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February 22, 2007
Random belated posts
It's been a while.
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I wanted to write something clever about a Milan Kundera article that was published on the New Yorker but I'm feeling sick. I derived much pleasure from it and had R. reading it out loud from the book "The Curtain" where it's originally from. Very apt too, since it speaks of the provincialism of both small and large nations.
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Hated Scorcese's "The Departed". No one who has seen the fantastic Hong Kong "Infernal Affairs" trilogy - of which the Scorcese movie is a remake - can think this silly movie deserves an Oscar. I was deeply irritated by the use of foul language that seemed completely out of context. It seemed like a teenager wrote the script. Argh.
The only fun thing was seeing one of the characters sitting at Boston Commons looking up at the golden State House dome and a few hours later I was getting out at Park Street Station and having exactly the same sight. And also from a corner of the hotel room :)
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Saw "The Lives of Others". So brilliant. One of the best movies I've seen in years. Made me prompt my parents to go look for their secret police files at the National Archives. If this one doesn't win the Oscar for best foreign movie, the little respect I have for that Hollywood event will never even have a tiny chance of being restored.
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Saw "Little Children". The ending can be frustrating in two ways. The characters don't break up with the status quo and do not pursue their passions nor there is the edifying ending which would be something along the way of finding that it's not their lives that are wrong but themselves, hence the solution would not be trading a partner for another but finding out how to be happy regardless of relationships. That's why I said to Rui that I hadn't learned anything from it since I don't see how the problem posed has been solved. He seems to think otherwise.
The only fun part was when Kate Winslett appears naked and automatically me and Monica look at each other and whisper simultaneoulsy "She's got stretch marks on her thighs!". And we both sighed at that strange frivolous consolation.
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Read "The Accidental Masterpiece", got Siri Hutsvedt's "Mysteries of the Rectangle" and Julien Levy's Diary at the excellent Museum of Fine Arts bookshop in Boston. The Museum in itself is chaotic. I couldn't follow a logical path to the exhibition rooms and found hilarious that they should hang a Tagore portrait in the India section, amidst the hindu gods statues, for no apparent reason other than he was from India.
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And since it's been a long time I've insulted anyone through stereotyping (at least online), I can say that in Boston:
- people smoke a lot more than in any other place i've visited in the US
- everything, from a school, to a park, to a subway station, to a pebble in the street seems to be "the first in America"
- too many bricks.
Had a great time at L'Espalier but also at Ten Tables. Yum. No Boston baked beans, though.
It was freezing.
Had a fun sentimental tour of Harvard Campus and Adams House.
Enjoyed Piotr's Smurf Explosion and Lisa's Jesus Line up. And also the cheese fondue, reminiscent of Astérix in Switzerland childhood reading days.
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Fascinated by cultural differences. The same game show - with a few modified rules - is on TV in the US and in Portugal at the same time. The portuguese version relies on the presenter's jokes and anedoctes to keep it alive otherwise the public is so passive that it could be a popular cure for insomnia. In the US version everyone seems to be on cocaine. Or speeds. Or something - I'm not very savvy when it comes to recreational drugs, I'm afraid. Also, the difficulty level of the questions is....very different.
Posted by claudia