ugly fashion, yellow junk, coobs

The Devil Wears Prada, with Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. I'm torn between saying this was a really good stand-alone movie, and positing that perhaps it would have actually just been really good had one read the book. I suspect that latter on account of the carefully constructed phrasing in some scenes, which I'd bet was taken directly from the book, and so would have been more appreciated with that context. But anyway, what I found really interesting about this movie (besides reflecting that I thought nigh every 'fashionable' outfit was utterly atrocious) was the connection it made in my head to the novel Evolution's Shore. That is, the main character in the novel is driven by her own ambition rather than by her job/boss context and becomes a monster in her own special way, but generally there's a lot similar between the texts in the development of that main character. Devil is just romantic-lite, Evolution is more dark-mature.
-addendum...hm, well, I was going to add Connie and I's back and forth, but I'll simply extract that I agree about not liking her getting back together with the boyfriend, contrived, and just not right for her. Hell, now, if we look at Gaby from the analagous novel, she had to go through reporting on Chechnya-style wars for years, war-torn Africa, then further effort back in America before painfully re-forging a connection with her man. Not just have a coffee and a scone. Pfft.

The Simpsons Movie. With SpiderPig. SpiderPig. Doing, whatever. A piderpig can. Can, he swing? From, a web? No, he can't. He's, a pig. Look out. Here comes, Spider, Pig. Well, it wasn't as bad as it might have turned out. The beginning was hilarious, but as the prevailing opinion goes (and is correct), it gets kind of bogged down as the movie goes on. Generally pretty funny, though it didn't blow my mind or anything.

Cube, with McKay from Atlantis, and Ezri Dax from Deep Space Nine. Interesting movie - well, the movie itself isn't that amazingly engaging, but I can definitely see it making for good conversation. The concept is so simple, in a sense, and yet generates so many questions - what's outside the giant cube they're trapped in? Why are they trapped? Why them? And none of it quite answered within the text. I found especially interesting the point made on the wiki of the film that the characters undergo complete reversals by the end of the film - hero to villain, useless cripple to most important and then only survivor, poison to hero, etc. I likey.

-Gravity Pods - clever!

-dang thing is freaking me out...I think I saw it and then had an image of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing it staring at me from on top of the sheets

kertrivia ball

I love octopuses dearly for their interesting wierdness, but man, blanket octopuses are really wierd

Interesting article, both in regards to aikido and the psyche

How fun! Star jelly.

Funny saying: "God created man in his image, and man quickly returned the favor..."

Suddenly I'm super excited about the movies again

tranny Travolta vs chiweewee eating anaconda: GO

Hairspray, with Nikki Blonski, John Travolta, and Christopher Walken. I really liked this musical, though at the same time, I can't remember a single melody from it. I suppose in that sense it was more of a straight-up movie than an musical, to me, in that I wasn't focused so much on the songs as everything else going on. All the actors and actresses were perfect, and it's really a great story. Also, John Travolta. Fat woman suit. Yes.

Snakes on a Plane, with Samuel L Jackson and Julianna Margulies. Ew! Lots of gruesome death. But it's pretty hilarious. For as much as it's kind of playing into its own self-realized stupidity, it...well, it pulls off exactly that. There were even a few moderately serious parts, as much as I was expecting one of the pilots to go "Whammy!" and for a fat woman to get bit in the bajingo. Cult(ural) classic, right here. Now, I might go get one of those shirts from Overcompensating...

trivivia ball

-an interesting speech, given by a Moorish commander before a successful battle against the Visigoths; is it just me, or is it more negative than one might expect in the first paragraph?

-Manichaeism also seems interesting...anyone know more about this religion? I didn't really understand that much (besides some interesting imagery involving demons and virgins) from the article

-interesting thought to contemplate: "The breath is to the body what thought is to the mind."

-Spiderman vs Kingpin preview; looks to be some snappy dialogue

also: amusingly timed power outages

The Descent, with several British women, hongry cave monsters, and exactly one male cast member who was amusingly (and accurately) predicted by Kevin to die in a quite particular way. I think it was a great movie, with characters with some actual depth, in themselves and in their relationships, and all of that tied together with generally understated implications and expressions. The monsters themselves weren't so much scary as the environment, I'll note, but perhaps in a sense the monsters are just an extension of the environment - impersonally blind, practically non-sentient in general, but implacable all the same. Also, as much as one might be tempted to set up a female-vs-male dichotomy in terms of the human women and almost entirely male monsters, I think a more interesting tact might be that the women's subconscious issues with themselves and their relationships with each other, which are normally buried under societal niceties, are brought to the surface when the women themselves are buried. How's that for some punny imagery within syntax. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that it's like they're delving into their own subconsciouses, in a sense. Oh! Oh! And this is a spoiler, but did anyone else notice that it was the (former) mother who kills the child-monster, and then the mother thereof? It's like she finally confronted herself as the survivor of the intitial car accident, perhaps in viewing herself as the monster in being the only survivor, and then all that's left is to kill the woman who her husband was cheating on her with! Bam! How trippy is that? Anyway, I could go on, obviously.

Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch-Lincoln seems like he was an odd and interesting man

yes. balls.

just a quote from a book I'm reading-
“Last night Edgar, an adolescent wirehaired Dachshund, came over to visit. In twenty seconds his nose located the errant tennis ball under the couch. He began digging and whining, desperate to extract the fuzzy golden globe. We showed him bones, chew toy, rope toys, interactive rubber toys, and heaven knows what else. He wanted the ball. Later that night I turned on the local television news. As much time was devoted to the fate of golf balls, baseballs, and basketballs as to world peace, world hunger, and medical epidemics. No wonder we love dogs so much. No one else understands our obsession with balls so well.”

Tragi-epic, and fluff...and, uh, soil

Galaxy in Flames, by Ben Counter. Yet another book in one of the bestest series ever written, The Horus Heresy. This is the last of the initial trilogy, apparently to be followed by several, more focused interim novels, and eventually concluded with another hugely epic trilogy. I enjoyed this one in particular, in that though it didn't go as far with character development, it really didn't need to - it's the conclusion for several characters, in fact; it rather, then, concentrated on using the 40k setting to its potential-of-science fiction craziest, and creating great action scenes. How? By limiting the perspective in any given battle to one character, the reader gets a helmet-cam view, which thus makes the writing wonderfully cinematic. Great stuff!

Accepted, with Justin Long, a cute redhead, a cute blonde, and John Travolta and John Cusack's sisters. Yeah. Didn't realize those last two. I wonder if one could write about this movie, engaging in terms of the theme of attempting to create a utopia of sorts. In literary terms, interestingly, that would place it under the meta-category of science fiction. Anyway, all that babble aside, it's a pretty funny movie, not going deeper than what most people who'd identify with the main character would daydream for themselves, and in that, it does perfectly well. And it has that interesting nod towards ideas about utopia and education.

addendum: ah ha! I just remembered where I'd heard the name Bartleby before - a really creepy story about a man named Bartleby who is depressed to the point of becoming almost supernatural, by Herman Melville. I bet the movie writers just wanted a funny name, though.

terra preta - intriguing

Things of Note - an Auspicious Weekend?

-7.7.7. Rawr.
-yoga students bring really interesting lunches - homemade protein-enriched granola, marinated octopus, kombucha....
-chanting the yoga sutras is inexplicably superfun - call and response Sanskrit!
-after a couple hours of Tibetan, visual, aural, visualization, walking, breath-following, and other kinds of meditation, the mental state afterward is...well, awesome
-hammies are a bit sore, though
-aw, man, raisins? really, dogs? did you have to? stressing me out all weekend, aiii
-yay school where you sit on cushions on the floor all day, and pull out shiatsu futons to watch a movie!
-for whatever reason, half the people in the class seem really, really familiar
-
-that is so hardcore

p-p-push it! mm, hot karaoke

Grandma's Boy, with Linda Cardellini (not the gal from Veronica Mars, as it turns out) and Allen Covert (not Mel Gibson, as we really actually almost thought at a few moments). Though it started out having me wondering whether the movie really was going to seem as oddly vapid as the beginning seemed to be, it really caught its own momentum and became just plain funny. Slash, gross. After noting that Adam Sandler was the executive producer, I noted a few similar tropes to Happy Gilmore - sleeping with a (much, much) older woman, hot woman acting as consultant of sorts and becoming love interest, arrogant and socially inept antagonist, and positive and healthy relationship with a grandmother. Interesting take on similar things, I actually kind of liked this one more in a lot of ways, even if only because of the cast of characters that I actually got a little attached to by the end of the movie.

kerboom!

Live Free or Die Hard, with Bruce Willis and Justin Long. Also, Maggie Q, rowr, and what I swear is a very famous traceur, though for the life of me I can't remember his name. Ah ha! Here we are, just had to look him up in Banlieue 13 - Cyril Raffaelli. Basically, a little over two hours of non-stop action. Which, at first thought, I found kind of disappointing, in the corresponding lack of character development and plot - but, as was quickly pointed out to me, who the hell cares? Stuff was blowing up! And this is true. Also, and more interestingly to me (besides the hilarious Kevin Smith cameos) was Raffaelli and the showcasing of his parkour skills at two points in the movie - inspiring! Though, I have to note, I think it'll be darkly funny if people don't believe a human body can do that, and yet believe some of the other, more implausible stunts could happen that easily. And, if anyone knows the name of the girl band playing when Long's character is introduced, I will kiss you. Nevermind, no kisses, I think I found it. Now, if anyone wants to get me a cd, before I do, anyway...

Transformers, with Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox. Hey, this one had parkour, too! Well, robot parkour, anyway. Still, it seems to be becoming a definite staple of action movies, which I am quite fine with. I was a bit leary of saying I liked this movie as well, in this case because of the bits that made it seem more like a kiddy-movie than not, but hell those weren't near enough to bring down the rest. I guess my first impulse was to want them to go all the way in making it more 'edgy,' but compromise is needed, I suppose, to appeal to all audiences. Ginormous, blockbuster, massive budget robot fun. Well played, Michael Bay...for once.

practical. creepy. violent. a trifecta, except not.

On Writing, by Stephen King. Wow. If I had ever been an English teacher, or ever go on to teach English, I'm all over this book. It is single-handedly more practically useful and on top of that more interesting than any fiction-writing class I had in school. The first section is kind of a portrait of the writer as a young man, as it were, which is engaging and illuminating both; the latter half of the book is about the actual nuts and bolts of writing. Which is a far cry from the oft-repeated "we can't really teach you how to write" that was heard in school; but hell, they could have supplied the toolbox worth of advice and common sense that King offers. Ah well. Anyway, some really great stuff for anyone interested in writing; bonus trivia, there's even part of a first draft of 1408, with King's corresponding revising notes scanned over it.

1408, with John Cusack and Samuel L Jackson. Pretty solidly good horror. Though I still haven't figured out why they cast Jackson as the hotel manager, considering the completely opposite character in the corresponding short story the movie is based on; I guess maybe just for star power? Anyway, not really a jump in your face an scare you movie, but more old-school mess with your psyche horror. I enjoyed what they added to the story to make it more film-friendly, and though a couple of the special effects suddenly made me feel like I was watching an amusement park ride, generally it was fine - and that said, the subtle, regular old creepy-camera-angles did a lot of the legwork. Even had an ending that left me with goosebumps, which is pretty awesome, considering most horror endings these days. I'll note the random little thing I noticed wherein anytime Cusack's character hit anything while freaking out or angry, he had great martial form - I mean, what regular schmuck kicks a wall in general with a tight back-kick, or hits the door with a cutting elbow? Also, they still snuck something of a Dark Tower reference in there, I wonder if anyone else read the detail as such.

Reservoir Dogs, with, well, several now-famous actors. Like 1408, this mostly takes place within a single room; it also shares some of those unorthodox camera angles and tracking. And, that's the end of my conferral of the two films, I haven't really thought that out. Anyway, one thing I find really interesting about this iconic movie, besides the iconic images contained within, is that the main action and impetus of the story is never actually seen by the audience. What we see is purely what happened before and after the attempted robbery catastrophe, and I think that that frees up the narrative for its jumping around in the timeline. Instead of building up to what would have otherwise been the climax of the movie, the shootout at the jewelry store, the introduction and denouement become the substance of the story. Interesting! Abrupt ending, though.

Things of Note - A...Hm...Weekend. Yes.

-yeah, really couldn't think of any descriptor there, and "varied" seemed boring
-I now have a Sam's Club card...and look like a doof in the grainy little photo
-after a trip to Summit Hutt, I'm thinking about taking up backpacking, or "humping it," if you will
-tuna and bacon? well, they don't really add to one another, but it kind of works
-LG...everywhere....
-dags and bur! and light-schwartzes
-a deceptively simple game, just red or black, and a thin line between awesome and not
-yay very generous, housebound old women - now, we just have to hope their children don't think Kim is conning them or something
-yay Corinne's art show! and yes, sell the totes!