Concerts

Movie Review: 300

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything, Movies | Leave a comment

spoilers ahead.

Toronto – Needing something to do on nice spring Wednesday night, me and some friends decided to venture indoors and watch this movie called ‘300’ thats all the rage right now. In case you have been in North Korea or a cave, you will know this is the latest adaption of Frank Miller’s story and is loosely based on Battle of Thermopylae , where 300 Spartans fought off about thousands of Persians (or as they are now known..Terrorists) in an effort to slow down their advances. I will leave the rest of the battle details for you to wiki up, just like i did.

obviously the movie was very stylized. lots of slow mo scenes, saturated colors, cgi stuff. it was a more colorful version of sin city in that regard, i thought it was all a pretty nice touch. there were a lot of titties in this movie, and my friend pointed out the people who made the movies put in a bunch of female titties to counter the fact that we will be spending a better part of 90 minutes watching a bunch of men fighting while wearing speedos. anyways, yeah story starts out with an introduction to our hero, king leonsis or something. we learn that spartans are bred to fight and it shows a bit of his training, which involves killing a wolf and wearing it as a fur coat. that actually made him the king. i feel pity for the crappy spartans who could only kill a squirrel or a fish, they’d probably be made fun of a lot.

we fast forward a bit to see that the persians were offering some kind of plea bargain to the spartans, only for the king to utter what is probably the best movie line of the year “THIS IS SPARTA!!!” , and then he kicked the Persians into the well, which as a friend pointed out..would only contaminate their water system, so they were doomed from the beginning. the king then climbs a mountain to go see the oracles, who ask some drugged up naked chick (NOT played by lindsay lohan, surprisingly) for advice. some stuff happens, and the they go to fight. about an hour later, they all die, the movie ends.

this was a pretty enjoyable movie, its probably not one you can watch more then once. most of the movie was quite predictable, but chances are you only went to see it to see fighting in slow mo, and special effects. if u went to see it for that, you are probably satisfied. the dialog isn’t that strong, and all the best lines were already shown in the trailers. the persian king wasn’t really that intimidating an enemy either, as he looked like a cross between kareem abdul jabbar, goro from mortal kombat, and mr. t with piercings.

3.5 / 5

Movie Review: Rocky Balboa

Posted on March 26, 2007 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything, Movies | 1 Comment

Finally watched Rocky Balboa on Friday. This was the first Stallone movie I have seen since Demolition Man, so it has been awhile since I have seen Stallone in action. Man this dude old. but he built. I always thought boxing was a big money making business, but obviously I was wrong, as Rocky seems to be just doing okay, living in what appears to be a ghetto and running some not so nice restaurant. He must of spent all his earnings on coke. I am guessing he really misses Adrian, and thus he picks up some chick working at bar who has tupac for a kid. Don’t really understand that subplot. He also has a not so good relationship with his son, who doesn’t want to live in his dad’s shadow. Obviously this son doesn’t know he can absorb other peoples super powers and will blow up new york in a matter of months.

so rockys watching some simulated fight on ESPN and decides he wants to box again. first of all, i don’t think boxing is relevant enough so that a simulated fight would actually appear on the news, second of all, if i was to poll 1000 senior citizens, i think fighting a bad ass black man would be the last thing on their mind. bingo ..yes. boxing..no. unbelievability aside, rocky starts training, and we hit a classic montage. montages are awesome, so points for this section. somehow, because he is about to box, his son decides to quit his job as a corporate lackey and become a cheerleader for his dad. no real reasoning behind this action.

after what appeared to be about four hours of buildup, we get to the fight, which was a fairly well done. and then after the fight ends, that was pretty much the ending. i guess this movie was okay. i almost fell asleep a few times during the buildup about how miserable rocky’s life has become. but really, what kind of message is this? rocky is sending a message that fighting will solve all your problems, and that isn’t a message we want to send to the youth of america.

so..

+1 for montage and constantly playing the rocky theme
-1 for long buildup
+1 for well shot fight scene
-1 for unbelievable fight (seriously..ten rounds?)
-1 for weird subplots that go nowhere
+1 for unintentional comedy
so

2.5/5 i guess

Concert Review: The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, Kool Haus, March 11

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | Leave a comment

Well, I can’t really say anticipation was high for this supposed super group, but I was looking forward to seeing this band on Sunday. Right on the heels of the great and fresh Pipettes show not even 24 hours ago, I wondered how these aged men would perform in what now must be a fairly routine show. I mean, when I first started coding, I would code stuff up on the spot and think ‘thats kinda cool’, now I just copy and paste anything I could find from what I’ve previously coded. I imagine it’d somewhat similar.

First of all, this place was packed. I had expected it to be half empty since I haven’t really read or heard much about the GB&Q in the public eye. I guess that fact that there were members of Blur, The Clash and The Verve in this band really helps. Also, there is a black guy in the band, and black people are all the hype in indie music now (bloc party, noisettes, tv on the radio). Haha just kidding. When some veteran Brits play anywhere in Toronto, you can never underestimate the amount of ex-pats that will attend the show.

The band came on about 10:30. They started off with some song from the album. I must say, I have only heard the album 3 times since it was released online, and considering I might go thru four or five albums a day, asking me to recall song titles from albums is like asking Shawn Kemp what his 8th kid was named. They were really crisp live, obviously, I guess. The music was a lot more rock-ish live then it was on the album, and Damon and the Clash dude came out in suits with Top Hats, which was very anglo of them. They started off with some songs off their album, then Damon went on the piano and they did some more songs off the album, and then he got up and they finished the set with some more songs off their album. It was alright, although I did check my phone clock more then once during the show, which is not the greatest sign on Earth.

Some random dude standing about five feet to the left of me kept on yelling out ‘Scotland’ during the act. I mean what the fuck is that? this ALWAYS happens during some UK act, someone will yell out “WALES!” or “MANCHESTER!” or some random UK city. I don’t yell out “HONG KONG” during the set, I don’t think you should either. Also, there was also some older white male standing in front of me to the left that was pretty much the WORSE DANCER EVER. i was not sure if he was having a seizure, drink out of his mind or just whatever, but he was the most uncoordinated person I have ever seen. I was not alone in this observation, as most people in the vicinity witness this atrocity to human movement for most of the night. It was really distracting. Think Seinfeld Elaine dancing, times that by ten and you have this guy.

Concert Rating 2.5 / 5

– might have enjoyed it more if
a) it wasn’t after the best show I have seen this year
b) if I knew the source material better
c) Damon sang blur songs
d) dancing dude was shot
e) scotland dude was mute

Concert Review: Pipettes, Rivoli, March 10

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | 1 Comment

Pipettes

As anyone who knows me knows, I was very excited about this show, to the point where I emailed people who were interested and told them about the show, provided some mp3s and even the link to the ticketbreak site that sold the ticket. The night did not start out too promising, as there was a block long lineup leading into the Rivoli. Anyone who actually has been to the Rivoli will know that the concert area is small to say the least (or as some people will call it..’cosy’). We were wondering if they had done what CMW always seem to do and oversold the show. I would have been very pissed off.

As it turn out, they just had to kick people out and that after about 40 minutes of waiting in the freezing cold, they allowed people with advanced tickets in (and only allowed them in). This left a lot of people probably angry outside as they weren’t selling tickets and it was advanced tickets only. Preparation is key bitches!

As it ended up, the place was only half capacity, which is truly odd, as people on craigslist were willing to pay like 5x the ticket price to this show, which was labelled as ‘sold out’. Typical CMW bullshit i guess. The Pipettes came on at about 1 am and then performed what I deem “quickest 1 hour + set” ever. Seriously, it was like they came on, and boom they left. Thats how good the show was. I remember one show in May in 2005 when the Dears were playing at Lees and they launched into like a 15 minute jam session, and I thought I could have finished the book War and Peace by the time they had finished that song. Anyways, this was the opposite.

Seeing how they have only one album and a few singles, you could probably guess their set list. They pretty much played every song they have. As expected, the girls came out in polka dot dresses and had the whole retro-60s kinda look and setup. They had choreographed (but not that choreographed) moves for every song and were in general very enthusiastic thru out the entire show. The crowd was more involved in this show then your typical Toronto crowd, and that was nice.

Overall, awesome show. Happy times. – 5/5

Awesome pics of the show here

blogTO review

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