Update
:: My mom is home from the hospital in Winnipeg, resting and recuperating as best she can, trying to regain her energy. It’s been a long four months of dealing with various medical problems. Thankfully she is on the mend.
:: On 23rd Avenue, which is the main west-to-east route near my house, a section of the south side has been resurfaced with asphalt. I love driving on it now, it feels like like my car is moving over a pillow.
:: I saw four movies on the weekend, including Festival Express, Control Room, Open Water, and the original Shaft (1971 version). I enjoyed the three new movies, especially Open Water. I think it’s a great achievement, given the small crew and the budget of $150,000US. The weekend estimates for the period ending 22 Aug 2004, show Open Water at $10,800,000US, which was an increase of 1,109% over the previous week, bringing it up to $13,900,000 as of yesterday. Not too shabby. I wonder if it might set a record for rate of return compared to cost of production.
:: Earlier this year, I bought a Swiffer WetJet. Today I bought the dry land version, along with the duster. I assembled them, and did some dusting. Life doesn’t get much more exciting, does it?
August 24th, 2004 at 10:16
One of the guys that works at DreamHaven Books sent me an email that is talking about the dangers to pets from the Swiffer wetJet. I thought this could be right and passed it on to someother people but it was one of those urban legends. It’s all explained at http://www.snopes.com.
It’s funny how those urban legends get started. Remember the one about the gang members who were riding around in cars at night, with their lights out, and shooting at people who flashed their lights at the gang members. Well it’s making the rounds in Calgary this summer. My brother told me this story when we were all in Winnipeg last month. I told him that story had been going around Minneapolis 3-4 years ago and there were never any incidents that made it to the tv news or the local papers at any time. Snopes says the same thing about it…no documented cases in the country.
We saw last years new Godzilla flick…Godzilla x Mothra x Mechagodzilla Tokyo S.O.S. and it was not much more than a poor sequel, to the previous years film. Hopefully the new (and last film for sometime) will be better. Better still is the original version of the 1954 Godzilla, which was butchered here in the US adding Raymond Burr to the cast and dropping a whole bunch of footage of people dealing with the new monster. You can get a bootleg of it from Video Daikaiju at http://www.videodaikaiju.com. There was supposed to be a US release of the orighinal but it hasn’t come out yet.
Also recommended from the Video Daikaiju listing is Matango. A ship full of people get stranded on an island which has giant mushrooms all over and they gradually find out that the mushroom spores take over their bodies if eaten and turn them into giant ambultory mushrooms. It’s pretty darn good.
August 30th, 2004 at 12:06
Re: rate of return compared to cost of production. Blair Witch Project, from daily box office:
Total Gross: $140,539,099
Production Budget: $60,000