fighting the boss

I just wanted to post two links to interviews that I found very interesting and wanted to share.

The first interview is between Charlie Rose, Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro Inarritu and Guillermo del Toro, and they discuss their friendship and their recently released films Children of Men, Babel and Pan’s Labyrinth, respectively. I’m not a huge fan of Charlie Rose’s style but I am happy that he managed to put this together. Because the three men are friends and are very personable, the interview is very interesting almost despite Charlie Rose’s bumbling.

The second link is a rare interview from NPR with Sacha Baron Cohen as himself and not one of his hilarious characters. He discusses the Borat movie, the characters in general, their effect on society and how he even pulls these things off to begin with. A very neat interview…

Meet the Real Sacha Baron Cohen (You need to click on the “Listen” button under the title to start it up)

I’m sure you’ll enjoy those. I have to migrate my site to a new host soon and that may bring with it a site overhaul as one of my goals for the new year is to do more personal web design.

I make no promises.

i was down at the harbourfront centre yesterday to check out a free live show by a brazilian chick name CéU, as part of their canada day festivities (i actually missed most of the show but i did manage to buy the cd, which is great).

i already bought tickets to the upcoming sarah harmer show at the harbourfront concert stage and was perusing the website and realised that there are really really cool events going down there all summer. the beauty is that most of it is FREE!

of particular note is next weekend’s beats, breaks and culture festival that’s going to showcase a lot of cool music, breakdancing, graffiti art and other stuff from all over the world.

if you’re in or near toronto and you’re looking for something to do i can almost guarantee you’ll find something that appeals to you here:

Harbourfront Centre World Routes

this is an unabashed, unsolicited endorsement of what makes toronto great.

well, well, well. as i sit at my computer at work, awake much too soon, particularly for a saturday, i remember why i have this big grin on my face and this big blue splotch of a stamp on the back of my right hand. last night was a great one.

i’m trying to relay this story as i anxiously struggle to release my new meligrove band cd from its impregnable plastic wrapping. my shaky fingers are no match for this seemingly entryless protective sheath. ah, there she goes. at last i can enjoy the wonders inside as i relive last evening’s events.

first some context. i’ve been toliing away for the past two weeks at work on this giant project that must get finished. yesterday was my twelveth straight day at work. as the evening approached, i was filled with a mixture of exhaustion and inspiration; i could either go home and go to bed or i could try to make the most of my scarce free time. sleep was an inviting option in some respects, but i absolutely can’t deal with that work-sleep-work schedule that can so easily creep up out of nowhere. add to that the fact that it is canadian music week, meaning there were a large number of good shows going on in the city, sean & mags were coming down to see the parkas play a showcase at 1am at healey’s and the fact that my small taste of cmw at the mellifluously-voiced courtney farquhar’s show the night before was the only concert i had been to in ages, and you’ve got yourself the recipe for a strong desire to rock, my friends.

Read the rest of this entry »

this weekend was an unusual one. i spent friday night driving up and down city streets only to end up, hours later, at the exact spot i had begun the journey with no stops in between. saturday i spent the entire day at home, after waking up pretty late, filled with paralysing ideas of working on this site. ultimately, i spent the day reading about different tricks and techniques for cool web design while actually designing nothing, giving up before midnight in a tired, unproductive heap.

then sunday morning came. i woke up early and did some cursory research into the cost of equipment i may need for my upcoming film project. after a brief breakfast, i headed out on the road to guelph to see andrea. this is where things get interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

so i just watched a trailer for a movie named ‘brick’ with the kid who played the kid on third rock from the sun. from the trailer, this movie looks quite awesome. two beefs with this trailer (and trailers in general). first, i don’t like trailers that quote movie reviews, particularly from film festival screenings. my thought is that the trailer should be good enough on its own to make you want to watch the movie and reviews from film fest screenings are generally overzealous anyways. second, i don’t like trailers that try to tell you everything about the movie. this one isn’t that bad but there are some out there that basically show you the whole movie, thus negating any reason for watching it. it usually means the movie isn’t that great and/or that the distributors don’t have any confidence in it.

let’s compare and contrast, shall we?

best trailer i’ve seen in a long time: marie antoinette (this tiny, crappy version doesn’t really do it justice. if you see it in the theatres you will gain a better appreciation)

worst trailer i’ve seen recently: ultraviolet

ironically, both of these movies are being released by sony pictures, who’s current slate of upcoming movies is pretty much atrocious, other than marie-antoinette (basic instinct 2, rocky balboa, casino royale…it’s remake/rehash city over there).

some other trailers that worked for me (i.e. made me want to see the movie) and are worthy of mention: thank you for smoking, idlewild and bubble (i know some people may not agree with that last one…)

lastly, and unrelated to movies, i was reading about the drop in the valuation of google stock this morning (it dropped $30 yesterday to end at $401) and it just kind of made me think. what was i doing that was so important in august 2004 that made me miss out on the original ipo when the stock was offered at $85. $85 to $401? seriously? and, like, three weeks ago the stock was at an all-time high of $475. is it just me or does this sound like the most sure-fire way of becoming rich outside of selling celebrity sex tapes?

i need to learn about this stock market thing. sounds like my ridiculous tech-knowledge-y can be put to some useful purpose (i can’t decide if that was lame or awesome, but the spelling definitely sucks).

so i’ve been somewhat distracted recently, in a bit of a productive funk that has kept me from writing down all the amusing anecdotes and wonderful ideas i’ve come up with in the meantime. the occurence of these brainstorms hasn’t waned much but my ability to be loquacious and the complementary ability to actually sit down and focus on writing has been stunted at best. the result of these temporary slowdowns is a lack of posting here, writing elsewhere and a definite and prolonged dearth of mass emails (i’ve been flirting with referring to them as newsletters, except for the fact that they rarely contain news).

i am starting to get busy with a couple of new film projects, primarily a two to three minute 16mm short i hope to produce this year and for which i am seriously considering applying for a bravofact grant. if you or someone you know has ever applied for one of these things i would love it if you would put me in touch with them. the application is a bit unweildly and the amount of information that needs to be supplied seems daunting. also, if you are interested in participating in some capacity in the project, as a producer, crewmember or even cast, please get in touch with me asap, either through a comment or directly at [mina dot mikhail at gmail dot com].

i also have a few stories and articles i am hoping to get down in writing, along with some serious design work to this site, including some new functionality and a more refined (or brand new) layout.

in fact, i’m going to make a list of topics to write about and then try to knock them down once a day (or week at least). you can vote for the priority i should do them in by leaving me a comment.

the list

• my thoughts on the election (the canadian election and not that of hamas, which, i guess, i could write about too)
• my thoughts on the convergence of american girls, wet t-shirt contests and alcohol
• an article entitled ‘peeing in public’
• a story entitled ‘no regard for beauregard’
• a story entitled ‘beaman, be a man!’
• a completely uninformed review of the first ten pages of salman rushdie’s “midnight’s children”
• the first in a series of articles of the current state of my knowledge of women (very short articles, believe me)
• some movie reviews (the apu trilogy, the squid and the whale, king kong…)
• and finally, movie reviews and guesses at synopses of movies i haven’t seen yet and will probably never see

so weigh in and let me know where i should start or if you have better ideas than these. as pedro says in napoleon dynamite, which seemed to be a promise stephen harper figured would win him the election, “vote for me and your wildest dreams will come true”.

salaam to all the capricorns and aquarians (or aquarii) who’ve been celebrating their birthdays as of late. i find it quite intriguing that i have three very close friends whose birthdays are all within a few days of each other. this particular day is jd’s birthday, sunday is scott’s and then the ninth is brendan’s. wild.

ok, so ever since i’ve been done school, and travelled the world i’ve been completely out of the loop in terms of concerts and shit. i find out about shows i want to go to a month after the tickets go on sale. what’s the deal with that? sure, i’ve sort of lost interest in being part of the frenzied mass of hip torontonians who can’t miss a single live appearance of broken social scene or metric, but by the same token, they are good bands, bands i like even, and they usually put on good shows, from past experience. so what’s a brother gotta do to get a ticket? i used to be all over it, checking websites for upcoming concert dates, going to buy the tickets the day they go on sale and whatnot. i would inform others of the shows. nobody tells me shit until the day of the concert.

them: “you going to the so-and-so show tonight?” me: “i didn’t even know about it until yesterday. so no. and thanks for telling me.”

whatever. not something to get all worked up over. i like to have a good time at a concert every once in a while but there will be others. i can find some other creative ways to blow my cash and my time in the mean…time (one too many ‘times’ there). it seems that gone are the days where i buy an extra ticket to shows months in advance and then end up with no one to come along on the day. which, come to think of it, is probably a good thing.

sean sent me this hilarious link to the following skit from snl. this was worthy of a post all its own…

i’ll be back very soon with a mass email account entitled “feliz navidad, beaches!”

i’m in an internet cafe in puerto vallarta, enjoying the sun and the water and the ability to do nothing for long stretches of time. i went to my first real live wet t-shirt contest last night and let me tell you, it is disturbingly insane. i’ll be back soon to totally get into it. this one may even warrant a comeback of the old mass email trick. we’ll see…

pat morita (aka mr. miyagi from karate kid fame) died yesterday. i find it at once incredible and completely logical that he was nominated for an academy award for the role of mr. miyagi in karate kid. i mean, karate kid, a marginal movie, but on the other hand, mr. miyagi is a pop-cultural icon. everybody knows who he is. i salute you, morita-san.

in happier news, it’s ricardo montalban’s birthday today and he’s still alive at 85. a world without ricardo montalban is a world that’s not worth living in, is it? what would we have done without his villainous presence in both the original naked gun and star trek: wrath of khan? khan noonien singh…why was khan indian anyways? i guess for the same reason captain jean-luc picard speaks with an english accent. regardless, this man loves starring in films with colons in the title.

yesterday i managed to make it all the way to lunch before finding out the earth-shattering news that jessica simpson and nick lachey (more commonly known as one of the dudes from…98 degrees maybe, or ‘nsync, i’ve lost track) are getting divorced. luckily, cnn had this scurrilous piece of infotainment pasted across their homepage next to an article about elton john getting married and underneath a piece about 12 dead in afghanistan. this media-inspired divorce makes me feel pretty sorry for them. it’s fairly obvious to me that if it wasn’t being reported daily for over a year that they were breaking up that they may have had, at the very least, the chance at lasting longer than this. but, on the other hand, they brought it on themselves to a large degree by allowing themselves to be videotaped 24/7. every hit tv series has to have a big finale. they are just the right people to have blurred the line between their real lives and the mediascape of hypertext and celebrity. it echoes very faintly scenes from boogie nights, raging bull, and network, for me, as if all those sad characters with positive outlooks in the midst of depressing situations meld together in an orgy of self-illusory lust for happiness through celebrity. but even making that comparison is laden with irony, i guess.

considering nick lachey basically has no talent, we can expect him to linger in the public eye for another year or so, doing the talk show circuit talking about how he and jessica are “still friends” while promoting another terrible attempt at music before he fades into oblivion, only to resurface on the surreal life after several high-profile trysts with a long train of b-list celebrities. his looks might even get him into some a-list poon, but it won’t last long because he hasn’t got breasts and the media-hungry masses don’t put up with useless male celebrities. it’s a jealousy thing (i.e. from the male perspective, why should he have all the sex with women that i wish i was having sex with; or on the female side, what does she see in him [inner monologue: he is so incredibly gorgeous]?).

jessica, of course, will be fine. i’m now going to go punch myself in the groin for being on a first name basis with these avatars of human beings that i don’t even know.

moving along, the viraginous keke is officially a toronto fashionista and general gadabout. if you can pry your ravenous eyes away from the face-meltingly sexy sarah taylor, you will find keke’s expert insight into toronto fashion week and a beautiful photo of the lady herself, draped in marc jacobs (jacket, not the man…yet). i ran into keke on the street the day she bought that jacket, which was odd because it was the morning after i had first met her. can this girl have more beautiful skin, lips, style? uh uh.