Books I Read in 2008

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks ****
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming ****
A Time Odyssey Book One: Time's Eye by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter ***1/2
A Time Odyssey Book Two: Sunstorm by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter ****
A Time Odyssey Book Three: Firstborn by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter****
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi ****1/2
Fatal Tide by David Leach ****
American Armageddon by Craig Unger ****
Death Masks by Jim Butcher ** 1/2
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman *****
Beyond the Horizon by Colin Angus *** 1/2
Legend by David Lynn Goleman **1/2
Summer Knight by Jim Butcher ***1/2
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard ***1/2
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson ****
Grave Peril by Jim Butcher ***
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill *****
Freefall by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens ***
Fool Moon by Jim Butcher ***1/2
Blaze by Richard Bachman (Stephen King) ***1/2
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson ****
Axis by Robert Charles Wilson ****
Amazon Extreme by Colin Angus ***
Lisey's Story by Stephen King ****
Storm Front by Jim Butcher ***1/2
This New Ocean by William E. Burrows ****
The Regulators by Richard Bachman (Stephen King) ****
Desperation by Stephen King ****
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars by Max Brooks *****
Saint Vidicon to the Rescue by Christopher Stasheff *
Red Lightning by John Varley ****
Lost in Mongolia by Colin Angus ***
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King ***
Event by David Lynn Golemon **1/2
Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend by Stephen Davis *****
From a Buick 8 by Stephen King ****
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman ****
Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson by Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour *****
Live from Cape Canaveral by Jay Barbree **1/2
I Am America (And So Can You) by Stephen Colbert ***1/2
Insomnia by Stephen King ****
Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast *****
Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson ****

Movies I Watched in 2008

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ****
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) **1/2
The Dark Knight *****
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army ***1/2
Wall-E *****
Get Smart ****
Young@Heart ****1/2
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ****
Iron Man ****
Speed Racer ***
Hurricane on the Bayou ***1/2
Roving Mars ***1/2

DVDs I Watched in 2008

Corner Gas: Season 5 ****
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) *****
National Treasure: Book of Secrets **
Run Fatboy Run ***
Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interview *****
My Name is Earl Season Three ***
Futurama: Bender's Game *****
Rush - Snakes and Arrows Live ****
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson ****1/2
The Starlost - The Complete Series *
The Who at Kilburn: 1977 *****
The Simpsons - The Complete 11th Season *****
Slacker Uprising ***1/2
King Corn ***1/2
The Police: Certifiable *****
Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles Season One ***1/2
Mission: Impossible - Season Five ***1/2
Looney Tunes: The Golden Collection Vol. 6 *****
This is the Sea 4 ****
Capricorn One ***1/2
Live Free or Die Hard ***
Torchwood - Season 2 ****1/2
3:10 to Yuma ****1/2
The Deep ***
Heroes - Season 2 *** 1/2
Quark - The Complete Series ***1/2
The Office - Season 4 *****
This is the Sea 3 ****
This is the Sea 2 ****
This is the Sea ****
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem *1/2
Eureka - Season Two *** 1/2
Eureka - Season One ***1/2
Days that Shook the World ***
The Dresden Files ***1/2
Get Smart - The Complete 1994 Series **
Robot Chicken: Star Wars *****
Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control ***
The 4400 - Complete 4th Season ****
When We Left Earth ***1/2
Death of a President ***1/2
The Nude Bomb ***1/2
Get Smart Again ***1/2
Mission: Impossible - Season 4 ****
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee ****
The Darjeeling Limited **1/2
Sharkwater ****1/2
The Invaders - Season One ***1/2
A Crude Awakening ***
Dead Man ****
Buffalo 66 ***
Juno ****
Justice League: The New Frontier ****
Bonnie and Clyde ****
The 11th Hour ****
seaQuest DSV - Season 2 **
Cloverfield ****
Beowulf ***
There Will Be Blood ***1/2
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story ****
Sunshine ****
Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street ***1/2
Family Guy: Blue Harvest *****
Get Smart - Season 5 *****
Get Smart - Season 4 *****
The Mist ****
Battlestar Galactica - Season 3 *****
Manufactured Landscapes ***1/2
Get Smart - Season 3 *****
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer **1/2
Get Smart - Season 2 ****1/2
Jay and Silent Bob Do Degrassi *** 1/2
No Country for Old Men ****1/2
Trailer Park Boys - The Movie *** 1/2
Get Smart - Season 1 *****
In the Shadow of the Moon ****
Into the Wild ****
Lost Season Three ****
Torchwood Season One ****1/2
Shrek the Third **
Stranger Than Fiction ***
Extras - The Complete Series ****
Hot Fuzz ****
Doctor Who - Season 3 ****
Hearts of Darkness - A Filmmaker's Apocalypse ****
Close Encounters of the Third Kind *****
Blade Runner - The Final Cut *****
Galactica 1980 - The Complete Series *
The Doors ****

Remember the Great Internet Crash of 2007...?

No?
Maybe this will jog your memory....

The Day The Shoe Stood Still

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Linus

Linus left us two years ago today.
His person still misses him very much.

I'm Dreaming of a Freezing Christmas

Victoria is on the receiving end of its first real blast of winter in a couple of years. Right now, the temperature is -3C with 10 centimeters of snow on the ground, with more on the way. (And before all you Easterners start laughing at us, we normally have highs of plus 7C this time of year, so this is quite unusual for us. Also, we here on the We(s)t Coast consider anyone who lives east of Chilliwack to be an Easterner. This includes you, Albertans. But I digress.)


We are experiencing what weatherdudes call an "Arctic Outflow." The jet stream has moved south of us and a big low pressure cell is dragging down cold arctic air. The cold air funnels through the Rocky Mountains creating strong winds. Our forecast for winds today is 50kmh, with gusts of 70kmh or higher. So it's not the cold air per se that's hitting us hard on the Island, it's the wind chill that's sucking every iota of heat out of everything and chilling us to our bones. And it's going to get worse as the highs in the last half of this week are forecast to be as low as -7C. With the windchill, it's going to be nasty. And it doesn't look like it's going to warm up much until Christmas Day. The good news is that we may get a white Christmas this year, which normally only has odds of 1-in-20 of occurring in these parts.

Finally!

Finally someone gave Bush the boot!

Evil Brain From Outer Space

Let's get this out on the open right from the start: Evil Brain from Outer Space may just be the best movie title ever!
This 1964 film is edited together from three Japanese Starman short movies. The three original movies totalled 159 minutes in runtime, while this edited version clocks in at a quick 79 minutes. As so much is cut from each movie, the film veers wildly from underdeveloped plot point to underdeveloped plot point, from action scene to scene with lightning speed, in a rush of quick and cheesy action-packed Grade-Z mindless silly fun.
The brain of Balazar, an evil scientist from the planet Zemar, has been assassinated. Somehow his brain has been preserved and ends up in a suitcase on earth. His followers have followed the brain to earth. (They're followers. That's what they do, alright? They follow!) Only Starman, an alien superhero sent to earth to fight atomic evils in his disturbingly tight leotards, can save us!
Along the way to defeating the brain, Starman must defeat a monster who is also attacking earth (who also wears disturbingly tight leotards), and assorted groups of Balazar's followers (again with the leotatds).
This is all pretty corny and silly, but it is presented with enthusiasm. And the action scenes, as cheap as any you'll ever see, use imaginative camera tricks and angles to good effect.
Fire up the corn-popper and enjoy!

Merry Christmas, Detroit!

From here...

King Kong (1933)

It’s been years since I’ve seen the original King Kong, I gotta tell ya, this film rocks!
The new special edition DVD features the fully restored 1933 cut (not the 1938 "censored cut" which most casual viewers would be familiar with), and it looks gorgeous. It probably hasn’t looked or sounded this good since its original release.
And yes, the acting is a bit over the top, the dialogue a bit corny, and the special effects don’t hold a candle to what can be done today, but 70 years later, it still holds together remarkably well. The plot, as if you didn’t know, concerns a film-maker who’s heard rumors that some thing exists on a south sea island. He takes his camera crew and a young ingénue (Canada’s own Fay Wray) to the island and discovers the thing is Kong, a giant ape. He plans to use Wray’s character as bait to lure Kong into capture, and then showcase the ape in a traveling show and make millions. The plan goes wrong as Kong falls in love with the bait, and trying to find her, escapes in New York, causing mayhem and death.
The film is full of classic cinema images and moments. And being the 1933 version, many scenes of violence have been restored. Kong was vicious and brutal.
The special effects, for their time, are staggering. This was the Star Wars of 1933. No one had ever seen anything like this. The film-makers who trace their inspiration back to Willis O’Brien’s 18-ich tall Kong miniature are too numerous to mention, but some that are featured on the supplements are Peter Jackson, Ken Ralston, Bob Burns, Rick Baker, Ben Burtt, and Ray Harryhausen. And speaking of supplements, there’s an hour-long biography of Merion C. Cooper, who produced Kong, and a nearly three-hour documentary on the film itself. Considering that almost no behind the scenes material exists from the actual production itself and that hardly anyone involved is still alive, the documentary does a fine job showing how the film was made.
If you haven’t seen Kong in a while, and remember it as being hokey, well, yes, you’re right. But Kong still has the power to overcome all the pitfalls that a 70 year-old movie has for a 21st century audience. Yes, it’s cheesy, over-acted, hammy dialogue, with cheap sets, and crude special effects. It still works, and works brilliantly. Check it out. You owe it to yourself. And Kong.

Cadboro Bay in the Fog

Here's a slideshow of our recent paddle around Willows Beach and Cadboro Bay in the fog.

WTF, Indeed

Robert J. Sawyer has noted on Facebook that the world is facing a huge economic crisis but our Prime Minister has decided to sit it out for the next two months.
As Sawyer said, "WTF? Peace, order, and NO government?"

Groundhog Day

So the Governor General looked out her window this morning and saw her shadow.
That means at least six more weeks of a Harper government.

Notes From A Consitutional Crisis Zone

In our system of parliamentary democracy, we do not elect a government; we elect a parliament. The government is formed when a group of members of the parliament can demonstrate that they have the support of the majority of the members to carry on a legislative agenda: to govern.
When the government no longer has the support of the parliament, the government falls and is replaced. The creation of a coalition of opposition parties to defeat and replace a sitting government is not illegitimate; it's how our system is meant to operate.
What it is, of course, is highly unusual in Canadian politics. Nothing like this has been done in the memory of most living Canadians. That doesn't make it illegal.
Canadians did not give Harper's Conservatives a mandate to run the country single-handedly. Canadians may be willing to let Harper sit in the driver's seat for a while, but after two elections they sure don't seem willing to let him have the keys on his own. Harper has spent the last three years forming coalitions; in a minority situation, the survival of his government has depended on it. Not one piece of his legislation could have passed the house without at least some opposition members voting along with the government. Harper may not have formed a formal coalition as the opposition has now done, but every piece of government business he presented to the House necessitated the forming of an ad hoc coalition with one of more opposition parties.
Harper's mistake is the age-old mistake of hubris. With Dion a lame-duck leader of the weakened Liberals, Harper believed he could push through with his damaging agenda, using a crisis to push through ideologically-driven economic measures.
Harper's economic statement originally proposed a three-year ban on the right of civil servants to strike, limits on the ability of women to sue for pay equity and eliminated subsidies for political parties. How does denying pay equity for women help stave off the effects of the worldwide economic meltdown? It doesn't, of course. It's just classic neo-conservative tactics -- use every chance to propel your ideological agenda. It's not about the economy, stupid; it's about using the economy to score every little political point you can.
Harper follows every page of the neo-con text book. He says one thing, but does another. Fixed election dates, anyone? He spent two years (and millions of dollars) on an ad campaign deriding Stephan Dion with personal attacks before the election was even called, despite his previous campaign promises on returning civility to politics. He accuses Dion of sharing power with seperatists, yet he and his party suck up to them in Quebec every chance they get. They have to, because that's the only group where he will get any support from in Quebec. His party has a long history of courting with the seperatists; it was Brian Mulroney's inability to control the seperatists MP in his Tory ranks that resulted in the formation of the Bloc.
In his acceptance speech this year, he said we work with the other parties in the House, yet his first economic announcement includes the cutting of party subsidies. How is this going to return civility to the House? Or more importantly, how does this help stimulate the economy when opposition parties have to lay-off low-level party workers during a recession? This is just petty nastiness.
And he lies, of course. He lies when he says that the coalition agreement was not signed in front of Canadian flags because of the presence of the separatist party (a lie - there were two Canadian flags). He lies when says he would never enter deals to govern the country with separatists. He signed a deal with the BQ to do just that in 2004, and his predecessor Stockwell Day arranged one with the BQ in 2000.
When confronted with criticism, he and his lackeys do not confront the issues, instead they issue personalize attacks on the messenger. How many Harper ads did you hear during the last campaign attacked Dion the person, yet how few did you hear actually debating the merits of Dion's proposals and presenting alternatives?
The crisis here is one of a reckless leader over-reaching for his dubious goals. It is a crisis of agenda, not process. You may argue that the Liberal/NDP coalition (with Bloc support) is fraught with dangers, and it is. They have matches and there's a lot of gasoline pooled about. But even that does not make their proposed actions any less legitimate.
And I'll take that over a leader who gives every indication of his intention to burn down the progressive house that we Canadians have spent 141 years building.

Percentage of Canadians who did not vote for Harper's Conservatives in the 2008 election: 62.4%

Naomi Klein on Harper's "Crisis"

As seen at rabble.ca:

What I think is really amazing about this moment is whatever happens next - whether we end up with this coalition or not, we will have an extremely chastened Harper. So the attempted shock doctrine has failed. I think we can say that decisively.
Just to be clear, what I mean by the shock doctrine, as you know, is the use of crisis to push through unpopular pro-corporate policies. This bundling of a whole package of policies: denying the right of public sector workers to strike, the attack on public financing of political parties, with the economic program - that is what failed, and people were offended by the opportunism of it.
This is what so many of us were worried about during the election - the context of a Tory victory in an economic crisis, because we know that there is this pattern of using an economic crisis to push through policies that were nowhere during the campaign.