madtypist

The Assassination of Jesse James

2008-04-28T05:54:05Z

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The title sums up well what the movie is about so there's no need for me to summarize. It's a good movie although I would have been a little restless watching it in the theater.

It's a Western obviously but with the twist of showing how all the killings are acts of cowardice. Some of the men hold their guns steadier than than others. We know Jesse dies. We know who kills him. And the movie does a nice job of showing the build up to it and the desperate thoughts that were running through all of their heads. And we see what it does to them to pull the trigger, either more mess or deep regret.

The actors deliver strong performances, particularly Brad Pitt who has such strong presence that it gives an idea of the aura and menace that surrounded Jesse James and why so many people, even in groups, could be so afraid of just one man. The other members of the cast do a good job of projecting their desperation and fear. The cinematography is pretty and makes good use of silhouettes and subtly antiquing the edges of some of the shots. Where the movie fails is in the narration which tells too much when it's not necessary and also slows down the pacing.

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Spicy Shrimp

2008-04-18T06:49:14Z

Last night, I started thinking about how little time there was in the day, and I started doing the math and trying to break up my day to more effectively fit everything in. It was a little discouraging, especially since I feel so often that I do so little and everyone else seems to do so much, and it turned into a little brain teaser to play with all day. Anyway, this is a roundabout way of describing how I started thinking about quick and simple dishes for dinner and reminded me that I should jot down this recipe for spicy shrimp.

This recipe is from Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. It's a Moroccan dish and quite easy. It's so quick it doesn't quite need a recipe, but then that's the kind of dish that I'll turn to again and again in a pinch - especially since we had all the ingredients on hand before even finding the recipe.

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, crushed
3T sunflower oil or EVOO
1t paprika
3/4t cumin
1/4t ground ginger
pinch of cayenne or ground chili pepper
1/2 pound large frozen or fresh shrimp, peeled
salt
2-3T cilantro or parsley, chopped

Cooking Steps:

Saute 2 cloves of minced or crushed garlic in oil
Stir in spices
Add shrimp
Season with salt to taste and add herbs.
Fry about 5 minutes or until shrimp is a nice healthy pink.

Serves 2 as a light yet satisfying dinner.

The results are very tasty and the dish comes out very red and colorful. We just ate it with a bit of bread brushed with a little olive oil and then toasted, which probably isn't the most fitting accompaniment, but it was easy and let us focus on the shrimp. I'll have to think about something else to go with it for next time.

BTW, I do recommend checking out Roden's book. It's informative and fun to leaf through since there are a lot of appetizing recipes with combinations that at least I haven't explored before.

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Movies: Once, Shopgirl, The Proposition, and The Island

2008-04-17T05:57:42Z

Once

Once was marketed as a modern musical when it was out in theaters, which both piqued my interest yet also helped me to find other things to do.... In a way, I'm a little sad that I didn't see this movie in the theater because the music would have been much more enveloping in a theater setting compared to my living room. Unlike older musicals where the characters spontaneously break out in song when they're overwhelmed with emotion, the characters are musicians so the songs flow more naturally into the story as the characters pour their hearts out into the music. It's a good movie and I liked how the story handled the characters' relationship. I liked that the movie was set in working class Dublin so none of the scenes were very touristy. Glen Hansard was so charming in the lead role that I thought the movie was worth watching for him alone.

Shopgirl

I haven't read the novel written by Steve Martin upon which this movie is based so I can't speak to how Shopgirl fares as an adaptation, but M read the book and says that the male characters are a little different which changed the relationships. I enjoyed watching the movie because it is beautifully shot. I thought that Claire Danes delivered a good performance as Mirabelle - honest and awkward one moment and beautiful the next - but Mirabelle's growth in the movie was fairly predictable. The male love interests played by Steve Martin and Jason Schwartzman were more intriguing but I felt distant from all of the characters, almost disinterested. I would recommend watching the movie though because there are so many lovely colors and images.

The Proposition

M persuaded me to watch The Proposition because it had Guy Pearce in it. He told me the movie was a Western, but it is set in rural Australia, so the setting is a little different. The movie opens with a shoot out in a brothel and a lawman gives Guy Pearce's character an ultimatum: kill his older brother who is responsible for leading his gang in a brutal murder of a family in exchange for his freedom and his younger brother's life - or have all three brothers hunted down and killed. There are a lot of scenes where Europeans are talking about the natives as if they're animals and that they'll civilize Australia as they either run off into the wilderness or try to impose European society in the harsh landscape, but mostly you see a lot of brutish, vengeful violence made by Europeans - both gentlemanly and uncouth - toward other Europeans with natives dying in the middle. There are a lot of good actors populating rather desolate scenes of Australia, but overall I didn't enjoy this movie much.

The Island (2005)

The Island seemed like pretty solid science fiction and reminded me of Logan's Run, but I wouldn't recommend it. I liked Scarlet Johansson and Ewan McGregor, but I thought that the action scenes dragged on too long. There were a lot of good actors in supporting roles though.

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Marie Antoinette (2006)

2008-03-20T06:31:16Z

Marie Antoinette

Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette is such a great book that I hope Sofia Coppola's movie did not discourage people from reading it. It's not that the movie is so terribly bad but rather that the movie has very little to do with the book and what was there was of little interest except as eye candy.

The movie certainly fails to convey the historical context that the book provides but to be fair that's not what Coppola sets out to do. This is not a period piece. What the movie does show is how very young Marie Antoinette is when she enters France and how strict the court rules are. She can't even reach for a handkerchief without breaking etiquette. The movies does a good job of showing how lacking any avenue of expression Marie Antoinette, like many young girls, parties and shops because there is very little that she is allowed to do - and politics have no interest to her so she doesn't bother to understand it. Marie Antoinette and her companions party and shop so extravagantly and spend so little time on anything of substance that it's no wonder the country is in trouble when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette become monarchs. And because the movie only captures the bubble that Marie Antoinette inhabits, we see precious little of the rest of France (the mob's arrival at Versailles is quite sudden and almost cartoonish). There are various deliberate anachronisms throughout the movie to link it to the partying of Marie Antoinette's day with reckless young celebrities today but it's not sufficiently compelling to justify two hours. The sets were pretty since the film was shot in Versailles, and Kirsten Dunst performs well with the little material she has to work with but it just wasn't enough. The party is over by the movie's end, but I just can't help but think that the film could have had something - anything - more to say.

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vox gripe and office space

2008-03-19T06:49:32Z

Vox Gripe: There's a new ad on the sidebar when I try to compose a new entry. It's very distracting because it flashes constantly and sometimes it moves and interferes with my mouse. It gets especially confusing when I try to add an item from my library into the draft. And No, I do not want to know who in Petaluma has a crush on me. It's terrible but I suppose the price one pays for a free blog. I don't recall the ads being this annoying and hope it's not the start of a trend.

Anyway, I had meant to write about Office Space, which is one of those movies that a lot of my friends would quote or refer to but which I had never gotten around to seeing. The movie is a bit dated now in terms of pacing although not in terms of the sentiments and work situations. I remember seeing the fax machine scene on television close to when it was released and finding it hilarious but the movie is much more muted by today's standards. I still enjoyed it though.

Office Space

The ad in the sidebar is still moving around and flashing at me. Very annoying. It works as an ad, I suppose, because I keep staring at it but I get very disgruntled when I look at it, which is probably not what they intended.

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Two Days in Paris

2008-03-18T05:52:00Z

Two Days In Paris

I liked this movie. The premise is very simple. Marion and Jack visit Paris for two days. They have been together for two years and have just completed a vacation in Italy. Marion grew up in Paris and this is Jack's first introduction to the parents and to her friends in France. I liked the dialogue which is very raw but not in a harsh way but in a way that gives a more intimate peek in to a couple's relationship than you get in most films. Jack and Marion are neurotic and insane and insecure. They fit together because they're silly in the same way but their relationship is also very fragile. The movies also does a good job of showing how Jack is isolated because he can't understand the fast flowing French around him, making him more insecure and anxious even when he can read the general situation. The movie has a similar feel to Before Sunset, which Delpy also co-wrote.

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work, kf, allergies, and worms

2008-03-16T18:10:21Z

The work week is blending into my weekends, so today I woke up 2 hours before I needed with a list of all the things that I needed to get accomplished today for work. April 1 will be nerve-wracking to get to and I'll be quite jittery on that day but it will also be a relief.

KF class was canceled today because the instructor hurt his foot or ankle somehow. We told the admin that we hoped the injury was not too serious. She replied blithely that he knew qi gong and that he would recover quickly. I'm a bit down because there was no class. It helps me calm down and shake off the stress.

Yesterday, I saw the allergist. M drove me because he's tired of my coughing, wheezing, and sneezing all night and of waking up to see me dry eyed and unhappy. The allergist prescribed two different types of pills and two different types of eye drops. I'm going to go back and see him after the summer when I no longer have symptoms so that he can test to find out what I'm allergic to. To test now would mean I'd have to be off all allergy medication for one week, and he'd rather not put me through that misery right away. Nice doctor. I hope that some combination of what he prescribed works.

After the allergist, I adopted sprat's worms. They're red worms that she's been using for composting. M is a little fearful and a little confused about why I took them in. I've raked through the dirt a bit but haven't found any worms yet although I haven't looked terribly hard. I did some web research on worm bins and vermicomposting and saw close up shots of the worms. Yeah, I really am not that keen on seeing them but I do want to make sure they're there and ready to do their jobs. And um, the web turns up strange folk; some people are absolutely obsessed with worms.... In the end, I hope I'll have something good to feed Meyer, our lemon tree, who will actually bear fruit this year!

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television

2008-02-26T06:46:07Z

I've been sick and rather lazy so we've been watching a lot of tv lately. We don't have cable or even broadcast channels so tv is kind of an event at our house even if we watch the shows well after everyone else has.

We finished watching the first season of House. I like Hugh Laurie as House - such a different character from the ones Laurie played in the Blackadder series - but I don't like the women in the show very much. I'm hoping that will change but I didn't like Sela Ward's character either - at least from the appearance she makes at the end of the season. Laurie is worth watching though. He's such a nasty character, a bit of his own villain, but he does what he thinks he should do and makes no apologies. I also like his relationship with Wilson. Is the second season good or am I better off stopping after the first season?

We also tried watching the pilot to the Sarah Connor Chronicles. It could turn into a fun sci fi series maybe but the terminators are a bit too dramatic. I loved the terminator in the second movie because he was rather sleek and clever, but the first bad terminator in the pilot didn't have much cleverness and was just rather brutish.

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paint color, new glasses, and kung fu

2008-02-26T05:39:41Z

I haven't had the time or the focus to write - mostly because I had a very nasty cough and cold which has stolen my voice and took me out for much of last week - but just a general update. A lot of minor changes, nothing major, but I'm generally happy not to have any major drama.

We painted our living room and hallway last week. The living room is brown and the hallway is light brown. If anyone had told me that I was fated to paint any wall in my house brown of all the possible color choices, I would have been very puzzled and probably a bit annoyed. But brown it is. Actually, it's more of a beige. It was the best looking of the colors that we had up. I may re-paint, but the living room looks much nicer, like a place where grown-ups live. Anyway, I've decided on bright colors for the rest of the house. It's nice that after 2 years my house is beginning to look like a home.

I have new glasses! They're thick and black but the cool part is that the arms pivot in any direction I want. I have no idea if there is any functional purpose to being able to bend them in any way I like it - the only thing I can think of would be that they're less likely to break off - but it's a fun feature. If I must wear glasses, I might as well pick frames that I can play with.

I did learn that my little brother has a scary memory. I told him which company made my frames and he was able to tell me which glass showcase my frames were stored from his one and only visit to this particular optical shop 6 months back - a visit that lasted for less than 10 minutes.

Finally, I signed up for a kung fu school. It's nowhere near as intense as my old school, but I'm nowhere near the shape I used to be in. The instructor is patient and very clear even if he doesn't speak English. The emphasis is much more on stretching than cardio, so I'll have to do cardio workouts on my own, and the general pace is much slower. It's a class where I'll have to push myself to improve rather than have other people yell at me to push myself harder, so it'll be a bit of an adjustment. The moves are familiar though: a crescent kick is still a crescent kick, but I do wish my body would remember how to do sweeps and the varying sequences that we run through in class because I know that I've run through them before. I do feel generally better after class though.

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Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

2008-02-19T05:54:10Z

The Complete Persepolis

I heard about Persepolis because of the movie, which I wanted to see but did not catch in time at the theater. If the movie is true to the book, it's probably worth watching. The book features vignettes from the author's childhood growing up in Iran starting from the Islamic revolution and the drastic effects it has on Marjane's family. It's an interesting peek into an Iranian family. I liked the art which is almost child-like, but most of all, I liked Marjane who grows from a defiant little girl who dreams of becoming a prophet to a troubled and callous teenager to a self-assured adult. Engaging read.

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