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The vine which formerly had a stranglehold on three of the 8 ever-green that line the back forty of spud central is no more. This is due, in no small part to a Herculean effort on the part of This Spud and The Wife. We will be rewarded with healthy evergreens and more sunshine. But I have also paid the price with a symphony of aching joints and muscles, the like of which I have not experienced in a hell of a long time. Worth the effort? Ask me in the morning.

Thanks to the virtually non-stop intercontinental media coverage that the Sars outbreak in Toronto has received, the wankers at the World Health Organization have declared us to be a place worth of avoiding for all non-essential travel. Which effectively means that my town has suddenly gone from being the Centre
Of The Universe to the City of The Damned. Mel Lastman (our munchkin mayor) is really pissed and has become the mascot for this story south of the border. Maybe this is all a good thing, though, as it might get those Yanks feeling sorry for us and forget how pissed off they were at us just a couple of weeks ago. (Would you like some Liberty Fries with your Peameal Bacon on a bun?)

For all of you out-of-town and out-of-country Spuds, I was just downtown today and it looked like the same frenzied madhouse it always has. Screw the W.H.O.. Come on up for your holidays. You have our solemn promise that nobody will pay any attention at all to you. Just like always.

Also, while I'm going on about stuff, I'd just like to say goodbye for the season to the Toronto Maple Leaves. I showed up for the last game of the season down in Philly. Where the hell were you?

Oh yeah, the movies. Almost forgot.

ENIGMA (TWO SPUDS) (VIDEO)

Enigma is a big time BritFlick based on a novel by Robert Harris that I can just barely remember reading. It's all about what you might call the world first true propellerheads, the mathematical whiz kids recruited by the British government to break codes and stay a step or two ahead of the Jerries in WW2. If I was a Brit, I would describe this movie as "bloody good", or "ripper". The story revolves around the character of Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott), an Oxford genius mathematician who broke the first enigma code, then went a little bonkers over a knockout babe (sizzling Saffron Burrows) who was actually a double agent, comes back after a bit of rehab and then ends up falling for a slightly less spectacular female (Kate Winslett), while all the while being suspected of some level of treason by a dashing, but caddish British spook (Jeremy Northam). Add a sort of dumbed down script by Tom Stoppard and some solid period-capturing direction by Michael Apted and you've got yourself a real Sunday-night-at-the-movies-treat. Another interesting point about this movie is that Mick Jagger and Lorne Michaels (Saturday Night Live) are listed as executive producers of this film. Good for you guys.

I'll send you one of my scripts tomorrow.

As soon as the NBA playoffs are over, of course.

RABBIT PROOF FENCE (ONE SPUD) (VIDEO)

This is one of those 'based on a true story' movies that pop up out of Australia every so often, the most famous of which is Walkabout.

Rabbit Proof Fence actually a kind of historical film about the so called 'half-caste' aboriginals, who were fathered by a number of the workers who erected the 1500 mile long rabbit proof fence in western Australia. It basically tells the story of three young girls who are taken from their mother to an internment camp where they were to be trained to be domestics to white families, encouraged to marry whites and have their 'blackness' bred out of them. This is a bit of turn of the century Australian dirty laundry for sure. But the girls have different idea of how they want their lives to turn out and split from the camp, eluding capture for six weeks and walking nearly 1200 miles back home. Twice. Oi. My achin feet.

There's a real bleakness and a fairly strong smell of racism exposed going on in this film. It's not easy to watch. But in its own way it's really quite hypnotic. Phillip Noyce, who also directed The Quiet American (soon to be released on video) is unrelenting in his depiction of the harshness of the terrain these three girls are crossing. But it's kind of like the Brer Rabbit story from Uncle Remus. These girls were born and raised in this terrain. The only hardship they face is the distance they must travel. The music score by Peter Gabriel uses a lot of traditional instruments and creates a haunting soundscape for this story to play out in. But in spite of all the good things this film had going for it, I got fairly restless watching it, because, let's face it, it's about a 1200 mile walk.

Rabbit Proof Fence is worth seeing for the history and the general interestingness of the fence concept itself, if that kind of stuff turns your crank, but I could take it or leave it and I'm pretty sure The Wife felt the same. I didn't bother waking her up to ask.

GOOD ADVICE (TWO SPUDS) (VIDEO)

Now this is something that doesn't pass through Spud Central very often at all--a good romantic comedy. Now it's not going to make it to my list of all time favourites or anything, it's a little too fluffy for that. But it did a good job of keeping The Wife and I in an upbeat state of viewership for a couple of hours, so what the hell. Also note that this is one of The Wife's picks. (She's actually on a bit of a hot streak.) In Good Advice, Charlie Sheen, Hollyweird's lizard king, plays a slimy stock broker (what a reach) who loses his shirt in an insider trade. His girlfriend, played with airheaded glee by Denise Richards, a really bad advice columnist for a little Manhattan newspaper, run by superbabe Angie Harmon, leaves him to got to Brazil with some Brazilian rich guy. Through odd little twists of fate and desperation that only happen in romantic comedies, Charlie, with help from his pal Jon Lovitt, a rich plastic surgeon and his manic wife played by aging superbabe Rosanna Arquette. (She's the one who can act, sort of), starts writing her advice column and guess what.
Now it's nowhere near as asinine as is sounds, because the writing is surprisingly good and the actors are all having fun. Good Advice has nothing whatsoever to do with reality and, well, some nights that's a really good place to be.
That's it. I'm staying up for too many late night hoops games and I'm pooped.
 
 
 
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