Tag Archives: Film

Last Saturday, MacDonald Family Pictures produced another epic in film-making: Ninja’s Surprise.
A 2 1/2 minute cinematic wonder starring Cameron and Keaton (the same team that starred in last week’s film The Battle).  They are quickly becoming their generation’s Crosby and Hope.  Or maybe Spade and Farley.
This time, we went on location to Robinson’s Island, out around Brackley Beach.   Production costs must have creeped towards an astronomical 5 dollars for this movie filled with sword-play action, death and almost death and costumes.  Keaton plays The Traveller, a man in love with nature who is unfortunate enough to fall prey to the unexplained evilness of The Ninja. The Ninja attacks The Traveller, and in a move that Clint Eastwood would envy, The Traveller quickly subdues the over-zealous ninja.  Thinking him dead, The Traveller continues his travelling.
But wait!  The Ninja revives!  And chases The Traveller in a chase-scene that all future chase-scenes will be compared against.  As quick as the chase begins, it stops and a fantastic sword battle ensues. Having had enough of this fighting nonsense, The Traveller kills The Ninja.  This time, his dead eyes prove he has ceased, breath forever left.  A Ninja’s surprise, to be sure!
The Traveller walks away, none the worse for wear.

The movie file is a bit too big for me to post here with my meagre bandwidth limits.  Maybe I’ll put it up closer to the end of the month.

I had 24 contestants in my Oscar pool.  I had a pink highlighter and 12 sheets of paper (2 contestant’s lists per)  on which I checked the correct guesses.  I found that it would pretty much take me the entirety of an acceptance speech to check through all 24 guesses for each category.  This made watching the Oscar ceremony much more of a task for me than it was in years previous.  However it made the 3+ hours fly by.
First, before I get to the results, a few comments on the entertainment value of the broadcast:  I was a bit disappointed in Chris Rock’s monologue.  I didn’t find it that funny, and I didn’t appreciate the "wait for A-list actor" jokes.  While I didn’t really find him all that funny, I did appreciate the pull-the-pants-down-on-Hollywood tone of his performance.  His "streeter" video where he got the opinion of black theatre-goers was not very good, but I did like the surprise of Albert Brooks showing up at the end of it (although I didn’t think what he said was all that funny).  After the monologue,  Chris Rock was pretty much invisible.  While I appreciated him keeping things moving briskly, I could’ve used a few more attempts at jokes throughout the broadcast.
I was disappointed in the choices for Best Songs, and the performance of each was pretty much unremarkable.  All five songs were pretty blech and having Beyonce sing three of them seemed like an odd thing to do.  Five opportunities for bathroom breaks, as far as I was concerned.  Having YoYo Ma perform live for the memorial video was nice.  I am always saddened for those who appear on the list and then the applause dies down to nothing, only to resurrect itself for the next person.
As a watcher of the Oscar broadcast, I appreciated the efforts to speed up the evening.  Having all the nominees (of "lesser" categories) on stage was a good move, however as a human being with empathy, I felt bad for all the losers who were shuffled quickly off the stage.
That’s about it.  A fairly bland show, I thought.  Now, on to the results:
While I certainly don’t think I made any mistakes in my tabulations, I certainly don’t guarantee my results, since I’m not going to double check them (I was kind of double checking as I went anyway).  If you have a problem with your score as compared to what I proclaim it to be, too bad.

I was disappointed in my picks.  I submitted my picks early.  In fact, mine was the first submission.  If I had waited until this week, many of my picks would have been different, after checking with odds-makers and getting a feel for the buzz of the awards.  Still, I stayed with my original choices and only got 10 correct.  Usually I average about 13-15 correct.
Rather than list all the contestants by name and their results, I am going to go this way:

2 people got 5 right
4 people got 7 right
2 people got 8 right
4 people got 9 right
3 people got 10 right
4 people got 11 right
2 people got 12 right
1 person got 13 right
3 people got 14 right
2 people got 15 right

and, the winner, with an amazing 17 of 24 guesses correct…

Matt Rainnie

Way to go, Matt.  You nailed it, my friend.  Your mix-cd is being conjured up in my brain as I type and live and breathe.  I’ll get it to you shortly.

If you entered this contest and would like to know your score, just make that request in the comments of this post and I’ll post it there, for all to see.

{Submissions to the contest are now closed.  To those who entered:  Good Luck!!!}
This is your final reminder.  If you want to enter The Annekenstein Monster Oscar Pool, click on this link:  The Annekenstein Monster Oscar Pool.  Fill in your picks and name and click on the submit button.
I will be accepting submissions until this Thursday.
If you’ve already sent in your submission, then ignore this.
For the record, from the 19 submissions, the Best Picture picks so far look like this:
The Aviator:  8
Ray: 5
Million Dollar Baby: 4
Sideways: 2
Finding Neverland: 0

Winner will likely (I’m not making any promises) win something, like a mixed cd or something.  Whatever.

Went to see Anchorman on the weekend, and I know many of you have been waiting for my opinion before you went yourselves to form your own opinions. So, here is my opinion:

Overall, I was generally disappointed. Yes, there were a lot of funny moments, but they didn’t seem to go anywhere (kinda like Marx Brothers movies, I suppose, where the plot is merely the container for a bunch of skits and jokes).
I think what threw me off most was the pacing of the film. It seemed as if it had a TV sitcom feel to it at times, almost as if they were pacing the jokes to accomodate the laughter of an audience. It just seemed kind of off and a bit too loosey-goosey.
I am a huge fan of Will Farrell, and will laugh at almost anything he does. I found myself smiling quite a bit at him in this movie, but not as many laugh out loud moments as I would have liked. Too many of his attempts at humour were flat and/or desperate. Of course, there were a handful of moments from him that were hilarious, but they were balanced too much by moments that didn’t go anywhere.
I laughed at pretty much anything Steve Carrell said as the dim-bulb weatherman, but I found the other two in the 4-man news-team rather lacking. Not bad, just lacking. Christine Applegate was good, but didn’t really have much to do. Fred Willard, I think, was pretty much wasted in his role. He did a good enough job playing it pretty much straight, but the comedy he was given (or came up with by himself through improv?), regarding his son, was pretty inferior and forgettable.

So, in a nutshell: lots of smile-along moments. A few real big laugh out loud moments. Not enough moments in between. Perhaps it would work better for me if I saw it on television?