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movie

Jeff Milner Movie Review – The Pianist

Based on the journal of a World War II survivor from the Warsaw Ghetto this movie gets my highest “WWII holocaust movie” rating since Shindler’s List. It’s done very tastefully and at the same time isn’t so depressing that it’s impossible to watch.

Whether I agree that Adrian Brody deserved the best actor Oscar for his performance is beside the point (I don’t by the way — I think Daniel Day Lewis should have gotten it for The Gangs of New York.)

The Warsaw ghetto, as far as I understand, is the one place that the Jewish population fought back against the Germans who were shipping them off to death camps. I would have preferred to see more about the resistance itself, but because of the situation that the protagonist, Spielman, was in, we only get to see a little of the fighting and hear about through rumours and word of mouth from those around him.

I highly recommend this movie because of the importance of remembering the holocaust but in particular because this story was based so closely on Spielman’s journal and also some incidents were taken right from the directors own personal experiences. He was a holocaust survivor as well.

If you rent the DVD I also recommend that you watch the special features disk — the story of survival.

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Miscellaneous

Jeff Milner Movie Review – Bruce Almighty

Anna-Maria, Zee, and I saw Bruce Almighty last week. I was worried that all the funny parts were in the preview and that it had the potential to be a big fat bomb. However I was pleasantly surprised at it’s originality and I have to admit that after the last few years of very little Jim Carrey movies I was ready to see him back at it. The movie is a little flat and at times it’s disappointing to see Jim Carrey’s character not really reaching his potential with his new powers.

If I had Godlike powers, I’m sure I could come up with some pretty great benefits to mankind and although I would probably benefit from the work I did, I wouldn’t be so annoyingly self centered. I guess Jim Carrey’s character figuring that out is the point of the movie.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Mom, Dad, Jackie, and Glenda, I mean Glen, Visit

Mom and Dad came to visit yesterday. We went to Kimball to see the site of the upcoming Milner Family Reunion. 100 years of Milners here in Canada. Anyway Jackie and Glen are here and ready to head to bed so I’m going to have to finish my post later.

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Miscellaneous

Happy Forth of July Yanks

Hope you have good fireworks tonight. I enjoyed the fireworks here in Canada on July 1st as I was driving home from the wedding late Tuesday night. Fireworks are fun.

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Miscellaneous

Kayaking

My cousin Aaron sent me the kayaking pictures he took last weekend. He also sent a pretty cool video he made of me kayaking in a big hole. It’s actually a pretty disappointing video because I didn’t stay in the hole very long and didn’t do anything really that neat. Just moments before though, I got sucked into the hole and then spit right out of the water. It was pretty cool. In the meantime you can also see this picture of me kayaking from the same weekend (May 30th, 2003).

Categories
Miscellaneous

Environics West Update

“Hello, I’m Jeff Milner, representing Environics West a market research company. We are currently running a survey on dining experiences. I am not selling anything. May I please speak to the person in the home 18 years of age or older and has the next birthday?”

Click.

“Hello? Hello?”

So I had my first day of surveying yesterday. They spent the first few hours training us and then from 7:15 to 10:30 I was on the phones. It’s actually not that bad of a job. I think I may even like it, plus I will still have plenty of time to go swimming during the day before my shift. The only negative thing about the job is that each day I only get 5 hour shifts, so it is going to be extra hard to get in a 40 hour work week. Hopefully that lifeguarding job comes through.

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Miscellaneous

Mice? Not in my Kingdom!

I think I found some pest “evidence” this morning in my laundry room. It looks to be a pretty big one too – judging by the “evidence”. I guess it’s either a mouse or maybe Jason let his rabbit play around downstairs while he did his laundry, somehow I don’t think that’s it. Although maybe it’s just leftover from before I had the house and it got revealed from moving the laundry machine and dryer around. They did have a pet porcupine here and if I had to guess, I would say it definitely looked like porcupine droppings.

Categories
life swimming

Swimming in the River Near Indian Battle Park

Instead of going to Waterton on Sunday, Anna-Maria, Zee, Sophie (Anna’s dog), and I went down to Indian Battle Park. We had a fire and swam in the river. Afterwards we roasted smokies and marshmallows over the fire. It was a really good day – even though it did start to rain. Even when it rained, it wasn’t that cold – for me at least, and then when the rain stopped it got nice and hot out. I also decided that I want to take Anna-Maria kayaking down the river and get out in Coaldale. I just need to find someone to pick us up. Maybe Dad will bring his truck sometime and we can meet-up at the Nolan Bridge outside of Coaldale.

Animated Gif of Zee Juke, Anna-Maria LeMaistre, and Jeff Milner in the river

Categories
life

Zee and the Lawyer

Anna’s roommate had to go see a lawyer yesterday. She was really surprised that he had a lunch hour from 11:00 to 2:30. How does that fit in with normal society? That’s beside the point. She was there to get a will notarized and when it came time to pay she discovered that the lawyer’s office didn’t take visa or interact as a form of payment. So she explained that she didn’t have any cash and would have to run over to the 7-11 to get some. She said it never even crossed her mind to run out on the bill, but when she came back the lawyer exclaimed, “Oh you’ve just restored my faith in humanity.” Zee then quipped back, “Are you projecting?”

Categories
Miscellaneous

Secret to Immortality May Have Been Discovered

Here is just a quick link about a scientific discovery of the secret to keeping cells from aging.