Thanksgiving 2007
Thanksgiving day was pretty good except for the death of my car's battery that prevented me from visiting Austin and his guests before they ate dinner. But my dinner was simple but delicious - Green bean casserole, Cheesy Monkey bread and Apple cake. I believe it met the minimum Thanksgiving requirement for starch that Sandy and I discussed in a conversation earlier this week.
Here' s picture of a funny little car that parks near my office. It is a government car but I am not sure of its exact purpose.
More Beer reviews
Lagunitas India Pale Ale: Now that I know that India Pale Ales have an extra hoppy taste I want to try them all. The Lagunitas web site says their IPA is a "special homicidally hoppy ale" and while I found it to be quite good with a nice smooth taste I did not find it to have a strong hoppy taste..
Some more movie/DVD reviews
3 Iron
A curious Korean movie about a young man who moves into people's homes when they are away. He eats their food but also does their laundry and other cleaning. He manages to leave before the occupants return. At one house that he thinks is empty he finds a woman who has been abused by her husband. She leaves with him and joins him in his little home invasions. They are eventually caught and she returns to her husband but they still remain together in a way that may not be real. There are some elements of horror towards the end that were kind of confusing to me. It is a nice looking film and I am glad I saw it but it is just odd. The director also directed Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring,
Robots
Animated kid's movie about a young robot who has dreams of being an inventor. He goes to the big city where he makes friends but his dreams look impossible to achieve. The animation is very inventive but the story is nothing special. The ending scene involving a robot dog singing like James Brown, a marching band and lots of robots dancing makes up for the overly long scene involving flatulence.
Horror on the 15th Floor
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Dead Like Me This series about a young 20 something who dies and is then given the job of escorting other people to their death is well done and well written but I just can't get past the ugliness of it. There are some moments of humor but overall it is depressing and filled with unpleasant people. I think the side plot of the grieving sister and mother is brilliant. I appreciate it but it is just not for me.
The Aviator Way too long and I just was not interested enough but Cate Blanchett is great as Katherine Hepburn and the scene where Howard Hughes crashes his plane is fantastic.
Im Juli. A charming German film about a shy school teacher who is told by a street vendor who has a crush on him that he is destined to be with a woman associated with the sun. She of course plans to be that woman but things go differently and he meets a turkish woman and follows her to Turkey. The plot is predictable but there is lots of fun along the way.
The Ladykillers The Coen Brothers remake of the 1950s Alec Guinness film. Tom Hanks, his accent and his dialogue are brilliant. And visually the movie is stunning. I could not wait for another character to die so I could see the body go off the bridge on to the garbage barge
Folklife Festival
We then saw a young song and dance troup from China, a barbershop quartet type group from Tibet.
Then the Vietnamese opera performed.
\
The food lines at the folk life festival were way too long so we headed to the food court at the Old Post Office. First we had to get masala dosas at the Indian Kitchen. I almost tried the Coconut Bharfi and Thums Up soda.
And we could not leave without a visit to Larry's Cookies.
Some more movie/DVD reviews
We've been renting some cable TV series
Dead Like Me
Paula recommended this series about the dead walking among the living acting as grim reapers. We've seen the pilot. The cast is interesting and we are interested to see how the story develops.
The Wire Season 2
Started off a bit slow but the action is picking up. The first season was all about the drug dealing gang in the Baltimore projects. This season the story continues in the projects but there is also a murder investigation in the Baltimore Port. I still can't get enough.
Entourage
Another great series - a young actor makes it big in the movies and moves from Queens to Hollywood with his childhood friends. Jeremy Piven plays his intense agent. It's light and fluffy and fun with cameos here and there. Joe's favorite so far is Jessica Alba. Mine is Mark Wahlberg.
Top Fifty
It is lilac and wisteria time in DC. I took this picture in the parking lot next to my ballet studio.
So since it is a slow news day I thought I might list Joe's and my Top 50 movie list that we put together recently:
(In no particular order)
Kill Bill I & 11
Sexy Beast
Snatch
My Neighbors the Yamadas
The Fifth Element
Dil Se
The Matrix
The Professional
Trust
Simple Men
BladeRunner
Ghost in the Shell
Stargate
City Hunter
Chinese Ghost Story
Hana & Alice
Afterlife
Baraka
Galaxy Quest
Lost In Translation
Toy Story
Slacker
My Neighbor Totoro
Slaughterhouse 5
Dr Strangelove
To Kill A Mockingbird
Clerks
From Dusk til Dawn
Edward ScissorsHands
Grace of My Heart
Last of the Mohicans
Raise The Red Lantern
Party Girl
Die Hard
High Risk
Paris Texas
Wings of Desire
Star Wars
Young Frankenstein
Annie Hall
Bram Stroker's Dracula
Princess Bride
Sixteen Candles
Bottle Rocket
The Last Seduction
Singing In the Rain
Local Hero
Enchanted April
Austin Powers
Nightmare Before Christmas
Contest winner
Joe guessed it immediately and he was one of 4 readers to win. He correctly guessed it was the underside of arecibo radio telescope dish in Puerto Rico. There was no prize just a mention the next issue of the magazine.
Some more movie/DVD reviews
The Good Shephard is a movie about the beginnings of the CIA and one man's initiation into the world of espionage. It is a good story spanning World War II through the Bay of Pigs. It is a bit complicated but well laid out. Recommended.
Craftiness and Cuteness
I went over to Austin and William's place today to visit with them and my aunt Zita as they prepared for Thanksgiving dinner. I did not stay because I decided to work on my Christmas Contest entry and have a nice quiet veggie Thanksgiving dinner with Joe. We had a corn pudding, the traditional and apparently 50 year old green bean/cream of mushroom soup/french fried onions casserole, pull-apart rolls and cookies that Austin made this morning for dessert. I did make some progress on my Christmas Contest entry but I still have a long way to go before it is a true work of velvet art.
Austin and William's table looked quite elegant with a touch of cuteness. Austin made the napkins and I loved all the textures on and around the table.
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movie/DVD reviews
Koi... Mil
Gaya
A Hindi movie that steals liberally from E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial, Close
Encounters of the Third Kind and Charly.
A mentally retarded young man, his younger
friends and a pretty girl find an alien and try
to hide him from the authorities. It was fairly
dumb.
The
Secret Lives of Dentists
A family man and dentist thinks his wife, also a
dentist, might be having an affair. He decides
not to do anything about it but soon the jealousy
and worry manifests itself in an imaginary
alter-ego type character played by Dennis Leary
(whom I really liked in his short-lived TV show
The Job) who says what the dentist is
thinking but dare not say. It is an interesting
film, funny in parts but mostly kind of
depressing because the family is falling
apart.
Long Time Gone
And then there is the Christmas contest. It's coming along. I have found that working on black velvet requires daylight.
And I have also been working on images and little movies that will be used in my friend Dana's dance performance in March. I am enjoying doing the research and video-taping and video-editing but I am now starting to think of the hundreds of people including dance critics from major newspapers who will see the performance. I am now wishing I had gone for that BA in Art instead of that BA in Astronomy.
Here are two pictures I took recently.
Some more
movie/DVD reviews
Mystic
River
Excellent story, very engaging, beautifully
filmed, great acting. My only complaint was the
last scene that seemed tacked on and unnecessary.
It should have ended with the Sean Penn character
walking down the middle of the street away from
the Kevin Bacon character.
Jay and
Silent Bob Strike Back
After the inital 15 minutes where the vulgar to
funny ratio was a bit high I really started to
enjoy the movie. I really like Jay's ramblings in
this movie as I did in Clerks and the
silly plot was actually interesting.
Pet Food Bunny
My sonnet is coming along but I am still finding it very hard. I've changed themes a couple of times. I heard rumors that Lenore finished hers while lounging in her chemotherapy comfy chair and that Paula has already written 2 sonnets.
A neighborhood picture:
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Good Bye
Lenin!
A nice little movie about a son trying to hide
the fact that the Berlin wall has fallen from his
mother after she wakes up from a coma. It is an
interesting portrayal of that time and place.
Visitors
The Limey
This thriller is about an ex-con who travels from England to Los Angeles to find out more about his estranged daughter's death. It has a very interesting look to it and the editing is unusual without being too gimicky. The story is not complicated so it is more about the characters involved. Terrance Stamp and Peter Fonda do a great job with the characters. I thought this was much better than some Soderbergh's more ambitious movies like Full Frontal and Traffic. As I was just now looking over Soderbergh's film list I saw King of the Hill, a bittersweet movie that spawned my interest in vintage Hamilton watches. I had forgotten he had done that. Another excellent film that seems to have slipped through the cracks. It is not on out on DVD.
Injured!
Last weekend I went to Dana's house for a baby shower for my friend Amy who is on Dana's board and with whom I shared a hotel room in Latvia. We drank wine and champagne and Aaron made wonderful tea sandwiches and salads. Other than baby names Aaron's homemade mayonnaise was the most popular conversation topic.
A couple weeks ago Joe and I went down the the Hirshhorn Art Museum to see a video exhibit we had read about in the paper. It was very interesting. A Japanese artist made these quiet little films when he was studying art in London. They are mostly films of animated objects or shadows in his apartment. In one had planes taking off from tables, going in and out of rooms, circling light fixtures. Another had shadows of camels and elephants roaming the corners and windows and staircases.
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reviews
The
Returner This is a Japanese science fiction
gangster movie starring one of my favorite Hong
Kong action movie stars Takeshi Kaneshiro. He
plays an assasin who must work with a woman who
has come back from the future to prevent an alien
invasion and drops into his life. They find that
their jobs are intertwined and a lot of action
ensues. It was quite good.
Reservoir
Dogs A classic I have never seen, mostly
because I heard it was so violent. After seeing
Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill I figured I could
handle the violence. I kept waiting for it to be
funny like his other films but it really wasn't.
But what it lacked in humor it made up in style.
And of course I had to see it after meeting
Michael Madsen's father and uncle. `
More Spring Things
On the way home I stopped at the carwash near my house to clean my very dirty car. I was the last car to be washed for the day and as some of the guys were wiping down my car the others were all taking off their red carwash tshirts and changing into other shirts. That was an odd sight but then after I adjusted my seat forward and started driving down the alley about 10 of the carwash guys had jumped on their bikes and were riding down the alley with me. I felt as if I was swimming with the dolphins. Or maybe it was the white wine and Italian grappa at dinner that made the scene seem so surreal.
Here are two signs of spring - a bunny found behind the garden nursery at the National Cathedral and our algae-tinted pool which I will be swimming in one and a half months from now.
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
13
Going On 30 and Hellboy:
Two movies dealing with the supernatural and in
which the heros must overcome true evil - a bunch
of hellhounds and an evil russian and nazi in the
case of Hellboy and a back-biting fashion
magazine editor in 13 Going on 30. Both are
enjoyable movies.
A Week In May
Wednesday Ben and Dennis came down from Secaucus, NJ to attend the reception of their artist friend Chakaia Booker. She is a very interesting person to look at and she does very interesting work with rubber tires. Her pieces are huge and amazingly graceful. Lyla, Tracy, Austin, William and I attended the reception and then went to dinner with Ben and Dennis at Tabaq in the U Street neighborhood.
This past Saturday Marcia, Brooke and I drove
up to Baltimore for a cookout with friends I met
through Brooke. The cookout was at the house of
Jill and David who live in a beautiful 1950s
house. It was a nice night. There were stories of
celebrity encounters. Tanya met Paul McCartney
and his now estranged wife Heather at an animal
rights event in Canada. But even more intriguing
to me was Jill and David's story of being at
Hunter S. Thompson's memorial party and meeting
Johnny Depp. He offered them cigarettes. Someone
also knew someone who dated James Gandolfini
(Tony Soprano) in school. Apparently he was very
nice.
Family News (where it's not all about
me):
- Lenore who was diagnosed with and treated
for breast cancer this past month will be
starting chemotherapy soon. She'll be sporting
that Melissa Ethridge look for a time. Maybe
she'll take up the guitar.
- Lynda finished her chemotherapy and is back
at work. During her time off she learned
Dreamweaver and became a web mistress. I think
there's even an outfit that she wears.
- Lyla and Tracy are getting married,
sometime in the fall, somewhere in the US.
- My parents have started their Spoleto
marathon where they try to cram in as much
culture as possible in a two week period. It's
like a city-wide smorgasbord.
- Tommy and Sandy will receive a grant to
renovate their house with equipment that will
help Little T get around
- Austin made fajitas last weekend.
Here are three slide shows of pictures from my
week. I experimented with some new formats. If
you have an opinion on them let me know.
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
Curse of
the Were Rabbit Wallace and Gromit are now
inventing for their new pest control business and
making some money. There is a monster out there
eating all the vegetables that may or may not win
the Giant Vegetable Competition and they intend
to find it and stop it. Very clever and funny.
Wilbur
Wants to Kill Himself
This movie is a little funny, a little sweet, a
little sad. The look and feel is mostly bleak (it
is filmed in rainy, cold Scotland) but there are
wonderful moments in the film when color is used
to highlight an event. And there's this German
doctor that has a great face. Another good movie.
Tags: dvd reviews, family, art
Statue Contest
My parents also have a small collection of outdoor sculptures and statues and, again, for the most part I like them. But there's this one statue of a little girl that is cloying. It obviously means a lot to them so I try to keep my mouth shut. Well, they bought another outdoor statue and, guess what, I felt it was of dubious or non-existent artistic value. But hey now I really like it because I won the contest that my father orchestrated to name the statue. Here is a picture. I'll let you judge for yourself.
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reviews
Better Off
Dead A much more light-hearted view of a
suicidal young man than Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself.
John Cusack plays a high-school student who has
been dumped by his girlfriend for a expert skier.
He tries to become a better skier but eventually
decides she's not worth it. Luckily there is a
cute French exchange student across the street.
This 1980s movie really set a standard when it
came out back in 1980 something. It has all these
quirky comic-book like characters and quirky
situations like the two vietnamese brothers, one
of whom speaks like Howard Cosel, who constantly
want to drag race.
Highway Warning
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reviews
Dilwale
Dulhania Le Jayenge A good Bollywood movie
starring Shah Rukh Khan. It has just the right
amount of melodrama and silliness and only a
small amount of self-righteous gratuitous
violence. Raj and Simran live in England and fall
in love but Simran's father has promised her to
the son of an old friend in India. When the
father finds out Simran loves Raj he immediately
moves the family to India to start the wedding
preparations. Raj follows Simran to India and
tells her that he knows they could run away
together and elope but he wants to win the heart
of her father and get his permission - a true
challenge. The music and dancing are quite
nice.
To The Limit
Joe and I took a longer than usual (for me) bike ride this morning. It was great. The weather was nice and the trails were fairly uncrowded for holiday weekend (well, holiday for some. I have to work on Monday). We rode from National Airport to Mount Vernon, through marshes, under the Wilson Bridge, through Old Town Alexandria to the RV parking lot at the home of George Washington. Here are some pics.
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reviews
Initial
D This is a nice Hong Kong movie about car
racing based on a Japanese comic book series. It
is a story about a tofu delivery boy who gets
involved with professional and street racers. It
is also a story about friendship, fathers and
sons and first love. There is no
testosterone-fueled violence, only
testosterone-fueled car racing.
Cutthroat Competition
Lenore and Lynda are competing for the best scar from ovarian cancer surgery. Although Lenore's scar from her breast cancer surgery increases her total scarage, Lynda's stomach scar is longer and was cut into again for her second surgery. The prize is getting the most sympathy from the family. And you thought we only competed making puppets, writing sonnets and creating black velvet artwork. If you are squeamish, DO NOT GO HERE.
By the way, here is a list of our Christmas competitions:
- 1990 Write a Story based on a Edward Gorey drawing
- 1991 Make a 1992 Calendar
- 1992 Make pages for a Alphabet Book for Graeme
- 1993 Make a Mobile to hang in the Edisto house
- 1994 Karaoke Gilbert and Sullivan
- 1995 Puppets with a Purpose
- 1996 Touchy Feely Book for Little T
- 1997 Lawn Ornaments
- 1998 Poetry: A Limerick and then one other poetry form
- 1999 Mosaics
- 2000 Photography (Photography By The Numbers)
- 2001 Comic Strip
- 2002 White Trash Cooking Show
- 2003 Stuffed Toys
- 2004 Dioramas
- 2005 Black Velvet Art
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reviews
Kilnieks
(Hostage) Lorella and I went to see this
Latvian movie directed by Laila Pakalnina that
was part of the European Union Film Festival. It
is a story of a hijacker who forces a plane to
land in Riga. He lets all the hostages go except
an 8 year old boy who asked to stay on the plane.
The story is about the hijacker and the boy's
friendship as well as about a number of
interconnected events that happen around the
airport involving racing cyclists, farmers,
detectives, biathletes, folk song choirs,
bunnies, dogs, cats, cows, bees. The director
manages to include many Latvian traditions and
favorite foods in the stories. It was quite
enjoyable although I am not really sure what
happened at the end. Even though we see the
hijacker and the boy sitting and talking in a
tree it is not clear if they got away clean,
died, or if they were just in the imagination of
some children playing in the sand. The film was
in English and Latvian. I recognized alot of
words but unfortunately my grasp of the language
has severely dwindled.