Tales of a Masochistic Troubadour

Movie Review: John & Jane

Since I'm really too lazy (or more importantly, I didn't have time) to research the movies that were showing at the Toronto International Film Festival, I made most of my movie choices based on this article in the Toronto Star.  Ashim Ahluwalia's "John & Jane" was the top pick of the review so on Wednesday, PD and I decided to go see it.

"John & Jane" was described as a documentary about the effects of globalisation as seen from the perspective of workers in the Indian offshore call centres.  PD, il l'amour X and I were looking forward to seeing this movie since we were expecting a scathing commentary on American globalisation and capitalism.  The perfect fuel to feed a a few sarcastic individuals working in Corporate America.

Boy were we bullshot.  Here's how I'd describe the film: "A pointless caricature of the Indian call centre worker."  The subjects were so exaggerated they became irrelevant to whatever point the director was trying to make.  If there was even a point at all.  PD, X and I agree that the whole purpose of the film was probably just because the director wanted to make a documentary.  C'est tout.

The funny thing was I actually thought I was just an uncouth and unculcutured individual for not understanding the brilliance of this movie.  Turns out I wasn't the only one worried about that.  X was apparently thinking the same thing.  We were both incredibly relieved to see PD give this movie the worst vote possible and realised our opinion of the movie was shared.

I give this movie a 1 out of 5.  It sucked.

Movie Review: Seven Swords

   

Went to watch Tsui Hark's Seven Swords with JKL & DL on Sunday.  This is my first of hopefully three movies I'll be catching as part of this year's Toronto International Film Festival.

I've always been a sucker for Chinese swordfighting epics and Seven Swords delivers what I expected in spades.  But like most of these epics, Seven Swords is incredibly confusing; I'll probably need to watch it again just to understand some of the details behind the story (or I could read the novel but my Chinese literacy is abysmal).  And maybe I'm being a bit presumptuous here, but I found that Tsui Hark was - to some extent - trying to emulate Lord of the Rings in the camera angles they used to portray the vast barrenness of the environment (especially the first shot of Fire & Wind's castle...  it reminds me of the scene in LotR when they arrive at Rohan).

So if you're into the genre, I'd say 4 out of 5... go watch it (I'm going to catch it again).  But if you're not into this genre of movies, then you'd probably only give it 2 out of 5 at most.

Dirt Biking 2005

I really gotta stop writing such long winded blog entries.  They take so long to write that I can never finish them in time...  Here's a short one.

 

Every year around September, a group of crazies at Bell get together and go dirt biking near Peterborough with the Trial Tours group.  We met Steve and his crew almost seven years ago and we instantly bonded when our fearless leader, NS, decided to wipe out within the first five minutes of the day and break his collarbone.

Counting this year's trip on September 2nd, I've been on a motorbike three times in my life.  And since I seem to have no talent for dirt biking, I've always stuck with the beginner group.  I blame my lack of skills on my love of biking; my problems are usually biking related:

• PROBLEM: Leaning too much on the handlebars.
  SYMPTOM: Loss of throttle control and too much tension.
  CAUSE: I rely on my handlebars a lot while biking, something I fixed this year with the introduction of the Chameleon
• PROBLEM: Standing on the pegs with my toes as opposed to the arch of my foot.
  SYMPTOM: Difficulty in shifting and braking.
  CAUSE: You push and balance with your toes on a bike.
• BIGGEST PROBLEM: Using the front brake wayyy too much.
  SYMPTOM: Locking up of the front, thereby causing the rider to perform an endo (end over the handlebars)
  CAUSE: Right hand brake on a bicycle is the rear brake, but the front brake on a motorbike.

My two most spectacular wipeouts of the day involved a huge tree trunk (bike couldn't make it over, but I did) and a fork in the road (couldn't decide which way to go, so I went straight towards the bushes and ended up doing an endo when I hit the front brake too hard).

Apart from NS' collarbone incidence the first year, we usually come of out dirt bike day dirty, tired and in need of a beer only.  In my case I always end up severely bruised.  This year was an exception.  DG was a first timer and by some fluke occurance of events, he managed to break Trail Tours' record for injury sustained in a single event.  DG lost control of the bike while going downhill on a singletrack (hit a rock) and somehow he landed very badly when he ditched the bike.  In a fantastic proof of the numbing qualities of adrenalin, DG managed to get up from the fall, kill the engine, take his helmet off and lie down.  At first we though it was just a broken collarbone (typical biking injury), but upon further examination at the hospital, it turned out DG not only broke his collar bone, but he fractured his shoulder blade, cracked four ribs and partially collapsed his lungs.  He's still in the hospital right now, apparently hallucinating from all the drugs they've been giving him for the pain.

Anyhow, I'm going to visit DG tomorrow and hopefully he'll be out of there soon.  His wife wants to murder all of us, so I have to sneak in before she shows up.

Will I go dirt biking again?  Hell ya.  Not only that, I'm stupid enough that I still want to get a motorbike (Ducatti Monster... mmmmm).

BTW, carrying a 200 lb guy in a strecther down a hill is not fun.