Lordy

Boy do I feel stupid. I watched The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring over the last few days. It was so tedious and long (3 hours!), I don't know why I bothered. I never cared what happened to anyone. I was never for a second worried about what would happen to "Frodo" or whatever his name is.

The special effects were really spectacular, and I can see why people like to see that kind of thing on "the big screen" -- but aside from a few breathtaking moments, this was just one long-winded piece of self-important childishness. Lordy, lordy, lordy.

I never cared much for the saving-the-world-from-unleashed-evil genre. Evil in the abstract is pretty meaningless to me. Not something I trouble myself over.

28 Weeks Later

I'm really kind of freaked out right now. I don't know why I had 28 Weeks Later in my queue (I know I say that a lot) and I barely remember the first one. Well, this was very scary. It was, I thought, very well filmed. It wasn't like a typical horror film (unless they've changed a lot recently, which is entirely possible). I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that. There seemed something artistic to a lot of the shots. The sudden jolts of silence, and the noise; the slow motion, then regular time. The subdued palette. Almost beautiful, actually. And then there was this whole scary surveillance motif. It was mainly military surveillance, that green graphic thing. But there was an other sense to it to, a feeling of quiet paranoia. This eerie feeling of being watched and stalked, recorded and controlled. Marked. The subdued, calm yet tense sense of order and then the frenzied, palsied buzzing of the infected and the crazed noisy terror of the chased. I was uncomfortable, frightened, and on edge through the entire movie.

The ending was REALLY good. I was expecting all the leads to be saved, but that wasn't the case.

Sedaris & Gladwell

I came home exhausted after a long draining day at work and curled up on the couch with the newest New Yorker (even though I haven't cracked last week's yet). I read a wonderful, funny, touching piece by David Sedaris on flying business class next to a sobbing Polish man. I know it is so... so... pedestrian to like David Sedaris, but I am not going to apologize. I think his prose his so smooth and witty; his essays are extremely well structured. I don't know what's not to like.

Then I read a review by Malcolm Gladwell, another favorite of mine, about a book on the race & IQ thing. I know that this has been in the news again recently, but can't we just table this ludicrous issue already? It was a good article, of course, but it is just so depressing that there are still people out there trying to prove that blacks are inferior.

The Museum at FIT

I saw three exhibitions this morning at the Museum at FIT.

Ethereal Elegance included beautiful acrylic on paper fashion paintings by Steven Stipelmen. These had a lovely, impressionist feel to them and some of them reminded me of Debuffy and Chagall.

Exoticism showcased clothing from all over the world that has inspired Western designers. The textiles and ornamentation were intense. Heavy fabrics weighted with beads and embroidery. A really cool pair of "granny boots" that were knee high and made of fabric that looked like old fashioned curtains.

Chic Chicago displayed "Couture treasures from the Chicago History Museum". Basically a ton of gorgeous, elegant clothes from all different eras. This was kind of my favorite.

Ma Vie En Rose

I put this on for something to watch while preparing and eating my Lean Cuisine after a run. I meant to just watch the beginning and get to work, as I had seen it when it first came out. But I got so absorbed in it, I couldn't turn it off. It's about a seven year old boy who wants to be a girl and how his family deals with their own homophobia (they never, ever call it that) and the neighborhood's ostracizing. It was very intense, the vehemence with which the community refused to accept him or his family. The boy's internal world was represented by these ultra-vivid, over-the-top scenes of a Barbie-type doll and a Barbie-type world. My favorite character was the mother. She was very sweet with her son, but turned on him under the stress in a terrible way. She managed to be gracious and in-your-face at the same time with the neighbors. I just thought she was very well-rounded.

The Consolations of Philosophy

I have slowly been reading Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy for at least a month and finally finished it. What a wonderful book! Each chapter explores a specific philosopher, looking at the life lessons one can extract from their work. So, it isn't an intellectual theoretical treatment of the philosophers; it's a kind of emotional personal reading of them -- which is how I tend to read philosophy anyway.

He covers Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Each chapter has a title like, "The Consolation for Inadequacy" (Montaigne) and includes a lot of information on the philosophers' life, on how they lived, as well as copious quotes and even pictures, sometimes oddly chosen.

My favorite sections were the ones on Montaigne and Schopenhauer -- both whom I personally related to. Neither whom I've read. I can't wait to go out and read Montaigne's Essays, although that will probably have to wait until after January. Surprisingly, I am most familiar with Nietzsche and was least engaged with that chapter ("The Consolation for Difficulties")

Some Schopenhauer quotes:

"We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness"

"There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment."

I have never forgotten my Freshman Seminar professor exclaiming one day, for no reason I could discern, "Oh, poor Schopenhauer!"

A River Runs Through It

I'm not sure why this movie was in my queue, but it was. I just finished watching it. Although Robert Redford directed and narrated it, and Brad Pitt was one of the stars, I bet reviewers said that Montana was the real star of the movie. It was very Redford-y in that sense, showing a deep, somewhat self-indulgent love of the vast Western states. It was slow and sleepy, took place during a much slower time (the 20s) and was rather predictable. But at the same time it was gorgeous and sweet. There was barely any hint of a plot, like they didn't want plot or narrative arch to intrude too much. And the movie really was narrated (by Redford). Anyhoo...

It was made in 1992 and I can't believe that was 15 years ago. That makes me feel old. Brad Pitt looked like a baby practically.