Reviews

I’ve been travelling so much that I’ve had lots I wanted to post a note on, but never had a chance. So here’s what I can remember, in 10-second review format:

V for Vendetta: Surprisingly good. I thought it would suck based on the trailer, but I was totally, totally sucked in. Great political commentary. Decent acting. And I’m so glad he died at the end. Letting him live would have been cheesy classic Hollywood. Took balls to let him die, and made the movie live that much more for me.

X3: Awesome. Best of the bunch. Too many deaths, but understandable given the events.

Aliant: My phone company called me the other week to say “on your current plan, you get our International calling plan for free. Last month that would have saved you 30$. Mind if we sign you up?” Yes… A phone company calling to tell me they can save me money. Who’d'a thunk?

Rogers: Rogers Wireless (my cell company) often calls me to inform me of free trials to their services. I sign up, then set an Outlook reminder so I cancel 1 week before the trial (typically 3 months) is up. Good times.

Webcam: I just bought a webcam. My first ever. It’s a Logitech IM. Really quite nice. I’ve connected it to Skype if anyone wants to talk “face to face”.

Sheraton Toronto: I stayed there 3 times during my trip to T-Dot. I always felt valued, always felt special, always felt like they cared. It’s the smallest things. Refunds when the Internet went down. Always calling me by my name when I called room service or the front desk. Going out of their way to get me show tickets when I was bored one night.

Holiday Inn Select, Toronto Airport: The Holiday Inn Select is the 3-4 star version of the Holiday Inn. Supposed to be way nicer. They had some nice “little things” like a fog-free mirror in the shower (didn’t work) and a larger than average bathtub (that leaked). I stayed here twice during my stay. The first time was 5 days and every day something went wrong. The second stay was better. Not sure I’d be willing to pay 200$/night for it though.

Mesh: Awesome conference. Best conference of the year. Great organizers. To say it “changed my life” wouldn’t really be accurate… But that my life changed while I was at mesh makes it that much more memorable. Too bad I was dead tired the whole conference so didn’t socialize as much as I’d have hoped.

Red Bull: Over the last month, I’ve come to live on this stuff. Nothing like having to work 80+ hour weeks for nearly 2 months to make you need a pick-me-up on occasion (especially for 6am conference calls). As a note, you *can* buy these in a 24-pack. Saves you about 15$ ;-)

Oblivion: I’ve finished the main quest for this. Absolutely awesome game. I only have about 4 more achievements to go to “finish” the game (there are hundreds of side quests, but getting all achievements means you’ve effectively “finished” it, since there’s little benefit to doing all the side quests).

Perfect Dark Zero: Finished the main quest of this last night, in Agent mode, with a friend. Great game. Some really great moments. Not as epic as Halo or Halo 2, but a crazy amount of fun. Only level that really bugged me was the Temple. Too much “fleeing”, not enough time to sit back and be strategic. Finally battle was great.

Xbox 360: I’ve had it for a few months now. And while it set me back more than 1000$ with everything, I haven’t regretted it for a day. Demos, trailers, videos, sync’ing up with my PC or MP3 player. Awesome console.

IE7: I recently had to uninstall it and go back to IE6 and FireFox. Wow. It’s the littlest things in IE7. Open a tab by clicking on a mini-tab. Close each tab in the tab itself (instead of goingto the far right). Ease of opening a blank or new tab. It’s all just really smooth once you get used to it. I don’t even remember the learning curve, since everything was done in such a way that it was easier to open links in tabs than new windows. Genius.

Shannon and I went to see The Brothers Grimm together on Saturday. Neither of us was very impressed.

I went into the movie, having only seen the canned trailer.

In a lot of ways, the movie reminds me of when I saw Van Helsing. Van Helsing was really a tribute movie in a way: it took all the best bits from all the best classic horror flicks, weaved them into a vaguely cohesive plotline and had fun with them.

The Brothers Grimm takes dozens of childrens fairy tales and … Well, just twists them. Freakishly, badly, oddly, and never in a good way. Rapunzel is actually an evil witch. The Gingerbread Man is actually a blob of goo that swallows a boy and then runs away. Jack and the Beanstalk is … Jake and a bunch of beans that never do anything, and his sister dies as a result.

There weren’t many laughs, the plot was totally disjointed, the acting was 10x over the top (which is to be expected). Overall, this isn’t a tribute film. It’s just a mockery and twisting of childrens fairy tales.

It was sad. It could have been fun and entertaining at least to the degree Van Helsing was. Instead, it was just a flop.