Maple cake with caramelized apples.

Hey @nerdist, my amazing girlfriend made me a birthday cake! She didn’t have a triangular pan so she used a cupcake for the top!

The trailer for Beginners is perfect. It tells you everything you need to know and sets up the idea of the film perfectly.

Beginners is a story about Ewan McGregor’s character Oliver, who’s life has become stagnant. He has no noticeable love life or attachments, and his father has just come out of the closet.

The film deals with a lot of identity issues. Identities of self, others, and the notion of what it takes to make someone happy and what being happy constitutes. It’s a little on the slow side, but otherwise I thought it was a really nice film. Christopher Plummer’s role as Oliver’s father is played perfectly without over-emphasizing or “playing up” the fact that he’s gay. The new experiences he’s discovering and the life he never had the opportunity to enjoy is genuine, and as a viewer you really feel for these characters.

I’m not usually a fan of dramas, but I really thought this one was great and definitely recommend seeing it.

Buy it on Amazon.ca:
Beginners (DVD + Blu-ray Combo Pack)

Nothing interesting to post today as I’m slowly trying to build up some reviews for throughout this week. I’ve been spending my weekends catching up on some of the films and television shows I don’t really have time to watch during the week any more and save them up to cram them into a bunch of reviews for this week.

Here are some reviews you can look forward to:
Beginners
Project Nim
Beauty Day
Contagion
The Thing (2011)
Breathers (a zombie novel)

Hope you enjoy and had a great weekend!

Tourtière.

I was impressed with Richard Ayoade’s film Submarine. Although I’m not into “The IT Crowd”, I’ve loved Ayoade in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh. He’s a quick witted comedian and Submarine is a great example of putting this wit to great use. 

The film centres around a 15 year old boy who thinks he’s unique and far more intelligent than he actually is. It’s one of those “coming of age” type of stories that is shot beautifully and feels similar to a Noah Baumbauch or Wes Anderson artistic type of film. The writing is sharp and although the film is slow at times, the ensemble cast does a great job keeping your interest. 

I had heard nothing but praise for this film for the past year or so, and I’m glad I’ve finally had an opportunity to see it. If you’ve enjoyed films like “The Squid and the Whale”, or “The Life Aquatic”, this would definitely be up your alley.

Buy it on Amazon.ca:
Submarine - DVD
Submarine [Blu-ray]

Bacon cheeseburger with potato wedges.

The Doctor’s two dimensional adventures on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Vita aren’t quite as lost in time as the doctor himself, as Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock has been given a “March 2012” launch window. Perhaps you were worried that Supermassive Games (note:not Bastion dev Supergiant Games) wouldn’t include series staples like Silurians, Daleks, and whatever “The Silence” is? Well … uh … quit worrying about that, because they’re alltotally in there.

Also in there? Classic 2D gameplay! And, well, did we mention that those characters from the long-running TV series are in the game? Because they are, in case you didn’t realize that.

(via Joystiq)

I had some hesitations about Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I’ve never really enjoyed any of the original films, and despised the Tim Burton remake. The concept was always interesting, and the original contained one of the best cinematic twists of all time - but there was always something keeping me from being engaged (and it probably had something to do with the lack of action and bad prosthetics).

Once the trailer for Rise came out, I thought the series might be grasping at straws: desperately trying to market the concept to new audience, and plopping James Franco in the lead. Reviews were positive, so after much deliberation I finally sat down and watched it - and it was good.

There was a humanity present in this film that I feel the others lacked. That’s not to say that we as audiences have to jump on any specific animal-rights cause. The facts are clear that animals are abused and taken advantage of, and that’s not the right thing to do, no matter what views you subscribe to. This film lays out the good vs. evil concept very clearly and shows that we, the humans, were always the cause of our own destruction and the eventual rise of the apes.

I thought Andy Serkis as Cesar was incredible. He’s already got a huge Oscar push behind him because the motion capture was so incredibly accurate and realistic that it gave the chimpanzee the difference between computer generated animals and an actor’s performance. The animation was well done, and the lead up to the eventual “rise” scene was great too.

All in all, the film succeeded on a bunch of different levels. It’s a heart-warming story of a man and his ape, but it’s also a great drama film (who would’ve known!). It’s worth watching, despite Franco still not quite feeling “right” in the role of the geneticist. 

Buy it on Amazon.ca:
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - DVD
Rise of the Planet of the Apes [Blu-ray]