Kirsten's musings...

SIFF 2011 - Week 2

Hoping for movies I enjoy in the second week.

The Whistleblower

Based on a true story, this tough-minded and unsparing conspiracy thriller follows an American cop (Rachel Weisz) to Bosnia, where her job as a peacekeeper leads her to a ring of human traffickers that includes fellow U.N. workers.

Simple Simon

Eighteen-year-old Simon has Asperger’s syndrome. He likes space, science, and circles, but can’t understand emotions. When his brother breaks up with his girlfriend, Simon develops a scientifically perfect plan for finding a new one.

Fuck My Life

Javier’s having a really bad year. He lost his job. He's broke. He may have to move in with his mother. But the worst of all is that he can’t get over his ex-girlfriend Sofia when she keeps turning up online. A romantic comedy for the Facebook era.

Being Elmo

Everybody knows Elmo, the beloved furry monster from Sesame Street, but few recognize the man behind the googly-eyed Muppet. This remarkable documentary follows Kevin Clash’s inspiring journey from putting on his own neighborhood puppet shows to becoming the creative force behind one of the world’s most iconic children’s characters.

SIFF 2011 - Week 1 Reviews

Submarine

I sometimes have a hard time with British accents and colloquialisms, and the fact that the sound in the Neptune Theater isn’t great didn’t help.  I missed a lot of the dialogue, but what I did hear didn’t do much for me.  It was almost a French movie with a lot of purposeful looks and implied experiences.  I gave it a 2.

Beginners

This was a very sweet, slow, quiet movie, which is okay sometimes.  It just didn’t work very well for me.  I did like the interplay between Oliver and Anna, and of course Christopher Plummer was excellent as the father, but I think it jumped around too much for me to get lost in the love story.  The dog, however, definitely had the best lines.  I gave it a 3.

Pinoy Sunday

I guess the Taiwanese idea of a “comic journey” isn’t quite the same as mine, but there you go.  It was a cute movie, and I get that the couch represented the new life that the main characters were trying to achieve, both dreams eventually failing by the end of the movie.  It just wasn’t that funny, and they didn’t even find the couch until 1/3 of the way into the film.  I did actually giggle at a few of the lines, so it stayed firmly at a ‘3’ on my ballot.

The Bengali Detective

If this was a comedy then I’m the Queen of England.  It was more like a boring episode of CSI:Kolkata.  I guess I missed the ‘documentary’ part of the description, but I just found it depressing.  Plus the ‘first person’ filming made me dizzy.  I couldn’t sit through the entire movie, and since Jim wasn’t enjoying it either we left about 30 minutes in.  If he had been enjoying it I would have left anyway, and found some way to amuse myself until it was over.

Friday pix

This weekend will be the 100th Anniversary of the Indianapolis 500.  To celebrate IndyCar rolled out a grid of historic Indy 500 winners.

 

For more information check out this link.

SIFF 2011 - Week 1

Wow...really late with these posts - we've already seen two movies.  Here are the movies from our first week of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF):

Submarine

Based on the successful debut novel by Joe Dunthorne, Submarine is the hilarious coming-of-age story of 15-year-old Oliver Tate. Oliver has two summer objectives: to lose his virginity to pyromaniac bully Jordana before he turns 16, and to put an end to his mother’s renewed flame for her ex-lover.

Beginners

When Oliver meets an alluring and unpredictable actress, their budding love affair floods him with memories of his recently deceased father Hal, who came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized and wonderfully tumultuous gay life in this deeply funny and transformative movie.

Pinoy Sunday

After discovering a couch on the streets of Taipei, two Filipino migrant workers embark on a comic journey that includes bouts of accidental heroism, some truly Google Map-shattering shortcuts, and one of the more unexpected musical numbers in cinema history.

The Bengali Detective

This wildly entertaining documentary set in Kolkata follows a pudgy, middle-aged private dick. Rajesh Ji is a man of fierce purpose, whether it involves serious sleuthing, caring for his beloved family, or coaching a dance routine for a ragtag team of his own employees for a national TV talent show.

Etymology corner

At one point in the movie "Legally Blonde", the token ultra-feminist character argues that the university has a huge bias against women, and that she's lobbying to have the term 'semester' changed to 'ovester'.  This of course led me to wonder where the word 'semester' came from.

semester
 
–noun
1. (in many educational institutions) a division constituting half of the regular academic year, lasting typically from 15 to 18 weeks.
2. (in German universities) a session, lasting about six months and including periods of recess.

1820–30; < German < Latin sēmē ( n ) stris  of six months duration < *sex-mēnstris,  equivalent to sex  six + mēns ( is ) month + -tris  adj.suffix (perhaps representing an earlier *mens ( i ) -teros )

So what she was seeing (I assume) was a link to the word "semen", a decidedly masculine trait, when in fact the word is more closely related to "menstrual", which is obviously associated with women.

For completeness' sake, the origin of 'semen':

semen

–noun
the viscid, whitish fluid produced in the male reproductive organs, containing spermatozoa.

1350–1400; Middle English < Latin sēmen  seed; akin to serere  to sow.

Friday pix

The 2011 Seattle Film Festival has opened!

 

Friday pix

Congratulations Vancouver!  On to the conference finals!

Etymology corner

There's a giant white board in our lunch room that has become a place for co-workers to write puzzles for others to try and figure out. Recently someone put up a list of "Expressions" that were to be decoded.  For example one would be:

3=P for a FG in F _____________________

The answer is Points for a Field Goal in Football.  One of these expressions sparked an interesting conversation.  The expression:

500=S of P in a R  ____________________

The answer to this one is Sheets of Paper in a Ream.  One of our Swedish colleagues was confused by the term 'ream', as he hadn't heard it before.  He asked what a ream was, and we said, "Well, it's 500 sheets of paper."  We decided that it must come from some old word and is just used in common English, so of course I had to look it up:

ream(n)
1. A quantity of paper, formerly 480 sheets, now 500 sheets or, in a printer's ream, 516 sheets.
2. A very large amount. Often used in the plural: reams of work to do.

[Middle English reme, from Old French reime, from Old Spanish resma, from Arabic rizma, bundle, from razama, to bundle; see rzm in Semitic roots.]

So it does have some old roots, originally meaning 'bundle.'  Then I realized there's another meaning for "ream", a much more violent meaning.  If you come home and say you got "reamed" by someone, it's not good.  You probably just got yelled at, but the literal meaning is to make a hole in something.

ream(v)
1. To form, shape, taper, or enlarge (a hole or bore, for example) with or as if with a reamer.
2. To remove (material) by this process.
3. To squeeze the juice out of (fruit) with a reamer.


[Possibly from Middle English remen, to make room, variant of rimen, from Old English rman; see reu- in Indo-European roots.]

Interesting.  Two words, spelled and sound the same, but have very different meanings and origins.

Friday pix

I've been a little obsessed recently with faces.  You can use similar basic descriptions for people who don't look that alike.  I really saw this in two of my favorite country singers, Dierks Bentley and Billy Currington.  They're both average height, medium build, curly dark blond hair and 5:00 shadow beards.  See for yourself:

Dierks:


Billy:


Maybe it's just because I'm familiar with them, but I don't have any trouble telling them apart.  So what is it?  How do you really describe facial differences?  What makes a person attractive or unattractive?  I know that I've looked at some people who I didn't find attractive but I would have a hard time telling you why.