Strange Movies...

One thing about cable TV is that there are times when you're tired and bored when you will watch a movie that you'd never rent. You can then end up watching some very odd movies. (For instance, when I had the flu a couple of years ago I watched this incredibly bizarre Johnny Depp movie where he was looking for some book and it was connected to the devil or something...?  I was feverish and slept through parts but the lingering impression was that it was very, very strange. And offputting. And did I mention strange?

This summer, one bored weekday evening when nothing was on, I sat through Tree of Life.  Which, if you've never seen it, is a completely non-linear movie. It comes off much like dreams -- beautiful, random, and... odd.  

Let me describe it this way, when a friend asked "What is it about?"  My answer was "I THINK it may have been some sort of thing where a man is dying and in his final moments he flashes back on his life and maybe glimpses heaven.  Except there were also  dinosaurs.  And I think he's alive in the end.  So... um... I'm not sure." The fact that I watched the whole thing and can only give theories about what may have been going on... and it feels every bit as plausible to think it was a dream as it is to guess that maybe it was a man dying... before admitting the truth that I don't know.  Well, that tells you a lot about what watching the movie was like.

This lazy (and exhausted) Sunday afternoon, I ended up watchng... another weird, weird movie on cable.  This time it was Melancholia.

The art direction is gorgeous.   The plot is infinitely more coherent than Tree of Life.  And it is a weird, weird movie. An online description of it came up with:

"The apocalypse, when it comes, is so beautifully rendered that the film cements the quality of fairy tale..."

Nods.

Anyway, I did what I do a lot of times when I watch a movie and find myself intrigued, unsettled, and puzzled, I look for what was the online reaction to the movie (even if the movie is years old.)  This time I ran across a comparision between Tree of Life and Melancholia that I have to say I rather agreed with:

" Is it just me or has everybody else also observed that [pairing Tree of Life and Melancholia is the ultimate double-bill?  Come on!  Is this not a match made in heaven (or hell, however you want to conceive of it), a fight to the death (or the after-life), a contest between the eternal light of God's grace and the black hole of nothingness?   {...} [These two movies] find it in every way legitimate to fill up a massive metaphysical frame with the paint of personal psychology.  {...}  [The difference between the two movies is that with Melancholia] I am positive about prose that makes some goddamn sense.  The narrative in The Tree of Life is incoherent.  I suspect that it is intended to be poetic and I am confident that it is meant to be profound, but it's an (...)attempt to pass off glorious aesthetic experience as drama.  Melancholia, conversely, is a hell of a two act play.  Not only did it make sense as a story, the formal construction of the narrative is remarkably powerful"

Which is to say that Tree of Life seems to end at some ecstatic place of communality, forgiveness, love (while being very, very strange), while Melancholia is the exact opposite.

Melancholia revolves around Kristen Dunst being clinically depressed at the end of the world.  Which, sure, who wouldn't be clincally depressed at the end of the world?  But that's something of a misleading description because the first half of the movie is Kristin Dunst's character's wedding (to Eric Northman...er... can't spell the actor's name).  Her character self-destructively sabotages a seemingly happy event -- her wedding.  Happy event ---> self-destructive behavior until she is unbearable, rejected, and alone.  

Second half of the movie, she's clinically depressed to the point of catatonia (her sister has to nearly force her to eat and bathe) while the planet Melancholia begins to fill the sky (literally.  It's an actual rogue planet -- beautiful, terrible, and blue. 



Her brother-in-law (Keifer Sutherland) isn't happy that his wife (Dunst's sister) is caring for depressive basket case, Dunst, while he's happily reassuring his son that Melancholia will not hit earth.  Calculations have been run by scientists.  Scientists are sure it will miss.  It'll come close, but miss.  It is a thing of wonder to be marvelled at.  They're lucky to see such an (and it is gorgeous) event. 

His wife (Dunst's sister), however, is anxious. She's googled and there are conspiracy websites that claim the planet is in a 'dance of death' with Melancholia.  Melancholia will slingshot by the earth before retuning to destroy us all.

And... this isn't a spoiler, because the opening frames of the move are of the the earth being obliterated.  The viewer knows from the outset -- they're' doomed (talk about predestination).   Keifer Sutherland's character (optimist and rational science) is wrong when he says that everything will be fine.   The sister, caught between Sutherland and Dunst, becomes ever more agitated and desperate, while the Dunst character, who sabotaged her happiest day while falling into near catatonic depression, becomes more calm and ever more functional as the world ends.

This movie is deeply nihilistic.

. {...}  The sister that is his stand-in says not just that life on earth is the only life in the universe.  She declares further that life on earth is evil. According to what moral compass this orientation is charted, I notice von Trier declines to disclose.  What is plain is that this is no "disaster movie" since the end of the world can hardly be considered a disaster if life on earth is evil.  Guess we just have to accept the opinion of a clinically depressive film-maker as reliable testimony on this topic.  Or not.  Personally, I have put meatloaf in my mouth many, many times and not once has it tasted to me like ashes. 

But I would be a liar if I failed to confess that Melancholia made me wake up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep.  It's a very intense trip"

Also:

The depressive sister is a kind of witch, an intuitive astrological seer, Nostradamus in a dress.  She looks at the sky and knows - just knows - it's over.  In keeping with a Stephen King protagonist, this character is made sick by her own power. Until she isn't. Never mind religion.  We are long past hope.  Turns out the man of science can't face facts.  The lord of the manor with his telescope hedges his bet with a full grocery cart of survivalist supplies.  But his devolution from advanced technologist to hoarder of basic necessities is secondary to him living with a false faith from the get-go, the belief that practical rationality will render him invincible."

Also...

{...} Parallels that may be drawn between the so-opposite sisters in the film and the antithetical conceptions {...} of day/life/illusion and night/death/actuality are there for the drawing.  About this, I believe von Trier is sincere.  Duh, he sides with night/death/actuality unto nihilistic despair.  {...} . forget about the noble bearing of true love, a mother's love, a sister's love.  The earthy woman of social bonds who honestly cares for her family and thinks it only proper to seek the company of others when confronted by crisis, turns out to be yet another who can't face facts.  Her personality as the reliable nurturer decomposes to reveal that her essence is anxiety.  She too is subject to panic.  Hence, it is only due to her crazy sister that she does not loose her own mind completely. So it turns out that the depressive, the previously incapacitated, is finally cool and collected.  She is the 'truly brave person,' the sane one in the end, because she has been facing the fact all along.  Only fools and cowards live life to the fullest, feel any sort of purpose that might bring about some sort of immortality.  These cowardly fools want to leave a legacy.  But even if they do write their own epitaph, it is no more meaningful than a commercial copywriter's tag-line.  It is the girl who can't get out of bed in the morning, the gal who is forever mourning who is able to shake off the covers come Judgment-less Day.  For she is under the spell of Planet Melancholia.  Hence, she strips naked to bask in the glow of death."

...er... This movie is incredibly nihilistic.  Beautifully shot...  and soul-numbingly bleak. 

Can't say that I liked it.  In fact, the subtext makes me angry (and the pacing was tedious).  But it had visually haunting art direction.  Some of those images linger.

Strange Movies...

One thing about cable TV is that there are times when you're tired and bored when you will watch a movie that you'd never rent. You can then end up watching some very odd movies. (For instance, when I had the flu a couple of years ago I watched this incredibly bizarre Johnny Depp movie where he was looking for some book and it was connected to the devil or something...?  I was feverish and slept through parts but the lingering impression was that it was very, very strange. And offputting. And did I mention strange?

This summer, one bored weekday evening when nothing was on, I sat through Tree of Life.  Which, if you've never seen it, is a completely non-linear movie. It comes off much like dreams -- beautiful, random, and... odd.  

Let me describe it this way, when a friend asked "What is it about?"  My answer was "I THINK it may have been some sort of thing where a man is dying and in his final moments he flashes back on his life and maybe glimpses heaven.  Except there were also  dinosaurs.  And I think he's alive in the end.  So... um... I'm not sure." The fact that I watched the whole thing and can only give theories about what may have been going on... and it feels every bit as plausible to think it was a dream as it is to guess that maybe it was a man dying... before admitting the truth that I don't know.  Well, that tells you a lot about what watching the movie was like.

This lazy (and exhausted) Sunday afternoon, I ended up watchng... another weird, weird movie on cable.  This time it was Melancholia.

The art direction is gorgeous.   The plot is infinitely more coherent than Tree of Life.  And it is a weird, weird movie. An online description of it came up with:

"The apocalypse, when it comes, is so beautifully rendered that the film cements the quality of fairy tale..."

Nods.

Anyway, I did what I do a lot of times when I watch a movie and find myself intrigued, unsettled, and puzzled, I look for what was the online reaction to the movie (even if the movie is years old.)  This time I ran across a comparision between Tree of Life and Melancholia that I have to say I rather agreed with:

" Is it just me or has everybody else also observed that [pairing Tree of Life and Melancholia is the ultimate double-bill?  Come on!  Is this not a match made in heaven (or hell, however you want to conceive of it), a fight to the death (or the after-life), a contest between the eternal light of God's grace and the black hole of nothingness?   {...} [These two movies] find it in every way legitimate to fill up a massive metaphysical frame with the paint of personal psychology.  {...}  [The difference between the two movies is that with Melancholia] I am positive about prose that makes some goddamn sense.  The narrative in The Tree of Life is incoherent.  I suspect that it is intended to be poetic and I am confident that it is meant to be profound, but it's an (...)attempt to pass off glorious aesthetic experience as drama.  Melancholia, conversely, is a hell of a two act play.  Not only did it make sense as a story, the formal construction of the narrative is remarkably powerful"

Which is to say that Tree of Life seems to end at some ecstatic place of communality, forgiveness, love (while being very, very strange), while Melancholia is the exact opposite.

Melancholia revolves around Kristen Dunst being clinically depressed at the end of the world.  Which, sure, who wouldn't be clincally depressed at the end of the world?  But that's something of a misleading description because the first half of the movie is Kristin Dunst's character's wedding (to Eric Northman...er... can't spell the actor's name).  Her character self-destructively sabotages a seemingly happy event -- her wedding.  Happy event ---> self-destructive behavior until she is unbearable, rejected, and alone.  

Second half of the movie, she's clinically depressed to the point of catatonia (her sister has to nearly force her to eat and bathe) while the planet Melancholia begins to fill the sky (literally.  It's an actual rogue planet -- beautiful, terrible, and blue. 



Her brother-in-law (Keifer Sutherland) isn't happy that his wife (Dunst's sister) is caring for depressive basket case, Dunst, while he's happily reassuring his son that Melancholia will not hit earth.  Calculations have been run by scientists.  Scientists are sure it will miss.  It'll come close, but miss.  It is a thing of wonder to be marvelled at.  They're lucky to see such an (and it is gorgeous) event. 

His wife (Dunst's sister), however, is anxious. She's googled and there are conspiracy websites that claim the planet is in a 'dance of death' with Melancholia.  Melancholia will slingshot by the earth before retuning to destroy us all.

And... this isn't a spoiler, because the opening frames of the move are of the the earth being obliterated.  The viewer knows from the outset -- they're' doomed (talk about predestination).   Keifer Sutherland's character (optimist and rational science) is wrong when he says that everything will be fine.   The sister, caught between Sutherland and Dunst, becomes ever more agitated and desperate, while the Dunst character, who sabotaged her happiest day while falling into near catatonic depression, becomes more calm and ever more functional as the world ends.

This movie is deeply nihilistic.

. {...}  The sister that is his stand-in says not just that life on earth is the only life in the universe.  She declares further that life on earth is evil. According to what moral compass this orientation is charted, I notice von Trier declines to disclose.  What is plain is that this is no "disaster movie" since the end of the world can hardly be considered a disaster if life on earth is evil.  Guess we just have to accept the opinion of a clinically depressive film-maker as reliable testimony on this topic.  Or not.  Personally, I have put meatloaf in my mouth many, many times and not once has it tasted to me like ashes. 

But I would be a liar if I failed to confess that Melancholia made me wake up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep.  It's a very intense trip"

Also:

The depressive sister is a kind of witch, an intuitive astrological seer, Nostradamus in a dress.  She looks at the sky and knows - just knows - it's over.  In keeping with a Stephen King protagonist, this character is made sick by her own power. Until she isn't. Never mind religion.  We are long past hope.  Turns out the man of science can't face facts.  The lord of the manor with his telescope hedges his bet with a full grocery cart of survivalist supplies.  But his devolution from advanced technologist to hoarder of basic necessities is secondary to him living with a false faith from the get-go, the belief that practical rationality will render him invincible."

Also...

{...} Parallels that may be drawn between the so-opposite sisters in the film and the antithetical conceptions {...} of day/life/illusion and night/death/actuality are there for the drawing.  About this, I believe von Trier is sincere.  Duh, he sides with night/death/actuality unto nihilistic despair.  {...} . forget about the noble bearing of true love, a mother's love, a sister's love.  The earthy woman of social bonds who honestly cares for her family and thinks it only proper to seek the company of others when confronted by crisis, turns out to be yet another who can't face facts.  Her personality as the reliable nurturer decomposes to reveal that her essence is anxiety.  She too is subject to panic.  Hence, it is only due to her crazy sister that she does not loose her own mind completely. So it turns out that the depressive, the previously incapacitated, is finally cool and collected.  She is the 'truly brave person,' the sane one in the end, because she has been facing the fact all along.  Only fools and cowards live life to the fullest, feel any sort of purpose that might bring about some sort of immortality.  These cowardly fools want to leave a legacy.  But even if they do write their own epitaph, it is no more meaningful than a commercial copywriter's tag-line.  It is the girl who can't get out of bed in the morning, the gal who is forever mourning who is able to shake off the covers come Judgment-less Day.  For she is under the spell of Planet Melancholia.  Hence, she strips naked to bask in the glow of death."

...er... This movie is incredibly nihilistic.  Beautifully shot...  and soul-numbingly bleak. 

Can't say that I liked it.  In fact, the subtext makes me angry (and the pacing was tedious).  But it had visually haunting art direction.  Some of those images linger.

Kitchen Meme

Gakked from slaymesoftly

Rules:
Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of.

pasta machines
breadmakers
juicers
deep fat fryer
egg boilers
melon baller
pastry brush
cheese boards
cheese knives
crepe makers
electric woks
salad spinners
griddle pan
jam funnels (???)
pie funnels
meat thermometer
filleting knife
egg poachers
cake stand
garlic crushers
martini glasses
tea strainers
bamboo steamer
pizza stones
coffee grinder
milk frother
piping bag
banana stands
fluted pastry wheels
tagine dishes
conical strainer
rice cookers
steam cookers
pressure cooker
slow cooker
spaetzle makers
cookie presses
gravy strainers
double boiler
sukiyaki stoves (???)
ice cream maker
fondue sets
healthy-grills, (George Foreman?)
home smoker
tempura sets
tortilla presses
electric whisks (???)
cherry stoners
sugar thermometer
food processor
stand mixer (Actually... I killed it)
bacon presser
bacon slicers
mouli mills (???)
cake testers
pestle-and-mortar
gratin dishes (is this like a souffle dish?)
apple corers
mango stoners
sets of kebab skewers
Potato ricer
Pineapple peeler and slicer
Lazy Susan
Soda Stream
Lemon zester (Are we talking micro-plane?)
salt pepper mills
espresso maker
Waffle irons
electric skillet
blender
toaster
toaster oven
microwave oven
electric kettle
coffee maker
can openers – mechanical or electrical

I'm adding -- stick hand blender

Kitchen Meme

Gakked from slaymesoftly

Rules:
Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of.

pasta machines
breadmakers
juicers
deep fat fryer
egg boilers
melon baller
pastry brush
cheese boards
cheese knives
crepe makers
electric woks
salad spinners
griddle pan
jam funnels (???)
pie funnels
meat thermometer
filleting knife
egg poachers
cake stand
garlic crushers
martini glasses
tea strainers
bamboo steamer
pizza stones
coffee grinder
milk frother
piping bag
banana stands
fluted pastry wheels
tagine dishes
conical strainer
rice cookers
steam cookers
pressure cooker
slow cooker
spaetzle makers
cookie presses
gravy strainers
double boiler
sukiyaki stoves (???)
ice cream maker
fondue sets
healthy-grills, (George Foreman?)
home smoker
tempura sets
tortilla presses
electric whisks (???)
cherry stoners
sugar thermometer
food processor
stand mixer (Actually... I killed it)
bacon presser
bacon slicers
mouli mills (???)
cake testers
pestle-and-mortar
gratin dishes (is this like a souffle dish?)
apple corers
mango stoners
sets of kebab skewers
Potato ricer
Pineapple peeler and slicer
Lazy Susan
Soda Stream
Lemon zester (Are we talking micro-plane?)
salt pepper mills
espresso maker
Waffle irons
electric skillet
blender
toaster
toaster oven
microwave oven
electric kettle
coffee maker
can openers – mechanical or electrical

I'm adding -- stick hand blender