I’ve had this damn post sitting in my drafts forward for so very long. King Corn. It’s a documentary about corn. Yes. Corn. It’s actually really good and it’s pretty funny. Liana blogged about it too. Yeah, I’m over this post. LOL.
WATCH IT KAIES? 
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
Iron Giant on a hopefully beautiful night outdoors with peach iced tea and lemonade blended with ice and a bag full of homemade popcorn with flecks of furikake on top? YES PLEASE!
See you on the 16th!
~Spec
Posted in: flicks , seattle
I loved this movie. LOVED IT. I’m sure you’ve already heard great things about it, so I’ll just say this: OMG SO GOODS.
We watched the movie at Majestic Bay Theatres, a family-owned neighborhood movie jaunt. A woman celebrated her 92nd birthday there and everyone in the theater sang her happy birthday. LOL. It was adorable and totally set the mood for the movie. I even got a shirt out of it!
As for the movie, I can honestly say that this is my *favorite* Pixar movie. There wasn’t much conflict, just a great showcase of what “longing for love” really is. Just a great story about two sentient beings being all lovey-dovey with each other. Cute cute cute.
Maybe it was just me, but I was searching for Apple cues through out the movie to a point where it was distracting me from everything. Johnathan Ive, Apple’s VP of Industrial Design helped design EVE and every time I watched that sleek white pod on the movie screen, I was looking for more design cues from every angle. Also, HUGE bonus points for the progression in the ending credits. Genius!
Go watch it, then go home, wait a few months and buy it on Blu-Ray to enjoy it all over again in high definition. Hee hee.
WAAAALLLLEEEEEEEE.
~Spec
Posted in: apple culture , flicks
The Seattle International Film Festival, lovingly shortened to The SIFF, kicks off on May 22nd and runs through June 15. I read a great overview of the festival on Seattle.Metblogs, which is really giving me some sort of a pulse on this city.
One of the movies that I *did* want to check out is Bottle Shock… which tickles every culinary bone in my body in all the right culinary places. LOL. That sounds dirtier than I’d like. Oh well… summary below!
…another based on real life feature, this one about the shockwaves sent around the world in 1978 when the Paris Tastings revealed that Californians could produce wine every bit as good, if not better, than the French.
It’s gon’ be a showdown here tonite fellers! While I’d love to go in depth about how some regions in California have the same longitude (dude, it’s not latitude, I looked it up) as the well respected areas in France thereby creating a similar grape growing eco-system (pushes up glasses in a snobbish way)… I’m sure the film will explain it better than I ever could. Hee hee.
The film was an offical selection for the 2008 Sundance Festival and includes actors and actresses such as - please forgive me for the vague *also in* film references - Steven Spurrier (That bad guy in Harry Potter and the cheating dude in Love Actually), Eliza Dushku (she was in Buffy) and Bill Pullman (ya know, the president in Independence Day).
Bottle Shock will close out the festival, so there’ll be plenty of other movies to see! I hope it’ll be just as fun as the SFIAAFF!
Go Movies!
~Spec
Posted in: flicks , seattle
WHOA. Back to back movie posts? YESH. Just came back from watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Did I spoil the review in the title? Haha, yes but that’s ok. It was a really great movie! HI.LAR.I.OUS. Also, two beautiful women and uhh… lots of male frontal nudity. Honestly, all of the movie reviews talked about full-frontal nudity… but I brushed it off like it was just a bunch of small random shots. NO. Let me reiterate: YOU WILL SEE NUDITY & YOU WILL WANT TO LOOK AWAY AND SAY EWWWWWWW. LOL.
I thought it was a great addition to the 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad catalog of movies. What I found most surprising was that, just like Knocked Up, you really saw real people in real relationships… and sometimes that’s what makes things so damn funny. We all go through it, right? RIGHT?!?! LOL.
Cast picture! Great movie! 
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
EEEEE. The Dark Knight, July 18. If only they’d do Wolverine movies like this - who wants a PG-13 Weapon X? Hee hee. Oh, I’d totally buy this related t-shirt.
So excited!
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
With all the love that the guys from Jabbawockeez have been getting by winning the first season of America’s Best Dance Crew on MTV, breakin’ as a whole on the mainstream level is getting out of the novelty role (again) and its movement is gaining serious (and positive) momentum. I hope these guys capitalize on the opportunistic world that they’ve found themselves in, ’cause I’ve been kinda disappointed with their DJ / Turntablist Hip Hop brothers and sisters after all the press from the Scratch movie. Sigh. ANYWAYS…
That’s why a release of Planet B-Boy to Seattle April 25th - May 1st at the Landmark Theatre is so perfect. So uhhh… what’s Planet B-Boy? Wiki has the deets:
Planet B-Boy features extensive footage of the dancers in competition as well as street performances and various rehearsals by the different crews from around the world. The narrative of the film centers on five particular crews (representing France, Japan, South Korea, and the United States) in their quest to win the Battle of the Year, and it includes multiple interviews with the B-Boys and their families. The film also includes interviews with German B-Boy and promoter Thomas Hergenröther (who founded the Battle of the Year competition) and legendary B-Boy Ken Swift of the Rock Steady Crew.
I’ve seen the trailer and it’s dope. There’s not much else I can say about it, other than ZOMG DID YOU SEE THAT GUY DO THAT CRAZY UPROCK INTO AIR-SWIPES INTO A BEACHBALL AND THEN A 1990 INTO A POSE? lol.
Well did you? lol.
~Spec
Posted in: flicks , seattle
author’s note: I just deleted 3 paragraphs whining about how foreign films get popular here in the ‘States. It was utter rubbish. I should just keep my mouth shut and enjoy the movies that happen to come my way. Hee hee.
I’m not even sure how I was first exposed to it, but I enjoyed the true story of the The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. IMDB has a quick summary below:
Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he’d only visited in his mind.
Disclaimer: It’s an introspective piece, which means the pace is probably slower than most mainstream media here in the states. It’s also almost entirely filmed in the first person’s perspective. I’ll spare you the details, but you’ll feel claustrophobic even if you watch this in a huge theater. The supporting cast was phenomenal, especially of the hospital staff that truly cared for the main character. Good stuff. I’ll be watching Israel’s The Band’s Visit later tonite, so I’ll let you know what I think soon!
YAY Movies!
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
So, with all this drama in the L.B.C. it being the holidays & all, bummin’ around the house just doesn’t cut it as far as I’m concerned. Thankfully, Liana thought so too when she recommended we actually watch a movie “in theatres” (lol I put it in quotes) out in the U District. I first required a promise of freshly popped popcorn and an extra squirt or two of that plastic butter and we were off!
If you didn’t know already, I really <3 cheesy (1) and (2) overly (3) dramatic (4) movies (5), so it was easy to say yes when LauLau brought up Juno.
Juno, as defined by its imdb page is “A comedy about growing up…and the bumps along the way.” I’d hate to say more about it, thereby ruining the delicate bloom of each plot line, but I will say this: It is cute, it is smart, it is funny as hell AND it’s totally worth the out-of-the-way trip if it’s not showing near you.
While we waited in line in the cold for 15 minutes for tickets, we learned that the Neptune Theater is one of the last single-screen theaters in Seattle. It’s a classic, large space with fresh popcorn a poppin’ and nutritional yeast in a shaker in case you’d like to sprinkle it on your fatty popcorn (wtf ew? lol). I liken it to the Castro Theater back in SF, but without the organ player. And more senior citizens. Hee hee. Maybe if we have free time, we’ll watch it again and hang out in the U-dist. for a little bit and check out more of this city that we just happened to moved to. Definitely a DVD purchase!
YAY Juno!
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
It’s Thanksgiving away from the family (again), so instead of catching up with oodles of people about their careers, love lives and gossip (sorry everybody!)… there’ll be a lot of straight chillin’ to be had. Liana already listed her food wishlist for this Thursday (thus outing her newly created blog HI SWEETHEART!!!), so I’ll be forced to pull a Sandra Lee and rock Turkey day semi-homemade style. LOL.
So, there’ll be some Wii to play as well as some movies to check out. I made a quick stop at Blockbuster (while Liana was @ The Wax Bar) to bring a few movies home:
Tekkonkinkreet (link)
“BLACK and WHITE, two street urchins, battle an array of old-word Yakuza and alien assassins vying to rule the decaying metropolis of Treasure Town - where the moon smiles and young boys can fly.”Samurai Fiction (link)
“Three centuries ago, a precious sword has been stolen by Kazamatsuri — the sword, which historic and symbolic value is priceless for the clan. Lord’s counselor’s young son Heishiro goes to retrieve the sword himself to protect the clan from the shame or possible demise.”Paris, Je T’Aime (link)
“Through the neighborhoods of Paris, love is veiled, revealed, imitated, sucked dry, reinvented and awakened.”Hairspray (link)
“Pleasantly plump teenager Tracy Turnblad teaches 1962 Baltimore a thing or two about integration after landing a spot on a local TV dance show.“
We checked out Hairspray yesterday, and I was kinda disappointed with the movie. It was ok, but I guess it was hyped up so much that I assumed that I would “have” to grab the soundtrack and play it over and over in my headphones. Oh well…. it happens!
I remember watching 349834094 hours of Rurouni Kenshin @ Phil and Jamie’s house back in high school and The Dudesons @ Brandon and Aaron’s place last year. Ahhh the memories. Maybe there’ll be a Project Runway marathon! LOL.
What will you be watching?
~Spec
Posted in: flicks , wastin' time
Frameline31: SF Intl LGBT Film Festival
Celebrating the best in LGBT cinema from around the world, June 14-24, 2007. The longest running, largest and most widely recognized LGBT film exhibition event in the world. www.frameline.org
Wow. Frameline. It’s been a year already! There sure are a lot of movies to be seen and even though there’s no Margaret Cho offering this year… it should be a good time. Hee hee. Jocelyn is serving on the board of directors this year, so show your support! Maybe you me and the sister on Sunday afternoon? Lunch, movie (comedy?) then Wii? Cool? Cool. LOL.
In the bay area and don’t know what to watch? Check out the trailers on their YouTube profile here. If they make the film festival… SOMEONE had to think it was good!
YAY movies!
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
Saturday, June 30
Union Square in San Francisco
Showtime: 8:00 PM
Presented by The San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation
Aside from bringing my knife bag for work, I will be bringing a lil’ blanket and a travel mug filled with some liquid chocolate… so I can keep warm while watching this Bogart classic. I don’t know what Liana is gonna do, but I’ll be warm! MWMWAHAHAHAHA.
I doubt that I’ll see anyone I know out watching the movie on Saturday… but I wanted to let those of you know that are in the Bay. AANNNDDD… because I have OCD… ACRONYM TIME!!! CASABLANCA - “Cats assess sinister applications, but lack any noisy colored asteroids“. Damn. I wish that made more sense. LOL.
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
WOO HOO. I forgot how good it was to be a student! YAY. I must do something responsible with this return before I do anything stupid… ’cause you know… I will. LOL.
New Macbook (12′’ white!), ipod *cough* phone *cough*, shoes, dress shirts from Brooks Brothers, video games, HD monitor, turntable needles, dj headphones, slim camera, plates, flatware, Blix wall art, pillows, sheets, books, food, restaurant quality knives, pastry gear… are things I will not be purchasing with this money. LOL. I wanted to make a list… just to make myself sure that I got all the “want” out of my system before I shut it down.
This was gonna be a seperate blog post, but after watching The Pursuit of Happiness (which was a great movie btw)… I’ve had this underlying worry that I’d mirror Will Smith’s character and go broke in this fair city of San Francisco. I actually started taking notes on what to do in case such an event happened! LOL.
Oh Herschell, you so crazy.
~Spec
Posted in: finance , flicks
Youtube link here. Welcome to the Air Guitar Nation everybody… it’s gonna be one HEEEEEEEEELARIOUS ride.
Air Guitar Nation is a feature-length 2006 documentary about the first US Air Guitar Championships, following the top contestants, David “C-Diddy” Jung and Dan “Bjorn Turoque” Crane, to the World Championship in Oulu, Finland.
The film, which I saw with Jocelyn and MR. KILLFEATHER (yes, he’s “CONNECTED” lol), was part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival… which I posted about previously. It was a FOUR STAR / ZOMG MY KIND OF MOVIE / GOTTA BUY IT ON DVD / kind of flick. I’ve never laughed so much while in a theatre. I’d add more, but the trailer says it all!
IT WILL COME TO YOUR CITY, AND YOU WILL WATCH IT.
I’M TELLING THIS TO YOU!
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
…I’ll be watching The Namesake, starring Kal Penn. I *just* blogged about the book, and now I find out that it’s a freaking movie… that came out YESTERDAY. I BLOGGED ABOUT A BOOK ON THE SAME DAY THAT THE MOVIE ADAPTATION CAME OUT. OMGGGGG. I AM SO ESP.
So anyway, I’ve also heard UBERTASTICALLY GREAT THINGS about 300. Apparently, the storyline gives both men and women alike an undeniable necessity to scream for blood. More hype than Snakes on a Plane… and it looks like it’s worth it to boot!
But, since The Namesake is only screening in select cities (YAY. I heart SF), I figure that I can always catch 300 on a “throwaway” relax-time night. I hope the movie does the book justice. I’m a big fan of Jhumpa Lahiri’s work. What I’m *really* curious about is whether or not Kal can pull of a serious non-stoner role. Mmmmm… sliders.
I MISS WHITECASTLE!!!
~Spec
UPDATE: Going to the 5:30PM showing @ the Embarcadero! YAY.
Posted in: comics & graphic novels , books , flicks
Quick post. The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is coming!
Presented by the Center for Asian American Media (formerly NAATA), the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) is the largest annual exhibition event in North America dedicated to showcasing the best in Asian American and Asian cinema. The SFIAAFF annually presents over 120 films and videos across 11 days in three cities: San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose. The 2006 SFIAAFF drew over 200 filmmakers and industry guests, and over 29,000 attendees.
I don’t have any specific movies on my radar, but since it’s @ the AMC on Van Ness and the Castro Theatre… everything is just a spontaneous bus ride away. ZOMG HERSCHELL TAKING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION FOR RECREATION?! LOL YES.
Only 8 days away!
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
Children of Men. Wow. Just wow. Sure, it’s a futuristic thriller created to satisfy an unquenchable need for the “world gone mad” scenario… but more so, it’s a strong commentary of how a world that has no future would function. Scary.
Clive Owen and Julianne Moore were fantastic in the film, but the real highlight of the film was its direction. Ben from ArsTechnica’s Opposable Thumbs (my former writing gig) said it best:
Our Opposable Thumbs alumnus Elle clued me in: “That scene was totally out of Half-Life 2, wasn’t it?” That was it! In my mind I was thinking of Gears of War, but Half-Life 2 fit as well. The shaky camera that has one continuous view of the action, following one man bobbing and weaving through the bullets and the carnage, made me feel like I was looking at a war game. It turns the movie into something of a third-person shooter in places.
There was a point in the film where Clive’s character was dodging bullets, sneaking around corners, which was quite reminiscent of “look around the corner” shots that have been so popular in recent video games… i.e. Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 2, Gears of War and the latest iteration of the Rainbow Six series. Awesome.
I didn’t give it much of a chance when I first heard the premise, as I thought it would follow cliche after cliche… but I was dead wrong. It surpassed any “good” expectations I had and overall, it was a great film. Definitely one of the better action films I’ve seen in quite a while.
Highly recommended.
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
Smokin’ Aces. Better quality trailer here. I can’t wait until this comes out. Ben Affleck (trucker ’stash), Jason Bateman (welcome back sir!), Common (no Gap hoodie here!), Alicia Keys (zomg she looks hottt), Andy Garcia (Badass in Confidence), Ray Liotta (GOOODFEELLLAASSS) and Ryan Renolds (LOL Van Wilder *and* Alanis’ ex-main-squeeze)… all in one hanky-spank hitman movie.
January 26 seems so far away
~Spec
Posted in: flicks
Casino Royale. DOPENESS. What a movie! This latest Bond installment took a handful of pop culture and seamlessly intertwined it in the movie. There was a TON of action within the first 20 minutes of the movie… packed with a load of great Parkour:
Parkour is a physical discipline inspired by human movement. It focuses on uninterrupted, efficient forward motion over, under, around and through obstacles (both man-made and natural) in one’s environment. Such movement may come in the form of running, jumping, climbing and more complex techniques. The goal of parkour is to adapt one’s movement to any given obstacle.
It also harnessed the kinda recent phenomenon of Texas Hold ‘Em. I like it when I can actually relate to the most uber-est spy in the whole entire world. Anyway, the movie was AWESOME. I won’t do a comparison to my favorite Bond of all time, but I think this blue-eyed fella (whatever his name is) had what it takes to bring in a new generation of fans.
The point of the post?
GOSEETHEMOVIEZITSGEWDKTHXBYE
~Spec
Posted in: flicks , streaming conciousness