Movies

The Lunchbox

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Netflix DVD – they rated it at 4.3 stars for me, and 3.8 for the general audience. Sandra and I watched this one together. Though it was set in Mumbai, India, and in Hindi with English subtitles, I was surprised that quite frequently, the characters spoke in English. I wonder if that is really how people speak there, or if this was done just for the movie?

The Lunchbox movie poster

This was a charming movie, centered around the apparently world-famous Indian lunchbox delivery system. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it seems that people at work have their lunches shipped hot to them just in time for their lunch break, using a large system of deliverymen. These deliverymen use bicycles, trains, and whatever means necessary to get the lunchboxes delivered, regardless of the weather. In the movie, a woman is cooking lunch for her husband, but the deliveryman takes it to the wrong person. The lunch is much better than he’s used to, and so he sends her a note in the empty tins … which starts an interesting exchange of notes that becomes less and less about food and more and more about their lives and desires. Many reviews on Netflix refer to a disappointing ending, but one reviewer said you have to pay attention at the end. I wound it back and looked for clues, and it’s true … [SPOILERS] Continue reading →

Adventure, Documentary, Movies

Beyond The Edge

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Netflix streaming – they rated it at 4.7 stars for me, and 4.0 for the general audience. This is a documentary about the first two people to climb to the top of Mount Everest – Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. I didn’t know that Hillary was a bee-keeper from New Zealand! This documentary/recreation was very well done, and I kept wondering how they filmed some of the climbing scenes – it looked like they were actually up there and climbing to the top of Mount Everest … and perhaps there were – the credits say it was filmed on Mount Everest and in New Zealand. It’s a great story, and a very good documentary, but I’m going to give it 4 stars. Interesting story and beautiful scenery and filming.

Beyond The Edge movie poster

Books

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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A novel – by Junot Diaz, and winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. An MIT Professor of Writing, Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo) and moved to New Jersey. The main character of the book is in the same situation, and I wonder how much of the book is a reflection of his own life. My wife Sandra is Dominican, and having been down there many times, I understood more of the book than what I suppose most people would. That, and my basic knowledge of Spanish, was helpful since the book has quite a few words and phrases in Spanish. I originally bought this book for Sandra for Christmas, but she works so much that she hasn’t had time to read it. Instead, I picked it up, read a few pages, and found it to be written in an energetic and entertaining way. At first, I wondered how such a piece of fluff could have won the Pulitzer Prize

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - a novel.

 

, but that’s only at the beginning of the book – after that, it gets much more serious, talking a lot about the life of Oscar’s family under the dictatorship of Trujillo, who ruled the DR from 1930 to 1961. Continue reading →

Movies

The Other End of The Line

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Netflix streaming – they rated it as 3.7 stars for me, 3.6 for the general audience. A cross-cultural romantic comedy, perfect for Sandra and I to watch on Valentine’s Day, I figured … but she decided it was stupid and had bad acting, so we stopped watching about a half hour in. I was intrigued, though, and watched the rest of it the next day on my own, and found it to be

The Other End of The Line movie poster

enjoyable, though  Continue reading →

Documentary, Movies

Generation Iron

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Netflix streaming – they rated it at 4.2 stars for me, and 4.0 for the general audience. It is an interesting look at current male bodybuilders, following several of the top contenders for the Mr. Olympia title, the one that Arnold Schwarzenegger won 7 times. They are an interesting, and quite different, group of people. Things have changed since the movie Pumping Iron, as far as I know. I mean, I go to the gym in the winters to keep in shape, but I don’t follow body-building at all. I was surprised to see them getting what was basically a paint job, complete with airbrushes, and a phone-booth-like tent to block the overspray.

Generation Iron movie poster

One of them points out how even if most people took steroids like they do, they wouldn’t be able to accomplish what these top guys have accomplished. I’m giving it 4 stars, I enjoy these stories about the people behind the scenes, though I know some people don’t.

Five stars, Movies

Guardians of the Galaxy

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Netflix DVD – they rated it as 4.7 stars for me, with 4.1 for the general audience. I’m going to give it 5 stars. I had heard good things about it, which surprised me because I didn’t think it would be that great with a talking raccoon! I think I avoided it back when I was into comic books, because I just didn’t like the silliness. This movie, though, does silly in a great way, it’s the ton of fun they said it was, and I enjoyed it a lot. The visual effects were fantastic, and I could see the science fiction city scenes working perfectly for a Legion of Super-Heroes movie.

Guardians of the Galaxy movie poster

Groot was a fun character, and even the raccoon was fun. I thought the green woman was cool, but maybe not as tough as she could have been – but then, maybe it worked better this way. The big, thick, muscle-bound guy, I think, was probably the weakest of the characters, some of the humor with him was pretty lame. I liked the main guy a lot, he’s got a good screen presence, and he fit this movie perfectly. The general tone of the movie, with the music and a large number of humorous moments, combined with the science-fiction visuals, really worked well. Hopefully we’ll see a lot more movies like this in the future … and more serious ones with science fiction visuals like this.

Five stars, Movies

Frida

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Netflix streaming – they rated it 4.5 stars for me, but only 3.7 for the general audience – “my kind of weird”? Yes, what a great movie this was, I didn’t think I was going to like it at all, but Netflix is almost never wrong with my ratings. I’m going to give it 5 stars. Salma Hayek was wonderful in this movie, as was Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera. A number of big-name stars had shorter roles, and in some cases weren’t easy to recognize: Ashley Judd, Edward Norton, Antonio Banderas, and Geoffrey Rush. This movie had a great tone to it, the music added a lot, the special-effects scenes of paintings, the costuming – it all came together to make this a masterpiece.

Frida movie poster

What an amazing life this woman had. Continue reading →

Adventure, Five stars, Movies

The Abyss – special edition

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Netflix dvd – they rated it as 4.6 for me, but only 3.7 for the general audience. I don’t think I’d seen it before, so I’ve never seen the regular release. This special edition adds much, apparently. It is a spectacularly-made epic movie, but in a small way somewhat let down by its ending. I’ve read that it was quite difficult to make, given all of the underwater scenes. It certainly is very claustrophobic and there is no way in the world that I would have been able to be in those enclosed spaces or underwater suits! At 2:51 it’s pretty long, but by far the vast majority of the time is engrossing. Before the ending I was starting to think what a great movie this is, but after the ending I am a bit subdued. I still think it’s a masterpiece, though, and well worth watching.

The Abyss Special Edition movie poster

One scene in particular is spectacular – you’ll know which one it is when you come to it. I really liked the leads in this movie, Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and the rest of the cast was good, too. I think I always avoided this movie because the title made me think it was a horror movie. More like an action thriller, and I’m giving it 5 stars.

Books, College

The Gatekeepers – inside the admissions process of a premier college

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Sandra bought this book with the intention of reading it, but one day I read a few pages and became interested. I ended up reading the whole thing and telling her the parts of it that I found most interesting. And this is a VERY interesting book – a New York Times reporter tells the true story of the admissions process at the private liberal arts college Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut), as well as the story of six high school students from around the country as they apply to many colleges and wait anxiously to hear which, if any, will accept them.

With Christina just starting out on this long road, I learned many things

The Gatekeepers book cover

that might prove valuable Continue reading →

30 for 30, Documentary, Movies

30 for 30: No Más

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Netflix streaming – they predicted it at 4.7 for me, and 4.0 for the general audience. I did find it interesting, but gave it 4 stars. I never did see the incident that the title refers to, but I always assumed that Roberto Duran was sitting on the chair in between rounds and just said that he wasn’t going to come out for the next round. Apparently, that wasn’t the case, and what they set up in this documentary, somewhat of a confrontation 20 years after the incident, seemed to me to be a bit of a reach, and only somewhat gratifying.

30 for 30 - No Mas movie poster