Movie of the Year: Evil Dead III: The Army of Darkness
Disqualified: The Dark Knight – Because it’s going to win so many awards anyway. Although it is one of the best films in years, I feel that other movies deserve a chance. So, in official terms, it was disqualified under suspicions of performance enhancing drugs. I mean, come on! No movie is that good naturally!
This is going to be a big upset victory. Or it would be, if any body cared about these awards. Yet.
Army of Darkness is the crowning film on The Evil Dead trilogy, following directly after the events of Evil Dead II, but it masks the film in a much different atmosphere. The semi-serious horror (part outrageous and funny) series took a quick turn into Action Comedy, with a few moments of ridiculous hilarity! These films are to be watched in rapid succession, and are enjoyed best with a group of friends, bowls of snacks (gummy things, so you can still hear over the chewing!) and a few of your favorite drinks handy. For being a welcome, hilarious, campy and downright entertaining film, Army of Darkness wins the Golden Bowl of Excellence in Film for 2008. Army of Darkness warrants a round of high-fives and a celebratory “Woo!” purely for the films it beat out this year.
Best Character: Ashley “Ash” J. Williams. Housewares. For his constantly awesome, one-liners, action phrases, and total bad-assitude.
Honorable Mention: Terminator 2. It’s just an excellent action film. Seriously.
Iron Man – It deserves a pat on the back. It was a step in the right direction for Marvel after the let downs that were Spiderman 3 and X-men 3. Unfortunately it looks like they’ll be taking another step back with the up-coming Wolverine Movie. I think they made him American for this. Wolverine is not American. He’s Canadian. The Weapon X Program was Canadian! No exceptions!
Well, every other website is doing it. So I will too! Presenting the first annual Year-End-Awards in media excellence! Although, in my awards the selection will not be solely placed upon things that have been released in the year 2008, due to the obstructing lack of a corporate budget, but on pieces of media I have experienced in 2008! I encourage the members of the Blog Role to follow suit and cough a little activity into our otherwise (Read: Binks and Granite!) dusty blogs.
I’ll be taking various pieces of media, split into a handful of categories, I played/watched/read through this year and single out the best to be showered with praise and gifts, as if some heavenly Deity had violently barfed all of the peasants’ sacrifices. It is sure to become an annual tradition at Soup of the Day!
To note: I do not take myself too seriously. You shouldn’t either.
Book of the Year:Watchmen
In a year of so-so school novels, and rereads, this Graphic Novel stood out from the crowd. This is the engrossing tale of Heroes and Humans set on an alternate 1980s earth. Superheroes and Vigilantism have been outlawed since 1977, save a few government sponsored heroes, and those who continue to operate beyond the long flabby arm of the law, and the story leaps to a bounding start with the murder of the Hero known as The Comedian. The plot rages on as an old variation on the murder mystery, but becomes so much more through stirring character development, gripping twists, and white-knuckle excitement that I care not to mention here. With much of my reader base out of the loop on this one, I will leave these awards spoiler free. So you may read The Watchmen the way it was meant to be read. For so many things I cannot mention here; I award Watchmen the first Golden Bowl in Written Excellence.
Favorite Character: Rorschach. Because he’s awesome.
Honorable Mention: Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was discounted from the competition on account that I had read the book once previous to this year. Although, as much as I love the depressing tale of a controlling, loveless future: Watchmen is still better.
And more to come!
Public Service Announcement: Soup of the Day will be undergoing a domain name change in the new year. The U at the end of my URL will be changed to an EW to avoid Google Searches and unwelcome readers from stumbling upon this site. Thank you.
I was browsing Rodgers Video one lonely Friday night. Halloween night, as I recall. I had gotten off of work maybe fifteen minutes prior to my arrival on my well-worn bike. I had my heart set on The Nightmare before Christmas, as it is the most applicable movie I could think of that would suit the occasion without having to pee myself in fright. You see, being a lone movie watcher, horror movies do not appeal, so naturally the musical troupe of Halloween Town were the next best option.
It was gone.
Damn.
All right, let’s browse the movies on sale. See what I can add to my respectable collect I’ve been building up. And that’s when I spotted a gem. Thought to be all but legendary in the Americas. It was Spaced. The entire series.
This is the T.V. Series that was done by the same people that brought me the gifts of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, two of the greatest movies in history. I Instantly picked it up, and I never looked back. Having paid full-price thanked the staff, and left the store. But then I never looked back!
It’s hilarious. It takes about two or three episodes to get into, but it’s nothing but pure urine-yellowed gold afterwards. Not the scary kind as described earlier though. The original premise is a Young man and woman -complete strangers- are having similar problems with homelessness and underemployment. They devise a plan to pretend to be dating, so they may rent the perfect couple’s flat and live happily! This plot dissolves quickly in the series’ 14 episodes and is lost to Star Wars, Resident Evil, Evil Dead, and Terminator references, wacky shenanigans a few drops of drug references (which, being young adults in the series, fits the characters I suppose) and constant tom-foolery. The characters are all incredibly lovable, and the series minimal length ensures that it doesn’t over-stay its welcome but leaves you wishing they had made just a little more.
I highly recommend my whole reader-base picks this off of DC++. Or buy it, so Simon Pegg Edgar Wright and Nick Frost can make some more movies.
I signed my resignation offer. The new store owners seemed to be quite shocked form this information, as most part-time students – I assume- didn’t take their buyouts because they were relatively low. I should be receiving approximately fifteen hundred dollars to quit the job I hate! If only every student could feel the pleasure I do from this. . . Then again, they get girlfriends – so balls to that!
In about 49 days I shall be done working at Lil’ Z forever. And by forever, I do mean forever. Even if I wanted to go back I wouldn’t be able to: no Lil’ Z store is able to hire me for the rest of my life now. It is forbidden! This is supposed to be incentive to stay, and think about one’s job security at this company. For me? It’s a promise that I never have to become my bosses. I never have to be those people. I don’t have to be stuck there. Like an addict, trying to get his fix from his loved ones, even if I feel like I need to work there for money to live they will do what’s right and leave me be.
How’s School?
Crazy stressful, horribly confusing, and fucking busy. Keeping my grades up for post secondary is hard enough, due to my newly discovered lack-of-work-ethic (I think I broke it in the summer) and having no clue what I want to do with my life. Not even a Sherlock Holmes pull-it-out-of-every-one’s-ass-crack-and-solve-the-mystery clue of what I want to do. Although I suppose that would be a better clue, and not a less substantial clue I like the sound of it.
Well, not the sound of Sherlock Holmes, master detective, raping people for clues. But the phrase. For shock value.
Although, having never read the complete collection I can not guarantee that Holmes doesn’t rape people.
A fifth year of high school looks like it will be necessary for me to upgrade my marks and successfully enter into the post-secondary life. I will have failed on Granite’s piece of advise he gave to me all of those years ago.
“Stew, no matter what you do: do not stay for a fifth year. Apply to a school, and just leave.”
I’ll do you proud Granite! Just. . .probably not this year.
That’s life stuff for now. Opinion and media posts to come!
Okay. I’ve been looking for this game for well over a year now, maybe pushing two years, and I’m really having my doubts about ever finding it. It’s been repeatedly praised for its greatness and intense knack for driving the piss out of your body like exercising a demon that is training for the Olympics. Ever since I played through the Resident Evil Remake on the Game Cube (Pre-EBGames days. It was impossible to find and one of my favorite games ever. Thanks for the recommendation Granite!) I’ve never had a really genuine scare from a game. Sure, other Resident Evil games had their moments. But RE:0 you always had a partner. RE:Cod Veronica X and RE:3 didn’t look or sound real enough( Although Nemesis scared the balls back into my body a few times) and in RE:4 you have so many guns, and so much ammo it doesn’t even matter. The Game becomes less scary the instant you kick someone in the face and their head explodes.
Anyway, I figured I would reach out to my community. All readers of the blog, be you commenters or not, and preferably people I come into contact with at some point during any given year, if you ever find a copy of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the Game Cube in a store, I beg of you; buy it. I would gladly pay you back, maybe even a little extra! And we could be best friends forever! This worked for Granite when he asked for the community to find him Resident Evil 3 (for the Playstation no less!) so perhaps it will work here. Or maybe one of you owns the game and would like to lend and/or sell it to me? That would also be awesome.
If this fails I may need to take a trip to Montreal. After all, they have the gaming store where you can find anything in Montreal. Seriously, they had every single Resident Evil Game for every system it came out on. Unused! That’s like finding the eleventh commandment, or something! (I forget what the store is called. I’m thinking Game Buzz, but maybe not.) I’m not sure when I’ll be going back to Montreal though. This could be very fickle indeed.
I have put on the Blog-o-signal. Surely it will work its magic.
Well, I’ll try to keep this one short. Every planned post (Zombie Plans to be sure) have been temporarily delayed due to issues popping up in the life of me. Mostly work related things are keeping me away from a lot of activities that I would rather be doing or taking part in, but c’est la vie.
A co-worker, and good man, passed away just last week. Ryan his name was. He drowned in lake Huron while on vacation, only seventeen years old. I won’t get to into here, but the guys from Lil’ Z are going to his visitation tonight (Thursday) to say our goodbyes. We’re all pretty good friends at work, and having lost one of our own is pretty difficult. Even if he was semi-new. Work has been pretty tough with Ryan gone, knowing what happened, and having to pick up hours along the way. We were already short handed with 4 employees not able to work, which left us with not enough who could. Now we’re down to 5 who can’t work and B.M. douche bag extraordinar, quit at three o’clock in the morning when he had to work at six. Awesome.
So, long story short. I’ve been going through some shit and I’m working over 60 hours a week. So, there may be a slight damper on my activity. I thought you guys deserved to know.
The Night of Thursday, July 17th, 2008 I managed to live a dream.
It took three months, rolling over in bed with excitement for many nights, about 12 hours of work, some research, a three hour trip to Toronto, and some pushy security guards. And I’d do it all again. My good friend Colin joined me on this escapade, as did my parents. Which is sort of lame but what can you do? I saw Mark Knopfler live! I think this bears repeating.
I saw Mark Knopfler.
Of Dire Straits.
Live.
We reached Toronto, and departed from the car. He was playing at the Amphitheater in a few hours so Colin and I wandered the park. There were hundreds of people already wandering the park at Ontario place, in anticipation for the show. There were security guards all over the place, just watching people going into the show. We wandered in and found the Swag shop. The T-Shirts were of less than stellar quality, and at 35-40 dollars each it seemed quite the stretch for a poor quality souvenir. They were all, or mostly all, themed after Mark Knopfler’s latest album cover Kill to Get Crimson. My friend Colin bought a shirt to remember the occasion, and nice Dark gray, featuring a gray-scaled scooter text to inform strangers and passers by where he had been on the night of July 17, 2008. I, however, would get something a little more timeless.
I forked over the money for a large poster of Knopfler surrounded by his Guitars. Signature ’61 Stratocaster, ’58 Les Paul, National Style O, 57′ Stratocaster, ES 335, and Martin Ragpicker. It was signed by the man himself, and I will certainly get it framed soon. It was then that Colin and I decided to get out of the open humid air, and find our seat in the Amphitheater.
There were security guards everywhere. They were there to ensure that no one was to have any fun, stand up and move around a little to the music, or employ any uncanny concert behavior such as knocking around beach balls, or holding up a light to show respect and support to the performers. God forbid that anyone have an authentic concert experience!!
We sat down and conversed a little. We had a seat where we could see the band’s set up and instruments sitting just to the right of the stage. I counted three of Fender’s Mark Knopfler Signature Stratocaster! Surely he could do without one, and give it to me! The opening act began, and half the seats were still empty, or filled with Ghosts. There was a very could reason for this. A young girl, by the name of Jesca Hoop went up to the microphone and began babbling and attempting to put on a show. Yeah, Sure, she’s okay and good for her for getting up infront of a whole crowd of people and playing her songs. But she has no place at a Rock and Roll concert, and seriously needs to work on having a voice that doesn’t sound like nails molesting a chalkboard. Sure, these are great quality nails, and the finest of chalkboards. But it is what it is!
Finally she was done, finishing to a round of applause and many members thinking exactly what I was. The sun had gone down by now, and it was getting darker. All of a sudden, lights hit the stage and the crowd erupted! It was soon after that the lights hit the stage once more and the band emerged, sitting at their designated instrument stations, and I was impressed to see that other than Knopfler, all members of the band switched instruments at least once in the show. Knopfler came up to the microphone as the band started playing Cannibals (I was hoping for Walk of Life, but what can you do?) calling out to the crowd. “How are you over here? Yeah! How about this side, you guys doing alright? In the back? All right!!”
It was awesome. Beyond measure. He opened with Cannibals, Why Aye Man, What it Is and Sailing to Philadelphia, all post Dire Straits stuff. They were better than I had ever heard them, with so much energy coming from the band. Especially his versions of Song for Sonny Liston and Why Aye Man that night. Phenomenal. Followed by Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet. It was beautiful. The whole crowd erupted in applause after he finished up. Mark Knopfler beamed at the crowd and our applause, gave us a quick thanks and then signaled to the band to start the next song: The Sultans of Swing. It was wild, and I thank whoever controlled the volume that day, I would be surprised if you couldn’t hear it all over Toronto! The extremely beautiful woman next to me (Mid 20′s I’d say) was clamoring out into the aisle so she could go dance. Her words to me were “I’m going out here to dance! You can come if you want!” It would have been awesome if not for Securityman Captain Butterpants, formally of the S.S. no doubt, who told her to go sit down as she got out of peoples’ way! Truly she was the one, and my chance was gone. She was so pretty and she liked Dire Straits!? I will find her one day. One day. . .
Halfway through the extended solo the crowd went crazy, and rose on its’ feet and didn’t sit down until the next song had started. The Sultans of Swing, Speedway at Nazareth, and Telegraph Road all blew the eardrums out of my head with crazy-long guitar solos that were so epic it made The Lord of the Rings look like a lame “Why did the Chicken cross Middle Earth?” joke.
After Telegraph road had finished, with a blinding light show, and a giant Resonator body descending from the sky, Knopfler stayed to play three classic Dire Straits songs for an encore. Brothers in Arms, So Far Away, and Going Home. It was unreal. The two hour set seemed to go by in a few minutes, and I still have a hard time grasping that I was in the presence of Mark Knopfler, the greatest guitarist and artist to ever grace the planet. According to me. And I’m right.
I would give anything to see them play again, and I hope I will someday. It was unbelievably good. I still need to see him play so much that he may never play again. I missed out on Money for Nothing, Walk of Life, and Tunnel of Love, but I fear I may miss out on some of those as Dire Straits broke up so long ago. Despite Guy Fletcher and Danny Cummings still playing with him, both of Dire Straits. If there is a God I will see him again and he’ll outplay this show, although it would be extremely difficult to do.
So I picked up the Futurama Movies last night,(last night was about two weeks ago.) and watched them both in a row. The majority, or all, of my readers were there for Brendon’s spectacular screening of Bender’s Big Score (Excellent set up Mr. Brendon!) and I enjoyed it quite thoroughly. It really felt like Futurama was back, bigger and just as great as it ever was! The heartfelt story, well known to the fans through the series’ certain heart-string-plucking episodes, and the gut wrenching humor! Although the humor was lacking a tiny pinch (Probably due to the increased length of the spectacle) it was distributed very well throughout the film. I will not spoil anything for those shameful enough to have missed out on the film, despite having almost a year to see it, and those who were in the same room for Brendon’s awesome presentation of it. And those who wouldn’t shut the hell up when they were playing Crimson Skies.
Andrew!
Anyway, the film left us off with closure the many problems that had come up during the film, save one nail-biting, butt-clenching cliff hanger on par with that found in Half-Life 2. The cliffhanger was to present the Beast With a Billion Backs an exciting and mysterious plot devise, and ensured that everyone would be excited for the next installment! Well, finally, the Beast with a Billion Backs was here to present some closure and continue the plot in a hilarious and exiting manner!
I was slightly disappointed when the new adventure took place a month after the events of Bender’s Big Score had left off! However, as soon as the story got rolling, and the laughs started coming I was enjoying every 30th century second of it. I had read reviews that said The Beast with a Billion Backs is classic Futurama, and so much more and they were almost right. The laughs were genuine, and the story, although sort of strange at parts, is decent. But it is not as well thought out or exciting as Bender’s Big Score, but The Beast with a Billion Backs delivers more humor. Anyone who enjoys Futurama (which should be everyone!) should go and see this movie! One particular scene was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a very very long time: making me laugh so hard I had to rewind to catch the dialog that took place afterwards. The film is worth seeing just for that scene! (Those who have seen the movie, I’m referring to the scene with the Robot Devil. Also, Death Ball.) A highly recommend this film to any who enjoyed Futurama, and I liked it just as much as Bender’s Big Score but for the humor rather than a combination of humor and story.
I leave you now with the preview for Bender’s Game
In a year of so-so school novels, and rereads, this Graphic Novel stood out from the crowd. This is the engrossing tale of Heroes and Humans set on an alternate 1980s earth. Superheroes and Vigilantism have been outlawed since 1977, save a few government sponsored heroes, and those who continue to operate beyond the long flabby arm of the law, and the story leaps to a bounding start with the murder of the Hero known as The Comedian. The plot rages on as an old variation on the murder mystery, but becomes so much more through stirring character development, gripping twists, and white-knuckle excitement that I care not to mention here. With much of my reader base out of the loop on this one, I will leave these awards spoiler free. So you may read The Watchmen the way it was meant to be read. For so many things I cannot mention here; I award Watchmen the first Golden Bowl in Written Excellence.
