Just caught Beowulf & Grendel last night at my local small-cinema’s ‘art series’ showings.
I’m not one for lengthy reviews usually, and there will be no spoilers in case you don’t know how the story goes.
In short, an excellent film, though I can totally see why distribution and promotion in North America was limited; definitely a niche film. This was no 13th Warrior. There were no big-time Hollywood types, accents were thick (except in the case of the one Canadian actress in the movie), and budget was not huge.
The flavour in the movie comes out distinctly, and it looks very authentic, as opposed to fantastic. The viking village is no Edoras, and there are absolutely no flashy special effects whatsoever, though I will say that the make-up and costuming is amazing. And, of course, the mood remains largely sombre, as one would expect of a Scandinavian-inspired tale.
Do yourself a favour and see this if you get the chance; if you can’t catch it in a theatre near you, it should be out on DVD soon.
Posted by Ron as TV & Movies at 6:20 PM EDT
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I’ve been doing a lot of political reading, and engaging in the odd debate on various forums (which have nothing in and of themselves to do with politics). Usually, this involves butting heads with neo-con idiots. As part of the fun, I ran across two interesting videos available online.
The first was a “homebrew” 9/11 documentary called Loose Change, which basically asks a lot of the hard questions that the american media was reluctant to ask, or unable to get any answers for. Like Farenheit 9/11, you probably should take some of this with a grain of salt, but the important thing about it, like with Michael Moore’s work, is that it promotes discussion and inquiry, which is the exact opposite message that people have been getting from the american media (especially on Fox). The video can be seen on Google Video here.
And speaking of the american media, and Fox, a while ago, the fifth estate put on a feature called Sticks and Stones, about the degeneration of the american media into a mouthpiece for the conservative, right-wing, neo-con agenda. It covers the Ann Coulter affair in some detail, and even reveals subversive elements within our own traditionally soft-core socialist country. It runs about 42 minutes and I found it worth every second of my life devoted to watching it.
Posted by Ron as Media, Politics at 12:16 PM EDT
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That’s it, another carte blanche to rape motorists at the gas pumps again this summer.
Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can at 12:27 AM EDT
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It can be said, and fairly, that most new media slips below my radar, or rather above it, since I try to pay more attention to what’s going on underground.
Actually, no, most of the time, my proverbial radar is simply switched off. Usually, I don’t give a crap, but it has the unfortunate side effect of me missing out on some cool stuff from time to time.
Case in point: Sometime in 2005 (according to IMDB), Beowulf and Grendel was released. This is something right up my alley, and somehow I missed it. Granted, from what I was able to find out, distribution was poor, and marketing almost non-exsistant. I think I found it in a list of movies on amazon’s ‘coming soon to DVD’ list. In any case, I was worried that I’d missed out on seeing it on the big screen.
Not so. Rainbow, one of our local cinemas here in London is putting it on as part of their ongoing ‘arts series’ and will be running it for three days (May 28, 29 & 31). I’ll be there.
Posted by Ron as TV & Movies at 1:20 PM EDT
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A couple weeks ago, I picked up The Lone Gunmen complete series on DVD. This past week I’ve been doing little else but watching it.
I really enjoyed the series when it made its debut in 2001, that is, when I could actually find it on the air. Half the time when I went to watch it, it wasn’t on or had its time changed, facts which weren’t reflected in any TV listings, including the ones on the digital cable box I had at the time. As a result, I only caught about half of the 13 episodes that were made before the series got canned. A shame, because it happens to be a damn funny show.
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Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 9:45 PM EDT
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Tonight I did some work on my car, at work. I installed a new all-aluminum racing-grade radiator from PWR, and a Perrin lightened crank pulley to replace my old OEM unit that had become unbalanced.
The lightened pulley, besides replacing the unbalanced original one, has the other side benefit of reducing rotating mass on the engine, freeing up more horsepower to actually go to the ground instead of spinning an overweight engine part.
The stock part was a two piece rusty steel pulley with a rubber vibration dampener, and weighs about 4 pounds. The rubber dampener was coming apart, hence unbalancing the unit.
The lightened unit appears to be made from aluminum, one piece, and only weighs about 1.2 pounds. The difference in weight seems small, but because the part is spinning very quickly (=engine speed, up to 6500RPM) that 2.8 pound difference reduces the rotating mass of the car by about 100 pounds, and should be good enough to shave 0.1 second off my quarter mile time. That part remains to be seen, though my Butt-O-Metre™ indicates a bit more snap when I punch the gas.
The rad got put in because the newer SVX I just bought has a cracked rad, and the one in my first SVX is a near-new OEM replacement that I bought about two years ago because it had a cracked rad, too. So the newer car gets my OE rad because the terms of the warranty prohibit any sort of modification. Everybody wins.
My belly was in knots the whole way home, because I couldn’t remember if I had tightened everything up after I was done (turns out I did). There were also clearance problems with the new rad cap, but I’m going to take a look at it again later in the week, with a fresh mind, and see if I didn’t overlook something.
Come to think on it, my belly is still in knots… I can’t figure out why.
Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can at 10:39 PM EDT
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Do the people retarded fashionistas that blindly follow these stupid trends actually think this looks good? It was bad enough in the 70’s, why resurrect this crap? Seriously, every time I see someone wearing something like this, it just makes me want to punch them in the face, thus shattering their precious, overpriced, made-by-sweatshop-labour, diva eyewear (this applies to guys too!), and possibly their nose, if I get a good enough shot in.
I hated last year’s trend just as much (frameless). Not because they looked particularly bad, just that every little diva had to have a pair. And where are all those expensive glasses now? Value Village? The local landfill? Nobody would be caught dead in last year’s fad, but at least it didn’t make you look like a fashion reject from 30 years ago that just came out of cryogenic stasis.
I’m not even sure why the mere sight of these things enrages me so; I haven’t figured that part out yet. All I know is that it makes me have much less respect for the person behind the shades. Does that make me a bad person? Is it foolish of me to make sweeping prejudgements about so many people? Probably. Do I care? Not until this trend is gone (again, for good this time, please).
Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 8:02 PM EDT
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During this week’s shopping trip to the Superstore, I encountered a rather large display of rather large bottles of barbequeue sauce; President’s Choice brand Smokin’ Stampede Beer & Chipotle sauce in a 1L bottle.
I find PC product quality to be superb most of the time, and I can’t argue with the flavour of beer, so I picked one up. Good choice. Not overly smoke-y (then Meghan wouldn’t like it), and not too spicy (then Jen wouldn’t like it). A lot of sauces get most of their flavour from an intense hickory-smoke flavour that puts one in mind of chewing on a hickory log. Unsubtle and not too pleasant. But this sauce is sublime; it reminds me of the sauce they used to sell at the Beer Store during the summer months. Haven’t had any of that in quite a while, since I haven’t been to a Beer Store in a long time; I don’t even know if they sell it anymore.
Anyway, I really liked the PC stuff, and recommend it if you like to barbequeue a lot.
Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 10:37 AM EDT
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I haven’t posted anything political in a while, but this just incenses me. STUPID fucking conservatives. Yes, let’s just fund all our lovely tax cuts by letting our environment go to shit. Great idea. Sorry, Steve, you lose.
Posted by Ron as Politics at 9:46 AM EDT
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…actually have a decent day at work. That’s right, while the bosses were away at a Subaru conference in Niagara Falls, things were actually “normal” around the shop, and it was downright pleasant.
Posted by Ron as Work at 11:27 PM EDT
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