Tom Purves – Product Management, Fintech & AI

Bliss 2 stars
Apparently, in Chinese and “bliss” means something entirely different. beautifully shot film, of unhappy people in a grim, rainy, and bleak urban Chinese city I couldn’t identify. And they don’t get any happier. yikes.

El Cantante 2-3 stars (depending how much you like salsa)
Had to ditch The Fall (sigh, Dave says his best of the festival) but thanks to the good folks at Visa it was a pretty enjoyable all-around gala event pictures. The story of Hector Lavoe salsa musician and one of the biggest superstars of the 70s/80s Puerto Rican community in NewYork (who knew?). JLo is in it. Marc Antony is in it. Surprisingly(?), they’re both pretty good. in fact every scene in this movie is pretty good. The only trouble is there’s a lot of scenes in this movie each much the same (Hector belting out salsa, JLo acting sassy, Hector falling in to drugs, Hector belting out salsa, JLo being sassy, hector back to drugs…) for about two hours. good music, though a _lot_ of it.

D.O.A.P. (Death of a President) 3 stars
Fictional story about the assassination of an actual president. So the title kind of gives away what’s going to happen, but it’s good, there’s real tension to it, you don’t know how or when and you don’t want him to get shot but obviously you know it’s coming. A little over-the-top in places in its backhanded criticism of the current Bush regime (and bear in mind I’m no Bush apologist myself) but nonetheless worth seeing.

Journals of Knud Rassmussen: 3 stars
The film best described as “interesting”. Portrayal of traditional inuit culture as last recorded by danish explorers (and hence they feature as characters) before the influence of christianity and colonization. More a collection of scenes than any sort of linear arc. Some scenes brilliant, others drag. Worth seeing if you have time or interest in the North but, you should also really read the books.

Woman on the Beach 3.5 stars
Korean movie simple, elegant and much of it improvised. Enjoyable and quite funny imparts. About relationships, fidelity and mostly about human/romantic encounters that almost connect.

ShortBus 4stars
With the whole cast in attendance, finished with a huge ovation at the big Ryerson theatre last night. A stunning film in more ways than one. Same director as Hedwig and the angry inch. Now I’d love to see this film get wide release in the U.S. (where it’s set), if you would think of Janet Jackson’s nipple as a malicious bb gun to the eye of american decency and family values, then consider this movie a hydrogen bomb… This movie would make hard-corn porn director blush (be prepared), but somehow amazingly, the sex bits all consistently poetically (if not hilariously) appropriate. And the funniest thing is this movie isn’t even really about sex, even though the characters seem to practice and obsess over it frequently (because that’s just life isn’t it? even if the rest of us aren’t quite so omnivorous and er, acrobatic about it). And a killer soundtrack scored by Yo Le Tengo featuring Hidden Cameras, many others…

My old friends, since you’ve been asking, here what’s new with me these days. Much! Starting just last week I’ve taken on a great new client. That work is going to be keeping me really busy 3-4 days of the week for the next few weeks. I’m helping out one of downtown’s major financial organization with a project that’s both rather enjoyable and devilishly secret.

While that work is paying the bills, Jevon and I are fast at work on the Firestoker poject. Yes, watch for these rumours to start coming true around the 22nd of September. Of course, if you can’t wait this long feel free to give me a call, let’s go for coffee and I’ll give you private demo of our upcoming product. In other very cool Firestoker news, Jo Brown has just agreed to join our team, at least for the near term. She’s in charge of sales and we’ve anointed her the Queen of Revenue. (yes my gosh, revenue! how déclassé un-web2.0 of us, and she doesn’t even keep a blog — oh the humanity…) And of course, we’re hiring developers too and hoping to make an announcement on that soon as well. You saw the job posting right?

And lastly with the other 2 or 3 of the 26 hours of the day, I’m signed up for a completely irrational number of filmfest movies and concerts this month. Mini-reviews to come! and then democamp and casecamp and with luck, another enterprise 2.0 camp…

what of the other usual sorts of personal updates? no, sadly no new spouses, houses, little ones to report. No, no puppy, not even a fish. Maybe next month? At least items for the long-term checklist, alongside “sleep”.