Day: July 6, 2009

Three sentence movie reviews: Vertigo

In contrast to today’s suspense/mystery-type movies, this one moves incredibly slowly. Very obvious shots are lingered upon until even the dimmest movie viewer gets the point. Still, it is a Hitchcock film, and though I had seen it before, I still was tense/frightened at the end.

Bechdel score. Two women: nope. Unless you count Kim Novak as two women. 🙂

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1958/vertigo.html

5 July. Five pictures from my Washington DC trip.

After our long day and late night, I was happy that St Paul’s K street’s solemn mass isn’t until after 11:00. We went and I enjoyed the pageantry of the service. Post church we met up with Sara’s sister Jess and went to Chinatown and had “Fresh Noodle Made on the Spot.”
I met up with Jenna at The Building Museum. I was pretty excited to see Portland was featured in the Green Community exhibit. Oh look! We’re even in the picture on this page of the website. There was also a great exhibit about storefront churches.

I bid goodbye to Jenna and decided to take another attempt at the National Museum of the American Indian. On the way, I took this picture of the capitol.
I love the beauty of the American Indian museum’s building. All the undulating lines make it interesting to photograph and fun to look at. You can see more pictures by scrolling down to the bottom of this link.
I never thought I would say this, but I was pretty museumed out. I went to look at the food court, which I heard was fabulous and which looked delicious, but I was still full from “Fresh Noodle.” I wandered through two gift shops buying some last souvenirs. Then I wandered across the exhibit “Ramp it Up” about the skateboarding culture in Native America. Because I have always had a soft spot in my heart for skaters, I loved this exhibit.
I took the Metro back to Sara & Shawn’s and I entirely checked out, missed my stop by a couple of stops and had to double back. That has never happened to me on any public transportation system. Ever. I was pretty tired. We (S&S along with Jess) lounged around a bit and then went to see Vertigo at this Diner. Both Sara and I were thinking “Diner in front, movie theater in back,” but no, there was not theater, just a small screen and a projector in enclosed deck out front. When it got time for the movie, they loaded it up and turned on the sound. It was kind of bizarre. But fun. I’d seen the movie before, but still gasped in surprise as the nun rounded the corner at the end.

It was a good last full day of my trip.

5 July 2008. A picture from the Hungary/Romania trip.

Man, there were a lot of good pictures from today. It was a touch choice. Today was the day we “worked” in Okland, which consisted of about an hour or so of clearing wood and debris. A sudden summer downpour ended our labor, though we were pretty much finished. After resting a bit, we took a tour of the cemeteries of Okland. First we went to “the cemetery” on a hill above the village. From “the cemetary” we could see the “passersby cemetery” where anyone who hasn’t lived in the village since forever is buried. “Even if they have lived here for 100 years?” I asked. “Even if they are the minister?” Eva told me both of those groups would be in the passersby cemetery. She said she likes the view better in the passersby cemetery anyway.

We walked back to the village and had a tour of the church. Their church, unique among Unitarian churches, has painted tiles on the ceiling. Their embroidery, as mentioned before, was solid blue. We got to play the organ and go all the way up in the bell tower, where I took this picture of the village.
Isn’t it pretty? Most all of those houses have gardens in the backyard where in America the lawn would be. The road through town that you can see in this picture is a dirt road, and it is the one that the cows walk on to get back to their homes at the end of the day.

After our tour of the church we wandered up to the passersby cemetery and indeed, the view is quite nice. Next on our agenda was an incredibly long soccer game in the school yard. I played, Marcia played, Don played, the YRUU youth played, the youth from the village played. It was tremendous fun. While my soccer skills mostly involve getting in the way of things at the correct times and constant chatter, Don (our most senior member of the group) turned out to be a soccer star. So much so, I began to refer to him as “The Wall.” I was surprised to learn he hadn’t ever really played soccer. He attributed his skill to his youth playing hockey.

Our game reluctantly ended when we were called in for dinner. Post dinner, was a viewing of Juno. So ended the evening.