4 posts tagged “movies”

... was the theme for the night, when Al and I went to see Rocky Votolato play at Neumo's on Friday. Al has already written up a full report, so I will not repeat all the details of the evening, except to reiterate that it was a great show, and I was impressed that Rocky managed to get through a full set plus an encore despite having pretty much lost his voice over the course of the tour. He growled his way hoarsely through most of the numbers, which was something to get used to considering his voice sounds fairly soft and soothing on the albums. But it gave the songs a different dimension, and I enjoyed the show. I really need to get hold of Suicide Medicine somehow. It isn't on Zune Marketplace.

Yesterday a group of us (Aparna, Astha, Andre, Ricmoo and I) decided to inaugurate hiking season with our first outing of the year at Rattlesnake Ledge, about 45 minutes east of Seattle. It was a nice little warm-up hike, with some great views at the top, and all the fresh air apparently sent Moo into a state of exuberant craziness that I never thought possible even from him, climbing into hollow logs, striking statuesque poses atop rocks, and chasing chipmunks around perilously close to cliffs. It was a thoroughly entertaining morning. (A sampling of pics below, full collection here.)

This is the second time I've had a cold in the last three weeks! Not sure what's going on there, but it meant another day off work today when I couldn't really afford one. That said, IMHO it's better to invest one day in beating it than spending a week sniffling my way miserably through my normal routine.

One of the things I took for granted when I was still in Australia was that when I was sick, I knew exactly what to take for it. For cold and flu it was always Logicin or Codral - that stuff put me right so quickly and effectively it was almost scary. But the brands and active ingredients are completely different here. The last time I had a cold I asked at Rite-Aid (the main pharmacy chain here) whether they had anything with pseudoephedrine in it, and all I got was a blank stare. I ended up picking up some Dayquil, which had a familiar brand name on it (Vicks), and seemed to be roughly what I was looking for. It didn't really do much.

Today I was upstairs at Arpan's for lunch, as he was working from home and kindly offered to feed me - his mother, on top of being one of the nicest people I've ever met, is a prolific cook - the fridge is still bursting with home cooked food 2 weeks after his parents' visit. Arpan had also been fishing yesterday so he'd made some stuffed trout - mmmm. That was a corker of a lunch.

Between appreciative mouthfuls, I mentioned my n00bness in relation to North American drugs, and Arpan said "Oh, don't even waste your time with that sissy Dayquil stuff. You need Niquil. Don't move." He went into his room and presently emerged with a packet of green pills, informing me that my troubles were over. He was right. I went back home, took the pills, and within about half an hour was overcome with the urge to sleep, despite the fact that I'd been lying in bed for the last 15 hours. I was out cold for the next six hours, and awoke with absolutely no symptoms whatsoever. I'm still not sure whether to be glad or scared, so I'm indulging a little bit of both at the moment. I don't know what's in those pills (and I'm not sure I want to), but they sure as hell do their job.

In other news, I've watched a couple of good films this week. On Wednesday we went to see the wildly entertaining Blades of Glory. From the trailer I wasn't expecting too much and had to be cajoled by Kosta into even going, but I was glad I did because it was hilarious. Will Ferrell was amusingly obnoxious as usual, and Jon Heder basically reprised his eponymous role in Napoleon Dynamite while upping the effeminate factor by about 200%. It actually ended up being one of those rare movies that is way better than the trailer would suggest.

On a slightly more cerebral note, we went to see the political documentary An Unreasonable Man over the weekend. The film documented the career of Ralph Nader, the longtime political activist who famously ran for the US presidency against Gore and Bush in 2000 and is widely blamed for the Democrats' loss in that election. The documentary highlighted his achievements in consumer activism over the last forty years, most notably his campaign for automobile safety regulations, which often involved having to take on corporate giants who were not above using sleazy tactics to try and discredit him. That was incredibly inspiring. It also examined his motives behind running for president in 2000 and his refusal to bow out of the race, which in the end turned him into a public pariah.

This issue in particular sparked a big discussion amongst my friends when we were walking out of the cinema. Nader's own justification behind running was that both major parties are too beholden to big corporations, and that people should not be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils because that does not give either party any incentive to improve. After having a major influence on public policy in the 60's and 70's, Nader was deeply disillusioned and frustrated with the Democrats' evolution into a party driven by corporate contributions, and believed that the only way they would change their ways was if he could prove enough of a threat at the ballot box - the only language that political parties understand.

It was interesting to note that opinions in our group were pretty much divided on the American/non-American line. The Americans in our group saw Nader's candidacy as an arrogant indulgence which contributed to the election of a right-wing reactionary into the most powerful office in the world. The rest of us disagreed. How can a democratic country, indeed, a nation which prides itself on spreading democracy and freedom to countries around the world, be so vitriolic against any third party entering the political arena? The two-party system is so entrenched here, it's almost scary. I think you do need someone to "keep the bastards honest", as the old Australian Democrats slogan went. If Nader's message resonated so much with people as the film suggested, surely the (American) Democrats should have seen that as a wakeup call to reexamine their policy, rather than a threat to their own power base? The lengths to which both major parties went to keep Nader out of the debate during the 2000 campaign certainly seemed to me to go directly against America's zeal to portray itself as the model democracy.

This is a gripping and endlessly thought-provoking portrait of one of the most fascinating characters in American politics. Definitely worth watching.

In other news, Missy Higgins' new album comes out in less than two weeks. Fingers crossed that she heads over to the States soon to promote it - she was in Seattle last year but it was before my 21st birthday, and it was not an all ages show :( The first single is sounding good, where is the trademark piano though? Also, look carefully at the video around 1 min 20 seconds in - you can see the UTS tower (and again, much closer up at the 1:55 mark)!

Last night I went to see Mira Nair's latest film, The Namesake, a screen adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel. Nair directed my favourite film, Monsoon Wedding, but I wasn't that impressed after reading Lahiri's much-hyped The Interpreter of Maladies a few years ago, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I really, really enjoyed this film though.

Warning... possible spoilers ahead :|

The story begins with an arranged Bengali marriage and the couple's move to the United States to start a new life. It documents how they turn a partnership of two strangers into a loving marriage, their struggles to come to terms with an unfamiliar culture and life away from their families, and their relationship with their children who are in turn also fundamentally torn between two very different worlds.

Their son Gogol, the eponymous character of the novel, is played by Kal Penn in a big departure from his Harold and Kumar-type outings. He really did put in a great performance. A lot of the dilemmas his character faces are questions that remain unresolved in my mind, so I really enjoyed following his journey. (On a side note, it was amusing to see how similar his mannerisms were to Arpan's. Aparna and I kept looking at each other in shock at how uncanny it was.)

I don't think you have to be Indian or an immigrant to enjoy this movie. It's not just about ethnicity or identity, it's about universal things like family, love, loss - something I've always loved about Mira Nair's films. Definitely worth watching.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas.

Alec and I didn't end up going to California - it was just an unfeasible distance for one person to drive in such a short time. Instead we decided to head up to Vancouver for a couple of days. We stayed at Al's uncle and aunt's place, a stone's throw from downtown. The weather was atrocious, so after a little shopping downtown - I am now obsessed with Roots - we hung out at home with Alec's cousin Roger and his girlfriend Rina, who proved to be all-round champions and even cooked us an amazing dinner. In the final hours of Christmas eve we headed off to midnight mass at Roger's church, St Augustine's. It was quite a nice service, and I surprised myself by remembering the obscure 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. verses of Christmas carols that I barely even remember learning - obviously something from 11 years at a Uniting Church school stuck. The power of the subconscious mind, huh.

We spent a lot of the next day helping to make Christmas dinner. Alec's family was having 25 people over for the night, so they really put out a spread - 2 turkeys, some other sort of roast meat, vegies, and all sorts of bikkies and candy and other goodies. I learned how to make stuffing: one of the great mysteries of life finally solved. I headed home on a Greyhound that night; Alec stayed an extra day or two with his rellos.

On Boxing Day Radhika had organised a formal potluck dinner at her house. According to the invite all the girls had to wear dresses and the guys had to wear a collared shirt and tie, which unsurprisingly had the more smartass guys in our group asking whether they could come along without trousers on. I managed to get a nice LBD at the Boxing Day sales for $50, discounted from $200. Gotta love a bargain. When I got home I cooked up a storm and made rosemary lamb pie, rocket and haloumi salad, and strawberry lemonade. Everyone turned up looking absolutely stunning and carrying yummy food - it was a good night. I'll have to post up photos here once I have them from my friends.

The disappointing news of this week was that our ski trip to Schweitzer got cancelled due to last minute dropouts. I was extremely bummed out - I was really, really hanging out for this trip. It would have been great to celebrate new year's in some obscure mountain chalet in the middle of Idaho - no, seriously. Oh well, skiing day trips and new year's eve plans are being cemented as I write this, so I don't believe the weekend will be a complete writeoff.

In other news, I was wasting time on the internet the other day (as one does) and came across this:

They are making a movie of one of my absolute favourite books as a kid. I absolutely adored this book. I sat down and read it in one day when I was ten and then many times over after that. It was the first book that ever made me cry. But I'm sorry to say that, just judging by the trailer, the movie looks terrible. They've turned it into a Lord of the Rings movie! I'm hoping they just decided to put in the most sensational parts of the movie into the trailer to attract attention, and that the book hasn't been transmogrified into some scifi/adventure flick. If they do what they did to Dinotopia, I will be ropable, mate.