Touch You Last

There are three things I haven’t done since we moved up to Ottawa in late October. In part it’s due to circumstance beyond my control, and some of it can also be blamed on inclement weather. But in the end it’s mostly because I’m so very lazy. 1. I’ve yet to learn the layout of this city. Map and globe skills aren’t exactly my forte, so this isn’t a thing that will just occur to me one day. I’ve got to sit down and study a map for a few hours. Sarah is too good with directions, which makes me lazy. Even when I’ve been to the Costco forty times I still need verbal commands for when to turn. And the odd time where she prompts me and I actually do know where I’m going, I’m all, “I know! I KNOW! What am I, some kind of moron?” 2. I have to go to ByTowne Cinema, Ottawa’s independent theatre, which incidentally is about three blocks from my house. Back in University, I discovered Windsor’s little indie theatre late in my third year, and since leaving I’ve pissed and moaned about ...

I love movie trailers. Ideally, when I go to a movie I want to see so many good trailers that for a moment I forget what film I’ve come to see. (I also want to not see that goddamn MovieTickets.com commercial. I swear to you I will kill that couple if I ever find out where they live.) After watching all the current trailers that it seems are out there to be watched, there are four movies that I’m most excited to see. From this selection, my tastes look painfully mainstream, but this isn’t entirely the case. It’s just that, while I do enjoy my indie fare, a trailer for Sideways or Vera Drake doesn’t make me chub out in quiet the same way. Here are my top four, ranked in order of anticipation. Sin City – The only bit of Frank Miller I’ve ever read is the Dark Knight Returns. My comic book days have long since passed my by and even then I only read the crappiest DC titles, but I’ve watched this trailer more times then I’d like to say and now I’m dying for April to get here. Vi...

I’m going to go on a bit about Stephen King and the Dark Tower series. I’ll make no attempt to recap what these books are about, so I run a high likelihood of endangering my readership—all two of them (three if I can count Jay .) And Jorge has actually read the series, so it’s just my wife that won’t give a crap. Let me start by saying I was brought up on Stephen King. Okay—not wholly true. I was brought up on fried bologna and the belief that spaghetti in a can is the real spaghetti , but from a book perspective I was raised on King. Misery , IT , The Shining , Different Seasons —these were the first books I read that weren’t school books, the ones that first made me excited to read. And when I first started to write “seriously” my style was a carbon copy of his (which I’m probably still exorcizing ten years later.) When University arrived, I’d grown, matured, become a book snob, and Stephen King got pushed aside for meatier books. I was an English Lit and Creative Writing major, so...

I’ve advertised this blog to all of two people. A readership of strangers seems better than a readership of friends because then I can make fun of my friends and still have them. For those of you who have wandered here by accident, here’s the back story to my title. First, you should know that Touch You Last is not sex thing, however it might sound. I googled myself to see if this site had been indexed yet (it hasn’t) and was instantly sucked into an irresistible black hole of pornography. If you’re looking for South Florida Dominatrix Mistress Poison or Erotic Buffy Fanfic, I can show you the way. On a side note, googling myself might be the most masturbatory thing I’ve ever done. Second most, actually. Touch You Last is a game that my brother and I have played for at least fifteen years. The rules of play are very simple: be the guy who has touched the other guy last. If you were sitting beside me right now, and I were to poke you in the arm, I would be winning the game of Touch You ...

Never did finish all 8 movies. At best, we usually see a movie a week so I’m not quite sure why we though we could increase that eightfold. Alas. Thoughts on the rest of what we saw: The Big Easy – Saw this about ten or twelve years ago and remembered not finding it that sexy (and this was at a time when even the word Regina made me randy.) Turns out I didn’t miss anything the first time around. Sure, he calls her cher and touches her pumpkin, but once that’s done not a memorable scene or line follows. The Faulty Towers Pilot – I wish I’d seen more episodes because it must get funnier. I felt a tremendous pressure to enjoy it, sort of like watching The Office for the first time (and like The Office, I’m sure it’s a riot by the third episode.) The audience killed it for me a little bit. They were just so eager: “That’s John Cleese! Ha! Brilliant! He’s was in Python, yeah? Christ, that’s funny! So funny I’ll fucking scream laughter—HAHAHAHAHA!”

We came back with seven movies. Here are my thoughts on each: Troy – Excepting the first and last third of it, it’s sort of a fun movie. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favour and start at the scene where Paris fights Menaleus, then stop after Achilles squares off with Paris. If you know enough about the Trojan War to know that it had nothing to do with contraceptives, you’ll know enough to get by. The Philadelphia Story – Like a screwball comedy, without the pacing or the humour. Wait, maybe it’s a romance. No. Not that, either. Bowling for Columbine – If I learned one thing from this movie, it’s that Charlton Heston answers his own security intercom. (Ring it! More likely than not, he’ll let you in.) Oh, and America is scary .

The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s twenty-ninth feature film and second biopic, stars Leonardo DiCaprio as brash visionary Howard Hughes. Though ending well before Hughes’ ignoble end, the film depicts nearly all aspects of the billionaire’s life: as a filmmaker, as an avionics mastermind, and as a world-class kickboxer. Hughes’ obsessive-compulsive behavior, though debilitating, made for a truly manic life. Before the age of thirty-five he’d completed the trifecta of testing and crashing a plane he’d designed, romancing Katherine Hepburn, and defeating Frank Dux in the bloody Kumite . And this is only the beginning. But one can’t speak of the film without discussing the use of colour. The hues and saturation change to suit each decade. Even Hughes’ mood has its effect on the colour scheme: he’s surrounded in crimson and grey while convalescing after a brutal crash, and resplendent in fuchsia and aubergine during an ill-fated May-December romance with fellow billionaire William Randolph He...