9 posts tagged “film”

More point forms:
- I downloaded Alpha Centauri. Basically wanted that game for ~ 6 years. And then I was like, "Hey. The internet is so good for that." I also learned that I do not know anything about computers, but now I have a vague idea of what an iso is.
- I also legitimately downloaded the Creature Creator demo for Spore, which is fiiiiiinally coming out sometime soon. I really enjoy it, and will likely soon get the full version less legitimately.
- Went to the cottage. 2 days, ~ 8 episodes of rain, once when I was in the kayak. Saw "Across the Universe". I kind of wanted to hate it, but couldn't. Really, it was quite good.
- Okay seriously it rains all the time. Allll the time.
- So things with Professor are going famously! I suppose I should have provided interim updates since the last thing I said was that it was questionable, but everything seems to have smoothed out. Yayyy. I really like him. And we're going to spend my favourite holiday, aka Canada Day, together. Erm, magical...?
- Work yadda yadda. I have this week off. Gotta get my fill of Toronto before I'm off to the hinterlands come this weekend.
- Saw 2046. Not so great. Bad one, Mr Wong. (Interlude: Watched it with Professor. Putting my arm around someone makes me feel manly!)
- (Please note that Professor is but a nickname.... dating a real professor would imply a creepy age difference.)
- Free Harbourfront shows! (Nothing I like, though...)
- Okay so apparently starting a sentence with "As well," meaning also, is something we only do in Canada. I have Canadian and American neighbours: confirm? thoughts?
- I was at Sonic Boom! today (bought Milk Man and Intercontinental Champion), and some woman asked me "Excuse me, do you work here?" WHAT A COMPLIMENT!
- I finished Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, which was really good. And set in TO! This was my second excellent Cory Doctorow, so I certainly recommend him. Oh and you can get I think most of his books for free on his website sooo.
- This song:

Deerhoof - Giga Dance

Deerhoof

Okay so there's a lot that's happened.

I moved res buildings. This one is... much better than my old one haha. Not that I won't be happy to be back there in September. Especially after living in the suburbs for July and August. Um so yeah this building is so confusing, but I love to explore, so it's fun.

Work is a-mazing. I love working with kids, seriously. And every time it's gone so well. The kids are good, the workshop works out well, and I get good reviews from the teachers. I worked in my mom's school today, actually. She wasn't there, but the Grade 8 teacher booked me. I was really dreading this particular workshop because a) he was clearly going to report right back to my mom, and b) it's like the most boring, confusing workshop. But it worked out fine! Great even! DESPITE the fact that my materials crate was missing a crucial component. I just made up a replacement part and it went off without a hitch. It was amazing, and even though I'm pretty much burned out from low sleep and early mornings (at work at 6:45 today!), I am just so happy.

Yesterday, I seriously couldn't stop thinking "I think my life is perfect. My life is perfect." And I can feel that even though I know there are things I want but don't have. It doesn't make me too much less happy. I've realized that it isn't not having something that makes one sad, but rather the thought that not having that thing ought to make one sad. When I did that project in Grade 12 on happiness, the one main message was that it's all how you look at things - you make your own meaning and happiness. So like... yeah an outsider wouldn't say my life is perfect, but from the inside it is (I assure you).

Speaking of things I want but can't have, I helped my friend Samurai apply for an instructor position with my camp later in the summer. He wouldn't be working in the same place as me though, which is good because well, straight up, I'm kind of in love with him. Not actually love, mind you, but I don't want to say "like", because it's way too high school. Now if only he'd break up with his boyfriend. Which, objectively, I don't really want, because I think they're much better for each other than he and I would be. So. I'm pretty sure a lot of my annoyingly persistent interest in him is based in the fact that I barely even know any guys, so. Uh not many options. And as I said, I'm pretty content anyway, so I'm not really going to go looking.

Speaking of high school (yeah it's back there), I saw American Teen last night. For free. I'm pretty sure that in some location in the city, at any given time, there is something cool and free to do. And eat. For sure. Um but yeah the movie was really good. Though.. the director was there, and she said that she tried to avoid the sort of typical stereotypes... which she didn't do at all. But yeah it was still really good.

The St Patrick's Day parade is going past my window. Except we're not on their route - they're on their way to the route. So they're just sort of... walking past. Not parading. But at least I'm getting to see it, because I'm not going to otherwise.

It seems weird that we have this Irish holiday. Do we even have that many Irish people? Okay yeah according to Wikipedia we really do. 15.6% of Ontario. Bizarre.

So my grandmother gave me a jade plant. That means that my room is home to the following macroorganisms:
- Homo sapiens sapiens
- Dionaea muscipula
- Crassula ovata
- Kalanchoe sp.
- and sometimes, Mus musculus

It is warm out lately.

Oh and Friday night I saw "Me and You and Everyone We Know", which was amazing. Well-scored. Themes include fantasy and reaching out to strangers.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Ai-yah it's been a while since a post...

I listened to Black Moth Super Rainbow one hundred eighty-two times last week. I would every day if I could. I loooooove them... yeah anyway. They're good!

Danielson are also getting a lot of play these days.

It's finally seeming like spring these days aaaand it's going to snow tonight. A lot. Blahhh I am sick of it.

Today was incredibly productive. Considering the 5-7 hours of class I have on Mondays, I usually spend my between-class time dawdling. Today, however, I knew I had work to do and HUNKERED DOWN in the library - and I did a week of calculus in ~2 hours or so. Commitment!

I also handed in my application. For an instructor job at a science camp, I realized I hadn't put down the backstory for that.

Errrr I saw the Oscars. I hadn't seen any of the movies except for "Atonement" which I am rather a fan of. It won Best Original Score, which it really deserved. I found the soundtrack on Youtube. Good stuff.

Oh I went to Fresh on Saturday night with a friend. This is good because a) I need to get off campus more, and b) it reminded me how dayum good that place is. Vegan deliciousness. But it was quite a sitcommy fiasco. My friend was walking up Spadina, and there's a Fresh there. I'm up at the University, so the Bloor one is closer to me, but I told her I'd meet her down there since it was convenient for her. I changed (I'd been skiing with Dad that day) and walked down Spadina, and called her and said "I'm outside the door", to which she said "No you're not... where are you? I'm at Bloor". Insert laugh track. I didn't really find it funny at the time, but ten awkward minutes of sidewalk pacing later, she showed up via streetcar, and we had our delicious meal. I had a Thai burger made of I'm not sure what with a spicy peanut sauce. Goooood and perfectly filling.

I thought our waiter was a very cute guy. Turned out to be a girl, whoops... Well her style was tomboy verging on drag king, so I can't really be blamed.

We also had crepes at another place after. I didn't really want to, but my friend was going to a show later, so I kind of had to keep her occupied.

I actually read over alllll my Bio notes tonight. Am I ready for the test? Nopity-nope.

Last night was "Fireball", this big dance or whatever that my college does to commemorate our building burning down in 1890. What I'm sure used to be quite a nice event now seems (by descriptions by friends) to have turned into a night of vomit-wading. Charming. Needless to say, I did not attend. Really not my cup of tea.

Instead, I saw a screening of "Up the Yangtze"! Dad texted me Saturday morning recommending it to me, and I'm glad I went. A friend and I headed up to Cumberland (the only place it was playing) through the slushy night for the 10 pm showing. The director was there! We arrived just as he finished his introduction.

The movie was good. Sad. As any story about the human impact of the Three Gorges will tend to be... But it was well shot, and managed to document a lot of angles on the story, showing even a lot of stuff I'm sure the government wouldn't have authorized. If they had known...

It showed Chinese life well, and the contrasts between cultures were apparent. Mainland people just seem so much more... mature, sensible. Even optimistic. Here, most of us have minor hardships, yet tend to be quite negative (myself included and especially). There, despite quite large levels of hardship, especially in the peasant family the story followed, optimism persists. People recognized that although they were personally suffering, and in fact being rather mistreated, it was for the country's greater good. As one man said, roughly, "We must sacrifice the little family for the big family". Even the youths showed maturity far beyond what I would even come to expect from adults here. Speaking of a girl new to the boat they were employed on, a group of late-teens girls said things like, "She must learn to be more humble in the kitchen - she needs to learn to ask for help when she needs it." and "She will change with time". Let me translate what this would be like here: "Yu Shui is so ugly. Did you see that shirt she was wearing? I don't want her around me."

The white tourists in the film looked the worst. Their constant, inane questions, poor and cheesy attempts to take in "local culture", and just... everything careless and stuck-up they said... it was embarassing. If I ever go to China, my greatest fear will to be a tourist like that. I don't want to be a tourist! I should have been born there instead.

Oh well... my life is good!

On another note, moss stitch is not going well. For some reason, I just can't seem to wrap my head around the coordination involved in the knit-purl transition and vice-versa. Even when I think I figure it out and a couple stitches turn out fine, I screw up others and it's a mess. And I really like the look of the [proper] stitch, so... I need to keep working at it.

Long entry.

Yesterday was shitty. And today was looking like a pretty bland hard work day.

My mom texted me this morning: "Are you hibernating? Schools are closed so your sister's sleeping I am missing the computer!" This text woke me up, actually, but that's okay. I was like... hibernating? Schools closed? Last night there wasn't even any snow on the ground...

But oh there was this morning! And unbelievably enough, this poster was on all the hall doors and peg boards:

Today was cool! Okay there was the usual... 5 hours of class. But! Well, back up.

When I went to see Atonement (for the second time), we were stopped on the way into the theatre by this woman with a clipboard. I never consider clipboard people to be good news, but she was - she gave us tickets to a free advance screening of this movie "Blindness".

It was at 7:00 tonight, and I was informed by a girl in my house who's pretty into movies that we ought to go quite early, since they have limited space. Everyone who was with me when we got the tickets ended up having class, so I ended up going with said girl. Anyway, we left at about 5:45 and walked to the theatre. There was quite a crowd, so we were worried, but we got in line. A loooong line. But we slowly advanced, and got in. We got searched for recording equipment! Ooh.

Anyway, this movie isn't coming out until the fall, so it's unfinished. It was funny actually... in a sort of minor bit describing a bus going off the road, they just used low-resolution stock footage off the internet, to later be replaced by their own stuff I guess. And one part had a subtitle with the line they were changing it to.

But yeah the movie needs some work. I basically liked it overall, but some of the pacing was dodgy, the mood wasn't quie right, and goddamn a couple of the scenes were disturbing. Suffice it to say a lot of people walked out, and I was crying.

So we filled out this questionnaire, and it was a good way to sum up my thoughts on the movie. AND my companion and I were asked to stay for this focus group discussion afterwards. Only 25 people out of the whole group - and we'd filled the largest theatre I'd ever been in. I think we were picked because we looked like the youngest people there.

The discussion was good, and people agreed with a lot of my comments. It was fun - I wish we could do that with all movies haha!

And they gave us DVDs as thanks. I got "The Queen". I wanted to see that, I guess, so.

Yeah so even though the movie wasn't the best, it was a really fun experience! A well-spent 5 hours of my life.

There is a Periodic Table up in our Common Room, for no particular reason. We were looking at it the other day, and no one, including chemistry kids like myself, could figure out what W was. Well, I shall inform you that it represents the element wolfram - better known as tungsten.

Hmm, Wolfram would be a cool name. I doubt I shall have biological children of any sort, though.

I finally saw I ♥ Huckabees. I quite enjoyed it though... I could see why some people wouldn't. I had been told several times that I resembled Jason Schwartzman's character, and although I had resisted that characterization, I suppose there were some aspects. Mostly though, I think many of the comparisons were drawn from the similar haircut I had at the time of release.

Unsurprisingly, it seemed this morning that the nu-winter was over - most of our snow cover had melted. Howevvvvver, by this evening, when I went back to the burbs for dinner with the family, it was snowing yet again. Really nice and flaky. But also really gross and wet.

This song is good!

Super Furry Animals - Into the Night

Super Furry Animals

Now ordinarily I wouldn't be so positive about a song that uses the word "Professorsaurus", but they are one of the best Welsh exports (in any area), so I'll let it slide... this time!

Posts like the one I made last night do tend to make one feel pathetic upon reading them later. But that's what happens when I make an entry late at night. Things always look better in the morning! And they did today. Mostly. Eughhhh... But I won't delete it - shit happens.

Anyway, I tried to post the song "Bro's" by Panda Bear, but it is too large. I guess... it is more than 12 minutes long, so. But it really rings true with me - makes me think of a now-defunct friendship I once had. I always wanted a brother... I wonder why? Someone to look out for me? A male influence? A friend?

I just saw Sè, Jiè (Lust, Caution). It was an amazing movie, but I have to admit there was not a lot of emotionally-satisfying material there. Not a great pick-me-up. But I actually do feel a bit better, because, well, I'm not in that situation.