Interesting Week

On Wednesday I went to a "Power Within" conference with others from work - the keynote speaker was Bill Clinton. The other speakers ranged from not bad to excellent - Peter Gruber, former CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment and now head of Mandalay Entertainment (he also produced Rain Man and a slough of other films), one of the authors of Freakonomics, Herb Cohen (How to Negotiate Anything - he was hilarious!) - to name a few.

Bill spoke for about an hour, mostly about his NGOs and how - now that he is no longer president - he can actually accomplish things without having to worry about how it will affect his approval rating, etc. His message was simple - be more afraid of failure than of inaction - and he was quite a moving speaker. He pointed out that he visited Canada more than any sitting US president, that he loves it here and joked that he's been here so many times this year that Martin called him up and warned him that if he came once more he'd be subject to Canadian taxes. He also said that this was fair, considering Bush had given him 4 tax cuts he didn't need or want.

Thursday night a few of us went to see Tom Phillips perform in Hank Williams - The Show He Never Gave. It was at the Ironwood and it was quite good. I'm not a huge fan of honkeytonk but, much like I felt after watching Ray, you get a sense of how many songs he wrote and how they have had such an impact on everything. Tom was good, though he admitted after the show that he has to sing a whole lot higher than normal to play the part and that it's quite tough.

I'm off to Toronto tomorrow just for the week - back Thursday.

Dave wants . . .

Kelsey did it, Len did it, so here's mine. Put "(your name) wants" into Google . . .

Dave wants to introduce Carmen to his family in England.

Dave wants it stated that ALL bikes welcome on every road.

Dave wants a professional style kitchen complete with a restaurant size range.

Dave wants to expand the kitchen area.

Dave Wants Spicy Noodles.

Dave wants to get back with Jessie.

Dave wants to feel power and control with the gun.

Dave wants automated podcasting - it's already here.

Dave wants to know if we have seen the best of JD Fortune.

DAVE WANTS TO TOUCH IT. (emphasis not mine)

'New' Stephen King movie

Click on the following link (requires QuickTime):

http://www.ps260.com/molly/SHINING%20FINAL.mov

Off to Winterpeg

At least it's supposed to be balmy this week. I'm leaving tonight, coming back Friday PM (we should be able to stop in at QTs b-day festivities after G picks me up at the airport. Jenn is going back to TO but only for a few weeks before she moves to our nation's capital.

This Thanksgiving Weekend: Played a lot of Wallace and Gromit Project Zoo on the old PS2, saw the Were-Rabbit movie with the girls on the weekend - it was amazing by the way! Sad news connected with that though, see here.

See you when I get back!

Film Fest over for another year

My Film Festival had some ups and downs this year, as some of you may already know.

First off, our film Still Life With Razor was not accepted - then it was accepted (clerical error) - then we had to rush to get a screening copy - then we dragged a bunch of friends, the cast, etc. down to a midnight screening, only to be told our film was playing the following Saturday - then it played that night anyway.

The festival as a whole was very disorganized - they had many versions of "updated" schedules and people were showing up for films that weren't playing, etc..

The best film I saw at the festival (one of the great perks of being a delegate was getting a full festival pass) was Caché (Hidden) from France, with Juliette Binoche and the old man from Amelie who get's his trinket box back. There was a total jerk who sat behind us, though - he had a cold and snivelled through the whole movie, he talked through the whole thing and then said at the end "that movie sucked ass". Anyway, it was nice to hear Juliette speaking French in a movie - it's been so long.

Another good one was Salt from Iceland, except that the entire movie was handheld and in extreme close-up so it was kind of sick-making (but that was not what it was going for). BTW, if you have a freckle-fetish you have to see this one.

Can't wait for next year!