Movies

All children, except one, grow up

Suffice it to say, today was a great deal more invig­or­at­ing than I had expec­ted. After a late start to the day (break­fast — or brunch, more appro­pri­ately), I headed off to the theatre to watch Despicable Me with L and A. Having bought our tick­ets (and then vacil­lat­ing whether or not we wanted to sit in a dark, empty theatre so as to save the best seats), we headed in and claimed our Real 3D glasses.

I’m hav­ing a bad, bad day
If you take it per­sonal, that’s okay
Watch, this is so fun to see
Huh, despic­able me.
– Pharrell, “Despicable Me”

The movie, by all means, was great. The story was fun, the humour well-​timed and (gosh darn it!) the orphan girls were so sweet! This makes me think that every­one ought to be forced to care for the young. Perhaps we’d have less vil­lains that way? Behind our seats, a whole row was reserved for (what we assumed) was a birth­day party. Hearing the chil­dren giggle with glee behind us wasn’t as annoy­ing as I might have ima­gined — it was quite fun to have them behind us! (Too bad L was thwapped on the head by an overzeal­ous child…)

After a rather long jour­ney to pro­cure a screen pro­tector for A’s (new!) BlackBerry Bold 9700, we wandered over to Chapters where we dis­covered, much to our mutual pleas­ure, that we could have din­ner together. We ate at The Boss (where I learned that I don’t actu­ally know how to order beef in Cantonese…how do you indic­ate how well-​cooked you want the meat?!).

Once full, we left the res­taur­ant to a rap­idly clos­ing mall. We wandered over to a water foun­tain out­side to won­der what we could do. I sug­ges­ted we take a stroll in Central Park (des­pite my great fears of creep­ers run­ning amok in the wooded areas). Off we went.

After dodging incom­ing golf balls from the pitch-​and-​putt and trekking through the verd­ant trees, we sat on a bench and noticed two people appar­ently shout­ing at one another. Perplexed, we gazed on to notice a man in a blue cape yelling to some people fur­ther away. Nosily, we inched closer and closer until…we noticed that it was a pro­duc­tion! Outside! In the park! For free!

All children, except one, grow up 35878 1283880990539 1635540069 645313 746012 n 300x225

Enthralled, we found ourselves sit­ting on the grass (and swat­ting away the copi­ous amounts of vam­piric mos­qui­toes) and try­ing to unravel the storyline. As it turns out, it was a pro­duc­tion of Neverland: Beginnings by Rainforest Theatre, a small local com­pany. We watched with glee as Peter Pan was nearly wed­ded to the daugh­ter of the pir­ate king and as we learned how Captain Hook gained (lost?) his eponym­ous append­age. With subtle amuse­ment, we gazed on as one over­ex­cited child-​spectator inched closer and closer to the act­ors until he was actu­ally sit­ting within the action, gaz­ing upward and ask­ing, “Can I see that?!”

I found it so magical that serendip­ity (and, admit­tedly, a reluct­ance to return home to do read­ings for ENGL 468) led us to a the­at­rical pro­duc­tion in the ancient pulse of germ and birth. I thought I had encountered some­thing out of Midsummer Night’s Dream! (But of course not. My appoint­ment to see Henry V is this Friday.)

It is some indic­a­tion of my great love for the theatre but I adored the way the act­ors inter­ac­ted with the audi­ence and with their sur­round­ings. With little more than some light cos­tum­ing, they cre­ated a world into which their children-​spectators could be drawn by sheer cha­risma. And what is a more nat­ural set­ting for a the­at­rical pro­duc­tion than the forest?

The play fin­ished and every­one dis­persed. We headed over to P’s house to play poker briefly before I was summoned home with great dis­pleas­ure at my waywardness.

And I could wish my days to be bound each to each with such won­der, joy and serendipity.

Sunday, July 18th, 2010 ENGL 468, Friends and Acquaintances, Meditations, Movies, Shopping 3 Comments

The little Maid would have her will

Been stuck on this song since I finally watched 500 Days of Summer. :)

Note though, that I am hardly a hope­less romantic. I prob­ably sub­scribe more to Summer’s views on life and on love than Tom’s. Or maybe the little sis­ter. She seemed wise!

Monday, November 16th, 2009 Love, Movies, Music 3 Comments

Stand still, yet we will make him run

the_time_travelers_wife_ericbana_rachelmcadams-500x333Today I went to watch The Time Traveler’s Wife with A, L and D. Going into the movie, I had fairly low expect­a­tions (sig­ni­fic­antly affected by the mostly neg­at­ive reviews of the movie) so when the movie man­aged to tug on my heartstrings a little, I was pleased. Here’s the lowdown:

Based on the premise of The Time Traveler’s Wife, a Chicago lib­rar­ian (Bana) has a genetic dis­order that causes him to time travel when he is stressed. Though he often dis­ap­pears from her life for long peri­ods of time, he tries to build a romantic rela­tion­ship with Clare Abshire, an artist (McAdams).1

To be truth­ful, I wasn’t entirely impressed by the book (even though my cash­ier had assured me it was one of the best she had ever read). The style is emo­tional but not enga­ging enough to pro­duce the per­func­tory will­ing sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief neces­sary needed to enjoy the novel for its lit­er­ary mer­its, in spite of the logical con­straints. And I’m also not ter­ribly emo­tional any­way so an appeal to pathos doesn’t sit well with me. This all meant, of course, that I hadn’t expec­ted much from the movie.

Nevertheless, I should have real­ised that noth­ing – noth­ing – could pos­sibly have been as bad as what I had been as bad as what I had expec­ted. McAdams gave a fairly genu­ine per­form­ance, even if she was a bit overly cheery or overly dra­matic at moments. Bana per­formed suit­ably, if woodenly, as Henry DeTamble. I was dis­ap­poin­ted, how­ever, with the rampant exclu­sion of the subtle events in the novel that made it so charming.

The movie could have been bet­ter than this but it was still a good try any­way. Not liv­ing up to the hype is very dif­fer­ent than say­ing it was a bad movie over­all and I wouldn’t be so cruel as to con­demn the movie as the latter.

After the movie, we headed to La Casa Gelato for some dessert. After sampling sev­eral unpal­at­able fla­vours (I was feel­ing adven­tur­ous so I tried the gor­gonzola!), we mostly resor­ted to sure­fire bets – I paired chocol­ate brownie with rasp­berry sorbetto. It was great!

Good day over­all, glad for the res­pite from the mono­tony. I have to be more wary of fall­ing into a regi­men­ted life­style. Must remem­ber to loosen up from time to time.

  1. “The Time Traveler’s Wife (film).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 16 Aug 2009, 03:47 UTC. 16 Aug 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Time_Traveler%27s_Wife_(film)&oldid=308240389>. ↩
Saturday, August 15th, 2009 Food, Friends and Acquaintances, Movies 2 Comments

hold infinity in the palm of your hands

After get­ting plenty of sleep and spend­ing the day fix­ing my laptop, I am pleased to finally blog about The Best Day Ever™.

I star­ted by rolling out of bed (lit­er­ally rolling off my bed and onto the floor) at around 9:30. Groggy and bleary-​eyed, I turned on my laptop (doesn’t this tell you a lot about me?) and then I ate a quick, small break­fast. A then phoned me and informed me that we (A, N and me) would be meet­ing at Burrard Station at 11:30 to watch Harry Potter and the Half-​Blood Prince (of which I have only re-​read 50%). Quite hap­pily, I set off (wear­ing appro­pri­ate attire for the assuredly hot day) and arrived exactly at 11:30. Of course, this meant that I was awk­wardly on time. A and N arrived shortly there­after, gently remind­ing me of how I have a tend­ency to induce guilt in oth­ers by being pre­cisely on time. I must remem­ber that for the future – I will earn­estly endeav­our to arrive fash­ion­ably late, saun­ter­ing into the room with a grand entrance.

It was decided to pur­chase the tick­ets first at the Scotiabank theatre and off we went. I felt slightly crest­fal­len when I noticed that A’s ticket actu­ally prin­ted her name on it while mine was name­less. Curse my cash­ier for not know­ing advanced func­tions made to impress friends and foe alike. Curse her.

After first vis­it­ing the Burrard loc­a­tion (at which we were turned away due to full capa­city), we arrived at the Robson loc­a­tion of the Cactus Club Café and sat down for lunch. We had much delib­er­a­tion over the menu and I got the J.D. BBQ bur­ger (which was juicy and yummy! but not really my style, to be hon­est). We noticed the sheer num­ber of staff our loc­a­tion seemed to pos­sess; at every turn, a new staff mem­ber strolled by duti­fully. N sar­don­ic­ally remarked about the reces­sion and labour wages. I concurred.

After lunch, we headed to watch the movie. After read­ing the book in pre­par­a­tion for the movie, there were cer­tainly some things I liked and dis­liked about the cine­matic experience.

I liked…I dis­liked…
  • reten­tion of sev­eral canon­ical scenes of interest (par­tic­u­larly the bird attack scene)
  • comic relief scattered throughout
  • appro­pri­ate screen-​time for char­ac­ter development
  • mod­er­ately impress­ive FX
  • mem­bers of the new cast (par­tic­u­larly Stroma and the hil­ari­ous fin­ger lickin’/dragon balls scenes)
  • Broadbent as Slughorn (and accom­pa­ny­ing musical score!)
  • the por­trayal of Bellatrix Lestrange
  • poorly transitioned scenes
  • reli­ance upon viewer know­ledge of the novel
  • sev­eral crit­ical changes to canon­ical events that have yet to be reconciled
  • omis­sion of the Battle of the Astronomy Tower

I was gen­er­ally unim­pressed with the movie but felt like it did the job. It was adequate but not much more… As much as I adore the movies and the books, I can’t say that Harry Potter and the Half-​Blood Prince will be a par­tic­u­larly mem­or­able cine­matic exper­i­ence. It’s a shame because I had had high hopes for David Yates’ dir­ect­orial vision.

After the movie, we ven­tured around down­town and ended up in Sears at Pacific Centre. Excitedly, I skimmed through the sta­tion­ery sec­tion, glow­ingly apprais­ing the Montblanc pens and Moleskine notebooks.

We then heard the announce­ment of a life­time. “Attention shop­pers. We will be hav­ing a free giveaway on the fourth floor today, for shop­pers only in the store right now.” I paused and looked to N and A, who were listen­ing with rapt atten­tion withal. I gingerly replaced the Moleskine note­book I had been thought­fully caress­ing and we set off towards the fourth floor.

Needless to say, it was a dis­ap­point­ment. We got a dinky orange little fruit juicer (the effic­acy of which I sin­cerely doubt) and waited the whole present­a­tion to learn that we could have a free filet knife…with pur­chase of 29.99. We left.

As such, A and I were hor­rendously late for din­ner with C and D at Thai Spice. I ordered Tom Yum which, admit­tedly, is a weak­ness of mine but I was rather dis­ap­poin­ted with the lack of fla­vour. A’s pine­apple rice was only pass­able. Happily, though, we played Sorry dur­ing din­ner which (albeit dis­plays a thor­ough lack of table man­ners) enlivened our din­ner much more than the food would have done.

The crown jewel of the even­ing was really watch­ing Les Miserables. It was spec­tac­u­lar. If you haven’t watched it yet, I assure you that you are miss­ing out. The cast­ing was won­der­ful; per­en­nial favour­ites Jonathan Winsby and John Mann gave breath­tak­ing per­form­ances while new­comers didn’t slacken at all.

Here’s what I thought:

  • Murphy (Valjean) dis­played mas­ter­ful skill at singing with a par­tic­u­larly strong voice and diverse range; he was a little wooden at times but his singing was spot-​on flawless
  • Cournoyer (Javert) was a per­sonal favour­ite; Javert doesn’t get much vari­ety in song but Cournoyer did a com­mend­able job at con­vey­ing Javert’s character
  • Hosie (Fantine) was a strong pres­ence but her wig was very offput­ting; I’m usu­ally a big fan of Arts Club cos­tume design but here is one case where I was rather distracted
  • Lipman (Mme. Thenardier) and Mann (Mr. Thenardier) offered won­der­ful — won­der­ful — comic relief but Lipman’s vocal strength was not what I would have expected
  • Winsby (Enjolras) was, of course, incred­ible and power­ful; his per­form­ance is almost so strong that it is over­whelm­ing, actu­ally, threat­en­ing to over­shadow the per­form­ances of others
  • Victor (Marius) had a per­fectly respect­able per­form­ance though he was really over­shad­owed by Winsby at times
  • Talbot (Eponine) was a sur­prise star; I was really impressed with her per­form­ance and vocal strength!
  • Harwood (Cosette) gave a good per­form­ance through­out but I can’t recall any moments where I was floored by her
  • Ballard (Gavroche), Matchette (Young Cosette) and Withers (Young Eponine) gave great per­form­ances, par­tic­u­larly at their ages! I bet I’ll be see­ing them at the Arts Club when I’m much older

I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed “I Dreamed a Dream,” “Master of the House,” “Stars”and “Drink with Me to Times Gone By.” Unfortunately, “One Day More” was nowhere near as strong as what I would have liked but ç’est la vie!

All in all, a mar­velous day. I just hope A doesn’t tire of my company!

Sunday, July 19th, 2009 Food, Friends and Acquaintances, Movies, Music, Shopping, Technology 3 Comments

forget and forgive: I am old and foolish

Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock in The ProposalToday, I had the cul­min­a­tion of BIOL 334 in a 7-​question exam. It wasn’t very dif­fi­cult (in ret­ro­spect) and I paced myself evenly through­out, work­ing meth­od­ic­ally and sys­tem­at­ic­ally. I was par­tic­u­larly amused when I came up with 9 phen­o­typic classes for a par­tic­u­lar cross (red, blue, lilac, fuch­sia, magenta, peri­winkle, rose, violet, indigo and cyan). The cheat­sheet was only use­ful for assist­ing me with the ploidy ques­tion (which I shame­lessly copied out of my notes).

I had a quick lunch with Derrick and Nelson before head­ing home for some well-​deserved rest before the evening’s fest­iv­it­ies: din­ner and a movie!

I headed over to Metrotown a little early so that I wouldn’t be late…and ended up in Chapters, encour­aging Louisa to come over and buy books. There’s an inter­est­ing anec­dote about a tower of books and my head, so feel free to ask me in per­son next time you see me. Anyway, I star­ted read­ing the Marple books and I hope they’re at least half as good as Poirot. Here’s hoping!

Allison got off work so we walked towards Sammy J’s. Louisa, of course, decided to wait for the cross­walk while I cas­u­ally strolled up the stairs to take the over­head bridge. She’s still bit­ter that I was quicker. Dinner was alright, shared three appet­izers with Louisa and Allison (Justin — Jalapeño Artichoke Dip, Allison – Steak Bites & Louisa – Calimari). We fin­ished up quickly and went back to Metrotown to line up for our movie.

The Proposal, as far as romantic com­ed­ies go, was pretty good (7.5÷10). Lots of comedic moments even if some of the gags get tired af ter a while. There’s some chem­istry between Reynolds and Bullock and cer­tainly with some of the sec­ond­ary char­ac­ters. I think I’m a bit biased, com­par­ing it with Bride Wars and He’s Just Not That Into You, but all in all, a fair movie. I laughed out loud in sev­eral scenes!

Here’s hop­ing I’ll loosen up over the next while. It’s my only chance to do so; no tutor­ing and no school means I’m free for (at least) one week.

forget and forgive: I am old and foolish S5S
forget and forgive: I am old and foolish MAJ15Sforget and forgive: I am old and foolish C9S
forget and forgive: I am old and foolish PKNSforget and forgive: I am old and foolish P3Sforget and forgive: I am old and foolish W5Sforget and forgive: I am old and foolish MAJ11S
forget and forgive: I am old and foolish S4Sforget and forgive: I am old and foolish SKGS

The Crossing Card:

forget and forgive: I am old and foolish S9S

Friday, June 19th, 2009 BIOL 334, Food, Friends and Acquaintances, Literature, Movies, Shopping, Tarot 5 Comments

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