Dear Track Teamers,

I went to Toronto this weekend to visit with Steve Palmer. We decided to hightail it with some friends to check out the North By NorthEast Music Festival in the city that Al Waxman, Harry Rosen, and Eugene Levy think is the center of the universe. I’ve decided to give you the lowdown on what is one of the coolest music festivals in Canada. In many ways, this is the counterpart festival to the famed South By Southwest Music Festival. I wasn’t dissapointed.

We arrived and settled, and decided to catch some food at the famed Duff’s Wings. I initially thought that Duff McKagan from Guns’N'Roses had opened a wing joint, and was secretly hoping that we’d be served a pound of them while mentally air-guitaring to “Mr. Brownstone”. I’ve never had wings like this. The have a degrees of hotness with the wing sauce that is measured by something scientific called the “SHU”, short for the Scofield Heating Unit. Once the scientific stuff is introduced, and you realize that there is more to degrees of chili heat besides mild, medium, hot, and “suicide”…like every other sports bar in the world, then you begin to get curious. We had some standard fare at this place, but I asked for a small bowl of what they call “Armageddon”. To get an idea of how hot this wing sauce is…check this out. Here’s some perspective…HOT is about 100,000 Scofield Heating Units. “Armageddon” is about 850,000 Scofield Heating Units. It is very hot. I’m not sure how they harvested this wing sauce from the surface of the sun, but it’s painful. I slightly dipped a french fry in this hell, and the potato practically evaporated.

Our first stop was the Horseshoe Tavern where we caught opener Julie Dorion of Eric’s Trip and the headliner, Evan Dando. Julie was good…if you’ve never heard of her music, it’s a darker version of Feist, but I was looking for a bit of a pickmeup and found it a bit slow. We spotted Mike Keenan in the audience wearing a complete jean outfit and the niftiest pair of Sonny Crocket leather slip ons I’ve ever seen. After Julie closed her set, Evan Dando came on, looking very haggard, and sporting a beat up Gibson acoustic guitar. He proceeded to play a pretty stripped down acoustic version of Lemonheads classics like “It’s A Shame About Ray” and others…I pictured Johnny Depp from the video kicking back a Henieken in the club with us.

As we left the Horseshoe, a torrential rain began to shower us. We grabbed some Chinatown newspapers and hightailed it to the Silver Dollar Room to catch The Oholics. Didn’t really dig them that much. Stayed for about 30 minutes, and took a sip of a Black Russian. A drink I realize that I cannot ingest. After determining that…we gingerly quickstepped next door to the newly refurbished El Mocambo, where we proceeded to get ready to witness greatness. Canada’s loudest band, and what I consider to be one of the best rock shows I have ever seen, ever. Period. Conclusion. Montreal’s BIONIC. They raped my ears, and blew my face off. This band is so killer, that I recommend wearing earplugs unless you’re into being killed by riffs and amp buzz. So awesome. If you’re more into an act like Duncan Sheik, this would not have been the place for you to be.

Next night, we checked out ex-Ottawa natives, Clothes Make The Man. My band…The Setbacks, who are currently on hiatus because of our lead singer’s liquid paper addiction, played with CMTM often. I’ve always found them awesome, but the show that I caught at the Bovine Sex Club this night was almost like a re-introduction to the band that made me realize how talented a bunch of songwriters these guys are. They are totally awesome, and I can say that this music is something I am totally into right now. They rule. Check them out. Went back to The Silver Dollar Room later on in the night to catch Slim Twig. Interesting act, if you like rockabilly meets David Byrne, but I was pretty tired by the end of the night, and was getting ready for the high tail back to Ottawa at 5 a.m.

Besides the awesome music…I managed to check out “The Hulk“, the new feature film from the newly formed Marvel Studios. This is considered a reboot of Ang Lee’s take on the popular green giant. The industry generally considered the first movie adaptation of the comic book to be a major flop. It grossed 132 million dollars at the box office. Respectable numbers, but low grade considering the expectations that studio executives had for the film, especially with it’s 100+ million dollar price tag.

The new one features Ed Norton as Bruce Banner, Liv Tyler as Betty Ross, Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky/The Abomination, and Academy Award Winner William Hurt as Thunderbolt Ross. Tim Roth rules. He’s just got that cool factor that guys like Gary Oldman have. You can tell he’s a badass in real life to some degree. The movie is good overall. A solid 3 stars. It’s “comictainment”. My term for the direction that Marvel seems to be steering it’s movies now. They’re delivering good bang for the buck films that don’t dissapoint with the special effects. A cool thing about this movie was the cameo from RDJ as Tony Stark. It alludes to the Avengers movie coming out in two years.

Now before I start this entry, I would like to indicate that I am and have been a big fan of the show. This has lessened my credibility with most of my friends…well…actually all of my friends, who happen to be either beer swilling hockey fans with a penchant to deliver blows whenever I bring up John Mayer’s name, or beer swilling music fans who give me slices across the nose whenever I order wine instead of a bottle of 50. Sometimes, they both get together, and if I happen to mistakenly begin to discuss something that happened on American Idol the night before, I run the chance of waking up in an alley. Bottom line, I’m a completely straight SATC fan, living in fear when a conversation about Darcy Tucker comes up. I have to make a concerted effort to not talk about those things that should remain unmentioned at certain times, and usually what I’ll do is draw on my limited 1980′s hockey knowledge…you know…when we all used to collect the Paganini hockey stickers. I’ll throw in some stats about Grant Fuhr.

The theater was packed with many women, wearing pumps and stilletos. My friend commented on just how done up all the ladies were. It smelled a combination of Givenchy and Tommy Girl. I saw more power suits than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and on a few instances, I observed what I could swear were real life Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte combinations. I’ll often see this. 4 combo lady troupes pounding down Bank Street, all in a row. When the movie started, I could sense the anticipation of everyone, including myself, of where the girls were in their respective lots in life, from the last episode. A hush fell over the theater.

Well. I wasn’t dissapointed. Carrie and Big were still together, getting ready to purchase a fancy apartment in New York’s elite district. Samantha had moved to L.A. with Smith, managing what seemed to be a career on fire. Charlotte and Harry had adopted an adorable little girl from China. Miranda and Steve had found their groove to some degree in that same house in Brooklyn that Miranda had resisted to, and they were still lugging around Magda, with Brady in tow, trying to compromise their different perceptions and approaches to life and marriage. The kid who plays Brady looks astonishingly like an actual cross between Cynthia Nixon and David Eigenberg. Good casting Michael Patrick King!

The same tendencies exist. Samantha is still a nymphomaniac. Her relationship with Smith is strained, as he’s constantly on a shoot, and she wages a personal battle against her sex starved self as she suddenly discovers her inner voyeur for the neighbor next door. The fact that they seemed to have lasted as long as they did even seems to surprise Samantha. Charlotte and Harry seem quite happy, and Charlotte is the quintessential mother who doesn’t deal with the strain of a career versus Miranda’s uptight and cantankerous take on the difficulties of balancing wife/mother/lawyer/Miranda/ challenge. Miranda doesn’t hesitate to let people know how difficult she is finding it. Carrie is her usual self, only now she’s a sensation. A financial and social success, she basks in the lack of complication between her and Big that seems to have allowed them to actually learn to love each other unconditionally and without judgement. She has her man, and she’s happy. That is, until they purchase the apartment.

There’s a hilarious segment of dialogue that occurs between the four after Miranda insensitively encourages Steve the night before, during sex. There’s also a few genuinely awkward and painful moments in the film when you recall the history of these characters. Jennifer Hudson puts in a great turn as Louise, the assistant that Carrie hires as she tries to get her life in order. The two actually have some good chemistry in the movie, that works a great angle of allowing the audience to see Carrie relying on someone else besides the other three for emotional support. Louise represents a completely different type of person in this mix, from an entirely different background, that is grounding more than anything.

This series was such an institution, that men and women both, seemed unable to avoid the natural comparisons to these characters that everyone seems to make. The biggest thing I hear is that everyone can relate to all of them, to some degree. I’m not even just talking about the girls. The men as well, and that includes Aleksander Petrovsky and Aidan. The series, and obviously the movie as well, seems to have become a cultural phenomenon for the working young professionals, who balance emotion and logic constantly, finding themselves exhausted while trying to maintain a sense of self. They waver between openly desiring to find love, while at the same time being strongly and in some cases unwaveringly committed to who they are and what they want. Love must fit in to the spaces that are allowed. If it doesn’t, then they will drown themselves in martinis and margaritas, secretly hoping that if they are destined to be alone, then they will be with each other. These characters are emotionally dependent on each other, and share a bond that is strictly between them, even exclusive from the husbands and significant others that exist. This is the undercurrent that the series producers have so successfully conveyed from the beginning, and which I believe, is exactly what was intended. Some women I talk to think the premise is unrealistic, and portray characters that they resent of the consideration of representing most modern women in some capacity, most times with pieces between the four of them. Others think it’s not about that, and that it is simply a story. Either way, it’s entertaining.

As a concluding element to this…Kim Catrall looks fucking fantastic in this movie. For a 50 year old woman, she redefines the word MILF. Word on the street is that she hates Sarah Jessica Parker in real life, and even referred to their relationship on the set during the series as "strictly professional". You see, this is what I am more interested in. The real dynamic between these four, as in the real life dynamic. Cynthia Nixon is apparently a lesbian in real life, and judging by the personal quote I was recently reading about her on imdb.com, actually has the opinion of marriage that she seems to keep during most of the film. Kim Catrall openly has resentment about the series costing her her third marriage to Mark Levinson, the guy she wrote that orgasm book with. Rumor has it that that was one of the reasons she was so hesitant to return to the movie. It wasn’t only the money, it was also revisiting a character that represented a real life turmoil for her to portray. SJP has been married to Ferris Bueller for a while. She was an original 80′s bratpacker, and managed to actually live with Robert Downey Jr. for about 9 years. That makes her a survivor, because RDJ, if we want to use acronyms, was a maniac during that time. Kristin Davis is made out of cardboard in real life, and requires oil changes.

Check it out. It’s good. Really good. It’s usually pretty difficult not to gloss out a series to big screen adaptation. Word on the street is that the initial script had some big names attached to it to direct. SJP stepped in and flexed some logical muscle, arguing that hiring the team behind Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was completely retarded, and that unless they wanted a national mutiny on their hands, they should migrate everyone…literally everyone who was involved in the show….to the big screen adaptation. In my books, that makes her quite smart.

I managed to sneak to my local Hasty Market on Saturday night. I purchased a pack of cigarettes, a bag of Sour Cream & Onion Humpty Dumpty Chips, and a bottle of refreshing Dasani bottled water by Coke. As I floated to the cash register, I saw the incredible movie collection available at the store. I picked up "We Own The Night", starring the always lovable Robert Duvall, Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, and Eva Mendes. I heard that this movie was gritty, and I decided to gamble my $1.99 for 24 hours. I wanted to see what this ensemble cast could do together, especially since I heard Joaquin Phoenix and Eva Mendes hated each other so much during the filming of the movie, that they almost didn’t finish it.

Is it good? Yes. It was worth the $1.99 I spent. Robert Duvall seems to play the same character in each of the films he is in. So does Mark Wahlberg with his Bostonian whisper talk. I like Mark Wahlberg, but he always seems to give me the impression that he’s annoyed about the fact he’s an actor. Joaquin is his usually jubilant mess of a self, but this is exactly what I like about him. I still maintain that his best role to date was as the sexually frustrated Garry Buckman in the classic Steve Martin flick, "Parenthood". Joaquin has maintained a presence on my radar since I saw him in 8MM, back in 1999. He’s good at conveying confliction and frustration. He’s also good at honing the types of characters who demand these traits that he obviously holds in real life. Have you ever seen this guy in an interview? He shakes and crosses and uncrosses his legs constantly. He’s a living paint shaker this guy. Also, depending on when you catch him, he slurs the hell out of his speech, and usually downs 2-6 bottles of water in the span of a 10 minute sit down with whoever. Diabetic? Maybe? Dehydrated from what he considers real life method acting? Perhaps. Trying to wash out the 20 pills he took the night before, coupled with a liver full of booze? Almost certainly. Joaquin. I love you, and this is why I need you to read this entry, and imagine 6 other readers of the Five O’clock Track Team with me on an imaginary couch. We are staging an intervention. We are genuinely concerned about your erratic insanity and mental stability. You act weird, but you are brilliant. It seems as though the characters you play have no end as you exit a movie set. We sense that this is who you really are. If this is so, you need to get help. We have no doubt that your skills as a thespian will ultimately lead to that Academy Award that eluded you for your portrayal of Johnny Cash. Will you live to see it? We’re not sure. Posthumous Oscars are never as good as when the people receiving them are alive, unless you go down in a massive ball of flames, like out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel or something…and we wouldn’t put it past you. We’re asking you to get help. That is…unless…it will stifle you eccentric brilliance. Let us know. You seem like a cool guy, and if afforded the opportunity, I might want to party with you.

Back to the film…it’s good. Solid performances all around for the most part. The gritty factor is high, with a cool Russian mob element to it that is scarily believable. The most compelling thing about this movie is the war on the street between the criminals and the police, and how there is an element of the police being fearful because of the casualty rate they suffer in the film. Russian mobsters are bad ass. No doubt. There is also an element of blood runs thicker than anything in this film, with it’s family theme, as Duvall and Wahlberg play Dad and Son Grasinsky, the career cop combo to Phoenix’s Bobby Green, the ugly duckling brother who didn’t want, changed his last name, and instead went on to manage and mingle a club serving as a front for drug trafficking. Phoenix’s performance in this film is quite good. He stands out here.

Worth renting? Yes.