In memory of Khosrow Shakibai, Hamoun is screening in Pacific Cinemateque in downtown Vancouver on Tuesday, August 12. Show starts at 7:00 p.m., doors open at 6:30. You can get your ticket at the door as far as I know. I will update you once I know more. You can also check out Cafe Radio's show for this week for more information.
Read the rest...I have been meaning to write about Pink Martini for a long time. I heard them for the first time two years ago through a friend. I instantly fell in love with them... their work has this 1940's feel to it, but at the same time is fresh and young. Their melodies feel familiar, although the lyrics are original most of the time. Pink Martini is based in Portland, Oregan, but the founders of the band met at Harvard! The lead singer, "China Forbes" has this heavenly voice (you have to see her live to understand what I am saying!) that you just can't help but love.
Pink Martini's music is very international. they have songs in English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Arabic! I saw the band's performance live last month during Vancouver's international Jazz festival and all I can say is don't miss them if they every come around to your town!
Unfortunately, some ongoing technical difficulties (!) have resulted in me not being able to upload music for this post. I waited a few days, but decided to post this without a sample song. It was pretty hard for me to pick a favorite song anyway. You can go on you tube and listen to whatever is available from Pink Martini and pick your own favorite. (do not miss out on songs from their latest album)
I can not believe I had missed on such a great movie! (great movies I have to say now)
I spent the last 6 hours of my day watching Batman begins and the Dark Knight basically back to back. I watched the first one on DVD, hoping to understand what all these hard core fans were talking about. How could a Batman movie be this good?! and I was surprised (in a good way) and loved the movie so much that decided to devote a Saturday afternoon and go see the sequel. What I loved about both movies is how no one character steals the scene. There are maybe 10 different characters that are all important to the dynamics of the story, and they are all so well developed, and well acted too.
I absolutely loved Batman begins because of the background it gives on Batman and how he became who he is. The fact that Batman is a human like everyone else that learns to be a hero is something that separates him from other superheros like Superman or Spiderman. He's more like James Bond, with better morals!
And Christian Bale was awesome. Let's face it, you can only act so much when you have a mask on your face, and I think in all the un-masked scenes he was pretty good. The Dark Knight had more of the masked Batman in it, so I can't really say much about Christian Bale's acting, but I thought Aron Eckhart did a great job in the movie.
I recommend both movies strongly. There's a reason they've got such high ratings on imdb.
...or, the adventures of the cutest (and the only) robot on Earth! This would somehow summarize the story of the movie I watched last night: Wall.E.
Wall.E is so cute, you'll find yourself aw-ing all through the movie! It is amazing that the only words he says is his own and Eve's (the white super-robot) name, and yet you can feel all sorts of emotions in these words, depending on the situation! Apart from all the funny and romantic and cute moments that happen in the film, what interested me the most was how the movie showed the future of Earth, all covered in garbage (and clearly as a result of crazy consumption' you could see the remains of huge supermarkets and gas stations, etc), and also the future of Earth people, who were living with the most advanced technologies imaginable and yet their lives were so empty. I am not trying to read too much into this film, but I honestly think it's a great thing if kids' cartoons occasionally have a message as well!!
All in all, I had a great time watching Wall.E and so recommend it to everyone. I haven't met a single person that hasn't liked it.
Another awesome thing about last night was the short Pixar animation that preceded Wall.E: Presto. It was one of the funniest short animations I had seen. You can see a sneak preview here. The whole film is a comical fight between a magician and his bunny who wants a carrot, but can not get it.
hmmmm, oh, ok, I also watched Shortbus a few days ago. Not at all what I had expected. Except for crazy s e x scenes, I couldn't understand what all the excitement was about!
... and nothing really changes. nothing progresses. nothing happens.
It's all nice and sunny in Vancouver. Hope all is well with you.
whiningly yours,
S.
ok, I've read up a lot on this whole autostart thing in FireFox and apparently for some reason FF doesn't recognize autostart=false and I couldn't find a quick answer anywhere. however, Mozilla now offers an add-on called "Stop Autoplay" that you can install and forever live autoplay-free. I hope you either use IE or install this add-on and never have to open this page again to music being autoplayed!
Read the rest...
