I just finished watching Penelope from Netflix. Aww, that was such a sweet, cute movie. (Plus, it gave me the opportunity to play my favorite game, British actor spotting: Withnail! Octavian from Rome, Owen from Torchwood. Hey, was that Nick Frost? Yes, it was. ) I really loved it. It's definitely going into the dvd collection.

James McAvoy's performance was funny and charming. I don't think I've seen any of his movies that I've disliked so far. (Although Starter for 10 did make me cringe a bit.) My favorite photo of him, let me show you it...


In other news, I did finish reading Breaking Dawn and it was bad. No, it did not get any better. It was so long and never-ending, that I almost lost the will to persevere through it and/or life, but I did manage to finish it. You should read cleolinda's recaps of the series; she does a much better and funnier job of pointing out the WTFery than I could and you can still lol without going through the bother of actually reading the damn things yourself.

I also finished reading Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man. When I was little, I wanted to be Nancy Drew when I grew up; now I kinda think I want to be Nick Charles. Solve crime, make smart alec-y remarks, have cocktails. I was kind of surprised at how little Nora had to do in the book. (Perhaps she has a larger role in the movies?) She was awesome, but more like awesome in the background and every now and then she would make a snappy comment, but more often, it seemed like she was fixing Nick a drink (a lot of drinks) than actively doing anything. I still enjoyed the book though.

meme stolen from everyone...

From Entertainment Weekly's top 100 movies of the last 25 years. Go through their list, BOLD the ones you have seen, and underline the ones you own on video or DVD; put an asterisk next to the one you love. Italicize the ones you want to see. Strike through the ones you hate/don't want to ever see.
( clearly in possession of too much time and not enough shelf space )

I've decided that I really like the new Indiana Jones trailer. I have a weird ambivalence about the new movie. Raiders of the Lost Ark was my favorite movie as a kid, but I can barely bring myself to read up on it in case it ended up being too disappointing. But the clips of the action scenes look reminiscent of the chase in Raiders and there's some fairly amusing lines. I'm kind of meh on Shia LeBoeuf, but Cate Blanchett looks like she's having fun playing the evil nazi Commie. So yay for that, I think I can uncover my eyes now.

Anyway, here are the books I've read so far this year:

Love and Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser. Excellent biography on a fascinating time period. Very well researched.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Gothic tale about feral twins. Enjoyed.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami. I enjoy reading Murakami, but I'll admit, I always feel like there's stuff going way over my head, especially with some of his more fantastical or sci-fi bits. I liked the realistic parts about the night owls hanging out at Denny's, but the part about Eri getting sucked into the tv? No clue, wtfkaythnx, also felt those scenes caused the book to drag. Still, I ordered a copy of Norwegian Wood because I am nothing if not tenacious. And also, because of the Beatles reference.


And Only to Deceive and A Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander. Two excellent mysteries set during the latter part of the Victorian era. Emily marries solely for wealth and when her husband dies soon after, realizes only too late his worth and depth of character. Then she goes around studying classics and solving crime. ^_^ The first book is mostly about stolen and forged antiquities and the second deals with someone pretending to be a descendant of the lost Dauphin of France. I'm really looking forward to the next book.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Friendship and betrayal in 19th century China. Reread this and was horribly depressed all over again.

The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner. A fantasy of manners in which Alec, the Mad Duke of Tremontaine decides that he will have his long estranged niece trained to learn the sword. It was rather slow moving at the beginning, but it picked up after awhile and I was sorry it ended so soon. Alec is much less annoying here than he was in Swordspoint.

Yikes, much later than I thought. Time for sleep. I'll post the others later.

Monday afternoon, I went with Sarah to see Barack Obama at a political rally downtown. It was my first time at such an event, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It was held at the old Farmer's Market.

( pictures, goofing around with friends, Napoleon's hat, etc. )

I started this cross stitch last Halloween but ended up putting it aside and didn't finish it until a few weeks ago. It was alright until I got to the last part where I had to backstitch the spider legs and (predictably) hated doing it. (The spider part that is, not backstitching in general. I loathe spiders.) But at least I have one Halloween project done in time ^^

Last Friday I hung out with mythicalgryphon to see The Prestige. Fun times! It was good to see Brenn again ^^ The movie was very good and certainly brought teh Pretty. As much as I enjoy watching Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman (who both are excellent here), their characters can be hard to sympathise with as they're both pretty bastardy. (I mean that in every sense.) It's quite twisty too, which I should have expected since Christopher Nolan directed Momento as well.

Off to watch Heroes now, yay.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, y'all. I'm having a nice, quiet time so far; thankfully my birthday falls on three days off from work. Yesterday, mom took me out for sushi at Shiki's and then we went to see The Illusionist over at Quail Springs. I've been wanting to see it for a few weeks now; it takes such a long time for smaller movies to get to Oklahoma :P I'm really glad I got to see it though. It's a very lovely period piece, just pretty to look at. There's a flashback in the beginning where the light sort of flickers at the edges of the screen, sort of the way it does in old silent films. I want to read the Steven Millhauser short story that the movie's based on. . . but the collection it's in seems to be out of print. Drat.

(And even though I really liked the movie, occasionally I would think of the line, "It's not a trick, Michael. It's an illusion." And then I'd have to concentrate in order not to get "The Final Countdown" stuck on a loop in my head.)

The previews before the movie were The Prestige (that other Victorian magician movie), The Black Dahlia, and The Science of Sleep, all of which I'm looking forward to. Yay for awesome previews.

Today I went to Borders with my spiffy 30% off coupon. And they have bags of Lindor chocolate balls with white chocolate goopy filling for Halloween. *dies*

Just got back from the movie, which was simultaneously awesome and horrendously painful all at the same time.

I bought tickets online for the Harkins theater downtown and by the time Sarah and I got there, about half an hour before midnight, it was already way packed. While Sarah was getting drinks, it took me a good ten minutes going up and down the aisles trying to find two seats together and failing. Finally, I found two empty ones in the bottom left hand side of the theater and asked the guy in the third seat if they were taken, and when he said no, I finally sank into the seat in relief. We made some chitchat about how freaking crowded it was.

Then, before they started the movie, Harkins held a costume contest. There were at least two dozen people in costume. Each person had to give their pirate name and do a little jig. The two finalists ended up being a Captain Jack lookalike and a guy in a puffy shirt named Captain Blueballs. They commenced sword-fighting. Captain Jack cheated by pulling out a pistol. Pirate, naturally. He ended up winning a treasure chest/gift basket filled with candy.

At beginning of the jig-off, the guy nex to me said, "How lame. These people have no lives." Hiding my annoyance, I said that I thought it was pretty cool. Dude, you made the effort to go to a midnight showing of a pirate movie, you're not going to earn cool points anytime soon.

Anyway, by that point Sarah had showed up towards the end of the contest and the movie started. There were three of us in a row of just three seats: me, Sarah, and this guy. Now at the beginning of the movie, we didn't notice anything peculiar. I certainly hadn't when I had first sat down. But after the first hour, Sarah realized that the guy sitting next to her smelled bad. Really bad.

There's a line in the movie where one of the characters describes the kraken as having "breath reeking of the stench of death", at which Sarah turned to me and whispered, "And I'm sitting next to it." Later she described it, "as if he got up this morning and rolled around in dead babies."

By the last forty-five minutes of the movie, even I could smell him. At first, it was just a whiff of something strange, a hint of b.o. or really stale breath. You couldn't tell where it was coming from. But then it grew stronger, the scaly tentacles of funk spreading further, more pervasively. The kraken was undeniably on the move.

Poor Sarah was leaning as far forward into fresh air as she could and when I would glance over, she had this kicked puppy look on her face that said, "Please, please help me."

Most of the drive back to her house was spent apologizing for making her take that middle seat. Most of the conversation went like this...

Sarah: I CAN STILL SMELL IT ON ME. IT BURNS.
Jennifer: I'M DRIVING AS FAST AS I CAN. ZOMG, I AM SORRY.

Such a shame because the movie itself was really great. Lots of swash-buckling fun, something this summer has sorely lacked. At 2 hours and 45 minutes, it is loooong though; do not hesitate to pack a light lunch. Johnny Depp was great again, as always; he totally sashayed away with the picture. I did love the other characters too. Everyone looked like they were having a lot of fun. Can't wait to discuss spoilers :D Oh, and definitely stay past the end credits.

Looking forward to the third installement, especially since Chow Yun Fat is supposed to be in it. FLOVE. After tonight's experience though, I will pass on any more midnight showings.

Oh, I had the most awesome find in the Walmart dvd bin the other day. It was this ancient tv movie from the ‘80's called Mazes and Monsters. I remember seeing it ages ago when I was just a wee thing and had been wanting to see it again so I was overjoyed to find it, for $5 no less. Anyway, it stars Tom Hanks as this college kid named Robbie who plays a Dungeon & Dragons style game. This came out back during D&D's heyday when parents and newscasters were concerned that it would turn kids onto Satanism. Anyway, Tom Hanks transfers to a new college and meets some new friends who pressure him into gaming rather than letting him concentrate on studying. He tries to turn them down, but there's a gamer chick, so he totally gives in, in hopes of getting laid. Then they do lots of gaming; they light hundreds of candles because they totally have to get the atmosphere down. Then they decide to be even more hardcore and rpg in a cave with costumes they bummed off the drama department. So of course, Tom Hanks totally loses his grip on reality and flips out. Even though the gamer chick is now ready to get laid, Tom Hanks thinks he's really his holy man character from the game and has to stay celibate. That's just the first sign of crazy, though. Eventually, he disappears and the cops get involved, but eventually his friends figure out he's booked it out of town an is now in NYC. They track him down at the World Trade Center, which Tom Hanks is about to jump off of because he mistook it for Tolkien's Two Towers.

Slightly Less Crazy Gamer Friends: Don't do it, Robbie!
Tom Hanks:It's okay, guys. I can fly!
Slightly Less Crazy Gamer Friends: No! You don't have enough points!

Bwa-ha-ha! It gets even better at the end when his friends come to visit him and Tom Hanks looks like he's dressed for a game of tennis (white shirt, white shorts), but totally thinks he's still in D&D land. "And that's the day when we gave up all hope and Robbie was lost to us forever."

I admit I wasn't paying that much attention while it was playing (I was painting ma dollieh and there's only so much grainy 80's video one can take), but I think Tom Hanks may have shanked a homeless guy. I'll have to watch it again someday.

After work today I went to see X Men 3 with mythicalgryphon after, which I had some completely random observations...
( spoilers within )
If you do go see the movie, be sure to stay after the closing credits. Bonus scene!

Shiny, happy meme

( Read more... )

At work: Please make the calls stop, customers are giving me Teh Dumb :(