Month: December 2008

Three sentence movie reviews–Mala Noche.


I find it remarkable this film was made in 1985, it seems so contemporary and blatantly homosexual. Another of Van Sant’s “filmed in Portland where I work” although 20+ years before I started working there. Tim Streeter, who plays the main character is magnetic.

This is the first movie Gus Van Sant made. When I started my Gus Van Sant movie viewing project, it hadn’t been released on DVD and wasn’t really available, so I skipped it. Now you can see it as part of the Criterion Collection. I, for one, am very glad it is available.

photo from: www.imdb.com

Twilight

Here’s my problem with Twilight: 17 year old girl falls in love with 17 year old vampire boy. Fine. 17 year old girl falls in love with 110 year old vampire in the body of a 17 year old boy? Kind of icky. There were a lot of lover-as-father/paternalism things within the second half of the book that kind of weirded me out. I might read the second one to see if that goes away, but I might not.

Also, I felt like there was so much undercurrent of denying your primal urges in that book. The whole set up of falling in love with someone who could theoretically kill you if he smells your intoxicating scent too much was very repressed. Almost like a closeted lesbian in a religion that doesn’t recognize homosexuality would write. Hmmmm. And! At the end of the first book it is very clear that she wants to become a vampire too so she can be with her beloved. The whole changing yourself completely to be more like your help-mate doesn’t square with my independent figures in a relationship world view.

Summary: Twilight not best book to read from a feminist perspective.

On the other hand: I thought about the plot for many days.

Fabulous!

I’ve been watching this work in progress for about six months now and I just have to remark about how very cool it is. First of all, growing things in the front yard is super cool. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Secondly, though I myself have decided that raised beds are not for me, I love how contained this front yard garden is. I think that is the key to success with front yard gardens: make them very aesthetically pleasing. Either that or have a full-on permaculture garden, but avoid that midpoint where things are kind of weedy and unkempt.
Hiding behind that cloche is a lot of kale and collards. I’m a bit jealous.
And look! Soon an espalier fruit tree will grow along the front of the house. I want to espalier fruit trees in my backyard.
And here is that empty lot around the corner from me. It’s still waiting for me to plant a huge garden there. If only the generous owners would realize what a better owner I would be and give me the deed…

GPS devices have me stuck on Existential

I think that navigating through the landscape is a skill that can (and should) be developed. I have a particular talent for it, if I do say so myself. So when the nice-lady-voice keeps telling me I have made an error, I don’t really like to hear it. The car, that vestige of freedom in the modern landscape, is the last place I want an inanimate object telling me what to do. Except for the few people with absolutely no sense of direction, I think GPS units are one of those things Americans needlessly spend money on. When you don’t have to figure out where you are and where you are going, you lose that skill. Is that something you want?

But this comic made me laugh.