The best part is, that’s exactly how I eat cheeseburgers at home. I hate ketchup on a burger (although I do like tomatoes) and I keep “spicy mustard” (actually whole grain dijon mustard) in my fridge all the time.

Also, that reminds me, we need another burger-off this summer.

Thank you Ken for the camera, kijiji for the hook up and Rachel for not yelling at me for too long when I brought it home.

Also I have a slightly used (and by that I mean broken) D70s for sale… it comes in a nice box…

No Country for Old Men
Zodiac
Ratatouille
Sweeney Todd
The Lives of Others
Bourne Ultimatum
Eastern Promises
Juno
Knocked Up

And even though I haven’t seen it yet I am reserving a place for this film simply on the basis of PTAnderson Directing and Daniel Day Lewis starring. How could it not be briliant?
There Will Be Blood

Honorable mentions to:
Once
Paris Je T’aime
3:10 to Yuma
Into the Wild
Darjeeling Limited
Grindhouse Presents: Death Proof
Transformers

Anyway, if you’re going to watch movies this is the time of year to do it. Everybody keeps back the good ones till the end of the year for Oscar consideration. Now I just need to get a chance to see “There Will Be Blood”.

Onto the thoughts on Juno – if you don’t want to bother reading the rest of the post- the bottom line is- it was good…

The good of Juno is so incredibly good it far outweighs the bad. In fact, the bad, primarily the fact that none of the characters sounds like a real human being, is actually… part of the good. (this is also why I liked Studio 60 so much – maybe I just like characters that are more interesting than the people I know in real life – come on guys kick it up a notch) Anyway, Ellen Page carries the entire movie on her titular back, though her parents do a pretty good job in support (acting and character wise) as the pitch perfect parents to have around if you happen to be a pregnant teen. Micheal Cera gives us the same blank but intensely humorous stare as he did in Arrested Development/Superbad/life in general, while Jason Bateman (who I love all over again from Arrested Development) and Jennifer Garner stand by as cardboard cut outs. But it doesn’t really matter because Ellen Page’s Juno, the wisecracking, hipster, punk rawk, pregnant teen is so much fun to watch. Sure the dialogue is manufactured, moments are a little too precious and the ending is… well the last scene is just bad- but the movie is absolutely great.

Awesome.

The singing was reasonably good but the gory, dark and gruesome storyline was told with such a great flair for dark (dark) humour it comes off perfectly. Burton is really at his best and the casting of Depp, Bonham-Carter and Rickman are absolutely dead on. As good as “Legend” was bad. See it.

Factory Girl: Started out fine but then “The Worst Actor in the World” [trademark] Hayden Christensen showed up playing, what I can only imagine, was suppossed to be a mannequin dressed up to look like Bob Dylan. I don’t know why that was in the script either. Ugghh 3 out of 4 sucky stars

I haven’t actually read any of the book to be honest, so far I’ve just waited for each movie to come out, but with the final installment hitting later this month, I don’t think I can wait another two years to learn the fate of Harry.

Maybe I’ll actually read this one… or at least have my wife explain the ending.

My best guess, Harry pulls a Jesus and dies to stop Voldemort but somehow comes back to us.

The beauty of the film is in the way del Toro shows us a young girl retreating into fantasy to deal with the brutality of war around her. It isn’t a retreat into happy safe fairy tales or the schmaltzy nonsense of Life Is Beautiful that pretends war isn’t ugly and scary. This is fantasy that mirrors the experience of life. Scary, sometimes ugly, and yet filed with hope. One of the best films I have seen in a long time. Don’t let the subtitles scare you off this is truly one of the best films of this or any year.

I don’t even know where to start.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
For Clooney‘s directorial debut this is a fine introduction. He’s trying a little too hard at times to be artsy (see Good Night and Good Luck to see him nail artsy perfectly) and it can drag a little in the middle but damned it Sam Rockwell doesn’t make almost anything watchable, even Chuck Barris. 4 out of 5

Nacho Libre
Tried to go see this twice in one night and can you believe it was sold out! Nachooooooooooo

Underworld Evolution
If Underworld is a guilty pleasure then this one is really guilty. No pretense to any sort of character developmet here. I did actually like it better than the first time I saw it though. 3 out of 5

The Notorius Betty Page
I didn’t actually get to see this one. It was playing at the Uptown Theatre but apparently Joe and I were a couple days late. ? out of 5

Stay
With a $50 million budget and a grand total of $3.5 million earned at the domestic box office you could probably call this one a bomb. As a follow up after Finding Neverland this has to be a bit of a disappointment for Mark Forster but it�s not all that bad. 3 out of 5

Hitchhiker�s Guide to the Galaxy
I never did read the book so I didn�t have the incomprehensible reverence some people seem to hold for the guide. Without the baggage of measuring up to the novel I thought the movie was reasonably entertaining. 3 out of 5

Munich
Surprisingly intelligent even though the themes are pretty obvious. That intelligence, excellent performances all around and a great visual style make this the best film Spielberg has done in a long time. Easy. 4.5 out of 5

Aeon Flux
It’s the second time I’ve seen this. Wasn’t much better the second time around. 3 out of 5

Fun With Dick and Jane
Okay, so Jim Carey is gauranteed to make you smile at least a couple times if you watch him for an hour and a half- his face is just funny- still that doesn’t mean you get your 90 minutes back. This is just one more movie that didn’t need a remake. 2 out of 5

Shaolin Soccer
I love Stephen Chow. Bizarre dance sequences and a ton of jokes that are probably twice as funny if you can actually understand Cantonese. 3.5 out of 5

Old School
Seriously I watched a lot of dumb comedies this week. What’s up with that. Oh and I love Luke Wilson. 3 out of 5

Wow, not one intelligent movie this entire week.

Anyway, here’s the gist of my review- boring. Seriously this was a boring movie. It plodded along with absolutely none of the engine that the book had. Tom Hanks, is obviously not a fan of intellectuals, because his portrayal of a Harvard professor amounted to the most stone-faced, ineffectual, performance of his career, and Audrey Tautoo had only one expression, confusion, for the entire movie. No wonder the film had none of the latent sexual tension between the two leads, they were both too bored to notice each other.

I mean this could have been a fun movie, car chases, hulking albino assassins, high ranking conspiracy- and yet nothing materialized.

It really seemed that Howard, true to form, didn’t want to offend anyone. He softened Hanks’ character, and made him more sympathetic to Christians, he absolved the Vatican of any wrong-doing and had the “bad guys” working without the knowledge or approval of the church, he downplayed the role goddess worship and even made rank-and-file Opus Dei members come out on the side of angels.

After all the nervous hand-wringing by Christians across the globe, the only people who should really be offended about this movie is anyone that payed $10.95 a ticket to see it.

Seriously dissappointing.
** out of *****

I first read Noah Baumbach’s name in the credits to Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” which he co-wrote. In “The Squid and the Whale” he adds director to his credits. As a director Baumbach is solid, his camera work isn’t particularly interesting (certainly not in a league with Anderson), and the shaky cam can be a little annoying (though forgiveable given the tight budget) but the performances he pulls form his cast, especially Jeff Daniels as a self-absorbed intellectual, are fantastic. Add to that a particularly funny, touching and smart script and this is a great little film.

David Cronenberg has never been a particularly accessible director. As much acclaim as this year’s Best Picture received, Cronenberg’s film of the same name is a slight bit more difficult to sit through. Still his eye for composition and his sense of tension and subtext are powerful. -besides he’s Canadian.

In A History of Violence, Tom Stall is a mild family man living in rural USAmerica. But when he is forced to act to stop a murder he is put in the public spotlight. The limelight attracts attention from the violent past Tom thought he had outrun and his wife, Edie, and family never knew existed.

Brokeback Mountain may have garnered a lot of attention for its look at American sexuality but it’s A History of Violence that is the more provocative. Cronenberg ties the ideas of violence and sexuality so tightly that when the tension is eventually released in a troubling scene, the struggle between Edie’s distance from her husband and her lust for this new violent alter-ego makes this one of the most uncomfortable sex-scenes around.

The film is a powerful statement about what we normalize and how we both abhor and scramble to consume violence and darkness. As Peter Travers _Rolling Stone, puts it, “The family tableau that ends the film is as chilling and redemptive as anything Cronenberg has ever crafted.” What’s chilling is the fact that this is not the redemption we are looking for. This is an acceptance and internalization of the darkness we see in each other. The close of the film is not about a forgiveness that removes the guilt and shame of sin, it is a forced submission of conscience; a choice to ignore and silently condone the darkness in each of us; something we do everyday in order to avoid the confrontation and acknowledgement that precedes true redemption.

Best Picture
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Good Night, Good Luck
Munich

Best Director
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Good Night, Good Luck
Munich

Best Actor – Male
Philip Seymour Hoffman – Capote
Terrence Howard – Hustle and Flow
Heath Ledger – Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Pheonix – Walk the Line
David Strathairn – Good Night Good Luck

Best Actor – Female
Judi Dench – Mrs. Henderson
Felicity HUffman – Transamerica
Keira Knightley – Pride and Prejudice
Charlize Theron – North Country
Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line

Screenplay – Adapted
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Constant Gardner
A History of Violence
Munich

Screenplay – Original
Crash
Good Night Good Luck
Match Point
The Squid and the Whale
Syriana

Some realy good films this year. Among my favorites, A History of Violence, Capote, Syrianna, Hustle and Flow, Good Luck Good Night, Batman Begins, King Kong and Crash.