The Automatik

Having waited six months to see this film, I confess that I was a trifle concerned that it would not live up to the hype. However, Breakfast on Pluto has not only met and exceeded all of my expectations, it has transfixed me, rendering me helpless in a state of semi-hypnosis, counting the hours until I can once more be held in its thrall. Read more

I hated the first hour of this movie so much I had to fight the urge to leave the theatre at least five times.

I’m glad I didn’t.
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I know that many of you are probably experiencing this phenomenon the wonderful media have dubbed “Katrina Fatigue.” Let me tell you something: since August 29th, I’ve been pretty fatigued myself.
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Independiente, 2005

It’s hard to believe that the first Suede album was released more than a decade ago. Brilliance, bickering, band members quitting, being forced to tack on “London” to the name, and singer Brett Anderson dyeing his hair blond ensued throughout their reign, so it’s perhaps harder to believe that a band that received overwhelming amounts of UK press hype went down a few years ago with barely a whisper.
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2006, V2 Records

It’s been an exciting few years for The Meligrove Band.
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AM Glory/The Pat McGee Band/Hanson
Kool Haus
November 10, 2005

It’s been about five years since the first time I saw Hanson perform live. Since then, they’ve left their major label and started an independent one (3CG), watched their fan base enter high school (and even college), cut their hair, removed their braces, and even gotten married and started a family (well, just Taylor). They’ve obviously grown up, so it’s too bad that some of their fans haven’t.
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Starvin’ Hungry/The Leather Uppers/Tricky Woo
The Horseshoe Tavern
October 28, 2005

Going into downtown Toronto on the Friday before Halloween in full costume requires a certain amount of bravado. Yet, despite fears of being openly mocked, wearing a costume downtown on the Friday before Halloween gives you a sense of power, a sense that it is possible to do whatever you want because you’re walking around in downtown Toronto in full costume. It was with this mindset that we ventured out to hang out with friends and see Tricky Woo.
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New Orleans and its surrounding cities and neighborhoods are no longer as I knew them. The coast of Mississippi has been changed forever. Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christian are nothing but felled trees and splintered wood. My father and stepmother’s house has been crushed by a 20-foot storm surge that wreaked destruction five miles inland, lifting up their van and spinning it around and floating three strange sofas into their shattered and now-exposed living room. Their neighbors’ roof is now in their backyard, but there is no sign of the rest of that house. Even if they didn’t lose their houses outright, many members of my family, not to mention nearly everyone else I know that still lives there, have been rendered homeless and jobless for the foreseeable future.
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The Joel Plaskett Emergency
Harbourfront Centre
August 20, 2005

There was a time, say before 1984, when you could see a band perform in a crowded venue and the most you had to worry about was the lingering smell of pot smoke or spilled beer. Those halcyon days are gone – and mosh pits aren’t for the floor section of a Metallica show anymore. If crowd surfers could infiltrate a Celine Dion concert they would – but I won’t be gathering empirical evidence to support that hypothesis anytime in the next century.
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“Would you like to see my mask?”

We humans rely on the fact that our superheroes are just that: greater than mortal men. But Batman is a special kind of icon: not an alien who came to earth in a meteor shower, nor a man bitten by a radioactive arachnid. Relying heavily on Batman graphic novels and completely discarding the embarrassing Batman franchise of the 1990s, in Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan and screenwriter David Goyer have gifted us with a spectacular vision of Batman as not only a hero, but as a flawed human being who inhabits a world where the good guys don’t always wear white and sometimes the criminals are clad in shades of grey.
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