Movie time! Crafty time! Free time!

I fell in love with Katharine Hepburn in 1997, when I read her autobiography Me: Stories of My Life.

I can't express in an eloquent manner why Hepburn mattered. Before there was Wikipedia and Google, I spent the summer of 1997 learning as much about Kate Hepburn as I could from books. Her independence, her intelligence, her unusual personal life, her devotion to her family - these were all qualities that resonated with me. Her beauty is being taken for granted for the purposes of this blog entry. I've only ever seen two of her films by that time, but I loved her on screen as well as on paper.

*As it was just pointed out to me by a commenter, a Kate Hepburn Cultural Arts Center is being constructed as we speak in Old Saybrook, CT. I think I shall visit over the summer...

Last year, in honor of her 100th birthday, I wanted to watch all the Hepburn films that Netflix had to offer. Then life interfered, as it often does. So I am starting now - I figure a film a week should not be too taxing, and will take me the rest of the year - there are 25 of them in my queue. Having to report them here should also keep me honest/and posting regularly.

So tonight I watched "Little Women" and while I understand it received an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, two questions stick in my mind:

a) Did people in 1932 interact quite as artificially as they do on screen? Or is that just a film convention from the time period? Or are they trying to be very proper for portraying 1864?

b) Did Louisa May Alcott *write* such a contrived ending for the novel, or was this the fault of the adaptation? I've never read "Little Women", so I can't tell. But I can't possibly believe that Jo would be happily accepting a marriage proposal from Fritz Behr if events proceeded as they did in the film.

OK, now that I've got that out of my system, here's the other part of the post.

About a month ago I have come to the conclusion that I own entirely too many articles of clothing which are ill-fitting. However, I also have the know-how to *make* them fit, and just needed the time to do so. Summer is my off-season time, and here's what happened last week:

LK gave me this cute T-shirt in the winter, but trouble was, it was meant for extremely short-torsoed people (which I am not) - see Exhibit A

Well, when combined with this home-made shirt (ahh, what did we ever do without CafePress?)...


...it becomes quite wearable! and sporty! and you can't see my belly button!

The other one is a bonus. A shirt that was a hand-me-down for a reason (could it BE more shapeless?)...

...with the help of some clever darting becomes quite lovely!

I even wore it to an event and received compliments.

So that makes my other summer resolution - I am going to alter a couple of items a week, thereby gaining new summer clothes without spending any money - yay.

we'll see how long the resolute behaviour lasts (she thought sarcastically)

Bastille Day!

Today is Bastille Day. Vive La France! To celebrate this event, I went to see Pixar’s Ratatouille. More about that later. In other news, and this is for MK:

Ani DiFranco never fails to brings the ladies and a few sensitive dudes to tears or soft, gentle whimpering with her honest lyrics, music, and tight body. Anais Mitchell opens. Her folk-rock tunes of love gone gosh darn crummy start at 8 p.m. at the Warfield, 982 Market (at Fifth St.); Tickets are $40.50.

I stopped listening to Ani circa 2000. The most I ever paid for her concerts was $22. My college roommate used to go see her in clubs in NYC for free. I realize $40 is not nearly the same type of inflation you now get with really famous bands (you don’t want to know how much we are paying to see The Police in Fenway Park), and that musicians need to eat too, but this is sad.

Oh yeah, Ani - there was only so much tragic whining I could handle. Plus, she stopped being intriguing when she got married. That ended in divorce, yeah? I am happy she is still making music, and there are still people coming to ogle her tight body. Maybe if I listen to her again now (her new stuff, I mean) I might like her again. I should experiment.

But back to rats in the kitchen. In his excellent book The soul of a chef: The Journey Toward Perfection Michael Ruhlman says the following:

“When we braise meat, we can if we choose, connect ourself with everyone who has ever braised meat and everyone who will ever braise meat…to connect to that same pleasure, that amazement, to connect to that same gratitude. This is the kind of satisfaction that people who truly love to cook are after. We seek, in our collective struggle, to learn more and to cook better, but we are in fact reaching for that connection to humanity that we’ve lost or maybe never had or simply want more of. This connection will forever elude us…if we ever lose sight of cooking’s fundamental importance to others.…never forgot for a moment what the work was all about: to cook for people and to make them happy.”

That’s what food is all about. And that’s what Rémy, the cutest rat in history of film, wants to do for people, and does with great success. He has pink ears, nose, and paws, and is great at using these to express emotion as only a rat might. I predict a huge surge in pet rats this year, as there were thousands of clown fish being acquired after “Finding Nemo”, and dalmations a decade earlier. The depiction of the food and the restaurant business in Ratatouille is flawless, and I dare say Rémy’s fur is more realistic than that of James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (or as I like to call him, “Kitty” in “Monsters, INC”.) Aforementioned Thomas Keller, chef/owner of French Laundry, served as an adviser on the film, providing his recipes for the dishes, as well as the model for the way the kitchen should be run. In return, to quote SFGate’s Stacy Finz “To pay homage to the cooking profession, the filmmakers used Keller's voice for the role of a restaurant patron. The French version of the movie has chef Guy Savoy playing the part; the Spanish one substitutes the voice of El Bulli chef Ferran Adria. In the British version, "The Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver has a cameo as the restaurant inspector.” My hero Tony Bourdain called this film “quite simply the best food movie ever made”, and anyone who has any modicum of interest in food (not even cooking, just eating well) should see it. I am done gushing now.

Harry Potter

This is a rare live blog post.

Reasons I LOVE Harry Potter movies and books:

1. confirms my inner geek. I have an outer geek too, but I try to hide her.
2. do y'all have flying dreams? 'cos I do. and Harry Potter movies just throw me into those dreams, because flying on a broom has got to be the coolest thing EVER. Also totes reminded me of my absolutely FAVOURITE ZEMFIRA song: London Sky - forgive the quick translation, I totes thought I translated it before...

I dreamed of the London sky
Of a long kiss
We were flying, not holding onto anything
Which one of us will fall down first,
Break into pieces, onto the Tower Bridge?
In the morning,
I will find out in the morning...
You will find out later...
There is nothing more precious than these dreams.
Without these reminders
I am a lone wolf
What if I miss in the middle of the night,
Take off,
And nobody will know?
Just that lone wolf,
I am counting the steps until the very last destination.
Let’s run and fly!
I dreamed of the London sky,
Of a long kiss
We were waking on clouds there,
Pretending to be London rain,
Together sprinkling on the asphalt.
In the morning,
I will find out in the morning...
You will find out later...
There is nothing more precious than these words.
I am a lone wolf
What if I miss in the middle of the night,
Take off,
And nobody will know.
Just that lone wolf,
I am counting the steps until the very last destination.
Let’s run and fly!
I dreamed of the London sky…

3. People die, and teens have to deal with that. Even if it's just on the screen. For Harry Potter it's totes for real.

4. Emma Watson/Hermione Grainger is hot. She's also a know-it-all, which reminds me of ME being 14. Except that I wasn't a witch OR hot.

5. I REALLY REALLY want to believe in magic. I also totes wish there were Harry Potter books when I was a kid. They make growing up easier.

Oedipal unrest

Some time ago my friends and I were passing time discussing that oh-so-12-year-old-girl question of which celebrities one would like to kiss (and do other things to…) – all in good fun, etc. This game is especially good when there is a reasonable variety of the players’ sexual orientations, and copious amounts of alcohol are consumed. As I’ve just seen the last “Pirates of the Caribbean”, my list was quite obviously dominated by the Captain Jack Sparrow himself, and went something like this:

1. Johnny Depp
2. Zemfira (this required explanation – a Russian rock star)
3. Kate Moennig (an actress, for those not familiar with The L Word)
4. Gael Garcia Bernal
5. I can’t post it here. It’s too embarrassing. It proves that I am indeed 12 years old.

Now, something has been bothering me about this list since its inception. I couldn’t quite figure out what, so I thought about it for a while, and then I watched The Science of Sleep (which is, by the way, a phenomenal and sad film.) And then I got rather creeped out, because I realized what was bothering me. Gael Garcia Bernal reminded me of my father. A lot. Like they could be brothers. Born 25 or so years apart in two different ethnic groups on two different continents, but that’s just details. I invite you to compare for yourselves:

I know it's not exactly twin city here, and my dad is, like, 12 years old (well, not really, I have good genetics, yo) but eerie, no?

I thought back to Babel, and realized I had that vaguely creepy feeling then as well, but I could not define it besides feeling like I personally know the actor. And it wasn’t just a physical resemblance, either – it was Stephan’s character traits that reminded me of my dad as well. I think what made it more poignant is that The Science of Sleep is set in some indeterminate time period – could be now, could be the 1970s, there’s no real contemporary technology or anything involved, and Gael Garcia Bernal’s character wears what appears to be his father’s polyester clothes from the 1970s. Since I recall many things in my life beginning in 1978 or so, the polyester suits just cinched it. Add black plastic “nerd” glasses, and my father was up on the screen.

So now I guess I have Oedipal complex by proxy – I don’t know if such a thing exists, but it makes me uncomfortable.