Rachel The Movie

Last night I watched the movie Rachel Getting Married and I loved it so much. Seriously I think I was crying through half the movie (do I seem to be crying a lot recently??)
The movie is about a young girl Kym leaving rehab for a couple of days to go home and attend her sister's (Rachel) wedding, which is this beautiful concoction of music. I thought the movie was so heartfelt and beautifully filmed, focusing mainly on the relationship between the sisters. There were these scenes of Kym feeling so much pressure and stress, her face is just about to shatter. In between the story which covered the dysfunctional family and their past tragedies, there are these long wedding scenes, the dancing and the toasts and the singing, which wonderfully builds the atmosphere and also the secondary characters. This, along with the rest of the movie which primarily follows Kym, makes the movie nice and balanced. You end up loving both sisters and appreciate their differences and at the end of it, what came out of the movie was the strength of sisterly love.
One of my favourite movies ever.
Why did it only get 7.1 in imdb???

KK2

It seems they are making a new karate kid movie, with the kid being played by Will Smith's son. Nothing good can come of that. Last night before going to my karate class, i decided to have a quick watch of the original karate kid 2. This is when mister miagi goes to japan to face his old enemy and of course little karate kid joins him to offer support. Now I generally really like these kind of movies, love me some Rocky action, mighty ducks, you know sport related movies. These days throw in a bit of marshal arts and Bob's your uncle. But seriously, this movie is bad. Setting bad, acting VERY bad, story pretty bad, Japanese people speaking english BAD. The blossoming love between the kid (whose name i obviously don't recall) and the japanese babe.. bad. Everything bad. so so bad.
and yet I am wondering what happens in Karate kid 3. :-P

ps. one of the biggest problems people tell me about japan is that the society is very male dominated and women are to a large extent in the background. Now i don't know how true this is in reality, but it was surely true in KK2 and you know if it is in the movies, it MUST be true right? :-P

TMI

This post is possibly going to be one of those TMI posts - too much info!!
It might not be a bad idea for you to close the browser right now or simply watch the Wolverine trailer below and then quit.

Are you still here? Well don't say i didn't warn you. Possibly i have made too much of the following so now that read the below, it will seem too inconsequential. There is no winning!!

I have bunions. You don't know what it is? well click on the word!! basically it is a slight deformity of the foot, extremely common, that makes you have a little bump next to the base of my big toe. My right foot's bunion is bigger. It's hereditary and related to how you place your feet and the bunching up of the toes. Recently a friend suggested i use toe spacers to separate my toes and ensure that the bones don't bunch up. I bought them yesterday (finally) and am wearing them today.. and so far, they seem interesting. I am hopeful!!! It's amazing that I didn't know about them earlier. I will have to keep wearing them and write a follow up blog later on, on their effectiveness. They won't reverse the condition but they supposedly improve comfort.
ok, back to wolverine ;-)

JCVD

Last night, Atlanta and I went to watch JCVD with our karate club. The movie is very good, extremely stressful but funny and sad actually. I really felt for van Damme by the end of the movie. I really recommend watching it. Osu!!
Meanwhile, enjoy the following teaser trailer that they showed at Cannes.

The Fall

Last week I watched a spectacular visual celebration, a movie called The Fall, directed by the one-named Tarsem. The movie was set in the 1920s in LA, in a hospital. While a young Romanian girl gets to know another patient--a paralyzed young stuntman--he tells her a fantastical story. The movie reminded me in some ways of Pan's Labyrinth and known my love for that movie, it should be realized that this is a high complement indeed.

The funny thing is that almost half the critics liked the movie and the other half did not. The main criticism was that the director put style before the development of the characters and story. It is true that the scenes in the movie were amazing, like a painting at times with expansive scenes and so much color. It reminded me of the movie Gabbeh. However I also very much liked the story. The amount of tears I shed at the end of the movie was a testimony to the emotional grab of the movie.

Wasabe

I have not been a faithful blogger in the last month or so... and a lot has happened. It all started when we had a family reunion in mid august which coincided with the best of the best movie, The Dark Knight. We watched it on IMAX and it was magnificent - Batman as usual was the torn hero, while his nemesis the Joker was evil and chaos combined. I was reminded of the passing of Heath Ledger and it is such a shame. In some ways I was glad his face was always covered by makeup - it distanced him from his character.

I also went for a visit to LA and met up with some old family friends whom i hadn't seen for nearly 10 years - the kids had grown and they were little women now. I love watching and talking to teenagers and young adults - their views and their thought processes and what they deem as cool. Those years are hard! I remember I really wanted a boy friend but of course at that age, if you don't have the look and the cool cat act, which let me assure you i didn't, then boy friends were rare and scarce. It didn't help that i looked different to a lot of people around me. Now i look back and just think what a life.
My mum used to say to me that being young is beautiful. I didn't use to agree with that but now i see these fresh faced kids and understand what she was talking about. (not that i am old now ofcourse, but it is all relative). We used to worry about our hair, our skin, am i too fat, are my legs long enough, am i cute enough... so much energy!
Sorry how did i get in this meandering? :-P

I also went (twice) to the Frida Kahlo exhibition in Sf MOMA - i will have to write about her in a separate post. it was really interesting, her paintings were so emotional and i am glad i went twice because my feelings changed.

As I said lots has happened in these times. I will have to be more consistent with my blogging.
Meanwhile here is a really fun song I heard yesterday by Lily Allen called "GWB (Fuck you very much)", addressing, i assume, the esteemed leader of the first world central. Although some say it means Guess Who batman, which doesn't make sense to me. regardless, it is upbeat with not so upbeat lyrics. Reminds me of her other song Smile.
Boomp3.com
If you want your own copy, you can get it here.

Dr Horrible: I've got a PhD in Horribleness.

Ahoy all you fans of Joss Whedan.
DaJoss has a new 3-part musical-comedy web series, Dr Horrible, that is being released incrementally this week before being taken off the web this sunday, after which it will be available on DVD. So... you only have a couple of more days before it is no more. They have released parts 1 and 2 and 3 will be released tomorrow. Part 2 is quite hilarious... I had a couple of outbursts of laughter while watching at work!
It's a superhero spoof starring Neil Patrick Harris as a supervillain wannabe who dreams of being accepted into the Evil League of Evil (what a sweet name!). Thwarting him from his goal is his nemesis, Captain Hammer (played by "Firefly" star Nathan Fillion), as well as his affection for a girl from the Laundromat (played by Felicia Day).

Grave of the Firefly

Last night we watched the movie Grave of the Firefly, an old (1988) anime. It was an amazing movie, it played with your heart strings like a virtuoso. It is the story of the survival of a brother and a sister, made orphan by the firebombing of Kobe during WWII. I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I don't know how much to write and what to say. Something I liked about it a lot was how nothing was totally good, and similary nothing was totally bad. Actually the only bad thing is war. I don't want to give away the ending but once you finish watch it, i recommend wiki'ing it and finding out more about the author of the story and the semi-autobiographical aspect of it.
Here is a trailer for the movie:

and here is a review of it by Roger Ebert with some interesting views.


ps now I have two favourite shows with the term firefly in them!

First review. My heart Pounds.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/37214

Me.want. to.watch.
Me.hungry. to. watch.dis. movie.
Me.thirsty. for.de. dark.knigh.

Fiançailles

If you like the movie Amelie, watch A Very Long Engagement, by the same director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring the very same Audrey Tautou. The movie has the same whimsical story telling and characters. Maybe there were too many characters, maybe the ending was too feel-good... can such a movie ever end badly? but it was sweet and heart felt.

So guess what i watched tonight? :-)

Desparately Seeking Onion

Last weekend Altavisto and I watched the movie The Fountain. Has anyone else watched it? It is one of those movies which is wonderfully acted and layered like an onion and at the end of the movie, we are left off, wondering how the layers were ordered and if the layers were real or imaginary. The hubby gave me his interpretation and although it was better than my own confused mess, I am not yet convinced. I will have to read up on it. If you have seen it and have your hypothesis handy, let me know!!

On another note, we also watched the super cool movie Super Bad. Oh yeah. Definitely on another level, but had quite a few LOL moments.

El Laberinto del Fauno

My favourite movie of all time is El Laberinto del Fauno by the genius Guillermo del Toro. I saw it when it first came out and this weekend I watched all the extras on the dvd and the entire film with director's commentaries. If you liked the movie, I really recommend watching the movie with the commentaries because like del Toro mentions in the extras, there are so many layers to the movie and learning the layers only increases your appreciation of the movie. I am so amazed that the movie didn't get more awards -- for sure, it deserved the Oscar for best foreign movie. The acting alone was brilliant. The storyline fantastical. The score enchanting.
I won't say too much about the movie because it seems everything I want to say is better conveyed by the many reviews of the movie. So instead I will list various quotes which I liked and some comments. Note there will be sp0ilers so if you haven't seen the movie, go see it! and then read the quotes. :-)
Btw, other movies related to this which I want to watch are: The Devil's Backbone and The Little Princess.

"When we're kids, we all really believe that there is a rabbit-hole somewhere that we can tumble down and come out in a magical place. But as we grow up, the belief wanes but the need for that belief increases." This is so true. Perhaps this is why religion becomes so important to some grown ups.

And although audiences have interpreted the film's bittersweet ending as everything from a religious metaphor to a psychological allegory, del Toro offers a simpler, but more poetic, explanation, that of "I always think of that beautiful quote by Kierkegaard that says the tyrant's reign ends with his death, but the martyr's reign starts with his death. I think that is the essence of the movie: It's about living forever by choosing how you die."
At the end of the movie, I really struggled with the idea of whether the fantasy world was real or not. Why can't it be? But I guess it's not. Along the same lines, a reviewer writes: "she defies her stepfather with the knowledge he can kill her. But what he does not know is that he cannot take her life."

"The bulk of the movie deals with one question: How does one contend with overwhelming, tyrannical violence?" Everyone deals differently, from the brutal violence that Captain Vidal leashes out on those around him, to the guerrilla warfare of the rebels, the double life of Mercedes and the Dr, the acceptance of the mother and its total rejection by Ofelia.

The first lines of the movie, quoted from the faun, reads: "A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning..."
This quote kind of reminded me of the parallel of this movie and that of The Little Prince where he escapes from his world and comes to earth seeking people, thinking that then he will no longer be lonely. He learns too late that you can still be lonely in a sea of people. Another of my favourite books.

N0 C0untry

Last night I finally watched the much anticipated N0 C0untry 4 0ld Men and I am sorry to say it did not live up to its hype. Yes the acting was great, yes the scenes and the way the movie was made were great, but I was left wanting at the end of the movie. What was the message, the moral of this story? In fact what was the point of it all? Did I miss something?

Update:
I went and read up on IMDB and wiki and it seems there were depths I wasn't aware of. Seems there is something about futility, fate and the element of chance. It doesn't matter what you plan.
One thing which I realized after I researched the movie was how anti-hollywood this movie is.
Quoting from someone on IMDB: (spoiler alert!!)
"The way it inverts the action/thriller. The final act has been so maligned by so many people because it does the exact thing the Coens were aware that it would do. It destroys the adjusted perceptions of the audience and forces them to confront things that are not there. We are denied the "satisfaction" of watching Moss die, Chigurh is denied the satisfaction of killing Moss, Bell is denied the satisfaction of restoring order, Carla Jean does not get to walk off into the sunset with her husband -- nothing in this movie ends the way Hollywood would want it to, which is one of the reasons I think it's absolutely brilliant."

Nikola Tesla

Recently the hubby and I watch the movie The Prestige with Wolverine and Batman. In the movie, Wolverine contacted Nikola Tesla to build him a teleportation machine. Now as any physicist or engineer will tell you, Tesla is a name that is regularly heard in relation to magnetic fields and AC current. But I thought to myself, "how did Tesla get involved in the movie and the whole idea of teleportation? Why did the directors think of Tesla?".

After reading the following article, it all became clear! I knew Tesla invented AC current but wow - he invented so much!! and it seems he was famous for running currents thru his body to light up bulbs. Many argue that his work was much more important that that of Edison and yet the latter won is credited with more. Also there is some debate whether Tesla invented radio waves or it was really Marconi who is considered to be the father of wireless communication.
And then there was Tesla's idea of sending waves thru the earth (so called terrestrial waves) to maybe light up every part of the earth? :-) was he responsible for a huge explosion in siberia?

He seems to have been an amazing inventor.

I recommend reading this article to get an idea. It doesn't require any background knowledge and then you will see why he is the man :-) Also a lot of things that are referenced in the movie now make sense!

My Favourite: El laberinto del fauno

I never ended up talking about my favourite movie: Pan's Labyrinth or El Laberinto Del Fauna.
I recently got the sound track and now I listen to it all the time and recall different moments from the movie. I find the movie so very very very sad. And yet the fairy tale land brings hope and possible meaning to the confusion of our ordinary lives.
"A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside..."
I thought I would write something about this today, but then again i got lost in people's interpretations of the movie and the pics. It is a movie which appeals to all my senses and the juxtaposition of the beauty and ugliness of the world. Of the hope they we all have that there is more to life than the ugliness that we sometimes see.
I've uploaded the first three tracks of the soundtrack which include the lullaby. The password is my real name all lower case. (let me know if you have any problems)

Why do people get married?

I heard the following quote from the snippet of the movie "Shall we Dance" when i was channel surfing. Susan Sarandon first asks "Why do people get married?" to which she first says not because we love each other but rather...

"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'."

Is that true? but what does it actually mean? because we can';t simply pick anyone as a witness right? to stay with them, we have to love them. Anyway maybe the quote is not as deep as i first thought. It is true though, marrying means getting that witness right? :-) bonus!

300 and counting

I found the following article from NY Times to be a very nice reflection of why the making of 300 the movie, was inappropriate. I liked the following paragraphs from it:

The 'Battle Of Thermopylae' has been the single most powerful wedge, which has divided East and West for over 2 millennia. In a time when East and West should be reconciling their differences, along comes the movie '300' to drive that wedge even deeper.

What is most disturbing about this movie is not that it lacks historical accuracy. It is not that Xerxes, the Grandson of Cyrus The Great and loving husband of Esther, is shown as an oversized drag queen. It is not even the outdated racist cliché of casting the Persians as Africans and the Spartans as white, blue-eyed 'Chippendale dancers,' when in reality the roles may well have been reversed.

What is so distressing about this movie is the realization of the tremendous power Hollywood wields in determining a people's identity. It is the same nightmare Native Americans endured during the whole 'cowboy-movie' genre.

So this was a nice article. I still haven't seen it, refuse to see it. My uncle went and saw it and he is someone who can like things just for the way the movie is made etc. Anyway he said even the action scenes were not great - most of the movie was battle scenes and blood and gore and... not nice.

ok finally some interesting points which were made to argue why we shouldn't get upset about the movie:
- most Americans don't associate Persian with Iranian
- Iran also has stereotypes of Americans and they are not particularly nice stereotypes. When Iran stops using these stereotypes they can point the finger at US and Hollywood.

still I think the movie was inappropriately made. Hollywood has power... and with great power, comes great responsibility. :-D

A great movie

Tonight I watched a great Iranian movie called Ayneh or The Mirror. It was a stressful movie, but one of the most original and well acted movies I have seen in recent years. I don't want to talk about the plot very much because i don't want to give it away, so I will just write down what IMDB has said about it. Suffice it to say the expressions of this little girl who they were following, Mina, were amazing. You believed it all. And then there was the commentary about Iran, the little conversations going on around the girl. It really was a great movie.

A girl in traditional female clothing, and her arm in plaster, comes out of school one day and doesn't find her mother meeting her. She decides to travel home her self though she doesn't know her address and remembers the road only visually.