film: The Cove

Just watched The Cove, a powerful documentary about the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan.

Comprehensive note will come during the February post, but a few points that came to mind, mostly as a response to my parents that turned into a general rant against a small percentage of the population:

1. The first thing you say when you watch a film like this should not be, at least in my opinion, the sentence, "There are worse things happening in the world." The people watching this will most likely know there are terrible things happening in the world. "Better" and "worse" are relative terms. If someone wants to cry over the senseless slaughter of dolphins, then that also has nothing to do with you or the fact that you believe worse things are happening in the world.
   
   
2. There's no such thing as a "better" cause to be passionate about. It is all relative. One of my pet peeves is when people say shit like, "Why do you care so much about (this)? What about (that)?" I care about (this) because I care about (this), okay. If you think (that) is that much a more noble, better cause to fight for, then FIGHT FOR (THAT) YOUR FUCKING SELF. Go out and find organizations that share your thoughts about (that). If there isn't one, fucking make one. There are +6 billion people around the world, chances are SOMEONE CARES ABOUT (THAT) TOO. Stop shitting on other people's efforts to make the world a better place in their own way by implying/saying outright that there are better things to spend their time, energy and money on.
   
   
3. I don't give a shit if it's a philosophical question, don't ask me something like "So if you had a dolphin and a person before you and you had to kill one of the two, you'd kill the human?"
   
   Number one, IRRELEVANT QUESTION, STOP FUCKING DERAILING.
   
   Number two, NO REALLY, STOP DERAILING.
   
   Number three, DERAILING! The discussion is about dolphins and how to save them, not fucking KILLING PEOPLE INSTEAD OF DOLPHINS.
   
   Number four, it would truly, truly depend on the situation. 99% of the time yeah, I'd save the person, but what if it's fucking Hitler? Do you think that's an absurd proposition? Well, your question was ridiculous, okay, it was fucking absurd. Most probably I will never face such a clear-cut decision in which I do not need to consider history, and I'd rather not spend time considering what I'd do in such a situation. I think dolphins are important animals, I think the slaughter is senseless and should be stopped, I think this film was a good one and I'm going to fucking cry over it. Does this mean I'm going to go out and kill a person to save a dolphin? NO, because I don't need to kill a person to save a dolphin. What do you accomplish by getting me to pick a human being over a dolphin? You've proved that I value the life of a human being, possibly slightly more than a dolphin's. Does that mean I think dolphins are inherently useless? No. Does that mean I think dolphins should be senselessly slaughtered for meat that no one voluntarily eats anyway? No. It just means that in the 0.0000000000000000001% chance that a situation like that ever occurs, I will choose to have the human being to be saved. CONGRATULATIONS.
   
   

Or maybe I am totally wrong and there is a "better" cause to root for. I am almost itching for someone to start a conversation about this just so I can start yelling. Terrible of me, I know.

books: Fight Club, + to-read list

Can't say for sure, but I think Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club is going to be one of those rare, rare cases where I prefer the film version to the book*. It's probably my mistake of watching the movie before reading the book, but a comment like that wouldn't do the movie justice. On it's own it's a captivating film, the stark violence and blunt dialogue and the spot-on-acting from Helena Bonham-Carter, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, and I think the plot of Fight Club works better on screen, with music and loud noises and bright flashes of color.

Hopefully I will have more things to write in the February round-up post, but my immediate response to finishing the book was this: good, but I liked the movie better.

Books I'd like to read in 2011, in order:

1. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
3. Game Change, John Heilemann & Mark Halperin
4. Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
5. something by Charles Dickens, okay, because it's a classic and I haven't even read an abridged version of Oliver Twist or something. OH! Or maybe some Hemingway. I haven't read a Hemingway in so long.

More to be added as time goes on. Hopefully other people will recommend some good books, too! I'd like to brush up on the classics in 2011. Looking forward to Never Let Me Go, and not just because my heart goes doki-doki for Andrew Garfield**, who is in the film adaptation with the adorable Carey Mulligan and beautiful Keira Knightley.

* I am holding out for the hope that Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper will be another one of those rare cases, but I can't decide if I can stomach the possibility of watching it only to find out that I hate the movie too, and now I've wasted even more time on it.

** For some reason every time I look at Andrew Garfield's face I feel like the older sister even though he's almost 6 years older than me. I just want to hold him close and make him food while he and his girlfriend are sitting at the kitchen table and tell her all his embarrassing childhood stories and tease him about his outrageous crush on Jesse Eisenberg.

films: January

Movies! Lovely things. These book/movie posts are entirely for my own benefit, so please do not expect smart-sounding reviews or even coherency, really. Also, do not expect that I will somehow reign in my shameless abuse of the caps lock or shift key.

WARNING: possible spoilers.

1. The Social Network, dir. David Fincher. 2010.

Jan 1 (in theatres with Lareina)

OH MY GOD THE SOCIAL NETWORK. The amount of love I have for this film (and my newfound obsession with Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield) is ridiculous and frankly quite embarrassing. So because I suck at writing coherent and thoughtful reviews on anything anyway, here is a list of things I could gush over for ages and ages.

Things I loved about TSN:

1. The script. It was fast-paced, snappy, funny and so damn smart. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the part where Mark Zuckerberg is hacking into Harvard's systems and creating Facemash.com. Or maybe it's the dialogue between Mark and his ex-girlfriend Erica Albright. Or maybe it's the "if you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook" moment that the trailers love to use. Or maybe it's Mark being all "I need you" and Eduardo replying immediately with "I'm here for you!" and OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, this movie was essentially a tragic gay love story. But I'm supposed to be writing about the script so DIALOGUE. And the action. The scenes in general. It is important. It is amazing here.
   
   
2. Critics and non-critic people in general kept on talking about how TSN's scenes were longer than scenes usually are in movies, and how it's such a novel thing and it works so well here. I agree - I think I like it. I say I think because I was so absorbed in the story that I didn't notice how long or short the scenes ran. No part of the movie dragged on for too long or cut off too quickly, and everything about the scenes worked, okay, why am I trying to write something cohesive and structured, let's just get onto point 3 so I can actually gush:
   
   
3. The characters. I will clarify and say Eduardo Saverin in particular, because there were just moments where his expression just BROKE MY HEART and I wept (in my heart) for his poor betrayed self, even though I wouldn't say that Mark did the wrong thing. Mark did the right thing for his company; he just did it in very asshole-ian way. Anyway. Eduardo's stupid big eyes! Mark's sense of humor and acerbic wit! "Wait, let me check your math."!!! Interestingly (oh my god I am jumping all over the place), it wasn't the "I was your only friend" scene that killed me the most, it was the moment where Eduardo pulls out two beers from the fridge, pops the cap on one, and holds it out, only to see Mark come in and pull out his own beer. The expression on Eduardo's face! Mark's continual obliviousness! UGH BOYS.
   
   
4. The soundtrack! My god, between TSN and Tron: Legacy, my ears were very, very happy.
   
   
5. This story was just a tragic gay love story, okay, and it broke my heart.

As you can tell, I enjoyed and still do enjoy this film very, very much.

2. The Green Hornet, dir. Michael Gondry. 2011.

Jan 14 (in theatres, with Mike)

There's nothing much to say about the film itself, other than it's a comedy/action film that requires very little thinking to watch and that Jay Chou steals the show. It's funny enough, yeah, which is occasionally all that I ask for in a movie, but it's also kind of stupid. The protagonist, Brett something, is unsympathizable, and I don't even care that no such word exists according to Google Chrome. I could not sympathize with his character at all. Period. Oh, your dad died? Sorry, but YOU'RE STILL A GRADE-A+++ ASSHOLE.

One thing, though: I was inordinately excited for Jay Chou. My friend Mike even commented on it: "I think this is the most Asian I've ever seen you being."

It's not as easy as it seems to explain why I was so excited, but it's mostly a visibility thing. It's hard to understand if you watch movies and TV shows and see a majority of characters look like you. In my case, I watch tv and movies and see mostly beautiful white people; people who look like me are frequently relegated to supporting roles, or background characters - the most obvious example would be the movie adaptation of popular television show Avatar: The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. If you don't know about the clusterfuck that is that movie, then I will not be the one to tell you - just google "avatar" and "racefail" or "racebending"and there will be a shit. ton. of articles and blog posts about it.

It's not enough to say that one might be white, but they're "ugly", or not conventionally pretty, so it doesn't really count. It doesn't matter - privilege is intersectional, meaning that the privilege of being white is not cancelled out by the fact that you DON'T have the privilege of being "beautiful". Just because a white girl* doesn't look like Natalie Portman** doesn't mean the white girl isn't white, and that's what we're talking about here - visibility. Wait, what the fuck? Is that what I was talking about?

ARGH this is supposed to be about the movie. Back to TGH!

I was inordinately glad to see a fellow Asian person on the big screen in North America, and thrilled to see that even though it's a funny shitty movie, he's the saving grace of the film. JAY CHOU IS AWESOME, OKAY. Why is Seth Rogen's character SO FUCKING STUPID. Why couldn't the Asian guy get the girl for once. Why couldn't this movie be about Kato and him dealing with working for a terribly stupid employer who only knows how to fuck things up but still considers himself the "main character". Why couldn't this entire movie be Kato making lattes and kicking ass, huh?

3. Team America: World Police, dir. Trey Parker. 2004.

Jan 17

AHAHA THIS MOVIE. HOLY SHIT THIS MOVIE. If you have not seen this movie, then just watch it and read what I have to say later. (Or never.)

POINTS AGAIN, BECAUSE I AM LAZY.

• I had to watch this for an intro to communications class (BEST CLASS EVER?) and while some people might think that applying semiotics to TA:WP will ruin their enjoyment of the movie, I'm finding that I'm enjoying it more. I want to watch it again with a friend and just analyze the shit out of every scene. The music (the lyrics, I mean), the ridiculous action tropes, the 2-dimensional characters...
  
  
• Along that note, while this movie pokes fun of America, I don't think it's a critique on the "America the Bumbling Superpower" myth, but a perpetuation of it. (Yes, I want to go there.)
  
  
• I watched this at like 2 in the morning, in bed. My ribs hurt from trying to keep in the laughter.

Is this movie a layer of stupid-smart-stupid or smart-stupid-smart or smart-stupid-stupid or stupid-smart-smart or ??? I don't even know anymore, guys.

4. The Fighter, dir. David O. Russell. 2010.

Jan 29 (in theatres, with Mike)

Christian Bale never, ever fails to creep me out with his intensity. Which is a good thing, I suppose, but really, it's just creepy. Melissa Leo was phenomenal as Alice Ward, I felt; the scenes with Alice and Dicky kind of broke my heart. The entire ensemble was lovely, really.

Plot-wise, I felt that the film was rather understated - despite the fast-paced action of the boxing scenes, the story unfolded quietly, almost subtly. Nothing about the events that happened surprised me, or shocked me, or even reached out through the screen to shake me and force me to feel something. It gives the film a quiet power; I liked it. Not a movie that made me want to stand up and applaud while saying, "Yes, this is the film I didn't know I wanted to see!" but a good movie nonetheless.

If I had to list the movies in order of preference, it'd be The Social Network, Team America: World Police, The Fighter, then The Green Hornet.

Films I'd like to watch this February: Boy A, The King's Speech, Casablanca, and, hopefully, the documentary Waste Land.

* I'm sorry, except I'm not really.

** Why did Natalie Portman have to go and support Roman Polanski? Why on earth would anyone support a person who DRUGGED AND RAPED A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD?!

book reviews: January

So I decided to write about the books I read this month, but this essentially derailed into a rant about My Sister's Keeper, a book I cannot believe I wasted hours of my life reading. I should have just watched the movie, Jesus.

WARNING: spoilers.


1. The Stranger, Albert Camus. translated by Matthew Ward. 1942.
Jan 1-22

I had this book on my bookshelf for ages. My god, it is good to finally rid myself of the guilt that struck me every time I passed it in favor of a different book. It should have been a short read, but I ended up savoring it, pulling it out every day to read a chapter, or maybe even just a few paragraphs.

There's something deceptive about the simplicity of the story: Mersault goes through only the bare bones of life, narrating each event with a lack of passion, but the book forces you to think, if only to contemplate what you'd do when faced with the certainty of death.

I don't know, I just really liked this book. I loved it. I read passages aloud to myself if only to revel in the unfeelingness of the words, felt a certain kinship with Mersault that frightened me at times. Also, it reacquainted me with a lovely word: absurd.



2. A Little Princess, Francis Hodgson Burnett. 1905.
Jan 22-25

Reading this book was a strange mixture of affectionate enjoyment and awkward judgment. My enjoyment of the book was diminished slightly by the colonialism and ~poor white girl's burden~ heavily present throughout the story, but all that aside, Sara Crewe is more or less a lovable character and you start to wish you were there with her, holding her in your lap and letting her spin tales and pretend to be a princess.

Once you get over the voice in your head that screams, "omg little white girl and the Indian servant who serves because that is his calling and he truly loves his master and he is dull and doesn't speak but is QUICK-FOOTED and AGILE and CARES FOR THE LITTLE WHITE GIRL HE YEARNS TO SERVE wow awkward awkward awkward!" Lie back and think of England.



3. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual, Michael Pollan. 2009.
Jan 25-26

Short and sweet; this shouldn't even count in this list because it's a list. Of rules to follow when eating. It may be simple and common sense, but after a quick read through I was struck by how much we take food (or food-like substances, anyway) for granted. Well worth a read, I say!



4. My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult. 2004.
Jan 27-31

When I was in the seventh grade, English class was my favorite time of the day. It's easy to see why, when you get the details: awesome teacher who started every class with "Tales of the U.T." (U.T. standing for Unusually True, not Urinary Tract); funny and relevant comic strips on handouts; assignments that weren't a chore to do; excellent grades.

One of these assignments was "a day in the life of a Japanese student your age and your gender". It was one of the rare assignments in that I didn't want to do it; I had nothing to write about. As exciting as Japan may be, we'd had a Japan unit almost every year and I was sick and fucking tired of Japan. The one time it was exciting was in the third grade, when the whole class had to learn knitting to make a quilt for this school-wide project, and everyone watched Big Bird in Japan while knitting, and I sat with this boy my best friend at the time liked and acted like a spy, asking him extremely roundabout questions about what he thought about my friend. That was the one time the Japan unit was fun, okay, because of a guy. That I was only interested in by proxy, because my friend was deeply in love with him and his smile and it was all very cute and I was always very invested in my friends' happiness and love lives.

Okay, that was a terrible tangent. Back to the story that seems pointless but all has a point! I procrastinated on the story like no one would believe. Instead of writing this goddamned assignment, I stayed up late reading truly horrendous fanfiction. The night before the assignment was due, I sat myself down in front of the computer, cracked my knuckles, and started writing.

It is very obvious that I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I borrowed names from Cardcaptor Sakura and Inuyasha, I went into detail about the morning routine of Higurashi Sakura-chan and her older brother Miroku. JESUS CHRIST, I KNOW. Painful, isn't it? Three pages into this drivel, I panicked. Where the fuck was this going? I made Sakura train with Kaho in the morning, going through figure skating routines. I made her father the nicest father ever. I made her shower. I made her dote on her cat. I made her argue with her brother. I used Japanese words like "baka" and wrote "onii-san" as "oni-san". I made her go to school. I WAS GOING NOWHERE WITH THIS STORY.

So what did I do? I killed off the older brother. Hell yeah, I went there. I was reaching, okay? Less than half a page before the end of the story, I made the teacher announce to Sakura-chan that Miroku-kun had gotten into a car crash after dropping her off at school and died instantly.

The teacher probably wondered what the fuck he was reading. Still, he said "I was surprised you slipped something so tragic into something so short. I was impressed that you managed to treat it effectively with sensitive writing and judgment. 80/70" (Emphasis his. Dunno why, but it's kinda funny.)

Am I telling you guys, the nonexistent audience, this anecdote to brag? No, I am telling you this because a couple years ago I found this story again and laughed so hard I cried, all the while wondering what the fuck the teacher was smoking to give this piece the highest mark in the class. Remembering the argument they had this morning, a single, solitary tear rolled down her cheek. COME ON, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS. At least I can say that I wrote this when I was in the seventh grade - so that's what, at age 12?

Sadly, accomplished writer Jodi Picoult has no such excuse.

Thus I have no idea what the fuck happened in this trainwreck of a book. She took a fascinating plot with an interesting dilemma, dragged it down with unnecessary metaphors and character anecdotes that did nothing for the story, and then shat out an ending just as terrible as my 7th grade vomit-fest.

Let me just list the number of things I found terrible about this book, because of course you guys care:

1. TOO MANY NARRATORS. At least one of them (Julia) I can say with full certainty was not needed to further the plot. The only thing she really did was help introduce yet another unnecessary character that has potential to be a protagonist of her own bestseller but used as a cardboard placeholder here and stir up romantic subplot that, again, does nothing for the already plenty interesting story. Oh, and she gives a pithy little speech at the end about... something deep, probably. LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKS I DO NOT GIVE, THERE ARE MANY HERE.
   


2. ALL THE PITHY ONE-LINERS. Cool one-liners are awesome to end a chapter with, especially if you have something profound to say. Cool one-liners are NOT awesome when they are used to end every goddamn chapter, and occasionally to end every goddamn paragraph of a goddamn agonizingly long chapter. Ms. Picoult, there is such a thing as being too profound, and you accomplished it three chapters into this over-long monster of a book. Congratulations.
   


3. Why were the more interesting tidbits of the book not expounded upon? Why not go into detail about Kate's heartbreaking romance with Taylor, rather than waste pages upon pages talking about a romance that honestly does nothing, absolutely nothing to the plot?! There were so many interesting stories and anecdotes Picoult could have detailed that could have twisted heartstrings and inspired waterworks, but no, time to go on and on about Campbell Alexander's high school romance that SIZZLED OUT LIKE A FIRE CHOKED OF ITS LIFE-GIVING OXYGEN, HAHA, LOOK AT THE ANALOGY I CRAFTED WITH EXPERT PRECISION AND CARE.
   


4. omg, stop talking about stars and fire and trying to force EVERYTHING into a metaphor about fire/stars/fire fire FIRE. Jesus Christ. Brian's perspective could have been axed from the book and everything would have been fine. The book would have 75% less of its "FIRE FIRE EVERYWHERE, LOOK AT HOW MANY THINGS I CAN RELATE TO A FIRE" trope, which is sad, because Brian is a firefighter and by cutting him out of the picture there should be 95% less fire-metaphor/similes/analogies. Christ.
   


5. Maybe my initial dislike of the book makes me biased beyond help, but the characters were so unsympathetic. My shriveled, blackened heart beat a little for Jesse, the older brother made useless in the face of his little sister's disease and suffering (silently, internally, because of course one member of the family HAS to be extremely NOT well-adjusted) for it, but that was about it. I could not even muster the passion to care about Kate, the girl dying of kidney failure. FAIL. Whether that is on my part or Picoult's part, I cannot tell.
   


6. Some people are really good at writing multiple perspectives into a book. Switching characters every chapter is something that can work really well depending on the story, but I'm not quite sure if this story is the right story to do this in. I was reminded of the idiom too many chefs spoil the broth as I was reading the book, and I think it's an apt judgment in this case - the number of narrators could have been cut down to three, two, even one! and it still would have worked. The relentless jumping around into different people's heads just made it hard for me to sympathize with them, especially when key moments in certain characters' lives were explained from a different character's point of view.
   
   Having this many narrators gives the reader less room to interpret. We're basically being hammered over the head with "THIS IS THIS CHARACTER, THIS IS HOW THIS CHARACTER THINKS AND REASONS AND ACTS, SO YOU BETTER AS HELL SYMPATHIZE! LOOK AT THEIR PAIN! LOOK AT THEIR SUFFERING! ISN'T HUMAN LIFE SO DRAMATIC YET SO TRIVIAL? FEEL SORRY FOR THEM, BITCHES!" and as a reader, I wanted to hammer myself over the head with something other than the emotions I was supposed to feel. No, I wanted to beat myself over the head with a goddamn sledgehammer.
   


7. I know adolescents are smarter than we often give them credit for, but Anna is thirteen fucking years old and thinks/talks like an inexperienced university professor.



8. The ending. Jesus christ, the ending. COP. OUT. I cannot go on enough about how terrible the ending is. Why. Why would anyone go into the trouble of developing a plot that has moral/ethical dilemmas worth pursuing and considering, birthing characters that (should, in theory) capture readers' imaginations and their sympathy and make them care about their sufferings, come to a perfectly fine denouement, leave the potential for a message both profound and touching, and then throw it all in the trash by writing "CAR CRASH, PROTAGONIST DIES, THE ENTIRE FUCKING PLOT OF THIS 239482034 PAGE BOOK IS MADE FUCKING USELESS"?! If there is a ~deeper meaning~ to this cop-out of an ending, please, fucking enlighten me, because it felt like the entire book was a waste of the time, effort and all the fucking headdesk-ing it took to read.
   
   It's like all of a sudden I understood how my seventh grade English teacher must have felt - here is a piece of writing that is correct grammatically, has a plot, has characters, and then HOLY SHIT HERE IS A TRAINWRECK, I CANNOT TEAR MY EYES AWAY FROM THIS DISASTER. How the fuck do I grade this? Is this an A++ or a complete and utter F? Well, this is the seventh grade. Let's cut her some slack. A++! A++s all around! I need a swig of whiskey, who the fuck told me teaching teenagers how to write was a good idea?
   
   The only difference here is that Picoult is not in the seventh grade, and it was not three pages of build-up thrown into the fire, it was over three hundred pages.

If anyone still left reading this essay of a post disagrees with me and thinks MSK is a decent/good/great/not-a-waste-of-dead-trees read, please do comment with what you liked about the book! Hostility aside, it'd be nice to be able to look back at the book with more than just seething "omg SHOOT ME that was shit".


In conclusion, I have many feelings about My Sister's Keeper, and now that they are all out I am going to move on with my life and read something that doesn't make me feel like I've given entirely too much attention to a Twilight-esque book.

Coming in February: more books! I've started reading Pride and Prejudice and Fight Club, alternating between the two in an attempt to inspire myself into writing something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but with less zombies and more Brad Pitt and bloodied knuckles. Mr. Darcy with washboard abs! Elizabeth Bennett, first lady to join the Fight Club, though if you call her Elizabeth or god forbid Lizzy she'll punch you in the fucking balls, and then kick your teeth in for good measure. It's Eli, and she'll adhere to the fifth rule of fight club to the fucking letter, so if you spend more time ogling her breasts than getting ready to put up a hell of a good tussle, well, you won't come back to fight club for a long, long time, she'll make sure of it. And Mr. Darcy will moan about how inadequately handsome Eli is, but then at night when everyone is sleeping (except for Mr. Bingley, he stays up composing soppy love poems to Jane-the-secretary) Mr. Darcy pays a visit to the guy who stared a little too long at Eli's ("Nonexistent, my god, Mr. Hurst's shuddering tits are far more titillating than her flat chest," he bites) cleavage and makes sure he won't come back to fight club ever. HAHAHA I have only read the first six chapters of P&P, what am I doing.

...aaaand apparently there is a Jane Austen's Fight Club?! Damn it, I am always late to the party. )':