Weekend Update

Yeah, yeah, I know it's Tuesday already, sue me.

Friday I had a lovely evening with my group of 'sisters' that I get together with about once a month. We're all together again now that ~V has moved back stateside and pretty soon, we will hopefully be joined by Heathen at some point too. I always have a good time with this group and I'm very thankful that I have them. They're part of what I consider my 'chosen family,' something I've written about before.

Saturday I pretty much prepped cooking stuff all day. I made my first completely vegetarian meal, since I was having a vegetarian over for dinner. Stuffed eggplant is mighty yummy and easy to make. I had saffron rice, stuffed eggplant, a little na'an flat bread with tomato & feta. All in all, I was very proud of myself. I mean, I can cook and I like to cook, but I've never done an entire meal without some sort of meat. The hardest part was thinking of things that could go together with the main dish without conflicting flavors. In the end, pretty much everything I made contained most of the same ingredients in different combinations, and so it all worked well together. I made a peach cobbler for dessert too (come on - fresh farmer's market peaches, you gotta do something with them!).



We rented Diary of the Dead, which I liked and was interesting - classic George Romero - Zombie madness with the over-arching critique of human nature. I think I still like Dawn of the Dead (both the original and the remake) better though. The premise of Diary of the Dead is a bunch of college students are in the middle of making a film for Jason's final project (a horror movie of course) and wind up making a documentary of the events that unfold in the first three days of the zombie plague. The movie begins by one of the characters explaining that she edited the final version and uploaded it as a warning to future generations. It has interesting characters and a good balance of dialogue, analysis, action, and horror, and of course, Romero's constant question of 'do human beings really deserve to live?'

Annie was happy to have someone other than me to play with for a little while. The boy jokingly offered to buy her from me because she's so cute. Once she gets to know people, she's the sweetest little dog and everyone ends up loving her to death.

Sunday was a quiet day. I did some knitting and some operational stuff (pay bills, etc - wheeeee). I also decided to order Dead Snow off Comcast on demand. It's playing in a local theatre, but the showtimes are weird and honestly, it's $7 to watch it at home with nifty features like "pause" and $9 to see it in the theatre. So it was worth it, IMHO. It's only a couple bucks more than renting it - so why not?



Awesome movie. Unlike Romero's work, this is your classic totally ridiculous zombie movie. The point of this one is antics, action, and gore. The premise is totally formula and an homage to movies like Evil Dead - a bunch of happy go lucky college students go into the woods (or in this case, the mountains) for spring break. A friend of theirs is hiking across the mountains and will meet them at her family's cabin (or will she??). Kids are having a great time. Enter spooky old man that randomly shows up and warns them about the history of this place - that during World War II it was a Nazi stronghold and there are evil forces still at work. Exit spooky old man. One of the characters is a total movie nerd and is seen wearing several different shirts with various horror movie posters on them. The first half of the movie is essentially the kids trying to figure out what is stalking them from outside, then them getting picked off one by one in great gore fashion. And then the climax - killing Nazi zombies with chainsaws and sledgehammers... awesome fun. I should note that this is a Norwegian film - the version on comcast is overdubbed, not subtitled. But the movie/dvd version will likely be subtitled.

Movie Review: Gran Torino

I can't think of a single Clint Eastwood-directed movie (that I have seen) that I disliked.

This movie is no exception.

It's about Walt, a jaded, bitter, old Korean war vet who's wife recently died. He's angry, he's a bigot, and he hates that "His" neighborhood has been over-run with Asian immigrants - most of whom are decent people, some of whom are gangbangers - all of whom he repeatedly refers to as Gooks, Slopes, Zipperheads, etc. To Walt, there is no difference between the gangbangers and the regular people, they're all intruders. If you are sensitive to racial slurs, you will be jarred by this movie. However, the way the words are used actually works really well.

Walt just wants to be left alone with his dog, and while everyone around him can see his life is empty, he cannot. His own kids and grandkids want nothing but the obligatory relationship with him, if that. They're not close, they don't know each other at all.

The neighbor kid, Thao (or "Toad" as Walt calls him) has problems with his cousin's gang. Just for wanting to protect his own property, Walt inadvertently finds himself intertwined in this conflict. Seen as a "hero" for pulling a rifle on the gang to get them off his lawn (he could care less about the other people involved), the neighborhood starts to engage this bitter old man. He confronts his own prejudices and eventually comes to to understand and appreciate the neighbors, their culture (and their food). He eventually befriends the Thao, his sister Sue, and their family, who become more like family to him than his own children. A family that he defends repeatedly from the gangbangers.

Truly a fantastic movie.

I MUST SEE THIS MOVIE

Come on!!! Nazi ZOMBIES!!!

Thankfully it's coming to the Music Box in Chicago in a few weeks.




I love the one character's "Braindead" t-shirt. That was the original title for Peter Jackson's (yes, *that* Peter Jackson) second movie "Dead Alive," my favorite zombie movie ever.

Pictures, Sailing & Movie Reviews

Today is a really slow day at work, so I finally have some time for an update.

This past weekend was pretty fun. Aside from having to lure Annie outside while people were blowing up small pieces of the neighborhood, it was a good time.

I took Thursday off work to hang out for a few hours with a couple friends in from out of town. We took a tour of the Auditorium Theatre, which is basically about the history and architecture of the building. Those of you who saw Public Enemies saw Johnny Depp standing in the lobby of the theatre for a minute or two. It's truly an amazing building and I am awed every time I am inside.






We got to go up to the Gallery seating area, which is above the 5th balcony, about 72 feet in the air. The Gallery is grandfathered into building codes now, but the new codes would never allow these seats to exist because they are arranged on a 41 degree incline and you seriously get vertigo looking down at the stage. I didn't take any pictures up there - they would not have captured the feeling.

Friday I went to New Buffalo, Michigan and went sailing with the same friends & their family. I'd never been out on an actual sailboat before, and it was a perfect day to be out on Lake Michigan. We went out for a few hours and then went back and had dinner. I got off the train downtown about an hour after the Grant Park fireworks had ended (1 million people crammed into a space of maybe 10-12 square blocks). Thankfully, most of the crowd had dissipated before I got downtown and I was able to get on the El very easily.



Movie Review #1: The Taking of Pellham 123
Saturday I went with 'the boy' to see the Taking of Pellham 123 and I was actually quite pleased with the movie. It was better than I had expected because they did a very good job with character development. We both pretty much had the plot figured out from the beginning, but still thought it was a decent movie. It's a remake of a 70s movie and the plot is basically a hostage situation involving a subway train. John Travolta plays the leader of the hijackers, and the bulk of the movie revolves around him talking to Denzel Washington, a transit dispatcher, over the radio. The interactions between the characters is well done and I'd recommend seeing it if it interests you. The thing I like about movies like this is that there is no clear black and white distinction between the "good guys" and the "bad guys." All of the characters have grey areas, and that makes them much more interesting.

Movie Review #2: Towelhead
A few weeks ago I rented Towelhead, which interested me because it was supposed to be a coming of age story about a half-Lebanese, half-American teenager living in the United States. The title, which was supposed to draw attention to racism and insensitivity, and all the reviews I read indicated that it was supposed to be about the prejudices she faces and that other characters grapple with when cultures, generations, and identities collide.

It is not that.

I hated this movie. I kept watching it just because I thought it might get back to the point, but no. Spoiler alert, I am not hiding anything in this review because I want you to know what you're getting into. If you don't want to know, skip this.

While it is a coming of age story about is Jasira, a 13 year old half-Lebanese girl whose mother sends her to live with her Lebanese father in Texas, it honestly has very little to do with racism or even identity, which is merely a sub-plot. Jasira is sent to live with her father because her mother is a selfish bitch who doesn't believe Jasira when Jasira tells her that her mother's boyfriend was basically molesting her. He only got as far as 'shaving' her, but her mother sees it as her fault and sends her away. From this point on, Jasira's character is nothing but an exotic sexual object - and she's only 13. She lives with her father and is then molested by the father of a kid she's babysitting, who is your stereotype of a conservative, flag-waving, Army reservist Texan. Of course, he and her father both have misconceptions about the other (another bit of the racism subplot). She begins a very inappropriate relationship with this character - which in addition to her dating a black boy in school (there's another little bit of racism in the plot), is the main focus of the plot. It's horrifying to watch this character be used as an object. Now, this is based on a book by the same title, written by an Arab woman. Maybe the book is better and less involved with the sexualization of a teenager. I also have to point out that Alan Ball, the screenwriter for American Beauty, adapted the book for the screenplay. What is it with that man and stories about adult men having inappropriate relationships with teenage girls??? Don't get me wrong, I love American Beauty (a far, far superior movie to this one), but it really makes me wonder why this man is drawn to stories of this kind.

If you're expecting a thoughtful and insightful movie about conflicting identities in America, this is NOT it.


Movie Review #3: Let the Right One In
This was recommended by a friend, so I rented it last week. While the storyline was very interesting - a teenaged vampire (Eli) befriending a bullied boy (Oskar) and the strange relationship between them as Oskar starts to realize what Eli really is, the movie itself was very, very slow. I recently heard from someone else that the book is much, much better (surprise there, right? When is that not the case). I would have liked a lot more character development and backstory. Pretty much the budding relationship between Eli and Oskar is peppered with incidents with the school bullies and myserious disappearances of townsfolk. I will say that the storyline, characters, and style of the movie are very original. I just wanted more to happen.