January 2010 « justinlife

26 January 2010

some psych work at last

Posted by admin @ 16:42 pm categories: Food • Psychology

I went today to a third meeting at the Complutense University of Madrid, this time for the head of the MEG/EEG center there (who’s* also in charge of the Psychiatry Department in the Medical School) to give me some instructions. I got there on-time, but had said I’d be late, so I walked in at 17:20, to find that he wasn’t there. I sat in a waiting room at the end of the hall (I should add that the hallway had the lights off, and that his office was the only one with anyone in it — not surprising perhaps since many professors don’t keep long office hours, but still weird) until the secretary/assistant/coordinator (I’m not sure) invited me into her office, which was heated. At maybe 17:45, Professor O. arrived, and rushed into a meeting that had been postponed, I believe. I read from Panorama, the McSweeney’s newspaper-and-magazine that I got for the holiday’s (it’s awesome — all the articles are engaging, even those that I don’t care much about; here’s one they’ve put online). Eventually, I started thinking of leaving, but I figured I’d just be playing on the internet.

Shortly thereafter, Professor O. invited me and the woman into the other room, and demonstrated these glasses that they’re using for an experiment — sunglasses with a camera on the top, hidden, for blind men to wear. I believe — this was all in very fast Spanish. Decidedly, they’re doing a study on attention and motivation (stuff I’ve worked on before!) in the blind, but how exactly the study is going on I’m still unclear on. I think they all already knew, so that was one of the main problems. In any case, there were four men — all professors or academics, at least one an engineer — talking about the study, and we sat with them for a bit. They ended up in a discussion of whether attention and motivation are separate processes or one process with two different names, which I found awesome: both the question, and the fact that I could understand it. (I think it’s quite likely they’re the same process, even if they’re that process working differently. Professor O. thinks the same; the engineer disagreed. I said a word or five, and they listened, but obviously I was slow to speak. I would’ve been even if they were speaking English; they were almost all at least twice my age.)

After the meeting wound down, Professor O. and I met briefly, and he described the plans: he wants me to do some research on the topics of positive and negative emotion as they relate to EEG waves, the two hemispheres of the brain, and picture/word presentation. In some senses, this is very similar to things I’ve done. But it’s kind of exciting, and the eventual plan is to move this study onto looking at depression. I won’t be there for that, but he intends to involve me for the entirety of this study — designing it, analyzing data, writing the paper. I’m not sure why he’s being so helpful, but I guess in some sense he’s gaining me as someone who’s excited to help run a study he wants run, and and that’s a great thing. I’m excited, for my part. If all goes well, we’ll get to publish something. And if we get stymied, I’ll certainly have a lot of great experience. I imagine I may talk more about the research I’m doing, if it’s interesting, on this forum. I’ll warn you.

* It had been a long time since I had thought of the difference between whose and who’s. I had to teach them this week. It’s generally so instinctive. Except when it’s not. I often make the written mistake of they’re versus their. And right vs. write, which is probably my worst mistake. They’re so simple to do, when you’re writing (or typing) quickly. Clearly the mistake has nought to do with not knowing, and much to do with mistaking something.

A note: I made soup with all that chicken stock I made the other day. Today, so a bit later than I thought. I’ll have it for dinner tomorrow, and Thursday, and I’d probably have enough for two more days besides if I weren’t going to Dublin. It’s spicy, and pretty good. I used half an onion flavoured with a red chili (not sure what kind — it wasn’t labeled in the greengrocer’s) and some cumin and turmeric; I added half a green pepper, broccoli, garbanzo beans, tiny pasta like orzo, and eggplant (cooked separately). In that order. Not bad for something just using all of my vegetables in the fridge.

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24 January 2010

a busy weekend

Posted by admin @ 17:28 pm categories: art • people

The One-Man Band Band, picture from Canal's website

Most awesomely: At the recommendation of one of the women I work with, I went to see a group called The One-Man-Band Band. (They’re French Canadian, so I guess the real name would be L’Orquestre d’Hommes-Orquestres. It was in Spanish here, obviously.) You can see a youtube video of them performing, and see just how awesome it is. They are, more than anything, performance art — they cover Tom Waits songs, but I think “interpret” is a better word, and it’s the word they use. They’re ridiculous, and tons of fun. I was very glad to have been told about it in time to go. (Read more about it, if you like.)

They played in one of the many Canal de Isabel II buildings, up in the north-west of the center. It’s a huge complex, but the theatre itself was about what you think of when you think medium-to-small school theatre, although very new and well-set-out. And the group, who sung entirely in English of course, were clever and talented. They made me want to listen to Tom Waits more. I need to get his music off of my external hard drive and put it onto my computer.

I went with Ashley and Mateo. Ashley is really into Tom Waits, but I think all three of us ended up liking it — as music, as performance, as odd-thing-to-do-on-a-Sunday-evening. So, hurrah!

Last night, we had a sort-of-birthday-party for Ashley, at my friends’ place. There were maybe twelve or thirteen of us there. We played the forehead game (I suppose it has a better name, but I like calling it this — some of you may know it as the game they play in Inglourious Basterds, where you put a famous person’s name on someone else’s forehead and they have to guess who they are; I don’t remember where I learned about it but it’s been a favourite parlor game for a few years now), and had some drinks, before heading out to a club.

Now, most of you who know me are aware that I’m not much of a club person. I like dancing perfectly fine, when I’m pressed into it; I’ll have a drink or two. But clubs seem to expect a lot more than I’m willing to give. Drunkenness, rampant spending, and so forth. Not things I consider anathema, but neither my favourite sports. So it’s quite odd that I went to a club not just last night, but the night before as well (that time, with my flatmates). I think I’m worn out on the whole deal for a good while, now. In any case, last night we ended up at a well-known club in Madrid called Kapital. It’s famous not least in part because it has got seven floors; it was quite packed. There’s a dance floor, and then floor upon floor of bars, and so forth. Most of us who were at the party ended up going to the discotheque. All of us, maybe? In any case, I ended up going in with Mateo and Ashley, Mateo’s sister Sarah, who studies in Salamanca, and her friend Dan, who was visiting and was pretty awesome (and now not in Spain. sucks, don’t it?). The five of us paid our €20, and after some talking finally ended up dancing down on the main dance floor, with a girl named Molly and her friend Alicia. The dance floor was packed, the music was reasonably good, and every five minutes or so a heavy spray of mist, more like fog than anything else, was thrown down into the dance floor, cooling people down — probably the coolest thing about the club, in my opinion. But to be honest, as usually happens to me in clubs, I have the most fun observing — I like dancing, sure, and it was fun to dance with Sarah and Dan, but watching the people around us is half the enjoyment for me. Like the guy in the striped sweater who kept staring at Sarah and Molly. Or the kid who followed our friend A. around, until Molly yelled at him and got someone who worked there to get him to back off.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, and it was a late night, as clubbing in Madrid tends to be, so I’m going to publish this and hope it’s coherent. I intend to write some teaching stories sometime soon. And so I shall.

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23 January 2010

on gay marriage

Posted by admin @ 9:37 am categories: Uncategorized

I’ve linked to this elsewhere, but this article from The New Yorker is really quite fantastic. I’m really a fan of the way the writer (Margaret Talbot, whose name I don’t recognize) presents the case, and compares it to other quests for civil rights.

She discusses the necessity of finding suitable plaintiffs for a case like this, by comparing the Lovings, who were plaintiffs for a case on interracial marriage (and have the perfect name), with the woman who was the plaintiff in Roe vs. Wade (and later became an anti-abortion activist). I heard an NPR piece on Rosa Parks, and how she wasn’t in fact the first woman to do what she did, but instead was the one who had the best background for pursuing a national suit. (Before her, most recently, was a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin who was pregnant and not thought of as a good face for the campaign. Which makes sense, really.)

Anyway, I recommend it for reading. I wish I could jump to the end and see what happens, but I guess that doesn’t work so well in Real Life.

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21 January 2010

nerd! 1: books. 1.5: climbing. 2: food.

Posted by admin @ 16:52 pm categories: Food • writing

So there’s no real excuse for this.

When I was in eighth grade, I think, I started reading a series called The Wheel of Time, written by a man known as Robert Jordan. (That’s a pseudonym, for no good reason that I know of. He just always wrote this series with this pseudonym, and others with different ones.) It’s epic fantasy in the most ridiculous way possible. By which I mean: it’s quite literally epic, in that there are currently 12 books (with two more forthcoming) and over 10,500 paperback pages (thanks, wikipedia). Yeah. By comparison, The Lord of the Rings is three books long. George R.R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire (which I read three books from in high school, and ended up finding surprisingly distasteful) is four books long (although three more are projected). Terry Goodkind’s godawful (the first two were good, and then I got disgusted) Sword of Truth series is eleven books long, I guess. WoT (as it’s often abbreviated) has sold almost twice as many books as the Goodkind series, around 44 million copies. Martin’s series is considerably shorter. The only fantasy series I ever liked as much as WoT was Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (beginning with The Dragonbone Chair and feeling very much like something Lloyd Alexander might’ve written). (To be fair, I didn’t finish the third back in that series until years after I first tried it. But that doesn’t fault the beginning.) There is also some more elf-heavy fiction, which I’ve managed to almost block out of my mind. Like Terry Brook’s Shannara series, which I’m kind of happy to forget.

Anyway, I guess the point is that most fantasy isn’t quite so large-scale as Jordan’s, and clearly I’m not the only one who admires that. Anyway, over break I picked up the series (I started on book two, and ended up just keeping on going), and now I’m reading book eleven. Twelve was released in November, I think, co-written by Brandon Sanderson because Jordan died three years ago, now. Leaving copious notes, and a wish that the books be finished.

I do acknowledge, reading these for my third time, that there are lots of things that bother me. I especially notice the things that maybe only happen twice a book, but happen twice every book. There are things like braid-pulling that happen way too often. Phrases like “his cloak would’ve made a tinker blush” are used every time a certain character appears (he’s supposed to wear a too-colorful cloak). I am frustrated when characters do stupid things. For example, characters who are not only on the same side, but also friends, don’t share important information with each other. Sometimes motivations are weak — I still don’t quite get why many of the villains switched sides not just to a different side but to the evil side. It’s one thing when the villain is, you know, a king who wants to rule the world. It’s another when the ultimate villain is the Dark One, a devil who touches the world and enjoys torture, death, and destruction, and expects his followers to as well. Someone who’s jealous might turn on their friends, but not so far as to embrace sadism. Or maybe once, but not over and over again. Right? Maybe I’m being re-naïve.

In any case, this is tons of fun. I like reading these books. I’m reading the eleventh one for the first time, I’m pretty sure (I didn’t own it, and I don’t remember it), and then I’ll have to switch writing styles and read (well, listen to, on audio book) the twelfth. And then I’ll be dry at least until November.

I’m not even going to try describing the plot. Wikipedia does an okay job, but if you’re at all interested then you should pick up the first book, The Eye of the World. It’s kind of pulp fiction, but well-written and well-thought-out for the most part. The characters have distinct personalities. Occasionally you get lost, but there are websites for looking that sort of thing up. Also a brief glossary in the back of the books.

Actually, there are a ridiculous number of websites dedicated to WoT. Not just wikis, of which there are at least two, but “scholarly” sites where people write up their theories, or think about the roots of Jordan’s ideas, or any such thing. It’s quite fun. And useful, when you’re lost, or want to know whether people think the same thing you do. Unfortunately, the websites DO assume you’ve read everything (obviously), and so sometimes give out spoilers.

In other news:

Today, I went rock climbing! It was quite a lot of fun. I feel a bit more comfortable at the place, although I still don’t really say more than two words to anyone other than the woman working at the desk. Still, it feels good to be exercising more than yoga on occasion, and if I couldn’t do anything difficult and felt tired quickly, then it’s well that I finally bought a ten-visit pass and will be going in ten times over the next three months. At least. I’ll try and use it faster. If I go twice a week, then I’ll buy a monthly membership. That’d be fun!

On Tuesday, despite being exhausted, on a whim I bought a tiny (1.5 kilo) chicken from the butcher’s (that’s a bit more than 3 pounds) for €4. The guy threw in two chicken carcasses for free, too, which was nice. So I roasted the chicken that night, more or less following this recipe. More “more” than less, except that I only left it to rest for an hour and a half or so. Even so, it turned out splendidly. Crispy skin, moist breasts, maybe a tiny bit soggy since the lemon had a lot of juice. I had the chicken and potatoes for dinner that night and last night as well.

I also saved two things: first, the chicken carcass, bad meat, joints, and skin. Second, the oil and drippings left in the pan. The latter I used for tonight’s dinner, which was fantastic: I took the last pieces of chicken, and fried them in a bit of (lemon) chicken fat with green peppers, just to warm them. I made rice with stock. I sautéed mushrooms in butter (Michael Ruhlman has an excellent meditation on how best to cook mushrooms, which I didn’t quite follow, since I used butter, but sort of did). And then I made tacos, just peppers, mushrooms, rice, and chicken. Delicious.

The reason I had stock to make rice in, of course, is that I made it. Two raw chicken carcasses, plus one roasted chicken carcass, plus a €1 selection of celery, leek, and carrots from the supermarket, plus some leftover cilantro and some garlic and an onion. I bought a new, bigger pot today, primarily because we needed one (for €15 — I doubt it’ll last more than a year, but I’ll be gone then), and it sat with water turning into stock for around five hours. (I followed Ruhlam’s book for this one. He knows that stuff back-and-front.) I’ll put the stock in the fridge for the night, and then make soup tomorrow, I think. But for now, it made some very soft, flavorful rice.

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17 January 2010

more movies.

Posted by admin @ 18:23 pm categories: art

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, dir. Terry Gilliam, 2009.

I really liked this movie. It reminded me somewhat of the 2006 film The Fall, which I also really liked. Lush, ridiculous fantasy world. Imperfect plot. Beautiful. I like most of this movie. I would hold off on recommending it, because I think many people might not like it. But if it seems exciting to you, then I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Le Roi et l’oiseau, dir. Paul Grimault, 1952/1980. (The King and the Bird)

Apparently this movie has been cited as an influence by Hiyao Miyazake, the famed Japanese director of Spirited Away and so much else. I’m not surprised. It’s a kid’s movie, only not. It’s gorgeously drawn; the dialogue is silly but sometimes clever. It re-tells the story of “The Chimney Sweep and the Shepherdess,” only with lots of liberties. It’s kind of hilarious, kind of bizarre, and fun. I saw it was playing at the Cine Doré, part of the Spanish Filmotheque, on Saturday, and went with a number of friends. It’s a beautiful theatre, and I like what they do (although the sound quality isn’t great). Overall it was just plain fun. Also, cheap: they charge €2.50 for a ticket, or €2 for students.

District 9, dir. Neill lBlomkamp, 2009.

I finally finished this movie on the plane coming back from the States. It was okay. I watched most of it over the summer, and didn’t care to finish it until I had it in front of me. But I didn’t mind it, not at all. It just wasn’t a hugely thrilling film, either.

Youth in Revolt, dir. Miguel Arteta, 2009.

I liked this about twice as much as I expected to, which means I laughed and didn’t squirm too much. My friends thought it was amazing. My other friend’s dad, who was in our theatre with his wife and daughter, told me later that he thought it was fun as well. I think it’s pretty good. Despite everything, it’s still pretty typical Michael Cera. I don’t find it terribly boring, but it’s not terribly exciting either. Still, a pretty funny movie, and better than many comedies I’ve seen.

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madrid, again

Posted by admin @ 18:03 pm categories: Psychology • Spain

I’m back in Madrid, after a nice and mostly-relaxing break in Miami. The break was long, but still felt short in some ways.

In coming back to Madrid, I’m interested in what is and what feels changed, different. For sure, coming back here didn’t feel like moving to a new city — it felt like coming home. I think I’ve become better at feeling at home in places. I still don’t feel at home in other people’s houses, so perhaps it’s more that I’m becoming quicker at making a place feel like my home. Nonetheless, it’s a nice feeling, and as such I’ve promised myself to make the best of being in Spain. Take advantage of my luck, right?

I’ve started working with a professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, who’s doing EEG research into depression. We’re creating and carrying out a study, and because I have experience with EEG, he’s letting me take a greater role than I might have done if I had stuck with MEG work — although he’s promised me the opportunity to observe some MEG studies if I’m interested. (I am.) I’m excited to get back into doing psychology work; I’ve already mentioned on this forum that I’ve come to actually miss it. And if things go well, I may be able to help with any paper that comes out of this work — it helps to be fluent in English here, since most significant scientific publication is in English. Excellent.

As most people reading this know, I’ve applied to graduate school in clinical psychology, and I’ll be interviewing shortly. That’s a change, actually — a change in what kind of nervousness I’m feeling. But damn-exciting, no? I’m getting really excited about all of this, which is great up until the possibility where I don’t get in anywhere. But I’m keeping my hopes up, and if I do get in to grad school, then I’ll be thrilled to get started. Terrified, of course. But thrilled.

Here are some of the things that will happen before the end of the year, though. Things to look forward to, things to work on. For one, Joe will be coming to visit in early February. That should be exciting and fun. I may miss part of his visit for an interview, but I’ve no doubt that he’ll survive. My parents and maybe my sister are coming in the end of March, which should also be fun; we’ll explore Madrid and travel up to the north of Spain.

I also fully intend to do some outdoor climbing and hiking. There are amazing mountains in this country. Let’s take advantage of that, Justin! I’ve been meaning to buy a book on mountaineering in Spain; maybe from the climbing gym (I’m going this week; it seems worth it for the fun, and because maybe I’ll meet some people I like). There’s good hiking near Madrid, once it’s a bit warmer, and Kara recommended climbing up near Zaragossa, in an area called Rodellar. That sort of climbing would require a group, but I bet I can find bouldering somewhere nearby here. So I will! And maybe a friend will come with me and enjoy the outdoors and make sure I don’t break my neck.

In mid-May, I’m going to this music festival in Barcelona called Primavera Sound. Stee went two years ago and raved about it; the lineup is pretty awesome, I think. I’ve never been to a music festival before! Should be fun. And then of course, in July, I’ll be doing some traveling. I’m still unsure about my plans, but I want to head to some places in Europe that I’m really curious about. Suggestions are welcome!

Beyond that, I’ve just got to take advantage of things like being-in-Madrid. And meet some more Spaniards. Such shall it be.

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11 January 2010

vitamins

Posted by admin @ 12:08 pm categories: Food • Psychology

There’s a fascinating article in Slate about vitamins (especially multivitamins) and their efficacy. It’s a question that I’ve long wondered about: just how well do vitamins work? As I briefly mentioned before, Michael Pollan suggests that we should be making sure to eat foods that have important vitamins — but that popping pills of those vitamins might not be so effective. Emily Anthes, in this article, says something along the same lines — maybe we’re not accomplishing as much as we should think, by taking multi-vitamins.

Our flour and water and many of the foods we buy already have extra nutrients embedded within them, thanks to laws in the US, and if we’re eating healthful foods, we’re probably getting many of the rest. I don’t know that I’ll warrant that supplements are bad — not until the evidence builds up a bit more — but I do wonder about the usefulness of taking vitamins every day.

In any case, I definitely recommend giving the article a read. The best part about it? I spent the first half of the article thinking to myself, “Huh. It’s interesting that they’re suggesting that so many of these vitamins can affect the body in a possibly negative way, but what about the placebo effect?”, and then the second half is about the placebo effect. The brain is decidedly able to change the body. It can be undermined anyway, though.

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10 January 2010

three more movies

Posted by admin @ 16:43 pm categories: art

I’ve also recently seen:

Jennifer’s Body, 2009.

Ridiculous. Did a good job of portraying high schoolers and their relationships, actually. Except for the random addition of an evil succubus and evil rock band. What?

Youth in Revolt, 2009.

A lot better than I was expecting. Really quite funny. Very much a movie for people my age. But fun and enjoyable. I like Michael Cera, and I think he’s going to end up being more versatile than one might have expected at first. Yeah. The movie’s about him breaking out of the mold he started off in, and it’s silly, but it’s actually pretty clever and I laughed quite a bit. And got over the shudders over the awkward/embarrassing things that happened.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Felt like it was taking the children’s book as a jump-off point, and like it was made equally for stoners as for kids, but actually quite fun to my surprise.

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3 January 2010

some movie reviews

Posted by admin @ 23:14 pm categories: art • writing

I’ve finally gotten to see some movies in the past few weeks. Here they are, with my usual brief few-sentence review/description. The Road and Avatar are going to get a bit more treatment, I imagine. But I’ll go in order of when I saw them.

Up (wiki), dir. Pete Docter, 2009.
Up is somehow amazing endearing, happy and sad, and well-made. It was engrossing, I laughed and I cheered. I’m not so sure I’d want to watch it again tomorrow, but I sure would in a year. I definitely recommend it. (It’s about an old man who’s always wanted to go traveling, a young excitable boy scout, and the way they head to South America — with balloons raising the man’s entire house.)

Zombieland (wiki), dir. Ruben Fleischer, 2009.
This movie was ridiculous and every bit deserving of the praise it has received. It’s about a young man (Jesse Eisenberg, who was the older brother in The Squid and the Whale, and the lead in Adventureland — yeah, another “land”) who’s trying to survive in post-zombie-apocalypse America, and joins forces with an older man and two young women, sisters. It’s a romance, it’s a comedy, it’s a zombie movie. There are some quirks but they’re not overdone; the games the movie plays are surprisingly fun. I didn’t get even the slightest bit bored; I paused the movie so it would last longer. And maybe once or twice in a few awkward scenes. Definite recommendation.

On the plane from Madrid, I watched three movies.

Julie and Julia (wiki), dir. Nora Ephron, 2009.
I would never have watched this without some sort of prompting, but I’d heard good things, and it was indeed a fun movie. The acting is good (Meryl Streep plays Julia Child very well), and the plot is nice. Plus it’s about cooking! It’s certainly no movie to shy away from.

Juno
Watched this for my second time. Still good. Although yes, I agree with the criticism: how is a girl this smart having premeditated sex without a condom? (With Juno, there’s no excuse.) Still, that accepted, great movie.

City of Ember (wiki), dir. Gil Kenan, 2008.
I watched this movie near the end of the flight, more because I didn’t want to read than anything else. And it was pretty good, to be honest. A silly science fiction movie about a future where humans live in an underground city while the earth restores itself (think Wall-E and Zion from The Matrix films), where the generator is failing and the mayor (Bill Murray! especially funny after seeing him in Zombieland) is too blind to care about more than himself. So the kids (who go through a perhaps unnecessary but The Giver-like ceremony at the beginning) have to figure out what’s wrong or how to get out. And one of the kids is Saoirse Ronan, this young British actress who’s getting a lot of press and who has a difficult name. Anyway, not bad. Not something to search out, either.

When I got home, I watched some movies with my folks:

Adoration (wiki), dir. Atom Egoyan, 2009.
This movie was quite cool. I like Atom Egoyan, who also directed The Sweet Hereafter and Ararat. He’s concerned with [immigrant] identity, with Canada’s role in the world. This movie’s about a young man who ends up taking a school exercise too far. Read about it. Or just watch it. There are flaws, but Egoyan’s a magnificent story-teller, and watching the story unfold is pretty cool.

Avatar, dir. James Cameron, 2009.
Everyone knows about this, probably. I think Musa had interesting things to say, and I found this article very interesting. Mostly I just ended up having enjoyed the movie (I saw it 2-D; haven’t seen a 3-D movie in at least ten years), but feeling like it was kind of lame anyway, and not even all that special or novel. Also it reminded me of the amazing Ferngully. It reminded me a lot of Ferngully. Good, though. Worth seeing if you’re excited about it, I guess. Certainly not boring.

500 Days of Summer, (wiki), dir. Marc Webb, 2009.
Second time watching this (on DVD). A little less enjoyable the second time, but still fun. I like Joseph Gordon Levitt a lot. And Zoöey Deschanel, for that matter.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, dir. Sergio Leone, 1966.
I bought this for my father for the holidays. I first watched it with him and his father a good long while ago, and again at school last year. We sat down and watched it a few days ago. It’s still an excellent movie. There are some great scenes, and young Clint Eastwood is great. A classic, no kidding.

Finally there are two movies I’ve seen with friends:

The Road, (wiki), dir. John Hillcoat, 2009.
I read Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocolyptic novel about a man and his son trying to survive maybe a year or two ago. I didn’t like it that much, to be honest — a bit too sparse and bleak for me, I think — but I liked the ideas behind it. I think the movie does an excellent job of filling in the lines, for the most part, and sometimes for making things a bit more intense (not always in a good way, but mostly). There are some things that annoyed me about the movie — the scenes with the dead mother, for one — but they were in the book, too. It’s a very faithful adaptation. The two underground scenes — one involving a bunker, and one a cellar — were fantastic. My theatre was mostly empty, and I heard people gasping, and cheering, at appropriate moments. I didn’t quite approve of the way they ended the film, but other than that I was very impressed. Well done, sirs. Viggo Mortensen is the father, and excellently so. Still bleak and sad. Recommended.

Lastly:
Sherlock Holmes, (wiki), dir. Guy Ritchie, 2009.
So I mean, Guy Ritchie directed this. So I shouldn’t be surprised. But it’s not even as clever as a Guy Ritchie movie should be. It takes the character of Sherlock Holmes, a few elements of it, and then throws him and a souped-up Watson into a Dan Brown novel. Taken as that, it’s quite good. But the mystery is lacking. It’s a gang movie at heart, and that’s too bad. Robert Downey, Jr. is excellent as Holmes, in this role, and Jude Law makes for an attractive Watson (which Should Not Be, but oh well). Ritchie’s trying too hard to avoid the stereotypical Holmes, I think, and ends up falling too far in another direction. Still, I enjoyed the movie. Just… better plot, please. If only they had just made an actual Holmes story into the plot. I might’ve fallen for a street-tough Holmes anyway.

And that’s it for the moment.

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