The basic premise of the Safe House sees Matt Weston (Reynolds), an inexperienced CIA agent who’s the solitary staffer in a South African safe house, get the most hands on experience of his career. Soon after the famous rogue CIA agent, Tobin Frost (Washington) is brought in for questioning, the house is attacked, eventually causing Weston to flee with Frost – and so begins the non-stop shaky camera car chasing, gun shooting and CIA conspiracy-ing adventure.

There isn’t much else to this movie other than the aforementioned action, and it barely slows down enough to let you get to know the characters very well. I liked the idea of the “trust no one” aspect of the movie, but I feel it was a shadow of what it could have been. Washington shows the same kind of intensity that he brought to his role in Training Day with Ethan Hawke and Reynolds is believable as the under-used agent who’s somewhat gullible, but I thought they under used the talent in favour of loud noises. There were glimmers of Washington getting into Reynolds’head, but that was mostly at the beginning and after a while it trailed off.

If you’re looking for an action movie with a lot of car chases and loud gun shooting then this is the film for you. If you’re looking for a solid script that lets the actors shine, then you might want to pass this one over. I give Safe House a 2.5/5.

As part of Winterlicious, the night featured a competition of three student chefs each creating three citrus-themed dishes (app, entree, dessert)  served to three celebrity judges (Christian Pritchard, Chef Lynn Crawford and Chef Jeff Crump). The night was emceed by Mildred’s owner and executive chef, Donna Dooher who did a fantastic job keeping everyone entertained.

The chefs had very limited time to prepare their dishes under hot stage lights, with people (like me) photographing them and the judges of course, critiquing each of their choices. In the end, Chad Shetty from the Niagara College Culinary School took home the big prize of $2,000 after receiving some high praise from the judges on each of his plates. Congrats also have to go out to Greg Light from Humber College and Cortney Zettler from Stratford Chefs School whose plates looked equally delicious (in my humble opinion).

Guest meals were separate from the competition, but also featured a citrus-theme in the appetizer and four courses, and were prepared by the staff at Mildred’s:

First Course: Avocado salad with carbonated Florida grapefruit

The first course to start our night was an interesting blend of citrus with spiciness, which was quite good. I didn’t eat the onion, but the hot pepper went well with the grapefruit and avocado.

Second Course: BC Albacore tuna and Florida grapefruit segments in tofu orange sauce, with baby arugula and truffled ginger soy vinaigrette

Next up was this tuna meal. I’m slightly allergic to seafood, so I could only grab a bit of the fish. However, the rest of the plate was very well done and the arugula, ginger soy vinaigrette and grapefruit was an excellent blend of flavours.

Third Course: Chicken and house-made merguez tagine with medjool dates and Florida orange juice, served on a bed of Florida orange juice infused couscous

By far this was my favourite meal of the night. As soon as the dish was served I was immediately excited to try it. The chicken was perfectly done and fell apart in my mouth. It went well with the orange juice infused couscous, which wasn’t as citrus-y as I had expected.

Dessert: House-made ricotta torta della nona with Florida orange juice, orange zest and topped with orange syrup and a Florida orange segment

A close second was this dessert. The orange syrup made the torta, which was creamy and not sweet, taste just perfect. I’m not a huge fan of sweets so this dessert suited my palate quite well.

Overall the night went very well and the competition felt like I was watching a Food Network show while I ate. I would have loved to have tried the dishes prepared by the students because their presentations looked extremely well done. I’d also like the opportunity to make it out to Mildred’s once again because I enjoyed it so much, though my treks to Liberty Village are unfortunately few and far between.

Room is told from five year old Jack’s point of view, which definitely took some getting used to. Throughout the first half of the story we repeatedly get to experience Jack and Ma’s routine Room. Ma, who has been in Room for seven years, religiously makes sure Jack is fed, has his (limited) exercise, learns his math and reading, and watches one hour of TV each day.

Ma is a good mother, given her situation. You can tell she’s emotionally damaged from her ordeal, but she does everything to make sure Jack is as educated and healthy as she can. With the TV in the room, she attempted to protect Jack by created a fantasy world, where everything in Room was real, and everything outside was TV. She also physically protected him, from the man who visited every night.

Old Nick, as Jack calls him, is the man. He brings food, Sunday treat, and stays for the night. When he comes, Ma makes sure Jack is already in Wardrobe. Before sleep each night, Jack counts the number of creaks in his head. Old Nick makes Jack’s Ma upset.

It wasn’t until the second half that I really became enthralled with the book and couldn’t put it down. I felt like I was really in the head of Jack, and at times was frustrated like he was when things didn’t go his way, or seemed completely foreign to him. At the same time, I felt Donoghue did a fantastic job of conveying what was happening to the two of them through things like Ma’s behaviour and Jack’s innocent observations.

My biggest qualm with the book would be the sometimes inconsistent writing style. It seems Donoghue tried too hard to capture the vocabulary of a five year old, mixing ridiculous word combinations with amazing vocabulary. Jack was relatively well-educated by Ma, and had television to teach him proper sentence structure as well, but so often he would essentially come up with jibberish – maybe chalk that up to his living situation, I don’t know, but it made the reading experience very choppy at times.

If you’re looking to pick this one up, be patient and you won’t regret it. While the basic premise is something we’ve all seen in news headlines, it’s a unique take on writing and you have to give it to Donoghue for attempting it. I quite enjoyed Room and the story really stuck with me – so much so, I had to take a few days afterward to get my mind right to write this post and even pick up another book. I give it a 4/5.

I’m not a smoker, and outside of my parents (who quit smoking a few years ago) I don’t preach to others that they should quit – it’s ultimately a personal choice. For those looking to quit though, the “Break It Off” campaign recently launched by the Canadian Cancer Society looks like a great resource. It offers help for people at each stage of the quitting process, including a a combination of 13 different methods to quit, because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.

They’ve also included a cool initiative to help make the whole break up a bit more social. Called the “World’s Biggest Breakup“, it allows anybody to upload a video of themselves breaking it off with smoking; even non-smokers can show support. I’m not big on making videos, but I can see how this may help people share in the experience together. As of publication there are four journal postings – I expect that number will grow quite a bit as people find out more about the initiative.

Available on both iPhone and Android devices, the app seems friendly enough to use. Similar to the site, it offers tips on quitting but also lets users track his or her progress and share milestones on Facebook. My favourite feature is the ability to see how much money can be saved from quitting. I’m sure other than health reasons, the ridiculous cost is probably why many decide to quit in the first place – I know it’s one of the big reasons I never started.

As with quitting anything, the willpower must be there. If a person isn’t really willing to give it up, no number of websites, Youtube videos or apps will help them get there. For those who are willing, this looks worth checking out.

When I read the article on Thomas choosing to not attend the photo op with the President due to his personal “opinions and political beliefs” according to team president Cam Neely, I first thought he was being petty. Why wouldn’t he show up to a non-partisan photo op? Each winning team in the major sports leagues does it, and on a smaller scale he’s creating a distraction that I’m sure his team could do without.

Looking online, fans on Thomas’s and the Boston Bruins‘ Facebook pages passionately share congrats with him or anger at his actions. Based on those updates, the boycott has polarized his fan base to the extreme. One such fan, an American living in Finland, wrote an open letter to Thomas about his actions. Here’s a paragraph that stood out:

“Today, i lost respect for you as a person. It’s not because we have different political views, because you have a right to your opinion, but because you couldn’t find it in yourself to be the bigger man and say “thank you” to someone you disagree with when all theyw ere tyring to do was a nice thing. It makes me question how you’d treat a fan, like me, if I wanted you’re autograph and I was wearing an Obama t-shirt.” [SIC]

As people formed their opinions about him, Thomas remained mum on the reason why he declined the offer. That is until about 6pm when he chose to explain himself via his Facebook page, well after the word started spreading. Here’s what he had to say:

As you can see, Thomas noted the boycott wasn’t based on politics or party, but as a criticism of the way government operates and treats Americans, as a whole. I have to admit I didn’t expect that, and was conflicted.

The vibe I get from his update is reminiscent of the ‘Occupy movement’, which I fully stand behind. Like many others, I was going on the angle that he was opposed to Obama’s administration, which he’s entitled to, but it also seemed like a petty reason to not attend the simple event. Even though I now understand why, I still feel he could have made the effort to show up for his team. There’s more he could do to protest government, with the platform he has.

One of the reasons I waited to post this is that I wanted to see what he had to say. I think he should have come out with his reasoning immediately because the speculative comments have tarnished the day for his teammates and himself. There were many terrible comments directed his way, but TSN’s Dave Hodge tweeted this libelous gem stood out the most because he basically calls Thomas a racist:

It’s a clear example of why you should hold off on your commentary until you have the facts, and in this case, Hodge should know better and not have tweeted that garbage at any time. A search for @TSNDaveHodge name on Twitter at least shows many are giving it to him good; let’s hope he apologizes to Thomas and his family.

As for Thomas, since it wasn’t a mandatory team event, he likely won’t be suspended for his actions, but I wonder if this will impact the way his teammates think of him? How did you feel about Tim Thomas’s decision to not show up at the White House, and once you knew why, did your opinion change?