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Under Construction

This site is undergoing a major overhaul from tip to tail. Many posts have already been deleted from the archive, which went back to 2006(?!?!), and a few more may go soon. However, there is a plan for this blog beyond deleting old posts. I intend to revive it in the coming months to talk about things I love doing:
DIY
Baking
Gardening
Crafts
Thrifting

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Popular Posts

The Great Beauty Film Commentary - beware possible spoilers!

Trains that don’t go anywhere ... La Grande Belleza was hard for me. It’s the first film we’ve been assigned in my contemporary film class that I didn’t fall in love with on some level. My gut reaction to the film the first time around was that there was some profound stuff in it, but that is was achingly long and headache-inducingly convoluted. I just didn't 'get' it. I appreciate it more now, after considering the questions which were posed to us, and reading the articles, interviews, and reviews. There are now things I find interesting about it, and questions it left me, but I’m still not in love with it. The initial party scene instantly made my mind flashback to Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby party scenes. Though I admit the excess and debauchery were grittier and more palpable in this film. But the break-neck montages almost made me nauseous at times.  And after a certain point the cinematography felt like just another layer of distraction in a film so much about exactly that...

My Word for 2018

I don't know what rock I've been living under, but this concept of having a guiding word for the year is brand new to me. I only know about it because of a vlogger I watch regularly: She's in Her Apron . But the idea is SO up my alley. I've never been a resolution-maker, but a word? I love words, obviously. I live for them, by them, and though them. To use one to define all my many intentions and goals for the year is one of those ideas where I'm mystified that I never thought of it! My word for 2018 is: RELEASE

Wild Tales / Relatos Salvajes Film Commentary - beware possible spoilers

Visceral reactions or existential angst? All the interviews and articles paint "Wild Tales" as being six separate short stories having a running theme of revenge. Ok, that’s true. Revenge does come up in every tale. And they are completely separate stories. They don’t have a single character weaving within them to tie them together, as in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Nor is there the bird flying above, or the narrating writer, that Szifron mentioned having considered adding to weave them into one. But I do see much more than just vengeance as a common theme. The most glaring component I noticed was the theme of power, or lack thereof, and the shifting of it. The rich are uniformly rude and entitled in every story, while the poor get used and pushed around until they usually reach a breaking point. In every story the powerless try to fight back, and the powerful try to stop them, but who really wins in the end is unresolved. There is a delicious vicarious pleasure from watching t...