Sunday - Sorting and Movie day
It has been a busy Sunday...
Well in between trying to pack up fragiles that seem to keep pop out of the woodwork (literally) and going through the masses of books, weeding through them we popped in two movies. Most are not moving with me with is a shame but darn it I have way too many already packed and in the list to go with me.
The first movie was chosen by Liz 'cause I was busy wrapping the egg collection. The egg collection... sheesh, I remember when Catseye and I purchased the first one, back in college in 1988. That one is my favorite - an egg shaped piece of polished black obsidian with silver flakes in it. It came from a vender who sold rocks, minerals, etc that he shaped and polished. Supposedly the rock itself was from the Mt Saint Helens area. I have the painted Russian wooden ones that match the minaret my grandfather gave me for Christmas in 1995. I have a pair of large wooden ones picked up from a yardsale and once cleaned up turned out to be olive wood and from Israel. The trio of ceramic ones Liz made me in art class. The one Ken brought me from India or was it Kenya? The tiny wooden ones a friend put into a mini Easter basket as a gag gift. The two huge porcelain ones with their fancy blue enamel that Ken talked me into getting at a flea market and are still absolutely lovely even if they go with nothing else in my entire apartment. Now the collection takes up its own shelf... but just fifteen years ago, I had only the one.
Anyway, while I was carefully wrapping and wrapping and boxing that collection, Lizzy put in 'You've Got Mail'. Yeah, the romance. And here I am, the one who rarely watches romances. Give me a good action flick. Maybe a chick flick if I'm really in the mood but it better be good or I'm gone. So, since I was not intending to watch and she wanted to see it again (yeah, I got her a collection of romances for Christmas a couple of years ago) I said sure. It was... actually pretty good.
Tom Hanks is a decent actor. And Meg Ryan a pretty good actress. The whole 'unknown' internet love interest was at first hilarious, then sad, then sweet, then absolutely funny. Watching the way the people unfolded was awesome. And the two main characters grew and changed, becoming better. The two supporting characters (the boyfriend and girlfriend of the main characters) were very good foils for the primary focus.
I don't know much about NYC so I can't say anything about the scenery. The two stores were very well done, though. The quaint, old fashioned bookstore with its wooden shelves, parquet flooring, reading tables and the scroll work on the window pane was lovely. And when it closed the empty store was just a beautiful, if hauntingly sad and lonely, as it had been when full of people and books and movement. The fancy, supermarket discount bookstore was just what you expect from any mega bookstore found today - coffee shop, lights, noise, clerks who have no clue what book belongs to which author, and yet... it had a slowly growing sense of self.
The plot, well, personally it was the first time I'd seen one of the internet romance stories and I think there are at least a dozen out there. The whole mystique of not knowing to whom you are writing is the main theme but there is also the theme of reaching out, of becoming more than you were/are. Kathy (Meg Ryan's character) grew to stand up for herself, to say what she truly felt, and to acknowledge that she did not have to accept what everyone else expected of and for her. Joe (Tom Hanks' character) became human, he learned that everything is personal to someone, he also learned that money and expectation are not the end all and be all of the world.
That said, yep, I actually liked the movie. But most of all, I want to get to New York some day just to see if Riverside Gardens is as lovely as it was in the end scene, because it was downright awe-inspiring. Yes, I'm a garden nut.
The second movie we saw, and this one we had actually planned on seeing this weekend was 'Grand Torino'. Yeah, I'm an unrepentant Clint Eastwood fan. I don't remember how old I was when I first saw 'Fistful of Dollars' or 'Dirty Harry', probably way too young, but that's life.
Clint acted in, directed and produced this one and it was well worth all the hype. In fact, I deeply regret not seeing it on the big screen. And that's a rarity. Most movies I see on DVD I have no problem with the fact that I saw it first on DVD. This one, well, it deserved the screen.
The main themes - family estrangement, alienation, cultural differences, coming of age, enlightenment, heroism, life and death. A whole range of things and they are all fairly well covered. The main character Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) is a Korean vet who recently lost his wife, who never could relate to his sons and they don't really try. He is foul mouthed, prejudiced, stubborn, ignorant, and tempermental. But for all that, he is fairly straight laced, polite (within specific parameters), and decent. When he goes to confession for the first time in 40 years, his sins: kissing someone other than his wife at an office Christmas party in 1968, not paying taxes on income from sale of a $900 boat, and having a poor relationship with his sons.
The plot is in how the gruff, dying man learns to accept his new Hmoung neighbors, teaching the teenaged boy how to be a man since his father is deceased. Walt becomes a surrogate father figure to them, they become 'family' to him especially when his own children cannot even take the time to talk to him on the phone. And when the gang comes back, he protects them as best he can. Walt never cleans up his language or behaves any differently toward others - he helps when he's needed, cusses at everyone (his priest and friends included), and literally lays down his life to protect everyone in the neighborhood.
The secondary plot is the coming of age of Thao, played by Bee Vang. New to the area, no longer in school, without the money to get into college, and without references for a job, Thao is the only male in a house run by his mother, grandmother and older sister. His cousin is one of the leaders of a dangerous Hmoung gang that has all the local Hmoung too scared or too closely related to dare speaking to the police about, and he is their next target for recruitment. When he is browbeat by his mother into paying off the 'honor debt' for attempting to steal Walt's Grand Torino, he handles being told to count birds as his punishment but refuses to be sent home. After piquing Walt's interest, he quickly becomes the older man's friend and willing apprentice, working very hard to repay the honor debt and to learn.
No, I'm not going to tell the ending, even if most people have seen it. Yeah, I figured part of it out long before the midpoint, simply because there is no hiding the fact that Walt is ill, he knows it, he accepts it and does not want anyone to pity him about his mortality. Up until the very last moment, I thought one thing and was very pleasantly but ridiculously sadly surprised by the climax. Walt did the right thing, not the easy thing. Enough said.
And yeah, this movie is a keeper. In fact, I'm debating how long to wait until I watch it again, even if I cried after watching it.
Well in between trying to pack up fragiles that seem to keep pop out of the woodwork (literally) and going through the masses of books, weeding through them we popped in two movies. Most are not moving with me with is a shame but darn it I have way too many already packed and in the list to go with me.
The first movie was chosen by Liz 'cause I was busy wrapping the egg collection. The egg collection... sheesh, I remember when Catseye and I purchased the first one, back in college in 1988. That one is my favorite - an egg shaped piece of polished black obsidian with silver flakes in it. It came from a vender who sold rocks, minerals, etc that he shaped and polished. Supposedly the rock itself was from the Mt Saint Helens area. I have the painted Russian wooden ones that match the minaret my grandfather gave me for Christmas in 1995. I have a pair of large wooden ones picked up from a yardsale and once cleaned up turned out to be olive wood and from Israel. The trio of ceramic ones Liz made me in art class. The one Ken brought me from India or was it Kenya? The tiny wooden ones a friend put into a mini Easter basket as a gag gift. The two huge porcelain ones with their fancy blue enamel that Ken talked me into getting at a flea market and are still absolutely lovely even if they go with nothing else in my entire apartment. Now the collection takes up its own shelf... but just fifteen years ago, I had only the one.
Anyway, while I was carefully wrapping and wrapping and boxing that collection, Lizzy put in 'You've Got Mail'. Yeah, the romance. And here I am, the one who rarely watches romances. Give me a good action flick. Maybe a chick flick if I'm really in the mood but it better be good or I'm gone. So, since I was not intending to watch and she wanted to see it again (yeah, I got her a collection of romances for Christmas a couple of years ago) I said sure. It was... actually pretty good.
Tom Hanks is a decent actor. And Meg Ryan a pretty good actress. The whole 'unknown' internet love interest was at first hilarious, then sad, then sweet, then absolutely funny. Watching the way the people unfolded was awesome. And the two main characters grew and changed, becoming better. The two supporting characters (the boyfriend and girlfriend of the main characters) were very good foils for the primary focus.
I don't know much about NYC so I can't say anything about the scenery. The two stores were very well done, though. The quaint, old fashioned bookstore with its wooden shelves, parquet flooring, reading tables and the scroll work on the window pane was lovely. And when it closed the empty store was just a beautiful, if hauntingly sad and lonely, as it had been when full of people and books and movement. The fancy, supermarket discount bookstore was just what you expect from any mega bookstore found today - coffee shop, lights, noise, clerks who have no clue what book belongs to which author, and yet... it had a slowly growing sense of self.
The plot, well, personally it was the first time I'd seen one of the internet romance stories and I think there are at least a dozen out there. The whole mystique of not knowing to whom you are writing is the main theme but there is also the theme of reaching out, of becoming more than you were/are. Kathy (Meg Ryan's character) grew to stand up for herself, to say what she truly felt, and to acknowledge that she did not have to accept what everyone else expected of and for her. Joe (Tom Hanks' character) became human, he learned that everything is personal to someone, he also learned that money and expectation are not the end all and be all of the world.
That said, yep, I actually liked the movie. But most of all, I want to get to New York some day just to see if Riverside Gardens is as lovely as it was in the end scene, because it was downright awe-inspiring. Yes, I'm a garden nut.
The second movie we saw, and this one we had actually planned on seeing this weekend was 'Grand Torino'. Yeah, I'm an unrepentant Clint Eastwood fan. I don't remember how old I was when I first saw 'Fistful of Dollars' or 'Dirty Harry', probably way too young, but that's life.
Clint acted in, directed and produced this one and it was well worth all the hype. In fact, I deeply regret not seeing it on the big screen. And that's a rarity. Most movies I see on DVD I have no problem with the fact that I saw it first on DVD. This one, well, it deserved the screen.
The main themes - family estrangement, alienation, cultural differences, coming of age, enlightenment, heroism, life and death. A whole range of things and they are all fairly well covered. The main character Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) is a Korean vet who recently lost his wife, who never could relate to his sons and they don't really try. He is foul mouthed, prejudiced, stubborn, ignorant, and tempermental. But for all that, he is fairly straight laced, polite (within specific parameters), and decent. When he goes to confession for the first time in 40 years, his sins: kissing someone other than his wife at an office Christmas party in 1968, not paying taxes on income from sale of a $900 boat, and having a poor relationship with his sons.
The plot is in how the gruff, dying man learns to accept his new Hmoung neighbors, teaching the teenaged boy how to be a man since his father is deceased. Walt becomes a surrogate father figure to them, they become 'family' to him especially when his own children cannot even take the time to talk to him on the phone. And when the gang comes back, he protects them as best he can. Walt never cleans up his language or behaves any differently toward others - he helps when he's needed, cusses at everyone (his priest and friends included), and literally lays down his life to protect everyone in the neighborhood.
The secondary plot is the coming of age of Thao, played by Bee Vang. New to the area, no longer in school, without the money to get into college, and without references for a job, Thao is the only male in a house run by his mother, grandmother and older sister. His cousin is one of the leaders of a dangerous Hmoung gang that has all the local Hmoung too scared or too closely related to dare speaking to the police about, and he is their next target for recruitment. When he is browbeat by his mother into paying off the 'honor debt' for attempting to steal Walt's Grand Torino, he handles being told to count birds as his punishment but refuses to be sent home. After piquing Walt's interest, he quickly becomes the older man's friend and willing apprentice, working very hard to repay the honor debt and to learn.
No, I'm not going to tell the ending, even if most people have seen it. Yeah, I figured part of it out long before the midpoint, simply because there is no hiding the fact that Walt is ill, he knows it, he accepts it and does not want anyone to pity him about his mortality. Up until the very last moment, I thought one thing and was very pleasantly but ridiculously sadly surprised by the climax. Walt did the right thing, not the easy thing. Enough said.
And yeah, this movie is a keeper. In fact, I'm debating how long to wait until I watch it again, even if I cried after watching it.