Quote of the Day [8.17.09]

"What does 'foc' mean?"
"It's a slang word. When a man and a woman are in love, the man puts
his…"
"No, no. Here: 'F. O. C.'"Juliette Forrest (Rachel Ward) to Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin)
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)

Adventures From My Netflix Queue: Amélie

I didn’t plan on blogging the movies I saw today, but a scene in Amélie was directly copied in Ghanjani. It’s kind of weird to notice these things. Similar to Julius Caesar from yesterday. Is it coincidence?

The scene: The girl helps out a blind man.

She spots him lonely on the curb. Then she goes to help him. Takes him by the hand. Leads him to his destination all the while describing what she sees. She gives a running commentary on life being led around them.

In both movies, it signifies something important in the girl. In Ghanjani the girl is carefree, and shows her kindness as helping towards others: it comes naturally. In Amélie, the girl needs to become carefree and she slowly comes out of her shell.

Qué un shell!! Audrey Tautou is plain cuteness personified like an anime girl come to life. Moe in French.

Amélie is a charming movie. Love and the search for love will always be fun to watch. When the girl is as cute as Tautou it’s even more charming. When her character is as shy as that, I’m easily charmed. Reminds me of all the quiet, shy anime girls I so dig. (Mio! Yakomo!) You just want her to find that love. The search is darn cute as well. Find the man. Give him clues. Show him you love him. It’s as easy as that. Where’s my quiet anime French girl in my life.

3 of 5 stars.

Hunh!?

This should be tweeted, but your limited to 140 characters.

I’m watching Ghanjani, some BollyWood film on iFC. It starts off as rip-off of Memento: some guy with amnesia looking for the killer of his girl.

And then like all Bollywood films, the singing kicks in. We’re now in some romantic comedy showing the back story of how the guy with amnesia falls in love with the girl. It’s a case of mistake identity. And singing.

When will it get back to the thriller?

UPDATE WITH REVIEW:
I was just looking for something to watch this morning as I was waking up, and I decided to check out one of the free channels that I get on DirectTV. It’s the Independent Film Channel, iFC, showing their Sunday Bollywood programming. I let the station play as I was more interested in the morning’s news on the blogs. That is until, that dude decided to beat some guy up. Then I was intrigued about the movie. Then they started in with the singing. And the movie went from some thriller to romantic comedy.

She was a struggling model low on her ad agency’s actress list. He was the scion of the big telecom company. He’s come back from America to take charge of the family business. She is somehow linked to him. She pretends he’s her boyfriend. It works and she becomes the darling of the ad agency. They do finally meet. Cute. She thinks he’s an aspiring actor. She helps him get a job with her clout. They sing and dance.

Then we go back to finding out how she dies. And we’re back into Memento land and the bad ass kicking ass theme.

I was more interested in the romantic comedy. I wonder if that would make a better movie.

3 of 5 stars

Danny Choo and his weeks in Tokyo

http://www.dannychoo.com/adp/eng/1736/A+Week+in+Tokyo+43.htmlIf you haven't yet, you should check out Danny, son of Jimmy, Choo's
internet haunt. It's a real geek/otaku hangout, but there are some real
interesting things there. What's awesome is his weekly "Week in Tokyo,"
which he just shows you around. Beautiful photos. Nice writing. Good to read. Sometimes, the food he puts on there, makes my mouth water. Most
everytime raw fish is presented, I really get the hankering for sushi.
And then the noodles… Mmmm.

Link of the Day [8.13.09]

Speaking of shelves. Here’s a link to every Mac addicts favorite cataloguing software. I bought the first version and the upgraded to the second. I also bought the iPhone app before it was removed from the store for violating stupid Amazon.com’s TOS.

Use it to keep inventory of all your books, DVDs, manga, comics, anime, etc., etc.. I like that it has shelves to display your stuff. You can use your iSight to scan in the barcode to lookup on Amazon.com the item. It does com in handy.

That iPhone app is a great looking app. The desktop version is fun too.

http://www.delicious-monster.com/

Pulled From the Shelves: Shall We ダンス?

Pulled from the shelves is going to be some musings on a film from my vast library. Okay, it really isn’t vast, but it’s spilling out all over my house. Perhaps it’s time to invest in some DVD sleeves and recycle the boxes.

The first installment in this retrospect of my collection is a look at the Japanese Academy Award winner for Best Picture of 1997, Shall We Dansu? I don’t remember getting this one, but I found it sitting on my television still encased in plastic. It must’ve been when I bought some books from Amazon, as Marge at the FishTank, reminded me on Twitter.

If you hadn’t seen it, you may have seen the recent remake with J-Lo and Richard Gere. It has the same plot. A salaryman, slave to the grind seeks something outside of work and family to make him happy and relieve his ennui. He happens to see a beautiful, young woman looking forlornly out of the window of a dance studio. For a week, he catches sight of her every day from his the train home until one day he decides to find her. He at first approaches dance just to meet her. When he does finally have a chance to be alone with her, she rejects his advances and tells him that he is mistaken if he took up dance just for her. He accepts the rejection and puts his heart into dancing so much so that he begins to participate in amateur ballroom dance competitions.

All this time his wife suspects him to be having an affair. He’s no longer depressed and he smells of perfume when he comes home late. She hires a detective who informs her of his passion for dancing and who ends up finding passion in dance as well. She’s jealous.

He on the other hand is ashamed. Close dancing is unexpected in Japanese society. He doesn’t want anyone to find out about his dancing. A colleague at work also is a ballroom dancer, and he too hides it from everyone.

Our salaryman is also ashamed about finding happiness outside of his marriage. He doesn’t like to make his wife jealous. His obligation makes it too much to continue dance, but the rhythm calls. It calls for him, not just the pretty dance instructor.

Sorry about the spoilers.

The feeling I got from watching the dancing in this movie (maybe also, from the movie itself) is exhilaration. It looks like fun. I likened the feeling to riding my bike. It must be really fun! And especially, if you have a partner. Sometimes I feel like taking dance lessons. It looks like fun. It must be exhilarating to be in the embrace of a girl moving together to the music. And just like our salaryman, dancing may bring out the life in me.

So, I was glad to pull this film out of my library. I’ll gladly watch it again. In fact, I’m watching it again right now.

4 of 5 stars

They Just Wanna

When in need of something to blog about, I inevitably turn to blogging about blogging. Meta, man, that’s always the way to go when looking for a topic to write about. Yet, I know, everyone who blogs hates blogging about blogging. Navel gazing plain sucks in some blogger’s eyes, but it’s something. I think I like the sound of my keyboard in my ears.

The thing about this blog, it’s a reflection of me. Every post is something that I am interested in talking about. The posts are me. So, if you want to know who I am, at the time, just read my blog. I don’t talk much or go out much anymore, so this is the best I can do to let you know what’s up with me.

That said, I love how reading my archives brings me back in time, and it reminds me that sometimes my writing ain’t so bad. And I need to be reminded, because when the mind is blank, so is the textbox.

Nightstand

One of the two books I’m currently reading is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. And because I am not done it yet, I’m lolly-gagging around the internet looking for more information about it. You see, Díaz, sprinkles some spanish into his writing, and it takes me some time to decipher via context what he’s talking about. When I don’t completely pick up the gist of the spanish passage, I skip over them and continue on. But I found a site that annotates some passages of the book for you. So if you ever read it, check this site out.

I picked this book up, because I saw the blurb the author supplied on the back cover of Pluto, a manga by Naoki Urasawa. It’s an adaption and modernization of an Osamu Tezuka Astroboy story. When I read the quote, I thought that this Díaz fellow, a Pulitzer winner, likes manga? How geeky! Then reading Oscar Wao, you see how much of a geek this dude is: Marvel, DC comics, Robotech (Rick Hunter dude, not Rich!), Appleseed and anime. It’s included as well as other geeky tropes such as D&D, Tolkien and the bad luck with the female of the species. But it is a wonderful read, and I do get about 85% of the allusions to the geekdom.