Checksum Arcanius

Today we started the ramp up in our movie schedule towards tomorrow’s climax of four movies by watching two — the first at the Ryerson University Theater was a Samuel L. Jackson movie called “Cleaner,” a fun little whodunnit movie about a cop turned legitimate crime scene cleaner who gets involved in a less-than-legitimate job and has to extricate himself and his family. The plot was not-quite guessable, and it was fun, but it didn’t feel great — I’ll give it a 3.0/5.

Next we traveled South the the Elgin Theater for Atonement, a well-done but depressing movie about the overactive imagination and misunderstanding of a young girl royally screwing over a bunch of people. It was well-made, but not any fun, and not terribly thought-provoking either. I want either entertainment or thought; this unfortunately provided neither. I’ll give it a 2.0/5.

Next came the CN Tower, which I have been looking forward to this whole trip. We decided to try our luck with 360, the rotating restaurant at the top of the tower. I ordered a Caesar salad and came close to picking up my third grilled Atlantic salmon of the trip, but went instead for what I thought would be a safe steak fillet with a somewhat adventurous foie gras, which I have never had. The bread that arrived first was excellent. The salad was among the best I’ve ever had. The vegetables that came with my dinner with also very good. Which makes it all the more the mystery why the main course was so terrible. The meat was tough, unseasoned, unsavory, and really quite bad. The foie gras was not to my liking either. So basically everything was perfect except for the main course which sucked balls. I wasn’t the only one — Scott didn’t like his cut of meat much either, although he, unlike I, was able to finish his meal.

After the meal, we visited the glass floor, which gave a very real sense of incredible vertigo when I ventured onto it and peered straight down over a thousand feet. Now that is trusting an engineer! It was exhilarating and amazing and wonderful and awesome all at the same time. Of course, looking straight down into the Yankees-Blue Jays game going on in the Sky Dome (aka Rogers Centre) was pretty cool too. After the glass floor and a loop around the observation deck, we headed up another couple hundred feet to the tallest observation deck in the world, the Sky Pod, to watch the sun finish setting along with a panoramic view of all of Toronto and its environs. Scott and Dan wanted to go, but I wanted to bask in the feeling of being on top of the man-made world (until the tower in Dubai is finished, at least), so I stayed up on top for another hour or so, just soaking it all in. Despite the meat meal mishap, I am going to say that the experience was well worth it — nothing really compares to being on top of the world, physically or metaphorically.

On Monday we saw the movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a slow, methodical drama with a long title and a deep, refreshingly textured outlook on the event of it portrayed. Two and a half hours of deliberate film making — good, but not terribly exciting.

4.0/5

Today we saw Into the Wild, a self-discovery movie about a young man’s existential quest away from his plush life into the Alaskan Wilderness. I started out not liking the main character, but I gained respect for him — a theme that was repeated throughout the movie with many of the characters. It felt like it was showing people in all their glory and agony — the good, the bad, and everything in between, just as all of us really are.

4.0/5

Despite a number of logistical setbacks leading up to TIFF, we managed to exchange a majority of our vouchers for tickets this morning with a very nice lady who put up with all of my inane anti-TIFF comments very well. We ended up seeing three movies today: at 10:00am we watched Persepolis, an animated movie about an Iranian girl growing up amid the Shah, the revolution, and the even more oppressive regime of the Imans. It was a little unexpected and a little sad, but quite good actually. Next we walked across the hallway to our second movie, My Kid Could Paint That, at 12:15. It was a documentary about a child abstract painter, Marla Olmstead, whose family became mired in accusations of helping with her paintings when they claimed to provide no aid. The documentary was deeply textured but overall quite damning on the topic of whether Marla actually painted “her” masterpieces herself. The director himself was there and answered a few questions afterwards; he came across as a very likeable character who almost hated himself for coming to the inevitable conclusion that Marla had some help. He leaves open the possibility that his implied accusation is false, but he couldn’t find any other way to interpret the mountain of evidence that was gathered while making his documentary. Finally, we hoofed our way to the Visa screening room where we watched an epic about Ghengis Kahn, Mongol. It was a great and epic way to end our first day at the festival — unfortunately, our day didn’t end there. Although making it into Toronto without any problems in the morning, traffic leaving the city was something truly incredibly awful: In about two hours we made it only about two miles and nearly ran out of gas. We finally made it to a gas station, where we decided to hang out for a while until traffic died down some. We finally made it back to our hotel about 9:00, when we had originally left at 6:00. It was a somewhat stress-ridden ride, to say the least. At any rate, here are my totally off-the-cuff ratings (:

Persepolis: 3.0/5.0
My Kid Could Paint That: 3.5/5.0
Mongol: 4.5/5.0

Sunshine is a movie.

Sunshine is an Epic Sci-Fi Thriller.

I spent a while coming up with that genre.

4.5/5 — A

I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum at Lincoln Square with Amy tonight. It was good to see Amy doing well, and it was also a pretty good movie. It felt longer than it really was — they did a good job of packing a lot of material, and a lot of action, into the film. I’m give it a 3.5/5, only because there was nothing extraordinary about the movie — just a well-done action flick.

Early this morning before sleep, I watched Fight Club. I thought the twist was better than the one in The Usual Suspects, and it was overall more interesting as well. I give it a 4.5/5 (A).

Before that, I caught the Simpsons with Jon and Joe & Company before heading to Applebee’s for happy hour appetizers. It was as advertised, a slightly longer, slightly more involved episode that might as well have been on TV during some special. Still, some laughs, but most of then were given away in the previews. I guess I’d give it a 2.5/5 or a C.

That brings me to today, where after a good ultimate game, we headed to Jamba Juice and then the Apple Store, where we started playing with some iPhones. Somehow, after figuring out that the iPhones were active, the four of us there got the idea to put our numbers into the phones under the name of “Steve Jobs.” We then left the store, waiting for someone else to start looking at the targeted phone, and called. It was much too hilarious to watch as a man and his wife were surprised to see that they were getting a call from Steve Jobs. When the man answered, I identified myself as Steve Jobs and asked if this was the Seattle Apple Store. He seemed surprised, but answered in the affirmative. I then asked if he could get an Apple employee on the line. He paused again, but then said, “Yes” and proceeded to look around the store for the nearest employee. At this point, I was laughing too hard to remain inconspicuous, so I had to hang up and walk away from the store. But oh my, was it fun.

All this was followed by an afternoon chilling with Dan on Alki beach and a dinner which got canceled (tear), but it was a pretty good day overall.

After no work, a Biomedical Research Integrity lecture, Networks, and a stint at Harborview to convert EEG data, I ended up at home and in need of an activity to put off actually using the EEG data for a useful purpose.

Enter Maria, who was also looking for something to do. She came over and after a nice chat we decided to hit up Scarecrow’s 2-for-1 Wednesday special. With the help of IMDB, we picked out the Usual Suspects and Fight Club, both of which we had never seen all the way through.

The movie for tonight was The Usual Suspects. It was fun, entertaining, and well-done, but not quite as completely good as I might have hoped. But then a 4/5 ain’t bad.