Posts tagged with "movies"

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.

Tired Thoughts, Game Of Life, Etc.

I’m fuck­ing exhaust­ed. I haven’t been this tired since my trip to Tremblant, pos­si­bly. I feel drugged. I almost had a 10 hour day, and I slept hor­ri­bly last night. I decid­ed to attempt an entry at five in the morn­ing, but I did­n’t get very far. I knew that if I did­n’t write tonight, I would­n’t sleep very well again.

I find so much rea­son to write nowa­days. I seem to be get­ting affect­ed by so much. All my emo­tion is com­ing back to me like the open­ing of a vac­u­um.

Working on my graph­ics assign­ment has made me real­ize how large the project is. I have most of the cam­era move­ments fig­ured out, so that I can enter co-ordi­nates into an array and the cam­era will move between them. I can get the oth­er motions done, like cam­era angle and cen­ter of focus rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly. I just need to fig­ure out a way to ani­mate four arm objects at once, keep­ing track of all the motions. I’ll have about two days to work on it, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get it done.

An inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal idea I’ve learned more about is the Game of Life. I’ve nev­er real­ly found math phe­nom­e­na fas­ci­nat­ing, but the Game of Life offers an infi­nite num­ber of pos­si­bilites in cre­at­ing some­thing amaz­ing. With a sim­ple drag of the mouse, one can see if a group of cells will be able to sur­vive, reach sta­sis, or die off, based on Conway’s rules. I could spend hours try­ing out new pat­terns, watch­ing the cells dance in tiny flour­ish­es of log­ic.

I got all three of my mid-terms back, and I was able to pass two out of three. However, the two I man­aged to pass are still with­in five marks of fail­ing. I find that this term is the ulti­mate test of my abil­i­ty to pull things off. It’s the term with the most dire con­se­quences if I fail, and the term that requires the most of my gal­va­niz­ing strength.

I’ve asked Pat to attend my grad­u­a­tion. He’s the per­son who’s helped me out the most in the last four years, no mat­ter what my prob­lem was. Out of all the peo­ple I know, I think that he would be the proud­est.

Tonight was anoth­er scary movie night. Nick, Aaron, and Pita came over. This time it was The Shining. I almost watched it one time, but I was in the com­pa­ny of peo­ple who were mock­ing oth­er peo­ple, so I opt­ed to fall asleep instead. Although I did­n’t walk away from this movie with as much fear as Ringu, it was able to actu­al­ly send chills up my spine and down my arms. I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced any sort of chills relat­ing to hor­ror before, pos­si­bly because I usu­al­ly don’t like the genre. I was…amazed at what Kubrick did. The angles and score seemed to be the most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture. My favorite scene is when the wife is exhaust­ed­ly try­ing to open the freez­er door, jam­ming the han­dle over and over, while the cam­era is set near the door, and the audi­ence can see the sweat in her hair, the fatigue in her face, the fran­tic­ness of the sit­u­a­tion.

Old School, Frozen Carrots, Etc.

I was exhaust­ed yes­ter­day. I worked almost all day on my graph­ics project, and Aaron came over to work on his Scheme assign­ment. I was able to talk to him for a few hours before start­ing the work. We caught Old School at the Coliseum near his place, but it was still a thir­ty minute walk in one direc­tion. The movie was too pre­dictable, but had some very well done scenes, such as Will Ferrell get­ting shot in the neck with a tranq dart. I thought some parts were almost insult­ing though, like a com­plete­ly gra­tu­itous cam­era shot of Elisha Cuthbert’s ass while she was lay­ing on a bed. It’s not that I don’t find her behind to be a thing of beau­ty, it’s that it feels like the pro­duc­ers are adding shit like that in just to get more peo­ple in the audi­ence. I guess it’s been hap­pen­ing for a while now; ever since Shannon Elizabeth bared her twins in American Pie, teen movies have been becom­ing more and more sleazy. I still enjoyed Old School though, and gen­er­al­ly laughed my ass off.

Watching Old School allowed me to dis­cov­er a decent song called Dust in the Wind by Kansas. I’ve also been down­load­ing a lot of Canadian singer Holly Cole, who has a beau­ti­ful­ly expres­sive, olive oil voice. I enjoy Bagdad Café in par­tic­u­lar. I found two ver­sions of the song, one live and one stu­dio, which are good but with their own unique flaws. I pre­fer the live ver­sion because it has a sim­ple piano and bass, instead of synth sounds in the stu­dio ver­sion, but at one point she becomes obnox­ious­ly loud, as if she was over­sing­ing the notes, the way a trum­pet would sound if the trum­peter was blar­ing. It makes her voice seem almost mas­cu­line, which is a big turn-off. The way she mix­es her vibra­to with her flar­ing is very seduc­tive though. In the stu­dio ver­sion, how­ev­er, she seems to start off one line a lit­tle flat, before push­ing her diaphragm to hit a note with­out going falset­to. It sur­prized me, since stu­dio songs tend to be a lit­tle too per­fect.

I final­ly put up my poster of Dominique Swain. Aaron helped me decide on the linen clos­et door, since the walls in my room are so big they dwarf my mod­est­ly sized poster. I haven’t put it up since sec­ond year because it did­n’t seem to fit into the sim­ple­ness of my room.

I’m not espe­cial­ly hap­py with yes­ter­days entry, but I des­per­ate­ly felt like I had to get some­thing down. It’s a lit­tle too trite for me to be sat­is­fied.

I bought a bag of frozen car­rots and pearl onions to try out the last time I went gro­cery shop­ping, since I’ve been try­ing to eat more veg­eta­bles. I found out today that I real­ly don’t like pearl onions. They taste like what I imag­ine an onion would taste like after being soaked in water overnight. I tried to have the car­rots only, but the bag is sup­posed to be a mélange of the two, and the taste of the onions ends up seep­ing into the taste of the car­rots. I real­ly enjoy hav­ing a bunch of onion slices sautéed before adding in a pork chop or what­not to the fry­ing pan, but pearl onions seem to be a dif­fer­ent breed of onion.

Emotional Rollercoaster, More Mid-Terms, Etc.

This week has been such an emo­tion­al roller coast­er. I can’t describe the odd moods I’ve been in, the twists and turns my mind has been going in. I feel lost.

I have three mid-terms tomor­row, one of which I feel con­fi­dent about. I tried des­per­ate­ly to study dur­ing the three days I had off, and only one of them (today) had any progress what­so­ev­er. I think it’s just my study envi­ron­ment, com­bined with my cur­rent emo­tion­al fluc­tu­a­tions. I tried to study in the SITE build­ing today, watched the sun go from east to west, and felt my mela­tonin lev­els drop. I feel burned out already. I def­i­nite­ly need this read­ing week.

Speaking of which, I most like­ly won’t be going home for the week. I’ll prob­a­bly try to hang out with Trolley or Thom. I don’t have time to change the dates on my train tick­ets, or even get a new ISIC. I’m not even sure if I’m elli­gi­ble, since I’m a part-time stu­dent when not con­sid­er­ing my hon­ours project as a course.

My progress through Moby Dick has been non-exis­tent late­ly.

I’ll have to catch the Married with Children reunion spe­cial on Sunday. I always found the show to be amus­ing when I was a kid, though I nev­er laughed out loud as I would if watch­ing a fun­ny show nowa­days, like Family Guy. I think I was just mys­ti­fied by the open­ness with which the sex­u­al­i­ty was dealt with, some­thing that I nev­er grew up around. I’m sure the spe­cial will remind me of the sum­mers I spent at home long ago, some­thing I’d rather remem­ber for my inno­cence than my igno­rance.

I’m down­load­ing Full Metal Jacket. I still can’t get over how bril­liant the entire film was, pos­si­bly the best dis­play of genius on film I’ve seen so far. I still haven’t decid­ed whether I should buy it though, since it’s not quite a movie I can relate to, which is gen­er­al­ly the cri­te­ria I use to build my col­lec­tion.

I Can't Stop Watching Swingers

There’s some­thing about the chem­istry between Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn that sim­ply fas­ci­nates me, and although I’m sure the momen­tum of it spawned the painful movie Made, I still feel inclined to watch it over and over again.

My course load got eas­i­er this term, when I dropped a six hour per week course for a three hour one. Light sched­ules always seem to make my mind sloven, as if the load isn’t enough to put my mind in gear, so I grow rest­less in neu­tral. I won­der what I’m going to do when I’m out of school and look­ing for a job, some­thing which will be hap­pen­ing with­in the half-year.

For some rea­son, Dolly takes an invari­able fas­ci­na­tion with the brush­ing of my teeth. Wherever she is, she’ll stalk up to my loca­tion and gaze intent­ly at the act, hunched for­ward with the weight on her front paws. I can’t fig­ure out what aspect of the brush­ing she may find inter­est­ing, and I won­der whether she’ll ever tire of watch­ing.