Last Sunday, after she got off the phone with me, my mom, trying walk forward off of a step stool rather than backward, fell down and broke her shoulder. And then immediately became the "I've fallen and I can't get up" lady, and lay there all night because no one heard her ( Read more... )

They're on a mission.... but it's not from God ( Read more... )

While Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame sounds like the title of a Scooby Doo episode, it's actually an historical martial arts epic, directed by famous director Tsui Hark, based around a traditional Chinese hero, Judge Di (here rendered as "Detective Dee"). The Chinese have as mystery novels longer than we have, usually focused on ( Read more... )

So, Rain City Burger was -- stupidly - closed for the entire long weekend...

But --- a great new bakery opened up across Ravenna Blvd. at 65th and Latona, "Irwin's Green Lake Bakery" REALLY good and yummy.

Tonight's SIFF Film was Young Goethe in Love, and it was by far the lightest, brightest, most charming thing I've seen at SIFF so far. Which, frankly, tells you as much about my SIFF viewing habits as it does the movie ( Read more... )

Bangkok, 2018, is a rotten place, full of corruption, crime, influence peddling, and nuclear power plants. Worst of all, the new Prime Minister's beautiful girlfriend has dumped him! Meanwhile, Bangkok's criminals are being terrorized and killed by a masked vigilante known only as "Red Eagle ( Read more... )

Silent movies are great for their bigness, for the theatricality of their acting, the expansiveness of the gestures employed. This is true of even the "smallest" silents; coming from the world of theater, everyone was still playing to the cheap seats, not releasing that the camera can do a lot of work for you ( Read more... )

Womb or, "You think your family is messed up ( Read more... )

Another Earth was a film I watched with two brains, one the science brain and one the story brain ( Read more... )

Outrage is mostly kinda sorta a yakuza ensemble piece about rivalry inside a large Japanese crime syndicate. Kateshi "Beat" Kitano - one of the movies' great stonefaces - mostly sorta stars in his own picture. It all starts with an unsanctioned deal between an underboss and another criminal boss. "Champ" Otomo - played by Kitano - is the underboss' ( Read more... )