We did see Up finally this weekend, in 3D, which is the new popular thing, I guess. I don’t know if the 3D was a big deal to this movie — it was nice, but it didn’t particularly seem important. I would say that Coraline was a better experience in 3D than Up. I liked Up, I just think it would probably have been fine either way. Anyway, wow what a tearjerker! If you told me that Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks or some other such writer wrote the original story, it wouldn’t've surprised me! I thought the movie was good though, especially the silent montage, which I cried through. I was warned, and I’m warning you now, all the people who read this who haven’t seen the movie (what is that, 0?), but honestly if you are at all prone to crying in a movie, well, you’ll probably bawl. So go watch, and bring tissue. By the way, Ebert liked it too.

But anyways, what I was trying to say, before all the curmudgeonly digression, was, it’s worth it. Go see Coraline! The movie was great. Even if you’ve read the Coraline book, it’s not ruined, it’s good — Henry Selick, the director, did an amazing:) job translating it to the movie screen. Actually I imagine the standard Coraline in 2D is good too, but Neil Gaiman, the author of the book, recommended the 3D version on his blog, and he makes a really good point: you can rent the 2D version later, but I think to see the 3D, you’ll have to catch it in the theaters. And he says that when Jonas Brothers 3D (!!! — I don’t have enough ! for this) comes out, it’ll replace Coraline 3D (I guess theaters only show one 3D movie at a time?). So go see. :)

By the way, speaking of Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book won the Newbery Medal this year. Aaaaand, if you watched Stardust, that’s based on one of his books too. If you decide to read Stardust: Being A Romance Within the Realms of Faerie, I think it’s worth it to find the illustrated edition — the illustrations by Charles Vess really add something. It’s been a pretty good year for him, eh?

I guess they are trying to have more tea options because last weekend I had an apple chai tea infusion, which tasted an awful lot like mulled cider.  Quite delicious, but I did think that if I was in the mood for tea, it wouldn’t do it.  On the other hand, if I kinda felt like a spiced (mulled) cider, then yah, darned good! :)

We finally went to see The Dark Knight on IMAX. It was quite good, possibly the best super hero movie to date, and you know how much I liked X-Men (hello, Captain. I mean Professor X!) — although it’s been a while since I saw that so probably not a fair comparison. The only thing is that the palette for Batman is so dark that it can be hard to catch all the action (on IMAX particularly?) — I told Yut after the movie that I thought Beauty and the Beast IMAX was a better IMAX experience, but I’m not sure I convinced him. Anyways, by now, there’s been plenty said about Batman, so suffice it to say, I wasn’t disappointed. But I don’t get this PG-13, cos there were definitely parts I had a hard time watching. Or I could just be wimpy.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got to say about that! Next weekend, Yut and I are going to visit Chicago, just a quick weekend trip. So if you have any can’t-miss places or restaurants or any other suggestions, lemme know! We don’t have too many plans right now, so anything’s good, but I guess especially if there’s one place that really stands out to you about Chicago, that would be especially helpful cos we only have a weekend. :)

Books:
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede — It’s 4 books, Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons, but since there’s a boxed set, easier to just link one cos after I finished the first book, I went out and bought all the rest. It’s technically young adult fantasy (fractured fairy tales style), but just so good and so much fun. Reminded me of one of my favorite kid’s books, The Ordinary Princess, by M. M. Kaye. So worth reading.
Book of Enchantments by Patricia C. Wrede — Short stories by the same author as above. Fantasy, but only a few are set in the Enchanted Forest. Still good though.
Airborn by Kenneth Oppel — More young adult speculative fiction. But so good! A page turner from start to finish.
Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel — Fantasy, about a young bat who gets separated from his clan during migration. Cute, fun read.
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson — Science fiction, winner of this year’s Hugo Award. It took me a little to get started, but once I did, I stayed up until 4 or 5 in the morning to finish it. Good stuff.

Books:
Lord Darcy by Randall Garrett — liked it. And I’d recommend it to anyone.
Death and Thraxas by Martin Scott — liked it. Fun read, but I wouldn’t buy it in hardcover. Paperback, sure.
And that’s it!

Movies:
Clerks — Ok. Funny parts definitely, but I didn’t love it like lots of other people seem to.
The Contender — Ok. Lots of interesting things going on, definitely easy to watch, but I didn’t love it.
Guess Who — Ok. Lots of laugh out loud moments, but didn’t add up to a great movie. Still fun though.
War of the Worlds — Ok. I mean, seemed like a good summer flick, but overall, eh.
Bewitched — Ok. Funny moments, but the whole was LESS than the sum of its parts. This is becoming a theme here. :P
Pride & Prejudice — Great! Yay the first movie this month I really liked. It was clearly a movie version of the book done by fans. I’m sad that they didn’t find a way to work in the first line of the book though.
Calendar Girls — Fine, and with really good performances. But I dunno, didn’t love it.
The Island — Sucks. It was trying to say intelligent things but it felt like the director didn’t care about the message, only about the action. Didn’t work for me.
Anger Management — Ok. Once again, had good performances and good parts but not enough.

It didn’t end ’til past midnight, but after we went home we played monkey golf on Super Monkey Ball 2. Cos for some reason when we hang with misa and neb, we play old video games that I hadn’t thought of in forever, but then we play it a lot afterwards. So we didn’t even get to sleep until late. I’ve been soo sooo tired today!

Since the pub quiz was so late, we finally went to see Little Miss Sunshine like we’ve meant to forever. Which btw, we both really liked it. It was so funny I laughed out loud and so touching I teared up. We went to see it at the Landmark California Theatre which has some great popcorn with real butter. Yum! Also, there were literally no people in the theatre with us, so I really did laugh out loud. :D

We were actually planning to just hang around Berkeley after the movie and maybe grab some food or something, but after all the popcorn we ate (we got a large cos we like the popcorn at that theatre so much) we were a little sick, so we went to EB Games and got Lego Star Wars II and went home after all and were a little late meeting up for the quiz. It was fun! But we kind of suck at puzzles. We kept on getting stuck at dumb places just cos we didn’t see something, then we’d figure it out and it’d be all, “DUH!”

Also after the movie, we decided to buy a lotto ticket. I dunno, the threat of bankruptcy loomed! No seriously, we passed by some place that sold them and thought, eh, why not. The girl at the cash register asked me my age. I was kind of flabbergasted (it’s been a while since anyone’s checked) and thought to myself, “Dude, I’m way over 18!” But the only part that actually came out of my mouth was “18!” Then I corrected myself and said, “No I mean I’m well over 18 is what I meant.” She looked at me like, uh huh, and said, “I’m going to need to see some id.” Ooops. I guess I couldn’t have been any more suspicious if I’d tried.

I typed that all out in a weird order. I was under time constraints! Project Runway is on now! So I’m done.

Movies-wise, I saw A History of Violence, which wow I thought was really good. I mean I know it got pretty good reviews, but I have to say, for some reason I never thought I’d much care for it. But it was good and fun, one of those movies that made you think and was fun all together. If you haven’t seen it, I’d totally recommend it. Plus I think Viggo Mortensen is dishy — I always liked Aragorn better than Legolas. Although it was a close thing, cos Orlando Bloom was pretty fine as a blonde elf. Which is funny because when he’s not a blonde elf, Orlando Bloom does NOTHING for me. It’s weird. And I’m waaaaaay off topic. Errr, yeah so History of Violence was good. :)

Also saw Superman Returns which was okay. (Have I blogged about this already? I hope not.) I mean it was definitely fun and not bad, but you know it’s a set up story. And both yut and me thought that sections of it dragged. Which you know, it’s an adventure movie! With a superhero! And therefore a supervillain (Kevin Spacey was pretty great as Lex Luthor)! You’re not supposed to be thinking partway through, “Wow this movie is long.” Another problem was that Superman and Lois Lane were supposed to be like 30 or something at least and I didn’t believe it, at all. This probably shows my age, but even though I thought Brandon Routh was a good Superman, and really a very pretty boy, he looked soooo young. Soo soo young. And I wish Lois liked Clark more. I always thought Lois thought Clark was an alright guy, who was at the least a good colleague, but I didn’t get that from this movie. Anyhows, small things really. I mean, it’s a summer blockbuster superhero movie, and it was fun, and really what more is there?

Lords of Dogtown was a movie about the start of the skateboarding scene back in the day (I think 1970s actually) and the way it evolved with the addition of some new sorts of wheels and surfing moves (I don’t really know the first thing about any of that, but they got awfully excited about some polyurethane wheels in the movie and they went surfing sometimes). It’s also about the friendship of the boys in Venice, CA who were instrumental I suppose to the development of skateboarding. I don’t know if I was a big skateboarding fan if I would see this movie as a lot more or what, but it was just an okay movie for me. It was like all innocent fun, then they started doing cool tricks, then sponsorship got involved and money and etc and the friendships seemed to be degenerating, but it seemed that in the end they pulled themselves together. Still, it was interesting, about a subject I obviously knew nothing about.

We tried to watch The House of Mirth, but failed miserably when we both fell asleep. Sad, but true. So moving on! :p

Team America: World Police was sooooo funny. I loved the Montage song (something like when you need time to move fast, then you need a montage! which is so true, CSI obviously swears by this), and the I need you, like Ben Affleck needs acting school song, and lots of other stuff. Despite this, as a whole, the movie didn’t work for me. It was like a bunch of funny scenes held together by a flimsy movie with no focus, or maybe a satire that couldn’t decide what to satirize and so decided to satirize everything and only partially succeeded. Something like that. Still, good for laughs. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut by the same people was better, if that serves as any sort of frame of reference.

The last movie we saw in July was Lady in the Water. We went to see it because it was really really hot and the theater was nice and chill. I know the movie got a lot of really bad reviews, but you know what, we both enjoyed it very much. It was very much a fantasy, and I could see it as a children’s bedtime story, I think. Anyhows, there was the hero! And the heroine! Who are just regular people, not trying to do anything special, but when circumstances require it, become bigger and better and fulfill their destiny. And there was a Quest of course. And various other people trying to help them on their quest. Good triumphs over bad and justice prevails in the end. I liked it quite a lot actually, and it’s not cos I’m some sort of unrepentant M. Night Shyamalan fan — I liked Sixth Sense, but not Signs (which was laughable), and haven’t managed to watch The Village or Unbreakable yet.

See that was actually a lot more than I thought I had. I think I will have less to say about the books though, we’ll see. :)

This summer I’ve been reading a lot of Dick Francis. I won’t go into them all, there’s a lot! He wrote like 40 books and I had a week or two when I read like 4 or 5 a week, so it’s too much to get into. I think in July my two favorites were Hot Money and Knockdown. I realized that I’d read Hot Money years ago after I already got started but even though I remembered whodunnit, I still enjoyed it a lot.

I also read Alexander McCall Smith‘s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tears of the Giraffe (2nd book featuring the same characters, but it’s not like each book wouldn’t stand on its own), which I highly recommend. I think the local public library calls these books mysteries, and in a way they are — Precious Ramotswe (the main character) is a private investigator with cases to solve, after all. But you know, a lot of mysteries, the whole book and a great deal of what happens in the book is all towards one aim, that is to solve the mystery. But somehow, these books are more than that. It’s about Botswana, and Mma Ramotswe and her life, and yes, she does also solve mysteries. Really good stuff.

Also, I’ve been reading a lot of chick lit. This month I read Something Borrowed and its sequel Something Blue by Emily Giffin. Good, but I keep comparing things to Shopaholic and not liking it quite as much. Maybe cos I read Shopaholic first, so it was all fresh and good. But this was pretty good. I read something else too with a yellow cover, but I can’t remember the title or author now. It was okay, but the Something Borrowed and Something Blue books were better.

Last was Jhumpa Lahiri‘s Interpreter of Maladies, a collection of nine short stories. I picked it up because it said that it’d won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, which seemed as good a reason to pick a book as any. Sometimes award winning short stories, or maybe acclaimed stories in general, are too esoteric for me, I end up not getting why it was good or sometimes even having a hard time getting through it. But this one was very very readable, and I’m not saying I didn’t have favorites, but in general every story was readable and touching. Anyhows, I’m out of things to say, at this point, so if you read anything from this month, try this. Or Alexander McCall Smith or whatever. I don’t know, it’s a different sort of pleasure, but pleasure all the same.

I guess this was much shorter. Somehow, I always feel inadequate doing this stuff, but in a way more inadequate talking about the books. Maybe cos I sort of care more. But also partly I think it’s hard to feel discriminating enough, or maybe intellectual enough, to talk about books. I mean, I enjoy a lot of junk (like I actually also read a romance, and I got through it quickly cos it was light fun, but I barely remember the plot now and I can’t remember the title or the author but the book was blue), so it feels weird to be reviewing Pulitzer winners. Anyhows, the point is, I enjoyed most of this, sometimes deeply, sometimes in small ways, but they were good in their own ways. Something like that.