toastykitten: (Default)
2007-01-22 10:39 pm

i don't know what to write

I still haven't finished that damn Umberto Eco book and I started it in December. Does Foucault's Pendulum have a point? Is Causabon going to save his friend from the Templars? I am so tempted to re-write the book in the present, because then it would cut out two-thirds of the book. "Hey, look at this link on Wikipedia! It explains when the English Templars missed the French ones!"

I keep forgetting to write this, but Mark and I saw Pursuit of Happyness a while back. This is the conversation we had afterwards:

Me: Did you like it?
Mark: Yeah, I thought it was good. What did you think?
Me: I liked it, but if I were in the girlfriend's place, I so would have left him and taken the kid, too.
Mark: Really? I thought she was kind of a bitch.

Then we had a discussion about why Chris Gardner couldn't just get a job at McDonald's or something until he could finish paying off his rent. Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed the movie, but the setup kind of irked me. Maybe I am old-fashioned. I was also annoyed at the scene where he's bitching at the Asian janitor for not fixing the word "happyness" on the wall, and the janitor just keeps telling him in Cantonese that he doesn't speak English. I kept wanting to scream at the screen - the guy doesn't speak English! Stop talking to him! Talking to him like he's deaf won't make him understand you!  People do it often enough in real life; I don't need a movie reminding me.

I have been really hungry for the past few days, and that's mostly because of the wisdom teeth removal. I am so paranoid right now that I'm going to get something stuck up there and then my mouth will get infected. A co-worker told me a horror story about her wisdom teeth and she is still having trouble even though her wisdom teeth were removed over 8 years ago. I hope I'm keeping my mouth clean enough. I really miss crunchy food. I'm getting really sick of noodles and soup.
toastykitten: (Default)
2007-01-06 08:50 pm

movieline

A Whiter Shade of Guile - Joe Queenan writes about the whole white-people-save-black-people-from-themselves movies, and in a really funny way. "If there is anything black people the world over have learned from Hollywood - and there isn't a whole lot - it's that no matter how bleak the situation seems, they can always rely on some resourceful, charismatic and, in some instances, shapely white person to bail them out."

It's been a long time since I've read Queenan, who was snark-incarnate before "snark" became the most overused word on the Internet. I remember him because he used to write for Movieline - the well-written, funny, honest magazine before it got bought out and turned into a worse version of Premiere. Before it got bought out, Movieline was (in)famous for its annual sex issues, and the Jennifer Lopez interview where she insulted almost everyone in Hollywood before she broke out.

Dammit, now I'm on a total nostalgia trip. Salon did a short profile of the magazine some years back. Some of my other favorite writers from that era of magazine-goodness were Stephen Rebello - see interview with Steven Soderbergh, and Martha Frankel - see interview with Christopher Walken, who I also remembered for her interview of Leonardo DiCaprio before he hit it big, and for her rant about how Hollywood portrays pregnancy in movies. I can't find that article, but I remember her revealing that she and her best friend started taking birth control pills before they even really knew what sex was because they were so freaked out by the consequences of Hollywood-depicted sex. There's one part where she describes a movie where the protagonist has to decide whether to save the baby, which means the mother will die, or save the mother and the baby will die and the lead of course decides to save the baby because killing the baby would be a sin and she writes something like "These are my choices? No thanks!"

And there was also Edward Margulies, the former editor, who also co-wrote a feature with Stephen Rebello called "Bad Movies We Love".

Good stuff.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-12-10 10:24 pm
Entry tags:

recommendations

I saw Borat today. It is really fucking funny, but I would not recommend a second viewing. A lot of the humor is dependent on the element of surprise. The Rolling Stone magazine I bought actually had as the main feature a lengthy interview with Sasha Baron Cohen (as himself), and it's pretty fascinating. He claims that the ideas for his characters came to fruition when he realized how upper-class, white people would often just keep being polite instead of telling him to shove off or something.

I think I am, however, traumatized by the two naked hairy men scene...

30 Rock is also really fucking funny. I kept bugging Mark to TiVo it, but it conflicted with one of his shows. Good thing the show switched their timeslot, because now we can watch it. I love Tina Fey and I actually would occasionally watch SNL when she did Weekend Update. It's not really comparable to Studio 60 (which, even though I like it, is the preachiest of the preachy liberal shows I watch, including Boston Legal. Boston Legal survives not being most preachy because of the power of James Spader's charisma. ^_^) But I love the humor of the show - weird and nonsensical and yet utterly relatable. "I am a robot. I am a stabbing robot." - had us both rolling on the floor.

Aisha Tyler is my favorite guest reviewer for the Ebert & Roeper show. (Note to all male movie critics: PLEASE STOP TELLING US HOW YOU MASTURBATE.) She has almost the same taste as mine in movies - a tendency to like the violent action, good comedy, and occasionally fall for the chick flick. And plus she recommended Infernal Affairs right before The Departed came out. I also liked Kevin Smith, who I think should actually be a full time movie critic - it's obvious that he absolutely loves movies, and he's a great analyst, and he judges movies the Ebert way - on what a movie is trying to be - whether it's an action flick or period piece or kid's movie, and not whether each movie is The Greatest Movie Ever. I liked A.O. Scott, too - he seemed pretty laidback.

Mark's been getting way into Six Feet Under - Bravo is re-running it a lot, so he just TiVos the episodes. I haven't really been watching it - and have been skimming off and on. But dude, full on gay characters acting like real people! I like it so far, and I like all the characters a lot. If I could remember their names I'd say a lot more about them.

We walked into Savvy Cellar after watching the movie. Redwood City is undergoing some gentrification, and their new downtown is still quiet, but attracting more people these days. The place is a wine shop/wine bar that's been open for about a year where you can do wine tastings or bring a bottle home. The cool thing about it is that all the wines are priced reasonably at $39 or less, and they are all rated 90 points or more by leading wine critics. Now, even though I like wine, and have only started to seriously learn about it in the past year or two, I still know next to nothing. I had a great Riesling - the owner was working at the time and she poured me a full glass that I didn't even finish halfway. Mark had a Cabernet Sauvignon. They also had a little snack menu, but we'd just eaten popcorn at the movies, so we didn't get anything. They also had memberships - for $49.95 you would get two bottles a month, discounts on wines, wine classes, 75% off private party events, etc. There was one Asian gentleman who kept pushing us to buy - he was a realtor, and he wasn't even working for the place but he was giving us the hard sell - every ten minutes he would say, "So, you getting a membership? Buy today!" He was actually getting on the owner's nerves and she told him to stop bugging us and to let us drink in peace. It was surreal because every single salesperson in China was like that. We also chatted with a really drunk indie girl who went on and on about blood diamonds, so much so that I almost turned my own ring around.

We didn't get a membership, but we'll probably go back or bring some friends to kick it there. (Note to our nerd friends: free wireless!) I'm really wary of getting sucked in to things like that. We still don't have a Netflix account, even though we've been meaning to get one for like the past two years. I actually really like our local video store - they have a good selection (good bit of Asian movies, which I like), and reasonable prices and late fees, and they don't censor stuff like Blockbuster does.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-10-16 06:54 pm
Entry tags:

random thoughts

Still sick. Really pissed off, since I'd been so careful, and because I have to fly out tomorrow. There's something going around the office and I think I got it. Anyway, a new resolution: don't ever touch the bathroom handles with your bare hands. There are way too many people who don't wash, who don't use soap, and who knows where their hands have been. I think I might start buying some antibacterial gel for the office, too, given that flu season is about to start.

This discussion of why there aren't many black chefs is interesting. A fun game is counting the number of times people say in various ways "racism doesn't exist in this industry!" Also fun is the number of times that people note the increasing number of actual Latino cooks who toil for years but never get to be head chefs or anything like that and attribute that result to anything but race. Because, you know, that would be racist.

'The Last King of Scotland' renews debate about racial point of view - article about why so many movies about Africa have to involve white men as major characters. I was sort of wondering the same thing while watching the trailers for several of these movies - does every movie about Africa need to be distilled from the point of view of a white man? I think the last time there was a movie about Africa with a black lead was Hotel Rwanda.

Just thinking out loud - is this a sort of "reverse affirmative action" rule for white actors? Is there a requirement on the majority of movies about minorities that there must be a token white character? Barbershop, for example, had the white guy who "acted black", Bamboozled had that same guy, etc. I'm sure there are more.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-10-08 08:48 am
Entry tags:

the departed

A different perspective on the movie.

I watched the movie last night. I frankly, just ignore the racial stuff as much as possible, because otherwise thinking about it makes me distracted and drives me crazy. Yes, the one black guy dies, but you knew that was coming, right? The few Chinese people who are supposed to be mobsters working for the Chinese government speak American accented Cantonese instead of Mandarin and don't do anything. Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello is a racist mob boss, his racism made explicit by the first scene where he uses the n-word. (Is it really necessary to do that? Some would argue, yes, it is, because we need to see that Costello doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks, but by the time we get to the part where he rants against the Chinese mobsters, I'm starting to think it's not that it's necessary, it's that it's fun for the writers and directors to have someone to express their prejudices in a way that won't allow other people to call them racist because a bad guy is saying the words. I'm going to call them racist anyway. Frankly, if they were going for gritty realism, the mobsters would have shot him in the middle of that rant. Just saying.)

So aside from that stuff, I will call the movie good but not better than the original. Mark cannot say anything because he doesn't remember the original, but I had the original running through my head the entire night. Some of the lines were lifted completely from the original; the plot elements remain the same, but the order and execution are different.

The original was much more concise, and the acting tended to happen more inside the head of the characters rather than the outside. I thought this version could have cut out a half-hour of exposition. One of the things I loved about the original were all the quiet moments - Andy and Tony sitting in the same shop with the headphones, the first moments when Andy decides to call Tony and tap some Morse code, etc. There are very few moments like that in this movie; everything is made explicit and violent, especially on Leondardo DiCaprio's side. I thought most of the major actors did a great job with what they had - I didn't like watching Jack Nicholson because he was essentially playing the Joker and not a mob boss. Hello, you should have gone with John Goodman! Or maybe that guy from History of Violence. The psychologist is used more here, but not in a way that I liked - she's essentially nothing more than a foil for both characters and doesn't really have anything else to do besides react. Geography is really central to the plot here, more than it is in the Hong Kong movie, and the issues of race are more prevalent, but the director doesn't really go anywhere with the race issue besides Racism! Bad!

Writing this makes it seem like I enjoyed the movie a lot less than I did, but I actually did enjoy it a lot. Reading ReAppropriate's entry this morning just made me realize there were a lot of things I hadn't thought about while watching it, because I tend to compartmentalize those issues a lot. I really like what they did with Mark Wahlberg's character, who doesn't seem to have an analogous character in the original. But he's funny. This one has a lot more humor in it than it did in the original. It was actually quite interesting to see this with a packed audience - I could hear them gasping at the high-tension points. The ending is mostly the same, but I thought it could have ended a lot sooner than it did.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-10-04 10:43 pm
Entry tags:

the departed

East Bay Express' review of The Departed. (Sorry to be so obsessed, but I can't help it.) The Onion gave it an A - I can't find the review, but it's in the printed edition.

It also looks like the cut out Sammi Cheng's role as the girlfriend of the mole in the police force, and enlarged the psychologist's role so that she's now involved with both moles. I think that's a pretty absurd and unbelievable thing to do, but who knows how it plays out in the movie.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-10-01 10:23 pm
Entry tags:

thoughts of the day

It's easier for me to deal with sexism than it is to deal with racism. Is that weird?

The Departed got really good reviews. I need to watch the Chinese version again, and yes, I'll even willingly admit this remake is good if I see it. Better? Um...

Watching Kevin Smith review movies on Ebert & Roeper is awesome, because 1. he keeps insulting Roeper, 2. he actually has good taste and is very articulate about the stuff he does and doesn't like (why he can't translate that great perspective to his non-Jersey-type movies I don't know), and 3. his video pick was Battlestar Galactica.

I visited the Bloomingdale's in San Francisco that just opened today with some friends. The power went out in one of the sections and they closed early. I don't think I'll be shopping there much, given that everything's really expensive.

I had Mark TiVo Ugly Betty, because I heard it was good. It's a remake of a telenovela, which explains the Latino cast. I liked it, and Salma Hayek is one of the executive producers. I found it hard to watch, though - it's the same reason I can't watch either versions of The Office - so much awkwardness and humiliation.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-09-23 03:38 pm

recent media consumption

Yesterday we watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is based on a book of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson, the guy who coined the term gonzo journalism. I haven't read Thompson's work, so I have no opinion on that, but the movie I just didn't get. It seemed like one introspective trip that is, because of the drugs' effects, taken outside. It's weird. Mark likes it because it reminds him of his experiences in high school and college.

I finished John Hodgman's Areas of My Expertise, which should be read in Hodgman's voice for the best effect. He's my favorite of the recent crop of Daily Show correspondents, and every time the Mac commercial comes on I have to rewind and watch it again.

I recently bought San Francisco magazine, because I was desperate for something to read on the train ride home. You would think that I would learn my lesson sometime about buying magazines, but no, you'd be wrong. They redesigned their magazine from a normal format to an oversize format - kind of like W, the fashion magazine. The most recent issue has a good, long, thoughtful investigative article about why black people are leaving San Francisco (for Oakland! and Stockton!), the effect of which is totally ruined by the next twenty pages of its special advertising section for new real estate for SOMA and South Beach. The investigative article makes good points about how the only way black people in San Francisco can make any decent money is by selling their property to move somewhere cheaper, right? The advertising section starts out with the following sentences: "Who is moving to SOMA? In a word, everyone."

Anyway, I work in the area in where the advertisers are selling their condos, and if people are dumb enough to spend close to $1 million for a two-bedroom condo atop Safeway, and right next to the 280 freeway, and across from the train station that runs every day until 1am, then they totally deserve those condos.

I realize that magazines are beholden to advertisers, but they really couldn't have put that special advertising somewhere else? Who are these people writing for anyway?

I started Can't Stop Won't Stop, but I think I'm going to have to start over. There's just way too much information for me to process at once. And I suspect I'm going to go on a music buying spree afterwards.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-09-11 12:38 pm
Entry tags:

we have no taste

We went to see Crank yesterday. IT ROCKED. (Do not confuse this with a recommendation.)

One of the trailers was for Fearless, Jet Li's "last martial arts movie". My family has it, but I haven't watched it yet. The guy who directed it also directed "Bride of Chucky". My sister said it was kind of boring.

I think Aisha Tyler should replace Roeper on the show. I will love her forever for not recommending one, but two martial arts movies, and she recommended Infernal Affairs.

She needs to own her opinions, though - when she mentioned that she thought one of the movie directors was "borderline misogynistic", she backtracked and said something like "It's not like I'm some vegan harpy shrew who hates men..." I hate it when people do that.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-08-29 06:58 pm

san francisco freaks me out sometimes

As many as 14 people were injured this afternoon by a motorist who drove around San Francisco deliberately running them down before being arrested by police, who believe the same driver struck and killed a man earlier today in Fremont. No one knows why he did it.

I didn't hear anything about this during the day. But that's because I was in my work bubble and didn't even take my legally mandated 15 minute breaks.

I've been leaving my Gmail open, which is sometimes good in times of boredom, and bad when I'm really trying to work and a friend's got some good gossip or is freaking out over something.

This weekend Mark's going down to LA, which will leave me free to take over the TiVo. (Only the really exciting thing is, I get his PARKING SPOT! Usually, it's pretty easy grabbing a spot in front of his place, but if I get there later at night, I am reduced to tears and parallel parking. The way I do it isn't pretty.)

It's kind of funny - I've finally come to the realization that movies and television are to him what books are to me. Totally necessary to our own survival. Mostly it's about how we like to experience stories - I get too distracted by people with bad accents, I note every grammar error, and well, I didn't grow up in LA.

In the past month, we watched:

Little Miss Sunshine - Funniest movie of the year. It's so damn cute. It's really well-written, and it's about normal, everyday people working to achieve their dreams, and just not fitting in with the world that is already there. And the last half hour had me rolling.

Fun With Dick and Jane - This was a rental, from the only friends of ours who do not do Netflix. Mark and I keep meaning to get around to it, but then we never do and we just rent from the local video store. One thing I've never figured out about that store - why do they keep a tip jar? And why do people put money in it?

30 Days - The New Age episode: I liked the guy, who seemed be to kind of set in his ways, but open to listening to other people. I hated his girlfriend, Misty, whose 180 degree change of opinion after going on and on about how tarot cards are black magic, happened really fast and made me not take her seriously at all. I liked how they did a lot of different types of New Age stuff, not all of which was hokey. And it helped him relax, so that was cool.

The Abortion episode. A pro-choice feminist goes to live with some pro-life people. This was an excellent episode, in which no one learned anything new, except maybe the pastor's wife, who learned that pro-choice people don't "sell abortions". I wish this one was actually longer. The pro-choice person they picked was very clear and smart - and didn't become intimidated or fumble around for words the way the atheist did. It was sort of weird that we didn't see more conversations between her and the pastor, though. She (damn, I keep blanking out on the names) seemed much more into getting to know the women and the kids living at the home, which, is probably something I would do, too.

Next episode: Morgan Spurlock goes to jail for 30 days. He's gone on record as saying that it's really changed his perspective on prison, so I'm betting it'll be a good finale.

Bourdain in Beirut - actually I didn't see this episode, because the Travel Channel changed the name and we didn't see the commercial for it until after it aired. Twice. I'm so angry I missed this episode - from what I've heard, it's a really good episode - not so much about the politics, but about what the consequences of those violent actions do to people who are just trying to live.

Feasting on Asphalt - Alton Brown gets on his motorcycle with a crew of guys and rides across the country, sampling all the best road food. I normally don't watch Good Eats, so I've decided I'm with my sister. Alton Brown talks too much. Yes, that is his job, but still. Anyway, so far it seems like Alton is a very meat-and-potatoes type of guy, and that he's not actually all that adventurous about trying food that's sort of out there. You know Anthony Bourdain would have been happily chowing down on the brain burger and declaring it the best thing ever.

The Daily Show - I'm only noting this one to say, they hired non-white people! Whoa! I love me some Daily Show, but stewards of diversity they are not. Larry and Aasif seem okay, but I think we'll probably need some more episodes before they totally grow on the audience. I think part of the problem is the writing - it feels like they are doing white guy comedy, and not stuff they would actually have written themselves. We'll see.

I am very, very hungry.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-08-06 05:04 pm

lazy sunday

Mark is working on his cluster, and I just finished watching House of Flying Daggers. I forgot how hot Takeshi Kaneshiro is. The plot is stupid (I hate love triangles), but the scenery and fights are so very, very pretty. And it's funny - the Wikipedia article mentions that Chinese critics hated it because it didn't have any sort of "message" to it, and that's the one thing I really liked about the movie. Because in every other Chinese movie that has a message - it's always about how the individual has to sacrifice their own needs and wants for the good of the nation (see Hero) and I'm always thinking, fuck the nation. Go run away with your lover/take revenge for your father/live a carefree life, etc.

One thing I didn't know was that Anita Mui was supposed to be cast in it, and it was supposed to be her last film appearance. She passed away before they started filming, and they wrote her role out of the movie. It's too bad. I suspect that she would have been slated to play the new leader of the House of Flying Daggers.

(Someone really needs to edit the Anita Mui Wikipedia page, too. The trivia at the bottom make no sense.)

Last night we watched Find Me Guilty. While Mark and I hardly ever agree on movies to watch, we can always agree on Vin Diesel. And he acts! I don't feel guilty about liking this movie. It's directed by Sidney Lumet, who did 12 Angry Men, which Mark and I both watched in our government classes in high school. Maybe it was a requirement? I highly doubt that juries are actually that fascinating to watch, but 12 Angry Men did keep my attention. Anyway, like I said, Vin Diesel acts!
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-07-30 07:55 am
Entry tags:

the departed

Trailer for The Departed.

Thoughts:

1. Hmm, it looks like they're going to be more faithful to Infernal Affairs than I thought. There's that scene where Sam (I'm just going to go with HK equivalents right now) breaks Yan's cast, the usage of the cell phones, and the whole "nobody knows you're undercover" thing.
2. Jack Nicholson as Sam is a very, very, very bad idea. Personally, I think they should have gone with John Goodman. I don't remember if Goodman's ever done evil before, but you need a really likeable guy to play Sam, one who you wouldn't be able to tell at first glance is ruthless, calculating, and crazy. Jack Nicholson just looks crazy.
3. I hate the idea of Leonardo DiCaprio as Yan. You can call me biased, because I love Tony Leung so much.
4. Martin Sheen as the Inspector could be pulled off. He's still not Anthony Wong.
5. I wonder how they're going to do the ending.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-07-21 12:54 pm
Entry tags:

some quotes from mean girls

Kevin Gnapoor: Look, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but I only date women of color.
Cady: I have to pee.

Kevin Gnapoor: [after cutting into dance] What's up?
Janis: Can I help you?
Kevin Gnapoor: You Puerto Rican?
Janis: Lebanese.
Kevin Gnapoor: I feel that.

More quotes here.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-07-18 09:33 pm
Entry tags:

jackie chan, drunk, and other topics of interest

My sister sent me the following links:

Youtube video of Jackie Chan interrupting some person's concert. (There are subtitles in Chinese, which helped a LOT for me, since I couldn't really make out what Jackie Chan and the other guy were actually saying. Oh, and turn the sound down, it's really loud.) The picture quality sucks because it was recorded with someone's cell phone.

Here's a link to the same Youtube video, with English subtitles. I have no idea where the translator got "brokebacked" from, nor where the correlation is in Cantonese or Mandarin. The part where some person yells out "You're really sympathetic" should have been translated as "That's so pitiful/sucks for you!" And the person didn't translate "nei lo mei" - on the other hand, I'm not sure what it means, either.

Jackie Chan's subsequent apology.

Oh, and I am going to China FOR SURE this year! My sisters are buying the tickets this Friday, from the travel agency in Chinatown. YAY! We got a really good deal, too - about $1000 total for the two week tour, including airfare, hotel, and food. The hotels will be four-stars and up - according to the travel agent lady, "four-star in China is way better than four-star in America - they really take care of you over there". One of my sisters was pretty adamant about modern plumbing. They mentioned that our village still does not have modern plumbing and that we'd have "to do it in buckets". I asked where we were supposed to empty them, but everyone was eating so no one answered me.

Saw Pirates of the Caribbean over the weekend. It was fun, and fricking long. I had the same problem with Superman Returns. Directors, you get paid to hire these people called editors - USE THEM. I seriously could have done without the savage cannibals scenes, and without noticing that all the people who conveniently die in various ways - falling to their deaths, getting eaten by a kraken, are all minorities.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-07-17 08:53 pm

escapism

I am deliberately not reading the news, especially not about the Middle East.

Mark is at OLS right now, which is in Ottawa. He tells me the weather there is like it was in New Orleans, all hot and humid, with thunderstorms in the middle of the day. It's really hot here in the Bay Area, too, although thankfully I work right next to the ocean, so it hardly ever gets too hot.

Oh, and I finally got Mark to see and like a Shakespeare movie. We can usually agree on a movie to see in the theater, but that's mostly because I'm willing to see every comic book movie, ever. When picking out rentals, he wants to pick out every Quentin Tarantino movie, or anything with gangsters, Nicholas Cage and other macho stuff. When I want to rent stuff, I want comedies and Hong Kong cinema. He's always objected to Shakespeare because he "can't understand the language".

We rented The Merchant of Venice. Mark agreed to this only because my other pick was Bride and Prejudice (dude, Kumar and Said from Lost!), and Al Pacino plays Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most controversial plays, mostly for its anti-Semitism. It's a difficult play to stage, and an even harder film to shoot, because you have to cut down Shakespeare's five-act play to two hours, and make doubly sure that you don't allow the characters to become caricatures.

I really liked the movie. In Roger Ebert's review, he notes that the genius of Shakespeare's writing is that despite the racism, "its venom is undercut by Shakespeare's inability to objectify any of his important characters. He always sees the man inside." Al Pacino is captivating in it, and does a lot with the monologues he's given - "Hath not a Jew eyes?"

At the end of it, Mark turned to me and said, "Wow, and you say *I* like to watch train wrecks. That was half an hour of people just being really cruel." He's right - all the so-called "good" characters - Portia, Bassanio, Lorenzo, all treat Shylock contemptuously, even as they plead with Shylock to "show mercy".

There was one Arab character in here who is not a terrorist, and doesn't die. It's the Prince of Morocco, played by David Harewood - one of Portia's suitors. I guess that makes two.

I wish they had done more with the character of Jessica - Shylock's daughter - she elopes with Lorenzo, stealing her father's fortune and leaving him ruined, AND she converts to Christianity. She's only in the film for a few minutes, and she's shown as a flighty, shallow girl, until she starts feeling guilty towards the end, but she doesn't explain herself, nor are we shown anything of her motivations.

After watching this movie, he told me that a Klingon character in Star Trek liked to quote Shakespeare, and "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" was one of those lines.

In other news:

Japan creates a digital odor recorder: The new device, developed by scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, analyzes smells through 15 sensors, records the odour's recipe in digital format and then reproduces the scent by mixing 96 chemicals and vapourizing the result. This is so awesome.

Reading Versus Watching: Wuxia - This Wet Asphalt article explores why American publishers haven't really tried to translate Chinese wuxia novels - the most popular fantasy novels read all over Asia, especially those written by Jin Rong, the most widely-read twentieth century author alive today. The writer posits that issues of genre-classifying and unfamiliar non-Western styles are to blame, but also points out that Americans picked up on anime and manga fairly quickly and it's one of the largest money-makers for the book industry today.

I think the biggest hurdle, though, is just translating the novels. I've just about given up finding a Chinese novel translated in English that I can read and enjoy. The translations always come off to me as rather stilted, or too literal and I don't know if it's just me, but in the books I've read, I've always ended up hating the protagonist, for either being stupid or selfish. I know Jin Rong's books are not like that - and I know that only because I've watched many of the television serials his books are based on.

Some people have declared it Blog Against Racism Week.

Movie superstar SAMUEL L JACKSON will voice God in a new audio version of the Bible.
I am SO getting this.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-07-09 09:57 pm

wedding fever

We got back from the wedding a while ago. Our table was the LUG group, and how nerdy was it that two people at our table bought the groom and the bride the Dungeons and Dragons books? The bride and groom were lovely, and had a thankfully short and sweet ceremony in the East, EAST Bay, where it was boiling hot. It was a pretty small wedding, with some yummy cake, and a very pretty venue. We got to catch up with some people we hadn't seen in a while, and congratulated the bride and groom, both of whom looked lovely and very, very happy.

While the groom did not have a bachelor party, Mark and some of his friends decided to have a Scotch-tasting party the night before. They got pretty smashed, and I hadn't seen Mark that drunk since college. :P

I cannot drink Scotch. It burns, although one of the ones they tried did not burn. I'll post up their "tasting notes" when I find it - on one of them I added "smells like urine". Which it did. They drank a lot of Scotch.

It was also a potluck. (No drinking on empty stomachs!) One of Mark's coworkers, brought the best Indian food I have ever tasted. (Not that I go for Indian all that often, but it was pretty amazing.) Home-cooked food is always the best. I made twice-baked potatoes, bruschetta (which is pretty good, I think), and some salad, and other people brought smoked chicken, turkey, duck and some prosciutto and mozzarella. The smoked turkey was very, very tough. I couldn't bite through it, and gave it to Mark. I need to find some different things to cook, although bruschetta right now is very good, since tomatoes are in season.

Towards the end, somebody asked a question - what are your top five favorite movies? This was my answer:

1. 10 Things I Hate About You (I don't care how dated it gets - this is my favorite Shakespeare adaptation, and has Heath Ledger singing!)
2. Ever After: A Cinderella Story (I am a sucker for fairy tales, and especially fairy tales where the heroine is not useless.)
3. Infernal Affairs (This one is the best Hong Kong movie ever - it's like a re-birth of the movie industry with this film. Andy Lau and Tony Leung are amazing, as is all the supporting cast. Ok, I could have lived without Kelly Chen, but that's my own bias.)
4. The Incredibles (I have loved each successive Pixar movie more and more, and it peaked with the Incredibles. I liked Cars, but didn't love it. I loved the attention to detail paid in the movie, and especially how well they knew the tropes of the superhero genre. It was just all-around awesome.)
5. Donnie Darko (I didn't mention this at the party, because I couldn't think of it, until one of the songs on the soundtrack was played at the wedding. But I love this movie, for its little quirks, for introducing me to Jake Gyllenhaal, for the conversation about Smurfs, and the time travel. Love!)

If I took Infernal Affairs out and put those on my Hong Kong movie list, I'd replace it with Ghost Dog. I loved Forest Whitaker's performance, and he pretty much made the movie.

If I made a Hong Kong list, it would be:

1. Infernal Affairs (see above)
2. Police Story III - the Jackie Chan movie with Michelle Yeoh in it, because she gets to do her own stunts, and outshines Jackie Chan. Especially the one where she rides a motorcycle onto a speeding train. Watching the outtakes was pretty painful.
3. Ashes of Time - one of the early Wong Kar-Wai movies. This movie makes no sense, and is full of pretty people pining for loves lost and stolen. After this movie, everyone seemed to steal from it.
4. High Risk - with Jet Li and Jackie Cheung. Admittedly, this is a Wong Jing movie, which means that it's "mo lay tau" - nonsense - and steals blatantly from Die Hard and Speed. But it's one of my favorite Jet Li movies, because it's so funny, and it has some really good fight scenes.
5. Fong Sai Yuk - I love this movie more for Josephine Siao than Jet Li. She's such an amazing and talented comic and serious actress - she pretty much steals the show. She plays Jet Li's mom. One of my favorite things about this movie is how Siao gets herself into a situation where she's in drag and someone falls in love with her. It's hilarious.

Ok, I'm going to sleep. See ya.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-06-28 08:57 pm

feminism has arrived

Especially now that Guys Gone Wild exists. Favorite title is "Dude, Where's My Pants?"

Other things bouncing in my head:

You know that annoying guy in Office Space who says "Mmmmkay?" all the time? I met the real-life version of him in a very long meeting this week. He is just as annoying in real life.

Random people's opinions on immigration are really pissing me off. None of them seem to get that any changes in the law will also affect legal immigrants, almost certainly not in a good way.

Superman Returns will be on IMAX.

Mark's parents and grandparents are coming tomorrow. Mark previously thought they were coming last week, so I assisted him in the middle of a cleaning frenzy even though I was pretty sick. The good thing about cleaning last week is that there's not much left to do tonight. (And he is doing most of it.)

For whatever reason, lately, I've been resenting helping out with the cleaning. I think I'm just annoyed because even though I spend a lot of time here, I don't live here, and I (rightly or wrongly) don't feel like it should be my responsibility. Maybe I'm just being bratty.

The more I learn about the healthcare industry the more it depresses me.

I finished Danny, Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl. There are a couple of stories taken straight from his autobiography, Boy, and one chapter about the Big Friendly Giant, which would later turn into its own book. It's fascinating watching how the stories inspire more stories.

I hate PG&E. Stupid privatized utilities. (What, you thought California was liberal?) They have not managed to keep the power on continuously for a straight month. Last week, there was a power outage at my office. This week, Mark's power went out.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-06-25 09:47 am

movies

While watching Ebert and Roeper review The Road to Guantanamo I made a prediction that Roeper would make some asinine comment about how imbalanced the movie was or some stupid shit like that. And lo and behold, as soon as Ebert finished giving his positive review along with his opinion about how appalling it was that shit like that was happening in the US of A, Roeper interjects with "Well, I don't know that we know exactly what's going on down there, but for these three people it's really messed up."

Fuck you, Roeper.

Did you know that actor Sung Kang owns his own restaurant in L.A.? It's supposed to be pretty good, at least according to that site. Hmmm...we will have to check it out and maybe I will get to see my favorite BLT alum in person.

Does anyone know or care about the current LiveJournal controversies as of late? The breastfeeding icon one I thought was stupid, I thought people were making way too big a deal out of the voluntary ads, but I'm annoyed that every time I log into LJ I get that stupid reminder that I "could get more stuff with ads!", the whole Vox thing is confusing me, and I'm starting to wonder why SixApart can't just integrate all the services into one place, because I seriously do not want to sign on to another social network. I have enough accounts as it is, and in fact I'm thinking about deleting my myspace and possibly my delicious accounts. LibraryThing is staying - I might actually pay up for the lifetime account.
toastykitten: (Default)
2006-06-20 06:17 pm
Entry tags:

unlocked for your interest

I'm posting this part unlocked because [livejournal.com profile] manrobotmonster was referring to it in one of his entries. One thing I forgot to mention is that Mark and I were pretty much joking in this conversation - we don't obsess about it much other than to note it. I will admit that I occasionally obsess more about this stuff than he does. Also forgot to mention: The black guy dies, too. It's actually two cliches in one - the black guy dying, and the guy who discovers the deadly secret and dies before he can tell the protagonist what the one clue is that will solve the whole movie are the same person.

We watched what Zack called "some dumb action movie" - it turned out to be Spartan, this David Mamet movie that everyone gave four stars to. Maybe it was our initial impression that Zack gave us that framed how we perceived the movie, but we thought the entire thing was kind of dumb, and cliched, and the whole Mamet thing with people repeating their lines several times drove us nuts. And there was a Lebanese terrorist. I said, "Sorry honey", and Mark said, "It's okay - where are all the positive Arab characters?" "There's Monk." "But he's the only one!" "Yeah."

I thought of another one later - Sayid on Lost, but I don't know if he counts since his character was in the Iraq army. ?