LucaM

Watched it today. At the cinema. Not only because of the 3D; I still believe that at least the first viewing of a movie should be done on the big screen, at the theater, not the TV/computer screen at home. That comes later ;)
There's something magic about the moment the lights go off and the film starts rolling (well, the file starts playing. or whatever the term is. Side by Side and all that ;) )  You the viewer are no longer sitting in a chair; you're transported in a different world and reality takes a break for about two hours. IF the movie is good, that is.

And 'Avengers' is good - in the sense that it accomplishes what it wanted to do in the first place: to tell and, first and foremost, to show an entertaining story. That it does.  Of course, being who I am, I appreciated more the banter between Tony and Steve and Tony's one liners (calling Thor 'Point Break' and Hawkeye 'Legolas' ) than all the 3D gimmicks. But then, due to my eyesight problem (shortsighted), I can't fully appreciate the 3D thing; the action scenes involving big objects, such as the car chase at the beginning of the film, appear blurry to me.  Plus, as my eyes have to constantly strain to 'recalibrate' the images, they start getting teary and I have to wipe the tears surplus constantly. People in the back row were commenting about that. I'm not crying, you idiots,  it's just that 3D is hurting my eyes. As simple as that.

But the downside of jamming all those characters into a 2 hours action movie and packing it with said action means there's no character development at all. We don't get any information about Hawkeye's  or Agent Hill's back story. Everyone's just prancing around doing his or her stuff. Yes, I know, shut up and read the comics. Well I won't , 'cause completist that I am,  I just might get too involved in this for my own good. My few already existing comics obsessions are more than enough, thank you.

To summarize: it was fun to watch. But no more than that.

Watched it because IMDb mentions it was inspired by Melville's ' Le Samourai'.
IMDb reviews praise it up, down, left and right. Me, ain't impressed that much.
I can understand why the praise, though. It did establish a genre. I liked the choreography; the physical and emotional tango the two main characters dance. It did help me understand better the action-film layer of the Matrix Trilogy. (So that's where the lobby fight scene was inspired from ;) )
Didn't like the melodrama, though.  I'm still an European at heart; Melville's minimalism is more to my taste.

... and the English dubbing is simply awful. Will always be a fan of subtitles.

... if anyone wants to hear Chris Evans' attempts at speaking Cantonese... watch this.

Getting fond of the kid; he's like the little brother I never had ;) :D 

A photo at tumblr led me to it. IMDb says Jim Jarmusch's 'Ghost Dog' was inspired by it. So I was curious.
Turns out I've seen the 'samourai' movie several times in my childhood - after all, it's 7 years older than me - but never paid attention to what I watched. Story of my life.
But while I could see the similarities between this film and 'Ghost Dog', the moment I saw thin, tall, dark and handsome, trench coat and cigarette, I thought of someone - and something- else.
It's all there- as visual reference, I mean. The stairs. the long hallway with the old, unkempt doors. the wristwatch. The quiet hero, lone wolf character. The almost empty, stripped-to-bare-necessities apartment. The pots and pans on the kitchenette walls; even the pressing iron on the shelf.... From the second time I watched Constantine ( the first time I was too busy trying to make sense of the whole mess, so just registered the details and kept them in the back of my mind for a later viewing), that image kept nagging at me. I kept wondering where the hell I've seen it before. Now I know.
And by the second half of the movie, when Delon abandons the ruined trench coat in favor of a long black coat, I was literally going 'what the hell ?'

Je ne pers jamais. Jamais vraiment. ( I never lose. Not really)
... true. neither of them ever did.


While some parts of the film are more like stage play than cinema (no police officer would read aloud the arrest history of each suspect in front of other 400 rounded suspects), it has the simplicity and the minimalism of its time, and at the same time it's timeless. It's indeed a skeleton, a core on which adaptations can be built-but it remains in a class of its own.
And listening to their French was a delight. It's the French I've learnt in high school: clear, articulate, slow spoken. Each word heavy with meaning. The French of film noir ;)

question : what does this  look like?  or remind you of ?

tired. tired of routine, tired of people, tired of ... almost everything. especially stupid requests from people who really really really should know better...
just want to lock myself indoors and throw away the key, shut off the phone, set Skype on offline... read books and watch movies 'till kingdom or Armageddon or Mayan-prophesied-end-of-the world come or whatever. curl up in a ball, go to sleep and wake up only when MOTC and Gen.Um are released.
or better, sneak on the Passengers spaceship, set my pod to wake me up at half the travel distance, and spend the rest of my life watching movies, reading books, learning Russian and shooting the breeze with Arthur. won't try to wake up anyone else, I promise. just want to get away from people. for the rest of eternity. 

... but I'd miss anivad. and some parts of the internet. and that spaceship is docked until... forever, it seems. and I'd miss K's future films.

damn. :(

(borrowed from leftforgottenc)

You Are The Moon

You represent the unconscious side of life, what happens in dreams.
You are capable of great genius - but also of great madness.
Emotions tend to be primal for you, both your fears and your fantasies.
Your intuition is always right, listening to it is the difficult part.

Your fortune:

You are about to embark on a very important journey - and a very difficult one.
Some of your deepest dreams will be realized, as well as some of your deepest nightmares.
Follow your creativity and visions; stay away from your weaknesses.
You are taking a voyage to the center of yourself, and you may be pleasantly surprised by what you discover.


... what the sweet ever-loving fruck? :\

Watched it yesterday. 
it's 'the little film that could' :)
I liked how they left even less character development in the final cut, but the film still works.
'we' don't need to know the back story of each character, not beyond the few lines dropped by another character/s. What 'we' get to see in the film are 24 hours of a historical moment; and in those 24 hours a handful of characters come and go. 'We' don't have to empathize with them (the fact that we still do is completely due to the actors).
It's a beautiful minimalist experiment. And I'm glad 'we' get to see this kind of films too, not only the Avengers stuff.
(Don't get me wrong, I love the whole Avengers thing, fanfics included. But I'm a woman of eclectic taste ;)  and I need diversity :D ).

Side notes : I never really liked Paul Bettany as an actor, but at least here he's convincing.
As for ZQ... dear gods, those eyebrows ! :D  And Zach, if you say 'f*ck me'  one sweet more time... no, I wouldn't, but I'm pretty sure there's an army out there who would ;)

I have the same yahoo email since 2005. Chose it then because it was the only free email service available and because everyone was using it.
It gave me an error 999 message several years ago. At that time I was using that email account only for IMDb related things, so it didn't bother me much. Service was available again in a few days.  But now I'm using it for mostly everything work, private and fandom related.  And it keeps giving me the gdarned error 999 message since yesterday night. Can't access my emails. Can't work. Sent an error report, got a standard reply telling me "Contact your ISP and let them know you are experiencing connectivity problems with Yahoo!. You may have difficulty accessing Yahoo! if we detect unusual network traffic coming from your ISP. Only your ISP will be able to address and resolve this abnormal activity."

So wasting time on tumblr is considered abnormal activity. Hmmm....

Contacted my ISP provider today. It helped a lot. As in, at all.

So I'm through and done with yahoo mail, and anything yahoo related. And my question is: could anyone recommend another free email account provider  - except for gmail, where I already have an account-  which would be reliable, safe, user-friendly and, most important, accept signing ins from my corner of the world (Romania, East Europe)?

aol.com doesn't accept me.
hushmail.com rejected my computer, for reasons obscure and unexplained.

what else?

thanks. :)

unfortunately, I did aim with my hand today.
Held and fired a gun for the first time in my sheltered life of 37 years. Maybe for people living in countries with free access to guns this wouldn't be a big deal, but 2/3 of the people in my country go through their lives without even seeing a real gun, let alone touching one.
At the shooting range, they gave me a 9 mm Glock; don't ask more details about the model, wouldn't know what to answer. The only thing I knew about it was which was the dangerous end.  The instructor taught me how to load the cartridges, how to hold it, how to aim...  and this is when the problems started. I aimed just fine, until I pulled the trigger all the way, the gun came alive in my hands, the bullets flew fuck knows where and didn't even hit the paper target, let alone anywhere near the center.
... it was a weird, strange experience. The small metal thing in my hands was alien. It had a mind of its own. There's a dangerous, deadly power in it. about it. I'm beginning to understand people's fascination with guns.

And I've gained a whole new level of respect and admiration for the actor who played Tom Ludlow so goddamned well.

maybe in time I'll learn to aim with my eye.
or not.