oh thank god
Categories: General
Latin Lovers Need Support Too
Categories: General
Yesterday at the ballet with Christine and Kristen, one of the toreadors stuck a pose and I was forcefully reminded of the movie, The Heavenly Kings–which I saw recently as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. The pose, as the movie states, is that of “the latin lover”, “Antonio Banderas”, you know, “Zorro”. and so I giggled as the toreador butt-clenched his way across the stage, the tassles on his ridiculously tight pants flaring with every pirouette.
We bemoaned how tired we got just clapping for 30 seconds while the ballerinas danced for 3 hours, 9 days in a row. The other day I whined to Lisa about not being able to ride a bike because my knees lock in position but she’s riding a bike FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO LOS ANGELES. That’s 545 miles, people, AND she’s doing it for charity. So although I can whine, I can’t ride a bike. But I can support someone who can and so can you.
dear j.j.
Categories: General
don’t think i don’t know what you’re doing. they’re all dead? what about the last time you pulled this shit? was sidney dead season 2? or vaughn season 5? you are such a tease and this latest move is SOOOO typical of your inability to conduct straight story-telling. stop being such an ass, ass.
baby!
Categories: General
international film festival
Categories: General
i am so late on this. but there are many films to see starting this thursday. if any of the following strikes you with interest, let me know as i love film buddies!
Friday, April 27, 10:45pm, Kabuki
Forget mad cow disease—it’s Mary’s little lambs you need to worry about! With a little creature and makeup assistance from Peter Jackson’s formidable Weta workshop, debut director Jonathan King has crafted a witty and delightfully gory tale delineating the havoc that ensues when genetically engineered sheep are introduced onto a family farm.
Saturday, April 28, 4:30pm, Kabuki
A movie about a samurai from the director of After Life and Nobody Knows. Filled with Kore-eda’s characteristic moments of quiet beauty, this tale of a hapless samurai seeking vengeance but finding acceptance is a celebration of pacifism and a tribute to Japanese cinema history.
Sunday, April 29, 12:30pm, Castro
“In a pig’s liver, one can see an entire life.” This porcine prediction, made by a sage street singer at the beginning of masterful Indonesian director Garin Nugroho’s gorgeous, otherworldly epic, establishes an appropriately superstitious and magical tone for the fateful narrative about to unfold. Updating an ancient Sanskrit love triangle among spoiled royals—reimagined here as married pottery artisans Siti and Setio and village fat cat Ludiro—Nugroho has fashioned an all-singing, all-dancing morality play that pits cultural tradition and marital fidelity against radical uprising and erotic freedom.
Sunday, April 29, 2:30pm, Kabuki
Set in Malaysia in the 1990s, Hong Kong director Patrick Tam’s first feature in 15 years showcases superstar Aaron Kwok as a father whose complex relationship with his son tests the familial and cultural ties that bind.
Sunday, April 29, 4:45pm, Kabuki
This absorbing documentary follows adventurer and world-renowned tea importer David Lee Hoffman as he travels through China in pursuit of the best handcrafted teas. After seeing this film, you’ll never drink a cup of tea the same way again.
Sunday, April 29, 6pm, Kabuki
Three friends, each with a different background in the Hong Kong entertainment industry, decide almost on a whim to form a boy band. Realizing that none of them can really sing, they enlist the help of another friend who at least has released an album in Taiwan. Walking away from a sour record deal, the band, now called Alive, surreptitiously releases a song on the Internet, then complain to the press that the catchy tune has been pirated and uploaded illegally, generating a wave of publicity that turns the song into a major hit. The trappings of success—music videos, commercial sponsorship, tours—quickly follow, but in the best rock ’n’ roll tradition, the road to success is paved with self-destruction.
Monday, April 30, 9:45pm, Kabuki
Remember Henry Fool? In Hal Hartley’s sequel of sorts to his 1997 opus, titular heroine Fay Grim embarks on a quest to discover the “unbelievable truth” about that fool Fool, with whom she had a son years ago. As an implacably devoted wife and mother, the unsinkable Grim (delightfully played by Parker Posey, channeling Louise Lasser in the venerable ’70s faux-soap Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman), with an overflowing bag of groceries clutched to her chest, finds herself enmeshed in an ever-tightening web of clues, crimes and international espionage that take her from the kitchen table to the Bosporus Straits via the top hotels and boudoirs of Paris.
Wednesday, May 2, 9:15pm, PFA
Blood diamonds, world expos, electric cars, long-lost fathers and emus. Such is the stuff of the unlikely world of surefire crowd-pleaser Congorama. Michel, an underachieving inventor trading on the name of his famous and ailing father, leads a life of unremitting frustration. So when said father reveals to Michel that he is not Belgian, but is instead an adopted Canadian, Michel finally uses one of his well-intentioned yet ultimately pointless inventions as cover for a quest to find his biological family. Ostensibly trying to sell cable deicers to the government of Québec, Michel lights in the rural hamlet of Saint-Cécile, where a series of chance encounters will change his fortunes forever.
Wednesday, May 2, 9:45pm, Kabuki
This sci-fi anime mind trip centers on research psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba. She uses an experimental technology called the DC Mini, which allows her to enter her patient’s dreams and synchronize with their unconscious in order to better understand their neuroses. Once in the patient’s dream state, Chiba takes on the ass-kicking persona of a “dream detective” named Paprika. While the DC Mini appears to offer limitless psychotherapeutic potential, its misuse may have devastating psychological effects. When a DC Mini goes missing, uncanny events and a search for the Mini ensue, leading to a struggle over the very fabric of reality. This thrilling adventure represents the culmination of one of the most highly anticipated collaborations to take place in the Japanese film industry.
Sunday, May 6, 9pm, Kabuki
They say no man is an island, yet Oshima, the protagonist of amour-LEGENDE, means “big island” in Japanese. In this stylish puzzler, Oshima journeys to a remote island, arrives suffering from memory loss, finds himself with a different young woman than the one he started out with and begins to question his own existence, island or no. A married man caught in an affair, Oshima has fled the high-rises of Taipei with his paramour, May, to vacation at Snow Mountain, “somewhere in South America,” hoping things will return to normal when they get home. But a series of misadventures as mundane as getting locked out of a rental car and as strange as dodging a prairie full of suicidal squirrels leaves him unconscious and unremembering, waking up on a sand dune next to a polyglot young woman named Coco. Accepting her offer to help find May, he heads with her toward Snow Mountain, along the way hearing ominous stories about that destination’s effect on couples who think they have a future together.
Monday, May 7, 8pm, Castro
A companion piece of sorts to the exceptional silent installation-feature Cowards Bend the Knee, the semiautobiographical Brand upon the Brain! mines the rich territories of director Guy Maddin’s youth and spins them into a delirious fantasy of familial discontent. At the edge of the sea stands a lighthouse, once the location of an orphanage. There, some years ago, lived Guy and Sis, a brother and sister under the constant observation of their mother yet entirely ignored by their father, an ingenious inventor. When Wendy Hale, amateur harpist and half of twin detective team the Lightbulb Kids, arrives to investigate a mysterious regenerative nectar harvested from the orphans, things grow ever more complicated. A love triangle becomes a quadrangle when Wendy masquerades as her brother Chance and goes in search of clues.
Tuesday, May 8, 1:30pm, Kabuki
In this spectacularly scary slasher film from Norway, five snowboarders encounter a masked murderer in an abandoned ski lodge. Fans of last year’s surprise hit The Descent will thrill to the icy chills in this cleverly written and directed horror flick.
Thursday, May 10, 8:45pm, Kabuki
An eccentric and gently humorous road movie through beautiful seaside Hokkaido in which a taciturn widower, accompanied by a puppeteer’s apprentice and a mysterious young woman, looks for a piano and a beach beloved by his late wife.
isabella rose
Categories: General
i became a second cousin this morning sometime around 7:30am. i like to consider myself an aunt and not a second cousin though, which i think works out all right since i have a pretty close group of cousins. this pseudo-aunt business will stand me in good stead until i become a real aunt to my brother’s kid in october.
anyway, i’m hereby welcoming to the family, isabella rose, who was born april 22 at 6 pounds and 19 inches long. she’s hopefully out of the toaster she was put in to stay warm now even and happily enjoying her first day of life.
the garden
Categories: General
it is april 20th and it’s fast approaching 4:20 PM. i work in a high school and the library is completely empty. apparently the place to smoke is in the gully that runs along the school; they call it ‘the garden’. the things i know about these punks–not good.
i’m learning how to catalogue things this week. i’ve been given the ‘sears list of subject headings’. fun! i like looking up all the little subject headings to apply. admittedly, i like it after doing it for 3 hours total. i can’t imagine i would like doing it forever. though presumably eventually i could memorize the sears list.
…i’ve really got nothing to say.
there was a dead rat in the cat fool bowl in our garage last night. a hint that they want better rations? i dunno, it wasn’t eaten at all–not even gnawed on. poor little bugger.
p.s. in ‘hot fuzz’ (which i went to see this morning) they say, “by the power of gray skull!” not once, but twice. i nearly peed myself laughing. those he-man references get me every time, every goddamn time.