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June 29, 2006
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
If you want a depressing film, or a film that feels so real it hurts, stay far away from this flick. On the other hand, if you like great performances alongside some frustrating cliches (why, when there are a lot of children involved are they only rarely called by name?!?), then this is the movie for you.
Unfortunately, my copy from Netflix was scratched badly in two places, but I believe I saw most of the film. (Nevertheless, I liked it enough to order a better copy to be delivered ASAP for a second viewing.)
Many reviewers, especially of the male persuasion, found this to be a treacly chick flick that barely rose to made-for-tv quality. On the other hand, less cynical Y-chromosome possessing critics and plenty of women found it endearing. Yes, there are things I'd love to know about this family and especially this mother that weren't fully explained in the movie. But when you consider that it is based on the memoir of a child, it fits perfectly: there's no way to know the extremely inner feelings of the protagonist; but enough of her life theory is explained to understand why she stayed with her alcoholic, (verbally, financially) abusive husband. And Woody Harrelson is always good at realistically playing extremely flawed men.
tPWoDO is a first rate look at the extraordinary perseverance of one Midwest housewife in the 50s and 60s. It is well worth 1.5 hrs.
Rotten Tomatoes listing
Ebert's review / plot explanation
Posted by cj at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
Decision Made: Going Back to L.A.
I can't wait to be able to announce the major reason for this decision.
In any event, if you have any job leads in marketing or activism, please drop me a comment!
My lease isn't up till September 30, so I might be here for awhile longer. I'm trying to stay through July because I've got some major plans coming up, including
* supporting WILPF US co-President Chris Morin as she competes in the triathlon on July 16 at the Gay Games
* attending the Symposium on Building a Progressive Majority on July 20.
Posted by cj at 12:22 AM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2006
Cultural Hodgepodge
Bob Dylan in the Baseball Hall of Fame. by the Associate Press. Basically, one of his radio programs for XM Satellite radio is being entered in the Hall b/c it focuses on baseball. He even sang the national anthem. Why can't I just subscribe to his program rather than XM?!?!
India.Arie released her third album yesterday. I'm trying to allow it to calm my frayed nerves. Listening to it for the fourth time via Rhapsody. My nerves are still frayed, but that's because of the state of the world, not the quality of the album.
So-called Star was finally fired from The View! Hilarity ensues as she shows her trashy nature by interrupting a segment to announce her dismissal, which led to her immediate termination!
I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to check out my other blog. The world is a very scary place these days.
Posted by cj at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2006
Don't Drink the Water
So who know that the lil play by Woody Allen was made into a movie in the 60s starring Jackie Gleason? And Woody had nothing to do with that flick and hated it so much that he made a made-for-tv movie to resucitate his screwball comedy.
Oddly enough, I rented the film without knowing it was made for tv. It showed up in Netflix recommendations after I rented Melinda and Melinda, and I decided to go for it because I have vague memories of being the Stage Manager and Sultan's Wife (nonspeaking role, due to my theatre teacher's belief that I couldn't act my way out of a paper bag) ten years ago during my senior year of high school. Yes, in fact it has been ten years. Dude, I'm old.
Anyway, it was a light-hearted affair and the reason the wife reminded me of Marge Simpson is because the actress is Marge Simpson. So that's what Julie Kavner looked like 12 years ago. And perhaps this tv movie is the reason the aforementioned theater teacher chose the play. At any rate, I had zero recollection of the daughter and the romantic subplot, so it was a pleasant 1.5 hrs. Not earth-shattering. No need to watch it again. But pleasant enough. Specially since it included watching Michael J. Fox falling in love with Blossom.
I think it might be time for me to watch Annie Hall again...I keep hoping to find another Allen film that grabs me like that one did. No luck yet, but I've only scratched the surface of his ouevre.
IMDB listing for the tv movie.
IMDB listing for the supposedly terrible Gleason version.
Posted by cj at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2006
My New Baby
With much love and thanks to my rents, I am now the proud owner of a Dell XPS M170. Might possibly be the most cutting-edge laptop I'll ever own. Granted, part of me wishes I hadn't followed my sister on the path to a big screen because I think this behemoth weighs more than my old & on-the-verge-of-dying Toshiba Satellite...but I know I'll get over it. (I originally wanted to the lighter, smaller in all respects version, the XPS M1210, which weighs less than five pounds; but like I said I can deal with the weight. Now I just have to deal with the fact that the default screen size is too itty bitty for my blind eyes.)
I never thought laptop speakers could be this crystal clear. Huzzah for Rhapsody and Dylan! Currently listening to the Oh Mercy cd...
Posted by cj at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2006
Electricity Lost, Futbol Tie
I watched the absolutely thrilling Ghana - Czech World Cup Match yesterday while cooking / eating breakfast. There is absolutely nothing better than the underdog romping a heavily favored team. Ghana scored its first goal within the first two minutes of the game - a World Cup record. They went on to win 2-0, and the announcers said if they'd played smarter it could've been a 4-0 win.
The only weird part was that a Ghanan player - Paintsil - kept waving an Israeli flag. The US commentators said Absolutely Nothing. Turns out Paintsil plays for an Israeli club. As a UK observer pointed out, this would be like Beckham raising the Spanish flag during a UK win in the World Cup. According to Reuters, Paintsil wanted to honor his Israeli fans. I suppose it makes sense: his professional life seems to be based in Israel, and there are many Ghanan workers in Israel, but still...it could be used as an example of the lowering levels of nationalism in the world; which to me is an excellent thing. Alternatively, since it was a form of nationalism, just for his chosen country instead of his home country, it could be seen as an example of the importance of nationalism both as a civic philosophy and useful for personal economic security. (Apparently, the Tel Avic club Paintsil plays for was looking to axe him before yesterday's game.)
The announcers also kept promoting the US game at 3pm. Turns out that was the EDT start of the damn game. In reality it started at 2pm CDT, a fact I only caught onto much later in the day.
See, at about 2:20, the power was cut to my building. I had been doing other things on my puter and hadn't realized the game had already started. Sitting in my top floor flat in 90 degree heat without fans wasn't appealing, so I took a shower, got dressed, and started walkin to a pub. By the time I got there, the pub was dealing w its own circuit-breaker problems and I ended up only seeing the last ten minutes of the US game. Doh! Oh well, it didn't stop me from getting drunk with some random futbol fans...
Now I'm wondering if I should attempt to make breakfast with my food that sat unrefrigerated for 5 to 7 hours...
Posted by cj at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2006
Hilarious Explanations of Futbol
You simply must read Dave Egger's excerpt from his book The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, on Slate. Here's an excerpt of the excerpt:
The beauty of soccer for very young people is that, to create a simulacrum of the game, it requires very little skill. There is no other sport that can bear such incompetence. With soccer, 22 kids can be running around, most of them aimlessly, or picking weeds by the sidelines, or crying for no apparent reason, and yet the game can have the general appearance of an actual soccer match. If there are three or four coordinated kids among the 22 flailing bodies, there will actually be dribbling, a few legal throw-ins, and a couple of times when the ball stretches the back of the net. It will be soccer, more or less.
Also check out Luis Arroyave's Red Card blog on the Trib's site. While not quite laugh out loud funny like Eggers, Arroyave does provide good color commentary on what it's like to be in the host country during a World Cup.
Posted by cj at 06:42 AM | Comments (0)
Lisa Loeb and other Jews
So on Sunday I went to the Chicago Jewish Festival. My sole motivation for leaving my Sunday NY Times at 11:30 this morning was to see Lisa Loeb for free. It ended up costing me a $5 forced donation, but I suppose that was worth it for Lisa.
Unlike most people, I own a Loeb album (Hello Lisa) and I didn't even remember that her #1 single was featured in the movie Reality Bites. I've also been listening to her on Rhapsody. So I was pleasantly surprised that she played a few of the songs from the album I've come to appreciate via Rhapsody - The Way it Really Is. There were only two downsides to her performance: an extremely obnoxious "festival staff" person in a bright orange shirt who refused to get off the stage (he was taking pictures of her and the audience and completely distracting both her and the audience from her performance), and it was too short. Well, a third downside: I had to listen to a rabbi rockin out while waiting for Loeb to perform. It totally reminded me of Crossing California, including the random female groupies to the side of the stage.
I'm really glad I went with someone because chatting with her made it okay that I was at a really dorky, completely uninspiring Jewish event. I also managed to get in an argument with an Israeli ex-Special Forces guy. This because my purse has my WCUSP button on it. (WCUSP = Women Challenge US Policy: Building Peace on Justice in the Middle East, a national campaign of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and I am the WILPF US Program Chair.) Then my friend and I started debating the Israel / Palestine issue. And the whole thing made me realize that I need more ways to explain my views to other Jews who believe that a Jewish state is absolutely necessary to avoid another holocaust. I could go on, but I don't want to talk off the cuff on such an important issue.
Afterward, we went to Ribfest on Lincoln in my hood. I had half of a fried Snickers, a corn on the cob, a rib sampler, and a few bites of a Ribwich sandwich. I should've bought another ticket and gone for the Cuban sandwich I had originally been eyeing. Then again, having found an authentic recipe on the net, I now remember why I've never tried one before: garlic is a main ingredient in the roast pork, and I'm allergic to garlic. In any case, I'm not exactly wasting away so it's fine with me that I threw out most of the sandwich.
Posted by cj at 01:42 AM | Comments (0)
9 by 9, FIFA, and other tidbits from Saturday
9 by 9 is the challenge to drink 9 drinks by 9am in honor of the beginning of the World Cup. Or maybe it's just an excuse to start drinking at 6am. The women who invited me out this weekend for the most part had even less understanding of football than me. For example, they didn't know that the World Cup occurs once every four years. Or that a player plays on both a professional club team and their national team. But that's understandable. I was almost as clueless before I dated a football fanatic. Almost, but not quite - I had already seen "Bend it Like Beckham," and my Big Sis was in Brazil during the last World Cup, so she caught the fever then and passed some knowledge onto me.
So to recap from the World of Sports That Everyone Who Doesn't Live in the US Is Paying Attention To: England won its opening game against Paraguay. The lone goal was kicked into the net by a Paraguayan player. I really don't want to be that man when he goes home from the games. Next up on Saturday was Sweden v. Trinidad / Tobago. Trinidad is in the US division for qualifying for the World Cup. The way it works is that the top three teams from each geographic area automatically qualify. Other teams can qualify through a wild card style access. The top three teams from the North America division were Mexico, the US, and Costa Rica. So Trinidad made it in by the skin of their teeth on a wild card and is the smallest country (geographically) at the World Cup. They managed to hold Sweden to a nil-nil tie. This really helps the UK b/c Sweden only gets one point for a tie, whereas the UK got three points for a win. The third game of Saturday, the Ivory Coast v. Argentina was probably also a great game to watch. Alas, for that I was at a Pig Roast and missed Argentina kicking ass to a 2-1 victory.
By the way, Costa Rica lost to Germany on Friday in a surprising (relatively) high scoring 2-4 game; and valiant Ecuador pounded Poland to a 2-0 victory.
On Sunday, while I was getting ready to go to the Jew Fest, the obnoxious American announcers kept trying to conflate politics and sport during the Mexico-Iran game. Not only did they spew the irrational war-mongering party line about Iranian politics, but they talked more about their misguided understanding of Iran then they did play by play of the damn game. Mexico won 3-1. In the earlier game, not televised on ABC (damn them; getting broadcast channels only sucks), the Netherlands beat Serbia / Montenegro 1-0. And in the final game of the day, Portugal beat Angola 1-0.
According to a guy I met yesterday, "only immigrants in the US care about the World Cup." I'm glad most people I know are not so xenophobic. Granted, I still understand if you haven't caught World Cup fever, but I encourage you to use it as an excuse to go to a pub in the next few weeks: you're bound to meet many more cute males than any other random public gathering.
Posted by cj at 01:19 AM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2006
Printer's Row Book Fair: Read the Fine Print
The fine print is: don't plan on spending an entire day around books for sale without proper transportation. What I mean is, if like me you are compelled to buy more books than you could actually read, then unlike me take a rolling bag with you to a book fair. Silly me, I chose fashion over practicality. I was thinking of taking my backpack, but since my new shirt (from Nordstrom's Rack) was basically backless, I wanted to flaunt that instead of covering it up with a bag. Little did I know that a backpack wouldn't have been enough for the weight of the books I chose. Or did they choose me?
Jane Addams
Here's where it all started. Two very heavy hardcover books on Ms. Jane, co-founder of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Damn woman cost me more than the rest of my books combined. But it was worth it. The author discussion was great and inspiring: nothing has been written about Jane's activism through WILPF and "the definitive history of WILPF has not been written." So, apparently one possible way out of the dilemma of making a living while pursuing my passion for WILPF is to write about our dead history. Well, obviously it's not dead but the part about dead people captures a lot more people's imaginations than the living part. It's late and I should've written this earlier when my inner cynic wasn't trying to get me to go to sleep; but such is life.
Louise K. Knight wrote Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. I haven't read it yet, but her style is engaging, accessible, and full of depth. Plus, she's a sister WILPFer! So, I highly recommend her book. :)
Katherine Joslin wrote Jane Addams: A Writer's Life. Again, haven't read it but her style seems to be more grounded in university-ese. Indeed, her purpose is to show Jane's importance as an intellectual author, so it makes sense that she writes in a more refined way than Knight, whose purpose was to examine and re-tell the first 40 years of Jane's life.
Since my eyes are drooping, I must go to sleep without telling you about the rest of the fair or the 3 movies I haven't written about yet. manana es una otra dia.
Posted by cj at 11:44 PM | Comments (1)
June 01, 2006
The Da Vinci Code
I saw this opening weekend (life's full of stuff that's been keeping me from blogging, or did you not notice?) I really tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. I was actually excited for it: it's been long enough since I read the book that I didn't remember all the plot twists. Which allowed me to gasp out loud at some of the thriller parts (I admit it, I'm that kind of "girl watchin a movie." Which is why you'll never see me at a slasher flick - I've got enough nightmares as it is, thank you very much.)
Right, but there were also times during the film when I had ants in my pants. And I couldn't figure out if that was just b/c I was seeing A Seminal Summer Movie alone or what. I think the what's have it: it just wasn't that good.
In the words of Bob Bloom of the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Indiana:
The book kept you breathless; the movie makes you restless.
I'm still troubled by this movie. Part of me agrees with Ebert's reviews (both on teevee and in print). It worked as a popcorn flick. It wasn't the greatest popcorn flick ever made, but Ron Howard always makes pretty pictures. Worth seein, but not worth standing in line for (which I imagine you wont have to do anymore anyway).
Rotten Tomatoes entry (consensus = it's rotten)
Ebert gave it three stars, as did his users.
IMDB entry
Posted by cj at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)
Fanny and Alexander
One of the many reasons Netflix loves me is that I stubbornly hold onto dvd's waiting for the inspiration to watch them for weeks at a time. I did this not once, but twice with Fanny and Alexander. The broken promise raved about it, which is the reason it landed in my flat the first time. (I have a love, love, hate relationship with foreign movies: I love to watch them, love to think about them, and hate to get up the inspiration to read subtitles. But it's really no harder than fully paying attention to an English language film.) It landed on my Netflix the second time because other film reviewers wrote passionately about their love of Bergman and this particular masterpiece, so here it came at the most inopportune time: when I got extremely sick with bronchitis.
So, I've finally seen the theatrical release form of Fanny and Alexander. And I gotta say, I can't wait to see the 6 hour (made for Swedish television) version. Of course, I want to wait and watch that version on a better screen. Perhaps the big screen at my folks' house. It definitely warrants surround sound and sharp picture quality.
Ebert gave the movie 4 stars when it first came out in 1983. In that review, he explained the movie's importance in relation to Bergman's oeuvre. Then, he reviewed it again in 2004 as part of his "Great Movies" series. If, like me, you get sick of the obligatory plot description in Ebert reviews, definitely do not read the latter review. It was actually a pleasant read for me, since it reminded me of all the delicately shifting aspects of the plot.
My favorite words from his reviews are contained in the last graph of the Great Movies review:
At the end, I was subdued and yet exhilarated; something had happened to me that was outside language, that was spiritual, that incorporated Bergman's mysticism; one of his characters suggests that our lives flow into each other's, that even a pebble is an idea of God, that there is a level just out of view where everything really happens.Amen, brother.
Other interesting tidbit: Rotten Tomatoes lists 16 fresh reviews, 0 rotten.
IMDB entry
Posted by cj at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
I've been in Chicago for two years, longer than I've stayed in any city since graduating college 6 years ago. Eventually, I'd like to get a job in the peace economy, but since that economy is currently dwarfed by all other economies in the US, I'm havin a bit of difficulty finding a dream job...
And then, I've got to wonder: where should I be applying for work? I thought I had decided to try to stick it out here in the Land of Broken Dreams. But familial relations are tugging my heart strings back to LaLa Land. My friends caution me not to make a decision based solely on feelings for others. Which is true. I think part of the problem is that I've been stuck in my head alone for the last year and the opportunity to truly help someone sparkles at me like a pair of shiny, new shoes. And if you know me at all, you know it's difficult for me to pass up new shoes.
Often, I berate myself for the apparent lack of forward progress in my life in the last year. I stayed at exactly the same job in exactly the same apartment with almost exactly the same furniture as I was a year ago, when I was eagerly anticipating moving back to LaLa Land with the broken promise. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that (a)I no longer define myself in relation to a significant other (b)I've taken on more responsibility in WILPF - I'm now the Program Chair! And it can be a little overwhelming at times to think about, but it's definitely enough work to keep me busy (c)I've been applying to jobs and (d)I've really learned how to enjoy my own company.
Now it's time to completely move on. 50% of me wants to keep trucking along in The Windy City, because for some reason I feel like I can get my bearings here better than anywhere with the distraction of friends and family. The other 50% wants to go back to L.A. - at least for a year - because it would be a great year to be in L.A...
in other news, I got my first tan in, oh, five years! It's only the start of great things to come. Of course, next time I'm out on the river in 90 degree heat, I'll wear sunscreen.
Posted by cj at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)