Where the Wild Things Are

I saw Spike Jonze’s new movie “Where the Wild Things Are” on Friday. I really wanted to see this movie. I was intrigued by the previews and the reviews.

I really liked the beginning, where we see Max’s (a nine-year old, I would guess) family and we get a feel for the family dynamics. The movie through very precise, detailed shots gets across the mood: Max is angry, Max is lonely, Max is sad. The camera lingers close to his face, close to the gestures, like when he goes under the desk and plays with his mother’s toes: very peculiar and very familiar at the same time.

After a fit of anger Max runs away from home and enters a world of fantasy, a world where the wild beasts are. We get the description of their world, we get the idea of the beasts different personalities. By the middle of the island adventures, the movie feels like it’s dragging. Especially  during Max’s walks on the island with the beasts, mainly because there’s no plot. But there’s scenery and walking.

When things on the island get tough mainly because the strained relationship between Max and the beasts, we get more than we bargained for. And when there’s hurt and disappointment, I felt that the movie was rather manipulative: the camera lingers on the beasts’ and Max’s faces when they are on the verge of tears, and the music commands you to cry. These moments I wish it was more subtle, I wish there was less in your face sensational sentimentalism. And lots of people were crying.

I liked the movie, it set the tone right through beautiful shots and angles. The kid Max Records playing Max was very good. I just wish there was less shameless prodding of the viewers’  lachrymal glands.

Some Tuesday Evening

Sometimes it feels like things are difficult. Like nothing’s moving, nothing’s happening. Everything’s a drag; getting up, going to work. Moderate excitement cannot be excitement. The evolution is within you, except it’s not. It’s swampy, it’s still. Early darkness. Perpetual sadness.

Movie Theater Manners (or Lack Thereof)

Watching movies in a movie theater (read big screen) is an experience that I love and much enjoy. But one that can be easily ruined mainly by other people. I don’t know what expectations these people have when they go to a movie theater, but to me, when in a theater I try to keep to myself and minimize my impact on my surroundings.

When I say surroundings I mean people, seats, floor, food, everything. Oh, yes, food. How did chomping on popcorn become associated with movie watching? What compels people to purchase overpriced bad popcorn and ridiculously diluted soda? What compels people to chomp and slurp? How can they not realize it is annoying?

Bad habits, yes.  Generations of people being brought up with the conviction that the world is theirs to conquer. An attitude evident from the movie-going crowd to the foreign policy. It might be useful to boost youngsters’ self-confidence telling them they can be whatever they want to be, but it can also be useful to teach them that they should respect other people, because unfortunately, we have to share this world. I know, it sucks, but that’s how it is. There’s a fine line between ruthless go-getters, and obnoxious. Evidently some people think the world is their playground, but sorry to have to break it to you, the movie theater is not your living room. No, you cannot be as comfortable as you are in your livingroom. Until the time comes when movie theaters feature couches, you cannot stretch your legs while seating in a movie theater. Putting your feet up the seat in front of you is gross. (And, by the way, you are wearing these freaking stupid clogs, while you’re not a Dutch peasant and while is not Halloween). All I want to do is turn to you, smile and say as politely as I can “Would you mind putting your feet down? I’m afraid they smell really bad. Thanks!” How humiliated would you feel? Would that put the message across to your brain?

Probably not. Cause probably you were never taught good manners. Or you chose to erase them from your brain. Whether you like it or not you live in a society, meaning you have to respect some rules; this is not a desert island. It’s the same attitude that makes people yelling “liar!” while the President addresses the Congress, the same attitude making that god awful Kanye West snatching the mic away to say his sorry bit. It’s the same attitude of feeling entitled. You shouldn’t though, simply because you are not actually entitled. Not more than anybody else.

So while you take your feet off the seat in front of you, make sure that you keep quiet. Yes, you heard me, quiet. Resist the urge to turn to your companion every 5 seconds and comment or question or sigh loudly or exhale loudly. You can save it for later. And it would save us some aggravation.

And now that you masticated like a lovely bovine and the movie is over and it’s time to leave, can you take your trash with you? I mean really, what’s with leaving it behind? Is it some kind of animal territorial marking behavior, like leaving b.o. or urine behind? Unnecessary.

Unfortunately this obnoxious behavior is noticed in every theater: urban, suburban, arthouse, blockbuster. And actually it extends outside of the theater: people not covering their mouths while yawning, people talking while eating, eating with open mouth, eating like pigs while not in the confines of their house, driving without using the turn signal while turning, picking their noses while driving (yes, though you might be alone in your car, you can actually be seen by others outside your car), people cutting you off while talking, people talking endlessly and loudly…

The bottom line is that we do not have to sustain behavior that encroaches into our spatial, visual, aural space. Manner bullies, cut it out. Please. Thank you.

Students and Teachers

Sometimes I think that people can be classified either as students or teachers. Teachers are the people who are patient, calm, can explain things, like sharing knowledge, like to talk, can convey information easily and happily.

Students are people who are impatient, people who like exploring different things and learning new things all the time, people who can not sit still, who get easily bored, people who like getting better by learning.

I am definitely a student.

Short Documentary

Oh, neglected blog, chin up, here I am. I’ve been very busy lately, but that’s not a reason to stop writing, isn’t it? Well, what can I say? Among lots of other things going on, I have been working on a short documentary for Cambridge Community TV (CCTV) with three other people and our instructor. We are doing a short doc on the Out Of the Blue Gallery on Prospect Street in Central Square in Cambridge. It will air on CCTV when it’s done, and it will be on their website as well. This has been a new experience for me, and a mixed bag.

It’s been interesting to see the process of a short documentary film making, from pre-production to production and post production. In the beginning we raced through interviews and got too much b-roll footage, which of course is good. During editing we came to realize that a big part of the material was not good enough to use. One of our interviews turned out only 1 minute of usable material out of the 30 minutes we shot. The lesson learnt: when the interviewee is less than stellar, your questions have to be specifically and tightly phrased, so there is no room to roam. The camera handling was OK, but our shots seem kinda dark to me. I like the way it looks on the computer better than the way it looks on the monitor.

The most tiring thing, of course, was the editing process. It seems to be taking forever. We watch and go over the footage, try to decide what we like to use. After the decision is made and we sort of put everything together, watching the whole thing makes me think that something is missing: all of a sudden I like the material we didn’t use. And sometimes we forget exactly what material we have, and what could have been perfect for a certain scene. Back on the drawing board, back to talking about it, cause we’re a team and we have to agree and move on. The moving along process has been elusive at times. When I am on doing something I want to concentrate and I want to be done with it. Some people in my team tended to sidetrack the process, which is actually very tiring. I mean not all times are good for jokes, especially when we have to finish the damn thing in a week.

During editing one sees the things that one fails to see during shooting: the microphone playing pick a boo at the right corner, the unfortunate sitting of the subject with a bird painting in the background, in a way that it looks like the bird is picking on the talent’s head, the less than perfect sound, with lots of ambient sound and distractions, the setting on the camera that makes the heads look distorted. Did we screw up every way possible? I don’t think so, but we learnt a lot.

There are still many things to do. It’s essential to adapt and change strategy as soon as possible and of course we should not have left anything to the last minute. So, we still have a narration piece to do, and edit and edit some more and then wrap up. We have only three hours tomorrow and that’d be it. I know it’s not going to be perfect, I know it’s not going to be the way I had envisioned it to be, but I hope it turns out to something watchable and not too painfully horrible.

Dreams

Once again Gail Collins puts things into perspective in her NYTimes Op-Ed:

And some people feel it was sort of weird for Barack Obama to throw himself into the fight with such ardor. They may have a point. But if the president is going to take a flier on an improbable and possibly delusional quest, I would prefer that it involve lobbying the Olympic committee rather than, say, invading a country.

MBTA Clusterf&%k Before Yo La Tengo

Yesterday I was caught up in that MBTA clusterf#%k. Oh, good times. MBTA dahrling, you don’t stop surprising me, a new problem everytime. At least you’re being creative, you’re not boring me to death.

TMB and I got to Davis at 7:15pm to take the train. The platform was busy, but OK I thought, maybe that’s just commuter / rush hour traffic. The train came, but I noticed something strange: the sign on the front car, instead of reading Ashmont or Braintree, read “Central Sq”. Strange, but then again MBTA have messed up systems anyway (like the automated stop-announcing system getting stuck to “Next Stop Charles MGH” for 10 stops), so I didn’t worry too much.

Well, maybe I should have: after boarding the train there came an announcement that nobody was able to make out, just because the PA system on the trains is so lame and inefficient. But we were able to hear the PA the third time it announced that the last stop for this train would be Central Sq and then there will be shuttle buses from Central to JFK. Great, MBTA wants to prove us right, that they DO suck indeed. The train was being very slow, standing by every few yards for 10 minutes.

Right after leaving Harvard the train stopped again. For a long time that felt like forever. People grew agitated and kept asking what did they say and what was that, cause as I mentioned before the PA system is just useless. There was this woman, who kept asking the same questions: Her: ”What did they say?” Us:”They said that Central would be the last stop and then they would have shuttle buses from Central to JFK” Her: “Shuttle buses?!” Us: “Yes, shuttle buses from Central to JFK” Her: “But I want to get off at Park” Us: “[Silence]” Her: “So the next stop after Central will be JFK?” Us: “No, the shuttle buses will make all the stops in between” Her: “Shuttle buses?!” Us: “[Please somebody shoot me in the eye right now]“

These moments were just precious: there was this guy in his early twenties, who was asking questions too, like “Is it always like this?” Hmmm, interesting, I thought, a tourist marveling at how hard MBTA works to boost tourism in the greater  Boston area. People were trying to sort of explain the situation, although at that point we really didn’t know what had caused the service interruption: did somebody jump in the tracks, touched the third rail, then got run over by the train? Well, that would be a bitch to clean up. [Note: These were actually thoughts, not shared with the out-of-town visitors]. I think the guy at some point got embarrassed about his own questions, so he explained to us that he had grown up in a town with 10k population, and he went to college to a town with 1,000 people. “Is this what’s going on in the big city?” he wondered aloud. Oh, yes, the bad big city welcomes you.

After 10 minutes the train finally started moving again. But backwards! Yes, it started backing up to Harvard again, which btw was the last stop for this train. Um, OK… We got out of the train and was asking the conductor questions, and the poor woman was ready to cry. She was like “I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t get any answers!”. So then she was like “You’ll have to go up and take the shuttle bus from the street”. That’s great, but there’s a minor detail, there are like 20 possible places around Harvard Sq where shuttle buses could be picking people from. She didn’t know. Oh, well… We got out, after 5 minutes we saw the shuttle buses, and the masses of people waiting to board. Arghhh…

On another example of common sense or lack thereof, the driver of the shuttle bus had only the front door open for people to board on the bus. There was this MBTA woman working outside, trying to organize the chaos and she was yelling “OPEN THE REAR DOOR”. It took the driver a couple of minutes to realize that opening both doors would speed up the process, and btw you are a flippin’ shuttle bus. We were able to get on the next bus, and were securely packed in like sardines. It was hot and stuffy, and when we got to Charles MGH we got off, cause I couldn’t breathe. So, it took us one hour from Davis to Charles MGH. Jeez!

We walked from Charles to the Wilbur Theatre. Yes, that was the destination, the Wilbur Theatre to see Yo La Tengo play live. TMB would have liked to get  a beer, but we didn’t really know what time exactly YLT would be on, so we decided against it. I needed hydration badly, so I got a bottle of water from the theatre which cost it’s weight in gold ($4). Yura Yura Teikoku opened, a japanese psychedelic band and some of their songs were good. I took some photographs, it was really good that the staff didn’t go around bitching about the use of an SLR. Yes, I DID ignore the signs outside saying NO photography or video are allowed, cause I just spent $4 for a 99c water bottle,  I think it’s OK if I take a couple of photos and video clips, which btw you can see here.

Yo La Tengo got on at 9:20. I liked the backdrop with the colored buttons. Georgia is an amazing drummer, so fluid, so darn good. Ira made noise, as in lots of noise! There was a surprise: a six string ensemble joined them for a couple of songs, students from the area that YLT had only met yesterday. The highlight of the night was Little Honda: a super extended version, with super long solos, Ira going totally crazy, two violin players joining and a first sight for me: a violin up close against the amp for distortion. Can it get better than this?! At that point I thought I had lost my hearing, but was content. In summary, they kicked ass big time!

The Best Films of the Decade

Paste Magazine is asking its readers to vote for the best films of the decade, which is slightly curious timing since 2009 is not over yet. They provide a list of the best films of the decade, with the smallest font possible, and of course you can add films you think are missing from the list.

My favs: The Lives of Others, Lost in Translation, Half Nelson, The Squid and the Whale, You Can Count On Me, Once, The Station Agent (which is not on the list, wtf Paste Magazine?), No Man’s Land, The Whale Rider, Kill Bill V. I & II

The Flaming Lips

On Sunday I went to the Flaming Lips show at the BoA Pavilion. Ah, the Pavilion, with its white tent, reminds me of the days I worked in South Boston, and used to walk in that area every day. Nostlagia time is up, so, yes, Sunday night was a pleasant enough night for a concert, with an awesome full (or was it almost full?) moon.

Actually the main reason I wanted to go to the show was  Explosions In the Sky. I like their instrumental post-rock, full of guitar sounds.  They played before the Flaming Lips. They started at around 8:00. I love their music, but I hate the opening band treatment, that has to play with the lame lights, and use half the stage. But, their music was awesome! Then it was 8:40, and that was it! I couldn’t believe it, they only played for 40 minutes! That was disappointing! I tried to take some photos with my SLR, but, of course, you’re not allowed to shoot photos with that camera, so I had to take lame photos with my point and shoot, and none of the Explosions in the Sky came out OK. More disappointment *sigh*

Anyway, then the crew turned the stage into a serious construction site, working for half an hour to set the stage for the Flaming Lips show. Wayne Coyne was coming and going to check on the progress, he was kinda goofy. The screen at the background of the stage was projecting all cool colors and images. At some point it was showing a naked chic dancing (she looked digitally yellow, but you could tell her nakedness). After 5 minutes or so, she laid down, spread her legs, the camera zoomed in really close; then the screen at that “opening” turned out to be a door, which opened, and the band members came out of there; so, yeah, basically the dancing chic gave birth to the band members, nice, ain’t it?

Then Wayne Coyne appeared in a bubble, crowd-surfed for a little while, and the place turned into a carnival site, with balloons and confetti. I don’t know, I like their music, but I am not their biggest fan, and not sure I liked the use of so much “stuff” to get the crowd excited and going. Isn’t their music enough? No, I guess, there is always the show aspect that fans love, with yetis, dancers, etc etc. To be honest, the crowd DID get excited and the cool lights offered the opportunities for some cool photos I took and you can see here. I liked their set too, I just wish Coyne didn’t banter that much between songs.

Me, I am still looking forward to an Explosions in the Sky show.

At the Dentist’s

I hadn’t been to the dentist’s in four years, and yes, it was about time to pay a visit. There are people who dread the visit to the dentist, but not me. Generally my teeth have been in good health, and I have to thank Dad for this (btw today’s dad’s birthday, hey, Happy Birthday Dad, enjoy the last week at the beach!)

Anyway, I got to the dentist on time, and was feeling kinda excited about it (OK, not really, but it was something different in my everyday routine). When the technician called my name, I followed her in, and sat in the chair. She introduced herself and then showed me a piece of plastic that had to go inside my mouth and I had to chew on, in order for her to take the x-rays. I was like, are you sure that this has to go insidemy mouth?! I mean the plastic thingy was the size of half of my face, in other words, massive! She was like, yes, just open your mouth. I opened my mouth, she put it right up against my teeth, and then she went “OK, now close your mouth and chew on that side”. Uhhhh, are you crazy, woman? I can’t possibly close my mouth, cause it just doesn’t fit and, no, I don’t want it drilling the bottom and top of my mouth. Are you sure this thing is designed for people and not for horses?! She was like, “oh, you have such a small mouth”. Yes, I am a small person and I have a small mouth, what do you want me to do, get a new one? How about the supplier designing something that would easily fit smaller mouths?! Do you use this thing for children too? (apparently children use other plastic contraptions, which I was seriously tempted to ask for).

I started getting slightly annoyed, and thank goodness they had the radio tuned on NPR and not on kiss108 or something ridiculous like that. Then she suggested that I try fit it in my mouth myself. And I guess that went slightly better. The first two tries failed and my mouth hurt like crazy. The third time I managed to chew on the part, and the x-rays were usable, but, boy, was it a traumatic experience.

Then she cleaned my teeth, which felt like she really wanted to yank them out. At some point she was like “oh, your wisdom teeth are so far behind, it’s difficult to reach”. I wanted to yell, YES, they are wisdom teeth and they are supposed top grow back there, NOT in the front. Get it? After she was done, and to be honest it didn’t hurt too much, the doctor came in, saw the x-rays, examined my teeth and declared that I am all set!!! Yay, no cavities, no fillings, and, no, I don’t have to sit in that dreaded dentist’s chair anytime soon!