BIG SCREEN
QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2 SPUDS)

DVDS
THE VISITOR (2 SPUDS)
THE X-FILES – I WANT TO BELIEVE (ONE SPUD)
KUNG FU PANDA (1.5 SPUDS)

TV
DIRT (2 XL SPUDS)
24 REDEMPTION (1.5 SPUDS)

KNOW  YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

Well here we are in the crappy wet late November/early December weather. I shouldn’t complain though. Last year at this time it was pretty much a non-stop snow shoveling extravaganza, with one member of the Spud Central shoveling tandem down for the count. This year, we’re all ‘bring it on’, cause between the two of us, we can make short work of whatever blows our way. We have also just equipped the hybrid Spudmobile with snow tires, which is a first for me. BTW, if you have to do the same, it’s Canadian Tire all the way, from a cost perspective for both tires and installation.

Tomorrow, as I write this, is the US thanksgiving. And the day following it, is fondly, and in this economy, paradoxically known as Black Friday, which is the biggest shopping day of the year. Last night we were watching NCIS and The Mentalist (both 2 Spud shows), and the a lot of commercials that were coming on were for retailers who were encouraging their customers to get up at 4:00 am to start their Black Friday shopping. 4:00 freaking a.m.! Now I don’t know what marketing Einstein came up with that particular ploy, but it really says a lot as about the United States of American in a couple of ways. One is that they have figured out a way to extend the shopping day in a way that doesn’t intrude on leftover turkey dinner. And two, they know that if they put it on TV and yell at the people loud enough that an astonishingly high number of people will show up, like lemmings at the cliffside to do their bit to stimulate the economy and get their mandatory shopping done.

I’ve always liked a lot of things about Christmas, but one of the things I dislike about it, especially as an empty nester living in a bungalow is getting stuff for Christmas that I have to find a place for. I simply don’t have that much free space here at Spud Central. When I finish reading a paperback, I call the kids to see if they want it or immediately put it in a bag to go to the used book store. If someone where to give me a framed print or photograph, good luck with that, cause there’s simply no free wall space. Now, a lot of people, especially in the immediate tribe understand that which is good. So I end up with things like a subscription to ESPN magazine, or a piece of replacement communications technology. After that the list of things I’d like to have for Christmas falls off dramatically. Not because I am any sort of curmudgeon about it. But simply because I pretty much have everything I want or need. And if I think back, I pretty much always have. I’m one damn lucky spud.

No…what I like about Christmas is all the traditional stuff. Fluffy snowfalls that make the shoveling more fun than drudgery. Old movies. The smells that fill the kitchen when the Wife is whipping up her famous Christmas treats. The college football bowl games. Yonge Street between Queen and Bloor. Egg nog with a little whiskey or rum in it and a sprinkle of nutmeg on it. The dinner table, with its bright red tartan table cloth. Singing Christmas carols to myself. The fact that my immediate tribe is close by and always here on Christmas day. The time off to just muse a bit, rest a lot and make plans for the upcoming year. A walk on the boardwalk in a snowstorm.  All this stuff is really precious to me, and the best part of all is that none of it involves getting up at 4:00 in the morning and standing in line like an arsehole at some department store.

BIG SCREEN

QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2 SPUDS)

This is the second 007 pic with Daniel Craig in the James Bond role, and it pretty much cements his rep as the greatest Bond of all, if your criteria for judging that is authenticity.
This has a lot to do with writer Paul Haggis, who seems to have taken the franchise back to its roots and brought the Bond character much more in line with the original character created in the famous Bond novels by Ian Fleming. Craig’s Bond is an outsider, a sociopath weapon, used by British intelligence to do nasty stuff for which they pretend to chastise him for this behaviour, which, of course, gets them off the hook politically. In other words, he goes into every assignment as a rogue agent, and knows how to act the part.

This flick kind of picks up on the heels of the last one, as there is enough overlapping in the story line to give us a time perspective. This time the enemy is another wealthy industrialist
environmentalist who is seeking to control the water supply of South America. He is, like all Bond villains, a nasty piece of work, every bit as sociopathic as Bond.

This film was directed by Marc Forster who seems right at home here in the action genre, even though most of his previous films have been anything but action adventures. (Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner and Finding Neverland, all 2 Spuds flicks). But hey, when you have a couple of hundred million to blow and you’re good at what you do, any given director would probably kill a few people, even a close friend, for the crack at it.

As I said before, I don’t go the movies very much, since Spud Central is so well equipped to provide me with all the pluses of the theatrical experience and hardly none of the minuses. But as the Wife says, there are certain movies that need to be seen on the big screen. And Quantum of Solace (sorry, have no clue what it means), is one of them.

DVD QUICKIES

KUNG FU PANDA (1.5 SPUDS)

The Boy recommended this Dreamworks animated feature to us. Said it was hilarious. OK. Well it just goes to illustrate the ‘different strokes for different folks’ adage. I enjoyed it and found it funny and inventive in parts. It’s really beautifully drawn. But for me, hilarity did not ensue. For the Wife, this viewing experience was encapsulated in three words , ‘waste of time’. Now admittedly, she’s not a big fan of animation. In fact, she’s not a fan at all.  Bottom line – Not bad…not great. Well made.

THE X-FILES—I WANT TO BELIEVE (1 SPUD)

OK. The first x-Files movie was great. Big theme. Fit into the X-Files mold like a glove. Introduced Mulder’s sister who he spent 10 years on TV trying to find, and was generally pretty cool to watch. This one is the exact opposite. It felt more like an bad episode of Criminal Minds. It was pretty small and made for TV like for a big time Hollywood franchise sequel. This leads me to believe that creator/producer/director Chris Carter, has pretty much run out of gas, as far as this concept goes and would be well advised to go find a new toy to play with.

In this installment Mulder and Scully are living together. Mulder gets so excited about having something to do other than clip newspaper articles that he shaves his beard. Scully is all worried about some kind in her hospital with brain disease. And Russian maniac is trying to build a Frankenstein. The great Billy Connelly is completely wasted as a child molesting defrocked RC priest and psychic.  There are a lot of disparate elements that make up this movie that never seem to come together and add up to anything. But then that’s a symptom of being out of gas, which I happen to believe Mr Carter is.

THE VISITOR (2 SPUDS)

This is a nice tidy and slightly sad little indie flick about a widowed professor at an upstate New York college who finds a Syrian musician and his Senegalese girlfriend living in his New York city apartment when he comes down for a conference. This movie is wonderfully put together with great sparse performances bay everybody including Richard Jenkins and Haaz Sleiman, who have great chemistry together. This movie is about the redemption of the soul and it makes its point loud and clear without being brassy or forced. This is the kind of film you just want to sit on your couch and watch. It’s quite moving and understated, and because of those qualities, very powerful. I liked this film a lot.

TV

DIRT (2 SPUDS)

The Boy came over one day with a bunch of DVDs that he thought we might be interested in, including the FX Network series, Dirt. This is a series that you have probably never heard of. It stars Courtney Cox (one of the most incredible looking babes ever on TV) as the editor of a Hollywood tabloid weekly called Dirt.  This series gives you a real inside look that this smarmy business, and all the blackmailing, double-crossing, career making and dismantling that goes on in good old Hollywood. To keep everybody from getting confused, the show revolves around about a dozen or so people, all of who revolve around the Courtney Cox character.

I’ve watched the entire first season so far, and this has been fascinating TV to watch. The plotting is incredibly ingenious. Every time you think you have something figured out, something different happens…how entertaining is that? The show’s narrator, played by outstanding TV character actor Ian Hart, (Homicide) plays the star photographer for the magazine. He functionally schitzophrenic and he’s hell on wheels when he goes off his meds.

The series itself is about as energetic, albeit soap opera-ish as anything ever put on TV short of 24. It moves at a relentless pace, and not in a frenetic way, as the whole story steadily collapses on the main character. Any more detail than that would be spoiling things and we don’t wanna do that now do we?

This series was canceled after seven episodes of the second season had aired. And I can understand why. This series, although fictional, pointed out just how nasty and evil a place Hollywood can be, and, let’s face it nobody really like their dirty laundry exposed for any length of time, especially on a weekly basis. On the viewer side, I can kinda see how a lot of people could just wear out from watching it. I mean, there’s a lot of nasty stuff going on in this series, not so much physical but, a ton of psychological violence. This can kinda get to you after a while. Not me, of course, I love this stuff. The heavier the better…bring it on.

Anyway, if you see this series show up in the video store or on Showcase or Bravo, now that it’s in syndication, check it out. You’ll be able to tell right away whether it’s your cup of tea or not. If it isn’t, well you can see how hot Courtney Cox still is. And if it is, you’re into for 19 episodes of real nasty fun.

24- REDEMPTION (1.5 SPUDS)

Speaking of nasty stuff on TV, good old Jack Bauer, American’s favourite anti-hero is grunting at us again, in this 2 hours prequel to the sixth season of 24, coming up in January. Here we pick up poor wandering Jack, down in some fictional African country working with an old special forces pal (Robert Carlyle) running a school for orphans. What a softie, eh? The government sponsored sociopath with a heart of gold. The school, as it turns out is a shopping centre for the badass rebels who are in the process of taking over the country and need lots of little kids to do their soldierly dirty work, which, of course, good old Jack is not going to let happen on his watch.

For a 24 prequel, it was actually pretty linear, but it did manage to set up the situation in the US where they have elected their first female president (they’ve already has two African Americans, so that’s old news), and she, of course has to deal with the coup in the African country, the current government of which is being propped up by good old American guns and money.

I was a little disappointed with this as a movie, but quite well informed as a series fan and ready, I assume, to hit the ground running, so to speak, when the actual series start up in Jan.