Not a whole lot to say here, but this feels like a big day in Ottawa! I rode the LRT today just before it ‘officially’ opened, and was surprised and impressed with how normal it all felt!
I’m really excited that my daughter will get to grow up with a real, volume public transit system, something I had in Calgary that proved to be so useful to get me around. The train likely won’t be perfect (no system this complicated ever can be), but it’s such a huge improvement in reliability over buses that I can’t believe it took as long as it did to finally get it up and running.
I’m not sure exactly when I’ll get to take the train to work for the first time (still biking while I can for the time being), but I’m actually looking forward to this winter and getting to commute on the train again!
Left: The view from our front bedroom window, shortly after moving in, on April 27, 2014. Right: The view from our front bedroom window, 1 day after moving in to our new house, on June 7, 2019.
We finished our move on Thursday, June 6 in to our new house, and we couldn’t be happier about it! The view at our old place has changed quite a bit since we first moved in (the lot across the street is fully developed now, and the building you can see has been demolished, for example), but you seriously can’t beat our new view!
Our new house was a can’t-miss from both of us mostly because of the excellent location, and since moving in, it’s been just as excellent as we expected! Who knows what the next 5 years will bring for our family!!
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is what I’m calling my new favourite movie since Forgetting Sarah Marshall [2008] (and they’re so different, don’t even bother making me rank them). I’ve spent a lot of time talking with my friends about how much I love this movie, and so far nobody I’ve met in real life has really come to the same obsessive conclusion about this movie as I have.
I love the YouTube channel FilmJoy, and Movies with Mikey is such a wonderful video essay series, I just have to share this entry with you (but honestly, go pick any movie you love from the back catalogue and you’ll appreciate his take on it). There are lots of great video essays about this movie, this is but one recent example too.
Spider-Verse is a fun and unique movie in just so many ways. It has a great cast, flips expectations on their heads at every turn, it’s hysterical, and is SO beautiful in a way that I’ve never seen in any movie, animated or not. This film won the Oscar for best animated picture, and in a year with other GREAT movies, it wasn’t even close.
I could talk for weeks about the animation style, the amount of detail and passion that so clearly made it in to every frame of this movie, the characters and story which show off stories which have never been seen in Hollywood before. The way this movie is able to carve out a niche for a ‘different’ Spider-Man , while only heightening the ‘legend’ and legacy of the Peter Parker Spider-Man we all know and love is something that other adaptations could only dream of.
I’ve always loved Spider-Man as a character, and the emotional, humourous, and suspenseful moments just hit you SO hard. The soundtrack and musical cues are perfect, the lighting and colour are vivid, imaginative, and visually pleasing in a way you have to see to believe. And the way that the different comic book styles blend together seamlessly makes the world of this movie so immersive you believe everything it asks you to without question.
I could watch this movie over and over again, and it would never get old, or feel stale, because there’s something new or interesting or beautiful to focus on in every single frame through the entire movie. I love everything about Spider-Verse, and I hope that you’re excited to go watch it again reading this, whether you’ve not yet seen it, or whether you’ve seen it a hundred times.
