Hiatus from Blogger

Okay, I'm officially annoucing my move to my Korean blog, Adventures in Korean. I won't be posting any more on this blog, until after I return from Korea.


Also, the esteemed Bunny has a picture page in the same vein as The Various and Sundry Travels of Carl the Bear... but the idea is completely original! And the page is super special and embedded, so this link is the only way to get to it, until I get away to putting a super special and secret link on my blog's homepage.

After a convenient name change, this blog seems to be developing a very specific theme.


Men Who Stare at Goats
Starring: Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey
Grade: A

Before I begin, I'd just like to say, for those of you who have seen The Informant or read my post about it - these movies (while certainly not the same) have a lot of similarities. Half-way through the movie I realized this. But unlike The Informant, this movie was advertised as a comedy and is. Even during the moments where you kind of cringe at what's going on, it's still funny. (And of course, I still like The Informant, even if it wasn't as funny as advertised). Now onto the movie!

Dude, I pretty much loved this movie. At the moment I can't think of anything bad about it, other than at times I wanted it to go a little faster. But I'm also really tired so maybe if I wasn't than A.) I might have found something bad about the movie and B.) I might have not wanted it to go faster towards the end.

Let me start this movie intro by saying that if Miss Alice is reading this paragraph, she might want to skip it. There was a commercial for (I think - and isn't it funny I can't remember what the ad was advertising) a TV-movie. And it started on a close-up of this guy talking and all you can see are his eyes. And I'm thinking 'I know that voice and those eyes... it can't... be...' And the camera pulls away to reveal Glenn Beck. And the woman sitting behind me says with pretty much no restraint "Ugh, I hate that guy." And the theater busts out laughing. And the theater was pretty much in sync with the laughs from that point on.

On to slightly less controversial politics - now, I'm not exactly a fan of hippies, but I have to say after watching the hippie scenes in this is movie, where the "Men Who Stare at Goats, as it were, are trained to be psychic soldiers... I wouldn't mind spending some time in that camp. So the basic premise of the movie is that a reporter, Bob (McGregor) is investigating a government program from the 80's called the "New World Army", where men were trained to be "Jedi Warriors" or "Psychic Spies", via New age practices and things like that, and he's being told the story of this program (which is seriously based on some stuff that actually happens. See my side note on MKULTRA on the bottom of this post) by Clooney's character, Lyn. There's obviously more too it than that but this is the basic premise.


Okay, I could really just go on about this movie, especially because I'm tired, so I'll just break down the stuff I liked in bullet points.

  • Lyn's demonstration of (his liberal intrepretation of) how a Jedi warrior disables an enemy opponent: there are actually two insistences of this - both hilarious - and the second probably my favorite scene in the whole movie
  • The Jedi warrior references subtle juxtaposition with Ewan McGregor (aka the young Obi Wan Kenobi - if you don't know who I'm talking about... get out. Now.): this was supposedly unintentional and they just happened to cast McGregor for the part. Whether true or not, whatever, I don't care. It was funny.
  • The glorious, GLORIOUS 70's rock. Long live Boston.
  • Pretty much the entire last twenty minutes of the movie. I will give nothing away, but it's great. And it led me to decide my next bullet point.
  • Jeff Bridge's character (the original psychic warrior) is Walter Bishop. And through the transitive property, Jeff Bridges is also Walter Bishop. And Walter Bishop is the Dude.
Now go see the movie!

And if you're still reading: MKULTRA. Look it up on Wikipedia. Basically it was this CIA program from the 70's where the government tried to use LSD to see if they could read and end up controling the minds of people, such as communists and dictators, people like that. A lot of people died and the program shut down. When I was in high school, the documents about the program were unclassified, and my friend did a really awesome research project about it that I wish I did instead of stupid HUAC and the stupid McCarthy Hearings. (Stupid McCarthy... stupid not reading about the smoking gun til I had already written my whole paper...). It's pretty crazy the things they did. Crazy... or... Genius? Nope, it was crazy.

Filmographic Fridays! #2

Okay, so I realize it's not Friday anymore. You'll have to excuse the tardiness; I thought the Stargate: Universe premiere was only one hour, when it turns out it was two. And even though it's not a film, I give it two thumbs up, just for being more interesting to me than Stargate: Atlantis.


Movie(s) du jour:

The Informant!
My Grade: B/ B+

I'm on the fence about the grade for this movie, because all the trailer's billed it as a comedy, and while it's funny, it's not a hilarious, laugh-out-loud type of comedy. BUT this movie gets major props from me for the ending. It's not a twist or surprise ending but it is interesting and sort of unexpected. I don't want to give anything away, in case you're the type of person who (like me) does not and TRIES NOT to see things coming, but it really made me think more critically of Matt Damon's character(as in applying critical thinking skills to his character, not necessarily thinking badly of him) . Also, even though it's not laugh-out-loud funny, Matt Damon's narration throughout the film is surprisingly entertaining and cuts down scene transitions and other less interesting parts.

I really did like the film, but I was expecting a comedy. This movie is really more of a dramedy. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's a very entertaining dramedy, however it should have been advertised that way.

The Invention of Lying
My Grade: B+/A

My first instinct was to give this film an A, but I quickly realized that was because I had lowered expectation for it that I shouldn't have had. I was expecting this movie to have the funniness of Ghost Town (another Gervais movie), which was funny but not really funny. This movie however is quite funny. And the best part (for me) was that it had a nice message that didn't feel forced. There were actually a couple of messages: one about lying, obviously. I'll just let you guys figure out the rest when you see the movie, because there really are several good messages watchers can take away. To sum it up, I'm going to quote Roger Ebert's review "In its amiable, quiet, PG-13 way, The Invention of Lying is a remarkably radical comedy."

However, the movie does have one aspect that could be seen as a downside. Given that this movie is about people who can only tell the truth, the issue of religion, God and the afterlife was bound to come up and the movie does poke fun at these things. But I thought it was funny and wasn't offended, so there.

On a side note, I'd like to make a little comment about trailers. One of the reason's that I found The Invention of Lying as funny as I did was probably because I had really only seen two trailers for it. The second trailer I saw just an hour before the movie and it only contained a couple of seconds of new things, so nothing really over-spoiled for me there. And both hid the major plot points of the movie well.When I go to see a movie, I like to know it's basic premise and to have only seen ONE trailer that shows it's scenes and stuff. Teaser trailers don't count as trailers in this total. If I see more than one trailer (and in the cases of some movies four or five) I just feel like too much of the movie has been revealed.

While in both the movies talked about here, I saw the trailer for the new movie It's Complicated. This movie has an awfully long trailer (maybe two or three minutes - it's ridiculous). So I really hope they don't release a second one, because I already feel like I've seen to much of it.

Finally, after seeing it's trailer today, I'm really excited about Men Who Stare At Goats. Which had already hooked me anyway by it's awesome title!


Korea Update

So I got tired of waiting around til I go to Korea to start my Korea blog, but I also didn't want to have a Blogger blog (no offense Blogger) for it, since uploading pictures is a pain in the butt. After shopping around, I eventually started a blog for Korea on Wordpress. I'll still use this one for my 'unrelated to Korea' posts, but I'll be using Wordpress for Korea/'getting ready for Korea' stuff.


And I already got one view on two of my posts! Yay! Anyway, here's the new blog:


Also, I would definitely recommend Wordpress as a blogging host. It's got a really sweet dashboard set up although I haven't yet tried to upload pictures...

Rest in Peace

As two out of three of this blog's followers already know (and one will soon be finding out, provided she keeps reading), my grandmother died last Sunday (September 9th, 2009 at 7:44am, to be precise). She died of Alzheimer's, which is very sad because it meant she died in a lot of mental pain and unfortunately because of her arthritis she was in a lot of physical pain as well. While I'm certainly not happy that she died, I am glad she was finally able to pass because she was trapped in a bad place for longer than anyone's grandma should be.


I thought I'd share some of the stories from the last few months of her life, since some of them are very sweet while others are a reminder of what a little monster Alzheimer's is. First let me start with the bad.

What initially started off as forgetfulness quickly developed into the fabrication of memories as Grandma tried to connect together what she could still remember. She accused my grandfather (her husband of 60 years) of cheating on her with a woman living in the next town over, and eventually of having children with her. She forgot her youngest child, my aunt, before eventually accusing her of marrying my grandpa. She started asking people where her father (who has been dead since the 70's) was, and occasionally referred to my grandpa as her father. Sometimes she switched to 'Dark Mommy', as my mother and her siblings called the phase when Grandma threw and destroyed things, shouted things, acted generally violent and not herself. By the end, she had lost muscle control, was confined to a bed and was asking people to get her a shotgun so she could kill herself, because even though she couldn't remember what was going on with her, she knew that something was very wrong.

But Grandma still had some lucid moments, and some very ponient moments up to the very end. At her funeral, my mom was telling me about how loving my grandparents were in the last few months. It caught my mom and her sister off-guard because they (and I) could never remember their parents being very affectionate to each other, but by the end, my mom said she could really see how passionately they loved each other.

When my grandma was accusing my grandfather of cheating on her, he sat there very calmly and said 'No Bernice, you're the only woman I've ever loved. I've never loved another woman.' And when she died he sent my aunts and uncles on a search for a picture my grandma sent him when he was in the Navy, because he said it was his most precious possession and he was afraid she might have torn it up as 'Dark Mommy'. At the end, they had a moment together where my grandma said she wouldn't have traded her life for another without my grandpa. During her funeral and through the long Catholic service, Grandpa never took his eyes of her coffin.

It wasn't until they started carrying out Grandma's coffin when I (and my aunt and youngest cousin) became overwhelmed. I was okay with Grandma dieing, but it was upsetting to see my poor grandpa in so much silent pain. The woman he loved for 60+ years isn't with him anymore and the way she died must have been so emotionally devestating for him.

There was a moment of silence during the funeral and not being one to pray to God I prayed to my grandma, that she's able to make it to her heaven, that she's able to find and be with my aunt Marianne again and that my grandpa finds them when he dies. Unfortunately my grandfather, being a hardcore Catholic, believes that everyone spends some time in purgatory after they die before they're allowed into heaven, which I'm sure is only putting him through more mental unhappiness right now. Personally, I think Alzheimer's was their purgatory.

Filmographic Fridays!

Hmmm. I might just have to make this a thing, given how I do love those movies.

Movie du jour:

Inglourious Basterds
My Grade: A

I was tempted to give this movie a lower grade, because of my bias towards some of the characters who died (and this isn't a sentimental film, so you can be sure people die). But I'm going to be bigger than that and give it an A. It was a damn good movie. I was thinking about comparing it to District 9 but I don't like it when people compare movies across genres so I won't.

I think my dad said it best when after the movie he declared (and I'm paraphrasing, cuz I forgot what he actually said) 'I know this movie was supposed to be over the top, but it's a lot more historically accurate then some movies that were supposed to be serious historical depictions.' And unfortunately the best part of what he said I can't remember. He said something other than 'over the top' but like I said... can't remember what it was. But it rings true, in terms of the realisticness of the ending and the way the plans put into motion unfold. (PS. I just asked my dad what he said, and he couldn't remember either but this time he used the word 'outrageous')

Also, I'd like to give some props to Christoph Waltz who plays Col. Hans Landa. He was one magnificently evil bastard. I suspect that one day he might be on the list of best film villians, not because he was particularly evil but because he was so deliciously calculating in his evil.

And thus I shall leave you with that. Calculated evil.

I got back from my day at the botanical garden so late that I didn't have time to post about it. And from Friday to Sunday I was in PA and outside of wireless internet range, which is why this post is several days late.

I knew there was a botanical garden in DC, but I didn't realize it was also a conservatory. The botanial garden was nice, but since it's August a lot of the flowers were loosing their blooms. But still very nice and in the early summer I bet it's beautiful.

Then, after eating a delicious and extremely filling meal at the American Indian Museum, I went to the conservatory. WOW. That building makes me want to work in DC so I can go there everyday; it also makes me wish I had gone there before leaving College Park.

My personal favorite rooms were the orchid room and the Hawaiian room. The Hawaiian room was the coldest in the building. I kept trying to hang out in there since it was so hot, but it's pretty small so everytime someone came in I had to leave.

UNFORTUNATELY, a series of unfortunate events (not the book series) led me to leave my memory card for my digital camera and my cell phone (which I needed to get a ride back to get my memory card) behind. So no beautiful pictures, which is a real shame.

After that, I went to go see Julie & Julia at the Chinatown Theatre.
My Grade: B+

I enjoyed this movie as much as a thought I would, and perhaps more. I have to say Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, playing Julia child and her husband (respectively) were extremely enjoyable to watch. I'd probably give the movie an A, but at times the storytelling was a little slow and mainly the Julia Child obsession (although fully admitted) was kinda creepy. But it was a nice movie and worth the extra expense of seeing it in Chinatown instead of at home.

The only thing is... everytime I see a movie where meat that still looks like the animals that it once was is being prepared... I leave wishing I was a vegetarian... but I love bacon too damn much.

Older Posts