Fahrenheit Festival of Fire Sculpture 2011

Got the chance to see Artcite's latest Fahrenheit Festival, where they brought together various artists to make giant wood-straw sculptures that they burned once the sun set.

Most of the sculptures ended up burning quite nicely. Of particular interest were the flower that blossomed and the dancing man.

As for chocolate... unfortunately, the event location ended up being changed abruptly and the vendors did not participate. So we were stuck with hot chocolate from a can (no pictures needed), and mainstream chocolate bars and popcorn. Only the chocolate bar supply lasted through to the end of the event. On the plus side, grad students bbq'd fresh sweet corn.

Rating:  

Festival ~ 10 / 10 - Quite enjoyable, and let's not forget, it's the only fire festival in Canada.  It's like a Canadian counterpart to Nevada's Burning Man.

Chocolate ~ It's not even worth grading, but hey, that's no fault of the organizers.  It happens. Besides, we went there for the Fire, not chocolate.

Here's a few pics from the night:

Harry Potter's Last Stand and Dark Chocolate Pomegranate

Here we are, about four weeks after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 has come out and I'm finally getting around to posting about it.  Well, it can't have been that great then, eh?  Nope.  Plus, well, other things distracted me, like the visual art scene.

Three of us went downtown to catch it on the first Saturday night.  Coming into the theater, we brought our own goods, of course:  Brookside Dark Chocolate Pomegranate and yes, Jones Soda -- Green Apple and Blue Bubblegum flavours.

The state of the seats directly in front of us foreshadowed our overall view of the movie.   Busted and out of order, management taped them up in black garbage bags.  Sure, HP installments have always been filmed in rather dark tones to match the whole black and white fight between good and evil, but never before did we find the magic within broken.

It came across as if the actors, especially the younger ones, phoned in their roles.  Tired, weary, and emotionless.  Honestly, I felt more sentimental before I entered the theater and bought my ticket.  After ten years of Bertie Bott's Jelly Beans and the Weasley twins' antics and the crazed killer actions of Bellatrix Lestrange, a sadness in saying goodbye surrounded me like an Invisibility Cloak.

Good thing I bought a giant bag of popcorn and my friend supplied the Brookside chocolates.  I couldn't get enough of those.  Yummy, I thought about them as I bit and chewed them instead of focusing on the dull rapport between even Hermione and Ron.  So much for screen chemistry.

Now, the electricity and passion that Alan Rickman infused Snape with, well, that became the best part of the whole experience.  More please.  Oh, it's too late.  And when Molly Weasley took down Bellatrix, I actually thought, Why, Voldemort, why?  Boring as bloody hell.  Characters like Bellatrix needed more screen time--and so did Malfoy.

Oh, they could have done so much more with this movie.  Instead, they turned it into a sleep-walker of blandness.  When favourite characters like Fred died, they didn't show it and only briefly did the camera pause on them.  So much wasted potential.

Aside from Snape's love for Lily, the presentation fell flat.  I can't say it enough.  Even the epic final battle landed on its head.  Devoid of emotion, poorly choreographed, and far from memorable, it came across like bits of World War II reenactments, the Luke/Darth Vader sword battle of the Star Wars series, and, well, a knock-off of Lord of the Rings.

Sure, you can try and guilt me: it's the last movie, don't you feel the sadness, the tears rolling down your cheeks?  No, but I did and do long for the magic of earlier HP movies.

And then to add insult to injury, the production offered us some cheap makeup and clothes in the so-called aging of the main characters, Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Draco.  Seriously?  The HP machine has brought in buckets of money over the past decade; you'd think that they could spare a couple bucks to make them credible grown ups.  Hell, even bad wigs and properly angled stage lights would have worked better.

Walking out of the theater, we felt so empty.  Just as the author, J. K. Rowling, squashed further sequels by throwing a bland coda on the end, the series finale killed it by erasing the spirit that soared in earlier parts.

Ratings:

HPATDHP2:  6.5 / 10 - Somewhat lackluster and anticlimactic, but Snape and Voldemort saved it.

Brookside Dark Chocolate Pomegranate:  8 / 10 - A tasty mix of cocoa and pomegranate juice.

Cookie Cutter Hollywood Movies and Cookie Dough Ice Cream

We celebrated Canada Day (July 1) by eating ice cream and watched some older movies, A Knight's Tale (2001) and The Karate Kid (2010), with a friend.  When these movies came out, I had absolutely no interest in seeing them, however, we were hanging out and decided to sit down and see what they had to offer.  Since it was a holiday, we walked to the nearest grocery store and picked up the closest thing to chocolate that we could find without a trillion chemicals in it:   Irresistibles Cookie Dough and Brownies Ice Cream.

Irony overshadowed the whole experience. The day before, unbeknownst to us, the Canadian government issued an allergy warning for the ice cream we bought. No kidding. Course, we didn't hear about it until a few days later. Ooops. Fortunately, nobody who ate it suffered from any issue relating to eggs.

We hunkered down with the Heath Ledger movie. After eating takeout pizza we dove into the ice cream. Yeah, pizza, for the holiday. Special days aren't meant to be chalked full of nutritional foods. I suppose that goes for movie quality as well, since Knight came across as typical Hollywood cookie cutter feel-good fair. Yeah.

Just like in Smith's Karate Kid, everything is black and white; there's the good guy who must be the underdog and the bad guy who always has the upper hand, whether it be through class or money or both. Then, of course, we need a pretty girl who immediately falls for our hero.

Good thing I got busy stuffing my face, it distracted me from the feel-good crap on the TV screen.  Sure, Ledger provided some eye-candy and Karate Kid came across as a tourist brochure for the shiny bits of China, but the fact that these two movies had the exact same formula kind of ruined it.  I mean, hey, if at least one of them could have had even the tiniest bit of creativity to it, that would have made everything okay.

The only area they did get creative with was in the whole Suspension of Disbelief department, as expected.  Smith's character, a complete newbie to martial arts, miraculously spars a seasoned Kung Fu champ and avoids ultimate defeat.  Never mind that they got the style of martial arts wrong, but I guess if they named it something other than what they did, people wouldn't get that it was a remake with a few superficial changes.

And poor Ledger, fighting with a knight who's obviously using an improper jousting lance.  Even the crowd could easily see that it wasn't regulation.  Such oversights must occur for flimsy and drab plots to crawl towards the required ending of white defeating black.  Ho hum.

From yawn-inducing stories to bland ice cream that didn't have the texture of any of the goodies it boasted:  chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate brownies, or real cream.  And the chocolate taste was muted at best.  Disappointed, I double checked the ingredients to make sure it even had any in it and found traces of 'cocoa butter' and 'cocoa powder.'   Yay.

Ratings:

A Knight's Tale / The Karate Kid / Irresistibles Cookie Dough:  6 / 10 -  It's best to simply list them altogether, since they deserve about the same score.  Knight gets a high number for the shots of Ledger and the jousting scenes and, last but not least, Paul Bettany's naked butt shots.  Karate gets a decent ranking because of the pretty scenery and Jackie Chan--I'm a big fan.  Cookie did better than expected because well, we already had low expectations.

X-Men: First Class & Last Class Chocolate

I did not prepare properly for this particular movie outing.  We had to purchase chocolate at the movie kiosk.  And, as noted previously, we've been showing up on cheap night Tuesdays, since there are so many on the list to see this summer.

Despite the glitches, we enjoyed X-Men:  First Class.  Although I'd seen the previews, I had no idea how it would go over.  Well, it didn't center around Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), so ... But I have to say that the movie pulled off presenting the backgrounds of Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender).  Both characters came across as believable and their emotions reached through the screen to the audience, especially during their touching scene on the beach near the end.

Of course, I ended up on Team Magneto.  Xavier, even in college, when pursuing women, seemed such a pansy.  That's not a bad thing, but compared to the complex layers of Magneto, X was a lightweight.

Yeah, I know, it's a comic, but take the relationship between Magneto and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), for example.  She offers herself up to him and he reacts by agreeing, if she stays in her true form during the encounter.  That spoke much stronger than Xavier's lame pickup lines involving women's genetic quirks.

Now, that's not to say that others will be Team Magneto; somebody I went with totally disagreed.  She immediately took to the genuinely caring Xavier and stuck with him.  So either side is justified in the movie.

And onto the villains, featuring Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and his sidekick, Emma Frost (January Jones).  Bacon did a great job playing a sadistic Nazi and transitioned nicely into a 1960s Bond-type bad guy.  Frost played the villainous vixen convincingly, and yes, she fit the 60s style Bond bad-girl wardrobe.

Of course, with such a movie, in contemporary times, there has to be CGI, especially for scenes where Magneto lifts whole submarines into the air.  Believable?  Not so much, but hey, it's presented much the same as in the other X-Men installments.  The human reflection and interactions balance it without smothering the audience.

And then there's the cameo with Wolverine.  Wow.  His time onscreen didn't last longer than say, twenty seconds, but the audience went nuts when they--er, we--saw him.  He had one line and that's all he needed.  Perfection.

Overall, the movie exceeded expectations (since I really didn't know what I was in for).  The Wolverine spot brought it over the edge.  From Bacon to Mystique and minor characters like Beast (Nicholas Hoult), the actors worked it.  Costuming and props also did a great job of working the 1940s/1960s vibe.

Ratings:

X-Men:  First Class - 8.5 / 10 - It's a good score, considering the movie doesn't focus on Wolverine (my favourite character).  My views of Magneto and Xavier really turned around.  I'm also looking forward to seeing more movies with Fassbender and Lawrence.  And nice to see Bacon back in form.

Junior Mints - 4.5 / 10 - I couldn't be bothered to them until now, when I have to rate them.  It's really been a long time since I've had to eat such sugar mints.  I've been spoiled on real cocoa chocolate and candies, that's for sure.  These bloody things (I can't really call them mints) burnt my mouth with the low-grade sugar assault.  Never again.  I must stick to smuggling real chocolate into the movies.

The Solitude of Numbers and Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream

I'm currently writing a memoir about childhood and as each draft winds its way through the eagle eyes of beta and refining critters, I often receive fantastic feedback that leads me to other writers.  That's how I stumbled upon Paolo Giordano's The Solitude of Prime Numbers.  A reader said that my writing, which portrays a dysfunctional family and includes the use of bodily excretions, reminded her of this book.

She found both stories difficult to read, particularly because of the grittier details.  At first I thought, oh man, time to toss the whole thing into the garbage, but after I absorbed the rejection, I went looking for it at the local library.

I'd never heard of Giordano or The Solitude before.  It's a translation of La solitudine dei numeri primi, his Italian story of two traumatized individuals, Mattia and Alice.  I decided to read it, thinking, hey, why not, maybe I'll get some insights.

What a surprise it turned out to be.   I enjoyed the fast read.  Yes, it included a scene that dealt with excrement, but so what.  I'm not just saying that to bolster my own childhood poop.  It maintains the story's integrity.

Since I'm talking about the body, I'll move straight into the chocolate connection.   Well, yeah, childhood humour is appropriate, given that the story deals with the progression from early childhood to the prime of adult life.

What better way to experience a novel then by purchasing some ice cream that you can eat in small bowls as it unfolds?  I chose Turtle Mountain's soy based chocolate peanut butter flavor.  The first taste my tongue found was the peanut butter.  Yes, real peanuts and, real cocoa.  The texture wasn't as smooth as traditional corn syrup, chemical-laced ice creams, but it sure tastes better.

Like the ice cream, Solitude has a bite to it.  It's refreshing.  Not like a cool glass of water, but as a potent dance between the main characters, who suffer early traumas that leave them emotionally disabled.

It reads as the band Radiohead sounds with Thom Yorke's eerily haunting vocals, only it's fluid words on paper.  I doubted the similarity was a coincidence, so I read up on the author to find out who influenced him.

Sure enough,in an interview, he notes that Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails (NIN) inspire him as an artist.  Although trained as a physicist, he is clearly also an accomplished story teller.

In the end, as the isolated and lonely Alice and Mattia tried to come together, I really wanted them too succeed.  When such reunions rely on the logical resolution that a mathematician or physicist provides, it does not bode well.  Can one emotionally stunted woman plus one man of similar suffering equal  happily ever after?   Read it and find out.

There is also a movie adaptation of the novel.  I haven't seen it yet.  From the trailer, it looks like it has captured the essence and atmosphere of the story, so I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully it comes with English subtitles.

Ratings:

The Solitude of Prime Numbers:  9 / 10 -if only I could defy logic and force my own ending on it.  Otherwise, it makes for fantastic word music.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream:  8 / 10 - great peanut butter taste, I'd like to see a bit more chocolate punch to it.  While it is far more healthier than the average junk-filled ice creams out there, it wasn't as smooth.  Yes, I'd devour it again.

No Chocolate No Go

Well, folks, I ran out of chocolate a few days ago.  That means no reviews or experiences.  It's a pretty bland world without chocolate.  It's no joke, I can't even brush my teeth without it.  No, seriously, what's the point of brushing if there's no chocolate?

Okay, dental hygiene jokes aside, I've got a few book reviews in the works. That includes the first ebook I've read (I got it as a gift last week).  Those posts will alternate with my thoughts on movies that I haven't seen yet, Like Kung Fu Panda 2, X-Men: First Class, and Bridesmaids ...

Oh, I know what you're thinking; people do entertainment reviews all the time without the aid of chocolate.  Sure.  Point taken, but this blog is supposed to be chocolate fueled and to do it without would cocoa-less.  Without the chocolate vibe, you might as well get Melba toast or unsalted crackers to fill in.  Honestly.

Look for chocolate peanut butter ice cream among the treats that I'll be talking about.  No, I haven't tried it yet, but once it's in my dessert bowl, I'm sure it'll last about three seconds--at least, I hope that's how good it's gonna taste.

Hangover 2 Saved By Chocolate

Last night I headed downtown to catch the sequel to the Hangover.  I couldn't go wrong on Cheap Night--or so I thought.  Armed with Jones Soda, plain brown rice cakes, and Dubble chocolate bars, I met up with a pal.  Before you raise the eyebrows at rice cakes, it's important to note here that with all the summer movies out there, I'm budgeting the entertainment funds.

We were both excited about seeing the Coop as Phil again.  Quite pleasing to look at, he played the same let's-keep-it-together character as in the last film, but with a meaner twist.  It was odd hearing him say the F-word no less than 50 billion times.  I know, it's rated R for language, nudity, drug use, violence... but come on already.  Did his contract call for so many swear words per page of script?

Added to that, Phil came across as extra prickly and defiant.  I had no fun watching him.  Yeah, he lead the trio, but he had a pissy mood about him and the bit where he tried to steal one of Stu's prescription pads came across as over the top for the character.  He's far less likable in this installment.

And now we come to the role of women in the movie.  Sure, it's about guys and a bachelor party, but in the first one, we got a fitting taste of Heather Graham, who added a sense of feminine balance.  Aside from looking worried and getting upset about the boys' late arrival, the girls didn't say anything.  Now, I must note that a prostitute got a few lines, but she really wasn't what she seemed.  *wink wink*

Plot?  Oh, right, yeah, that thing.  Well, to be honest, I set out to see the movie to get my Phil of the Coop (get it?  Phil?  Fill?...).  Yeah, I laughed along with the other people in the audience at moments, even though the film, scene for scene, copied the first one in its entirety.  I did know that going into it.  Same setup, same action, same ending, the only difference being that it took place in Bangkok instead of Vegas.  Oh, and they went for the gritty look rather than flash, which worked great as an anti-party commercial.

Aside from the grungy core of the film, the intro and wedding scenes were done with some polish.  The opening credits worked as a deceptive pull.  A nice trick, it pulled my guard down, leaving me wide open for things like the chopped finger, multiple flaccid 'weenises,' and what Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) refers to as 'squalor.'

Oh, the monkey.  He smokes (see the suave chromatographic scene with his silhouette), and develops a friendship with Alan (Zach Galifianakis).  He takes the place of the tiger.  Not only do the guys have to return him, they have to retrieve him, so I guess there's a tiny variation on the plot from the first movie.  Yeah.

All in all, despite a few laughs and knowing nods, I wouldn't go see Hangover 2 again, nor would I rent it.  Maybe the cynical presentation put me off, or the forced swearing, or Phil's irritable demeanor, but whatever the root, it fell flat for me.

Ratings:

Hangover 2:  6 / 10 - It gets such a high score because the Coop looked good no matter what scene he showed up in and hey, Ken Jeong is always a laugh.  ...and the music rocked, just as it did in the first one.

plain brown rice cakes: 7 / 10 -  Hey, popcorn always rates as top for grazing food while taking in a movie.  Although much healthier, with far less calories, and far cheaper, the rice needed some sort of spice.

Dubble chocolate:  9 / 10 - Even though it melted on the way to the theater (ooops), it tasted good.  The only issue I had with it was the shape being thick instead of thin and wide like a regular chocolate bar.  Every crispy chocolate bite went down smooth and bonus, it's Fair Trade!  It more than made up for the limp movie.