let the right one in

I liked it. I’ll put it somewhere in my top 20 or something. It reminded me of Naked Lunch and La Dolce Vita. Naked Lunch is my favorite movie and La Dolce Vita is … cute but not really amazing. So it’s somewhere in between. Made me realize that if there was a genre called “medical surrealism” .. It would be my fave.

There’s no right or wrong. We live according to our needs. Yours is a hellish desire to live and to create life. / What’s yours? / To be dead. Stone dead.

“All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.”

I remember one time, senior year in high school, when one of my teacher asked me if I had been reading any books lately, I said, yes, I just finished Lolita, and I’m starting a new Nabokov book. I awkwardly added that Vladimir Nabokov was the best writer ever, giggled, and walked away.

This was my second time at Peking Dragon, and I have to say I was pretty impressed. First time I went, I didn’t remember much of what I ate so I didn’t have a very solid opinion. This time, we ordered more. For starters, their brown rice is amazing. Really huge yummy kernels, sticky, easy to eat and didnt taste fatty at all. Then we shared a Peking Lemon Salad. This was really good but a bit overpriced at $9.50 for the small container it came in. Although, the setting is pretty nice and this is an average price for a salad at a restaurant in these parts.

One of my favorite elements of Peking is that they encourage plate sharing. They actually have certain meals that are meant for multiple people. This is, according to them, in Chinese tradition.

Then we had the Peking classic lo mein dish – pretty good, not very meaty but it had a bit of shrimp, chicken and beef. This dish was pretty fatty. They serve some of the best Green tea here. I’ll go so far as to say it is the best green tea in Dana Point.

The tea and the rice were very cheap (a few dollars each) and they are the best part of this restaurant. Although it doesn’t hurt to have a salad or an entree when you are here. I still haven’t tried their soup menu – from the looks of their soup, it might be another of their strengths.

My fortune cookie said I am a food and drink connoisseur, so I thought it would only be appropriate if I wrote a review ;)

Can’t really recommend this movie. It’s not really animation, it’s rotoscoped live action. The plot and the writing was occasionally interesting but overall pretty dull. It was probably too stream of consciousness and too … hipstery. It was definitely original and unique but the pros don’t outweigh the cons. At times it was barely watchable. The 2nd half is better than the 1st half.

I was expecting a good movie because of the fantastic reviews and I did get a really good movie, well worth the price. But I wasn’t expecting for people to go out and say this is the greatest movie ever made. But then again wasn’t Avatar the best movie ever made a while back? I shouldn’t take it so seriously … :)
I felt this movie is far from a great movie. It’s a good movie. At it’s core, it’s a twist movie. A weak narrative that serves only to get you high off surprises, mindless action that lacked the beauty and elegance of the editing, which was probably the most interesting part of the movie. A couple days later, I realized the editing had a bit of a Rashōmon flavor, which, judging from Nolan’s other movies, is his favorite flavor of editing. (Fun fact, before the movie, there was a coke commercial that had music similar to the Rashōmon music.)

The writing? Blah. It wasn’t terrible, but I’m a huge believer in “Show, don’t tell” especially when it comes to movies of the mystical/arcane variety. I felt that too much was told to you. Lines like “We create the world of a dream. We bring a subject into that dream and they fill it with their secrets.” and of course the eloquent – “Dreams within dreams is too unstable.” Too bad this wasn’t a movie about cats.

Last but not least, I really disliked the heist elements.

That’s it.

PS. Memento was better.

I liked this. It wasn’t grotesque romance melodrama. It balanced between subtle and confrontational. Very natural plot flow. I’m not really surprised it was on the top movies of the decade list for 2000-2010 on Metacritic.

Was pretty bad. Anne Hathaway’s character was decent, though. The story was all mixed up and even though I’m not an Alice fanatic or something, I really don’t understand the purpose of the plotline they had. It didn’t really make it more interesting. It was quite boring actually. Which is strange for such a visually arresting movie. Maybe I should watch the original Alice in Wonderland film.

雨月物語 or Ugetsu or Tales of Moonlight and Rain is a 1953 film made by Kenji Mizoguchi. It’s not a subtle film. You might even say it’s the opposite of subtle as four characters are developed to tell the same story. It’s also not subtle because it’s emotionally arresting. I didn’t cry at this movie, I just teared up a bit, but 30 minutes later, an hour later, it hits you like a boulder over and over. It’s that intense. It makes you want to wake up from whatever dream you’re living. It makes you want to love someone, unconditionally, eternally, inhumanly, even, or rather, especially if it’s not possible.
This movie is not a love story. It’s a very colorful drama, with pain, horror, comedy, mystery, and finally love. The scenery is extremely delicate. Perfectly balanced with the artistic direction is the timing and camera movement, that move slowly from side to side as if you’re being cradled. You watch silently as people die, love, suffer and dream. The timing is perfect. It’s fast paced in general, except for a few key scenes where the slow pace increases the intensity tenfold.It’s a dark movie, which I wasn’t totally in love with because it made things harder to see, but it fit the tone. I tried not to give away too much in my post because the mystery element of the film is very entertaining to see unfold. I will say however that it is a ghost story, and has a couple disturbing scenes. It’s all necessary to go full-circle with the movie’s karmic mood.

The finest silk
Of choicest hue
May change and fade away;
As would my life,
My beloved,
If thou shouldst prove untrue…

I really liked this movie. It was genuinely funny. The only qualm I have is Marilyn’s character. I didn’t like the tragicomic element. The alcoholism and the sadness (on her end) of the deception, and how she just accepts it guilelessly at the end sort of put a damper on the comedy. I guess Sugar was right, she wasn’t very bright. The character was a bit annoying, but maybe at the time it sold because Marilyn’s life was similarly tragic? And that’s what people wanted to see? Her performance is the only part of the film that didn’t really click for me. Otherwise, it was really funny, and I love the gender bending humor.

Edit: Sort of related, I really like the typography on this poster: (Czech)