Mansfield Park

Today I worked on watching the 1999 version of Mansfield Park. It has a pretty all-star cast, including: Frances O'Connor (The Importance of Being Earnest), Jonny Lee Miller (Emma--2009), and Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey). I haven't quite finished it, but I've read the book and I've seen other adaptations and so I'm pretty sure I know how it ends. I definitely would say that I enjoyed it more than the other film version I've seen (the 1983 version), though it isn't as true to the novel (or at least what I remember of the novel). Several major plot points were quite different. For example Fanny's brother isn't in this version at all. And Sir Thomas doesn't seem to particularly care for Fanny here, whereas I could've sworn that he kind liked her in the book. But it still is very good. I especially like Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund. He makes such a fantastic Mr. Knightly, and he did just as well with Edmund.

I still have yet to see the recent 2007 version, so I can't comment on that one. Apparently I'm a couple decades behind on this Austen adaptation. (I just love Persuasion and Emma so much...).

Restless

Back when I was living in DC, I went with one of my friends to the movies and we saw a trailer for the movie Restless. The trailer looked pretty awesome, and so I was looking forward to it coming out a few months later. Well, life happened and I missed the movie while it was in theaters.

Then I moved.

After I got a job at the library here I decided to see if I could check out Restless, because by this point it had come out on movie. And while on paper I feel like paying $1 to get it from redbox is reasonable, in practice why would I spend money if I can get it for free at the library with a little patience? Sadly, only a couple libraries in our system have the movie, and none of them were eligible for me to put on hold because they were too new. I could have driven to one of the libraries in question and picked it up (but I'm too lazy to do that). I decided I could be patient and wait a few months. And then I forgot about it.

Then late last fall, I remembered that I still hadn't seen this movie, so I put it on hold and just had to wait a few weeks for it to come in (since it's still popular). It came in right after Christmas. For whatever reason I was insanely busy that week and didn't have a chance to watch it, but I couldn't renew it either since there were still holds on it. It always makes me sad to return items that I haven't watched or read yet. But that's the beauty of libraries. I can put it right back on hold.

It finally came in again several weeks ago. And I almost didn't have time to watch it this time either. But I did take a couple hours out of the middle of the day one day and watched it. I'm so glad I did. It was a fabulous movie. It was just cute and fun and worth the wait.

Restless is about a boy (Enoch) who is friends with the ghost of a kamikaze pilot who goes to the funerals of people he doesn't know. And while at one of these funerals he meets Annabel, who later admits to having cancer. They begin spending a lot of time together. It is a really interesting film. I'd recommend it.

Sense and Sensibility

With all my free time before classes start I've been re-watching excellent movies. So today I started watching the 2008 BBC version of Sense and Sensibility. I'd forgotten that it stars Dan Stevens. It was a pleasant surprise. The first time I watched this adaptation I remember being impressed with how well Stevens portrayed the mild awkwardness of Edward Ferrars without it being overly awkward. And I was so used to Hugh Grant's very awkward portrayal of him that this was like a breath of fresh air. And now that I've become so familiar with Dan Stevens as Matthew Crawley I was very excited to see him walk on screen today. If you haven't seen this adaptation of Jane Austen's novel, I really recommend it. It's fabulously done. Granted I'd expect no less from the BBC.

Film Noir

Because the library was closed for New Years, I had the rare opportunity this week to be home in the evening on a weeknight. So I headed over to a friend's house and we made french toast for dinner and watched a movie. We decided to watch Flawless, which (sadly) I'd never heard of. It is a crime thriller/suspense movie about a diamond heist in the 60s set in London. In many ways it felt like a nice film noir movie to me. It's pretty fabulous. 

Technology isn't good or bad. It's powerful.

Last week I showed up for my Wednesday class and the first thing the professor did was to have us divide up into groups to discuss the documentary Digital Nation that we were supposed to watch before class. So we divided up and it quickly became apparent that only about 5 people in the class had any idea what he was talking about... Anyways, he ended up showing us a trailer for it and we managed to still have our discussion. But it looked pretty good and so today I took part of my morning and sat down and watched it. It was thought-provoking. I feel like technology has so many sides to it that it's hard to tell what's good and what's bad and what just takes getting used to.

I've found that the more I think about technology and the issues that surround it the more I feel dissatisfied. I definitely can see the usefulness of technology, but I'm just not sure that the application is the best it could be. But hopefully with time we'll learn to balance it better and adapt. Anyhow, here are some of my take-aways from the film. It's definitely one I'd recommend. And you can watch it online.

Studies done at Standford show that people who multitask are actually really terrible at it and they are significantly slower than when they do one thing at a time.

South Korea is the first country to treat internet addiction as a psychiatric disorder.

“Over the past 20 years the internet has changed from a thing one does to a way one lives.”

“That was the first time it occurred to me that my children’s education might have a different purpose than mine did.”

“The world that we’re preparing them for isn’t going to require of them that they have to remember a bunch of information that someone tells them. The world is going to require them to do stuff, to build stuff, work on things, and that’s what we’re preparing them for.”

"I don’t know of any jobs in the world that require people to stay in their seats and keep quiet. But that’s what we require of them in schools…"

"To me there should never be a question as to whether or not students should have access to technology. Technology is like oxygen."

“It’s instant gratification education.” The short attention span makes people get bored faster.

Some surveys of college professors are showing that student’s basic skills (writing especially) are a lot worse now than they were 10 years ago.

People confuse the best ways of doing something once with the best ways of doing something forever.

Sure we’ve lost things. When we gained writing we lost memory. Now we lose attention and focus and become distracted. "That’s just the price of gain."

“Millions of people are inhabiting the Net as if it were a real place, satisfying the urge to connect to others in online games, virtual worlds.”

“The technology wasn’t isolating them; it was giving them a new way to be intimate.”

“What does the virtual world look like? It looks like the average of all the things we dream about.”

The part about military drones reminds me of Ender’s Game.

“A drone can’t dig through the rubble of that building and see what the results of that hellfire missile are.”

“That game world is equally rich to many novels, I would argue.”

“Technology challenges us to assert our human values. Which mean first we have to figure out what they are.”

“Technology isn’t good or bad. It’s powerful.”

“but most of all, I love being able to turn it off.”

Frontline’s DigitalNation

Tapped

By the year 2030 two-thirds of the world will lack access to clean drinking water.

This morning I sat down and I watched the documentary Tapped. After I watched Bag It last week, one of my roommates recommended Tapped to me as another good documentary about plastics. I promptly checked it out of the library (have I ever mentioned that I love libraries?) I'm coming to realize that I actually feel pretty strongly about environmental issues, and plastics littering our oceans is something that really bothers me. Bottled water also bothers me. Before watching this film, bottled water always bothered me from a financial point of view. Why would I want to spend $1.80+ to buy a bottle of water when I can get a drink from a water fountain for free? To me, I have a hard time understanding why someone would want to spend that kind of money. But then, I also don't get things like soda at restaurants for much the same reason.

I thought that Tapped was a fascinating look at the bottled water industry and the effect that it has on our lives. And below are some of the things that I took away:

40% of bottled water is just filtered tap water.

80% of PETE produced in the US ends up in Nestle, Pepsi, or Coke beverage containers

Municipal (tap) water is highly regulated and bottled water is virtually unregulated.

Municipal water providers have to test their water 300-400 times per month to ensure safety of their water. They also have to make their reports available to the public. Bottle water providers don't have to test their water or provide their reports.

We put an awful lot of faith and blind trust in a for-profit industry that is almost entirely self-regulated.

BPA is present in many kinds of plastic bottles, including water coolers, sport bottles, and baby bottles.

BPA has links to obesity, cancer, diabetes, ADHD, and many other diseases.

FDA approval of products comes from and is based on studies that are performed by the industry the product comes from. They don't typically ask for independent studies when looking at approving a product.

World average for beverage bottle recycling is 50%. US average is 20%.

Only 11 states offer container deposit legislation. (you pay a deposit on the bottle when you purchase and get it back when you return the bottle.) But only 6 of these have bills to include bottled water.

Michigan, which has a 10 cent deposit gets a 97% return rate. Other states with a 5 cent deposit get about a 70% return rate.

About half of Americans don't have access to curbside recycling.

Bottled water may have its place in disaster relief, but there issues around bottled water that make it unsuitable for regular use.

You're really better off just refilling a reusable water bottle at the drinking fountain.

I feel very grateful that I didn't grow up in a household that drank a lot of bottled water. Certainly we had some, picnics, the beach, vacations, etc., but generally when we were at home tap water was good enough for us. And I am so glad. I think it will make my desire to completely give up bottled water that much easier. If the demand for bottled water wasn't there I don't think that the bottling companies would bottle as much of it. I challenge you to consciously think, next time you have bottled water, about where your water comes from and where the plastic bottle is going to go when you're done with it.

There is enough water for human need, but not for human greed. --Mahatma Ghandi

Buying single use bottled water is like driving a hummer

Several weeks ago the library showed the movie Bag It. I happened to be working at the time that they made an announcement that the movie would be playing downstairs. So I looked it up to see what it was about and was intrigued to find it was a documentary about plastic bags. So I promptly put it on hold to watch at a later date.

I sat down this afternoon ready for a nice documentary about plastic bags and ended up being completely enthralled. The movie really made me think. 

Here are some of the things I took away:

 "[grocery sacks] are a convenience for a couple of minutes, a couple of hours. And they remain an environmental burden for hundreds of years."  Are they really worth the convenience if we're going to be fighting them for that long? Sure they're "disposable" so throw them away, but where is "away"? And what does "disposable" really mean?

Because the process of actually recycling a lot of plastics is a messy obnoxious process many plastics that you and I recycle end up in asia where low wage employees cherry pick the things that can actual be recycled. The process to melt them back down is messy, toxic, dangerous, etc.

 There was more plastic produced from 2000-2010 than in the entire 20th century. Most of that plastic goes towards single use items that will end up in landfills or the ocean.

Plastic doesn't bio-degrade, it photo-degrades. Which means that the sun breaks it down and then fish mistake it for food.

It's estimated that plastic kills 100,000 marine animals each year.

Imagine if every morning your breakfast was a bowl of cereal and half the stuff in the bowl was little styrofoam pellets and half of it was cereal. That's what its like for some animals in some parts of the ocean.

BPA is really scary.

It's not about being against plastic. It's about being against stupid plastic--silly, stinking, toxic stuff.

Plastic is incredible stuff, but it's not supposed to end up in our oceans or our bodies.

Don't put plastics in your microwave.

Single use plastics are just instant garbage.

When you don't use a lot of plastics, you eat better.

As I was watching this fascinating documentary this afternoon I felt a little bit sick to my stomach to realize just how much plastic I use on a daily basis and how much I am contributing to environmental problems the world over. It makes me want to run out and never use plastic again. Of course that is a little bit unrealistic. Nearly everything in my life is made of plastic, from the bottles my shampoo is in to my toothbrush to my T pass. However, there are things that I can do. I am going to make a concerted effort to not use plastic grocery sacks (or any other plastic bags from stores) any more. I have reusable bags, why not use them?
 I also want to cut way back on single use disposables (things like bottled water, plastic cups, etc.) So, for this next week I am going to try to be single use free. The movie suggested going single use free for an entire day, just to become aware of your habits. But since I know I don't drink things like bottled water I'm going to try to be single use free for a whole week to get a better idea of where I'm using "disposable" plastics.

The Artist

I know I'm more than six months behind on this, but this week I finally watched The Artist. I was amazed at how riveted I was. I knew it was good, it came to me highly recommended, but at the same time I didn't expect to have to put down everything I was doing and just watch. I guess in some ways I shouldn't be surprised at how much I enjoyed this film. I love French cinema--apparently even if it's in English, and if I didn't realize it was a French film till after the fact. I always forget how much I love watching good movies. I really need to make more time for that this fall. I miss my regular attendance at the International Cinema.

The Butterfly Circus

A good friend of mine recently shared this short film with me. It's about talents, dealing with weakness, and turning weakness into strength. It's a nice film with a good message

Cyrano de Bergerac

So we got a new roommate about a month ago and I have discovered that she likes French films too. She checked out Cyrano de Bergerac from the library. When she showed me, it sounded familiar, and when I read the back I remembered. Remember in Rigoletto when Porter is telling that story in the general store after his miracle at Mr. Ribaldi's? That's this story. So we watched part of it together at that time. But we ran out of time to finish it because we were tired. And I've been fairly busy of late and while I had managed to snag it from the library again it's taken me a while to get a chance to watch it. I finally watched it last weekend. It is just so good! Cyrano has the best lines. Here's one example: "Lug your guts away, salami, or stay and I'll remove you slice by slice!" Oh, the wit. I'm going to have to read the play next... 

Roxane and Cyrano

Life in a Day

 On the topic of documentaries. I can't remember who all of you I have shared this with, but it's pretty awesome. Back in 2011, one of my roommates went and saw a movie called Life in a Day in theaters. She came home and highly recommended it. Basically, it is a crowd-sourced documentary about a day in the life of the Earth. A specific day was set (24 July 2010) and thousands of people around the world filmed their life that day and then uploaded their videos to YouTube. Kevin MacDonald, director, then took the thousands of hours of footage and developed a 90 minute documentary documenting life on earth. It is quite amazing. One of the best parts is that the film was developed in cahoots with YouTube and so you can watch it free online (which is where I finally saw it, months after my roommate told me about it).

Documentaries

Every once in a while, when people ask me what kinds of movies I like or something I've watched recently, I get a little embarrassed and admit that I just watched this awesome documentary (or something else equally nerdy). I never would have pegged myself as someone who watches documentaries. They're really not anywhere near as boring as they sound. In fact usually, when just talking about the kinds of movies I like I'd have to go with foreign films, or Brit-coms, or something. Though I suppose that those are also rather nerdy genres to like.

So I was catching up on my google reader. Why is it that I'm always catching up on it? I really do try to read every day... But anyways, I was reading a post from a preservation blog that I sort of follow and the gal who writes it was talking about an art exhibit she went to recently, and about an installation by Werner Herzog that she particularly liked.The name Werner Herzog was familiar to me so I clicked on the link the gal provided and looked through the list of his films to see which ones I'd seen. Encounters at the End of the World sounded familiar so I looked at it. It's definitely a documentary about Antarctica. That I've seen. And that I feel like was pretty good. And then further down in the list was Nosferatu, which I definitely remember playing one week at the IC, but I don't actually think I ever saw it. Maybe someday I will (or maybe not...).

On a rather different note. You probably recall the last documentary that I posted about 1900 House. Well this week, I've been working on watching Antarctic Mission. It is a delightful documentary about one of my favorite topics: Antarctica. (Who knew there were so many documentaries about Antarctica?) It's been a good one. It focused mostly on the affects of climate change on the the ecosystems in the Southern Ocean and also the effects that the Southern Ocean have on the rest of the world. It is amazing how much on an impact global warming has on remote places like Antarctica. And I think that it is a topic that deserves more research and attention paid to it. I would hate for us to lose such an important part of our world, or such a beautiful one.

Mt. Herschel, Antarctica (from wikimedia commons)

1900 House

Some number of years ago, my mother brought home a movie from the library and we watched it together. It was a documentary called The 1900 House (I must really like movies with the word number 1900 in them...). When I say documentary, I mean it's a reality TV show/documentary. Basically Channel 4 created this four part documentary to see what would happen if you took a modern family (a 1999 family) and put them in a home styled from the year 1900. So they called in all kinds of social historians and developed this house. It is a house in Suburban London on what was a lower-middle class street in they 1900. And they removed all traces of modern life and outfitted it in period wallpapers and furniture and gas lighting--the works. And then they found a family that was willing to live in this home and abide by 1900 rules: wear the clothes, eat the food, and live the lives of a lower-middle class family in the year 1900 for 3 months. It's really a pretty fantastic experiment.

Every handful of years now I remember how much I enjoyed watching this the first time and check it out from the library again. So this week I've been watching it while I get ready in the morning. It's pretty fantastic.

Daru Rooke--Historian and Curator of living history museums

The Moors

So for those of you who follow Sherlock on Masterpiece Mysteries this week's episode was "The Hound of the Baskervilles." I was really impressed; they always do such an amazing job creating a modern tale out of these old detective stories. While I read The Hound of the Baskervilles not that many months ago, I seemed to have conveniently forgotten that it takes place in Dartmoor, Devon. Oh, Devon! Of course I was jolted back to remembrance when Benedict Cumberbatch stands on top this outcropping of rock:

Dartmoor National Park!

looking at this view:

Oh, the moors!

Remember when we went to the West Country? Remember how awesome it was? And how much you fell in love with Devon and Cornwall? Widecombe in the Moor? I absolutely love the way the UK allows whole towns and villages to be completely inside national parks (another good example is Betwys y Coed--inside Snowdonia National Park in Wales). I feel like that would never happen in the States. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of my television (in traditional 5 year-old style) watching Sherlock only reminded me of how much I miss England, and how much I love the West Country.

Sherlock

Back in 2010 when I was living in England I was introduced to Sherlock by a couple of good friends of mine (who incidentally were also living in England). Unfortunately for me, Sherlock came out the same week that I was going home so I only got to watch one episode before I flew back to the States. And then I had to wait six months for PBS to pick it up and air it. (I find it super annoying that we have to wait like 6 months to get the good shows over here.) So anyways. Season 1 was fantastic. Loved it. And this week Season 2 began! I watched the first episode this morning and it was just as amazing as I remember the first season being. And I'm really excited for the episode next week. It is always impressive to me how good of a job they did at taking these awesome stories and modernizing them.

Validation

I was talking to a friend the other day and she was saying something about feeling validated and it reminded me of this YouTube video, that I saw a year or so ago. It's a little long, but it is absolutely worth every single one of the 16 and a half minutes it'll take to watch it. So watch it, and smile.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Amar Waked and Ewan McGregor

Since I got my last assignment for the semester turned in yesterday and since my last class isn't till next week I found myself with some free time today and decided to treat myself and go to the movies. A month or two ago I was watching something and a commercial for the movie Salmon Fishing in the Yemen came on. It sounded intriguing, so I found a trailer. How can you go wrong with Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, and Kristin Scott Thomas? Exactly. Ever since then I've been dying to see this movie. Unfortunately, as a poor grad student working multiple jobs there just isn't a lot of money/time to go see a movie. I've been mildly worried that it would leave theaters before I had a chance to go and I discovered earlier this week that Thursday is the last day.

Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt

I don't know how the other 4 people in the theater with me today felt about me coughing through the whole thing, but they seemed to have survived. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is about a Seikh who believes that the sport of salmon fishing can enrich the lives of his people and is willing to pay any price to bring fishing to the desert. It's really quite a charming film. I really enjoyed it.

Howl's Moving Castle

In my unemployed state I find that I have a lot more time on my hands than I might wish and this past week I've been using that time (probably quite unwisely) to watch Howl's Moving Castle, the movie by Hayao Miyazaki.  It is fantastic. Before a couple weeks ago I had never seen it, though I had heard of it. (It played at the IC once or maybe even twice while I was at BYU, but for some reason I had missed it.) But, this is one of those movies that I could watch over and over again. In one sense it reminded me of The Legend of 1900--the way that I was prepared to watch it again almost as soon as it was over. It is just a fantastic film, I love it so much.