Film Review: At least no one said, “You sank my battleship!”

Producers looking for board games that can be adapted into movies will find an abundance of choice. Just think, Snakes and Ladders starring Samuel L. Jackson (“You’re going the f–k down!”). Or Malarky, the story of Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian’s wedding.

For now, audiences have Battleship, a booming, brainless blockbuster based on the 1967 guessing game. Let’s see how the movie fares in a game against itself:

School is in session: Oprah’s Lifeclass comes to Toronto

Credit: Oprah.com

More than 8,000 people packed a Toronto conference room Monday for Oprah Winfrey’s first broadcast in Canada. The sold-out event brought the media icon together with such “life experts” for a taping of two episodes of Lifeclass: The Tour on Winfrey’s OWN Network. Here’s my timeline of events from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre:

9:01 a.m.  The school of Oprah is in session. Entrepreneur W. Brett Wilson gapes at the crowd from the stage: “This looks like the largest stagette I’ll ever appear at.”

9:13  Spiritualist Deepak Chopra is our first period teacher. “As you’re listening to me, become aware of the listener. … That’s your soul.” My soul is growling. No. That’s my stomach.

9:45  Kernel of truth from host Jessica Holmes: “God gives us everything we need. Well, China gives us everything we need.”

9:48  Inspirational author Iyanla Vanzant explains the commentary from your boss and mother. “If you don’t tell the truth to yourself about yourself, other people will tell it to you and you will hear it as criticism.”

The last slice of pie: American Reunion, a review

Jim Levenstein hasn’t had the best of luck. In 1999, his father caught him humping a pastry. In 2001, he superglued his left hand to his privates and his right to a pornographic VHS (the Net generation may not recognize this historical artifact). Then in 2003, he ruined his wedding cake when remnants of his “manscaping” blew into the kitchen. (You just need see his father’s eyebrows to imagine the flurry of fur.)

As audiences catch up with Jim in 2012, we wonder what humiliating misadventures might befall our horny hero.

The good and the bad of it is — more of the same.

Charles Duhigg on how to make and break habits

I loved this book. I talked about it with my friends for weeks and they obliged me by nodding and smiling. Highly recommend it. Here’s my chat with author Charles Duhigg in the Post (March 27, 2012):

More than 40% of our daily actions are habits, according to research. Everything from driving to making breakfast to having sex have become automatic routines requiring little brain power. Habits are easy to establish, harder to break. But they can be changed, as Charles Duhigg, an award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times, writes in his new book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. In it, Duhigg pairs science with real-life examples to explain how changing the right habit can change everything.

At the make-up counter: Lipsticks and eyelashes

EYELASHES: To flutter is to flirt. Yet I have never heard a man check out a lady’s facial hair (“Man, did you see how she blinked those lashes?”).

Nonetheless, the pursuit for thicker, longer, darker and fuller eyelashes is an obsession for me, and for many. Lashes frame and enhance the eyes (the anatomical area many women would remind men serves as a window to the soul).

The cosmetics industry has responded with a myriad of products — you can wave a wand, you can glue on fakes, you can grow your own — and I tried several of them out.

LIPS: My collection of lipsticks currently consists of brown shades with names such asnutmeg and coffee bean. This sounds — and looks — about as sexy as a kitchen pantry. On a quest for a fun and fabulous new spring shade, I turned to Burberry Beauty specialist Nolita Shum for some suggestions. Click here for the details in the Post’s style section.

Film review: Silent House starring Elizabeth Olsen

The purveyors of the horror thriller Silent House promise a uniquely scary experience on three fronts: No. 1. It is inspired by true events. No. 2. It is shown in real time. No. 3. It is presented as a single take.

This appears to be a solid foundation for a great time at the movies, namely, the kind where you hide your face in your neighbour’s armpit and clench your butt for two hours. So does real story and real time equal real scary? Not really.

Silent House is a remake of a much creepier, no-budget Uruguayan film of the same name, La Casa Muda. Supposedly based on a real 1940s crime, both films tell the story of a girl who becomes trapped in a rundown house.

The Hollywood remake stars Elizabeth Olsen, the younger sister of the famed twins who grew up in the not silent, but Full House. Fresh from her acclaimed breakout role in 2011′s Martha Marcy May Marlene as a young woman escaping a cult, Olsen’s luck isn’t any better here.

Harry Potter grows up

Millions have watched Daniel Radcliffe grow up during the eight film instalments of Harry Potter and to see him now, in his first post-Potter production, is like running into a young person who you last saw as a child. It’s jarring, leaving you simultaneously excited and wistful.

The boy who lived has become a man. A man who plays a sombre, haunted father with mini-mutton chops no less in The Woman in Black, a horror movie based on another beloved British book.