esprit de l'escalier

Wizards and baseballs

I'm wimped out on my Friday plans, the thought of staying home and vegging was just too tempting. Saturday held wizards and baseballs for me. I picked up the last Harry Potter at my local bookstore when it opened at 10am. I finished the last 30 pages this morning. I enjoyed it, but will say no more about it...

Later I went to my first game at Wrigley Field with my friend Cindy. The Cubs lost, and it was a long, drawn out game, but I had a great time. Cindy's a lifelong Cubs fan and gave me a full historical overview of the stadium. Plus I had a hot dog and ran into a friend from school.

That evening Natasha and I had dinner and went to see the latest Harry Potter movie with our friend Elaine, which we all loved. The Order of the Phoenix was my least favorite book and the longest. When I first read it I thought it was endless and overly angsty. I mean, I thought Rowling got the teen angst stuff right, just a little too right. The movie, while it did gloss over and skip some side stories, did a great job telling the story. Elaine felt that the director got the boarding school aspect the best so far. I agree with her and am pleased to see him directing The Half-Blood Prince. Though I know die hards are probably angry at the edits, there was no way to film the book in its entirety.

A couple other things I'm liking:
- Clark and Michael: it's an online mockumentary-style show, the episodes last about 7-10 minutes and star Clark Duke and Michael Cera (George Michael in Arrested Development). My friend Ginny turned me onto it, as she loves Michael Cera. It's full of awkward pauses and uncomfortable humor, and is pretty hilarious. At least check out the clip of Michael on Letterman.

- The novels of Kate Atkinson. I just finished Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which I absolutely adored. A girl tells her rollicking life story, starting at her conception, and weaves in and out of her family's history. It's got a magical realism feeling to it and a huge heart and humor. I read Case Histories a couple of weeks ago, which I also enjoyed. The two books both tell women's stories, over different points in time, but Case Histories is a detective novel (of sorts). They both have humor and sadness, and I was crying at the end of Scenes, but in a good way.

Summer hours

I'm around, but it's been too hot to blog, and I plan on keeping summer hours, so expect more sparse posts. My brain's pickling a little in the heat. Yesterday, to beat the mid-90 degree heat, my roommate and I did a double feature of Ratatouille and Knocked Up. Not exactly a family-friendly, obvious pairing, but the times worked out perfectly.

Ratatouille makes me believe in the power of Pixar again. In some ways it was reminiscent of the Muppets or Fraggle Rock. Remy, the main rat, could have easily stepped out of a Henson creation, with his pure heart and creative spirit. I really love Brad Bird, the writer/director, and this movie. Go see it.

Knocked Up was funny and honest, which is what I expect from Judd Apatow, but I couldn't believe people were there on dates. I told my mother what we saw, and to this she exclaimed, "I don't know why people your age would see that!" I laughed and told her that if I had been there on a date, I wouldn't allow the guy to touch me afterwards. This movie is very good birth control.

I *finally* have my review of the latest Wilco album up at newcritics. Check it out here.

I've been overbooked since 15

I haven’t been able to put much thought towards posts lately, as evidenced by the fact that my most recent posts involve polaroids and brief weekend recaps (this will probably be much of the same). (The polaroid above is from Memorial Day weekend; it's the B'hai Temple in Wilmette.)

I just tuned into the second half of a very old Adam Dalgliesh mystery. I haven’t seen the first half but just read the book it was based on and thought I’d watch. According to the brief recap the characters are the same, but the events are entirely different. It sounds a lot more convoluted and ridiculous. Why anyone would monkey around with P.D. James is beyond me.

My weekend was packed full and I’m still exhausted. The Genius was in town, and Friday night Natasha and I took him and his friend Marty to Carol’s, our favorite honky-tonk within walking distance to our apartment. Cheap beer, live country, good company, it was great.

Saturday involved a hung-over scramble to complete a graduation gift and then my brother and I headed to the suburbs for a family party. There we had our first sight and sound of the cicadas, which are as bizarre, gross and fascinating as I expected. (I didn’t have my camera, but my brother did. Don’t hold your breath on him sending the pics anytime soon, though.) There was more family than I originally expected and we had a great time. I also went, dead tired, to an engagement party of a friend’s in a crazy huge house in Bucktown. The food and company were good, but I was asleep by eleven.

Sunday comprised of about six hours of reading articles about how fair use of copyrighted material is being degraded and ignored under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It’s a subject that is currently making me angry and I hope my paper on it isn’t too boring. Damn the man, and all of that. (I’m really going to miss my class on new media and the public sphere.) Chuckles and I also went to see Once, which was very sweet. It stars Glen Hansard of The Frames, a band I love.

Tonight I skipped kickball, ostensibly to work on my paper. In reality my brain needed some rest. Wish me luck finishing it and my portfolio project. I’ll need some. I should be back to the regularly scheduled programming soon.

Three mini movie reviews

I have celebrated my return to the US with a glut of movies, though I still missed one I can't wait to see (The Lookout). I don't feel like pulling a Mannion and writing up long and thoughtful posts about each, but I have slightly longer than sound bites that I thought I'd share instead.

Thursday night my brother and I went to see The Host (Gwoemul). I knew when I first read press about this movie that I would have to see this with family. My mother taught her children at an early age to love monster movies, Godzilla most of all. My brother probably inherited most of this love for monsters more than my sister or me, so besides proximity, he was the perfect choice as movie partner.

The Host is a Korean monster movie surrounding a family of misfits: a grandfather, two sons, a daughter and a granddaughter. The granddaughter seems to be the only put together one of the lot. Her father is narcoleptic loser who works a food stand by the Hahn River with the grandfather. The other son is a college grad with no job and the daughter is a world class archer who only ever manages bronze. There is a monster that comes out of the river and kills a bunch of people and captures the granddaughter. The misfits fight against many odds to try and rescue her.

People, see this movie. I laughed, I cried, I got really scared. The monster itself was awesome. It's amphibian and had a prehensile tail, which means it could swing beneath bridges as well as run really fast. The acting is great. The family is hilarious and stop at nothing (truly) to get the daughter back. Running underneath this all is a commentary on American military arrogance that is spot on. What more could you ask for in a monster movie?

Sunday night was my true glut of movies. I went to see The Namesake with my friend Allison. The movie is directed by Mira Nair (who I think is hit or miss within her movies) and based on the book by Jhumpa Lahiri. I hadn't read the book, but have read The Interpreter of Maladies. Allison had read the book and was looking forward to the film.

The story is told in two voices, from the parents' perspectives and from their son's. I had read that the actors who played the parents (Irfan Khan and Tabu) were wonderful, but the other side lacked the same depth and emotion. I found that to be very true. The story of how the parents came to be married and learned to love each other was beautifully shown in small moments, in looks and slight touches of the hand. Kal Penn, who played the son, was a little heavy handed in his acting, especially when balanced by such soft touches by the actors playing his parents.

When I got home from The Namesake, Natasha and I ordered The Wind That Shakes the Barley onDemand on cable. We had planned on seeing it at the Music Box, but figured we'd be more comfortable in our pjs on our couch. Man. What a way to end Easter. It's a beautiful movie. The acting, directing and cinematography are all beautiful. Cillian Murphy kills me, as usual. But god, is it dark, with humanity at its worst in many ways. It tells a story of how the Irish revolution tore apart Ireland, especially one family. Good movie with a bleak story.

Partially cross-posted at New Critics.

Oscar Blogging This Weekend!

Updated below!

Has everyone been checking out the blogging happening over at New Critics? I've cross-posted there a couple of times, but there are a lot of great posts and discussions about music, film, books, tv, going on.

You see that blinking graphic to the right? This weekend we're doing a bunch of Oscar blogging. Our fearless leader, Tom Watson, will be kicking the coverage off Saturday morning at 10am, and we'll have posts every two hours during the day until showtime. Then Blue Girl will cap the whole shebang off with her live-blogging the creme de la creme of awards nights.

I went to see the live and animated international shorts last night, and I'll be reviewing them Saturday at noon. Lance Mannion will be reviewing all the films up for Best Picture, the Self-Styled Siren will be covering Best Director, Viscount LaCarte will be discussing Humphrey Bogart, M.A. Peel will be cover Peter O'Toole, and much more!

It's going to be a fun weekend! Make sure to check it out!

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Update: The Oscar blogging has commenced! See my post here, and everything else here.

Caught in the rain

As I left the house this evening I passed my umbrella and paused. Would I need it? Nah. It hadn't felt like rain earlier in the day. It's the second time this week I've ventured out without an umbrella and regretted it.

I went to meet my friend Allison to see Notes on a Scandal, which was what I wanted it to be. Vaguely voyeuristic, gossiping, entwining. Judi Dench malevolently spun her web to catch Cate Blanchett. It's not a movie about nice people, and Dench is especially not nice as the slightly deluded but dangerous spinster teacher. Blanchett is beautiful (as always) as the naive and inappropriate art teacher. It was fun to see Dench so hard-hearted. Allison had real estate envy for Blanchett's character's house and I wanted her wardrobe.

We left the theatre to find it pouring, with a bit of freezing rain mixed in for fun, and we really enjoyed running to the bus stop. The bus, with its windows fogged up, was warm but lurched forward and back like we were in the hull of a ship. The rain had stopped by the time we reached our respective stops. I really don't get this weather. My roommate is pleased because she doesn't like the cold. It has me suspicious and concerned. I'd rather have snow.

A meme, a boss and the mafia

According to a silly internet test, I'm apparently "neutral" — not good nor evil, just a lovely pasty color, inoffensive and slow moving. Which has been fairly true around here. It's been all kittens and pies lately, which is all fine and good in moderation, but it's the holiday season people! The days are shorter and darker. Bah humbug and all. Actually, I don't want to get all humbug. Instead I'll talk about crime and power and start it all off with a meme.

I was tapped this morning by the lovely Maryam in Marrakesh. I had to do the following:
1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence.
3. Post the text of next 3 sentences on your blog.
4. Name of the book and the author.
5. Tag three people.

The book: Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko
The passage:
His professional manner and dry wit made him a natural for the TV talk shows and interviews. Even before any changes were made in the police force, his presence implied great change. And five years after Daley first made it a campaign promise, the police chief finally moved his office out of City Hall and into police headquarters.

I don't feel like tagging anyone (I hope you don't mind Maryam!), but I'm glad for the segway to discuss my current reading list. Since school has been out I've returned to my usual glut of books. The current one (Boss) and the last one (The Washington Story by Adam Langer) have both been about Chicago.

I bought the Langer book a while ago and finally picked it up last weekend and just devoured it. It takes place mostly in Chicago, in West Rogers Park with the backdrop of Harold Washington becoming mayor. Langer is deft at creating a sense of place and fleshing out some interesting characters. It is growing up story from the perspectives of several of the characters and weaves in and out of different points of view. I really enjoyed getting a sense of what the city was like at that time. It seemed authentic to me, for someone who was a small child in the suburbs at the time.

It was an interesting book to read just before Boss; perhaps switching the order would have made more sense chronologically. I am so glad I'm reading Boss because it puts City Hall into a much better perspective for me. When I first moved to Chicago I thought the corruption was mildly amusing. The longer I've lived here the less I find this to be the case. The back of the book has a quote from Studs Terkel calling it, "Stunning, astonishing, myth-shattering!" It is all of that. The book has literally kept me on the edge of my seat on the CTA. I don't really know how to describe it, except that if you were ever curious to see how an American political machine worked, or how Chicago became to be what it is, you should pick up this book. Hell, I think it should be required reading for Chicagoans. I picked up the book originally wanting to attend a book group discussing it, but I think I have my first class of next quarter that night.

I was thinking about this book a lot as I watched The Departed on Friday night. The way the mafia rule is not too different than the way the Machine worked, although there was more obvious violence with the syndicate. I really loved this movie and felt extremely emotionally involved with the characters. Who knew I'd want to cry twice in a Scorsese flick? I have never hated Matt Damon more in my life nor felt so strongly about Leo. Jack Nicholson was frightening. I really want to see the Chinese film it was based on. (Tony Leung is in it, who I adore.) I was so caught up in it all and tightly wound by the end of the film that I really needed the longish walks to and from the L and a large cup of chamomile when I got home. Not to mention the frantic, manic discussion of what my friend and I just saw, trying to untangle the leftover knots in our heads. Which is exactly how you should exit a movie: discussing it with energy and enthusiasm.

It does not look like this today

But I am going to pretend that it does. I spent all of yesterday in the library working on a paper due next week. (Though I did sneak out to see Stranger Than Fiction, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. Last week I saw Little Children, which was good, but made me extremely tense. It was populated with some very beautiful people, though.)

Since I'm busy busy and the weather is pretty November (read: grey, cold), I thought I'd post some photos from a couple of weeks ago, when it was sunny. (See the originals here and here.) My mood seems to be a reflection of the weather as well. I have an extreme want to hibernate.

Female isolation

I just returned from seeing Marie Antoinette with the roommate and Libby. I have been anticipating this movie for a very long time and it was everything I wanted it to be. Sofia Coppola is a wonderful storyteller. She shows and not tells; in fact this is what this movie is, a beautiful story that unfolds in images. Coppola knows how to piece a film together with its images and music. (The shots of the setting sun on Versailles —gorgeous. And the colors. There is this scene where Marie Antoinette is walking through a hallway, dressed in mourning. She has a black dress on with this sash that is this color I can’t describe. To call it grey would be too common. I leaned over to Natasha and quietly gasped at the color combination. Perfection.)

Coppola continues her theme of female isolation in this movie. No better story, really, than of a girl who would be queen in a foreign court. Kirsten Dunst is at her loveliest in this role. She conveyed so much emotion and understanding in her face and eyes, which is necessary in a movie without much dialogue. I never realized I would ever feel sympathy for Marie Antoinette who was raised, as Libby so aptly put it, to be a prized pet cow. (Jason Schwartzman I could take or leave, but the hotty playing her Swedish lover can definitely stay.) Natasha said she especially liked the portrayal of Louis and M.A.’s relationship. It’s not that it was cold, just so complicated.

Coppola portrays the alienation of being female so aptly, as she has in her other films, especially The Virgin Suicides. (Which is one of the most beautiful books.) It makes me so angry that movie critics routinely dismiss her, I think because she is so profoundly feminine in her perspective. I think if a male director used color or music half as well as she does they would be highly praised (I’m looking at you, Zach Braff). And you can’t seem to bring up her name without people still vilifying her for Godfather III. GET OVER IT PEOPLE.

I’m not saying this was a perfect movie, but I think she purposely left certain narrative threads untied. She created a sense of time and place for the heroine and you could feel its isolation and its suffocation in the midst of the gaiety. Yes, the pacing is slow because of the lack of dialogue, but you should let the images and sounds wash over you. I thought this movie was wonderful and I look forward to seeing where Coppola goes next.

Update: My friend Dan is studying theatre in Paris for the year and visited Versailles last week. He went to see Marie Antoinette's theatre, in which a scene takes place in the film. Check out his post on it.

Beautiful Chicago Saturday

Yesterday I had a wonderful Chicago Saturday. The weather was beautiful (if a bit too warm) and it involved the Renegade Craft Fair in Wicker Park. I had been looking forward to this for a while, because it meant I was going to meet Ashley G of Kitty Genius in person (she's great, although a cramped vendor booth is not the optimal place to friend some one). I went with my crafty friend Shana (who had a booth last year) and we both spent more money than we had originally intended. I bought a print from Jaime Zollars, whose art I have been admiring for quite a while (though I can't remember how I found her originally, probably somehow through Tiny Showcase). She's also really nice— it was really neat to be able to talk to the artists, since I'm so used to looking at their work online. Shana and I both bought something from Jill Bliss, who is really great. Inside I was squealing like a teenaged fan because I think she's so great. I bought a datebook from her and she signed it for me (because I am such a nerd). I had my camera with me to take pictures of the fair but felt my nerdiness too acutely to take photos.

Shana and I lunched at Earwax (which has the flashiest website I've ever seen for a cafe/dvd rental place) and ended our afternoon with bubble tea. Fantastic.

The night included a viewing of Half Nelson at the Music Box. The movie was well made and heartbreaking. The main characters were played by Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps and they were marvelous. It's not a movie to wrap up things neatly or to give you an ending to have the audience walk out pleased with themselves and the moral of the film, but it's one that had my friend Allison and I talking about continually through our evening. It's a movie that makes you think without beating you on the head with it. Plus, Gosling, even as a basehead, is so pretty. As is Anthony Mackie, who seems to be sneaking into lots of films lately and is just great.