Ananas

The reviews are starting to come in... and they're fantastic. http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/we...ateregistration

Just finished reading "The DaVinci Code". Man, what a loaded book that is. It's full of dangerous conclusions drawn from false pretences, and while the book is labeled a fiction, the claim that all accounts of religious practices are true is very deceptive. The research into the book is poor, and all I can say is that I looked forward to the end, not for any resolution but rather to be done with it.

Exotica - 8/10 From acclaimed Canadian director Atom Egoyan and packed with Canadian screen stars, this film will likely do violence to the notion of the well mannered, reserved Canadian, to those who are unfamiliar with the thirty million people who live to the north of the USA. It tells the interconnected story of several individuals living on the outskirts of Toronto, with much of the film taking place inside a strip club called Exotica. The main feature of this club is Christina (Mia Kirshner), the ex-lover of the club's DJ Eric (Elias Koteas), and among its regulars is Francis Brown (Bruce Greenwood), a man with a tragic past and a mysterious connection to Christina. Francis is in the process of auditing Thomas (Don McKellar), who is desperately trying to conceal a lucrative smuggling operation, and Thomas gradually becomes embroiled in the drama surrounding Exotica. Atom Egoyan is Canada's greatest cinematic export, and his brilliance shines through with this rye dissection of human relationships. The cast is very comfortable and, because of the somewhat numb atmosphere of the film, are able to get away with understated performances. Particularly good here are Mia Kirshner and Bruce Greenwood, both of which have found tremendous success on both sides of the border. This is a delightfully dark examination of loneliness and loss that has an incredible amount of heart for an R-rated film taking place in a strip club. Thumbs up.

You're a sad, sad man. ←

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - 9/10 To get me pumped for "The Brothers Grimm". Note to Monty Python newcomers, this is as good as comedy gets.

Well Good's comments towards Nickelback were pretty much limited to the "Creed rip off" nonsense (well not nonsense, but a little childish). Kroeger believes (I think rightly) that the motivation for his ire is that "Beautiful Midnight" flopped in the United States, and so he took his bitterness out on bands like OLP, The Tragically Hip and Nickelback who managed to have success down south.

Biggest free agent signing of the off-season below... Jim Hughson joins Hockey Night in Canada! It's a bit old, but that's a pretty decent replacement for Chris Cuthbert.

Our Lady Peace - "Spiritual Machines" The Streets - "A Grand Don't Come for Free" I guess you could call the Reggie And the Full Effect albums concept albums too, and they rock.

Stewie: The Untold Story - 8/10 Funnier than "The Wedding Crashers". I don't think there are many greater compliments I can reasonably pay this straight to DVD release. It completely captures the spirit of the TV show, while making it feel somehow bigger, kind of like "Beavis And Butthead Do America" or the South Park movie. Thumbs up, a must see for fans of "Family Guy".

Just a couple points:

I just finished "Bad Guys" by Linwood Barclay, who's a feature writer for the Toronto Star, and a damn good one at that. It's apparently the sequel to "Bad Move", which I have yet to read but didn't have any trouble understanding the plot without it. This is some really good, light reading that should make for a pleasant couple of hours to anyone who gives it a shot.

Considering how most artists do on their second major label album (*cough*50 Cent*cough*), this album is really good. Doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything, but it's still one of the best hip hop albums released this far this year. My favorite tracks are Gold Diggers, My Way Home and Hey Mama.

I haven't seen the film yet(never really planned to), and I guess it isn't worth looking at. It sucks when you know a few hours of your life have been wasted watching a horrible film, and its a horrible feeling, I felt when I watched Alexander...in the theatres ←

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life - 1/10 I saw this film on Thursday. Then on Friday I was going to review it, but I just couldn't, so I put it off to today. After a day of slo-pitch, you'd think I might have put enough distance between myself and the movie to formulate some sensible words for describing this epic disaster. You would be wrong. Horrible, just horrible. So uh... thumbs down.

Oh God, I swore to myself that I'd never become one of these people. You know the kind - they get into useless arguments over sporting events like their opinions (or even the sporting events themselves) matter. For a better example, just look at any thread about soccer on this board. Anyway, this is the last time I'm going to discuss this matter, because I have to stop the bleeding and wasted time at some point. I'm not going to stay here and throw the same argument back and forth at you because we're getting no where. I'm just going to pick out the original part of that post and reply generally. As for comparing GAA and SV%, there's no real comparison. One is a measure of how many goals a goaltender gives up per game, which is entirely dependant upon how many shots the team in front of you gives up. GAA average is dependant upon what percentage of those shots you save. Going back to your example of Roberto Luongo, if Patrick Lalime had recorded Luongo's save percentage, he would have had a GAA of 1.61. Conversely, for Luongo to have had a comparable GAA (based on the amount of shots he recieved in 03/04), he would have had to have had a SV% of .933 which, while he wasn't far off on the surface, is a huge difference when you consider that he played 73 games and faced a massive 2475 shots. You seem to imply that Lalime is at a disadvantage in this because he faced less shots, but that's not true. That's like saying the rich are worse off than the poor because they have to pay more tax. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe a goaltender is likely to get stronger as he gets to facing 30+ shots in a game, so if anything it's logical to assume that Lalime's SV% would actually be lower with a lesser defence. Time will tell, as it's hard to argue that he'll be inheriting a better defence in St. Louis. SV% isn't perfect, but it's still the best single stat in measuring a goaltender's performance.

That may be the funniest thing I have ever read. How the hell can Lalime have the best GAA in recent history when he fucking loses every playoff series he's in pratically. And I'm 99.9% sure Patrick Roy would have had the better GAA in recent history. As for playoffs it's a simple formula as much as I hate to admit it: New Jersey beats Philly who beats Toronto who beats Ottawa. ←

So you consider domination simply who wins the series? The Sens did dominate the Leafs in the '04 playoffs, but couldn't actually score past Belfour, while on the other end Lalime was choking on sloppy goals. Without Belfour, the Leafs would've lost that series because they were being dominated by the Sens. Oh and if it's 6-0 for any team in the first, most of the time they can take the win, so I don' quite see the curse. The Sens can't beat the Leafs and it has nothing to do with how good the Leafs are, because the Sens will, more often than not, be better. ←