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I am feeling pretty accomplished! But tired... so tired. This week has felt about 3 weeks long.
Cheesecake - in oven!
Strawberry sauce - done!
Tax return - filed!
Reviews of the last 5 movies I watched - rewritten!
The King's Speech - I enjoyed it a lot. Thought it was a bit heavy-handed in parts (seriously, how many Significant Looks do there need to be between Colin and Geoffrey? Yes, despite their disparate stations in life they care about one another and respect each other as equals WE GET IT). I was actually surprised, as it seemed like a more subtle movie than that, but overall was entertaining and well done. Helena Bonham Carter was kind of wasted... I like her as her normal kooky self. She was so straightlaced and dull here that she practically blended into the wallpaper. Colin Firth though, has never been more attractive. Unlike many others, I've never really found him all that attractive...this movie finally made me go, "Ohhh, so that's what other people see."
It was definitely an interesting time in history. I mean, what a time for a major political figure to suffer from a speech impediment! WWII! And of course, the whole scandal of Wallace Simpson and Elizabeth II's uncle abdicating, paving the way for her future reign. I have to say though that it kind of puts me off re: some criticism about their playing fast and loose with historical facts. I understand that some things have to be changed for cinematic effect and what not, but...eh. Sometimes it seems that they change things unnecessarily.
Even that aside, though, I don't think this is really a best picture movie. It's kind of disappointing to me that it's between this and The Social Network for the title. In any other year I don't think either would have a real chance. But as I said earlier, if it's between the two, I choose TKS. But I still say the real winner should be Winter's Bone.
As for acting... I actually think Best Actor should go to either Colin Firth or James Franco. Best Supporting Actress, I frankly can't even believe Helena Bonham Carter was nominated, other than because TKS is on a roll, and also she's HBC and it's a departure role for her. Supporting Actress should go to Melissa Leo or Hailee Steinfeld. And Best Supporting Actor should definitely go to Christian Bale. The BAFTAs aside, while Geoffrey Rush was good, he wasn't THAT good, the role didn't really allow for it. I actually thought he was better in Pirates of the Caribbean!
True Grit - Surprisingly, I liked this. I loved Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou? but otherwise the Coen brothers have been severely disappointing, particularly in recent times. I haaaaaaaaaaaated No Country for Old Men, while Burn After Reading and A Serious Man were just WTF. The ending kind of/sort of ruined my overall enjoyment of the movie, though -- I HATE abuse of animals, and hate watching or reading about horses being ridden to death. It's so wrong to use their natural, beautiful abilities against them.
I'm torn about Hailee Steinfeld for supporting actress. She definitely holds her own with experienced actors like Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, impressive considering her youth and inexperience, but did not much stand out aside from that. She strongly reminds me of Megan Follows from the Canadian Anne of Green Gables series. I'll stick with Melissa Leo, but the fact that Hailee was nominated at all, for a category that has historically gone to random and/or young actresses out of the blue (Anna Paquin, Marisa Tomei), kind of makes me want to change my vote.
I found both Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon quite amusing. Especially Matt, and how ridiculous his character is, with lines like:
"I gave some thought to stealing a kiss, though you are very young...and sick...and unattractive to boot."
"I have lapped filthy water from a hoof print. And was glad to have it."
Oh, and I also really enjoyed Barry Pepper.
127 Hours - I would actually give the Best Actor Oscar to James Franco for this role over Colin Firth. CF deserves it for more of a lifetime's worth of work, and certainly he was great in TKS. But I was really, really impressed with JF in this role. I've never been a huge JF fan, he was always kind of a useless pretty boy to me, but I think I've changed my mind now.
Obviously, this movie would not have nearly the same impact if the events it portrayed weren't true (and apparently extremely factual/authentic). But they ARE true, and just the thought of it... my mind can't even go there. I always wonder what I would do if I were put in this situation or that one, but after a point I just can't even think about it.
Side note... it's so random that Amber Tamblyn did a little cameo at the beginning.
Blue Valentine - What a miserable movie. Seriously, I found it even more miserable than Revolutionary Road or Jude, and those were fucking MISERABLE movies. At least in those, there were moments of joy, and I saw/understood that those two people had once loved each other. I didn't get that at all from BV. Michelle was only with Ryan out of convenience, or because she was scared, or whatever, but once she got over that, she was over him.
And I don't even blame her. Ryan Gosling's character has got to be the single most unattractive, unappealing male 'romantic' lead that ever existed. I seriously hated his guts. There was one scene when Michelle Williams is so frustrated with him that she starts to strangle him with her bare hands. I found myself clenching my own fists like I was choking him too, and had to consciously relax myself. I would say that he became dislikable because of how she treated him, but that's not true. I didn't like his younger self either. (Who, btw, just seemed like a wimpier version of Noah Calhoun. It's actually freakish how similar those two characters were in certain ways.) But his older, scruffy self was definitely worse. I don't know how he went from a halfway decent guy (though not attractive in the least to me) to the epitome of white trash, with those stupid fucking sunglasses that I wanted to rip off his face and shove through his ignorant, ambition-less neck. Wow. As you can see, I felt pretty strongly about the character, lol. I did not blame Michelle one whit for wanting out. There was NOTHING about him that was attractive. But then he turned me off right from the start. It is a little bizarre how different his character went from when they met to when they separated, it was almost like he was two different people.
Michelle, on the other hand, was basically the same person, just unhappy later in life. But her goals/ambitions were the same. In fact, I actually liked the older incarnation of her, after she'd grown up a bit and stopped taking shit from people. Though she apparently wouldn't take shit from the guy who knocked her up in the first place, which made NO sense to me. She was into him, or seemed like it, and he apologized and wanted to be with her and support her and she was just like giving him the cold shoulder. And then she meets Ryan and it's okay for HIM to be supportive, but not father of the baby, who she treats as though he has the plague? So weird and nonsensical.
Anyway, the happiest I felt was at the end, when they finally separated, though I thought she was still too nice and tolerant of him. God he was annoying. I think at the end of these types of movies you're supposed to be sorry at the end of the relationship -- I wasn't. I was rooting for it the whole time.
Love & Other Drugs - I like Anne Hathaway, but I never like her much in movies. There's something about her acting that rubs me the wrong way, I guess. Part of it is that she's so classically beautiful that she seems kind of weird looking as a 'normal girl.' But there are several scenes of her in black and white in this movie, and WOW. She's ethereally beautiful in them, like an old-time actress. Anyway, so yeah. I like her okay in her roles, I just don't like her as much as I always think I will.
Jake Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, has gone from someone I vaguely dislked to someone I now actively like. He was so great in this! Who knew he could be a romcom lead? He's always been so SERIOUS up until now. But I enjoyed him in Prince of Persia, and I liked him a lot in this, too. In fact, now I can even spell his name without looking it up first!
The whole movie was enjoyable right up to the resolution. sigh. Why, why, WHY do they feel that every single romance has to end with a Big Gesture? Don't they see that it's tired and old and actually detracts from the story they've been telling this whole time?? I mean, sometimes it's fitting. But in this story, when the female lead is suffering from a serious disease like Parkinson's, it is SO LAME that their problems could be resolved because Jake chases after her bus (on, as Jade puts it, a fake ticking clock). The most romantic part was when he told her he loved her! Wanted to grow old with her! And don't even get me started about the time they bumped into each other after his night of debauchery and she's with some random guy and acting like he's her boyfriend ("I'm with someone now"). Really? What happened to her insecurities/lack of trust re: her disease? She couldn't be with Jake because of it, but Random Asshole (they went out of their way to show us he was an insensitive jerk) is okay to be with? WHATever.
I really enjoyed the scenes between Jake and his brother. The fact that we're supposed to believe they're from the same gene pool is funny in itself.
Handbag I've been coveting - obtained!
Those who have been reading my LJ for awhile now (I'm talking about years) know that I'm a minor handbag fanatic. I decided years ago to care and nurture handbags instead of children. :)) I have a closet full of handbags, mostly unused, because like any crazy collector I can't actually bear the thought of using them. (I said it was crazy.) Also, some of them are so stylish that I really have nowhere TO take them. Anyway, I went through phases over certain designer brands (my biggest phases being Kate Spade and Louis Vuitton). Now I am fairly brand agnostic. :D If it's cute and/or beautiful, I'm a fan.
A couple of weeks ago, I passed a coworker's desk, and she had the cutest red handbag sitting there. It was just plain red, no other designs, but the color, the material, the texture, the shape, all really appealed to me. I got close enough that I saw a tasteful little metal plate on the front, one I recognized because I had been such a big KS fan back in the day. Long story short, I found out the name of the bag (Small Summerville Louis), and the color (Fire Engine Red), and to my surprise, it was actually very hard to find. It was sold out at all the KS retailers.
Usually KS bags can be found fairly easily, especially on eBay (of course I mean authentic, but there are plenty of the other kind as well). Of course I would set my sights on a hard-to-find KS bag. SIGH. eBay had one listing of the bag in the red I wanted (but the pictures were really bad, to the point where I wasn't even sure it WAS the same handbag), but the seller was asking for quite a high price for an out-of-season bag ($250 + $12 shipping -- the Small Louis originally retailed at $345). Completed listings showed me that this style/color combo hadn't even been listed in the last 90 days! There were plenty of listings for the bag in mouse (gray) or forest (green) at fairly reasonable prices (~200). I even almost settled for the gray (I emailed a seller whose last auction for it had been at a $175 BIN. It hadn't sold but also hadn't been relisted. I contacted her and asked if she was planning to relist it, and if so, if she'd take $150. I would have bought it if she'd said yes -- but she said she couldn't go that low. Then I asked if she had it in fire engine red because I'd pay the $175 if she did, but she responded, "I wish. The Small Louis would look awesome in that color." I wanted to reply, "It does." LOL).
I decided that it was a close call, because I didn't really want it in gray. I wanted it in red, and the only person selling it in red wanted $262 (with shipping) for it. I could understand why her listing hadn't sold. 1) The title of the listing said "KEATE SPADE." She's lucky that eBay's search engine has gotten much smarter than in the early days and accounts for typos. Back then, no one would have even found her listing. 2) As previously mentioned, her pictures sucked. It barely looked like my coworker's bag. The shape was off, the color was off, the texture was off. I was banking on the fact that she probably just didn't have a very good camera, because all the other details about the bag were correct, and she had a very good feedback rating and had sold other KS handbags before to happy people. 3) It was overpriced. All the other Small Louis bags were going for ~$200; she wanted $250. Granted she had the only red one on the market, but somehow I didn't think that was why she had listed it that high (she would have said something about it being rare in the listing description, imho).
In any case, I saw that she was in Renton -- local! Even if she were willing to meet me locally, though, I still didn't really want to pay $250. I decided to take a chance and ask her if she'd be willing to take $200 for it and also meet me locally. To my surprise (and delight) she agreed! The caveat was that she was willing to do this if she could save herself from paying all the fees (from eBay and PayPal), which meant that we had to do a transaction outside of eBay, and I'd have to pay her cash. I only had minor reservations about doing this. She was a reputable eBay seller, so I didn't think she was out to screw me over; the fees thing made perfect sense because my offered price would otherwise be too low (all things considered, she wasn't really giving me THAT much of a discount -- if we'd done it on eBay, she probably wouldn't have gotten much more for it than what I was offering); and finally, people do transactions like this all the time through Craigslist! So it was basically like finding someone on Craigslist who was selling the handbag I wanted. So I saved myself $62 and she sold her bag. Win-win.
I haven't taken any pictures of my actual bag, I'm not sure photos would do it justice, but here's the stock photo:
The shoulder strap is removeable and I plan to remove it. I like it much better as a tote.
Pets - cute!
I can't remember if I've shown you guys this photo before, lol. Ignore the messy bed. >.>
Oh, I need to pimp the Academy Awards poll once again since we are getting so close, just a couple of days to go now. Remember, if you've already taken it, if you haven't already done so, you should probably go back and fill out the second poll I had to post because my first one left out a number of categories. Here is the first part; here is the second part. Fill out both parts for a complete entry. There's also an optional 'sentimental' version of both polls if you feel like doing those. :-)
Cheesecake - in oven!
Strawberry sauce - done!
Tax return - filed!
Reviews of the last 5 movies I watched - rewritten!
The King's Speech - I enjoyed it a lot. Thought it was a bit heavy-handed in parts (seriously, how many Significant Looks do there need to be between Colin and Geoffrey? Yes, despite their disparate stations in life they care about one another and respect each other as equals WE GET IT). I was actually surprised, as it seemed like a more subtle movie than that, but overall was entertaining and well done. Helena Bonham Carter was kind of wasted... I like her as her normal kooky self. She was so straightlaced and dull here that she practically blended into the wallpaper. Colin Firth though, has never been more attractive. Unlike many others, I've never really found him all that attractive...this movie finally made me go, "Ohhh, so that's what other people see."
It was definitely an interesting time in history. I mean, what a time for a major political figure to suffer from a speech impediment! WWII! And of course, the whole scandal of Wallace Simpson and Elizabeth II's uncle abdicating, paving the way for her future reign. I have to say though that it kind of puts me off re: some criticism about their playing fast and loose with historical facts. I understand that some things have to be changed for cinematic effect and what not, but...eh. Sometimes it seems that they change things unnecessarily.
Even that aside, though, I don't think this is really a best picture movie. It's kind of disappointing to me that it's between this and The Social Network for the title. In any other year I don't think either would have a real chance. But as I said earlier, if it's between the two, I choose TKS. But I still say the real winner should be Winter's Bone.
As for acting... I actually think Best Actor should go to either Colin Firth or James Franco. Best Supporting Actress, I frankly can't even believe Helena Bonham Carter was nominated, other than because TKS is on a roll, and also she's HBC and it's a departure role for her. Supporting Actress should go to Melissa Leo or Hailee Steinfeld. And Best Supporting Actor should definitely go to Christian Bale. The BAFTAs aside, while Geoffrey Rush was good, he wasn't THAT good, the role didn't really allow for it. I actually thought he was better in Pirates of the Caribbean!
True Grit - Surprisingly, I liked this. I loved Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou? but otherwise the Coen brothers have been severely disappointing, particularly in recent times. I haaaaaaaaaaaated No Country for Old Men, while Burn After Reading and A Serious Man were just WTF. The ending kind of/sort of ruined my overall enjoyment of the movie, though -- I HATE abuse of animals, and hate watching or reading about horses being ridden to death. It's so wrong to use their natural, beautiful abilities against them.
I'm torn about Hailee Steinfeld for supporting actress. She definitely holds her own with experienced actors like Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, impressive considering her youth and inexperience, but did not much stand out aside from that. She strongly reminds me of Megan Follows from the Canadian Anne of Green Gables series. I'll stick with Melissa Leo, but the fact that Hailee was nominated at all, for a category that has historically gone to random and/or young actresses out of the blue (Anna Paquin, Marisa Tomei), kind of makes me want to change my vote.
I found both Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon quite amusing. Especially Matt, and how ridiculous his character is, with lines like:
"I gave some thought to stealing a kiss, though you are very young...and sick...and unattractive to boot."
"I have lapped filthy water from a hoof print. And was glad to have it."
Oh, and I also really enjoyed Barry Pepper.
127 Hours - I would actually give the Best Actor Oscar to James Franco for this role over Colin Firth. CF deserves it for more of a lifetime's worth of work, and certainly he was great in TKS. But I was really, really impressed with JF in this role. I've never been a huge JF fan, he was always kind of a useless pretty boy to me, but I think I've changed my mind now.
Obviously, this movie would not have nearly the same impact if the events it portrayed weren't true (and apparently extremely factual/authentic). But they ARE true, and just the thought of it... my mind can't even go there. I always wonder what I would do if I were put in this situation or that one, but after a point I just can't even think about it.
Side note... it's so random that Amber Tamblyn did a little cameo at the beginning.
Blue Valentine - What a miserable movie. Seriously, I found it even more miserable than Revolutionary Road or Jude, and those were fucking MISERABLE movies. At least in those, there were moments of joy, and I saw/understood that those two people had once loved each other. I didn't get that at all from BV. Michelle was only with Ryan out of convenience, or because she was scared, or whatever, but once she got over that, she was over him.
And I don't even blame her. Ryan Gosling's character has got to be the single most unattractive, unappealing male 'romantic' lead that ever existed. I seriously hated his guts. There was one scene when Michelle Williams is so frustrated with him that she starts to strangle him with her bare hands. I found myself clenching my own fists like I was choking him too, and had to consciously relax myself. I would say that he became dislikable because of how she treated him, but that's not true. I didn't like his younger self either. (Who, btw, just seemed like a wimpier version of Noah Calhoun. It's actually freakish how similar those two characters were in certain ways.) But his older, scruffy self was definitely worse. I don't know how he went from a halfway decent guy (though not attractive in the least to me) to the epitome of white trash, with those stupid fucking sunglasses that I wanted to rip off his face and shove through his ignorant, ambition-less neck. Wow. As you can see, I felt pretty strongly about the character, lol. I did not blame Michelle one whit for wanting out. There was NOTHING about him that was attractive. But then he turned me off right from the start. It is a little bizarre how different his character went from when they met to when they separated, it was almost like he was two different people.
Michelle, on the other hand, was basically the same person, just unhappy later in life. But her goals/ambitions were the same. In fact, I actually liked the older incarnation of her, after she'd grown up a bit and stopped taking shit from people. Though she apparently wouldn't take shit from the guy who knocked her up in the first place, which made NO sense to me. She was into him, or seemed like it, and he apologized and wanted to be with her and support her and she was just like giving him the cold shoulder. And then she meets Ryan and it's okay for HIM to be supportive, but not father of the baby, who she treats as though he has the plague? So weird and nonsensical.
Anyway, the happiest I felt was at the end, when they finally separated, though I thought she was still too nice and tolerant of him. God he was annoying. I think at the end of these types of movies you're supposed to be sorry at the end of the relationship -- I wasn't. I was rooting for it the whole time.
Love & Other Drugs - I like Anne Hathaway, but I never like her much in movies. There's something about her acting that rubs me the wrong way, I guess. Part of it is that she's so classically beautiful that she seems kind of weird looking as a 'normal girl.' But there are several scenes of her in black and white in this movie, and WOW. She's ethereally beautiful in them, like an old-time actress. Anyway, so yeah. I like her okay in her roles, I just don't like her as much as I always think I will.
Jake Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, has gone from someone I vaguely dislked to someone I now actively like. He was so great in this! Who knew he could be a romcom lead? He's always been so SERIOUS up until now. But I enjoyed him in Prince of Persia, and I liked him a lot in this, too. In fact, now I can even spell his name without looking it up first!
The whole movie was enjoyable right up to the resolution. sigh. Why, why, WHY do they feel that every single romance has to end with a Big Gesture? Don't they see that it's tired and old and actually detracts from the story they've been telling this whole time?? I mean, sometimes it's fitting. But in this story, when the female lead is suffering from a serious disease like Parkinson's, it is SO LAME that their problems could be resolved because Jake chases after her bus (on, as Jade puts it, a fake ticking clock). The most romantic part was when he told her he loved her! Wanted to grow old with her! And don't even get me started about the time they bumped into each other after his night of debauchery and she's with some random guy and acting like he's her boyfriend ("I'm with someone now"). Really? What happened to her insecurities/lack of trust re: her disease? She couldn't be with Jake because of it, but Random Asshole (they went out of their way to show us he was an insensitive jerk) is okay to be with? WHATever.
I really enjoyed the scenes between Jake and his brother. The fact that we're supposed to believe they're from the same gene pool is funny in itself.
Handbag I've been coveting - obtained!
Those who have been reading my LJ for awhile now (I'm talking about years) know that I'm a minor handbag fanatic. I decided years ago to care and nurture handbags instead of children. :)) I have a closet full of handbags, mostly unused, because like any crazy collector I can't actually bear the thought of using them. (I said it was crazy.) Also, some of them are so stylish that I really have nowhere TO take them. Anyway, I went through phases over certain designer brands (my biggest phases being Kate Spade and Louis Vuitton). Now I am fairly brand agnostic. :D If it's cute and/or beautiful, I'm a fan.
A couple of weeks ago, I passed a coworker's desk, and she had the cutest red handbag sitting there. It was just plain red, no other designs, but the color, the material, the texture, the shape, all really appealed to me. I got close enough that I saw a tasteful little metal plate on the front, one I recognized because I had been such a big KS fan back in the day. Long story short, I found out the name of the bag (Small Summerville Louis), and the color (Fire Engine Red), and to my surprise, it was actually very hard to find. It was sold out at all the KS retailers.
Usually KS bags can be found fairly easily, especially on eBay (of course I mean authentic, but there are plenty of the other kind as well). Of course I would set my sights on a hard-to-find KS bag. SIGH. eBay had one listing of the bag in the red I wanted (but the pictures were really bad, to the point where I wasn't even sure it WAS the same handbag), but the seller was asking for quite a high price for an out-of-season bag ($250 + $12 shipping -- the Small Louis originally retailed at $345). Completed listings showed me that this style/color combo hadn't even been listed in the last 90 days! There were plenty of listings for the bag in mouse (gray) or forest (green) at fairly reasonable prices (~200). I even almost settled for the gray (I emailed a seller whose last auction for it had been at a $175 BIN. It hadn't sold but also hadn't been relisted. I contacted her and asked if she was planning to relist it, and if so, if she'd take $150. I would have bought it if she'd said yes -- but she said she couldn't go that low. Then I asked if she had it in fire engine red because I'd pay the $175 if she did, but she responded, "I wish. The Small Louis would look awesome in that color." I wanted to reply, "It does." LOL).
I decided that it was a close call, because I didn't really want it in gray. I wanted it in red, and the only person selling it in red wanted $262 (with shipping) for it. I could understand why her listing hadn't sold. 1) The title of the listing said "KEATE SPADE." She's lucky that eBay's search engine has gotten much smarter than in the early days and accounts for typos. Back then, no one would have even found her listing. 2) As previously mentioned, her pictures sucked. It barely looked like my coworker's bag. The shape was off, the color was off, the texture was off. I was banking on the fact that she probably just didn't have a very good camera, because all the other details about the bag were correct, and she had a very good feedback rating and had sold other KS handbags before to happy people. 3) It was overpriced. All the other Small Louis bags were going for ~$200; she wanted $250. Granted she had the only red one on the market, but somehow I didn't think that was why she had listed it that high (she would have said something about it being rare in the listing description, imho).
In any case, I saw that she was in Renton -- local! Even if she were willing to meet me locally, though, I still didn't really want to pay $250. I decided to take a chance and ask her if she'd be willing to take $200 for it and also meet me locally. To my surprise (and delight) she agreed! The caveat was that she was willing to do this if she could save herself from paying all the fees (from eBay and PayPal), which meant that we had to do a transaction outside of eBay, and I'd have to pay her cash. I only had minor reservations about doing this. She was a reputable eBay seller, so I didn't think she was out to screw me over; the fees thing made perfect sense because my offered price would otherwise be too low (all things considered, she wasn't really giving me THAT much of a discount -- if we'd done it on eBay, she probably wouldn't have gotten much more for it than what I was offering); and finally, people do transactions like this all the time through Craigslist! So it was basically like finding someone on Craigslist who was selling the handbag I wanted. So I saved myself $62 and she sold her bag. Win-win.
I haven't taken any pictures of my actual bag, I'm not sure photos would do it justice, but here's the stock photo:
The shoulder strap is removeable and I plan to remove it. I like it much better as a tote.
Pets - cute!
I can't remember if I've shown you guys this photo before, lol. Ignore the messy bed. >.>
Oh, I need to pimp the Academy Awards poll once again since we are getting so close, just a couple of days to go now. Remember, if you've already taken it, if you haven't already done so, you should probably go back and fill out the second poll I had to post because my first one left out a number of categories. Here is the first part; here is the second part. Fill out both parts for a complete entry. There's also an optional 'sentimental' version of both polls if you feel like doing those. :-)