08. 01. HAVING RETURNED

So I’ve been away at camp for the last four days, where they won’t let you sleep and only give you cheap beer to drink. I mean, honestly, out of all the things to spend their budget on, they shouldn’t be scrimping on alcohol. Anyway it’s good times all round, and somehow I survived the ordeal, so here I am. I guess it wouldn’t have been impossible to update with food from camp, but that would have involved lugging the camera around everywhere and also four days’ worth of backlog since the IT lounge there is always full. These did not seem like wise options to me so I passed. Then again, I guess I could have posted pictures from the post-movie drinking session I had last night, but by the time I got back home I was much too drunk-tired to do anything much but embrace my bed. I was pretty embarrassing in terms of the amount of alcohol it takes to make you feel like you’re going to get drunk soon, but I blame it on my lack of sleep and my near-lack of dinner. Anyway, the movie started out as an action crime thriller and ended up as a gay romance. I was flabbergasted. I did not disapprove. I was still flabbergasted, though. Also this weather is sucking all my stamina out of me. If there is so much moisture in the air, why does it feel that it is necessary to drain me of my moisture as well? Why can’t we just get along in our separate spheres? Please, air, leave me alone. Air conditioning is expensive this year.

07. 18. EXCUSES

Okay, let’s deal with the facts here — there’s no getting over two days’ worth of missed posts. Actually no, that’s a terrible way to begin because those are not actually the facts. There is totally a way, I could just look up some pictures online and backdate the whole shebang. But I won’t, because that is way too much work and I didn’t eat anything quite so interesting as to merit that level of dedication. So the past couple of days, to be exact for the past six days, I’ve been having this odd numbness on my left side. And as you know, anything one-sided is totally not a good sign in terms of symptoms. So I guess it was a relief of sorts that at times, my right hand or leg would go to sleep as well. But relief or not, there was strangeness, lo, and I was confused. I thought it might have been something to do with not lying down for prolonged periods of time, since I’d not been sleeping that well, so I tried to rest it off — but there wasn’t any back pain to speak of (besides the usual, but that’s not relevant) so again, confusion reigned supreme. And then I finally got sick of this valetudinarian prevarication and called my mother to ask. Luckily she was talking with a couple of doctors in her office, and their general consensus was that I had, wonder of wonders, an electrolyte imbalance. Which totally makes sense. I’ve been drinking more water than usual, hardly anything on my menu is salty, and things actually seemed better after I guzzled down a bottle of some energy drink. Also sometime today I started developing a motor tic around my right eye so potassium and magnesium sound like they are in demand by my body. I am going to have to drink orange juice or eat bananas or something to do something about that. Hopefully I’m not getting much wrong in terms of, you know, what to do when you do have electrolyte imbalance. Besides, how bad can orange juice and bananas possibly be for you? Tune in next time, when I let you know that I’m going to skip two weeks’ worth of posts because I’ve developed stomach ulcers.

[ETA] It just occurred to me that this entire blog is like an exercise in watching me fall apart. Honestly, since when were you so sensitive about imbalances, o mortal shell? I do not believe it. But then again, I did go two weeks in high school with a blinding idiopathic pain in my side that mysteriously went away — maybe now I’m just more of a whiner. At any rate, here I am, disintegrating. Thanks to the limitations of the bodily frame. And Takeshi Kaneshiro. (No, The Good, the Bad, the Weird did not capture my heart and soul, oddly enough. It would have if it had given the barest minimum of thought to who instead of how, but as it stands I did enjoy it. I’m just not going to lose any sleep over it.)

07. 14. LUNCH

by now you should know that this is Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang obviously I mean come on have I been talking about anything else for the past week at all?

Early-morning showings will be the death of me. We met up to watch the movie at eight, and consequently had lunch at half past ten, which resulted in my premature enervation but more about that later. The important part is that though food may fill your stomach, it is just as important to appease your heart. Thus I conclude that what I had for lunch was the Red Cliffs movie, not, you know, what I had for lunch, which was fine, but not quite as fine as — I’ve went on enough about Takeshi Kaneshiro, so let me put a clamp on that for a moment. Now, I’m honestly aware that this isn’t actually a good movie, but I also must honestly admit that I love it. Then again I usually have such impeccable taste that I think I am allowed a guilty pleasure once in a while. Anyway, the point is, there’s this conversation between Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang; ZL is all “OMG SO WHUT IF WE BECOME ENEMIZ” and ZY is like “Psh then we kill each other I guess” and ZL is like “U HERTLES BASTRD!!!1″. I need to buy the DVD so that I can just watch that conversation over and over again. It’s because when the present is interpreted in light of the future, everything takes on a little bit more meaning. Oh, I guess it’s not super deep or anything, after all even the future-past is still the past and it’s all been written before, but guilty pleasures aren’t subject to the laws of logic. The catch here is that later, they actually do become enemies, and Zhuge Liang basically kills Zhou Yu with stress. There’s something in the way this conversation is delivered that leads me to believe that this eventuality is foreshadowed. Every single thing that ZL does, every quality and attribute of his, is ultimately just a weapon of diplomacy. If you watch the movie assuming that ZL is a superhuman genius in terms of politics, which he was, then you begin thinking that everything he does is carefully, precisely, heartlessly calculated. The way he furrows his brow and speaks like there’s too much on his mind, that’s just an illusion of credibility; his enjoyment of music and his fondness for animals are to put him in high favors; his insults are painstakingly crafted and thrown at the most precise moments; and during that conversation with Zhou Yu, it’s like everything that comes out of his mouth is said with a foreknowledge of ZY’s defeat. ZY, of course, is a very smart man in his own right but he’s a more honest sort — pretty much everyone is compared to ZL — and reading between the lines of this conversation turns the entire message over on its head. ZL is a remorseless villain, prodding ZY with hypothetical questions just to laugh quietly to himself. Ugh I love it. I want the bit in the second movie where ZL, knowing full well that the weather forecast has a southeasterly wind blowing for the next couple of days, turns the whole thing into an exhibition and is all O HAI LOOK AT MAI MAJIKUL MISTIKUL PWRZ I CAN HAS CHANG THE WIND!!1 and everyone is like FGSFDS HE HAS MAJIK PWRZ and the world is ridiculous. There is, as usual, a BUT: in the “mastermind-jackass” scenario, what throws me off about ZL’s character in the movie is his relationship with Zhao Wei’s Sun Shangxiang. Either he’s a womanizer, or he’s genuinely being nice, or he has ulterior political motives. And he knows he’s not going to get with her, so the first option is out — there’s nothing really to be gained by buttering up Sun Shangxiang, so the third option is out. Is ZL being nice, and if so, why — it’s not really a case of kindred spirits or magnanimous pity because they have pretty much nothing in common and you’d think Sun Shangxiang would know pity when she saw it. Ah well, I’m discarding options left and right but really it doesn’t amount to anything and all this is rather obvious. This is a long ramble on why I like what I like, how despicably Leo is that? One last note: the only people who rave this much about Zhuge Liang are old men who read the Three Kingdoms stories more than twenty years ago and can’t remember much from it except that Zhuge Liang puts on a fancy show for everything he does and also invents the dumpling. I think that accomplishment is confusing my view of his entire person — how can a man that invents the dumpling be anything but an embodiment of perfect good? No, ZL isn’t evil, but he is a right bastard when he has the upper hand. Which is why everyone hates him except for said old men.

[ETA] Oh, duh. Sun Shangxiang was sending ZL enemy secrets via dove mail. But that’s not really motive enough for civility, especially since all those painstakingly harvested secrets are just going to GO UP IN A BLAZING CONFLAGRATION

07. 10. SNACK

Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang

WHAT A RIDICULOUSLY HOT PIECE OF MAN-FLESH. What is this? What is this movie? I can’t articulate my thoughts concisely enough to have all this rambling fit into a post about mero fish, so here it is, a separate scream. Red Cliffs was no artistic masterpiece, not something that goes down in history as an example of superb film-making. The biggest tragedy is that since the source material is largely episodic, it’s difficult to translate that into a movie that holds every little piece together. But you know what, I couldn’t possibly care less, because I love this movie so much and I don’t even know why. Is it the casting? Certainly — I have an unconstrained adoration for movies that are cast according to something even deeper than stereotype. Something like archetype. There’s no need to search for the perfect balanced group, no worries about target audience or wrongful representation; they simply look the way that they are, and that’s exactly what this movie does. Is it the hotness? I won’t deny it — Takeshi Kaneshiro makes me want to tear down the projection screen and ingest every little piece of it in frantic lust. Or something. But in general, it’s a war movie with an epic budget, it better look hot for what it’s worth. And it did. It could also be John Woo’s obsession with doves.

Zhuge Liang and John Woo’s dove

I swear to God, if the theater wasn’t so packed, I might have actually emitted some sort of high-pitched shriek every time Takeshi Kaneshiro was onscreen. It’s just ridiculous. Strutting around like that with his infuriating fan, all coy and pensive and yet at the same time, he has the most hilarious scenes. No lie: HE DELIVERS A HORSE. The traditional instrument battle was as stiflingly badass as expected, and he fans doves and dusts himself off angrily and slkdjlfkjse I have resorted to keyboard smashing. Also let’s be honest: all those men inhumanely intensely gazing at each other all the time didn’t hurt, either. Of course it’s usually because one of them has a huge ginormous …army, and the other one is supremely skilled in b… battle. But hormones are hormones all the same! I guess my only comment that even approaches criticism from this angle is that Zhuge Liang is not apocryphal enough to suit my fantasies. He’s still a little lost, a little ruffled, a little hesitant, which is still considerably more romantic than historical accounts have him be. So really I shouldn’t be complaining at all. Besides, his true calling was never military tactics, it was politics, they say — and the little things he did, like changing the freaking weather and INVENTING THE FREAKING DUMPLING. ONLY THAT. Honestly, how many people have invented the dumpling? ONLY ONE. ZHUGE LIANG. This man was a god amongst sweaty, fierce, totally ripped mortals. Oh, Zhuge Liang. Three isn’t a number that does you justice; I’d have waited at your door a thousand times. My dusty invention of a crush.

07. 08. EXCUSES

No pictures today. The headache that I mentioned on the dinner post of the 4th appears to be something along the lines of a mild case of heatstroke and dehydration. Which is kind of funny, since it’s not like I had so much work that I couldn’t possibly be bothered with drinking a blasted cup of water — it wasn’t that hot, and I did drink when I was thirsty. Evidently that’s not enough. Well, at least we suspect that it’s — I just realized that maybe “heatstroke” isn’t even the right word. That sounds much too dramatic. What it is, is that I still have this headache and I’m drinking gallons and gallons of water. I wasn’t much in the mood for taking pictures all day today, also I had a visit with the dentist so that was a hassle. This week doesn’t bode well for relaxation. But just for reference, breakfast was cereal: lunch was a ham and cheese sandwich: dinner was chicken, salmon and beef (I know, right, welcome to the festival of protein) along with assorted side dishes and rice. And a gallon of water. I am almost done with A Tale of Two Cities and maybe it’s because I do most of my reading on a bike but I must confess that I have no idea what’s going on. Also Sidney Carton is one of those characters that grovel and beg to be liked, so I can’t. Oh, Dickens, how you toy with my volatile heart.

06. 28. EVENING SNACK

Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang

Because man cannot live on bread alone, and a girl has needs, I overcame my post-dinner hunger by feasting on movie pamphlets. And oh gosh look. This is from the Red Cliffs movie opening in July, about a week before The Dark Knight. So Takeshi Kaneshiro, whom I don’t really know but apparently have seen in Perhaps Love which nobody else watched except for the three people in the 200-person theater with me at the time which was half past eight in the morning, is going to play Zhuge Liang. And Zhuge Liang is kind of a big deal. I’m certainly not versed well enough in the Three Kingdoms lore to go into any specifics, but he is the original smartass bastard. He has a feathered fan for the express purpose of annoying the hell out of everybody else. He should be smarmy, composed, infuriatingly knowing and yet somehow incredibly fly. I think that has been accomplished and I am tickled to no end.

DUELING TRADITIONAL INSTRUMENTS

No kidding there is going to be a traditional instrument dueling scene in the movie. I can’t breathe, that is so amazing. It’ll be just like dueling banjos except without the mental disability and the hours of wide-eyed panic that follow. Also, TRADITIONAL INSTRUMENTS. I’m not sure what they’re called because I don’t know the first thing about China, but I’m already jumping up and down in my seat. Sorry the picture is so terrible, but these are tiny on the pamphlets and it’s super glossy. Zhuge Liang is twenty-seven at the time of the battle for heaven’s sakes how supernaturally hot is that? Also Zhou Yu is thirty-three and played by Tony Leung so okay both the actors are slightly older than their parts but by this point I don’t care, I don’t even care whether it’ll be a good movie or not and I certainly don’t care much about the battle scenes. I just need to see Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang sitting on a high chair with his white robes smiling that little maddening genius-tactician smile and maybe calling on some good old-fashioned magic. Though actually the last bit probably shouldn’t happen.

Charlie Bartlett

This movie is old hat but I saw the pamphlet standing there and I squealed. How is that man so fine? I always believed in you, Robert Downey Jr. Believe you me. Well okay let’s be honest I only heard of him after he got things under control, but hey at least I knew him a handful of movies before Iron Man. I think that’s enough to go with these days. Just like you get a smidgen of cred for having known Johnny Depp before PotC. Why do I incorrectly remember Secret Window to be further back than Caribbean? Probably because I felt like the movie went on forever, since, you know, it wasn’t a good movie really. It’s surprising: I just counted, and I still haven’t seen twenty Depp films. Maybe if I do Platoon and Donnie Brasco sometime.