (my son was killing himself laughing) and Goodman and Crystal were great. Oh, and also, the moment the alpha male from the top fraternity showed up and began talking, I recognized Nathan Fillion's voice IMMEDIATELY. I had no idea he was in the movie, and he's hilarious. Basically Captain Hammer in a university.

Love Is All You Need
My best friend and I started hitting the London rep cinema once a week in the fall, until we ended up putting yoga on that same night and now could only do that instead, so it's been a while, but we ended up at this Susanne Bier movie. We've been a fan of her work since her Dogme 95 days, when Sue and I would go see all the Danish and Norwegian flicks at the Toronto Film Festival every fall. This one is far more mainstream (and breaks almost every Dogme rule), about an English businessman (Pierce Brosnan) who is in Denmark running a Danish company. His son is about to marry a girl whose mother has just discovered her husband is cheating on her, after she has spent a year in chemo treatments to fight breast cancer. They all go to the wedding, Brosnan meets woman, etc. etc. A fun story, and where I'd like to say it's predictable, it actually isn't. There are lots of little twists and turns along the way and I really enjoyed it. What was particularly interesting is they didn't make Brosnan speak Danish, even though every other character speaks it. So in many conversations, he's speaking English, they reply in Danish, he nods and replies in English, etc. That way you just read the subtitles for the Danish, but they didn't have to teach Brosnan how to speak in jerky Danish for the movie. And it really works well.

Nurse Jackie
In addition to The Vampire Diaries, I've been marathoning Nurse Jackie. The seasons are quick, so it doesn't take long to get through 12 half-hour episodes, and I've blown through the first two seasons in no time. My library (love you, library!) has season three for me, and I'm picking it up on Tuesday. If you haven't seen this show, get it. It's addictive (no pun intended) and fun, and sad. I always thought it was a comedy, but it's a drama with comic moments. It handles even the deepest crises with some humour but a lot of delicacy, and it's a brilliant show. And Edie Falco proves she is bad in NOTHING.

I have a lot more on the go, but I've rambled on long enough for now! Perhaps more next week. :)