ratatouille

I can't believe it was still playing, but Mom and Jack and I went to see it yesterday evening at the Majestic and all three of us LOVED it. Brad Bird, who made "The Incredibles," too, basically proved to me with this one that A) he's a really good director and B) he knows how to make really cool credits. Or maybe the credits thing is just Pixar. I had read in a review a while ago that one of the great things about the movie was that it didn't shy away from the rats' being rats. They don't look like Mickey Mouse, they don't look like the bugs from "A Bug's Life," they look and move like rats. It fit and amplified perfectly the message of the film, which is that anyone can do anything with talent and perseverance, no matter what how daunting the obstacle. It sounds trite like that, but in the context of the movie it's quite wonderful. The food and kitchen themselves are also terrifically depicted and animated. It goes into my second tier of animated movies (below "The Lion King, "Beauty and the Beast" and "My Neighbor Totoro").

last night i had a dream

naked dream...frisbee...walking through neighborhoods to get to field...waking up in a bed with everyone looking down at me...why was i naked?

A naked dream. I was walking with some people to a field, through neighborhoods that in retrospect remind me a little of Villanueva de la Cañada, where I lived in Spain for a week in 8th grade. We were on our way to play frisbee and everyone was following me because I knew where the field was. There was a big mix of kids: City at Peace people, Michigan people, Blair people. I got to the field first and there were already a couple of kids throwing a disc around. I threw a couple with them and then the next thing I knew I was racing, buck-ass naked, after a deep huck. But I realized halfway there that I wasn't wearing any clothes and alarm bells started going off. So I turned around, hand over privates, and sprinted back towards my clothes to general laughter and shouts of encouragement for those closest to me to get a look. I tried desperately to pull my shorts back on as discreetly as possible and people started crowding around. I woke up in a bed with those same people looking over me. Other things happened in the dream but they are less clear. It was the first naked dream I can remember having.

Last night I went with Mom to get dinner and go see "Mar Adentro," which I thought was directed by Pedro Almodóvar but was in fact directed by Alejandro Amenábar. It's a movie about assisted suicide, for those not in the know, and it's among the most moving and beautiful movies I've ever seen. As I have mentioned here before, I am not prone to tears during movies, or books for that matter, but this was the second during which I had to wipe away tears. Perhaps I'm becoming more empathetic? Or perhaps I care less what implications my crying carries to the people around me? I'm not sure. In any event, the talk afterwards (this was part of Mom's office's Science in the Cinema series at AFI Silver, which is such a cool thing) was by a pretty high-powered guy in the field of bioethics and particularly as relates to end-of-life issues. But his comments were extremely brief and I thought pretty unsatisfying. The movie is not really about the science of assisted suicide or euthanasia, no doctors are involved. Its real themes, to my view, are relationships and selfishness (or lack thereof). It would have been better, perhaps, to have someone NOT a medical doctor (perhaps someone from the Hemlock Society?) give the talk. To be fair, I think he was thrown a little by the first question, by a man clearly out of touch with the context, who, with some doggedness, asked about stem cell research and aborting fetuses.

Right this instant I must go shower, but I will soon hold forth on Barry Bonds, about whom I've discovered I feel quite strongly. Oh yes, the big news from yesterday was really that I had my check-up with Dr. Kline and my blood pressure is totally, 100% normal. What a relief. I had lunch with Dad at Firehook Bakery afterwards, which was really nice (thanks, Dad!) and where I realized definitively how fired up this whole Bonds thing gets me.

comments follow on harry potter 4

First of all the theater was jammed, lines out the door for the 7:30 subtitled show and the 8 dubbed show. We got there around 7:10 and first went into the wrong line, so when we finally made it into the theater our seats kind of sucked (pretty close the screen, no raised at all, off to the side) but could have been worse. As far as the movie goes, I liked it for the visual imagination it showed. The effects, particularly in the battle scenes, were beautiful. I wasn't expecting much and that was enough to push me into the positive camp. But as far as a retelling of the book, it missed a lot of points. The whole thing about finding out where the Room of Requirement was, for example, with the cursed contract and Cho's friend betraying them and getting "SNITCH" written across her face, was a great episode in the book. The movie's kind of awkward Harry-kisses-Cho-then-thinks-she-betrayed-him-but-Snape-vindicates-her way of making up for it didn't work at all. Or the kids flying on the dead horse things: In the book, there's a whole scene where the kids who haven't seen death get coaxed up onto the horses and it's all very bizarre and cool. In the movie, the horse things are introduced in the beginning, briefly explained and then abruptly, flown on! later. Then again, that's what you get when you're trying to make a 2-hour movie out of a gigantic book. They need to bring back Cuarón, or some other director with the spine to take the book and make a really good movie out of it, rather than trying to cram a summary onto the screen. Another minor complaint: Helena Bonham Carter should never find work as an actress again, ever. She's so irritating and unbelievable I could barely watch her scenes, and she's way deep into typecast territory now as the "kind of scary/crazy but a little bit hot, maybe?" woman. All the other villains are tight, though, especially Ralf Faiehness.

In other news, briefly, I found out my final grades today. They are as follows: Sistemas Electorales (5,3); Conflicto Armado (5,9); Economía Política de Europa (6,5). In other words, B+, A, A. Judging by the grade for EPdE, I did really well on my final paper. Good news. Now I'm going to start making lunch.