Evans Above

I find that I haven’t really watched much of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Perhaps watching corporations drool over airing sporting events in a repressive totalitarian police state isn’t my idea of a good time. Roger Ebert said the opening ceremonies reminded him of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi documentary Triumph of the Will.

The opening ceremonies were also tainted by the regime’s need to show a perfect face, literally, to the world.The musical director of the ceremonies, Chen Qigang, admitted that Ode to the Motherland wasn’t actually sung by the pig-tailed Lin Miaoke but rather by 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Chen explained that, “The main consideration was the national interest. The child on the screen should be flawless in image, in her internal feelings and in her expression.”

Yang’s crime: her front teeth were crooked.

Another thing that bugs me about the Olympics is the fact that people get all patriotic about things they’d never watch normally. “Did ya see how we did in badminton last night?”

Really? How much of their entertainment dollar do you think they normally spend on badminton? Or gymnastics? Or even, dare I say it, swimming? Yet right now, Michael Phelps could probably run for president and win.

Well, maybe I’ll be more impressed with the Vancouver Olympics. At least they’ll be guaranteed to be a little less dictatorial.

Woke up early at 6:30 this morning and had a craving for a McDonald’s breakfast.

I head off to the Yonge & Eglinton location and while there, I was able to witness firsthand the results of the special comprehension training their staff are put through.

MCDONALD’S EMPLOYEE: Morning sir, can I take your order?

ME (in a clear and pleasant voice): Yes, good morning. I’ll have combo number three please with a medium orange juice to go.

MCDONALD’S EMPLOYEE: Number three?

ME: Yes.

MCDONALD’S EMPLOYEE: Just the sandwich?

ME: No, the combo please.

MCDONALD’S EMPLOYEE: What drink would you like?

ME: A medium orange juice…

MCDONALD’S EMPLOYEE: And that’s for here?

ME: No, to go.

See how efficiently the employee listened to my order and then proceeded to screw up every aspect of it? That takes special training.

Is Rogers capable of running a customer service site that doesn’t, well no other way to say this, SUCK?

Half the time that I go to the site to check on my account I get some form of error. Went to check my bill today and I received a 500 server error when went to view it. An hour later, that changed to a 502 proxy error.

Combine that with their ridiculous pricing plans for the iPhone and it really shows where their head is located.

Okay, so the fibre optics, microwaves, and two cans with a string that make up the internet are burning today with the news that more racy photos of Miley Cyrus, supposedly hacked off her cellphone, are out there. Miley in the shower with a wet t-shirt. Miley with her t-shirt tucked under her breasts as she pouts for the camera and blows a kiss. Miley with a donkey from Tijuana. What? Oh, I’ve just been informed the last one doesn’t exist. My bad.

This is not the first time that Miley Cyrus has been involved in a photo scandal involving photos she’s taken. Of course her handlers threw up a big smoke screen with the whole Annie Leibovitz/Vanity Fair cover shoot “scandal”. Yes, let’s get everyone talking about photos done for a magazine while handlers were around and make everyone forget that Miley’s hobbies include lifting her t-shirt up and pouting.

Of course, Miley’s career was created by Disney with Hannah Montana and what the Mouse giveth, the Mouse can taketh away. If your 15-year-old star can’t act like a Disney kid, well, they always have Camp Rock’s Demi Lovato ready to take her place as their golden child.

So the big question is: Will Disney dump Miley Cyrus?

Just read that 37signals are phasing out support of IE6 in their Basecamp online products. As they say, “The Internet Explorer 6 browser was released back in 2001, and Internet Explorer 7, the replacement, was released nearly two years ago in 2006.”

Moving away from a buggy browser like IE6 would be great. I just checked my logs though and, ugh, about 24% of our readers are still using IE7. Time to upgrade folks!

Sometimes you dip your hand into the mailbag and it bites back…

We received a copy of Superhero Movie, a spoof flick “from the guys who brought you Scary Movie and The Naked Gun.” If you ever feel the need to completely waste about 90 minutes of your life, then this is the movie to do it.

Writer-director Craig Mazin has basically taken the plot of a superhero film — in this case Spider-Man — and shifted some things aside to make room for a healthy dose of sight gags, physical shtick, and, most importantly, fart jokes.

Now gags, shtick and farts can be funny if delivered effectively and in the right doses, but Mazin has gone way overboard with material that’s not funny or just sits there like a rock. It doesn’t help that the hero, played by Drake Bell, has all the charisma and comic ability of a bug squashed against your windshield. His Dragonfly just has to get out of the way of much better comic actors like Leslie Nielsen, Christopher McDonald and Marion Ross, but even they can’t sink their teeth into this meatless parody. Poor Ross is also the supplier (but surprisingly not the denier) of one of the longest fart jokes in the history of film. Poor woman, did she not save any of her Happy Days money?

The film is full of cameos like Pamela Anderson, Craig Bierko and Robert Hays, but they too are wasted. The best bit in the whole film belongs to Miles Fisher, whose dead on parody of Tom Cruise in the Scientology tapes is excellent. I’d almost say it would be worth the price of admission, but since it was placed on the Internet, put your wallet back.

This film is packed with the usual extras: commentary, alternate ending, deleted scenes and a “The Art of Spoofing” minidoc. It seems a bit weird to call them extras since that implies that they’re being added on to something and there’s nothing here.

I downloaded Firefox 3 and though I love the browser, I have to add my voice to the chorus of people who don’t like the new format for the location or “awesome” bar. I hate the awesome bar: the awesome bar sucks. There, I said it.

When I type “c” in the location bar, I expect to see cnn.com or cinematical.com. The new “awesome bar” grabs a list of every bookmark and history entry that has a “c” in it.

Adding insult to injury, there’s no way to turn this off.

Ugh!

NKOTB a.k.a. New Kids on the Block a.k.a. Jordan and Jonathan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg and Danny Wood just finished performing on the MuchMusic Video Awards and the one word to describe the performance is “ouch”.

The MMVA performance really looked like five guys getting ready to take a kick at the multi-million dollar reunion tour can. The dancing was awkward, the vocals shaky — Jordan Knight in particular cracked spectacularly during “Step by Step” — and it looked like a bunch of guys at a company karaoke party pretending to be NKOTB.

I guess they can cash their cheques after the tour, which opens in Toronto this September, and finally put the reunion demands in their past.

Canadian Idol returns on Tuesday…and I couldn’t care less. Ratings for it were down last season, as they were for American Idol this season.

The only winner I clearly remember in five seasons is Ryan Malcolm and that’s only because he was the first. There was some curly blond guy and a dark-haired girl. Yep, they’ve obviously etched their names and careers into popular culture.

I think it’s funny how all the various Idol shows trumpet the “idol” word, like somehow these people have been properly elected idols that the masses must bow down to. The way Seacrest intones “This is your American Idol” the way they say “The President of the United States” when the State of the Union address starts. Sadly, some force-fed TV watchers actually accept that these people must be idolized because they’ve been told repeatedly that they’re idols and they’re the best. No, they’re supposedly the best of the people who auditioned. That doesn’t mean some 17-year-old singer in Wichita who thinks the show is a joke can’t sing circles around the winners.

I worked at a part-time job that was chock full of actors and singers. One of the women who worked there, the type who’d dote on any of the contestants, wondered aloud why none of the people at this job auditioned for the show. One savvy university student summed it up well: “Because they want careers.”

Reaching into the mailbag this week, we find Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. It’s a given in the movies that the easier a heist appears, the greater the chance that something will go very wrong.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play brothers whose parents own a jewelery store. Hoffman is the more successful brother. He’s got a job as a payroll executive, a sexy wife (Marisa Tomei), and a drug habit that needs cash to fuel it. Hawke is financially struggling, needs money for his little girl, and he’s sleeping with his sister-in-law.

Knowing that their parents, Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris, have their store fully insured, the two brothers figure they can stage a robbery. They’ll have the cash they both need and nobody gets hurt. Or so they plan…

Hoffman is, of course, fantastic. He truly is the embodiment of the actor you’d pay to watch read the phone book. But with him, you’d come back the second night to see him read the Yellow Pages™. Albert Finney matches Hoffman toe-to-toe as the pair’s father. With this duo in the cast it’s hard for the rest not to be partially in their shadows, but that’s not a slight considering the scale of performances we’re talking about here.

This DVD release includes interviews with the cast and director as well as commentary from Hoffman, Hawke and Lumet. Considering Lumet’s a filmmaking legend, that’s worth the price of admission alone.

While you’re at it, check out our photos from the Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival.

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