Having some server problems this weekend. Actually, no, the server is fine – it’s my ISP’s path to my site that is mucked up. Throughout the weekend I’ve had numerous periods of maybe 10 minutes where I cannot reach my site. If I do a traceroute during that downtime, I get about 15 pretty slow bounces and then it times out. If I use an anonymous proxy site, I can get in so I know that the site is still up, but it’s a bit of a pain to not have consistent access to my site, particularly if I’m doing work on the code. Not sure what I can do about this, unfortunately. I will treat this the same way I do medical conditions… ignore it and hope it goes away.

It’s bloody cold out!

I’m finding that I’m using Netscape 7.0 more and more – it’s essentially the same program as Mozilla and uses the same user registry so all my passwords and settings are preserved, but I’m thinking it actually runs faster than Mozilla. Maybe it’s six of one, half dozen of the other, but it amuses me to believe I’m just that astute and the one thing I do know is that they both kick Internet Explorer’s ass. Tabbed browsing man, you can’t beat that with a stick.

My email trash is asking me if I’m dating someone who’s already married. Wouldn’t that be an interesting development?

np – Neutral Milk Hotel / In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

Yeah, you’ll note the titles says Red Dragon and not Adaptation as I’d promised… that’s because no one wanted to see Adaptation this week but everyone wanted to see it next week. What’s a guy to do? Thankfully my plans of wasting the afternoon in a dark room surrounded by strangers wasn’t totally torpedoed as The Bloor was running an afternoon matinee of Red Dragon, which I hadn’t seen. But I have now. ‘Cause I went. In case you missed that. Anyway.

Saw and enjoyed Silence Of The Lambs, haven’t seen Hannibal as it looked terrible. Heard better things about Red Dragon. Haven’t seen Manhunter, so there won’t be any ‘it was okay but Michael Mann did it soooo much better the first time’ jive. As a sidebar, I was curious to see how dirctor Brett Ratner did with some non-lightweight source material since he’s the fellow attached to the new Superman movie. But if you look at his IMDB entry, you’ll note a 2002 item for Hong Kong Phooey Um, right.

So Red Dragon – a reasonable film but I think it was flawed from the initial concept. It’s marketed as a new Hannibal Lector film – unfortunately, he’s actually only a peripheral character. His parts are ratcheted up for the film but that creates a subplot with him and agent Will Graham that can’t be satisfactorily resolved because it doesn’t really exist in the first place, save the first five minutes of the film. The real plot of the film lies with Ralph Fiennes’ ‘Tooth Fairy’, and that thread gets only the standard Hollywood serial killer treatment. The motivations of the titular character are only presented in broad strokes, and I was left unsatisfied at the end result. Fiennes does as much as he can with the part, but isn’t given all that much to work with. The impression I get is not that the film wants me to figure it out on my own, but that it doesn’t especially care since the Tooth Fairy isn’t the main attraction.

Sir Anthony Hopkins has the Lector character down to a tee by now – and I can’t help wondering if that sinister grin is so automatic now that Hopkins isn’t even thinking about it? Edward Norton is excellent as always as FBI agent Will Graham, and I have to say – for a relatively small guy, he’s awful resiliant. Graham takes an extraordinary amount of punishment but always comes up, well, alive. And I always like Mary-Louise Parker. Absolutely didn’t recognize Harvey Keitel.

Ratner did a servicable job with the film, but he’s not in the same league as the previous directors of the Lector films. I’m less concerned with him being behind the camera for Superman than I am about the script that’s purportedly being used. But that’s a rant for another day.

np – Fountains Of Wayne / Utopia Parkway

Finally got to sit down and watch Leon, The Professional. I’ve seen this before, though more than five years ago, and that was the North American version (simply titled The Professional). This edition boasts an extra 24 minutes of footage which for the life of me, I could not identify. There were scenes that I didn’t remember, but that went for a good chunk of the film overall. I remembered the beginning and the ending, and that’s about it. Jean Reno does well in the role that pretty much typecast him in North America (the stoic, mysterious Frenchman, armed to the teeth more often than not), Gary Oldman is twitchily psychotic (“DO YOU LIKE BEETHOVEN?!?”) as the evil DEA agent and what can you say about the very young Natalie Portman besides… well, she was very young then but she’s all growed up now. I enjoyed this movie more the first time around – this time it seemed more slight despite the additional footage, wherever it was. It’s always a mild disappointment when a film doesn’t hold up under repeated viewings.

Afterwards, swung by the Green Room to meet up with some of the usual crowd. Didn’t stay long – after an hour some of them wanted to go to Blow-Up so I just went home… not much in the dancing mood. I did stop by Second Spin on the way there and chanced upon the Starflyer 59 double disc best-of. An unexpected find but I’ll take it!

np – Starflyer 59 / Easy Come Easy Go 1994-2000

Okay, so planning to get ALL my Christmas shopping done today was probably over-ambitious. I didn’t do too badly, I’m probably about halfway there. I’d forgotten that I have about a one-hour tolerance for the Eaton Centre. After that point, my patience runs out and it’s elbows up, everyone out of my way. Next time I say I’m going to do my Christmas shopping all at once on the last Saturday afternoon’s before Christmas, someone do me a favour and douse me in gasoline and hand me a smoke. It’ll be more merciful.

It amazes me that no one has yet opened a store that carries only what I’m looking for, in one convenient location at reasonable prices. And I won’t accept the fact that I don’t know what I’m looking for as an excuse.

Does anyone know where I can get interesting mugs in this city?

It wasn’t all shopping for other people though – before I left, I laid the smack down on the Joe Pernice Big Tobacco album via eBay. Good price, too.

Had a look through the Spin year-end issue, was surprised to find that I owned 8 out of their top 40. Once upon a time this might have seemed validating to me but now it’s almost embaressing. I mean, this is a list that has a 2001 release as their best album of 2002 (the White Stripes’ Red Blood Cells – though I guess it’s less important to Spin when the album came out as when MTV decided that they were going to be stars). I’m keen to see what Magnet lists in their year-end issue, though I don’t expect that’ll be out till mid-January.

np – Yo La Tengo / Ride The Tiger

Some more site tweaks – if you look just to your left, you’ll see I’ve added some contact info, namely my IM IDs and email address. I’m hoping that putting the info in the title tags only will foil spammers, nothing clickable – just mouseover.

I’ve also edited the photo gallery so that the images don’t appear in pop-ups anymore, they’ll be displayed in the main browser window.

I’m also going to rotate mp3s in the radio section over in the sidebar, tunes I’m currently fixated on and feel like sharing with the world at large.

I’m noticing that MyMusic.ca has jacked up a lot of their prices. This, combined with this thread at the antiantenna message board points to what may be an alarming trend in the prices of indie releases in Canada. I generally had no problem for paying $18.98 or $19.98 for a new Merge or Matador release, but if the prices go up by three or four bucks across the board, well that’s just ain’t no good.

Today I need to do my Christmas shopping. Unless it’s cold in which case I will just hibernate.

np – Aimee Mann / Lost In Space