Laura and I went to see ‘Sweeney Todd’ tonight.
I must not have paid attention to the commercials I saw on TV because I hadn’t realized it was a musical. So… those first few minutes of the movie were rather interesting.
Now I’m not really “into” musicals. Musicals, in my mind, are equal to ‘Grease’ and that is of no interest to me. Generally old, boring, cheesy love stories. New ones? Yeah, I guess there’s ‘Hairspray’ and ‘High School Musical’ but those fit the previous generalization if we merely remove the word “old.”
But ‘Sweeney Todd’ was different. Funny, this is the second movie within four months that has been a musical and which was thoroughly enjoyed. ‘Across the Universe’ was fantastic and so was ‘Sweeney Todd.’
The thing is, if the rest of the movie is excellent, then a musical doesn’t bother me. ‘Sweeny Todd’ had a cool story, excellent actors acting excellently and the visual style of the whole thing was gorgeous. I’ve loved some pretty awful movies in the past just because they were visually stunning (Silent Hill, Ultraviolet - just to name a pair from 2006), but this is a movie that also has other good stuff in it. ‘Sweeney Todd’ is an awesome movie… that just happens to be a musical. That I have no problem with.
I don’t want to give away any of the plot but Helena Bonham Carter was fantastic and I loved Johnny Depp’s charming smile as he casually flicks his razor across his clients’ necks.
Good times.
Laura and I hosted a housewarming party tonight.
There are no pictures, but the food was good,
And there is no leftover lasagna.
The bruschetta disappeared faster than J’s morals,
But it wasn’t some wild and crazy party.
People were tired and everyone left before 10,
Which is good, because Laura was asleep 20 minutes later.
The Shaw guy came today to fix our phone. It worked to call people, but it wasn’t correctly connected to the buzzer system downstairs so no one could call up to us for us to let them in. No fun.
So Shaw sent a guy. He was late, but really great and after he left, I called to report him as awesome. That’s actually what I told the confused customer service consultant at Shaw, too.
Besides really knowing his stuff, getting things fixed up, looking tidy and explaining things so Laura and I understood what he was doing, he had interesting things to say…
He used to work for WestJet in Toronto, back when they only had two flights coming out of there. While there, he would do delivery runs on the big cargo planes, hopping from airport to airport across the country. He’s moved out west to go to pilot school and is running Shaw jobs in the area to help pay his way through that.
The service call we was at before coming to our place tonight, though, turned out to be one of his pilot friends from his WestJet days. The pilot apparently divorced his wife in Toronto, moved to Kelowna and says he’s having the time of his life: Big boat, girlfriend 15 years younger than him and lots of disposable cash. He was so excited to find out this technician also ended up in Kelowna, they already made plans to hang out this weekend. Very cool.
Today I got a call from the place I had an interview with on Friday. They called to offer me a job, starting Monday. I’ll be on the morning shift (7am-3:15pm) working in the fumehood area. Last week they didn’t have a position available to offer me and suddenly now I start Monday. Odd.
I recently played all the way through the original Deus Ex again. It’s funny to think that the last time (also the first time) I played through it was in first year of university, at St. Jerome’s. My laptop couldn’t handle the game so I had to borrow Ryan’s computer to play it. Then I think Thai went away for reading week and let me use his PC, too. Pretty sure I played most of it on his computer.
Eight years after its release, it’s still a great game. The graphics and character models are showing their age and obviously nothing great. The locations are all pretty sparsely decorated. Offices have a desk, a shelf and maybe a plant in them. Interestingly, none of these criticisms take away from the fact that the core gameplay is still there and it is still awesome. I still got totally immersed into the world. The way that every situation allows for different solutions to the problem with varying outcomes is just so great. I have a hard time thinking of another game that allows so many options for every situation.
Now that I’ve finished the original, I’ve been playing the sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War. Last time I played that was when I was living in the basement room at 511 Albert, in Waterloo. I remember playing late into the night, by the orange glow of my Halloween lights, being so tired that I would jump up on my bed and nap during the 45-60 second level-loads. Of course, on the machine I’m playing it on now, those loads take 4-6 seconds.
I remember the sequel getting a lot of flak from people. I enjoyed it, back in the day, but not as much as the original. I think I was just happy to have ore of that gameplay, even if it wasn’t quite as good as the first. It really felt (and, playing it now, still feels) like they tried to simplify it too much in order to appeal to more people. Still fun, but now as excellent as the original game.
While inviting people to our housewarming party, I have discovered that I’m really quite awkward on the phone. Mostly when it comes time to end the call. “Um. Yeah. Okay, so… See you later?” Inviting people over Facebook is infinitely easier.
Laura and I finally got some stuff up on the living room walls today.
Big push today to get everything in its right place. Most things around the apartment are in order and the majority of the boxes have been dealt with so we could have our space functioning normally. We then had JJ and Jenn over because we blew them off the other night while we unpacked stuff.
I really like the Wii’s Everybody Votes polls:
Canadians are in the #2 spot for people who would least like to live in a foreign country. Well, obviously. Why would we want to leave this place?
Today I had an interview for a company that analyzes mineral samples for mining companies: Breaking the rock sample down and looking for diamond indicators, also sometimes gold and other precious metals.
They gave me an in-depth tour during which I tried to convince them I wasn’t overqualified and would be fine starting at the bottom to display my abilities. They seemed excited to hire me for their fumehood area… but then explained that they don’t currently have any positions available, yet will contact me by the end of next week. So, um… we’ll see.
I know, theirs is the worst web site ever. Clearly they’re not trying to market themselves.
Also, they misspelled characterization.
