Posts from — January 2007

Well, of course Angie was exactly right in her prediction. But no one guessed what would’ve made me lower the score, then (maybe) raise it back up again. Well, I’ll tell you in a minute. First, the recap:

Great movie. The plot? Well, think of it as an adult fairy tale. Well, I mean, think of it as a fairy tale for grown ups.

An “adult” fairy tale would be one starring me and Maribel Verdu, Paz Vega, and Salma Hayek. . . or me re-making Belle Epoque, with me and . . .oh well, you get the picture (not that you’d want that picture in your head).

The story’s about a young girl and her mom who go to live in the mountains to be with her new dad, who’s a captain of a division of soldiers in a region trying to stamp out the last of the maquis (the guerrillas). The evil step-motherfather is played by Sergi Lopez who rules yet again. (I hope he gets out of being the “bad guy” all the time.) The young girl loves the escapism of her books which allows her to occupy her mind instead of focusing on “new dad” and how her preggo-mom is not doing well at all. Fortunately she has the chief house maid (mmmmMaribel Verdu) to watch out for her.

See more …

I saw Pan’s Labyrinth yesterday with Angie and her second (tied-for-first though) office husband Matt. Silly kids asked what I thought of the flick afterwards, then Angie said, “well, maybe I should ask you on Tues or Weds”. So I thought I’d give y’all a chance to see how my mind flip-flops after a movie. In the comments section, guess what rating I’ll give the movie (One to Five star rating)- and I’ll give you a hint, if I had to rate it when I was coming out of the Daly City Theater, it’d be a perfect 5.

A few weeks ago I was heading up north to hang out with Kristen and Brett for some poker playin. I was too early so I went to kill some time at the mall. I hadn’t been to a mall in forevs. . . anyway, there’s a Williams Sonoma there, so I thought, hrm I should go see if they have any Isi Seltzer bottles in stock as I’ve wanted one for a while.

They didn’t have any Isi bottles (I already own an Isi creamer which rocks), but right before I walked out, I spied a Liss bottle on their sales table. It was marked down from $75 to $14. Total score. I’ve been drinking my own agua con gas since.

Why did this make the blog? I don’t know, but I got all excited about it and had to blab. Jodi had to endure the story once, so I thought I’d share the pain with everyone. (after two trips w/ me, she knows I have an odd love of agua con gas, and I know she always gets agua sin gas)

But for reals, who doesn’t like fizzy water? Mmm. Sometimes, I have a little glass on the side with my espresso, and sometimes I make strawberry italian sodas. Dizzam! Mmmm good.

Lordy Lordy. . . Happy (late) bday to Kliewer and Stef.

Happy Bday(s) to P ell, Yeager, Fnord, Rachel G-Page, Kuz and Florencia.


(I put two Pell pics in there because I like that “shocker pic”)

Did I just seriously type “whom”? Whatevers. . .

Anyway, who am I supposed to root for now in the SuperBowl? I usually root for the NFC, but theDa Bears have that anit-semite nutter in the backfield.

And I kind of like seeing the Colts lose a lot (as I’m sure people from Baltimore do as well). The Colts should lose so we can have a new B-Bills for the 21st Century. Oh, and the Cowboys America’s Team needs a resurgence.

I missed the boat a few years back and now I need a favor. Maybe if Angie, Kevin or Cory are up to it, it’d be more convenient. Here’s what I need. . . .

Please go out and buy all the previous seasons of 24 on DVD. Then go out of town and ask me to housesit. Kthanks.

Maybe Angie’s right. Maybe I am a wine snob. I personally don’t think so, but then again, I really like watching these videos about wine (made by a Yankee no less). You should watch some of the episodes. They’re fun.

Is it too early to rush to judgement? Is it bad of us to say that Frosty E. Hardison is an idiot? I’m not sure.

People always ask me why I like foreign movies. I tell them the best two reasons are usually Maribel Verdu and Penelope Cruz. Har har. But to be honest I think I like a lot of them because they can offer me no context.

By that I mean if, for example, I watch a Korean movie, I don’t know enough of the Korean language to know if the speaker is speaking with a goofy accent*, I don’t know enough of the setting to see continuity problems or reminders, I don’t know a lot of subtleties. In a way it can be a setback (like with Japanese, not knowing if they’re using the formal language when speaking to each other). But the reason I like it is that it allows me to focus on the story-telling and the raw acting and film. *by that I mean an accent that immediately conveys information on social status, education, or setting etc. For example, if I watched a movie starring Marky Mark or Eminem – within three words I’d know I were watching a mouthbreather. More examples: anything Owen Wilson’s in, any Wayan’s brother movie, etc etc.

I should come back and re-visit this explanation some other time, but a good way to sum up how I feel would be to compare John Woo’s Hard Boiled to John Woo’s Hard Target (unless you’re a Honk Kong-born New Orleans resident). While Hard Target is campy fun (a cool classic imho), Hard Boiled is considered cool. I think if it had been filmed in English, it would have been panned by critics for being campy. (If you still don’t believe me, go back and watch Broken Arrow again or Paycheck and compare them to A Better Tomorrow and A Bullet in the Head).

So given that, I like foreign movies for a lot of reasons (and not just an increased probability of seeing Paz Vega’s boobies). And I really liked Oldboy.

Before I get into it, let me just warn some of you who aren’t going to read this whole review because of the movie title I’m about to compare Oldboy to –even though the story has nothing in common — my old fave, Audition. [Mom, if you read this, don't rent either movie, you'll hate them both]

Here’s a summary of Oldboy: A drunk business man gets bailed out of jail by his buddy. He calls home on the payphone outside, his buddy turns around, and he’s gone. He’s been kidnapped. He gets thrown in some weird cell, they gas him at night to make him sleep and only let him play with the tv during certain hours [the tv's his only window to the world].

This goes on for 15 freakin’ years. The guy feels cooped up (obviously) and starts ‘training’ in his weird cell/hotel room by punching the walls and planning an escape. Just as he’s about to get out on his own, they release him. All he wants to do now is find out who the eff kidnapped him and exact revenge and get answers. THEN it gets weird.

He gets out, meets a girl, eats a live octopus, gets some clues, meets his kidnappers, tortues one of his captors in a way that’s so nasty* that I almost fast-forwarded the movie, and eventually figures out why he was kidnapped.

*almost as nasty as Audition- wait, I take that back, Audition rules, this is nasty but about a 5 on the 1-10 Audition scale.

**I should add that the gross violence (or sexual themes later) are out of place. They do kind of <i>fit</i> into and along with the story.

I won’t tell you why or any more than that (including another gross scene), but it’s a clever story. The viewer kinda figures it out about two-thirds of the way through, but you still go along with it.

But the thing is- the central themes – they couldn’t ever ever be made into a story in the US. Never evAr. And it’s nothing earth-shattering. It’s a good story, with good story-telling deivces. But we wouldn’t ever do it. If we tried it’d be some goofy “art” movie like Happiness, which I think is kind of overrated as being edgy and arty.

So, not much of a review, I know. I didn’t talk about the story enough. But I highly recommend it. Great acting & directing and one crazy-ass story.

By the way, the director of the movie has done a lot of good movies. I’d recommend almost all of his, but I’ll try to include some of them in my end of the month dvd roundup. And the main actor’s been in a lot of good Korean movies as well (like Shiri).

(warning, this is one long-ass post)

I was updating some things on CellarTracker today because I had been IM’ing with Cory who’s migrating his stuff from BottleCount. I wanted to double-check to make sure my stuff is up to date (which, for the most part it is). But as I was doing that, I found a note I had written to myself a while back to write down some recommendations for Angie.

I had wanted to write some recommendations for cheaper wine for Angie, who had bought some stuff at Safeway before a party (that must have been a while ago, back at the place on Laidley).

See more …