Thoughts and Opinions, Reviews
Tempted to go make a new bookshelf
Canada had rebellions?! What's that all aboot?
Wow yeah that was dumb.
Holy crap the new X-Force is badass, and I love the subtle touch of how Wolverine calls Laura just "X" - I mean, what is she to him as his clone...daughter, sister? Yet the nickname sums up a lot of that unexplainable relationship nicely.
Nanoparticle panacea? Cool, but scary somehow
Candy, with Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish. Well, that was uplifting. Yay for...uh...an Australian Trainspotting? It didn't really have a plot, either, in a similar way, it's more just a character study of some heroin addicts. So I think if one goes into it looking for that, rather than any narrative, really, one would be much more satisfied. I guess in the sense that it was about character I'd like to at least see a twop style rundown of the character-relationships, as there's obviously a lot of subtext in each, but failing thinking about it that way it was just basically a couple hours of watching a painful, sad downward spiral.
To this, all I have to say is this
Gone, Baby Gone, with Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan. In the end the narrative turned out to be interesting, but only in looking back through it; in the course of watching the movie, it was more of a "where the hell is this going?" So it could have been much more unified, had better character development, and had better pacing, but the end result (and dilemma) is certainly conversation and thought provoking. It seemed...just, kind of self-indulgent, and most every character or plot development was two steps behind where it would have had more impact or import. But it was good in retrospect, I guess?
Aikido vs kicks? Some of the throws are cool, but I find his lackadaisacal blocks of some of the roundkicks dubious, I think the kick would generally power through them...mm, that said, that's assuming they're doing a Thai style kick, maybe if they snap it back they'd reflexively snap back upon contact.
Know Your World - it's addictive, watch out!
Yoga and Aikido - interesting take on connections, I suppose
kind of like a twop, but it's a comic review
Michael Clayton, with George Clooney and Tilda Swinton. Great acting, great cinematography, great cast, great little moments.....and a narrative I just never really cared about at all. I find it silly that this was called a thriller when at least Kim and I were dozing off, if not everyone. Though, it occurs to me: maybe the idea of being in debt about a business would find terror-by-empathy in a crowd older than us who may have actually experienced that, and that...yeah, that would probably turn at least one subplot more thrilling. Odd to see Swinton in a 'normal' role, I've only seen her crazy/fantastic roles.
With GoodSearch, charity is easy to contribute to - like Google, but with better karma (man, imagine if Google did it...)
NOOO! Last issue! Even this preview makes me giggle, though, alas poor hilarious Deadpool....
The biomechanics of grip (littlefinger-ringfinger-thumb, hey-o!), one of the more useful things we learned back when
Yay Seva! Small donations make a big difference!
Women on grappling
Vaguely tangent to that, warrior women
Liberating Jesus....huh...
Christine Maggiore has an unusual idea
Definitely, Maybe, with Ryan Reynolds, Rachel Weisz, Elizabeth Banks, and Isla Fisher. And Kevin Kline, who I did not recognize in the slightest. I think for the most part this movie lived up to expectations brought about by pedigree (connections to Love, Actually) and the stellar cast. Though kids in movies are still a bit much for me, it worked well enough. Though I'm sure a lot of people would nail the plot as patently obvious, I got sucked in enough that each successive twist had me going, and tearing up at the ending. Yay kind of unorthodox rom-com! And again, great mix of actors. Also, reminds me of somewhat similar conversations I've had with my parents, which weren't exactly like something the daughter gets to hear in the movie, but interesting nonetheless, I recommend it, however uncomfortable it might get.
The Namesake, with Irfan Khan, Tabu, and Kal Penn. Great acting. Lovely cinematography and writing. Interesting cultural commentary. But...it doesn't really seem to go anywhere. Which is fine, in a novel, or perhaps if I were expecting it in a movie. My only real reference is the novel White Teeth, if that might make sense to one person out there, but it's not even really the same as that. The narrative is spaced out over such a time period...there are lots of touching and interesting and complex plot points, and it really is horribly interesting in a lot of ways...but, just too much and too little in certain, key ways.
For most of Western civilization low sexual desire has been considered a goal rather than a problem. Since the early days of Christianity people’s self-worth was measured by their ability to destroy their sexual desire with their mind (Sex was not a sin if done without desire)……In fact, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Graham Crackers were originally marketed as a cure for carnal strivings and masturbation.
Demon Seed seems another interesting and creepy movie from a while back
it's the multiple tables that gets me (and bonus: learn French!)
Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela. Wow, I finished reading this on the day Mandela was released from prison after 27 years. Crazy coincidence! Anyway, I think autobiography might be a bit much for me as a genre, it was certainly interesting throughout, but also pondorous simply in being almost the entirety of someone's life. So, something of a discipline-requiring task to finish, however much I learned a great deal about everything from the mind of a great man like Mandela and the history of South Africa; I feel like I know much more about the struggle against apartheid by knowing it from Mandela's mind and experience, than I could know from any article about it. One thing, near the end he notes he's always had trouble relating his feelings and emotions, and at that I realized, that would have made it a whole lot better for someone of mindset, as that's really what I was more interested in than the more bare-fact of most of it.
True Porn, Vol. 2, by a whole slew of people. Wow. I'll admit, I was looking for some quirky titillation, from autobiographical stories about sex by the artist/writers. But I really didn't get much of any arousal at all from it; the stories range from insane to melancholy to sweet to heartbreaking to funny to sickening. Just...a whole range of humanity, and then you realize it's only a slice of reality. Hard to read, and yet horribly addictive and hard to put down. I better get what people are looking for when they say they want something more "authentic" - I think it's what affects you like this does, mayhap.
A for Andromeda sounds original and intriguing, go 1960s
Wow, kind of a real life James Bond
It's like old-school crop circles - except involving Satan; I guess the old devils are the new aliens
Don't know what it's about, but it seems fun and ominous
Wow, I need a tshirt of the middle panel
at 8.2.08 0 comments
Across the Universe, with Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess. It had potential; I probably would have gotten a lot more out of it if I understood what I'll guess are lots of references to Beatles trivia. As it stands, the music was nice, the acting was nice, the stylization was nice...but the plot and characters were just macguffins to me, just to set a frame for the song covers. Of course, if they'd developed that more and played down the songs, that couldn't be had, though, b/c then it wouldn't carry as much Beatles-born weight. But as it stands....that's somebody else's weight, and the movie itself doesn't stand as well on its own, though, and left me with my mind wandering. Not bad, mind, just okay.
SLC Punk!, with Matthew Lillard and Michael Goorjian. Clever! Unexpected ending, though. Actually, unexpected, all the way through, in form (breaking the fourth wall, narration, etc) and in simple subject matter. I expected it to go for more shock value than anything, but it continually poked at the audience to think - how punk, in a sense. I also expected more poking at Mormons given the Salt Lake City setting, but they shied away from that all the way through. Hm. I suppose, in a very oblique sense, it's kind of a more upbeat, less traumatic version of Trainspotting? Mm. I'll have to think about that more before saying Yeah to it.
Sanctuary, a new possible show on SciFi, looks to be interesting...vamps and werewolves and pretty women, oh my...
Great short article about aikido
Interview about NVC, cuts to the quick of some aspects of it, though it's dependent on one paradigm of conversational style, I think, to confer with a book I'm reading on conversational linguistics
at 1.2.08 1 comments
