500 Days of Summer

Went to see this last Friday with RM.

This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met the one. This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total mis-reading of the movie 'The Graduate'. The girl, Summer Finn of Shinnecock, Michigan, did not share this belief. Since the disintegration of her parent's marriage she'd only love two things. The first was her long dark hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off and not feel a thing. Tom meets Summer on January 8th. He knows almost immediately she is who he has been searching for. This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.



summer move forward and paint me the fabric of fall...

No, without the death and darkness of Vienna Teng's Drought -- it is the remedy for that sort of thing -- a source of perspective, an enlightened* film about dismantling the myth of 'the one' (and basically taking a vivisecting approach to all the well-established clices of the romantic comedy genre) in the context of modern love. All set to an awesome soundtrack. (Officially on my wishlist, that is, after a backlog of other acquisitions.) If you dislike romantic comedies for any of the usual reasons, this is for you. If you like romantic comedies, you've probably seen too many of them, and you need a good dose of this.

* enlightened := broad in scope, applying picasa's 'i feel lucky' to a zoomed out photograph. meaning it rings true.

Current music: Trifonic - Good Enough

So what type of combat training do you have? ... Fencing.

Verbatim review of Star Trek from D's parentals...

Father: "Fascinating from a cultural perspective. I don't empathize much wit our macho delinquent protagonist. Though obviously this appeals to a lot of people. At least his skill at hanging off cliffs by his fingertips saved his life many times."

[Pause]

Father: "I may have some Vulcan sympathies."

[Pause]

Father: "Although giving a success probability estimate of 4.3% for anything involving the decisions of a small number of people has too many significant digits. Really, it's a caricature of reasonableness in risk evaluation procedures."

Mother: "Yes... I didn't much like Spock's mother. She was a bit of a sop. Especially for that sort of environment."

[Pause]

D: "Didn't she only have about one minute of screen time?"

Mother: "Yes, but that minute was just filled with wide-eyed, soulful stares."

Current music: Paper Tiger - Jolien

atonement among bears

Such beautiful clever, peaceful creatures. Why hasn't hunting already been abolished?

Current music: Tracing Arcs - Through A Glass Darkly

non-random linkdump: on memory

Every damn morning, swamp gas from a weather balloon ... reflects the light from Venus. Does what is actually possible/feasible change that what we perceive to be beautiful? Does it change how we choose to live?

This kind of thinking completely misses the point of having experiences, "good" or "bad". Have a bad day? Don't analyze, search one's soul or talk about it; just push ERASE. Why bother doing the harder task of learning from painful experiences when this option is available?

And suppose there were a way to find your way once you're already lost? You're lost in the woods -- we all are, even the captain. The difference is he likes it that way.



Current music: BT - Memories In A Sea Of Forgetfulness

bunnies! armed bunnies on a mission!

Based on the manga.

Current music: Bassnectar - Underground Communication

Happy New Year!

Look at it as a humorous insightful commentary on China in modernity. Jay Chou rapping with a little break-dancing kid (who's probably kick-ass at wushu) about medicinal herbs in front of a giant dancing ginseng, and then traditional drums, trimmed with LED's, beaten on by nun-chucks.

As a child, I was given a necklace with 卿 (prime minister) inscribed on one side of a gold pendant and Zhuge Liang on the other side, and told that Zhuge Liang, the master of statecraft, would watch over me and protect me.

Red Cliff is highly aesthetic, both in the Inara dimension (palace scenes feel like Hero) and the action-dripping-with-style dimension (visualize Infernal Affairs). Musically, well-composed. In the Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu musical duet scene, you really can decipher their communications by listening to them play. ("But, sir, you haven't even talked about the war.") But the pacing of the film is more reminiscent of Baraka. A lot of time is spent carefully setting up the scene, building up the action, methodically hanging Chekhov's guns on the wall, an air of 'just-bear-with-me-a-moment-longer' anticipation. And when you think that which you are looking forward to is about to happen, you see in bright red calligraphy: "to be continued."

If I searched my memory carefully, I might have recalled seeing two posters for Red Cliff one for each installation of the two-part film, but in the intervening time, it had truly slipped my mind. But seriously, what is it about an aesthetic cliff-hanger that jerks us forward by the wrists until it's difficult even to return a proper glare to the source of the motion? And to quote someone else's review of Red Cliff II: Those who had lamented the lack of big battle sequences in the first film, well, you can continue to lament as this one only had ONE which takes up almost the last hour.

Current music: Faye Wong - Ban Tu Er Fei