McCain's Negatives Mostly Political, Obama's More Personal
My Kid Could Paint That was an indie documentary about Marla Olmstead, a 4-year-old abstract painter (now 8) whose work has sold for tens of thousands of dollars. The film began as an exploration of the age-old question "What is art?" -- especially modern or abstract art, which is already highly criticized. The interviews with Marla's parents, family friends, art collectors, and art critics at first all addressed the issue of defining art, especially if a preschooler can outsell lifelong artists. The other underlying issue was whether or not Marla is an artistic prodigy, creating sophisticated abstract art. The local paper first featured a story on Marla, which was then picked up by the New York Times, and eventually international press.
While I'm waiting for the next installment of Sharan Newman's medieval mystery book to arrive in the mail, I borrowed Karen Harper's The Poyson Garden from the library. (It is also a murder mystery series, though it is not medieval...)Runaway kid fools Sea-Tac security — again
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was disappointing. I feel bad disliking such an icon as Indiana Jones, but at least it was slightly better than Temple of Doom. For starters, the movie didn't showcase the usual amazing locations around the world -- you could tell the entire thing was a set. And come on... aliens??? (Or inter-dimensional species, whatever...) One thing I did think was hilarious, though, was the scene with the very unsubtle line letting kids know they shouldn't copy Indiana Jones by climbing into a refrigerator to escape a nuclear blast in Area 51. In general, though, the film was predictable, from the appearance of Shia LeBoeuf and the welcome re-appearance of Karen Allen, and it was filled with the typical accented villains (Russians, not Nazis this time) and leaf-skirted, ooga-booga jungle inhabitants. Quite frankly, it was really, really difficult to watch 66-year-old Harrison Ford trying to re-live his glory days. I left thinking National Treasure was way better than this fourth IJ film, and I will also never look at a Duck the same way again...
Yaadein was a slightly preachy tale of a father whose three daughters have various stumbling blocks to marriage. The main love story, though, is between Hrithik and Kareen Kapoor, who is surprisingly and very refreshingly not playing her typical ditzy, popular character. The two play childhood friends who are so obviously crushing on each other but whose parents are so blind to it they arrange for the (conveniently wealthy) Hrithik to marry a business ally's daughter. (It helps, of course, that the other chick eschews anything Indian and traditional, so the audience knows who to root for.) But though Kapoor finally gets to play an interesting character who predictably tries to sacrifice love for family honor and friendship, and though there were some excellent shots of Hrithik in impeccably tailored and flattering colors and clothes (we even rewound a few scenes just to see him in an amazing suit), the story itself wasn't that believable or strong. Not that it had to be, but it also seemed suspiciously like Muhje Dosti Karoge, which we watched a few weeks ago.
Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai was only slightly better. (This was the film that catapulted Hrithik to stardom.) In the first half of the movie, Amisha Patel plays a spoiled rich girl who falls for Hrithik the struggling singer, who is then killed by mobsters. In the second half of the movie, her mafia don father sends her to New Zealand, where she encounters her dead boyfriend's lookalike. Of course he immediately falls for her and helps her bring the mobster villains to justice. There is a very hilarious dance scene where Hrithik turns a feather into a phallic symbol; however, this was the hotter musical number. (It rivals Shah Rukh Khan in "Dard E Disco" from Om Shanti Om.) I was a little weirded out by the ending, though -- rather than appreciating the new guy for being different, he simply stepped into the life of her old boyfriend and assumed all of his roles, which was really, really creepy.
Krrish made up for the first two films' deficiencies, though. It rocked my world by taking a masked superhero to a different level. Though Krrish dresses like Zorro and saves innocent bystanders by flying like any other common superhero in any other metropolis, the fight scenes and flying sequences borrowed heavily from Chinese action flicks. It was an interesting amalgamation of different icons.
Next up in the Connie Willis sci-fi obsession was a collection of short stories she co-edited. (I will read all of her books by the end of the summer!) I've always loved books of short stories -- they're perfect for ADD lapses and/or busy schedules.
Courtesy of the FG via WendyB again... and unlike the last time I continued a meme from the FG, I've been promised this one comes in just one installation! ;-P
So apparently today was the day for crying while reading. It started with a happy episode, while reading the California Supreme Court opinion. But those were mere sniffles and blink-aways of gladness, compared to the sob-fest that accompanied The End of the Alphabet."These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage. As past cases establish, the substantive right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own — and, if the couple chooses, to raise children within that family — constitutes a vitally important attribute of the fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy that the California Constitution secures to all personsfor the benefit of both the individual and society.This is totally going to be one of the defining issues this November! Maybe bigger than immigration, which I thought was going to be the sole decisive theme.
Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples ..."
[bolded portions my emphasis, italicizations not]
#1745: PACs, as opposed to 501(c)3s, actually start the workday at 9am.
As always, Connie Willis blew me away. Inside Job is a thoroughly enjoyable novella about a magazine writer who exposes psychics and mediums (apparently not "media").
I've never seen any of Dave Chappelle's standup routines, and everybody raves about his Block Party, so I bumped it up in my Netflix queue. Turns out, it's not a comedy routine, it's a documentary about, well, a block party he organized in Bed-Stuy. Oops. It's basically just interviews with residents, participants, and all the performers (everyone from Mos Def to Lauryn Hill), and isn't exactly the best "first" exposure to Chappelle. Still, as a portrait of a neighborhood and an event it's a good film. Just not what I was expecting!
In a similarly disappointing film, this week's Hrithik Roshan viewing with Ms. Tungsten was Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon. The premise was the typical case of mistaken identity: a rich guy is interested in a girl whose family mistakes his employee for him. She falls in love with the employee, but then the boss arrives to meet his potential bride and Bollywood drama ensues.
Because I miscalculated when the books on my reading list would arrive at the library, I decided to watch Enchanted to see what all the fuss was about. Friends raved about it; three of the songs were nominated for Oscars...
Mujhse Dosti Karoge seemed like two different movies before and after intermission. The first half reminded me, bizarrely, of both Cyrano de Bergerac and The Truth About Cats and Dogs: Raj and his family move to London when he's a kid, and for 15 years he thinks he's corresponding with Tina, one of his cute and popular female friends back in India, when it's really Pooja, the other nerdier friend. Years later, he returns and can't seem to figure out why Tina is significantly ditzier than her decades of letters seemed to show, despite the fact that Pooja knows more details about him. This first half was decent, alternating between funny and heartbreaking, even if some of the transitions between scenes and/or songs were rather abrupt.
Who Killed the Electric Car? was decent, if predictable. The title pretty much says it all: the film attempts to figure out how and why the electric car didn't take off in the mid-1990s, despite there being electric vehicles on the market and despite California adopting alternative-energy regulations. The movie's answer to its own question is also fairly obvious: oil companies are the root of all evil.
