Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)

I was pretty psyched to watch this movie. Aside from having an awesome title, it seemed like it might be the teen answer to "Before Sunrise." I kept my expectations low however and that was probably wise. There's no denying that the title is still amazing and that Michael Cera and Kat Dennings as Nick and Norah are fabulous, but the movie just could have been so much more.

It was cute. It had some good lines. It had a happy ending -- that's giving nothing away. But overall there just wasn't a sense that this was a magical night. It was hard to build up a consistent sense of connection and relationship when Nick and Norah kept getting jerked around from one set piece to another. There was a little too much obvious over the top humor (along with random quirky cameos) and not enough screen time spent on just Nick and Norah. I wanted to the movie to be about them, instead, it often tilted away to focus on the antics of the side characters.

One thing that bothers me (in movies) of late is how the dorky shy guy will magically be approached by the girl of his dreams. Then he keeps on rejecting her or keeping her at a distance for no apparent reason. And then she just keeps throwing herself at him. That just doesn't seem realistic to me. I mean, fine, if it happened to me once I'd take it all back. That's not a challenge Cupid, just a hint. Overall the movie was definitely a good time but it had the potential to be so much more. I'm definitely going to check out the book though.

"Kat Dennings has an odd, arresting beauty: sleepy blue-green eyes, porcelain-pale oval face -- and lips so red and juicy they look like the prototype for the wax ones little girls used to wear at Halloween. Along with the slight space between her perfect teeth, the effect is sexy and slightly comic."
-New York Times-

Didn't I Blow Your Mind

Oh what I would give to have John Hollinger's job. Watch the NBA all day and then apply fun statistical models to everything. As the new season approaches, Hollinger has given a break down for every player and even better, did individual scouting reports on all of them. That's insane! Seriously, like every player has a scouting report.

It revealed great things like how Tony Parker rarely uses his left hand, even on layups. Or how Dirk Nowitzki might be the best shooting big man of all time -- Larry Bird just rolled his eyes. And how Dwayne Wade is a huge gambler on defense. Armed with this information, my (W)NBA career is surely only a few months away.

Seriously, I'd want these people's jobs: Bill Simmons, John Hollinger, or Steve Sabol. In that order.

Make sure to click on the player cards and check out the Hollinger reports. A few examples: Carmelo Anthony, Deron Williams, and Rajon Rondo. The most fascinating part of the reports is the little line at the bottom that compares the player in question to whom they're most like (at their current age). For example, Andrei Kirilenko is comparable to a young Derrick McKey. Michael Redd is Jerry Stackhouse. Joe Johnson is the second coming of Michael Finley. Plus lots of head scratchers like Shawn Marion is most similar to Chris Mullin?!

In other news, the Celtic's season opener and championship ring ceremony is on October 28th. Clear your social calendars. Also, the special edition DVDs of their season will be available starting then too. The set will feature complete games so everyone can relive their crushing victory over the Lakers. Over and over and over again...

Tell Lara I Love Her

I sat down tonight to take in a classic, Doctor Zhivago, with my mom. She saw it when it came out, over forty years ago. I saw it maybe twenty years ago, when I was in fifth grade I think. I believe we watched it in class actually. I'm not sure what the teacher was thinking. Sure it's a classic film but was I supposed to get anything out of the film as a ten year old? All I remembered about the movie was the ubiquitous Lara's Theme. Which has kind of haunted me these twenty some odd years.

Well, let me just say after re-watching this thing that it's great. Romantic, gripping, and not what I expected at all. I thought it was just a love story but it's actually so much more than that. The story is set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and that fact utterly escaped me the first time around. I didn't recall anything about a rape either. Or maybe I didn't even know what the hell had just happened. And while Julie Christie's Lara had always been captivating in this iconic way, I can't say that I really liked her character. She was just kind of there and didn't exactly seem like she was worthy of Zhivago's love. His dutiful wife (played by Charlie Chaplin's daughter), totally gets shafted.

Actually, all the characters were just kind of there. Dr. Zhivago himself didn't really capture the imagination and even though horrible things kept happening to him, he didn't seem to have any real emotions. Throughout the movie I was Wikipedia-ing everything and got more background and perspective on the book, the film, and the history of the Revolution but without all the research, I might have been a tad bit lost. Still, I think I loved the film and would definitely watch it again. Maybe I'd even give this 2002 version a try, which stars Keira Knightley, and um, Bill Paterson. Okay, maybe not.

Apparently the movie was the Titanic of its day. It won multiple Academy Awards, made tons of money, and was loved and hated in equal measure. I can see both sides because it is kind of slow and overly long. Still, I was really drawn into the story and it gave me the same wretched/wonderful feeling after watching any (good) film about unrequited love. A powerful feeling of romance swept over me even if I'd be hard pressed to explain why when looking at the details.

My mom's friend lent her this boxed set of old Oscar classics so I'll probably be working through stuff like Lawrence of Arabia and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in the near future. It's family bonding time!

"There are two kinds of men and only two. And that young man is one kind. He is high-minded. He is pure. He's the kind of man the world pretends to look up to, and in fact despises. He is the kind of man who breeds unhappiness, particularly in women. Do you understand?

I think you do. There's another kind. Not high-minded, not pure, but alive. Now, that your tastes at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable; but for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there's two kinds of women. There are two kinds of women and you, as we well know, are not the first kind. You, my dear, are a slut."
-Komarovsky, Doctor Zhivago-

Louis Vuitton Don

"[Takashi] Murakami's retrospective is a clear indication of what results from this close marriage between art and consumerism: a castrated art -- one completely devoid of critical content. Murakami's work is part of a growing movement of Japanese pop art, with Murakami frequently referred to as Japan's Andy Warhol.

Superficially, the two artists seem to have a lot in common: Both use imagery appropriated from popular culture, both employ repetition of imagery as a common pictorial motif. Perhaps most important, neither artist actually executes their own artworks, instead employing a 'factory' of assistants to manufacture their paintings and prints, with the artist only touching the finished work to sign it.

Yet, to play up this comparison is to undervalue an important distinction between the two: Warhol, at least in his early work, criticized mass imagery even as he appropriated it. Murakami's work lacks even a whiff of subversiveness; it remains, at its core, a celebration of banality."
-(Super)flat Pop-

Stuff I've Been Reading 10

BOOKS READ:

Girls For Breakfast - David Yoo

Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Personal Days - Ed Park

Sweep - Cate Tiernan

How to Write A Damn Good Novel - James N. Frey

Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper - Michael Reisman

My personal goal while being back in San Diego and settling down again is to read a dozen YA novels in the next month. What I've discovered while working on this goal is that I can't read YA stuff along with other things. Usually I have a few books I flip around in but when I'm trying to get into the head space or tone of a YA novel, I can't read really read anything else or I lose my train of thought, as it were. Or maybe I just like these YA novels so much that I'm getting sucked in and don't want to stop.

Other things I'm hoping to fit into this schedule are books about reading and writing. One of them is titled "How to Read a Book." It's advertised as "the classic guide to intelligent reading" and comes highly recommended. I kind of love it, even if it's slow going. Seeing as I've never really taken a literature or writing class, I feel like I need to self educate myself, and fast. I was talking with a friend the other day and she said that I could probably remedially just learn some proper grammar by working through the right books. That would involve discipline and self motivation of course, but it's something I should challenge myself to do because it's my livelihood!

I mean, when I was playing with Lulu Titlescorer, a fun little app that tells you the chances your book will be a bestseller based on the title, I got lost on the little drop-down boxes about the words in my title. I mean, do I really fully understand what a "proper noun used as adjective/modifier" or "preposition/article" are? Um, maybe not.

I took my best swing at it and my chances of producing a bestseller with my next book is 69%. Not bad right? Roll the dice and cue the champagne!

Choke (2008)

This definitely isn't as palatable as Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk's other adapted work. I'm gonna say that you either love or hate this movie. I, of course, just mostly liked it. Any emotion too strong either way is way beyond my means apparently.

Everything in the movie is sort of absurd, the smaltzy gets a bit heavy, and the tone swings wildly between depressing and hilarious, but I found myself entertained every step of the way. Which is much better than anything something like Burn After Reading had to offer.

Sam Rockwell is creepy and attractive at the same time, which is pretty hard to pull off if you think about it. His big sidekick Brad William Henke is sort of Seth Rogen's cinematic older brother, back when Seth Rogen was actually funny -- like for a second. As for Kelly Macdonald, some people might cringe over her acting skills but I really dig her weird monotone-ish, perpetually hurt, delivery and find her very capable. But like my friend said after watching the movie, "She's like Kate Winslet. But not."

I think I'm going to go read the book now. Then again, maybe I should pass on that. It might be too much for my virgin eyes/ears. Fox Searchlight had novel promotional swag for the movie, which caused a brief Internet blip a few months back. Additionally, I love The Christian Science Monitor's terse review of the film, which speaks volumes -- a plot point concerning Jesus' foreskin might have turned them off -- plus the reviewer dismisses Fight Club. Blasphemy.