Wow, long time no blog! Been very busy moving everything to the new servers, so sorry for any temporary glitches you may have encountered. Everything should be peachy soon!

Tonight I went for Starbucks with Violet, who I hadn’t seen in a long time. Good to keep in touch with these people 🙂 After that, I met Dickson at Tim Horton’s and we did some work on one of our software designs. Everything was going good, then around 11:30 or so, these crazy girls started fighting. Like hardcore pushing, shoving, punching, and kicking, throwing around the tables and chairs in the Timmy’s! We were stunned! Eventually they were broken up, and the cops came.

Maybe we shouldn’t have gone downtown!

First off, Happy Canada Day (well belated I suppose). If you’d like to show your Canadian pride for another day, get the Canada Day MSN Picture! To celebrate, Dickson, Andrew, Megan and I went to see Spider-Man 2.

Without a doubt, it is the second best sequel of the summer. The only reason I say second best is because Shrek 2 was clearly better than the first IMO. SM2 has everything you would expect, and a few things you wouldn’t, but that is not what makes it great. Like a lot of the reviews have already said, Spider-Man 2 is great because its the only comic book movie where you can take away the superhero, the bad guy, and the action, and you are still left with a decent story. In this case, it would be a romantic drama between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. Like I said to Megan, if you took all that out of The Punisher, you’d have a movie where one guy is depressed and ignores the desperate girl who talks to him constantly. Nothing more.

My only complaint about the movie, and I suppose it really isn’t a complaint so much as me being greedy is this; at certain points I craved action, and they just gave me a lot of love. Then when I wanted the love, there was a lot of love, let me tell you! The stunts and action sequences in this movie were pretty awesome too, much better than the first.

Compared with Spider-Man, the sequel is a little more artsy, and definitely more character focused. Put together wonderfully, you really get into the movie and feel for the characters. Throw in a little action, some cool costumes, and Spider-Man 2 is the summer movie of 2004 – you will not be disappointed!

Tonight, while the rest of North America was watching Spider-Man 2 (going tomorrow), Sharon and I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11. It was definitely an interesting and thought provoking movie, but what can you expect from Moore? Anyway, here is my take on the movie and the issues it presents:

Criticism #1
Total screen time for Tony Blair: about 5 seconds. Total time for the British Government? Zip. How the hell can you have a movie focusing on the Bush administration’s addiction to war and not mention Blair and his government? I mean hello! The only reason the rest of the world didn’t attack the US was because of Blair. I recognize that the movie is intended for the voting American public, but I think that ignoring Blair is a horrible omission. No wonder there are rebuttal films in the works.

Commendation #1
I think Moore did a good job capturing a number of different audiences. He didn’t simply focus on the money aspect of things, nor did he focus solely on the human side of things. Instead, I think the film was well balanced between the lives lost (and taken) in Iraq and the financial reasons behind the war.

Criticism #2
Towards the end of the movie, Moore talks of a conference to which government officals were invited. The hosts? Well all the footage shows Halliburton employees. Yet when he introduced it, Moore said “DHL, Microsoft, and others”. If you have issues with these companies Moore, save it for the proper documentary. The last time I checked, oil was not shipped through the mail, and machine guns do not run on Windows. Furthermore, if these companies were really responsible for the conference, why was there absolutely no footage of them?

Commendation #2
Another thing Moore did well was to point out the facts that might have been missed by other documentaries focused on the Bush agenda. He took the time to find out and tell us that only one Congressman has a child serving in Iraq. Only one. You also see some other interesting things, like how Bush authorized a flight to take members of the Bin Laden family out of the United States AFTER the FAA had grounded all flights.

Criticism #3
When he starts talking about the war in Iraq, Moore states that Bush attacked a country that had not harmed America, had not threatened America, and had not killed any Americans. When it was said, it was quite powerful, and I overlooked it until after the movie. Then I thought, what about the Gulf War of 1991? No Americans killed? No violence against America? I mean that is hardly justification, but just goes to show that if you watch this movie, keep in mind that Moore is a sensationalist (albeit a damn good one).

Yes I have more criticisms than I do commendations. Another would be that Moore only showed footage in Iraq that served his purpose – no toppling the statue and cheering that Saddam is gone in this movie. For me at least, the movie just confirmed a lot of the things I already knew or believed I knew: that the best thing that could have happened to Bush was 9/11 to unite the country, that the war in Iraq was for oil (though nice to be rid of Saddam) and the money that goes along with it, and that Bush doesn’t really know what the hell he is doing.

Proof enough for me that the war in Iraq was about oil is North Korea. Here we have a country that has made threats against the United States, that does have a nuclear weapons program and flaunts it, and which does perform crimes against humanity, and yet there are no plans to “liberate” the North Koreans or protect us from the threatened nuclear attacks.

Bush has done a great job of making the world hate America, driving the American economy into the ground, and making money for himself. I have always said that Kerry is nothing spectacular either, but really, can he be as bad as Bush? The one thing I have always liked about Bush is that he is not afraid to take action. Unfortunately, he should have struck Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq. There is something to be said for thinking first.

After watching the movie I can’t help but be grateful that I live in Canada. Adscam really pales in comparison to the Bush scandal presented in the movie. Yet we cannot forget that we are greatly impacted by the United States. As a Canadian, I would really like to see Kerry get into office in the upcoming election. And even then, I don’t think things will be all that great. Until Bill is allowed to take office once again, or Hilary decides to run, or the next excellent Democrat comes along, I guess we just hope for the best.

All in all, an interesting movie, but not as ground breaking as it was made out to be.