If I may bore you with my health problems once again... well, this is
my online diary, so I can... a couple of months ago, I noticed that the molar that is the tooth in the bottom row, second from left, had a chip in it, and a clean looking one... like a gap in the crown. I have no idea if this has anything to do with my very painful experience getting my wisdom teeth extracted last September, but, whatever is missing, it didn't go down all of the way to the pulp of the tooth... until about Wednesday, since when I've had this damn painful toothache, so, I guess, now it's a full blown cavity, and I'll have to get it seen to again.
In other news, tonight, I'm trying Unibroue 11, a new beer I found at the M�tro supermarket, from the brewery that brought you Fin du Monde and Trois-Pistoles (both 9%), and it's, get this, 11% alcohol! Most potent beer I've ever tried! (Now, Carlsberg Special Brew is officially for wimps.) The taste is a little overwhelming, to say the least. It came in one of Unibroue's "champagne"-type bottles, complete with cork, and it's a 750 ml bottle, which I'm not going to drink all at once, so I had to clean out a Pepsi bottle and poured half the bottle into it, and the other into a glass. Well, I don't think I'll be awake for much longer...
Another post just to check a couple of template format changes...
BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (First and only Spoiler warning...)
I had been looking forward to seeing this one since last July, when AnimeNation forum poster "
jeremy" posted
a thread about Bend It Like Beckham wondering if anyone else had seen it, only to have me inform him that it wasn't being released here until spring. Well, I finally got a chance to see it yesterday afternoon at the AMC Forum 22, and it was pretty much exactly what I was expecting, so I wasn't disappointed.
Bend It Like Beckham is the story of Jesminder (Jess/Jessie) Bhamra (Parminder K. Nagra**), the daughter of fairly traditional Punjabi Sikh*** parents (though her airline pilot father (Anupam Kher) seems a little more open-minded about Western things than her mother (Shaheen Khan) is) who idolizes Manchester United star... um... ball-kicker David Beckham (who only really appears in a very brief cameo, not counting archival footage of "football", by which I mean soccer football, matches) and plays informal football games in the parks in Hounslow, the town near Heathrow International Airport (EGLL, for those of you
Flight Simulator fans, heh heh). Juliette ("Jules") Paxton (Keira Knightley, who played Queen Amidala/Padm�'s double Sab� in
The Phantom Menace) spots Jess in the park and invites her to come play for the local women's football team, the Hounslow Harriers, and Jess proves to be a natural. (Though Jules short hair causes Jess's parents friends to believe Jess is seen with a boy, and a white one.) But Jess must keep her more formal football-playing a secret from her parents, so she tells them she's working at HMV. Meanwhile, Jess's sister Pinky (Archie Panjabi) is engaged to be married in a traditional wedding to a nice Sikh boy, and the parents wonder why Jess can't do the same. But Jess finds herself attracted to her Irish-born coach Joe (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), and he might be attracted to her, but he can't date his players? And is Jules also attracted to Joe, or is she a lesbian, as her mother (Juliet Stevenson) believes? When it turns out that Pinky's lavish wedding is the same day as the most important match of the season, where a talent scout for the
(American) WUSA (Women's United Soccer Association) league will be in attendance, so will Jess have to choose between East and West?
That's about as much of a plot summary as I need to give (I'm ignoring several subplots), and even then, some might say I've giving away too much. It's a culture clash comedy, like
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (which I never got around to seeing, and which, to be fair to
Bend It Like Beckham, was in production at around the same time, so that
BILB follows (in North America) another popular "wedding & culture clash" comedy is pure coincidence) except with a culture that is much more alien to most westerners than the Greek culture is. I think the film does a very good job in showing that, amongst Indian youth in Britain, there are many that like to live as westerners, but, among those that keep their religion and/or culture, they still enjoy the better things in western culture. I was just a tad apprehensive that the music in the film would be mostly Bhangra, which, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit, I don't personally care for (I find the women's voices in Bhangra songs too high-pitched, and the songs all sound the same to me), but, no, the music is varied, including western and Indian songs, and a weird cover of Jennifer Rush'es power ballad "The Power of Love" (which most people think of as a C�line Dion song, and which I thought was a Laura Branigan song, but they're both "covers") in Hindi (I think). Also, there are "football" scenes in the film, but just as a plot device, and there are not enough of them to scare away soccer-phobic Americans. Plus, they explain some things about "football" within the movie. I've heard this film compared to
Mississippi Masala with Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury, which I'm afraid, if I've seen was years ago; London's one of my favourite cities, so I always love seeing it on screen (though you really only see central London in one brief scene where Jess and Jules go around Piccadilly Circus and Carnaby street to buy football shoes), so I'm a little biased. It's a light and fluffy trifle of a film, but still the most fun I've had at the movies so far this year.
****/*****
**Surprisingly, Parminder K. Nagra is only a year younger than I am: she was born in 1975, according to her
Internet Movie Database profile. I would have guessed that she was only 17 or 18...
***Not Hindu, as many reviews mistakenly say...
this page clarifies the differences between the two faiths, though it's rather Sikh-biased.
EDIT: I forgot... the film I've seen this compared to more than
Mississippi Masala is
Monsoon Wedding... I get those two confused...
THE "SPIRITED AWAY IS OVERRATED" WORLD REPORT
For a while now, I've been looking for a review of
Spirited Away that matched my own thoughts on the film: that there are many interesting things to see in it, but I didn't find Chihiro/Sen to be all that compelling a Ghibli heorine compared to Satsuki, Shizuku or, especially, Kiki, in that I never really got emotionally involved with her beyond just hoping that she'd find her parents and get out of the weird bathhouse/spirite world. I find most of the positive reviews to be just so much excessive hyperbole, but I find the few bad reviews of the movie I've seen to be much too negative. I've been looking for a review by someone that liked it overall, but whose reaction is relatively lukewarm compared to the adulations we've been hearing... preferably by someone who has seen most, if not all, Ghibli films and, as such, can evaluate it in a Ghibli context. So far, the only review I've seen that comes close to expressing my own opinion of the film is, surprisingly,
Chris Beveridge's review of Spirited Away on AnimeOnDVD.com... I had expected that, eventually, an "alternate angle reviewer" would buck the trend and give it a less than overly enthusiastic review, since I'm sure there are some other anime fans out there that don't quite get what all the fuss is about regarding this specific film, or just didn't quite care for it quite as much as "everyone else" did, but I didn't expect to see such a review from the site master himself.
Maybe I'll write my own review and submit it somewhere, probably
the Deadly Critic (still haven't finished the review of
Yokohama Shopping Log I've been writing for the longest time). I'm am intending on doing a review of
Kiki's Delivery Service, still my favourite Ghibli film and a film that I feel is given extremely
"short shrift" by a lot of the "Ghibli superfans" (not that I'm not a fan of the majority of Ghibli films as well, I just personally prefer not to put any anime creator or studio on a pedestal).
THE MIDDLE EAST NEEDS AN ENEMA UPDATE
I gotta write something about the war... I don't think it's a quagmire or anything like that, but, I want to offer somewhat original opinions here and not just link to what other blogs have to say on it.
I am glad that the Americans managed to rescue
U.S. Army Private First Class Jessica Lynch, a P.O.W., but, I admit, when I first heard about it on the radio this evening, when I heard it was a woman, I was hoping it was
Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson from that horrible P.O.W. video (the image used on the front page of many newspapers) since she is a mother of two, but, sadly, it wasn't her.
Can't think of anything else to say right now... (expect a review of
Bend It Like Beckham tomorrow...)
At the request of Sari Stein, I changed the description of her blog in my links since "anti-Concordia Student Union" is no longer a relevant position since at least a thousand more Concordia students than last time decided not to be apathetic and, at last, elected a CSU that serves the students and doesn't use the position just as a political soapbox to propagandize radical left wing positions at the students' expense.
Damnit... Blogger's doing some weird kooky things again... I add things, but they're not showing up when I refresh.
BREAKING NEWS
On a personal note: I'm bleeding out of my ass, for some reason. No, really! I was returning
Jackass: the Movie to the Pincourt Blockbuster (about a mile away from my house) and, on the walk back, my ass started really hurting, and, when I got home, I wiped it, and the toilet paper was all red and bloody. I put some Anusol, my favourite ass cream on, and it's stopped for now, but, still, I guess I should get it looked at by a doctor. Wow, aren't online diaries wonderful? I'm sure you were all eager to learn about the situation of my ass. Well, I'll provide updates, as events warrant.
(N.B.: Written last night, but Blogger wasn't working properly, for some reason, so I cut and pasted it and saved it...)
THE CORE (SPOILERS... first and only warning.)
I was hoping to see
Bend It Like Beckham today, but it was only playing at the AMC Forum 22 (corner Sainte Catherine's and Atwater) and I just didn't feel like going downtown today, for whatever reason, so I decided to see
The Core at the much less glamourous Famous Players Dorval, a non-descript 4 screen cinema that, from the looks of it, was built in the 1960s or 70s and which was closed a couple of years back when the larger, swankier Famous Players Colis�e Kirkland opened, but which reopened due to the fact that Dorval isn't that close to Kirkland. The Colis�e is actually a fair bit closer to my house, but, the Dorval Cinema is much more convenient because it's on the route of the 211 bus which goes all the way from downtown to Sainte Anne de Bellevue on the western tip of Montreal Island. Plus, it's cheaper to see movies there than at most other places these days.
The Core is a big budget disaster movie that does follow the template of
Armageddon and the like. Due to an illicit, experimental weapon designed to cause earthquakes in specific localized areas, the rotation of the Earth's core slows down, causing fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field that leads to freak events like dozen's of people's pacemakers in Boston suddenly stopping, killing them, and pigeons going crazy in Trafalagar Square, not to mention a malfuncton in the Space Shuttle
Endeavor's guidance computers, causing it to go off course during final approach to Edwards Air Force Base and veer towards downtown Los Angeles in a, quite frankly, pretty bloody well realized sequence (I just loved the shot of the
Endeavor swooping low over a Dodgers game). Due to Major Rebecca "Beck" Child's (Hillary Swank) impressive navigational abilities and extremely quick thinking, she manages to land the shuttle on the nearly dry Los Angeles river cemented riverbed, doing relatively little damage to the shuttle itself. Meanwhile, university geology professor Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) determines that the core will stop spinning completely, causing the magnetic field to weaken and disappear, letting in cosmic rays that will cause massive electrical storms and, eventually, microwaves that will fry everything on the surface. The military enlists Keyes as well as swarmy, egotistical government scientist Dr. Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci), and they visit Dr. Ed Brazzleton (Delroy Lindo), scientist, dreamer and engineer (who seems to have some bad blood with Zimsky) who has dreams of building the
Virgil, a machine made out of a previously unknown material highly resistant to pressure and heat which will enable a crew to burrow all of the way though the crust and mantle to reach the core. He had been unable to build it because of lack of funds, but the military provides him with unlimited resources and a three month deadline to get it built, which he does (with the plot necessity of one cruicial design flaw which means, obviously, one crew member will have to sacrifice him or herself). They intend to use 5 strategically placed super nukes to create ripples within the Earth that will bounce off each other and get the core spinning again, in theory. Can they restart the core's rotation before everyone and everything on Earth gets shaken, shocked and fried?
Well, you know the drill (bad pun). 6 mostly expendible crew members go below on a ship... only one or two will come back out. You don't suppose that one of those scenes with the simulator is foeshadowing something, do you? Like which two crew members will be the only ones around to drive the ship back, at the end (if they're successful)? And will the asshole crew member selflessly sacrifice himself by the end of the film? But I wasn't expecting any major surprises, so the predictability of these scenes is only a minor shortcoming. The sole purpose of this sort of film is to show you sights you haven't seen before, and there are many scenes of the desturction of cities and major landmarks, and they're scattered throughout the film, not just at the end like in
Deep Impact, the film I was consciously comparing this to, since it was on TV last weekend. For the most part, the destruction is really cool looking, especially that of the Golden Gate Bridge, with microwaves frying the suspension cords, causing the road surface to collapse and sending the exploding cars into the boiling San Francisco Bay below. The destruction of the Colosseum in Rome looked a little dodgy (I think they must have been using 3D Studio Max, for the rumbling explosion effects), but, overall, I didn't think the trailers quite did the effects in this film justice. Also, I already mentioned the shuttle landing, which was one of the most impressive special effects scenes I've seen in quite a while, and there's a breathtaking scene inside a giant geode. The actual core isn't that impressive, but there's not much to see... it's liquid magma, so it's just like bright yellow water. Been a while since I've seen a good disaster movie, and this fits the bill... I'm quite glad I didn't listen to all the naysayers on movie message boards, because I enjoyed it. Not a tremendously great film, but still quite good fun.
***1/2/*****
ANIME FANDOM... STILL A "NICHE" THING...
Assuming the
early weekend box office estimates are accurate, those of us anime fans that are "realists" about the prospects of the "mainstream" audience embracing anime (re: not bloody likely) were completely correct, and now we have some empirical evidence. Even with the Best Animated Feature Oscar, a "limited wide" release of 711 screens, tonnes of critical hyperbole and plenty of TV ads that I've seen over the past few days,
Spirited Away seems to be on the way to making only a paltry $1.5 million at the box office this weekend, or a slender $2109 per screen. Like I said, the animation fans and arthouse film buffs might be interested in seeing it because of the Oscar, but the wider mainstream public didn't care about animation (save for a narrow range of comedies) last Saturday morning, and still didn't care about animation Monday. Disney's taking a bath over this... glad I'm not a shareholder.
But, at least this means for certain that the DVD release of the superior, criminally underrated (by anime fans)
Kiki's Delivery Service won't be postponed. If you haven't seen any of the three Ghibli films (
Spirited Away,
(Laputa) Castle in the Sky and
Kiki's Delivery Service) coming to Region 1 DVD and you can only rent or buy one when they come out on DVD April 15th, while they're all decent enough films,
Kiki's Delivery Service is the only one I find, pardon the bad witchcraft puns, "magical" and "enchanting".
