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You Are 68% Intuitive |
 You are a very intuitive person. And luckily, your intuition is normally right. You’re wise enough to know that relying on intuition alone can be dangerous. When your intuition seems really off, you tend to ignore it – and look at the facts instead. |
How Intuitive Are You?
Answers to Tuesday Trivia of 2/13
Tough going this week.
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Please, television gods, don’t cancel Studio 60!
This sucks. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is getting better and better. The relationships are more interesting, and the characters are developing in fascinating ways. I want more more more Studio 60.
Expectations
I hate my birthday.
I hate my birthday because I want it to be magnificent and glorious and “My Day” and all that. And if it isn’t, it’s disappointing. I want to be surprised, but if I don’t tell anyone, then my chances for magnficence and lots of birthday wishes are decreased. And if I do tell people then I don’t get my surprise. (Once, my then-husband surprised me by telling me he couldn’t be bothered with my birthday this year so don’t expect anything, which hurt so much that when the surprise came, it turned out not to be worth it.)
So until yesterday, I never hated Valentine’s Day. But yesterday, I had a very pleasant day. No relationship. No cards. No flowers. No glorious romance. No disappointments. No keeping my fingers crossed hoping the man in my life won’t fuck up. No agreeing not to do V-Day and then being the idiot standing there opening a present without one to give in exchange. No agreeing to do V-Day and then being shattered when I get nothing nothing nothing. Again.
Yesterday I felt free. I didn’t even notice it was V-Day until I logged onto some blogs. And then I thought, “I feel better this way. I like me better this way.”
There’s a scene in Robin and Marian. Robin has been at the Crusades for thirty years, during which time, Marian became a nun, and eventually an abbess. And she says to him, she was at peace for all those years, and one day with him and she is happy to throw away her peace because she loves him so.
Damn, I love that movie.
But I also know that’s true for me. I know I’d throw away this peaceful feeling for expectation and hope and disappointment and aggravation, all of which are part and parcel of being in a relationship. But I also know I really do like the peace.
Hints are up
Sorry it took so long. Snow day an’ all.
I am Spartacus
Per Driftglass. We are all Spartacus.
Snow day!
Not only is school closed for Arthur, but work is closed for me. Whee!
So I told Arthur we should do a Calvin Snow Dance, sort of a thank you to the Snow Gods for the day off, and Arthur insists there is no such thing as a Calvin Snow Dance. I’ve been Googling for a while now, “calvin and hobbes snow,” “calvin snow dance” “dance for snow” and more. Not finding any cartoons. So consider this a bleg. If you’ve got a link to a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon showing the snow dance, or the sacrifice to the snow gods, or any of that, please step forward.
Tuesday Trivia 2/13
1. “They say you’re the bad guy.” “Oh, is that what they say?”
Solved by Brandi (comment #8) and Christopher (comment #9).
2. She gives them a choice of powdered eggs or fresh ones. Powdered will last longer, but they crave fresh.
A unique film memoir, with two completely separate film crews.
3. The revolutionary rapes a prostitute, but she gets her revenge, and a reward to boot.
This is one of nine collaborations between the director and his gorgeous star, all during the 1930s.
4. A sing-along at Graceland doesn’t go well.
Solved by Ken (comment #1).
5. Kissing a beautiful girl, he sees the assassin reflected in her eyes.
Solved by Ben (comment #13).
6. She arranges a book-signing event at the store where she works, and ends up seduced by the author.
Solved by Roberta (comment #3).
7. His day is divided into “units,” like a television schedule.
Solved by witless chum (comment #15).
Whee! Happy!
Arthur’s report card kicked ass.
Monday Movie Review: Babel
Babel (2006) 10/10
The accidental shooting of an American tourist (Cate Blanchett) touches the lives of a poor Moroccan family, a Mexican nanny (Adriana Barraza), and a deaf Japanese schoolgirl (Rinko Kikuchi). Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.
You will probably think I’m making this up, but I swear I read two or three different capsule descriptions of this movie and still had no idea what I was going to see. The biggest hint is that this is a Iñárritu movie; he’s the guy who directed Amores Perros, which was also about a group of unconnected stories tied together by a single accident. Here, I think that the director has truly honed his skills. The stories flow back and forth from country to country without confusion, and the sense that they are tied together by an undercurrent of meaning is strong. The characters in Babel all long to reach through each moment of failed communication and somehow touch what they really want.
Nowhere is this more poignant than with Cheiko (Kikuchi), isolated by her deafness, she is far more isolated by grief at the death of her mother. More than anything, she wants to be an ordinary girl, but it’s hard to flirt with boys when you can’t hear them. She wants to be no different than her friends, but her grief isolates her. Her constant grasping for sexual contact is touching and sad. Kikuchi is brilliant in the role, although I think it’s a real shame that they hired a hearing actress to play a deaf character.
The part you’ve seen on TV or in previews involves Richard (Brad Pitt) and the shooting of his wife Susan (Blanchett). The incident, and his desperate struggle to get help for her, is magnificently filmed; claustrophobic, terrifying, infuriating. Perfect, too, is the intimacy between them; they have come to Morrocco for time to heal their marriage, yet still have enough physical ease for him to help her onto a makeshift bedpan with no pretense at shyness.
Susan was shot accidentally by a shepherd’s son who was target shooting, but soon the fear of terrorism has made the shooting an international incident, and the family is terrified. While police in Morrocco stand firm to the point of beating an elderly couple who may be connected to the rifle, they are exactly paralleled by immigration police on the Mexican-Canadian border. What is true about both sets of police is that doing their job prevents them from seeing the “Other” as human.
In Japan, a third police officer is forced to see the girl he questions as human in a poignant and lovely scene.
If all this sounds confusing, it isn’t. You always know where you are and who you’re dealing with. You always experience a powerful and authentic sense of place, something very important to me when I watch movies.
I was very pleased that, despite the drama, fear, and violence, Babel wasn’t overblown. I feared I’d see a death or tragedy or horrible coincidence in every scene, but, while terrible things happened, I never felt like I was being bludgeoned. Perhaps just because it felt real in some crucial way.
