Last night I just finished reading the best book ever. It’s one of those rare books that made me so happy just being able to experience reading it. Please read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. You won’t be disappointed, promise.
When you live in a country where going to the movies costs more than 800 pesos a pop and the pirated DVD alternative is not just around the corner, you tend to be picky about the movies you watch. Still, with the barrage of really good movies that usually pack themselves around December, just in time for Oscar eligibility and the rich Christmas pockets, I managed to watch 4 films in the last week, with many others still in the horizon.
The Holiday – I was supposed to watch Happy Feet with a friend but we ran out of tickets, and the only alternative we had was The Holiday. Not a bad movie really, but of course you should never take these movies seriously. Kate Winslet was delicious as ever. (It’s always nice to see women in Hollywood who actually still have flesh.) Jude Law was his usual charming self. Cameron Diaz was sparkling and bubbly like always, although I’m beginning to think she’s starting to slide down the Julia Roberts slope. Jack Black didn’t have enough screen time, but then again he’s not exactly the romantic male lead type. All in all a pleasant movie as long as you don’t expect too much. In my case, I didn’t expect anything at all.
Eragon – BAD. I actually finished the book just the day before I watched the movie. I didn’t actually like the book all that much, so I shouldn’t have expected anything from the movie, but the film adaptation just turned out so horrible that the book seemed really good in comparison. I commend Christopher Paolini who started writing the book when he was 15, but as an avid fantasy fan the book was really nothing new, dragged at some parts and had a poor buildup to a scant, unexciting climax. The only good thing about the book was that you could feel real love between Eragon and Saphira (his dragon), like Paolini’s passion was stamped all over the book. This saving grace was not to be found in the movie, so coupled with an overly-hurried pace, uninspired dialogue and characters that seemed to have been plucked out of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, the movie was a chore to watch and utterly disappointing. For the producers’ sake, they shouldn’t even try churning out a sequel.
Casino Royale – I was never a big fan of James Bond movies. I thought they were all style and no substance, all about gadgets and not much else. I guess I’m more of a Bourne Identity / Sum of All Fears kind of guy. Casino Royale raised the whole James Bond franchise back to a venerable position. Daniel Craig is a fantastic Bond, so much better than Pierce Brosnan who seemed too frail and pretty for 007. The movie is more plot-driven, with respectable and surprising twists and turns. In Denmark, Casino Royale is perhaps this year’s main film event, with 2 of the main antagonists (Mads Mikkelsen and Jesper Christensen) coming from this proud little country.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer – What a beautiful movie. This is perhaps the best movie I’ve seen since Brokeback Mountain. I never thought they could bring scents and smells to life onscreen but they succeeded mightily on this one. The only other movie as sensuous as Perfume that I can remember watching is The Girl With the Pearl Earring, with the former clearly coming out on top. My friend, whom I watched this movie with, loved the movie as well, which is a tall order since Patrick Suskind’s novel where this is adapted from is his favorite book of all time. I guess this is one of those rare instances where the film adaptation doesn’t suffer from comparison to the original and actually triumphs. This movie is highly recommended, with top-notch performances from the whole cast and a penultimate scene that is perhaps the most spectacular I’ve ever seen on cinema.
Lots more movies to watch in the coming weeks:
The Departed
Babel
Happy Feet
Dreamgirls
The Illusionist
The Prestige
Bobby
Children of Men
Little Miss Sunshine
Borat
Egad… it’s been what, 2 months?
Not that I was ever a regular blogger. I still envy the blogging stamina of my friends like Clems and Raz and Dmitry Tursunov. Ok Dmitry isn’t my friend, at least not yet. He’s a tennis player who shot to stardom as the ATP Tour’s resident blogger. For the even more challenged, ATP is the worldwide tennis players’ association. And to the even more clueless, tennis is…
(If by any chance you want to read Dmitry’s blog, follow this link: http://www.atptennis.com/1/en/blog/tursunov/)
Still, I hate blogging here in Friendster. The layout options are so limited I can’t even fix the goddamn spacing. But I’m too lazy to create a new one. Besides, hardly anyone posts comments on my friendster blog anyway! (*note: this is a not-so-obvious call for attention, please COMMENT. Thank you.)
Maybe I should list down some pros and cons on blogging via Friendster.
1. Layouting sucks in Friendster, unless you pay for it. I probably don’t need anything complicated, because I definitely won’t spend time on it, but for Chrissakes can somebody just please tell me how to edit the html of my text???
2. No anonymous posting of comments on Friendster. So if you’re not my Friendster, I won’t hear what you have to say.
3. The good thing about blogging in Friendster though is the automatic updates, so my friendsters can always see when I’ve written something.
From the above it seems like I should switch to Blogger or something else, but the bottomline is this: I’m lazy. So I’ll stick with Friendster for the moment.
So what’s been happening the last two months? Was in Bangkok for 4 days, home for almost 3 weeks, then back in Copenhagen with weather that was 5 degrees colder than when I left. I hate how muggy and wet it feels here now, but hey at least I haven’t been rained out while biking to work. Not completely soaked anyway. Nevertheless apparently this was the warmest November in Denmark on record (or in many, many decades, I’m not sure). Sure doesn’t feel like that though.
Being winter now and all I hardly get to see the sun. Actually I feel like I live somewhere in the arctic. I leave home for work, it’s still kinda dark. I leave the office, it’s dark. In the weekends, I wake up from going out the previous night and stay at home with the blinds closed and then leave the house again at night, when it’s dark. Even when I go home at 6:30 am after a long night out, it’s still dark. Jeez. I heard that Vitamin D insufficiency causes some health problems, not to mention higher suicide rates. Good thing I live on the ground floor then.
It was nice to be back home, see my family and friends, shop for clothes and shoes at ridiculously low prices (of course compared to Denmark, most everything is cheap). At some point though I was ready to go home. The days got a bit boring since all the cars were being used and could only use one late in the afternoon. My friends were all busy with work and private stuff so I didn’t have anyone to go out to the beach with on the weekdays even though I was itching to. Of my list of things to do back home in the previous post, I missed out on 2, 8, 15, 18 and 19. 20 (Exercising) I barely accomplished. In fact I should add it to that list instead, considering I gained at least 1 kilo per week I was home.
There’s something about mothers that they always think you are too thin, and they make it their mission to always fatten you up.
Anyway I’m back here in Copenhagen now, it’s still weird to call it home but technically it is. I’m actually glad to be back to my normal routine, contemplating important questions like "Should I wash the whites or coloreds first?" or "When was the last time I vacuumed the house?" or "Can I still use my bedsheets for another 3 months?"
But no, I’m not as messy as I advertise myself to be, as some of my friends will attest. Then again of course they see a more sanitized version of my apartment when they come over, so they haven’t seen the real deal.
In a while I’m going to a kickboxing class for the first time at the gym in the office. The things I do to try and lose weight…
Will post pictures soon. Once I get my lazy ass to upload them.
