Odd Dinner Set Ideas

Odd Dinner Set Ideas

Words by Dirk Calloway

Every time I go to a hotel, I find the plates are either themed around chilli peppers, eggplants, zuccinis or some other ugly plant. What's the deal? Anyone know? It's just plain weird.

Sherlock Holmes - The Best of the Saw Series?

 Sherlock Holmes - The Best of the Saw Series?

Words by Dirk Calloway

I really liked the most recent Saw sequel, called Sherlock Holmes. Until now, the series has been getting worse with every passing year. With Holmes though, the franchise has been rebirthed with a fresh set of actors, writers, location and narrative. Take the villain of the pieces for instance:

Instead of Jigsaw we now have another guy with a hairline problem. His name is fancier: Lord Blackwood. Both of them are meant to be dead, but insist on returning from the grave to lay out a master plan for life. Both have rather grandiose ideas about a world that lacks selfishness or depravity. Both, rather ironically, try to change this wicked world of ours by making sure that humans act as depraved and selfishly as is possible. Both love to do this by using fiendish traps. And what fun these traps are!

The traps often stack the odds against their victim. In all cases, if the victim stays in the trap long enough, they will die. Like, the bathtub scene in Sherlock Holmes, where the guy carks it because he's been naked in the bath too long. Or the freezer scene in Saw III, where the girl carks it because she's been naked in the freezer too long. The specifics are all much of a muchness really, but it's nice to see that Holmes is the seventh film obsessed with fiendish traps.

Doors are always locked in Saw films. They are always locked for good reason. Sometimes there's dead animals on the other side, and sometimes there's explosions. Always, there are bad things lurking. Sherlock Holmes continued this tradition, and the weird fixation on keys that keeps popping up throughout the franchise.

Oh, crap, I almost forgot. A reliance on steam-powered whatsamahoosits is incredibly important to the series. Holmes proudly makes sure this motif is kept alive. Heaps of things are fuelled by fire and make enough sparks that people nearby would be very scared. The photo above doesn't do the machine justice, but rest assured, it's just as impressive as anything in Saw V .

Of course, no Saw movie would be complete without a double-crossing ex-criminal who's in league with the villain. Rules state that she must get detectives to do her bidding. She also has to have a weird love-hate relationship with a detective. She also has to be sort of indebted to the baddie. I know that none of this makes sense, but hey, if you want realism, go watch a Friday the 13th film buddy.

There are many, many more reasons why Sherlock Holmes is the best of the Saw franchise, but I'll leave the rest to the commenting board. I hope Guy Ritchie makes another sequel, because I've a feeling the next one will be in 3D!

Every Film I Saw Theatrically In 2009, Ranked In Preferential Order

Every Film I Saw Theatrically In 2009, Ranked In Preferential Order
Words Written by Dirk Calloway

1. Avatar (3D)
2. Up (3D)
3. Where the Wild Things Are
   
4. Fantastic Mr. Fox
   
5. Watchmen
   
6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7. The Hangover
8. District 9
9. JCVD
10. Ponyo
11. State of Play
12. Synecdoche, New York
13. Defiance
14. An Education
15. Inglourious Basterds
16. Separation City
17. Star Trek
18. The Secret Life of Bees
19. 2012
20. Zombieland
21. (500) Days of Summer
22. Public Enemies
23. Sherlock Holmes
24. Away We Go
25. A Serious Man
26. Duplicity
27. This Is It
28. Hotel for Dogs
29. RiP: A Remix Manifesto
30. Surrogates
31. Taking Woodstock
32. Terminator Salvation
33. The Spirit
34. G.I. JOE: The Rise Of Cobra
35. Confessions of a Shopaholic
36. Fast & Furious
37. Transporter 3
38. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
39. 12 Rounds
40. Bruno
41. Under the Mountain
42. Big Stan
43. I Love You, Beth Cooper
44. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
45. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
46. Seven Pounds

I saw 46 films in a cinema this year. Because I saw a few twice - Watchmen, Star Trek, District 9, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - I came very close to seeing one film per week, throughout 2009. Combine that total with the amount I saw on DVD and it's probable that I spent nearly an extra 300 hours of my life watching films. 

There are a few conspicuous absences: Moon, Let The Right One In and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I'm fairly certain the latter is pants, so I didn't bother to endorse it with my $16. I'd have watched the other two if they'd been screened in more than one boutique cinema in my home-town. That theatre decided to screen them at either inconveniently late times, or during work-hours. Their decision was no doubt based on the fact that staunch genre fans would make the effort, regardless of timings. Well, I say, screw 'em! If a film's good, promote the hell out of it, and schedule it for a time when the largest possible audience can see it.

We've a real problem on our hands with the silo'd world of boutique theatres. They've misguidedly pigeon-holed their audience as mid-40s women who drag their husbands / friends to anything that has subtitles or a small budget or what I have begun to call a "mid-concept" plot. The same demographic has misguidedly decided that it won't be caught dead at a multiplex in a mall, regardless of the quality of films screening there. The two groups are mutually reinforcing themselves into an endless loop of movies that feature any of the below:

• a bumbling assassin
• women who must band together doing something folksy (cooking and gardening, usually) to shake off their midlife blues
• a Westerner interacting with "world culture" and learning its many pleasured joys
• a soundtrack that regularly lapses into accordion playing, regardless of the film's nationality
• a broken family unit that lives together in a grim decorated apartment block, before an outside arrives and adds colour to their world... then the outside leaves again
• anti-American / anti-globalisation sentiments that uphold the conservative rural way of life as the only virtuous existence
• two or three dancing scenes, no matter how needless their inclusion be
• a running time that is no shorter than 110 minutes
• a period setting of the mid-90s or late-80s, without any real need for it
• a dog that acts as comic relief

Now I don't want you to think that I'm bashing on the "arthouse scene," but I need to remind you that 2009 was an amazing year for multiplex fare. Directors like JJ Abrams, James Cameron and Spike Jonze injected real smarts into their big budget extravaganzas. Directors like Zac Snyder and David Fincher poured their hearts into their projects and somehow made them into works of digital art (even if Watchmen and Benjamin Button were an hour too long for most people's tastes).

This was the year where, hopefully, everyone saw at least one 3D movie. If you haven't yet, book a ticket for Avatar. I hear there might be a session that's not sold out, um, sometime next week.

One small gripe: The Hurt Locker never made it to my town. I've seen a copy, though I won't repeat the methods I employed to do so. Rest assured, I am so fond of that film that if it had been screened nearby, Avatar's position on this list would be threatened.

At the other end of the spectrum, Will Smith might be tempted to go into hiding after the disastrous three-peat of I Am Legend, Hancock and Seven Pounds. Here's hoping that 2010 is a better year for The Fresh Prince.

The First Post

The First Post

Words Written by Dirk Calloway

A new decade, a new website.

"The Try Hard" will be many things, to few people. I, Dirk Calloway, will be your author. You - yeah you, the one with the face - will be my reader. Together, we will be a mighty force.

Comment freely and often.

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