Thanks…… Your excellent tips about temperature will be useful. I did not mean to suggest otherwise.

Cheers,

-cvj

If you like Sichuan food, by the way, give Fuschia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty a try.

Cheers,

-cvj

-cvj

But Sichuan peppercorns are legal again which is cool.

So you’re saying you prefer to cook? Excellent! We can do a cook’s tour, or you can give me some Korean cooking tips… maybe even a demo. I’ll buy the soju!

Cheers,

-cvj

P.S. For the food-lovers among you…. watch out for a post on cooking Chinese-style, coming up. I’ve been doing some experiments….. Just got to find the time to write up the results. (I’m sure I’ll be opening myself to ridicule from the people who really know what they are doing!)

As you know, there are some pretty excellent dishes to be had. With plenty of soju on the side….. oh yeah!

-cvj

It’s not a private blog…We welcome everyone! Please join in all the discussions here! Thanks for the recommendations. I will try to see that movie.

(Look out for discussions of Korean food in the future, by the way… another cuisine I like a lot!)

Cheers,

-cvj

I’m Sam, the girl you mentioned on the last line of the 4th paragraph. ^———^
I accidentally found your blog. (i guess this is very unprofessional excuse. ^^;; If you mind, i won’t come back here.)
Anyhow, thanks for your comment about me. =)
As a matter fact, I think i understand only 60% of the movie… but if i see the movie with Korean subtitle, i bet you i will love the brilliance of the movie.

It seems like you guys like movie as much as me. so.. I’d like to recommend a Chinese movie called
Happy together, directed by
Kar Wai Wong ,I don’t know any of you have seen this movie.
It is a story about two hong king gays. If anyone like Brokeback Mountain, they will like it. I believe the movie won Cannes Film Festival 1997.
let me know if you guys like it.
bye.

p.s: i hope i didn’t ruin your private blog.

-cvj

I enjoyed The New World very much, though the leisurely, deliberate pace had me nodding off a wee bit at one point. But that might have been because I had settled in with some popcorn at the outset. The main narrative is pretty thin and linear–Syriana was at least an order of magnitude more complex on that score. Pocahontas meets Smith, they fall in love, he leaves, she thinks he’s dead, she marries Rolfe. Some conflict is created because she learns that Smith is actually still alive, so she doesn’t love Rolfe so much. Then they go to England to be presented to the king and queen. She dies, the end.

But the movie isn’t really about the narrative. It’s about the atmosphere, the mood, the visual metaphors. It’s kind of like the manga-influenced graphic novels, or Chris Ware’s depressing cartoon in NY Times Magazine‘s “Funny Pages”, where the interstitial moments carry as much weight as the dialogue and foreground action. There are the meditative shots along the river and in the woods, which I think are meant to help put the viewer into the frame of mind of the settler confronting this “wilderness” (which might however been quite tamed by Native American use). The Virginia scenes contrast mightily with the scenes in England, where nature has been dominated by man into formal symmetries.

So, I enjoyed the movie as a visual art piece and poetic ruminations on the fall of an Arcadia to a European mode of domination.

And now that I’ve seen Powaqqatsi, I can’t help but wonder to what degree Terrence Malick and his team might have been influenced by the Qatsi trilogy. I remember hearing about Koyaanisquatsi when it first came out, but I was 14 at the time and some weird hippie-type movie would have seemed so lame to me. But now that I’m old enough and cynical enough to be way outside the target audience for mainstream movies, not to mention no longer holding the kneejerk belief that every new gadget that comes down the pike will make our lives better, I was ready to see a movie that questions how our culture chooses to live.

Powaqqatsi is even further from the mainstream than The New World was, the latter at least having a story, characters, and dialogue. Powaqqatsi is really more of a symphony with images, which nevertheless are arranged to create a meditative state and hopefully impact one in a way that bypasses the usual channels. It’s supposed to be kind of a trip, but not just for a pleasurable experience–the director’s idea is that we are so trapped in our familiar modes of thought that words are not enough to convey what we need to understand.

And it worked for me. I felt it was a powerful experience which was not merely entertaining, but also moving. I don’t know that I can solve the world’s problems, but I am more aware of the impact our first-world way of life has on other cultures. Of course, Syriana in parts addresses this, too. But I think maybe addressing these issues in a theatrical release was less common back in the ’80s when the first two Qatsi films were made.

So that’s what the movies are about. A fun fact about The New World, by the way–it was the first film in nine years to be filmed in almost its entirety in 70 mm film stock. Meaning that there’s a tremendous depth of detail on the big screen that you won’t see on DVD. If you want a gorgeous visual experience but don’t want to walk around a museum, check it out.

In syriana, a indoctrination of sorts, of the blind, being lead by the blind?

-cvj

No, I’m bound and determined to see The New World! I’ve been warned that the pace is very leisurely, but since I do visual art I can deal with that. And Terence Malick is considered to be an auteur. And it’ll be good practice for seeing Powaqatsi (sp?) tomorrow night at the symphony hall downtown. I’ve been on an American anthropology jag since reading Charles Mann’s excellent book 1492 over Christmas, you see…

If I do die of boredom, you will know by my absence.

I was kind of dissapointed, when I realize it was a remake of one I had seen just a month before, replaying on television.

As Munich was playing, my mind started to see the plot of the previous, and then what came next, seem to follow suit.

Sort of like remakes of Ocean Eleven?

But it might be good, I could well be wrong!

If in doubt though, its not too late to catch “Capote”, or “Good Night and Good Luck”, if you have not already seen those excellent ones….since the studios have re-released them to several large population areas. Oh, and “Syrianna” is worth a look.

I’ve also heard that Speilberg’s “Munich” is excellent.

Ok…I’ll shut up with the unsolicited recommendations now.

-cvj