Posts tagged with "movies"

Shift

I had the chance to watch Forrest Gump today, and re-expe­ri­ence was an amaz­ing film it was again. I spent many hours as a kid (or, more appro­pri­ate­ly, as a social her­mit) watch­ing it over and over again.

My grade nine his­to­ry class allowed me the priv­i­lege of under­stand­ing the sub­tleties of cer­tain scenes used as a time stamp, such as Governor Wallace protest­ing the deseg­re­ga­tion of the pub­lic school sys­tem, or each war Lieutenant Dan’s ances­tors died in.

It was odd to watch a film I haven’t seen in so long, yet to be able to quote most parts of it word for word, tone for tone, accent for accent. Everything seemed so for­eign yet so famil­iar. Every scene brought an old emo­tion, unfelt since the last time I watched it so long ago.

It was inter­est­ing to under­stand new things about the movie, things which were beyond my com­pre­hen­sion in my youth. It became appar­ent that I learned much since then, and that I was expe­ri­enc­ing the movie in a dif­fer­ent way. As James Cole notes in 12 Monkeys while watch­ing Vertigo, one may watch a film twice, but it may seem dif­fer­ent when the changes are sole­ly in one­self.

I only now under­stand Lt. Dan’s strug­gles with his fate and phi­los­o­phy. I remem­ber being very phys­i­cal­ly attract­ed to Robin Wright, and I guess I sim­ply lost that attrac­tion. I had­n’t ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed the strength of Forest’s moth­er until see­ing it again today. The list goes on.

It must be rare to have some­thing which can be used as a meter or ruler in which one can mea­sure ones progress. I hold self-improve­ment and intel­li­gence as such impor­tant things in my life that I am con­stant­ly try­ing to use one to bet­ter the oth­er, and con­se­quent­ly I may lose sight of how far I’ve gone.

Hopefully there is more to go.

Busy Days, And Movies At Home

My days here have been busy. I’m usu­al­ly doing some­thing from one moment to the next. I now under­stand a way of spend­ing one’s time dif­fer­ent­ly from one I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. I find that I’m gen­er­al­ly a per­son who’s cos­mopoli­tan enough to be able to pass time enjoy­ably with most peo­ple. However, most of my friends seem to be doers, always need­ing some­thing to do lest an awk­ward silence set in. These last five days have been filled with com­fort­able silences though, just from meet­ing and hang­ing out with peo­ple who are com­fort­able enough with each oth­er to sim­ply let con­ver­sa­tion flow at its own pace. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to look at hang­ing out with my friends in the same way again.

I watched In The Bedroom with Darren yes­ter­day. Although I thought it was a very well made film, with usu­al­ly mov­ing (though drawn out) sto­ry­telling, I did­n’t enjoy it very much. There did­n’t seem to be much of a mes­sage at the end, which leaves the enter­tain­ment of the film up to the the sto­ry, char­ac­ters, and plot, all which I felt to be very shal­low. The film is sup­posed to be about “the bonds of mar­riage and the lim­its of for­give­ness [being] put to the test”, but there was only one major con­flict and only a few shal­low attempts at devel­op­ing char­ac­ters and motives. It just did­n’t seem to go any­where, and with­out inter­est­ing (to me, at least) events tak­ing place, I felt as if my time would have been bet­ter spent else­where.

Speaking of films, I’ve been able to catch a few trail­ers which have piqued my curios­i­ty. The Good Thief with Nick Nolte seems like an amaz­ing­ly styl­ized movie (direct­ed by Neil Jordan) about a retired art crook doing one last heist. It appeals to me because of the way Nolte seems to bring a pres­ence of con­flict­ing human­i­ty with his slurred speech and rugged looks. I also find the slow, patient tune at the end of the trail­er to fit per­fect­ly with the cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the way Nolte looks at his lighter before clos­ing it on a bright­ly grey day with the move­ment of a city in the back­ground. All of this from a trail­er, and I’m already hooked. Kill Bill also looks amaz­ing, in a cheesy, Tarantino sort of way.

Lamplust, Formatting, Basic

Studying has not been going well. I find it dif­fi­cult to get moti­vat­ed, both exams being a week away. I’d much rather be try­ing to improve my win ratio or work­ing on my book, than learn­ing about orthog­o­nal view math­e­mat­ics or mesother­mal vein deposits. I might just write off the rest of the after­noon as relax­ation.

Using my tax return as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, I bought a set of Candela’s a few days ago. After see­ing a movie in which a restau­rant dis­plays a beau­ti­ful set of mood light­ing, I was inspired to give some more per­son­al­i­ty to my rather drably room. My Christmas lights do add a bit of mood, but they are too bright to feel com­fort­able. I also bought a blue sin­gle, in case one of them burns out, and so that I can have a bit of colour at my dis­pos­al. I don’t like the fact that they run on NiCads though, mak­ing them have the trou­ble­some char­ac­ter­is­tic of mem­o­ry. I’d like to just leave it on until I go to bed, but I’m afraid I’d have to let them “burn out”, although I’m sure that lithi­um ion bat­ter­ies would have dou­bled the price as well as the weight, and halved the lifes­pan of each Candela.

My com­put­er des­per­ate­ly needs a for­mat­ting.

I caught Basic this after­noon with Aaron and Chris. It was­n’t very good; the plot had way too many twists to it. I spent the entire time try­ing to fig­ure out what the hell was going on and admir­ing Connie Nielson’s dis­tin­guished and weath­ered face (oh my).

HK, Fullscreen

I’ve been watch­ing a lot of Chinese movies late­ly. I always find the scenery to be sub­tly poignant, from the den­si­ty of the hous­es, to the con­fine­ment of the liv­ing arrange­ments, to the hom­li­ness of the shops. It makes me miss Hong Kong. It makes me miss see­ing my grand­par­ents. It makes me miss the quaint lifestyle, the diver­si­ty of food, the entire cul­ture.

If I end up going to Hong Kong this year, I hope to be able to tell my grand­moth­er how strong a per­son I see her to be, but I detest my lim­it­ed knowl­edge of the Chinese lan­guage. I wish that I could express to her in English how much I look up to her. If I had a chance with English, I would feel like I could do the feel­ing jus­tice. I hope she does­n’t hurt my feel­ings. I hope she does­n’t die before I see her next. I won­der who would cry.

I still remem­ber liv­ing with Kenny, hav­ing a great time at his place, play­ing with all sorts of inter­est­ing gad­gets. His par­ents were always good peo­ple, one of the few sets of rel­a­tives I care about.

The feel­ing is almost tange­able. I can close my eyes, and see myself there again, a lost, emo­tion­less, igno­rant boy. I miss the street ven­dors. I miss the smell of my grand­moth­ers house. I miss the bliss.

I real­ize that my feel­ings are prob­a­bly a result of my absolute con­tent­ment when­ev­er I was in Hong Kong. I’ve had some of the best times of my life there, and I remem­ber noth­ing but hap­pi­ness. It seems like I’ve been taint­ed with matu­ri­ty, and I’m try­ing to regain a lost part of my child­hood, the care­free being that is so char­ac­ter­is­tic of young peo­ple.

Tainted.

I like that.