So I totally cheated this weekend. And I am okay with that because I had a pretty awesome weekend.
I skipped the gym on Friday, and I tried my hardest not to, but it couldn't be helped. My friend Dawn got into teacher's college in Toronto (so excited) and so she wanted someone celebrate with, and there I was.
That was followed by Galbi, which was awesome. That was followed by Kino and Ghetto. Then I look at my phone and it was 3:30 and I paintball in the morning, so I called it a night. X, however didn't and drank til 7a.m. When I went to his house on Saturday morning at 11:15, he was hugging the toilet. So he missed paintball.
At paintball I spent the entire time getting drunk off soju/orange juice. Playing was a lot of fun too. I got fucking mascured, got some beautiful bruses to prove it.
Saturday night got off to a late start but had a wicked predrink and then went a bar that we don't frequent called U2 and had a blast. Then of course we ended up at Kino. Went to McDonalds on the way home. Glorious.
Sunday went to the beach. My widget said it was going to be 18, but it definitely wasn't 18. Nice but not 18. Played some frizbee, learned a new game called tips. Hard. My team was losing, and so I start sacrificing my body to make plays. I cut my leg open pretty nice on the sand. Had a hilirous conversation about licking the wound.
Sunday night watched a Canadian movie called Passchendaele. The first half of the movie was very questionable. It was a WWI "epic" (used very losly), and this soldier comes home from the front shell shocked and so he gets assigned to recruiting. Blah blah blah, falls in love, blah blah blah, gets sent back to the front. The battle that it showed was really really well done, and really puts into prespective what fighting a war is all about. The film itself was beautifully shot, and the acting wasn't bad. But the writing was fucking brutal.
Anyways, I am not going to say that I failed, because I didn't. I got up this morning to do my cardio. I'm going to the gym tonight. I am starting to look slightly better and its been two weeks. Gonna stick it out. Gonna get'r done.
Showing posts with label movie reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie reviews. Show all posts
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Movie Review: The Wrestler
Got baked (again, more awesome than before) and watched The Wrestler on Sunday. It was awesome. I tried to stay away from reviews for it ever since I started to hear the buzz. I watched the trailer and all it was was praise for the flick. Sometimes that can be a bad thing. They just find ramdoms on the internet who liked it and source them in that movie announcer voice to make it sound spectacular.
Anyways when the opening credits started rooling, I must say that I was expecting the worse. The fanfare they had manifested did not look anything like the WWF propaganda I grew up with and though that was some... 7 years after the main character's hayday was set I wasn't impressed. But when the film actually began, I was blown away. It was gitty and raw and painful and truthful and totally unexpected.
I was however confused and disappointed by somethings. The film had a real documentary feel with the abundance of handheld shots. And at first I thought the follow shots of The Ram were to emulate the follow shots common is modern wrestling broadcasts. It got to be little much though and just came off as lazy and unimaginative.
I also don't think that relationship between the daugther was wholly realistic. It came off like she was an unsympathic brat. And why is Rachel Evan Wood so damned white?? The storyline did play into the overall plot quite well, I just thought it could have been done better.
Also there was a lack of flashbacks. It remained to be seen just how successful of a wrestler he acutally was. I can imagine, but he must have fallen REALLY hard to end up where he did. There was also none of that - the fall from grace. I suppose that was an artistic choice to have the story focus narrowly on his personal assention to imagined greatness.
The story of The Ram is a great film in its exploration of masculinity. It take a look at the powerful male, at the on set of old age. There is no doubt in the viewer's mind that this guy is too old to be doing what he's doing (despite the fact he looks epicly built - *shudder* its still Mickey Rourke). But his measure of self worth is tied forever to his persona in the ring. It is his place of business, its what he knows how to do best and what he is good at.
The film also does a lot to show just how real wrestling is. I was a wrestling for a few short lived years. My mother would have none of it in her house, which worked for me because all of my friends had bigger and better TVs to watch it on. I still catch it on every once in a while and am taken aback by the amount of superstars who have been around since before I was a fan. Bret Micheals is still running around without his shirt and hes been wrestling since 1988 (omfg!). It is the ultimate male soap opera.
Rating time: ****/5
Check it out.
Anyways when the opening credits started rooling, I must say that I was expecting the worse. The fanfare they had manifested did not look anything like the WWF propaganda I grew up with and though that was some... 7 years after the main character's hayday was set I wasn't impressed. But when the film actually began, I was blown away. It was gitty and raw and painful and truthful and totally unexpected.
I was however confused and disappointed by somethings. The film had a real documentary feel with the abundance of handheld shots. And at first I thought the follow shots of The Ram were to emulate the follow shots common is modern wrestling broadcasts. It got to be little much though and just came off as lazy and unimaginative.
I also don't think that relationship between the daugther was wholly realistic. It came off like she was an unsympathic brat. And why is Rachel Evan Wood so damned white?? The storyline did play into the overall plot quite well, I just thought it could have been done better.
Also there was a lack of flashbacks. It remained to be seen just how successful of a wrestler he acutally was. I can imagine, but he must have fallen REALLY hard to end up where he did. There was also none of that - the fall from grace. I suppose that was an artistic choice to have the story focus narrowly on his personal assention to imagined greatness.
The story of The Ram is a great film in its exploration of masculinity. It take a look at the powerful male, at the on set of old age. There is no doubt in the viewer's mind that this guy is too old to be doing what he's doing (despite the fact he looks epicly built - *shudder* its still Mickey Rourke). But his measure of self worth is tied forever to his persona in the ring. It is his place of business, its what he knows how to do best and what he is good at.
The film also does a lot to show just how real wrestling is. I was a wrestling for a few short lived years. My mother would have none of it in her house, which worked for me because all of my friends had bigger and better TVs to watch it on. I still catch it on every once in a while and am taken aback by the amount of superstars who have been around since before I was a fan. Bret Micheals is still running around without his shirt and hes been wrestling since 1988 (omfg!). It is the ultimate male soap opera.
Rating time: ****/5
Check it out.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
A glorious weekend
Even though the past month or so has been pretty hectic (Thailand for New years, China last weekend), weekends in Korea are pretty - dull.
It's not so much unlike home. The same people get together at the same places and do the same thing. When we first got here that meant drinking till the wee hours of the morning and then spending Sunday recovering. After a while though the toll that was taking on our bodies became unbearable and so the boozefest was confined to Friday night and Saturday was spent doing slightly more interesting things. Watching old movies that had been on 'must-watch' lists for years, drinking wine and making dinners, chating and laughing - good times.
This weekend however was a little different - and amazing. As I was saying before, I really want to make a go of a strict diet and sobriety attempt for the month of February and so I tried my hardest (which didn't take much effort) to get super, gongshow, shitfaced on Friday night.
Fridays, we go to this fantastic galbi (Korean BBQ) place in KSU which is right down the street fron our favorite bar Keno-Eye. The owers is a realyl cool guy, very friendly and generous. He also writes off a few bottle of soju for our table as well as comps us some after dinner soup (usually it is spiecer than like octopus soup, this week it was some other red paste fish soup).
Anyways, long story short, this week we end up getting into an informal drinking competition with a table of businessmen sitting next to us. They did an obnoxiously loud cheers, so we had to one up them. But they were not having any of it. So 3 or 4 cokesomecs later, I'm pretty sure we won.
We leave gabli (full dinner: apps, main, finisher, and shitfaced drunk amound of drinks = $13 incl. tip) and head to Keno. Being as cheep as I am (and broke) I poured the leftover soju into one bottle and me and X and Z stood throwing it back in the street outside of the bar. We go in and have a gay ol' time - played darts, danced, laughed. On the dancefloor I see a very friendly face. I had met him the week before, but just briefly seeing as I was leaving for China in the morning and it was coming up on 2a.m.
So me and guy are dancing and its not long before we're making out. Sloppy, gross, drunk making out in a bar full or straights. Glorious. And terrible, but glorious. Took guy home, even more glorious. Praise the lord, I got laid. I was beginning to get worried that it would never happen again. It was contributing somewhat to the grey state of mind I have been in for a while. I'm sure that was almost 6 weeks since I had last... not an incredible drought, but... long time.
That Friday. Saturday was spent mostly nursing the hangover from Friday. Watched some Ugly Betty, ate a glorious breakfest, did some laundry. Finally finished watching this season of The Amazing Race. Yea Nick and Starr. Which reminds me...
This is Dallas. He raced with his mom. They came in fourth place. I came across this a while back. This is why you should NEVER send pictures of yourself to ANYBODY EVER. They WILL end up on the internet. Pretty hot though, eh?
Anyways. Oh yes, Saturday. A former co-teacher of ours, got us a ridculous christmas present. Somehow, someway he found a source of pot and GIFTED a joint to us. Its much the best present ever for pot deprived Canucks in a strange drug-free land.
It came in the form of a joint and a roach, and one day after we got back from Thailand, X and I could not handle ourselves and smoked the roach without our friends. It was amazing. It was like an old friend had just wrapped you with a blanket and put his head on your shoulder and whipsered "everything is going to be alright." From the roach we only got 2 pulls each and so we made an executive decision that if we were going to smoke the rest between us and our co-workers (5 in total), we'd have to construct some kind of smoking device. We made a bucket/gravity bong and last night we got together at his place to do the deed.
When we got there he threw on Pumping Iron, for shits I suppose, but our entire group was enraptured by this film about muscle gods who competed against eachother in a quest to be named best of the best. It was truly an amazing film, most definetely worth watching.
X divided the ganj into 5 equal piles. He used his infinate wisdom and said "maybe we can get two bowls of out this." And that dear friends was the best idea EVER. Because that half bowl was just enough. The high crept up on you, that old friend wrapping you with the blanket. But soon he pulled the blanket over your head and put you in a garbage can and rolled you down and hill and when you got the bottom him and his friends beat the can with rocks and sticks. It was like I had never been high in my life. Like I was wasted. The girls was on a whole other level we had one parital freak out and two instant nappers.
I insisted we watch this movie Freaked. I remember it from when I was a child and my cousins showing it to me. And it must have been made by stoners for stoners because it was out of control. It was surreal and fantastical and hilarious. If you like silly B movies from the early '90s (and do drugs) give it a look see.
No one said a word for th entire movie and it seemed to go a lot quicker than the hour 20 running time. X and I tried to convince the girls it was a the prefect time for a MegaMart run, but they were having none of it. Two went home and Z said she couldn't move. So X and I went and go ice cream. Then I had a dunkas (fried pork and rice). Then I came home and watched some LOST and passed out. Wonderful. Just like old times.
Today I am going to watch more TV and stay in bed like I do most Sundays. And it will be glorious.
It's not so much unlike home. The same people get together at the same places and do the same thing. When we first got here that meant drinking till the wee hours of the morning and then spending Sunday recovering. After a while though the toll that was taking on our bodies became unbearable and so the boozefest was confined to Friday night and Saturday was spent doing slightly more interesting things. Watching old movies that had been on 'must-watch' lists for years, drinking wine and making dinners, chating and laughing - good times.
This weekend however was a little different - and amazing. As I was saying before, I really want to make a go of a strict diet and sobriety attempt for the month of February and so I tried my hardest (which didn't take much effort) to get super, gongshow, shitfaced on Friday night.
Fridays, we go to this fantastic galbi (Korean BBQ) place in KSU which is right down the street fron our favorite bar Keno-Eye. The owers is a realyl cool guy, very friendly and generous. He also writes off a few bottle of soju for our table as well as comps us some after dinner soup (usually it is spiecer than like octopus soup, this week it was some other red paste fish soup).
Anyways, long story short, this week we end up getting into an informal drinking competition with a table of businessmen sitting next to us. They did an obnoxiously loud cheers, so we had to one up them. But they were not having any of it. So 3 or 4 cokesomecs later, I'm pretty sure we won.We leave gabli (full dinner: apps, main, finisher, and shitfaced drunk amound of drinks = $13 incl. tip) and head to Keno. Being as cheep as I am (and broke) I poured the leftover soju into one bottle and me and X and Z stood throwing it back in the street outside of the bar. We go in and have a gay ol' time - played darts, danced, laughed. On the dancefloor I see a very friendly face. I had met him the week before, but just briefly seeing as I was leaving for China in the morning and it was coming up on 2a.m.
So me and guy are dancing and its not long before we're making out. Sloppy, gross, drunk making out in a bar full or straights. Glorious. And terrible, but glorious. Took guy home, even more glorious. Praise the lord, I got laid. I was beginning to get worried that it would never happen again. It was contributing somewhat to the grey state of mind I have been in for a while. I'm sure that was almost 6 weeks since I had last... not an incredible drought, but... long time.
That Friday. Saturday was spent mostly nursing the hangover from Friday. Watched some Ugly Betty, ate a glorious breakfest, did some laundry. Finally finished watching this season of The Amazing Race. Yea Nick and Starr. Which reminds me...
This is Dallas. He raced with his mom. They came in fourth place. I came across this a while back. This is why you should NEVER send pictures of yourself to ANYBODY EVER. They WILL end up on the internet. Pretty hot though, eh?
Anyways. Oh yes, Saturday. A former co-teacher of ours, got us a ridculous christmas present. Somehow, someway he found a source of pot and GIFTED a joint to us. Its much the best present ever for pot deprived Canucks in a strange drug-free land.It came in the form of a joint and a roach, and one day after we got back from Thailand, X and I could not handle ourselves and smoked the roach without our friends. It was amazing. It was like an old friend had just wrapped you with a blanket and put his head on your shoulder and whipsered "everything is going to be alright." From the roach we only got 2 pulls each and so we made an executive decision that if we were going to smoke the rest between us and our co-workers (5 in total), we'd have to construct some kind of smoking device. We made a bucket/gravity bong and last night we got together at his place to do the deed.
When we got there he threw on Pumping Iron, for shits I suppose, but our entire group was enraptured by this film about muscle gods who competed against eachother in a quest to be named best of the best. It was truly an amazing film, most definetely worth watching.
X divided the ganj into 5 equal piles. He used his infinate wisdom and said "maybe we can get two bowls of out this." And that dear friends was the best idea EVER. Because that half bowl was just enough. The high crept up on you, that old friend wrapping you with the blanket. But soon he pulled the blanket over your head and put you in a garbage can and rolled you down and hill and when you got the bottom him and his friends beat the can with rocks and sticks. It was like I had never been high in my life. Like I was wasted. The girls was on a whole other level we had one parital freak out and two instant nappers.
I insisted we watch this movie Freaked. I remember it from when I was a child and my cousins showing it to me. And it must have been made by stoners for stoners because it was out of control. It was surreal and fantastical and hilarious. If you like silly B movies from the early '90s (and do drugs) give it a look see.
No one said a word for th entire movie and it seemed to go a lot quicker than the hour 20 running time. X and I tried to convince the girls it was a the prefect time for a MegaMart run, but they were having none of it. Two went home and Z said she couldn't move. So X and I went and go ice cream. Then I had a dunkas (fried pork and rice). Then I came home and watched some LOST and passed out. Wonderful. Just like old times.Today I am going to watch more TV and stay in bed like I do most Sundays. And it will be glorious.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
time passes
Only posting because if I don't make a habit of it, I'll stop all together and I don't want to do that.
Two super quick movie review - no three...
Pan's Labyrinth - ****.5/5
Great film. I am mad at myself because I downloaded it. Which, one, means I am taking money out of the filmmaker's pocket; and two, I watched it on my laptop, which makes the quality shit and not nearly how the filmmaker intended it to be watched. I needs me a 63" wide screen plasma. One day...
Great story. I think that Captain is one of the most evil characters I have ever seen on film. Brutal scene with the knife. Haunted. Totally my kind of film though, loved the ending.
Lion's for Lambs - ****/5
Not sure what category this movie falls into - political thriller? (IMDB says "drama|war") Anyways I had a feeling I had seen it before I downloaded it, and as soon as I saw the first shot I knew that I had. Even still I watched it straight through and enjoyed the whole thing.
This one makes you think, and when I saw it university it was a perfect "fight for what you believe" in type of things. I like it especially because of the criticism it levels against the media and its role in the whole "war on terror".
Defiance: ***.5/5
It was a good movie. Completely frustrating because half of the movie is in Russian and because we live in Korea, the subtitles were, well, in Korean. So every time they would start speaking Russian everyone in my group would groan. Whatever.
Awesome performances by all the male leads: Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) was really great and a boy who grows into a man. Daniel (swoon) Craig was also great, not as pout-ie as his 007 preformances which was nice and Leiv Schreiber who is always amazing.
Not gonna lie, kind of under whelmed. Gets points for that "enduring human spirit" thing.
I might start going to muay thai with X. Not anytime soon soon. Maybe in like... April. My gym membership is paid for till then and this new place would be 100 a month. I have never been involved with anything like that, or at least not in my adult life. Might be good for me. I'm afraid of physical confrontation. Offically, I'm against it - "I'm a lover, not a fighter". But its more the fear of pain and injury. Yeah might be good for me.
Oh yeah leaving for China next Saturday. Should probably start packing. Its just four days, but CHINA!! Anywhozl. Shower time.
Two super quick movie review - no three...
Pan's Labyrinth - ****.5/5
Great film. I am mad at myself because I downloaded it. Which, one, means I am taking money out of the filmmaker's pocket; and two, I watched it on my laptop, which makes the quality shit and not nearly how the filmmaker intended it to be watched. I needs me a 63" wide screen plasma. One day...Great story. I think that Captain is one of the most evil characters I have ever seen on film. Brutal scene with the knife. Haunted. Totally my kind of film though, loved the ending.
Lion's for Lambs - ****/5
Not sure what category this movie falls into - political thriller? (IMDB says "drama|war") Anyways I had a feeling I had seen it before I downloaded it, and as soon as I saw the first shot I knew that I had. Even still I watched it straight through and enjoyed the whole thing.This one makes you think, and when I saw it university it was a perfect "fight for what you believe" in type of things. I like it especially because of the criticism it levels against the media and its role in the whole "war on terror".
Defiance: ***.5/5
It was a good movie. Completely frustrating because half of the movie is in Russian and because we live in Korea, the subtitles were, well, in Korean. So every time they would start speaking Russian everyone in my group would groan. Whatever.
Awesome performances by all the male leads: Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) was really great and a boy who grows into a man. Daniel (swoon) Craig was also great, not as pout-ie as his 007 preformances which was nice and Leiv Schreiber who is always amazing.
Not gonna lie, kind of under whelmed. Gets points for that "enduring human spirit" thing.
* * *
Not much else going on. I am slowing starting to see a reduction in my belly fat. That makes me feel pretty good. However I will still call myself fat until the time that I can say, "hey? wanna see my abs?"I might start going to muay thai with X. Not anytime soon soon. Maybe in like... April. My gym membership is paid for till then and this new place would be 100 a month. I have never been involved with anything like that, or at least not in my adult life. Might be good for me. I'm afraid of physical confrontation. Offically, I'm against it - "I'm a lover, not a fighter". But its more the fear of pain and injury. Yeah might be good for me.
Oh yeah leaving for China next Saturday. Should probably start packing. Its just four days, but CHINA!! Anywhozl. Shower time.
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