I rarely venture out of the Mayfair for my movie watching, because I am thrifty and there is no better place to enjoy a movie than the Mayfair...I also tend to get rather snobby at the often sub-par multiplex cinematic experience. On occasion I'll get free passes to preview screenings though, and if I have a free night and I've seen the Mayfair offerings of the night, that is sometime enough to get me to venture behind competitor's borders.

I wish that I hadn't of gotten free passes to see the Red Dawn re-make, and that I wasn't movie geek curious enough to see anything and everything. I didn't think the movie would be all that good, it's source material isn't exactly perfection in itself, but it was just a train-wreck of horribleness. I give a pass to Chris Hemsworth and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, because I like them and they have proven their acting ability elsewhere, everyone else involved should be ashamed in themselves. The film was directed by Dan Bradley, a veteran stunt-guy and 2nd unit director, and this proves that skill and experience in one film profession does not necessarily equate success when jumping over to another job title.

It's a shame, because I have no ill-will towards the ongoing trend of remakes and adaptations and sequels in Hollywood, and this will become the new go-to example that Hollywood is out of ideas. This was one of the movies that sat on a shelf for a couple of years due to MGM's financial troubles, too bad it couldn't have stayed there.

I liked the original Expendables film. It was good over-the-hill action, fun seeing all of these icons and semi-icons on the screen together blowing stuff up, but it all left me neutral as the credits rolled.

Cut to a couple of years later, and due to the films financial success, the inevitable sequel was produced. Sylvester Stallone remained on-board the second time around as star and a screenwriter, but stepped away from the director chair with Simon West (Con Air) taking over the gig. Another point of interest was the promise of slightly bigger roles for first movie cameo appearance stars Bruce Willis and now non-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger. All of the Expendable mercenary soldiers return, along with the addition of upcoming action hero Scott Adkins, Thor's lil' brother Liam Hemsworth, and the addition of another senior statesman of action, Chuck Norris.

For me, the real excitement to see this movie is that Jean Claude Van Damme came to his senses and joined the cast. Evidently he was offered up a role in the original and for some reason he passed on the opportunity to be in what had a chance to be a big hit movie...I can't imagine that he had a more promising gig to keep him occupied instead.

The best part of all is that he's the bad guy, his characters name is Jean Vilain, and he has a fight with none other than Sylvester Stallone. I'm sure there is lots of other guns-a-blazing, explosion filled, bad guy killing action...but what could possibly be more awesome than Stallone vs Van Damme. I think we're in an age of never-say-never in cinema, and in my youth I never would have imagined such a battle ever actually being filmed and put into a movie. On top of that I think there's a scene where Willis and Schwarzenegger drive around in a tiny car shooting stuff.

We've been screening the trailer at the Mayfair, and it has me genuinely excited to see it. I don't know if Expendables 2 will be a good movie, but I can pretty much guarantee that it will be a kick-ass awesome movie. I will be cheering for JCVD to defeat those pesky Expendables.

The Expendables 2 - Tuesday November 20th at 9:00pm / Wednesday November 21st at 9:15pm at the Mayfair Theatre

One of the perks offered up in our ongoing fundraising efforts at the Mayfair on indiegogo is the opportunity to become a permanent part of the theatre via your name on a plaque on your favourite seat. The above image shows what seats have been snatched up so far (more have actually been purchased than that, just not reserved as of yet).

You know how when you get to the theatre looking forward to sitting in your favourite place, only to find that someone has beaten you to your chair? Well, if you are kind enough to donate to our cause in this manner, then now and forever you can point at said person and with plaque like proof prove that they are indeed in what is your seat. It's the best kind of charity, the manner that will leave you mad with movie theatre god-like seat possession powers!

Celeste & Jesse Forever was co-written and co-produced by Rashida Jones, which staggeringly enough means that she has some real talent in film production and writing on top of the awesomeness that she already had just from being actress Rashida Jones as is. The movie hit some heavier notes than I had expected, and at the same time had some of the funniest laugh out loud moments I've seen in a film all year. Although, even with her character as the one causing trouble and being a bit unsympathetic in certain moments of the film, you none-the-less have to make the unlikely to be realistic and mighty suspension of disbelief leap that someone would want to divorce Rashida Jones.

Celeste & Jesse Forever - last night to catch it on the big screen - Sunday November 18th at 6:30pm at the Mayfair Theatre

Tomorrow is not only a chance for you to charitably support our ongoing digital projection fundraiser, it's also a cinematic experience that you can partake in few other places on our planet than the Mayfair Theatre.

Schlock Around the Clock: The 24 Hour Trash Film Festival gets under-way at 1:00pm on Saturday November 17th, and the dissent into madness will conclude (as the title suggests) a whopping 24 hours later on early Sunday afternoon.

The marathon of 14 wonderfully horrendous motion picture masterpieces being presented in glorious VHS are: To Catch a Yeti, Cool As Ice, The Barbarians, TerrorVision, Deadly Prey, Film House Fever, The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of Yik Yak, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Enemy Gold, Eliminators, Skyscraper, Undefeatable, Heavenly Bodies and Hell Comes to Frogtown (trailers all available via the link above).

The word hero gets thrown around a lot, but if you attend, watch and survive this
from-a-seated-position marathon, you are truly a hero that will be worshipped and admired for the ages.

I haven't been a video game player for quite a number of years. It wasn't really a conscious decision, but my enjoyment at playing video games fell to the wayside thanks to there not being enough hours in the day. From childhood and then through about college years or so, I finished some 250 video games, and played who knows how many others on top of that. One of those games that I played a lot of but didn't finish, because it can't really be finished, was Tetris. I achieved 216 lines on Tetris on four separate occasions, clearly that's where my block-falling-line-making skills top out. I figure that I played Gameboy Tetris for roughy 87 bazzillion hours.

Even though I'm out of the video game world besides for semi-annual Mario Kart-ing or games in which I shoot my friends, I none the less remain fascinated with the video game art-form and culture. The King of Kong, a truth is stranger than fiction documentary about the insane world of competitive Donley Kong-ing is not only a great documentary, but is also without question one of my favourite movies of all time. I was also very impressed with the more recent Indie Game: The Movie, about the trials and tribulations geeks must undertake in the stressful and challenging world of independent video game production.

The latest doc to keep me enthralled about the world of video games is Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. The movie explores arguably the most successful video game ever produced, and the assembly of the greatest players in the world for a line-making puzzle-piece 8-bit championship playoff. What's amazing about the power of a great documentary, is that no matter the subject matter, it has the power to keep a viewer in rapt attention and on the edge of their cliche seat. I haven't played Tetris in some 16 or 17 years, and yet the climax of the film had me holding my breath and mesmerized. Much like being hungry after seeing a good food themed movie, it also made me want to try my hand at Tetris again.

If you are a Tetris / video game fan, this movie is truly a must for you to see. If you are unfamiliar with or would like to be re-acquainted with the most addictive non-drug thing ever to be created by humans, I dare you to see this movie and I hope it doesn't de-rail and ruin your life too badly. You don't need friends and family and career and hobbies and hopes and dreams...making Tetris lines all day is much more rewarding.

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters - Friday November the 16th at 9pm, Thursday the 22nd at 9:15pm at the Mayfair Theatre.

On my current stack of recently read comics is 2012's CBLDF Liberty Annual. CBLDF stands for the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund, a non-profit organization which prides itself in the protection of the comics art form and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians and readers from the horrors of censorship.

Not only to proceeds from the comic books sales all go towards a good cause, as an added bonus the book is actually filled with some great work from an impressive collection of comic professional. The book features the writing and artistic talent of Andy Diggle, Robert Kirkman, James Robinson, Mike Allred, Terry Moore and Phil Jimenez to name but a few. Go drop down your $5 bucks, get a well worth the read comic, and as a karmic bonus do a good geeky deed all at the same time.

My talented pal Tom Folwer (who has drawn all kinds of nifty stuff ranging from Venom to Star Wars: Jango Fett to Hulk: Season One) was kind enough to donate his awesome rendition of Walter Sobchak to the Mayfair Theatre's Indiegogo portion of the fundraising campaign. I am happy to report that it has found a happy home, for the much appreciated to receive donation price tag of $300 bucks. Thank you Tom, thank you to our art purchaser, thank you John Goodman.

Tonight the live comedic genius event that is the Found Footage Festival returns to the Mayfair Theatre. For those not in the know, the mastermind's behind the phenomenon find the most bizarre things ever recorded to the VHS medium, and then tour their findings to an audience of appreciative geeks. I am a big fan of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and their style of audio commentary comedy is very akin to that. Their visit last year was the most hilarious thing that I saw at the theatre all year, and I'm looking very forward to seeing what insanity they have to offer and make fun of tonight.

Found Footage Festival Volume 6 - Monday November 12th at 9:30pm - Mayfair Theatre

Watched Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies last night, the middle chapter of 2012's presidential trilogy which began with Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer and will conclude with the more simply titled Lincoln. The movie comes from the copy-cat grindhouse geniuses at The Asylum, the makes of such other classic pieces of cinema the like of Snakes on a Train, Paranormal Entity and Transmorphers. Good luck to Mr Spielberg at keeping his Lincoln effort at the high cinematic quality that the first two movies have achieved. Also, why does Lincoln have two l's?

Now that I'm back on Canadian soil, I will jump back onto the ongoing 2012 Mayfair Theatre fundraising bandwagon. Currently under-way is our online Indiegogo campaign portion of the event. For a total of 30 days (until December 2nd at 11:59pm) you can donate to our cause, and depending on how much you are interested in donating, there are a number of fun and interesting rewards set up which you can get a hold of in trade. Perks include a candy embiggining card, getting your name put on a Mayfair seat for eternity, you can present a film, or get a platinum card that will get you into free movies for a year.

Thanks to everyone for their continued well wishes and kind donations that will be used to acquire us a new digital projector and help keep us open and screening movies for many more a year to come.

My girlfriend and I, and our new Dunny's, are headed back home (after pit-stop's in Denver and Chicago). I am going to again multi-task my travels with the reading of a whole bunch of comic books. See you back in Canada.

Bad news. It seems like my girlfriend has been food poisoned. Funny (not funny ha ha, but funny weird) news. The exact same thing happened when I travelled to NYC with a friend of mine last year. Exact same time-frame in relation to the vacation, exact same evil food eating scenario. So, as happened last time, despite protest on my part I was encouraged to get out of the hotel and do stuff as she lay in a food poisoned coma.

I went to the official Kid Robot store in Vegas, and today was the unleashing of another round of limited edition Dunny vinyl toys. I would have waited and bought them from Lost Marbles, my home-town purveyor of such things, but last time Kid Robot put out a ultra limited edition semi-secret round of toys akin to this batch I completely missed out. They were sold out before I even knew that they existed. Following that I got my learn on at the Natural History Museum and the Neon Museum. The Natural History Museum has actual live sharks and cool not-live dinosaurs, like this crazy looking deinonychus all covered in feathers. If indeed it ends up that a whole bunch of dinosaurs spent millions of years covered in feathers, Jurassic Park is suddenly a little bit less scary.

After checking in to make sure that the girlfriend was ok, I went and checked out some Ocean's 11 locations, and braved some impending tornado like winds for a final check off the Vegas list by getting some food at Pink's Hot Dogs. Another nice day in Vegas, though of course sad to have done it solo, accompanied only by the Nerdist podcasts. Lesson learned for one and all, if travelling with me, only eat exactly what I eat.

We trekked south along the strip to go and see the famous Welcome to Vegas sign. The landmark was much smaller than I expected, and there was an Elvis in attendance, seemingly kinda' just hanging around. What's amazing about Vegas is that for a city that's so famously big and loud and bright, if you look out on the horizon there is endless an endless desert of nothing. Down by the welcome sign, there's nothing much visible to the South, and if you look East, a lot of sun-baked sand.

We partook in lazing about in the Riviera pool, and later on did the slightly more exciting and maybe a bit more dangerous zip-lining over Fremont Street. For some reason I was zipping at an exceedingly high and seemingly non-stopping speed, and for a brief second I thought I might just fly right through the end of the line. Luckily the scientific principal and safety enforcements placed on the structure stood true. While walking along the actual Fremont Street we witnessed lots of giant Neon signs, girls dancing on bars, and a Superman chatting with a pair of Elvis (there's a lot of poorly costumed folks trying to trick you into taking a picture with them in trade for money in Vegas).

We ate dinner at an impressively giant buffet, then took in some musical Broadway culture with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It was very good, but I love the movie and portraying a role that I saw Dolly Parton portray first = big shoes to fill. I also missed her original songs from the production, which were done for the movie and aren't in the stage show.

The night was capped off with a visit to fake New York City, and a ride on their roller coaster. It provided a lovely view of the city at night, and simultaneously made me feel like I was about to die on numerous twists and turns in a short few minutes of time.

Also, while visiting Vegas, Obama was re-elected as President of the United States. I can confirm nor deny that I assisted his victory with a vote.

We found a great lil' vegan place called Red Velvet, hiding in a mall nearby to our hotel. I had a delicious wrap and salad and we contained ourselves to walking away with only one giant delicious dessert in tow.

We visited the local roller derby shop, the Viva Las Vegas Skate Company, because we are too late in the season to catch a bout and derby folks love acquiring derby shirts from foreign lands. We hit a bunch of Vegas landmarks and touristy spots like the exterior of the Bellagio where Clooney and the Ocean's 11 gang stood, and the flamingo's and ridiculously enormous coy fish at the Flamingo.

We also spotted some pretty great local flare like an amazing seeing eye dog valiently guiding his master through the insane streets of Vegas. Equally impressive, though much funnier, was a tough as nails bus employee seemingly whose job it is to make sure drunks don't die.

When in Vegas there are a number of fun yet cliché things to do while you visit, mayhaps at the top of that list is going to a burlesque show. We went to one from the talented ladies at X Burlesque, and I just might believe their claims that it is the best burlesque show on the planet. Yes, I fully admit that I enjoy mostly naked beautiful ladies as much as the next fella, but their dancing skills were truly astounding. It was a very impressive show.

Before the burlesque, we went for dinner at Planet Hollywood. A pretty touristy restaurant chain I know, but it's probably not too much of a surprise that I never get tired of looking at movie memorabilia. As you enter the restaurant, you are greeted by a trio wardrobe collections from Expendables 2, Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone and Jean Claude Van Damme (which is the jacket that I wanted to steal). Overhead there was an X-Wing, a Tie-Fighter and the Enterprise. My favourite thing about the place is how amazing pieces of motion picture history are displayed alongside left-over crap from garbage movies that no-one would ever care about preserving. For example: Princess Leia's gun from Empire Strikes Back, a pair of boxing gloves from Raging Bull, and the axe from The Shining...alongside a dress that Paris Hilton wore in some movie. Example 2: The ankle bustin' hammer from Misery, gold bars from Diamonds are Forever, and the frickin' Maltese Falcon!...alongside something Lindsay Lohan wore in a stripper movie.

Had a safe and uneventful flight to Vegas, with a brief lunch-time stop-over in Newark, spent most of the travels getting caught up on reading comics. We are staying at the Riviera, and because I am a giant geek, the first thing that I wanted to know was what films shot there. Ends up that it has a pretty historic track record as a film location, hosting films such as Diamonds are Forever, Casino, Austin Powers, and the original Ocean's Eleven.

All of the hotel staff and bus drivers and waiters are the utmost of professionals, have seemingly have a genuine sense of enjoying their job and workplace. Though my first instinct is that it is going to be a nice and worthwhile place to vacation, there is also easily spotted evidence that this place also crushes hopes and dreams via the whole gambling thing. There is also a sense of being transported back in time to an era when everyone smoked cigarettes. It's such a bizarre thing to see being done by dozens if not hundreds of people inside a building, you practically feel that you have stepped into a Twilight Zone of a plot twist.

On our first night in the city, we managed to fit in a very Vegas happening of dinner and a stand-up show. I wish I had written down the comedians names, they were both very funny. The show located in a cosy hotel located club featured a proud and loud Sarah Silverman-esque 40 year old woman, and a silver-haired veteran insult the audience Don Rickles type pro.

I was naive to the fact that along with all other forms of tie-ins and merchandising that cross-over to everything in our world, there are also pop-culture themed gambling machines. We played a Jaws game, and a very impressive Christopher Reeve Superman game featuring movie clips, audio and the rousing John Williams score. It was the perfect game for nerds and children alike, and we walked away with an impressive $10 profit.

Tomorrow I'm off for a lil' getaway to the wilds of Las Vegas, Nevada. Traditionally what happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas, but I will be sure to share all of my thrilling adventures with the blog-verse. If not thrilling adventures, I will at least do my bestest to regale in stories of watching burlesque and music stuff, eating buffet, seeing lots of drunk people and bright shiny lights and witnessing gamblers shattered hopes and dreams. I will also be there on election day, so I'll do my best to help out in that manner as well.

If this poster for the acclaimed Winnipeg produced, post-apocalyptic, pop-culture, no-budget (or $2,000...which is as close to no-budget as a production can get) masterpiece doesn't make you want to halt all other plans and run out of the house to see this movie, you may have to stop everything and re-evaluate everything about your life.

Manborg - Ottawa Premiere - One night only at the Mayfair Theatre - Saturday November 3rd at 11:15pm

Tomorrow I will join my derby family for a road trip across the border to Vermont, for the Rideau Valley Roller Girls Vixens team to battle the Grade A Fancy of the Green Mountain Derby Dames. If you happen to be in the Vermont area, specifically 105 Pearl Street in Essex Junction, do join us for what I'm sure will be a great night of derby action. As long as I don't get halted at the border for being confused with a criminal names Jamar (that happened on my last derby border crossing), I'll see yah there.

Join us at the Mayfair Theatre tonight and wrap up the Halloween season with Little Shop of Horrors, the greatest evil alien plant musical ever made in the history of motion pictures.

We've had a great month of October at the theatre, including sold out screenings of Shining, Exorcist and Rocky Horror Picture Show (thank you Mayfair patrons!), and Little Shop of Horrors is an excellent way to cap things off. This movie not only features the comedic talents of Rick Moranis, Bill Murray and Steve Martin, it's also directed by Yoda (or Frank Oz...but same thing). It's our very own day after Halloween scary movie kinda boxing day, filled with murder and Motown musical styling, tonight at 9:20pm.