Raging Canuck

Dunkirk, Colossal and Baby Driver (spoilers)

2017-08-04T13:57:00.000-06:00

As a former filmmaker & storyboard artist it’s sometimes hard for me to fall into the frame of a film. If the film doesn’t catch me with its visuals or wrench my heart through story and performance I click over to becoming analytical. I watch for tricks & techniques like interesting blocking, or lens choices or pieces of performance and dialogue. The thing of it is that most films can suck me in and wring me out like a rag, leaving to me to ponder them after I have experienced them. Dunkirk, Colossal and Baby Driver had me pondering while I was watching, entranced and sometimes perplexed.

Dunkirk is a mechanical masterpiece of relentless tension. Telling a pared down version of the WWII true story of the English retreat from the town of Dunkirk while the German mercilessly surrounded English and French forces as they wait desperately for an escape by sea, the film grabbed me by the throat and never let up. Opening with a delicate sequence of young Brit soldiers searching for food and water as they patrol the abandoned town that devolves as an invisible enemy kills all but one, we are lead to the beach in a grand long shot revealing the scope of the allied forces queued patiently on the beach. Title cards in quick sequence allude to the trick of Dunkirk, non-linear time. The story of the hundreds of thousands of men on the beach takes place over a week. A parallel story of commuter boats racing across the channel from England to France to retrieve the troops is a day. A third story of a British fighter pilot struggling to keep the skies clear from the German air force is over an hour.

The main characters of a soldier on the beach, the retirement aged owner of a small boat, and the pilot aren’t really characters. The dialogue for the entire film would fill a handful of pages. They are chess pieces moving around a board, lunging from one set piece to another in a desperate plea for survival. I didn’t ever care about anything other than the primordial fight or flight reflex of watching another person in jeopardy.

Making the film nonlinear Writer/Director Chris Nolan vacuums the air from the movie, removing all of the peaks and valleys and making the cinematic equivalent of the Loudness War in music. Dunkirk has no dynamic range, just tense moments that grow and grow and never release. It is like having your chest slowly squeezed for 90 minutes and waiting for that long sweet deep breath of release that never comes. The film never has a crescendo. There is no catharsis. It simply ends.

We get to breathe.

Colossal is powerful independent film replete with characters and story, its one trick a fantastical one. An out of work alcoholic (Anne Hathaway) is dumped by her boyfriend and left to sleep on the floor of her parents old empty family home. In a chance encounter with an elementary schoolmate (Jason Sudekis) she finds a new friend group of alcoholics and starts working at Sudekis’ bar as waitress. In a drunken stumble she wanders back to her family home, trudging through a playground, and once home passes out. When she wakes, she discovers a Kaiju (giant monster) has destroyed downtown Seoul Korea. After a second drunken wander through the park she realizes she IS the Kaiju and is responsible for hundreds if not thousands of deaths.

Hathaway has enormous depth as a former journalist who has not yet hit bottom with her addiction. Sudekis is a revelation, initially is kind and charming, falling easily into type until the film turns, and its metaphor is made clear.

Sudekis also has a giant being he can control: a skyscraper sized robot. While Hathaway initially takes delight in the ridiculousness of controlling this remote enormous creature, her conscious wears on her about the death and destruction she accidentally caused. She goes to great lengths to calm the populace and keep her beast from ever appearing again only to have Sudekis playfully tromp his Robot through the city. She confronts him in the playground, her actions writ large in Seoul as the beast shoves, slaps and motions for the robot to leave. Sudekis does so, only after shoving her to ground, revealing a simmering fury. The next morning, she visits his home, a filthy pit of despair where Sudekis has clawed the face out of photos of his ex-wife and child. He begs forgiveness for being a mean drunk and makes an empty promise only to later threaten her. If she should leave, he will go to the playground and destroy the city mercilessly.

Simultaneously her boyfriend visits her on a flimsy premise of giving a presentation. He confronts her about her drinking, and demeans her for living in this small town and working as a waitress. His frustration at her addiction spews out of him as emotional abuse. They visit the bar, where Sudekis take issue with him, and he sets the bar partially on fire, to make the point that she will never leave.

This is the turn. The first half of the film is a silly and charming character study of barflies and hometowns. With all of the pieces in play it reveals itself to be a drama about addiction and spousal abuse. Hathaway is trapped with a man who is willing to harm innocents (Seoul standing in for children) after being abandoned by a man who controls her through co-dependence. She rebuffs Sudekis who then turns back to the playground with the intent of causing mass destruction. Confronted once again, he batters her, leaving her helpless to watch as he stomps across the sand, causing untold loss of life without remorse. Sudekis’ performance as man desperate to possess and control what he can’t have, and cravenly jealous to the bone is staggering. It is like watching a kind but abused dog go bad. There is no warning and the consequences are dire.

The movie makes a slight attempt to justify not only the beasts but the character’s traits as Sudekis is shown to have been a cruel, bitter, jealous child hiding behind charm and kindness. No effort is spent exploring the cycle of abuse and addiction and the message of the film seems to be that once a garbage human being, always a garbage human being.

The film’s climax is what challenged me the most. The monsters as metaphor are a wonderful choice, presenting a drama that is not what it appears to be. Hathaway forces a confrontation by flying to Seoul, causing her beast self to manifest in the playground, just as Sudekis intends to pound the city in a drunken rage. His robot looms above her and thousands flee, until her beast shadows the sun over Sudekis. He is terrified and immediately tries to run. She scoops him up and he initially begs, then turns to impotent fury and her beast flings him to the horizon, killing him and the robot.

Seoul erupts in cheers, as Hathaway, processing her actions, wanders into a bar and weeps, asking the bartender if she wants to hear a story.

In a drama about spousal abuse, often the character arc resolves with the abused spouse killing or injuring the abuser in order to escape the torment. It is always justified and seems inevitable, but it never seems like murder. The abstraction of the metaphor trips me up and I was shocked by her actions. I didn’t know what to expect. To extend the metaphor, Hathaway’s actions are as if the Shining ended with Shelly Duval laying fatal traps for Jack Nicolson the day before, and push him into them. Unlike a crime of passion, Hathaway actions to save Seoul and more importantly herself are premeditated, though the final choice to kill appears impulsive. I wondered for her soul and I wondered how she would now address her addiction. Colossal is at once hopeful and deeply cynical and left me with a heavy heart and a lot of questions.

Baby Driver is Edgar Wright’s (Shaun of the Dead) latest film and unlike his previous works lurches from genre to genre with head snapping speed.

Baby is a driver with tinnitus, caused by the car accident death of his mother and father when he was a child. He uses old IPOD’s, like the one his mother gave him as a child, to play music to drown out the high pitched whine that never escapes his ears. He provides the escape for a series of heists for Doc, a Kevin Spacey type played by Kevin Spacey, and rotating cast of characters including John Hamm and Jamie Foxx. After a thrilling opening sequence escaping a heist through the streets and highways of Atlanta, Baby meets a waitress names Deborah, who is as music obsessed as he is. He fantasizes about her as if they are in a black & white 50’s film, like The Wild One.

Music is fundamental to the first half of the film, where Baby’s life is in essence a heavily stylized musical punctuated by escalating violence. Everyone and everything swings in an effortless joyful choreography of color and movement, culminating in a romantic dinner, celebrating Baby’s exit from crime. It is cruelly interrupted by Doc, who tells Baby, while he might be square, he is not done.

A final grand heist is planned and executed over a single day. Tensions run high among the team members and Bats (Jamie Foxx) descends into a spiral of death dealing. Darkness becomes a deep wide chord replacing the color and joy of the first half. Deborah’s life is threatened multiple times as the few people Baby cares about are abused and terrorized to force him to be compliant. The deaths mount and the violence grows, building to a car to car battle in a parking garage against Jon Hamm’s Buddy.

Baby and Deborah escape only to be caught. Baby goes to jail and serves 5 years in a montage until he is release on parole. His 50’s fantasy bleeds into color as they finally get to live their dream, drive west, fast, without a plan.

Baby Driver's fluid Technicolor first half is Busby Berkley homage to musicals. It is hyper stylized, calling attention to the choreography to such an extent that it almost seems ridiculous. Combined with the “aw shucks” cornball dialogue of 50’s style young love, it sidles up alongside La La Land as a charming oddball, until the brutal violence. The second heist of the film interrupts the reverie to establish Bats as being a dangerous unreliable force of nature that Baby tries to keep from killing people. The movie falls back into being a musical but stops dead with the arrival of Doc, and finally abandons it completely as the violence mounts.

This yo-yo in tone and genre makes Baby Driver a complex work that is hard to emotionally engage with. It is easy to react to, but unlike Scott Pilgrim, an earlier film that has an overarching theme filled with genre sequences, Baby Driver feels like less than the sum of its parts. It wants to be a love story but the characters have barely shared an evening together. It wants to be a heist movie but never shows the heists. It wants to be a car movie but lacks the deep fetishistic allure of chrome and power. It wants to be an exploration of the brutality of crime, but only shows the gore.

What is it, is a delightfully a musical, when heads aren’t exploding.

Star Trek Beyond

2016-09-19T10:29:00.000-06:00

Oddly small in scope, Beyond plays like an enormously expensive episode of TOS. Character relationships and interactions are well established by this third film the newest Star Trek movie incarnation and the cast appear to be having a blast. Essentially the story of Chris Pine’s Kirk meandering through a trifle of a plot while accompanied by Simon Pegg, Karl Urban et al, Beyond falls into Trek tropes by destroying the Enterprise (again) and stranded the crew on an alien world (again).

Pegg’s co-written script has a deep love and understanding of Star Trek, and director Justin Lin executes with the same physics bending flare he brought to the Fast & Furious franchise. Strangely paced and replete with stakes less set pieces, Beyond takes half of its running time to really hit its stride, leaping (spoiler) off-world and into a fantastic sequence set to the Beastie Boy’s Sabotage. The movie never really recovers as it races towards the climax, reducing scope from stellar to two guys punching each other.

Star Trek: Beyond is vastly superior to Into Darkness but does not have the pure emotional momentum of 2009’s Star Trek.

X-men: Apocalypse

2016-09-16T10:28:00.000-06:00

XM:A is an example of a talented filmmaker sleepwalking through making a film. Vastly inferior to his previous X-film, Days of Future Past, director Bryan Singer has a created a film with such impossible ridiculous stakes, that audience by-in is unfathomable. Re-introducing characters established in the original X-men as teenagers in the 80’s is an interesting choice, undermined by the use of Apocalypse as the film’s big bad. Apocalypse as played by Oscar Isaac, is a portentous blowhard that can absorb and use any mutant power, begging the question why he needs to recruit any other mutant. Angel, Storm & l Magneto are brought into the fold, to reap vast swaths of global destruction, including an incredibly disrespectful sequence where Magneto, inspired by Apocalypse, destroys Auschwitz.

Jennifer Lawrence joins Michael Fassbender in looking bored to tears as they work through the last movie of their deal. James McAvoy tries his hardest while spending most of the movie doing nothing and even a Hugh Jackman cameo as Weapon X does little to spice up the films bloated running time.

Ponderous and boring, XM:A dutifully trudges through plot towards its climax, never building to anything exciting or meaningful, and burdened with sub-par VFX, particularly in the opening sequences. With Jackman retiring from Wolverine with his next (and last) solo outing, XM:A unintentionally makes a good argument for this X-men universe to actually end.

10 Cloverfield Lane

2016-09-15T10:27:00.000-06:00

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Michelle, a young woman who drives (or is driven) off the road only to awaken underground, in a prepper nightmare. John Goodman’s Howard, with an unnerving calm, tells her that the world has ended and she is underground in his bunker alongside Emmett, (John Gallagher Jr.)

Goodman, in a startlingly intense and deep performance as Howard, brings real pathos and gravitas to the film, giving it a swirling pit of simmering dread. Winstead’s Michelle is no victim. Clever, resourceful and brave but desperate, she maneuvers in between Howard’s kind but menacing bulk and Emmett’s aw-shucks low key affability, trying to discern what is real or not.

10 Cloverfield Lane builds relentlessly, ratcheting tension, until the audience’s nerves are stretched like piano strings waiting to be plucked. It is a masterwork of craft and vision given the vast majority of the film takes place in 3 rooms with 3 people, until the climax.

The ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane has to be seen to be believed and will be incredibly divisive as it essentially is the beginning of a completely different movie. Despite the massive shift in tone, this movie is spectacular and one of the best of 2016.

Pandemic

2016-09-14T10:15:00.000-06:00

Pandemic is a take on found footage as well as a take on first person narrative (a la Hardcore Henry) that betrays its own premise from the start. Rachel Nichols is Lauren, a highly value CDC doctor who has arrived at one of the last remaining American strongholds during a zombie outbreak. Lauren is to be the fourth on a team of a Soldier, A Driver, and a Navigator that are sent out into the wasteland to recover survivors amongst the infected, who have 5 levels of disease. Level 1, we are told, is treatable; Level 5 is a ravenous mindless running cannibal.

Mekhi Phifer is Gunner, Alfie Allen is Wheeler and Missi Pyle is Denise. I will leave it to you to figure out their jobs.

Strangely empty of tension, Pandemic explores well-worn territory of civilization in collapse, and the veneer of humanity stripped away. Unable to explore character other than in broad archetypes, Pandemic fails to make much use of its format, but instead stages scenes within the perspective of each characters convenient helmet camera much as one would without the first person convention. The characters don’t act like people so we are never really in their shoes nor ever really in jeopardy.

Suicide Squad

2016-09-13T10:09:00.001-06:00

Beset with a troubled production and legendarily troubled reshoots, Suicide Squad had the unfortunate timing to be in production when the disastrous Batman Vs Superman was released to a critical drubbing and underwhelmed audiences. Suicide Squad as released is an incoherent mess that while not as blatant in its reshoots as the most recent Fantastic Four, still stinks of studio interference. Scenes introducing characters are repeated within minutes of each other and the film has a staccato pace that lurches from moment to moment of empty action.

The framework of the film gives glimpses of a larger work that delved deeper into the backstories of the characters, but in the final piece, the character moments are bite-sized chunks that allude poorly to whatever conflict may exist. Punctuated with gratuitous and brief bits of tired licensed music such as “Born on the Bayou” and “Sympathy for the Devil” Suicide Squad feels like an attempt to capture the experience of Guardians of the Galaxy with no understanding why those decisions were made appropriately in that film.

Make no mistake this is Margot Robbie and Will Smith’s movie, with each of their respective characters stealing the show whenever they are on screen. Robbie’s Harley Quinn is a sparkling gem of madness and spousal abuse where Smith’s Deadshot is a sociopath trying to do right by his daughter (which is an oxymoron). Each brings their full charm and intensity to the films, giving it far more life than it deserves. Viola Davis (Amanda Waller) and Jay Hernandez (Diablo) also standout as Waller proves to be as sociopathic as the Suicide Squad, and Diablo reveals a truly tragic backstory that makes him a reluctant hero. Jared Leto is an insignificant and impotent Joker, attempting to make hay of the role defined by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger and failing to do so. Leto’s Joker is occasional comic relief that exists only to further muddy an already inexplicable plot.

Suicide Squad is a mildly entertaining mess made from the threads of a likely more interesting movie and an embarrassing step down in quality for director David Ayers.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

2016-09-11T11:00:00.000-06:00

The Lonely Island presents their first movie with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Structured as a behind the scenes documentary of a Bieber-alike Conner4Real (Andy Samberg) and his former band The Style Boyz, Popstar has endless cameos from the hip hop and rap community talking about the impact The Style Boyz has had on pop culture. A glossy take on modern pop music and the inherent ridiculousness of massive egos and enormous money, Popstar skewers the modern industry delightfully, but relies heavily on the audience’s knowledge of the battles behind the scenes.

Out of context vignettes parodying TMZ are dropped into the film and as a non-American who has never seen TMZ, left me cold. The film is earnest in its attempt to create empathetic characters within the madness on Conner4Real on tour but is light on laugh out loud moments, save for a wedding proposal gone wrong and a groupie scene flipped on its head. Those standout moments and the expertly crafted pop parody “Fuck Bin Laden” are the highlights of an ambitious but mediocre film.

The Nice Guys

2016-09-10T11:00:00.000-06:00

Structured like Chinatown, but overflowing with the blackest humor, The Nice Guys bookends nicely with Shane Black’s other noire film KissKissBangBang, but is not as good. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe become entwined in a sex, drugs, and violence murder mystery set in smoggy ‘70’s Los Angeles. Violence and exploitation of women is a central theme of the film and while in step with the exploitation films of the era, is presented in such a grimy, sleazy way, it turns The Nice Guys into an instant relic of a bygone time.

Crowe effortlessly falls into the role of a world-weary paunchy enforcer who wishes he was a better man, even while choking men to death. Gosling sheds his laconic/stoic standby and is a lit fuse as a cynical huckster P.I. and he crackles as he stumbles comically through every scene. Violent and raunchy, The Nice Guys culminates in a rushed climax to a unearned conspiracy that while historically true, is played for laughs almost directly to camera. The Nice Guys is an entertaining misstep that demands an appreciation for the seedy side of show business.

Ghostbusters (2016)

2016-09-09T11:00:00.000-06:00

Hampered by an overly doting embrace of the original Ghostbusters and structured as a series of vignettes, Ghostbusters (2016) is an entertaining if slight movie. Crafted by Bridesmaid's Paul Feig, and starring four of the funniest women in show business as the titular heroes, the film fails to be more than setups and punchlines for mediocre one-off jokes. I finished the film entertained though feeling an ‘R” rated cut must exist and like Feig’s other improv heavy outings, would be better for it. Ghostbusters (2016) seems constrained as it attempts to tell a coherent story with meaningful characters.

Chris Hemsworth shines in his scene stealing receptionist Kevin, clearly delighted to play comic relief instead of hero and Kate McKinnon embraces the on-the-spectrum intensity and joy of Holtzmann. Melissa McCarthy and Krisitin Wiig are handcuffed by playing essentially the same character with different ticks, with both Erin Gilbert and Abby Yates as well-meaning women. Leslie Jones sparkles as Patty Tolan, amateur NYC historian and general sass machine with a heart of gold.

Without any inherent conflict between the main characters, Ghostbusters (2016) loses the rapport of the original and lacks any dynamic range of drama. Unfortunately, huge swaths of connective tissue appear to be missing or cut for time as the movie lurches from set piece to set piece, missing the nuanced control of films like Spy or The Heat. Ghostbusters (2016) plays like a fans collection of ideas inspired by the original film without a story to hold the pieces together.

Mechanical Failure: Plotting and Batman V Superman (Spoilers) part 1

2016-04-05T14:05:00.000-06:00

Screenwriting is a very specific art form that rewards brevity and clarity. Character and plot revolve around each other in a push-pull that at its very best results in an organic story told about believable people.

Batman V Superman is not that movie. It is the most mechanical inorganic film I have seen in years and serves as a great example of how not to plot a story.

What is Plot?

Plot is the series of events that lead or are led by the characters through the story. It can be as simple as boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl forgives boy. It can be as complex as a heist movie, where the characters are reacting to and/or driving the moving parts that make successful heist. The drama of the plot is how the characters deal with the adversity they encounter.

What is a Mechanical Plot?

A mechanical plot is a series of events that exist only to cause further events, like dominos, ignorant of the characters affected by those events. BvS is one of those movies.

SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF THE MOVIE

A gracefully plotted movie feels organic and natural. Character decisions make sense in the moment and upon reflection. It feels like the ending is inevitable as the journey that led us there makes sense.

The ending of BvS makes no sense, and neither do the mechanics that lead to it. Let’s start with the Kryptonite Spear plot point from the end to the beginning and how it travels through the climax of the movie, answering the following question's

why does Batman plant the Spear in the ground floor when fighting a flying man? (So Lois can get to them).
Why does Lois throw the spear in the flooded basement (so she can nearly drown, giving Superman motivation).
Why did Batman make a Spear instead of explosive tipped bullets? (ie. Kryptonite mist weakens Superman enough that Kryptonite bullets would shred his heart)So that Superman can sacrifice himself

The Players

Superman/Clark is the son of Martha and the boyfriend of Lois.
Batman/Bruce is the son of Martha and the employer of Alfred
Lois Lane a reporter and the girlfriend of Superman

Why I spoiled Star Wars:The Force Awakens For Myself (Spoilers)

2015-12-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

At the drive through window my wife said she honestly didn't understand why I was so upset and had been for a couple days.

"They aren't real" she said, adding "no offense".

In 1983 12 year old me sat with his family on the same night at the same time as we always had and tuned into the broadcast of the finale of M*A*S*H. As Hawkeye was carried aloft in a final helicopter ride and saw B.J.'s last "Goodbye" spelled out in rock I sobbed. My mother asked me what was wrong and my father (I am sure) said something derisive about "being too sensitive". I told them I didn't want "them" to go. "They" were my friends and we were saying goodbye.

Alan Alda's Hawkeye has always reminded me of my father, a tall lanky insubordinate smartass. There is a shot in the original Star Wars where Han Solo, piloting the Falcon away from chasing Star Destroyers silently looks determined and yet smug.

Han Solo reminds me of my father too. He, Luke and Leia are also my friends and have been for 37 years.

I didn't have many friends growing up. I was a chubby mixed breed with greasy light brown hair. I was bullied a lot for being too smart, too ugly, too boisterous, too shy, too sensitive. I grew out of (and back into) chubby, grew into glasses, grew into (and out of) weight lifting. It took 35 years to grow out of being bullied.

I turned abrasive, and hard to know. I maintained a small friend ratio in the real world.

I was never bullied by my other friends.

As I mentioned in my recounting of the Star Wars Marathon, the original film was a spinal tap into my dreams. I collected everything I could about Star Wars. I read Splinter in the Mind's Eye, the Han Solo trilogy, the Lando Calrissian one shot. I read Starlog. I bought action figures and vehicles, model kits and even eventually a mini-figure diorama of Jabba's palace in which I painstaking and sloppily painted each figure myself.

When the Special Editions were released in 1997 I was delighted, as like all of us I hadn't seen the original trilogy in a theater in over a decade. I waited in line for a week at the York theater in Toronto to see The Phantom Menace in 1999. I made new friends real and imagined, including a dude who spent one hundred thousand dollars on a home theater setup that needed 240 volt power and ran electrostatic speakers in 1999.

I spoiled The Force Awakens because I suspected from the moment the cast was announced and shooting began that Harrison Ford would kill my friend.

(I also have enormous issues with the filmmaking of TFA. While beautiful looking, and delightfully fun, the movie is a mess of co-incidence and short cuts. It feels like a much longer film that had an entire subplot excised for time and covered with reshoots.)

The death of Han Solo was heartbreaking. I wept silently as a young woman behind me sobbed. The movie had shuddered to a stop. The sturm and drang of the climax as modeled exactly on the end of Star Wars was meaningless, as were the plot points that followed.

I had stopped caring. Ford had brought his A-game and achieved his greatest wish. He killed Han Solo with the help of Lucasfilm, and Han's death is unearned.

Unconsciously I grieved and I was so shaken coming out the theater I wondered if I would care to continue to watch Star Wars movies. Three and a half decades of my life disappeared and I mourned their loss.

I had spoiled TFA for myself to prevent this very thing from happening. Ford's various appearances at promotional events gave the trick away, as he seemed (to me) to finally realize that what he had been rejecting for so long was unfiltered love from the fans.

Even as the movie unspooled exactly as I had read over the previous year I held out desperate hope. The details had changed but the broader themes remained so I hoped, I hoped right up until Han Solo fell into a bottomless chasm, betrayed by one he loved. I felt betrayed and abused in my love for Star Wars.

"They're real to me" I choked to my wife at that drive thru and wondered about my sanity.

I am told I have a lot of mirror neurons which give me greater than average empathy. I have been told that my abrasive nature is a direct result of having been hurt throughout my life because I am "too sensitive". I am told there is nothing wrong with me.

I miss my friend and wonder if it worth risking being hurt again.

Surviving The Star Wars Marathon

2015-12-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

I was awake when my alarm went off at 3 am. I had planned and prepared the night before, anxious about a great many things. I worried about the weather for the 30 min drive on a frozen highway. I worried about not sweating myself into a swamp of feet and armpits. I worried that my stepson would fall asleep or get high or fuck off with the friend that had invited himself along. I worried that there would be idiots with enough money time and cruelty to troll the event.

I worried that The Force Awakens was going to break my heart.

The boy can often be casually cruel in his words and actions. This morning he was excited and all in. He didn't snap in tired anger from lack of sleep as he often does. He appeared to understand how important this was to me.

My relationship with the Star Wars films is like everyone else's. I saw Star Wars for the first time at drive-in in the back of a green and white Oldsmobile, clutching a pillow and wearing yellow footy Hulk pajamas. It was likely one of the first films I had ever seen outside of my home. I was 7. I already loved comic books (especially the hulk) and The Muppet's but Star Wars was like a spinal tap directly into my dreams. I would chase that dream for years, enjoying knock-offs like The Black Hole. I was devastated when my father attempted and failed to tape a behind the scenes special during a network broadcast of Star Wars in the early 80's on a coffee table sized vcr. I had the blessing then of not even knowing a sequel was being planned until I heard about it at school or saw a tv commercial and badgered my parents into seeing The Empire Strikes Back. In 1983 I saw a double feature in the lead up to Return of the Jedi (still called Revenge of the Jedi in the trailer ahead of the feature). I loved the Marvel comics.

I had (unnecessarily) packed extra socks and shirts for us. Deodorant, toothpaste and toothbrushes. It was vital to me that during this sold out shared experience we not impede anyone else's experience as I hoped they would not impede mine.

I over prepared because it was the only thing I could do.

We arrived and in the periscope I shot I look exhausted already. I ate nachos for breakfast as we settled in for The Phantom Menace. I worried about stretching the collectors cup of Coke and my bottle of water as long as possible in order to minimize bathroom breaks.

The Phantom Menace is a long slow movie. The sold out audience began a pattern that would seem Pavlovian 18 hours later. Cheer for the Lucasfilm logo. Cheer for the Fox fanfare. Cheer for the Star Wars logo. Take pictures of the crawl. Cheer for each lead characters appearance. Cheer and applaud the director's credit. Repeat 6 more times.

Unintentional laughter happened a lot in The Phantom Menace. Most people today like to say they hated it in 1999. They didn't and if you are honest with yourself neither did you. You were either too young to have critical thought about a new Star Wars movie or you were too excited by the thought of a new Star Wars movie to be critical.

It was a presentation of the extended edition of TPM which doused my dream that this was Disney's chance to bring the theatrical editions back in style. The Special Editions it would likely be.

The big screen changes perspective dramatically and can dilate time. Groundbreaking special effects in 1999 look like texture-less shiny boxes of color. Creatures look worse. Animation is amplified and exaggerated to ridiculous effect. The end land battle of TPM is rightfully derided as a cartoon.

I had long held the belief that Attack of the Clones was the worst of the Prequels. It's not, TPM is. On that massive screen TPM drags and shudders from one sequence to the next, shining only in the pod race and during the final lightsaber fight. Attack Of The Clones has many flaws, but pacing is not one of them. AOTC leaps off the screen back to back to TPM.

The 10 minute break between films was challenging every time as there was always a line-up for something. It also would prove not to be enough time for my eyes and brain to slow back down as the prequels speed up.

AOTC literally explodes out of the gate, still thudding along on clumsy exposition between action sequences but with slightly more shading in characters and visuals. The look of the films changed from bright and bold to shadowed contrast but virtually abandoned physical locations save Tattonine. The first time I saw AOTC is was a nascent digital projector and you could make out the individual pixels. I wondered what a 2002 movie captured at 1080p and not on 35mm film would look like upscaled to modern projection standards. It looked a little soft but was far from the worst experience of the day.

Unintended laughter percolated throughout AOTC with it's horribly clumsy attempt at romance. In retrospect it reminded me that the man who made this film was so far away from his first love and so clearly had THINGS HE WANTED TO SAY about politics and democracy that it was a miracle AOTC had any fun in it at all. It established a whiny yelly Anakin Skywalker and the seeds of his fall, something that would finally bear fruit 13 years later in the character of Kylo Ren. It had cool light saber stuff. It was over quickly.

Revenge Of The Sith polished and refined the pacing of AOTC, and abandoned locations completely. The film looks and feels set-bound despite the scale, but the effects are spectacular and have aged well in the last 10 years. Anakin's turn feels more organic and less forced in a theater with an audience but still played to some laughter. The final lightsaber battle was punishing on my eyes and brain, fluttering red and blue blades sparking and swiping almost to incomprehension. Anakin's lightsaber was swept up by a victorious Obi Wan and a thrill swept through me. The path to the Force Awakens had begun.

We had hit the halfway point at noon. Daylight gleamed through the front of the complex. We had arrived in the dark, we would leave in the dark. I was starving but I would not miss a minute of the original Star Wars on the big screen, something I had waited nearly 20 years to see again. The boy and his friend had done periscopes between each film and now shared their thoughts on the prequels and expectations of the Original Trilogy (TLDR; they loved the fight at the end of Sith)

Within a few minutes my hopes sank as weird color correction, sky replacements and brutal edge enhancement around 3P0 in an early shot betrayed this as the Special Edition. Unintentional laughter fell away as the intended humor of the film played beautifully. Internet memes about whiny Luke were playing out in real time for a mixed age audience stretching from 8 to 65. Han Solo and Chewie were cheered in anticipation of the film we had come to see. Star Wars cascaded into a blur of cinematic joy, carrying an all-in audience. The seat next to me finally filled with a single middle aged man who had come to see the OT.

Watched in sequence, the Star Wars films speed up and meld, becoming a delirious delight. Halfway through we were exhausted but exhilarated. The visual punishment of the Prequels was soothed by the late 70's early 80's aesthetic of the Original Trilogy, especially Empire. Would you believed that nearly 40 years into my fandom I never noticed the sideburns in Star Wars and Empire until this viewing? Empire is a gorgeous beautifully crafted film marred only by the very dated EFX forced on it by the Special Edition, which are more of a time stamp than haircuts could ever be.

The boys thought the light saber fights and efx were lame and I only hated them a little.

When Return of the Jedi started the air in the room had begun to fill with anticipation and joy. We laughed and cheered despite Jedi having the worst presentation. Several sequences were completely out of focus, or had focus so soft it was near imperceptible what the focal point was intended to be. A women behind me dressed as an Ewok, but having never seen Jedi on the big screen kept saying "so cute SO CUTE".

As Jedi ended to rapturous applause the theater managers entered, scrambled and panicking to let us all know that, yes The Force Awakens would be in 3D and yes they would hand out glasses. 14 hours early they had told me it was in 2D. I would have preferred it that way.

As we waited I turned to the young men who sat next to the boy throughout the marathon. They were fans. I had glanced at them on and off as they leaned in during the films, deeply engrosses. They were also chatty.

I told them that we are all having a good time but I needed a favor, that I wasn't trying to ruin their good time, but I needed them to be quiet for the last movie.

They agreed and they were.

We watched the Force Awakens and afterwards, I decided never to do this again.

As the Wind blows-Abandoning Wind as a carrier

2015-05-05T09:58:00.001-06:00

As noted in earlier posts, finding a carrier in Canada is difficult given the plans change constantly. In reaction the explosion of smartphone use, carriers have moved away from a UBB like model for calls and texts to a similar model around data use. Calls and texts are now flat rate plans with unlimited use, and data rates are predatory and capped both in use and expense.

I have been using Wind in Alberta for year and it has been at best a mixed experience. Coverage and network speed (3G) are abysmal and embarrassing. Value and price are exceptional with unlimited data, calls and texts. I was betting on Wind being purchased by a bigger player (Videotron) or a new entrant that would immediately expand infrastructure investment and expansion.

I bet wrong.

Now I am searching for the least exploitative LTE plan I can Bring My Own Device and not pay and arm and a leg.

The first challenge is ensuring I can find a carrier that is using an LTE band my phone supports. The most common band in Canada is LTE 4 (1700 Mhz) which my phone supports. My phone is also unlocked.

The second challenge is the PRICE. With WIND I have slow but UNLIMITED data that throttles at 5 GB's a month for $43/mth. I often use between 3-5GB of data month which will be enormously expensive with every other carrier.

Let's start with the "value" carriers:

Virgin Mobile Canada BYOD

Virgin has unlimited calling, texting plans and caps out at 5 GB of data per month for $88/mth,

FIDO BYOD

Fido has unlimited calling, texting plans and caps out at 5 GB of data per month for $85/mth, including Spotify Premium

KOODO BYOD

Koodo has unlimited calling, texting plans and caps out at 5 GB of data per month for $88/mth wiht $5/250MB in overage rates

So far competition seems to be in short supply

TELUS BYOD

Telus has split calling, texting and data plans, called "Your Choice". Texting and calling is a separate charge from the additional Data plan.

Unlimited CANADA ONLY calling and texting is $40/mth
Data caps out at 8 GB of data per month for an additonal $85/mth but can be shared between family accounts.

This is prohibitively expensive

ROGERS BYOD

Rogers has combined calling, texting and data plans, called "Share Everything".
Data caps out at 4 GB of data per month for $90/mth but can be shared between family accounts.

BELL BYOD

Bell has split calling, texting and data plans, called "Individual Share". Texting and calling is a separate charge from the additional Data plan.

Unlimited CANADA ONLY calling and texting is $40/mth
Data caps out at 15 GB of data per month for an additonal $105/mth but can be shared between family accounts.

This is INSANELY expensive

Clearly competition is lacking as ever in Canada.

Rise up, gather 'round: Def Leppard Live

2015-04-27T10:50:00.001-06:00

Nostalgia is a powerful thing and currently the most dominant cultural currency. All forms of media are mined for reboots, sequels, prequels, to feed our middle-age need to revisit what we loved as children/teens and rock'n'roll is no different.

While the salad days are long gone for Def Leppard (and in some band members case,literally never were), April 23rd's sold out show at Edmonton's Rexall Center was a loud (but not uncomfortably so) resurrection of 80's metal. It was endlessly entertaining but also completely safe.

Playing only their hits and a couple lesser known songs, it was relaxed and comfortable walk through 30 years of music. My personal high point was during Hysteria, where the massive LED screen behind the band ran vintage concert footage from decades past and paid tribute to long dead guitarist Steve Clark. It was transported me and plastered my face with joy. I had been at the shows captured on film. I had seen them being filmed. It was home.

After the show, my wife and I discussed how mixed the crowd was, but dominated by 40-50+ couples and even families. I had enormous trepidation that the show would be represent the end of personal era, and the putting away of childish things. The secret embarrassment of still digging a hair band from the 80's and the smack in the face that we are old were hanging heavy on me. So many of the attendees seemed trapped pretending they were still 18 or 25 and that the party never ended. Unlike shows of the past the darkened arena was dotted with phone screens, waved instead of lighters. Teens and twenty somethings ran through their selfie routine, practicing their best smiles against the wall of human flesh. It was surreal.

The band and crowd wiped that away, the band playing as if a crowd of 15k people was just a house party, casually strutting around the stage, the performances tight if detached. My wife described it as a lack of pretense. I think it is more of a level of comfort. These 55 year old men have nothing left to prove, having survived the 90's and 00's. The crowd were as loud and appreciative as any I have attended, including the madness of the long gone Montreal Forum.

Edmonton, it seems, is a great place to see a show. The drunk middle aged men next to at one point screamed "they're really singing! They still got it!"

Def Leppard is my musical comfort food. I no longer care who knows it.

Why Telus Mobility is losing a 16 year Wireless Customer

2014-07-28T13:29:00.002-06:00

I have been a Telus customer since they bought Clearnet in late 90’s. I have carried them from city to city, province to province, upgrading phone every couple years. Conservatively I have spent in phones and contracts around $23K in that time.

There was a time when a customer that was 2 years into a 3 year contract upgrades were offered to keep the customer on contract. For 10 years I paid for a new subsidized phone 5 times. They were heady times.

As my family grew my account ballooned to 4 phones, and as smartphones became the standard, data became the third tier of any service. As smartphones became more powerful and VOIP became easy and often free, the value of text/talk reduced dramatically while the cost of data exploded.

Industry wangs can argue endlessly about why the cost of data has exploded in recent years (CRTC, profiteering, etc.) Or why plans get more and more expensive.

I noted recently that the short lived plan I had for my personal phone gave 10 favourite numbers unlimited text/talk, 200 non favourite local minutes and 6 GB of data for $70. At the time I thought this was reasonable value until I upgraded my wife’s phone last fall and triggered a whole new plan. She had been paying $50 for 1 GB data, 10 favourite numbers, 200 local minute. With the new phone, her now essentially worthless text/talk was bounced to unlimited in Canada for $50 a month plus $20 more for the privilege of 1 GB of data. If I wanted a new phone for myself, I would have to pay $125 /month for exactly the same features I have with a 3 year old phone as I would lose my current plan.

I had made a foolish assumption that dropping a phone to a total of 3 would reduce my $250 a month bill to $185/ month. Instead I am now paying in $250 for 3 phones.
Having done my research I realized there is a single player in the Canada market that can offer value but has enormous caveats. Wind Mobile offers me more features for half the price but I can only use the service in major metropolitan areas. Coverage is poor or non-existent outside of major cities. Roaming is expensive.

The recent announcement of new spectrum auction that essentially restricts the sale of the spectrum to Quebcor’s Videotron helped make up my mind. I can live with the inconvenience of carrying a burner phone outside of the city for now but Videotron is the most competitive wireless provider in the country. Should it win the spectrum it would either have to immediately buy Wind or Mobilicity to fulfil its obligations and become a national carrier, which is likely. Given Verizon’s hinting at entering the Canadian market made the majors apoplectic, Videotron forcing immediate downward pressure on rates but upward pressure on features is good for consumers.

So I did it. I abandoned 16 years of loyalty (with nary an attempt at retention from Telus) based on price, features, some inconveniences, and a bet that things will get better in the long run. I bought out 2/3 of my device contracts (fyi buying out the device does not end the contract, Telus charges another $50 per contract to end it prematurely no matter how much time is left, 3 months or 18 months. I didn’t know that).

Using my phone as a test I will live with Wind, not changing my habits and see if they can meet my needs. If it turns out well, I will transition my remaining 2 phones and $180/month from Telus and pay Wind $105/month total while keeping the now $145/month difference.

The Desperation of Hope

2014-07-16T15:37:00.003-06:00

My Mother has bright rolling laugh, the kind that where you can hear her tears welling from the initial burst as she slows down to a happy sigh and wipes her eyes. She is laughing because The Lady that lives in her mirrors has told her something funny. It makes me happy to hear her laugh like that. It happens between hour long one sided conversations and intense prolonged bouts of anxiety that leave her crying.

She doesn’t know my name or that I am her adopted son. She trusts me though, and comes to me to ask if we can help The Lady and whoever may be with her today; a second woman, a child, an adult the size of a child, all hallucinations that are as real to her as I am. She believes people are taking and eating babies and most times she states it as matter-of-factly and in the same tone as “You like anchovies?”. Sometimes she is overwhelmed by fear and disgust and can’t stop shaking, sure that my adult brother is not only an infant but has been taken. He is her only birth child. She talks about him by name a lot. She never says my name once in the week we are together.

She craves meat when she starts shaking, stammering that she needs meat or she will die. I feed her bacon which Dad cooks 3 packages at a time to keep up with her. Sometimes I get her to eat the leftovers from her last meal, which she barely touched. She eats well once the entire time I am there. Every other meal is a struggle to get her to eat anything, mostly due to the pressure and gas in her belly that no one can explain or fix. I wonder if it’s the anxiety causing it, and then try to get her to eat or take her meds.

I lie to her constantly, telling her whatever med I need her to take is for the thing that is causing her the most aggravation in that moment. She never questions me other than to complain that she can damn well take care of herself.

Often she drifts into depression and mutters with complete hopelessness and rare clarity that it doesn’t matter as she will be dead soon. Nearly all other waking moments are a battle for her to find the right words to string together a sentence. Only in despair is she effortlessly eloquent.

My mother has two Master’s degrees and was one of the most accomplished women of her generation in her field. She invisibly helped shape Canadian society and it’s interaction with healthcare. She worked as a consultant to other nations who hoped to emulate Canada.

She is unable to tie her shoes.

My Father is a machine who was raised on a farm and is unable to find contentment without physical labor. He joined the military as a teen and made it to sergeant, where he stayed until he retired. They promoted him to Warrant Officer just before. He is deaf in both ears from his work and wears government supplied hearing aids. He dotes on my mother but this past year has worn him down as even a man who can only sleep 4 hours a night and never rests gets tired, especially at 70. I learn on this trip that they knew 6 years ago, when I left Ontario, but didn’t tell me. We all suspected but only over the last 3 years as I have watched mom deteriorate did it become certain. We had watched her father disintegrate and die from the same disease and for 15 years I wondered if it was coming for her.

My mother often mumbles when she tries to talk to my father, which he cannot hear, which frustrates him and causes her anxiety. It cycles out of control in seconds and he storms off, paralyzed in his mind and in his emotions. When she complains that she wants to go home and doesn’t want to live here anymore her he tells her she is going to a new home where they can take care of her and The Lady. I try to make him understand that she doesn’t understand. He tells me that he will not lie to her or keep anything from her.

As I exhaustively watch her for 7 days, trying to get her to eat, trying to get her to drink, trying to offer comfort when she yanks at the doors that have had the knobs removed from the locks, I wonder how he did it for this long. He throws himself at appointments and errands and yard work, all things he has not had the ability to do for more than a few minutes at a time. He reads for an hour in the evening right before bed.

My Brother is a sociopath. Prone to violence and afflicted with a mind that functions at enormous speed but with either too much or too little empathy he lives alone on a small farm an hour away from my parents. He refuses to drive himself to see them as traffic makes him anxious. My father has to bring mom to the farm and hope she doesn’t wander too far while they try to do work. Our relationship is strained at best. He is constantly callous and cruel with his words, welding dark truths that civilization breeds out of most people. He accepts no criticism of my father. He hangs up on me when I try to explain our father has the emotional capacity of a brick. I doubt we will talk again. I travelled 3000 km because my brother was unable to drive 75 km and sit with my mother for more than 5 minutes. I believe him to be a coward until I remember that looking at her may be looking at his own future.

He is right to be afraid.

The Neighbors are generally middle-aged and kind. A man named Maurice who I learn is about to go under heart surgery has brought my mother home more than once, including a cold February when she was only wearing a t-shirt. He is kind and has a wonderful home, and is very proud of his hostas.

I have no idea if he will survive and I will never be able to repay him for his generosity.

I look at the home my parents have built for the last 20 years and I marvel at the peace and tranquility. Massive trees shade a large deck that bookends two gazebos. The front lawn is wide and green and dotted with flowers and bushes. It is immaculate and beautiful like their home.

My mother will never see this place again.

The “residence” is very old and a little grimy. The staff seems to be knowledgeable and kind but they are also putting their best foot forward. Dad has taken an antique double bed that has been in my mother’s family for generations and a recliner to place in her room. The first floor view is a smattering of grass and tall bushes. Photos of her family are dots against the massive beige blank walls.

The mirror has been removed from her bathroom.

Dad busies himself unpacking her things and trying to make the room familiar for her. Her anxiety grows until she finally bursts out a rapid fire string of half formed words, to the effect that she is a grown woman and can take care of her and therefore does not understand why this is necessary.

My mother has her cruelest moment of heartbreaking clarity and asks why we are doing this to her. I fight not to cry. My father tries to reason with her.

Mom and I join other “residents” in the activity/dining room. The pass through window of this former cafeteria is boarded over almost completely, leaving only a wedge of space at the top for the staff to speak across. Bingo is happening. The other “residents” are all 20 years older than my mother. Some can’t speak and their eyes sparkle with madness. Some speak constantly. It is nearly all women.

I place the tokens on the numbers as they are called. I hand them to mom and point where she should point them. She is confused and her hands shake.

We sit in the garden for a while. It is an enclosed square with a padlocked gate. The flowers are beautiful but sparse. Voices reverberate as they are renovating the top two floors. Dad joins us and they wrap a GPS bracelet around my mother’s wrist. I learn how brutally expensive this will be for my father and commit myself to ensuring he enjoys the rest of his retirement no matter what.

He did not live through this to die poor and unhappy.

We tell my mother to lie on her bed because she is tired and I hug her for a long time. I tell her I will see her in a while. Dad tells her he will see her in the morning. I wonder if my mother will sleep tonight, alone for the first time in decades, and if she will be afraid when she wakes up.

This may the last time I see my mother. I have resented my father for week for his stoic pragmatism. I ask him in the car to the airport how he feels. He says he is tired. I ask him how he feels about this.

My father cries for the first time in over a decade. I don’t resent him anymore. I bite my cheek and try to be strong for him.

I do my crying in the arms of my wife when I get home. I talk to my therapist about how many mothers and how many times am I going to lose them.

I continue to try and process this.

Tales from Telus: The Hypothetical-Videotron

2014-02-25T13:31:00.003-07:00

The recent spectrum auction resulted in the major players buying up piles of spectrum, along with Quebec's Videotron, which has lead analysts to speculate if the Quebec telecom giant is planning a national rollout. Given Videotron has some of the best rates in the country, this bares exploration.

The Lineup

Phone*	Off contract Cost	On "Tab"
Iphone 5s	N/A	N/A
Iphone 5c	N/A	N/A
Galaxy S4	$649	$49.95 (promo)*
Nexus 5	$499 ($350 from Google)	$0 (promo)*
Lumia 1020	N/A	N/A
HTC One	N/A	N/A

*On contract which requires a minimum plan commitment of $69.95 recurring monthly

While Wind does not offer Iphone 5 for sale it does support them depending on the model.

Plan in the Ass

A reminder of my current plans that would be replaced with a new device or a new provider:

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$205

Videotron plan:

*No connection fee found online

Non-Shared Plan across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited North America	n/a	6 GB/month	$71.95
Unlimited North America	n/a	1 GB/month	$49.95
Unlimited North America	n/a	1 GB/month	$49.95
		Data overage	n/a
		TOTAL	$171.85

**Included in all plans: unlimited North American text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Videotron's Plan is significantly less than my current bill but requires I buy out of my current contracts on which I owe the following:

2 year old Android (on contract)= $152.44/9 months left
1 brand new Android (on contract)= $479/22 months left
1 3 yr old iphone (off contract)=$0
1 wife-destroyed windows phone (on contract)=$294/19 months left

Upfront costs:

Wind's AWS network does not support the old iphone nor the wp7 should we choose to fix the screen, which means at least one new device purchase (nexus 5).

$925 contract buy out
$350 device cost

Total: $1275 with monthly recurring fee of $45 less a month and 80% data.

This is pure speculation given they are only available in Quebec and Ottawa but the rates and services are extremely competitive.

Tales from Telus: The Competition - Wind

2014-02-10T11:35:00.000-07:00

Wind Mobile is the real unknown in this comparison. There are some massive caveats that are unavoidable with this service, the largest being that there is literally no coverage outside of major cities. Uncertainty with the financial stability of the company combined with spotty customer service make this a more complicated choice given unlimited data plans and low prices.

The Lineup

Phone*	Off contract Cost	On "Tab"
Iphone 5s	N/A	N/A
Iphone 5c	N/A	N/A
Galaxy S4	$699	$199 (promo)*
Nexus 5	$499 ($350 from Google)	$99*
Lumia 1020	N/A	N/A
HTC One	$599	$199*

*Using "tab" which requires a minimum plan commitment of $50 recurring monthly

Like Koodo Wind uses a "tab" instead of a "contract". You still have to pay off the device over time or when you leave.

While Wind does not offer Iphone 5 for sale it does support them depending on the model.

Plan in the Ass

A reminder of my current plans that would be replaced with a new device or a new provider:

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$205

Wind plan:

*No connection fee found online
**Wind offers "unlimited data" of two flavors: unlimited and premium unlimited

Unlimited is included in plan cost and caps at 5 GB at which there is no charge but speeds are throttled enormously
Premium Unlimited is a $10 recurring monthly fee on top of the plan and caps at 10 GB at which there is no charge but speeds are throttled enormously

Non-Shared Plan across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited North America	n/a	10 GB/month	$50 + $10
Unlimited North America	n/a	5 GB/month	$50
Unlimited North America	n/a	5 GB/month	$50
		Data overage	n/a
		TOTAL	$160

**Included in all plans: unlimited North American text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Wind's Plan is significantly less than my current bill but requires I buy out of my current contracts on which I owe the following:

2 year old Android (on contract)= $152.44/9 months left
1 brand new Android (on contract)= $479/22 months left
1 3 yr old iphone (off contract)=$0
1 wife-destroyed windows phone (on contract)=$294/19 months left

Upfront costs:

Wind's AWS network does not support the old iphone nor the wp7 should we choose to fix the screen, which means at least one new device purchase (nexus 5).

$925 contract buy out
$350 device cost

Total: $1275 with monthly recurring fee of $45 less a month and 80% data.

The savings and the gains are enormous but what if Wind closes shop or I want to travel between urban areas? Deserves serious consideration.

The death of a form

2014-02-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

I finally watched Heaven's Gate on blu-ray. It was a transformative and emotional experience outside of the narrative and meta-narrative of the film. There has been swaths of text and video about the rise and fall of Heaven's Gate as the once greatest bomb in film history and it's role in destroying United Artists as a studio.

This is a set not a town.

The film announces its intent from the opening scene where a 1980 Oxford is transformed into a 1870 Harvard, replete with a mile of dirt roads and hundred of extras captured beautifully. The scale of the production is enormous in a way that is simply not done any more.

Ostensibly a Western loosely based historical conflicts between large cattle ranches and immigrant homesteaders, Heaven's Gate is a sprawling mess. Mired in incomprehensible accents and unable to find focus in either the violent horses and guns mythology of the west or the character interactions, it shifts tonally in lurches and spurts over the 219 minutes of the director's cut.

Also a set

It also one of the most beautiful films ever captured on negative.

Within the first 30 minutes of the film I was trying to explain to my patient but bored wife why making films this way has become a lost art and why it is important and started to weep.

I explained as best I could that the very act of designing and building a set on this scale simply isn't done. That to create a shot like at the top of this post today would be a dirt road surrounded by green-screens, likely in a studio, and most of the crowd would captured as individuals against green-screen and composited in. It would look fake.

I explained the density and specificity of the atmosphere was not by accident, but carefully designed to layer the image by using different amounts of smoke. The hundreds of extras were choreographed to move within the frame and populate its reality. Everything was done for real, on the location, under the sun and caught on film.

I would pause the film and walk up to our tv just to look at the grain structure. I told her that shots could be captured at 1080p and printed to canvas and one would think they were looking at a pointillist painting.

I explained how many VFX and transfer houses now have scans of negative exposed against black just to capture the grain so they can superimpose it over digital source materal and that grain will now be infinitely repeatable. It will no longer be that every print was unique and every negative. It will all look the same.

And I wept. I wept for an era of film-making that is truly dead, and a form of the art that will become irrelevant within a generation.

Heaven's Gate as a film was irrelevant to what it has come to represent for me, but it is appropriate that it broke my heart.

Tales from Telus: The Competition - Fido and Koodo

2014-02-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Given that Rogers owns Fido and Telus owns Koodo I don't have high hopes. I do have friends happy with their services though so let's break it down.

The Lineup Fido

Phone*	Off contract Cost	On 2 Year Contract
Iphone 5s	$719	$229
Iphone 5c	$599	$79
Galaxy S4	$699	$300
Nexus 5	$500 ($350 from Google)	$150
Lumia 1020	N/A	N/A
HTC One	N/A	N/A

Off the top Fido's on contract price for Android phones is nuts at 2-3 times the cost of other providers for an identical 2 year term.

Plan in the Ass

A reminder of my current plans that would be replaced with a new device or a new provider:

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$205

Fido plans:

Fido data plans cap out at 2 GB for $65 therefore Fido unable to meet my needs.

The Lineup Koodo

Phone*	Off contract Cost	On 2 Year Contract
Iphone 5s	$725	$225*
Iphone 5c	$575	$75*
Galaxy S4	$600	$100*
Nexus 5	$500 ($350 from Google)	$0*
Lumia 1020	N/A	N/A
HTC One	N/A	N/A

*Using "tab" which is a $10 fee recurring monthly fee until device paid (in this case nearly 3 years)

Koodo has uses a "tab" instead of a "contract". You still have to pay off the device over time or when you leave.

Plan in the Ass Koodo

A reminder of my current plans that would be replaced with a new device or a new provider:

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$205

Koodo plans:

*No connection fee found online

Non-Shared Plan across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	3.5GB/month	$72
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month	$52 (promo)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month	$52 (promo)
		Data overage	$0.02/Mb or $5/250 MB
		TOTAL	$177

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Koodo's Plan is less than my current bill but requires I buy out of my current contracts on which I owe the following:

2 year old Android (on contract)= $152.44/9 months left
1 brand new Android (on contract)= $479/22 months left
1 3 yr old iphone (off contract)=$0
1 wife-destroyed windows phone (on contract)=$294/19 months left

Upfront costs:

$925 contract buy out

Total: $970 with monthly recurring fee of $30 less a month and 40% less data.

AM DISAPPOINT.

But what about the dark horse in this race?

Tales from Telus: The Competition - Rogers

2014-02-08T10:55:00.000-07:00

I hate Rogers. When I used them as a wireless customer and as a cable customer service was uniformly terrible, but that was a long time ago.

However, they might be worth a look.

The Lineup

Phone*	Off contract Cost	On 2 Year Contract
Iphone 5s	$719	$229
Iphone 5c	$599	$79
Galaxy S4	$699	$99
Nexus 5	$500 ($350 from Google)	$49
Lumia 1020	$599	$99
HTC One	$649	$49

Off contract Rogers charge $10-20 more for Apple products but is on par with Android/Windows Phone. The only difference in on-contract prices is the 5C which is $50 less with Rogers than Telus.

Plan in the Ass

A reminder of my current plans that would be replaced with a new device or a new provider:

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$205

Rogers plans:

*$15 connection fee applies per device

Non-Shared Plan across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	3+3GB/month(promo)	$105 (promo)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	2 GB/month (promo)	$85 (promo)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	2 GB/month (promo)	$85 (promo)
		Data overage	$0.015/Mb or $15/GB
		TOTAL	$275

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Shared Plan 1GB (parity with Telus) across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	3+3GB/month	$105 (promo)
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 2 GB/mth	$85
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 2 GB/mth	$35
		Data overage	$.015/Mb or $15/GB
		TOTAL	$225

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Shared Plan 10 GB across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	shared 10 GB/mth	$140
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 10 GB/mth	$35
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 10 GB/mth	$35
		Data overage	$0.015/Mb or $15/GB
		TOTAL	$210

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Roger's Share Plan is close to my current bill but requires I buy out of my current contracts on which I owe the following:

2 year old Android (on contract)= $152.44/9 months left
1 brand new Android (on contract)= $479/22 months left
1 3 yr old iphone (off contract)=$0
1 wife-destroyed windows phone (on contract)=$294/19 months left

Upfront costs:

$925 contract buy out
$15 connection fee (per device)

Total: $970 with monthly recurring fee of $5 extra a month

I am starting to see a trend here. Let's give the value divisions a shot

Tales From Telus: The Competition-Bell

2014-02-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

I have not been a Bell customer in decades. As a third party ISP customer Bell has been a thorn in my side for years as they conspire to not provide the legally mandated service levels that is required of them.

However, they might be worth a look.

The Lineup

Phone*	Off contract Cost	On 2 Year Contract
Iphone 5s	$729	$229
Iphone 5c	$619	$79
Galaxy S4	$700	$99
Nexus 5	$500 ($350 from Google)	$49
Lumia 1020	N/A	N/A
HTC One	N/A	N/A

Off contract Bell charge $10-20 more for Apple products but is on par with Android. The only difference in on-contract prices is the 5C which is $50 less with Bell than Telus.

Plan in the Ass

A reminder of my current plans that would be replaced with a new device or a new provider:

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$205

Bell plans:

*$35 connection fee applies

Non-Shared Plan across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	6 GB/month(promo)	$105 (promo)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	2 GB/month (promo)	$85 (promo)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	2 GB/month (promo)	$85
		Data overage	$0.05/Mb
		TOTAL	$275

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Shared Plan 1GB (parity with Telus) across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	6 GB/month	$105 (promo)
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 2 GB/mth	$85
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 2 GB/mth	$35
		Data overage	$.05/Mb
		TOTAL	$225

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Shared Plan 10 GB across 3 devices (out of contract)

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	shared 10 GB/mth	$140
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 10 GB/mth	$35
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 10 GB/mth	$35
		Data overage	$0.05/Mb
		TOTAL	$210

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Bell's Share Plan is close to my current bill but requires I buy out of my current contracts on which I owe the following:

2 year old Android (on contract)= $152.44/9 months left
1 brand new Android (on contract)= $479/22 months left
1 3 yr old iphone (off contract)=$0
1 wife-destroyed windows phone (on contract)=$294/19 months left

Upfront costs:

$925 contract buy out
$35 connection fee

Total: $960 with monthly recurring fee of $5 extra a month

Sigh. On to the Rogers.

Tales from Telus: The home team

2014-02-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

Given the disgusting current state of price gouging in Canada's wireless market I needed to make a plan and do some research. I knew what I wanted from a provider:

Value for money: Call time minutes and texting is meaningless in a world of smartphones. Data would be the only thing that mattered.
Network reliability
Customer service
Ease of use to self manage accounts

I also knew that I would have to eventually buy out of my existing contracts to move my already unlocked phones.
Just Like The First Time

Telus has been my provider for years but since the smartphone exploded, their service and reliability have plummeted while their prices have sky-rocketed. Telus also had the sheer gall to offer the Nexus 5 on contract at a full $150 over the listed MSRP of $350. Telus is going to have to blow me away to keep my business.

If I were to replace my 2 yr old android with a new phone I would be out of pocket $150 just to buy out of a nearly 3 year old contract. I don't want any new contracts if I can avoid it. My other devices will be an exodus of attrition as the outstanding amounts on the contracts shrink.

The hope is to maintain or increase data caps for the same or less money.

With plans and devices current as of the date of post, Telus offers the following to a new customer. Here are my options to replace two of my three devices with new models.

Phone*	Off contract Cost	On 2 Year Contract
Iphone 5s	$719	$229
Iphone 5c	$599	$129
Galaxy S4	$700	$179
Nexus 5	$500 ($350 from Google)	$49
Lumia 1020	$600	$99
HTC One	$650	$49

*All phones have comparable storage and network connectivity (LTE) unless noted

I love it when a plan comes together

Telus’s plans are incredibly obtuse in how they are presented but they essentially break down into categories of use: Smartphones users (high data needs), Lite Smartphone users (low data needs) and everyone else. They have introduced a new “sharing” feature, which allows, for a price, a customer to purchase a data plan and then pay to share that plan with another device on the account.

These are the plans I would be forced to replace with the new devices except the center plan which is already a share plan:

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$205

Under Telus new 'share" plans this is how I would achieve parity though it is important to understand that the 6GB plan is nearly completely consumed every month with current behaviour and sharing is not an option. The above student promo user consumes at least 500 MB a month.

Non-Shared Plan

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	6 GB/month	$125
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month	$90
		Data overage	$0.05/Mb
		TOTAL	$290

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Shared Plan 1GB

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	6 GB/month	$125
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 1 GB/mth	$55 + $20 data
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 1 GB/mth	$35
		Data overage	$.05/Mb
		TOTAL	$235

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

Shared Plan 3GB

VOICE/TEXT**	FAVORITES Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	6 GB/month	$125
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 3 GB/mth	$110 data
Unlimited nationwide (shared)	n/a	shared 3 GB/mth	$35
		Data overage	$0.05/Mb
		TOTAL	$270

**Included in all plans: unlimited national text/picture/video messaging, Call display, Voice Mail, Conference Calling

I have a bad feeling about this

Even by taking advantage of current to this post promotions I would only be able to increase or maintain my data but still pay more for the service. Staying with Telus is clearly untenable.

What about the competition...

Tales from Telus: a descent into madness

2014-02-06T13:58:00.003-07:00

I have been a Telus customer since 1997. I even recently found a rate plan brochure outlining their offerings at a time when the dollar was worth (adjusted for inflation) 36% more than it is today.

The Burden of Proof

I recently divested myself of the burden of paying for a now adult step-child’s phone, reducing my phone bill from 4 devices to 3. In doing so, I successfully made my bill go up, and this is how.

1 year ago I had the following devices:

2 2-yr old Iphones (on contract)
1 1-year old Android (on contract)
1 brand new windows phone. (on contract)

I was paying $250 a month on average with the following plans:

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
200 Local	5 favorites #’s(local & LD)	500 MB/month	$50
200 Local	5 favorites #’s(local & LD)	500 MB/month	$50
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$225

*Favorites are local or national long distance numbers that once declared do not count against chargeable call time.

Having done the retention dance with Telus for years I had a maze of legacy products that were tacked on to my plans pointless, items that were meaningless as my plans evolved with smartphones (like call display and voice-mail which now ubiquitous with smartphone plans). However the most egregious thing about the above was the brutal abuse of data pricing, which I have discovered has only gotten worse.

Bad Timing

I now have 3 devices and I owe the following:

2 year old Android (on contract)= $152.44/9 months left
1 brand new Android (on contract)= $479/22 months left
1 3 yr old iphone (off contract)=$0
1 wife-destroyed windows phone (on contract)=$294/19 months left

Why am I paying for a broken phone? It’s complicated.

In the process of replacing the broken phone I discovered several things, the key of which is: TELUS HATES DATA USERS

My current plans

VOICE/TEXT	FAVORITES* Included	Data	Price per Month(before tax &fees)
200 Local	8 favorites #’s(local & LD)	6 GB/month	$70 (promo plan only offered for 60 days)
Unlimited nationwide	n/a	1 GB/month (promo)	$55 + $20 data (promo)
200 Local	10 favorites #’s(local & LD)	1 GB/month	$55 (student promo)
		TOTAL	$205

The Lesson

I had fully expected that divesting entire plan and phone would reduce my pre-tax bill to $175 but due to some bad luck I now have a more expensive data plan, an expensive unusable phone and a new contract. If I make any changes to other phones, I am forced to take a more expensive plan. Clearly this is unacceptable.

I had to start shopping around and make a plan...

The Hockey Punks

2014-01-27T14:57:00.001-07:00

The dog had grabbed her miniature tire on a rope and loped back to me, fiercely flinging it from side to side and growling, even as she smacked herself in the head with a piece of hardened rubber. It was dark as it is on a winter afternoon and the community league ice rink to the side of us was unlit, the ice closed. Two figures were on the ice when an angry voice shouted “Get off the ice it’s closed!”

I glanced over, and threw the tire back down the field.

“TAKE IT EASY” echoed across the park in young man’s voice. I looked over again to seen a thin teen in a black hoodie and sweats struggling with a middle-age/senior man with a shock of white hair framing a bald head. The older man had forcefully pulled the teen off the ice it appeared and after a moment, turned and walked back to the club house. At this side of the rink, piles of snow had been gathered to allow jumping over the boards and onto the ice if the gate was locked as it clearly was now.

A second teen followed the first one off the ice. He was a larger kid, in a grey hoodie and sweats. He stalked as best as he could to the benches where the older man was loading equipment backing into the clubhouse.

I threw the tire again.

There was a clatter as if equipment had been thrown to ground and the two teens walked to the parking lot, followed by the man. The kid in black moved quickly saying nothing. The big kid walked with a slow shoulder rolling wide stance. I called the dog to me, and made a show of putting her on her leash, as a 55 lb. Rottweiler cross quickly becomes intimidating when her head drops and her hackles rise right to the base of her spine. The big kid spun and shoved the older man, screaming “you wanna go! YOU WANNA FUCKING GO!”

I shouted across the park that of he touched the man again I would call the cops. The kid turned to me and called it self-defense as the older man had grabbed him earlier. I scolded the teen for picking a fight with a man much older than he and reminded him the rink was closed. The big kid shuffled towards the parking lot waiting to see if I would rush him, arguing with me. “You telling me a Canadian kid can’t play hockey...”

“IT’S PRIVATE PROPERTY. PEOPLE PAY TO USE THE ICE”.

“SO? I DON’T GIVE A FUCK”

And this is the really silly part.

“OH, ENTITLEMENT!?!”

I really said that. The kid seemed momentarily confused but followed his friend to car, shouting arguments at me about whether cops should be called. His final statement as he stepped to the car and dropped his gear in was “I CAN FUCKING FIGHT YOU, YOU CAN’T FIGHT ME”.

The older man stood at the edge of the lot, which prompted the kid to not get in the car, which promptly backed up and left the lot. It idled at the entrance to the lot while the kid screamed “YOU WANNA GO!?!” at the old man one more time, bracing himself on the ice covered pavement.

“REALLY?” I shouted.

The kid backed down the lot and got into the car. They drove off and I watched over my shoulder on the walk home, ready to be jumped.