Wednesday October 17, 1:58 p.m.
Well, I really needed to catch
"Looper"before it left the main screens since I heard so many good things about it. The other movie I'd wanted to catch,
"Dredd", has apparently already done so according to The Anime King. Fortunately,
"Looper"was playing at
the Silver City on
Yonge & Eglinton, so it just meant a straight bus ride for me. And of course, if I'm going to see a movie at Silver City, I will usually have lunch at one of my favourite haunts,
The Sunset Grill. Being a
Tuesday and all, the place wasn't all that crowded...a bit unusual to see since I've been used to seeing it packed to the gills.
Kinda surprised my waitress when I ordered
a Grilled Chicken Breast Sandwich instead of my mess of
Corned Beef Hash, Sausages and Eggs. But the spirit of my doctor was niggling me, so I decided to go for the relatively healthy route. And as you can see on your left, there was actual vegetation on the dish. But I made sure there was the obligatory cup of joe on the side. The sandwich straddled the fence very nicely between tasting good and tasting healthy. Was awfully tempted to get that side of hash, though. The total came to
$10.27 with tax...perhaps a bit high for a sandwich, but it was a damn fine sandwich. Gave the waitress a $5 tip; I only had the $10 and the $5 with me for lunch, and: 1) I didn't want to bother to ask for change, and 2) she was a good waitress, and I know from some personal experience how demanding the job can be.
Of course, to make it perfect for the urban lunch, I had to have my newspaper with me. I would've been happy with either
The Star or The Sun, and since this was the issue just after (former)
Premier Dalton McGuinty's resignation, there was a lot of red meat in there. Kinda surprised that there wasn't more vitriol or celebration. Not thrilled with McGuinty's seemingly final F.U. against
the Legislature by
proroguing it (why do I keep thinking of Ukrainian pasta shells whenever I mention that governmental term?), but I guess he decided he needed to make one final stab at protecting his party over the needs of
Ontario. In any case, the sign hanging at Queen's Park is now "Closed until further notice".
 |
courtesy of artistbyday
from Flickr |
Then, it was time for the feature of the day.
"Looper"has gotten some fine accolades from the critics, and certainly having it launch
TIFF back in
September couldn't have hurt either. I was interested in the sci-fi premise of organized crime dumping their detritus through time instead of concrete, and there were two veteran stars in
Bruce Willis and Jeff Daniels, plus the new royalty of
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt.
I'd been expecting a
future noir, near but not quite on the level of
"Blade Runner", and there were aspects of that via
Young Joe's voiceover, the time travel aspect and the tragedy. But there were a lot of very sunny scenes and the final scene had that hope that also punctuated the last scene of
"Terminator 2", so I couldn't really say that it was a true future noir, but nonetheless it was overall a fine movie although there was some threat of sagging in the middle. The quasi-philosophical discussion that the two Joes had in the diner rather nicely foreshadowed the final showdown. In addition, the technology didn't get in the way of the story which, I thought, changed focus from the Joes to the future
Rainmaker. Not quite sure whether this is a future DVD buy or an
Oscar movie, but I think it was well worth my dough.
