Wanting to be elsewhere.
Twister (1996) is one of my favorite movies. I don’t know why. Maybe because when I was a kid the whole thing seemed so exciting (and scary). And after more than a decade, it still keeps me on the edge of my seat.
I caught it on HBO last week, and I couldn’t stop watching. I was supposed to be doing something at the time, since I got home early. But I was hooked to the tube.
Lately my life has been so twisted, I kind of wish I could just disappear and be somewhere else. Somewhere better. Watching Twister last week made me forget where I am. It made me remember where I was, 12 or so years ago, watching Twister for the first time and feeling like I’d get sucked up in the tornado–because the visual effects were so good, it made me feel like it was real.
My favorite lines include the following:
Bill: Jo. Things go wrong. You can’t explain it, you can’t predict it. Killing yourself won’t bring your dad back. I’m sorry that he died, but that was a long time ago. You gotta move on. Stop living in the past, and look what you got right in front of you.
Jo: What are you talking about?
Bill: Me, Jo.
Aunt Meg: He didn’t keep his part of the bargain, did he?
Jo: Which part?
Aunt Meg: To spend his life pining for you, and die miserable and alone.
Jo: Is that too much to ask?
Dusty: He strolls up to the twister, and he says, *have a drink*. And he chucks the bottle into the twister, and it never hits the ground.
Source: IMDB
I’m done.
I just watched the trailer for Love in the Time of Cholera. It’s quite promising. But then again trailers are supposed to be that way.
I finished the book yesterday. I was turning another ordinary page–although eager this time to find out what happens next–when I realized it was the last in the book.
Marquez’s intention for the last line was obvious, but I was not touched. Instead I felt like the story ended too soon. Bitin.
I thought the Captain and Fermina and Florentino were going to get in trouble [more than they already were] or at least construct a plan. And I also thought the two would actually get married, or Fermina’s son would get angry at their affair. (But I guess that was implied already when he realized Florentino was also joining the trip.)
Marquez definitely surprised me at that, albeit not in the way Ian McEwan did. The story should have had more to it… Besides, it seems stupid that Fermina just suddenly fell in love with him when they were older because she talked to him and realized he was something. What lesson does Marquez want to show? It would have made more sense if Fermina did really love him when she was a teenager. But if she did the whole story would become a cliche.
Florentino, on the other hand, was too stubborn to move on. You’d think that with his numerous sexual affairs with different women (and I mean different: black/white, fat/thin, married/single, etc.), he’d find someone to replace Fermina with. Or at least contract an STD for goodness’ sake!
But, whatever. I still believe in Marquez. Even if his plot for this book failed me, I liked his words and style. There’s a tone in it that makes you feel like you’re reading something so important. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t really find anything quotable, as I would have if it were Coelho I were reading. Or maybe I just couldn’t relate to some of the lines that were quotable (eg., “The important thing in a marriage is not happiness, but stability”). Oh well.
I have plans of reading his Nobel-prize winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, although, perhaps not anytime soon.
Toni Morrison awaits me now with her first novel.
Can you feel the love… in this?
I’ve been reading Love in the Time of Cholera these past few weeks, and I am finally in the middle. I bought it not really knowing Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing style; the only thing I’d read of his prior to reading the said novel was his speech for the Nobel Prize.
Normally I’m a fast reader. But lately, I haven’t been. I don’t know if my watching too much has affected my interest to read, but what I do know is that the love story in Marquez’s novel is not touching enough.
At least, so far.
I mean, I’m not feeling it at all. It’s not romantic.
A boy and a girl meet for the first time and instantly like each other. They correspond through letters and hardly have real conversations. While she is writing to him in class, a teacher discovers she is not taking notes, but writing a love letter. She gets expelled. The girl’s father finds out about the boy, he reprimands her and takes her on vacation with him so she’ll forget. As usual, she does not forget him; the boy works in a telegraph office, and he learns of the girl’s location. They continue to write to each other. After around three years, the girl and the father go back to where they came from, and the boy sees the girl again in the market. When he gets near, he whispers to her. The girl turns to look at him and realizes that what they had was an illusion.
After a while, the girl catches the attention of a doctor who is one of the most respected people in the town. She is hesitant, but they get married, and this hurts the guy. He spends years agonizing, spending time with other girls but never really moving on.
Half a century later, the doctor dies; the girl becomes a widow. The guy visits her and tells her he still loves her.
Seriously, there’s really nothing to it. Maybe back then (and in Mexico), love letters were everything. But it seems so shallow. They hardly really know each other, and yet the guy is so dramatic and convinced he deserves the girl.
And what about the girl? Well, she’s stupid too. What kind of a girl gets kicked out of school and sent to some faraway place with her father for three whole years because of some guy, and comes back to tell this guy that it was all an illusion? Sure, it’s hard to really identify what we’re feeling, but come on! Cut the guy some slack. She should have rejected him in the first place. (That’s a laugh though–I am one to talk about rejecting people). Or at least, totally forgotten him in the years she spent with some cattle and pigs (’cause she went someplace rural).
I am a romantic, but honestly, I don’t feel the love in Love in the Time of Cholera. And that makes it hard to finish the book. I can’t feel what Florentino Ariza is hurting over, because it all seems so shallow.
I was much more touched with books like Atonement and Eleven Minutes (I’m serious). Technically, Marquez is a good writer: very descriptive and knowledgeable. But his plot sucks. At least for this book. And at least for the part I’ve perused.
If the ending throws me off, then he’s good. Really good. But if my summary up there proves to be all there is to this story, then I don’t think there’s anything marvelous about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s little novel. And I’m sorry for that, because I really thought it was something.
But since I’m not through with the novel, I can’t judge it once and for all. I’ll write a follow-up for this entry. Once I’m done with it.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Confession.
So I watched Raise Your Voice today. It wasn’t too special, but it was nice. I mean, I’m not a fan of Hilary Duff or anything; I’m more a fan of art schools like the one featured in the film. Plus I really love Oliver James’ British accent. I couldn’t get over it in What a Girl Wants, so how do you think I was just listening to his voice earlier–even if he was trying to comfort Hilary?
I like his eyes too. To quote Chantal Kreviazuk in Feels Like Home, “Something in your eyes, makes me want to lose myself…”
Whew. But of course no one can top James Franco, who is a package of all the cool things in a guy. Even if Mark Wahlberg is soo awesome in movies like The Italian Job and Shooter and–though I haven’t watched it yet, I bet it’s great–Max Payne.
* * *
Boy am I excited for photography next sem. I was… observing Patricia Evangelista’s photos earlier, and I loved the lighting of her pictures. Really neat.
I’m excited for a lot of things next semester, actually. I mean, I’ll be working on my majors–photography and developmental writing–plus technical electives and two general education courses. I do have my anxieties, though. All that pressure and challenge… But I guess that’s what I live for.
Atonement.
I finished reading McEwan’s Atonement last night (want the honest-to-goodness truth? I was up until 3am finishing the novel, with only a candle to light my way due to the power outage; I couldn’t get my hands off it), and I just can’t accurately describe how much I fell in love with the story. During the middle I was so sure I already knew how it would end, but I guessed wrong. The author is so gifted in his creativity. By the ending, my face was streaked with tears. Others probably wouldn’t have cried, but at least sympathized with Briony and the other characters. I am not good with reviews, and therefore have to admit my incompetence in writing one up here for Atonement. It would be an understatement to say that it was an interesting read, or a must-read, or a ‘good novel.’ It was very well-written, descriptive, and captivating. I must have looked up a hundred words because they were too deep or uncommon, but the book was not just embedded with fancy words or very detailed scenes or good relaying of intense emotions. Apart from its themes and conflicts being expressed vividly, the story was very… arresting… That anyone who has read Atonement would not have the ability to deny its greatness…
Dark Water
Dark Water is a movie starring Jennifer Conelly. The first few scenes are devoted to the conflicts she has with her husband. They are filing a divorce. They have a daughter named Cecilia who loves both her parents and is upset at the thought that they have to separate. To escape from continuing the battle with her husband, she and Ceci move to the outskirts of New York City. At first Ceci is upset with the apartment that she and her mother would be living in, but she experiences a sudden change of heart as she finds a pink backpack at the rooftop of the apartment. (she got there by a force that attracted her) She hoped to have it if no one came to claim it. Anyway, this is a horror film, but I was deeply touched at the end. It turns out that a little girl died in the apartment above them because her parents did not take care of her. I think they left her there, and then someone killed her. When the ghost of the little girl sees Conelly, she is driven by the very mother-like concern and love she gave Ceci–something she never got from her own mother. And so the ghost befriends Ceci, but in the end nearly kills her because she wanted Conelly for herself. Conelly pleads with the little ghost to save Ceci’s life and take her own instead. She promises that she will be a mother for the ghost.
So the ghost takes Conelly’s life instead of Ceci’s. Ceci undergoes shock and grief. She was then to be taken care of by her dad.
There was one scene that really brought tears to my eyes. Ceci’s mom let her presence felt in the elevator; that was where Ceci was. She and her dad were going to the car and leaving the apartment for good, but then when her dad got off the elevator, and as Ceci was about to, the doors were shut, trapping Ceci inside. Ceci instantly knew that her mom was there. Her mom whispered, “Whenever you need me, I’m here…” and then she pulled Ceci’s hair into a braid and kissed her.
It was so touching. That ghost of a little girl just wanted a mother…
