It has been exactly 1 week and 1 1/2 days since the end of school, though it feels more like 1 month and 1 1/2 days. The remarkable thing is that I have actually spend the past week doing things; for once in the summer, my favored companions have not been the computer or the TV, but real flesh and blood people. Of course, socialibility is relative.
Monday: Kate's party
Tuesday: Harvard Sq
Wednesday: Movies at Steff's
Thursday: Crashed Alice's
Friday: Crashed Alice's again and exploded diet Coke
Saturday: Went shopping with Mary
Yesterday, we finally got around to exploding Diet Coke after all the anticipation and ballyhooha. Well, not explode per se, more like make fountains of articifially sweetened brown liquid to compete with the pouring rain. After getting coked and stained (by Mary, who else?), the hardcore among us went outside and jumped around in the lightning and rain. My NSLC t-shirt is now a unpleasant shade of pee yellow. Fortunately, I don't give shit.
Today was shopping time because I have a grand total of 2 pairs of pants that actually like. That number has now increased to 5 with the purchase of 3 more pairs of pants. (Random tangent: Why are pants pairs? I know there are two pant legs, but its only one thing!) I bought this pair of big, brown "Bohemian" pants that are so comfy that it almost feels like you're not wearing pants. Each pant leg is big enough for two so if I ever start hating the pants, I can cut it up into 2 tube skirts. Two skirts for $7? Good deal.
You know what? It's really boring watching soccer by yourself. Especially when your choice of channels broadcasting the World Cup are either staticky and fuzzy or Spanish and fuzzy.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Movie Night: The Virgin Aquatic with Quills
Another intense movie-watching experience: eyes glued from one movie to the next with nary a second to catch a bite to eat. Okay, I lied, eating is the most crucial activity of all; it beats even watching movies. But other than those lengthy breaks for food, the night was devoted to nothing but movies.
After hastily arriving at Steff's house, we decided to do our part in fighting obesity by walking all the way to Video Signals (a distance much shorter than I just made it sound.) The journey was uneventful except for the 4 mosquitoes that I managed to feed. Remind me to never hang out with Steff outside. Somehow, she is even more mosquito-repellant than I am, a remarkable feat since I usually never get bites.
As soon as we figured out how to connect the VCR (old school VHS version of The Virgin Suicides necessitated this), we hit the couch in anticipation of a heavy night of cinema. Our stomachs demanded nourishment after the first movie, so we ransacked the kitchen to "cook." Our creation was an "omelet," more properly described as eggs + oil + pepper + cheese + random contents of the fridge, which was washed down with Coke and (possibly expired) peanut butter--a taste of college life indeed.
But yes, most important of all: The Films! Strangely enough, Steff and I had similar reactions to all of them, even the 3 minutes of A Woman is a Woman.
The Virgin Suicides (Coppola, 2000)
Having loved Jeffrey Eugenides' haunting novel, I eagerly awaited Sofia Coppola's adaptation of The Virgin Suicides, also her feature debut. It is the inherent trap of adaptations that they are judged according the quality of the original work, in which case Coppola's film comes up short by much more than a razor's edge. Her film is too slight to pack the emotional weight of the novel; the script glosses over too much to find depth in its characters. Coppola is torn between balancing the boys who narrate the tale and the Libson family, and the result is a skim off the top of both. On a more positive note, this was the first, and probably last time I liked either Kirsten Dunst or Josh Hartnett in a movie.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Anderson, 2004)
When we were renting this movie, the guy warned us that it was "awful" and that he walked out "after the first 5 minutes." This put a severe damper on expectations, something that probably turned out for the best. Because The Life Aquatic so surprised me with its exuberance, its excitement, its humor, its vibrancy, its energy, its wit, its life. The Life Aquatic is clearly the work of a deft filmmaker with a vision and a love for cinema. I've always felt that Anderson's weakness was in creating an amazing cast of characters but giving them nothing to do. No such quibbles here, because the sprawling cast is both pitch perfect and provided with an adventure to boot. Someone once wrote that Anderson creates hyper reality within abstract worlds, and he does this perfectly, wrapping everything up in a purely enjoyable story.
Fangirl fawning: Wes was so hot in the extra features! Holy crap, he looks so good with longer hair. Compare with dorky guy in The Royal Tenenbaums. 0_0
Random movie geek trivia tangent: Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson are good friends. Anderson, a frequent collaborator with Bill Murray, helped convince Murray to star in Coppola's Lost in Translation.
Quills (Kaufman, 2000)
“Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.” Such deliciously lurid prose, as spoken and written by the notorious Marquis de Sadem, spices the dialogue of Quills, a highly fictional account of the Marquis’s last days. Quills is an engaging romp—juggling dark wit, tension and sordid pleasure—with plenty of sexy accents and pretty costumes. The cast is excellent, the story captivating, and the dialogue sordid. My God, a truly enjoyable film.
A Woman is a Woman (Godard, who knows)
Whoa, back up here because I watched all of 3 minutes of this film. We decided that an old French movie with shoddy sound and subtitles was too much for 3 AM and went channel surfing instead. Good choice.
After hastily arriving at Steff's house, we decided to do our part in fighting obesity by walking all the way to Video Signals (a distance much shorter than I just made it sound.) The journey was uneventful except for the 4 mosquitoes that I managed to feed. Remind me to never hang out with Steff outside. Somehow, she is even more mosquito-repellant than I am, a remarkable feat since I usually never get bites.
As soon as we figured out how to connect the VCR (old school VHS version of The Virgin Suicides necessitated this), we hit the couch in anticipation of a heavy night of cinema. Our stomachs demanded nourishment after the first movie, so we ransacked the kitchen to "cook." Our creation was an "omelet," more properly described as eggs + oil + pepper + cheese + random contents of the fridge, which was washed down with Coke and (possibly expired) peanut butter--a taste of college life indeed.
But yes, most important of all: The Films! Strangely enough, Steff and I had similar reactions to all of them, even the 3 minutes of A Woman is a Woman.
The Virgin Suicides (Coppola, 2000)
Having loved Jeffrey Eugenides' haunting novel, I eagerly awaited Sofia Coppola's adaptation of The Virgin Suicides, also her feature debut. It is the inherent trap of adaptations that they are judged according the quality of the original work, in which case Coppola's film comes up short by much more than a razor's edge. Her film is too slight to pack the emotional weight of the novel; the script glosses over too much to find depth in its characters. Coppola is torn between balancing the boys who narrate the tale and the Libson family, and the result is a skim off the top of both. On a more positive note, this was the first, and probably last time I liked either Kirsten Dunst or Josh Hartnett in a movie.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Anderson, 2004)
When we were renting this movie, the guy warned us that it was "awful" and that he walked out "after the first 5 minutes." This put a severe damper on expectations, something that probably turned out for the best. Because The Life Aquatic so surprised me with its exuberance, its excitement, its humor, its vibrancy, its energy, its wit, its life. The Life Aquatic is clearly the work of a deft filmmaker with a vision and a love for cinema. I've always felt that Anderson's weakness was in creating an amazing cast of characters but giving them nothing to do. No such quibbles here, because the sprawling cast is both pitch perfect and provided with an adventure to boot. Someone once wrote that Anderson creates hyper reality within abstract worlds, and he does this perfectly, wrapping everything up in a purely enjoyable story.
Fangirl fawning: Wes was so hot in the extra features! Holy crap, he looks so good with longer hair. Compare with dorky guy in The Royal Tenenbaums. 0_0
Random movie geek trivia tangent: Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson are good friends. Anderson, a frequent collaborator with Bill Murray, helped convince Murray to star in Coppola's Lost in Translation.
Quills (Kaufman, 2000)
“Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.” Such deliciously lurid prose, as spoken and written by the notorious Marquis de Sadem, spices the dialogue of Quills, a highly fictional account of the Marquis’s last days. Quills is an engaging romp—juggling dark wit, tension and sordid pleasure—with plenty of sexy accents and pretty costumes. The cast is excellent, the story captivating, and the dialogue sordid. My God, a truly enjoyable film.
A Woman is a Woman (Godard, who knows)
Whoa, back up here because I watched all of 3 minutes of this film. We decided that an old French movie with shoddy sound and subtitles was too much for 3 AM and went channel surfing instead. Good choice.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)
When a film seems much longer than it actually is, it is usually is a boring piece of tripe. (:cough: The Lake House. ) Yet here it is a testament to the power of In the Mood for Love, where so much passion and heartache is crammed into a languid 98 minutes that it emerges as a sensual epic.Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are new neighbors, who after discovering that their respective spouses are having affairs with each other, begin a delicate relationship of their own. But there is nothing from the sordid pages of Closer; the relationship is as wistful as it is real, as wishful as it is fleeting. For someone who works without a script, director Wong Kai-Wai constructs a remarkably tight narrative while working within his characteristic parallel structure. The parallel is looser here, as the adulterate husband and wife are shown only briefly through disembodied voices and shots from the back, leaving the focus on Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan. Their relationship is subtly developed through vignettes reenacting the affair between the spouses, and the romantic tension pulses, even though there isn’t no much as a kiss.
It is the aesthetics of the film that bring out its full heartache and beauty. The brief encounters in the stairwell set to a hauntingly romantic score and slow motion walk the tender line between fulfillment and exasperation. The stylized cinematography glamorizes the aging alleys of 1960s Hong Kong. The perfectly coiffed Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are embodiments of a bygone era as well as protagonists in a futile love story.
Despite all the praise that I have lavished, In the Mood for Love is a film that I admire more than I love. Here is the inherent shortcoming to my viewing habits: I cannot pass judgment on a love story until I know what the heck love is.
A random musing: I have long ruminated on the importance of titles when we look at the work, be it a book, a film or a poem. There is always a certain awkwardness in translation, and I much prefer the original Chinese title of 花樣年華 (literally something like: When the Flowers were in Bloom), which has a touch more melancholy.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Harvard Square: Be There to Be Square
I have often repeated the thought that my only incentive to attend Harvard was the proximity to Harvard Square. The Square itself and the Harvard Co-op (I've always pronounced "coop," as in chicken coop) harbor many idyllic childhood memories. So today's outing was both a trip down memory lane and a confused stumble down Brattle Street.
Confused because I have a worse sense of direction than a goldfish. After taking the commuter rail in, I dragged the others around as I attempted to look for the Brattle Theatre, a place half hidden and much smaller than I expected. However, free movie passes override all other sentiments.
A lot of time was spent browsing around the Harvard Co-Op book store, especially in the back corner where the film criticism is located. That section is much larger than those in most bookstores, which isn't saying much. And a semi-interesting story about the last time I hung out there: a bearded old man sighed as he flipped through a book, expressing his disappoint that one of his essays did not make it in. Company was slightly more upbeat today.
Fire and Ice was the chosen location for our noon meal, the only non-Chinese restaurant my dad had ever recommended. The concept is cool (big metal grill with food cooked as you watch), but the food was meh. I guess I really shouldn't be complaining though, since I was the one to choose the ingredients. This is an ingenious idea: if you can't make good food, have your customers do it themselves. And to prove that we are inept at paying, Alex managed to figure out the bill in 1/4 of the time it took us at Not Your Average Joe's.
Another cool concept was The Lake House. But horrible execution. About two lovers living two years apart, The Lake House managed to take all excitement out of the warped and usually fascinating idea of time travel, creating an empty romance that was maudlin and middling and slow. Only the frigidly cold AC kept me from drifting off into sleepyland.
Sign # 586 You Are a Movie Nerd: When you go watch a movie in the theatres, you recognize all of the trailers as ones you have already watched online, some of them multiple times.
Confused because I have a worse sense of direction than a goldfish. After taking the commuter rail in, I dragged the others around as I attempted to look for the Brattle Theatre, a place half hidden and much smaller than I expected. However, free movie passes override all other sentiments.
A lot of time was spent browsing around the Harvard Co-Op book store, especially in the back corner where the film criticism is located. That section is much larger than those in most bookstores, which isn't saying much. And a semi-interesting story about the last time I hung out there: a bearded old man sighed as he flipped through a book, expressing his disappoint that one of his essays did not make it in. Company was slightly more upbeat today.
Fire and Ice was the chosen location for our noon meal, the only non-Chinese restaurant my dad had ever recommended. The concept is cool (big metal grill with food cooked as you watch), but the food was meh. I guess I really shouldn't be complaining though, since I was the one to choose the ingredients. This is an ingenious idea: if you can't make good food, have your customers do it themselves. And to prove that we are inept at paying, Alex managed to figure out the bill in 1/4 of the time it took us at Not Your Average Joe's.
Another cool concept was The Lake House. But horrible execution. About two lovers living two years apart, The Lake House managed to take all excitement out of the warped and usually fascinating idea of time travel, creating an empty romance that was maudlin and middling and slow. Only the frigidly cold AC kept me from drifting off into sleepyland.
Sign # 586 You Are a Movie Nerd: When you go watch a movie in the theatres, you recognize all of the trailers as ones you have already watched online, some of them multiple times.
Monday, June 19, 2006
DeCordova Psyches Peach Squares
Sunday being Father's Day, my parents dragged me along on one of those occasional family outings. I reluctantly slouched into the car as we drove out to the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park. For once however, I was glad to have listened to my parents.
If spending 2 hours appreciating modern art with your old-fashioned family sounds like an awful way to spend a Sunday morning, it isn't. Unlike most museums where you are required to keep a respectable distance from their precious works of art, DeCordova encourages the touch as well as the look. (Okay, why do I sense some sexual innuendo there? I've been watching too many French movies.) I'm not going to say anything more about the sculptures because 1. You should go for yourself and 2. I'm working on how to upload pictures without exploding my internet connecting.
This morning, I managed to eat a peach while simultaneously shave my legs. Who's got manual dexterity? Too bad I still lack the basics of hand-eye coordination. This deficiency is an unfortunate hindrance to succeeding in the addictive game of Squares.
Today was Kate's end-of-school/surprise birthday party, where intense annual water balloon fights happen. Luckily, I had the foresight to bring a change of clothes, without which I definitely would not have survived Mary's enthusiastic drenchings. After gorging ourselves on unhealthy food and ice cream sundaes, we hopped inside to watch Legally Blonde and Les Choristes. Legally Blonde was fun and fluffy while Les Choristes reminded me why Nina was so obsessed with Jean-Baptiste Maunier.
Having recently begun my CTY online Psych class, I can say that it positively sucks. The textbook is juvenile, the people unmotivated, the website archaic, the tuition expensive, the assignments boring...I can go on and on. The one positive note is that I met a fellow Wes Anderson devotee. :)
If spending 2 hours appreciating modern art with your old-fashioned family sounds like an awful way to spend a Sunday morning, it isn't. Unlike most museums where you are required to keep a respectable distance from their precious works of art, DeCordova encourages the touch as well as the look. (Okay, why do I sense some sexual innuendo there? I've been watching too many French movies.) I'm not going to say anything more about the sculptures because 1. You should go for yourself and 2. I'm working on how to upload pictures without exploding my internet connecting.
This morning, I managed to eat a peach while simultaneously shave my legs. Who's got manual dexterity? Too bad I still lack the basics of hand-eye coordination. This deficiency is an unfortunate hindrance to succeeding in the addictive game of Squares.
Today was Kate's end-of-school/surprise birthday party, where intense annual water balloon fights happen. Luckily, I had the foresight to bring a change of clothes, without which I definitely would not have survived Mary's enthusiastic drenchings. After gorging ourselves on unhealthy food and ice cream sundaes, we hopped inside to watch Legally Blonde and Les Choristes. Legally Blonde was fun and fluffy while Les Choristes reminded me why Nina was so obsessed with Jean-Baptiste Maunier.
Having recently begun my CTY online Psych class, I can say that it positively sucks. The textbook is juvenile, the people unmotivated, the website archaic, the tuition expensive, the assignments boring...I can go on and on. The one positive note is that I met a fellow Wes Anderson devotee. :)
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