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.

Watched:

• The Magdalene Sisters was a movie based on a documentary about the Magdalene Asylums that the Catholic Church ran in Ireland throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries (I think). The actual movie focused on some time in the 1960s I think. Basically, females who lost their virginity or who were suspected of possibly being the type of loose girls who might lose their virginity before marriage were sent to one of the Magdalene Asylums where they were worked like crazy. It was like a prison work gang situation. The movie focused on four girls, Rose and Chrispina who had babies out of wedlock, Margaret who was raped, and Bernadette who was deemed too pretty and flirtatious, and their day to day situations and the the way they reacted to it — some tried to follow the rules as well as possible (and it was never enough), and some tried to fight back, some got brainwashed, etc. It was really powerful and frightening how the nuns and priests abused their positions — the potential for abuse seemed to have brought together immoral sadistic types. And it created immoral sadistic types too, out of the girls who were sent to the Asylums and then decided that they had found their calling and became nuns. I didn’t feel like the movie was anti-Catholic so much as it was an indictment of the attitudes of the time and the ignorance — many of the girls were sent to the Asylums by their families. Well on the other hand, the Catholic Church was a very important part of Ireland in the 60s and they were clearly propagating the ignorance and the cruelty. Maybe it was an indictment of cruelty undertaken under religion. Regardless, it was a good movie, very watchable.
• I had somewhat ambivalent feelings about We Don’t Live Here Anymore. On one hand, it wasn’t about anything, or going anywhere. I mean, you are watching two marriages unravel in different ways. They fight, and commit adultery, and accuse each other of cruelty, and it’s all awful and all true. Or it’s all quiet indifference, more adultery, and silent hurt, also awful. And they’re committing adultery with each other and hiding it sort of sometimes even though they are friends who actually like each other too. And they all have children. It’s very mixed up and messy. Still despite all that, it’s like you could almost understand them trying to hold on to something and failing and then settling or reaching for something else. Well it’s hard to describe, but I enjoyed the movie. Not summer blockbuster fun though, if that’s what you’re looking for. Actually neither is Magdalene Sisters. :p
• We watched An Inconvenient Truth in June also. I wrote about it already, so I’ll just say that if you haven’t seen it yet, please please go watch it. Really amazing scary stuff.
• Lastly, we watched Something’s Gotta Give which was our light fun movie of the month. Which it totally was, light fun that is. I thought it was really funny! My biggest complaint about the movie was the ending, which was just too pat and perfect. Like the screenwriter or director was looking to finish things up ASAP. The performances were great, and it had so many laugh out loud moments that I still say it was worth watching.

Read:

• I borrowed Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell (of Sex and the City fame) from Julie, who’d recommended the Shopaholic books, which were awesome, but I already mentioned them last month. (And by borrowed, I mean I saw it in her car and started leafing through it so she asked me if I wanted to borrow it, which there’s really only one possible answer, isn’t there? :) ) Anyhows, I digress. This book wasn’t anywhere close to being as much fun as the Shopaholic books (diff author, but also chick lit which is why I am comparing them), which I think anyone could like. Even people who don’t like chick lit could probably like them. Maybe having just finished those books colored my opinion of this one, but mostly, I think it was just a weaker effort. The writing wasn’t smooth and the story wasn’t as much fun. I do think that Bushnell was trying to address some more serious points (about gender roles and powerful women and etc) while staying with the chick lit genre, but it felt forced to me. Still it was a quick read and I had no trouble finishing it, so I guess that counts for something.
• Spin Doctor by Leslie Carroll was something I randomly picked up from the library to try one day. It wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t love it either. It’s the intertwined stories of seven women who live in the same apartment building. One of them is a psychologist who does pro bono work in the laundry room a few days a month, trying to help the other six with their problems, and doing a good job at it. The irony is, even though she’s trying to help everyone else, she’s got problems too. Her husband’s working on a new project that seems to be taking all his time, her high school senior daughter is unfocused and getting into trouble, and she’s really spread too thin it seems. But even as she’s helping everyone else, it turns out that everyone rallies around and helps her when thing’s start falling apart. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t awful, it was just blah. <shrug>

And that was it for the month. Not many, dunno why.

Last week was excruciatingly hot. I mean for the Bay Area. Which isn’t really too bad, more like a confirmation of summer. But you gotta remember that around here no one has air conditioning so it can get pretty uncomfortable. But okay, anyhows, on Thursday, it was so hot that Yut and I decided going home right away would suck (tar roof, poor insulation at our place:p) so we went to see An Inconvenient Truth. (Yes it was too hot to go home so we went to see a movie about global warming harhar.) Which btw, if you haven’t seen it yet, I completely recommend it. I wanted to see it, and I love Al Gore, but I’ll admit I was a bit apprehensive about watching him give a presentation as a movie — I mean, I think of Al Gore as being extremely wonky. (Although wonky > ignorant-and-proud-of-it, but I digress.) Anyhows, it was even better than I thought, clear and riveting (Yut says, “It was definitely interesting, maybe not riveting!” ) and scary and hopeful all at once — I think I alternated between tears and goosebumps the whole time.

I especially liked the stuff he said about how 100% of peer-reviewed science agreed about global warming, that all the so called doubt about it comes from lobbyists and politicians and marketing types, not actual scientists. And it really struck me when he said that global warming is as big a threat to our cities and people as terrorists. And I liked his photos of areas all over the world in the past when there was a lot of snow and ice everywhere and the present where it’s clearly receded. I like how he made it really clear that everything is still fixable, it’s never too late. Well, there was a lot to like, I’m probably forgetting something. :)

Random cameraphone shot of one of the scenes of the movie — Al Gore walking onstage.

misa and neb watched it a while back, and wrote about it, too — “The Polar Bears are Drowning. I can’t say that I’m doing all or even most of all that, but still, there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t even know about, like menstrual cups! and green power! (Actually I haven’t figured out how to get green power around here.)

Books:
• Hades’ Daughter, God’s Concubine, Darkwitch Rising (The Troy Game books 1, 2, and 3) by Sara Douglass: When I picked this up, it was because I liked Threshold (from last month) and this is by the same author. I thought it was a trilogy, but it’s not. There are so far three books, but the fourth (and supposedly final) book in the series just came out and I haven’t read it yet. I liked the first book, thought the second book was just ok (had some boring parts), and really liked the third book. Overall, I think the series is pretty good so far. But still, I think a lot of times, single books that stand alone are better.
• To the Hilt and Knockdown, by Dick Francis: I like Dick Francis’s horsey mysteries, so these were good reads for me. If you’ve never tried him out, you should try one:) They’re lots of fun.
• Confessions of a Shopaholic (UK title: The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic), Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (UK: Shopaholic Abroad), Shopaholic Ties the Knot, and Shopaholic & Sister, by Sophie Kinsella: Julie recommended the Shopaholic series to me a while back, and she has a bunch of them, so she was gonna lend me them. But the thing is, I walked into Pegasus & Pendragon which has a used books section, and in their clearance area which is where I guess they put the books that haven’t sold for a long time or are in poorer condition, they have books for $0.49 (yup, 49¢!). So when I saw Confessions of a Shopaholic for that price, well, that’s a bargain, so of course I got it. Confessions was good enough that I went ahead and read all the rest of the books. Funnily enough, I thought Confessions was maybe the weakest book of the series. There was a lot of set up about Becky Bloomwood and her shopping problem, and I dunno, on one hand, I really understood her. I mean, not about clothes, but just in general. Like there’s three bookstores in Berkeley that have a used books section that I know of (The Other Change of Hobbit, Half-Priced Books, and Pegasus & Pendragon). Since used books are cheap(er) I go in and buy like six books at a time, and really, it’s just like buying only three books! And etc. But I’ve never had a dollar’s worth of credit card debt in my life. (Too much conditioning from dad:p) (Well to be perfectly truthful I’ve had debt when I forgot to pay my bill cos I left it lying around somewhere. But nevermind that:p) In GENERAL, I can’t imagine putting things on a credit card that I can’t pay off at the end of the month unless it’s like food or something completely necessary. Definitely not because of a shopping problem. Well, I don’t think so anyhows. It’s not like I’m Miss Budget Queen:p ANYWAYS. Okay, the books were good fun, and so far, all of them have been good fun. If you don’t hate the first one, definitely read the second, cos I think it gets better.
• The Triumph of Katie Byrne, by Barbara Taylor Bradford: I got this book at the airport cos it was on sale. I actually went to the newstand to pick up a copy of The Washington Post but there was a sale cart! With hardcovers for $4.99! At the airport! So I randomly picked one which said it was bestseller or by a bestselling author, I forget which. Anyhows, it sucked. Really, I have no idea how Barbara Taylor Bradford has had ANY bestsellers. And if this one was a bestseller, I really don’t get it. Maybe a lot of other people were suckered by sales. Honestly, it was a waste of time. Good thing I was on the airplane.

Movies:
• Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: So cute! Really fun movie. I would say that the W&G shorts are better, but still, really liked this.
• Me and You and Everyone We Know: Laugh-out-loud funny! But also poignant and touching. It’s a quirky look at disconnection between people and love also, I think. Anyhows, I’d totally recommend it. ))<-->(( bahahahaha:)
• The Longest Yard: Awful waste of time. Adam Sandler movies can be good fun, but gawd, this wasn’t one of them.
• The Mothman Prophecies: This was really good scary build up to… nothing. That’s the problem. There’s so much going on and so much they could’ve done with it, but it felt like it went nowhere. The climactic scene wasn’t climactic enough for all the rest of it. Good try, but not quite.
• Monster: I thought this movie was just ok, although it’s pretty highly rated, so maybe don’t take my word for it. Mostly, I felt like the performances were really good, but the movie not quite as good. Charlize Theron was completely believable in her role, and to a lesser degree (but mostly just cos Charlize Theron was so good) so was Christina Ricci. There was this middle part though that just got boring. Maybe I have a low attention span I don’t know, but it dragged. I understood the point (that she was spiraling ever downwards) but still.
• Unfaithful: Difficult movie to watch. In a way, it was like a scary thriller type movie for me because I kept thinking she would get caught, even though that wasn’t the point of the movie. It felt too much like two separate movies; I didn’t love it. Also, even though this month it looks like I’m a big fan of Richard Gere, I’m actually not! I mean, I don’t have a problem with him, he’s fine, I’m just not a big fan.
• X-Men: The Last Stand: Well, it wasn’t great. But it was pretty good summer blockbuster fun, except that after the first two, you’d really expect it to be better than just good summer blockbuster fun. So you have to manage your expectations going in, cos if you are expecting the movie to be as good as the first, you’ll be disappointed. Spoilers coming…
  
  First, the (short) list of good things: Good summer blockbuster fun, lots of stuff flying around, mutant powers are cool, especially ShadowCat, worth a matinee for the effects, especially that big scene where Magneto took the Golden Gate Bridge and moved it.
  Now, the bad things: How come when Magneto moved the Golden Gate Bridge, it went from day to night with no transition? How come 6 mutants (admittedly trained by Professor X) could take on like 300 other mutants? Also, Famke Jannsen as Jean Grey/Phoenix sucked. Honestly, there’s supposed to be all this struggle as Jean Grey and the Phoenix battle it out for supremacy over Jean Grey. She was like catatonic. Dude, I get it, it’s an internal struggle. But it’s a movie! And you’re a telepathic telekinetic! GIVE ME SOMETHING!!! I don’t know how they managed to cast Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan and Hugh Jackman and and Kelsey Grammer and even James Marsden so perfectly, and then forget that HELLO? Jean Grey is important!!! She deserves better. Which I think Famke Jannsen has been better in other roles, so I don’t know. Also, Phoenix is like an outer space entity that takes over Jean Grey, Jean Grey is not herself a stronger mental mutant than Professor X because Prof. X is the strongest mental mutant ever. I got into an argument with my cousin Mike about this cos he said that Professor X wasn’t a level 5 mutant (which I’ve never even knew that there were levels to mutants) but that Phoenix was, which I said, fine, I’ll believe you but then that means that the Phoenix is the only level 5 mutant there is, a category unto herself. Cos if even one other mutant is a level 5 mutant, then Professor X is DEFINITELY a level 5 mutant! DUH!!! Which brings me to Professor X getting physically pulled apart by the Phoenix, omg, I started to cry. Dude, why?!?! For goodness’ sakes, leave Professor X alone! He’s my favorite! He’s Jean-Luc Picard! It would’ve been so cool if they’d read “O Captain! My Captain!” at his funeral:D I guess that’s part of the problem. A lot of the wittiness and humor and tongue in cheekness and silliness that made the previous movies transcend the summer blockbuster were missing, and it hurt the movie a lot. I wish the original director stayed on.