This movie is everything--everything--you expect from the fourth of the Jurassic Parks. Totally predictable plot, half-baked character development of stock characters (macho man with an animal-loving side, overworked control-freak lady boss, girl-crazy older brother who is rude to his younger brother, younger brother who is going through a crisis but loves dinosaurs), plus lots and lots of running, guns, crouching beside/under/around vehicles followed by dinosaur-head poking around corner followed by vehicle getting crushed followed by more running, monologues about who-knows-what scientific moral "dilemmas" of our day. And all to the Jurassic Park theme music.
So in other words, I loved everything about it.
All the things you hope happen, happen. All the things you predict will happen, they happen too.
Bryce Dallas Howard runs around the entire island the entire movie in heels and a business skirt. Chris Pratt is handsome, confident, scruffy, and can talk to velociraptors (heart-throb). And Jake Johnson with his throwback tee-shirt, plastic dino display, and moment of misplaced bravado keeps the humor fresh.
Best of all, at the end of the movie I felt good about dinosaurs. Almost like we understand each other, dinosaurs and me (well, at least dinosaurs and Chris Pratt). But I also walked pretty fast from my car to the house. Which is exactly what Jurassic World should do.
Back when I lived in Idaho, one of my favorite places to eat was Mongolian Barbeque. I spent many-a-high-school-lunchtime and many-a-high-school-date there with friends. I am not exaggerating when I say that Mongolian Barbeque is a locus of friendship, of plenty, of exotic tastes and hearty servings.
And then I moved away from my beloved Eagle, Idaho and have lived sans Mongolian Barbeque ever since. A few years ago, on a particularly Mongolian-BBQ-starved day, I found one an hour or so south, in Springville. I went. It was bad. I vowed to never again eat any Mongolian but that served at that sweet sweet respite in home-sweet-Eagle.
Until this December. I'd hit a wall in my current writing project (analagous to this moment), and sought to drown said frustrations in food. I wanted stir fry. I wanted Mongolian. And then, in an act of divine inspiration, I remembered seeing a promo poster for a new Mongolian grill down the street. Could this be it? Could this be the Mongolian grill to fill the yearning years-long ache in my soul?
I am happy to report that yes, it is delicious. Yes, it filled my every noodley stirfry craving.
What is "it"? It is Mongo's Stirfry, in Provo. If you are in Utah, go there.
For those of you whose gastronomic voyages have never led you through the sweet, sweet waters of Mongolian Barbeque stirfry, let me explain: the whole thing is a buffet. It can be a little tricky navigating the ropes, so here are some tips for first timers.
You pick a bowl size,
then walk down a long table of various raw vegetables, meats, roots, nuts, etc., piling everything and everything you want into your bowl. Pack it in tightly. Save the noodles for last (they can be piled high without falling off the bowl. The same cannot be said of pineapple pieces or carrot slices.).
First reason I love Mongo's: they have signs by the bowls encouraging you to pile the thing 4" above the rim of the bowl. Many other Mongolian BBQs frown upon such behavior.
You then mix up your own concoction of sauces, from a spread of garlic, sesame oil, ginger, plus, lemon, orange, barbeque, teriyaki, curry, etc.
Second reason I love Mongo's: they give you separate bowls for the sauces. If you've ever tried to pour 8 ladles of sauce into an already stuffed and over-piled bowl of noodles and veggies, you know that it's only a matter of time before the whole bowl starts seeping over the rim with oily sauce.
Getting the right mix of sauces is pretty important. After years of experimenting (10 years to be exact...what can I say, good things take time), I'd recommend the following sauce combination:
3 ladles House Sauce, 3 ladles BBQ Sauce, 1 ladle Sesame Oil, 1 ladle Sweet and Sour, 1-2 ladles Garlic
Hand both the sauce and the noodle bowl to the chef. Before your very eyes, he throws them on the grill, cooks and cooks and cooks, and then, with a final flourish of his wooden wand (literal, not figurative), he whips the noodles into a fresh bowl. It's about I warn you, the fragrance alone, so exotic and complex, has been known to send grown men to their knees.
What the film is technically about:
A Texas outlaw treks across the country to make it back to his wife and child, who are trying to build peaceful and new lives for themselves until he can come for them.
What the film is really about:
It is about loving someone so much, you can sense them walking down the street.
It is about just wanting to hold her.
It is a love letter; it is an elegy.
What I have to say about it: Ain't Them Bodies Saints feels like a story you've heard your whole life, and never heard before at all. The script is refreshing, the cinematography folds you into the film, and somehow David Lowery manages to write a final act that simultaneously gives nothing away and yet completely appeases your expectations.
The story is simple but compelling. When the director asked for questions at the Q&A after, it was silent for a while, I think for this very reason. We couldn't figure out how to put into words the questions we had. You sense there are deep currents in this film, and yet it is all put forward so sincerely and unpretentiously that it takes some careful words and some careful thoughts.
And as for the music, well, it is perfect. There is clapping. There are mandolins. The score couldn't be more imaginative nor more perfectly suited for the film.
Things you should know:
1) director: David Lowery (with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara starring)
2) run time: 104 minutes
3) about the thumbnail image: yes, this film lives up to everything you would imagine from that snapshot. it is mesmerizing and haunting and completely beautiful.
4) content: there's some shoot-out scenes (as one would imagine in a film about outlaws), some blood, and a few swears. nothing gratuitous, either in blood or in language.
5) the title: brilliant huh. Ain't Them Bodies Saints. David Lowery said it's from an old Americana-sty;e song he misheard all these years. Sometimes mishearing can be the best kind of hearing.
5) you might cry. But it won't be because your emotions have been manipulated by cheap tricks. It will be because you recognize the characters in yourself, and because what you recognize is sweet and sad and so so worthy of love.
Do I recommend it?
If you have a heart, you need to see this film.
It's that time of year again! Time for Ryan Gosling and James Franco sightings, for getting lost in Park City trying to find parking, for waiting in lines, and for otherwise freezing in the subzero temperatures of the Wasatch Back. That's right folks, it's time for the Sundance Film Festival: the two weekends a year that Utah has more to offer the world than skiing and the oddities of Mormon culture.
I'm hoping to see a few films over the next couple of weeks (Have you seen the lineup? How is anyone supposed to choose only one?!), and I actually got to see my first last night, at a special exclusive premiere night! (I know, I know, lifestyles of the rich and the famous.) I know it can be hard to choose from the 200 films Sundance offers every year, especially when all you've got to go off is the paragraph in the Film Festival Guide. So I thought it'd be fun to do a couple of reviews of the ones I see. To kick it off, probably the last film I would have chosen to go to but one that I was incredibly moved by, Valentine Road.
What the film is technically about: Valentine Road is about the school shooting of 8th-grader Larry King by his fellow classmate, Brandon McInerney. Valentine Road follows the friends, family, teachers, and lawyers of the two 8th-graders through the aftermath of the event.
What the film is really about:
Justice. Mercy. Tolerance. Intolerance. The penal system. The education system. Nature and nurture. Crippling regret. Slow-to-come healing. Bravery. Forgiveness.
What I have to say about it:
You know a film is good when its hour and a half length elicits an hour and a half discussion afterwards. We talked the whole way home about right and wrong, justice and mercy, parenting and schooling, objectivity and manipulation in film-making, context and characterization as a key to swaying opinions, and most of all penitence and real change.
This film made me ask questions I haven't asked before. The story unfolded piece by piece, until this seemingly simple incident between two 8th-graders becomes rich with the many heartbreaking and inspiring side-stories of the people who knew them. With incredible finesse and captivation, Valentine Road shows the complexity of any moral decision. It shows how similar we all are, and how much each of us need love love love.
Things you should know:
1) director: Marta Cunningham
2) run time: 89 minutes
3) about the 80s-looking thumbnail image: don't be deceived into thinking the filming will be lackluster. It is refreshing and engaging and not for one moment did I disconnect from what was going on onscreen.
4) content: there is some language (a few f-words) and a couple of pictures of the blood at the crime scene. The content itself is already heavy (as Ira Glass would say, the film does acknowledge the existence of homosexuality (Larry identified as transgender), drugs, domestic violence, and hate crimes), but all is handled tactfully and gracefully.
5) and yes, there are funny moments in Valentine Road too. This one runs the gamut of emotion.
Do I recommend it?
Yes. Highly. Go with someone who has things to say about the world, someone who is naturally curious and who likes discussing ideas, and then after the film, go to a restaurant in Park City or find a ski lodge at Sundance to sit in or drive for a few hours so you have the chance to process all the incredible things that Marta Cunningham makes happen here.
Last night found us wrapped in blankets beneath the big tree, hiding from errant raindrops, listening to Mumford and Sons, smiling like we have secrets, smiling like little kids.
The album is a family and every song afire with a passion all its own. There is no resolve like the kind in "Holland Road," no hope like that in "I Will Wait," and no love like "Not With Haste." They demand and they promise and then leave the believing and the loving and the rallying to you.
These are the songs of the prodigal son. These are the songs of the wandered. These are the songs of the ones who ride triumphant into love with hands open and brave hearts brave and unfailing.
Two and a half years ago, a group of us gathered in a basement late at night to listen to a newfound band, the Avett Brothers. Tucker rode his bike to the next town over to get the album (I and Love and You), and delivered the most beautiful love-letter for an album that any of us had ever heard before.
And then we sat in the dark and listened. I cried during "I and Love and You."
And now the Avetts have a new album again: The Carpenter. (You can listen to it in its entirety, courtesy of NPR's First Listen.) When a band puts out another album after huge success on their first, I listen for what's different. If it's just more of the same, I'm less impressed, and usually don't end up buying the second album. But if they can add something new, show the world they've got expansive skills, then I buy. Frinstance, after the compilation of one-hit miracles on X&Y, Coldplay's Viva La Vida was a storybook and an epic poem--the songs could stand on their own (as in X&Y), but they were also integrated into the arc of each other. Beirut's The Rip Tide showed a more crisp, driven Zach Condon than the warbling, wandering gypsy melodies (which I love just as much) of Gulag Orkestar. And after For Emma, Forever Ago, Justin Vernon actually sings notes in the bass clef on Bon Iver.
Here, in this "next" album, the Avetts are certainly putting on some new hats. The headline song, "The Once and Future Carpenter" is cedarn and valleyed like John Denver. "Live and Die"'s clippy rhythm and rhymes are reminiscent of some of Colin Meloy's work with the Decemberists. And "Paul Newman v. The Demons" is its own beast entirely.
They carry off this foray into new styles with a tentative (and endearing) curiosity, even if the poetics and melodies of these first few songs are a little more generic and predictable than their first album's. And this is where it gets sticky: I have mixed feelings about the Avetts trying on new hats. I and Love and You was a tender, incredibly intimate peek into two brothers' hearts. I fell as much in love with their purposeful, compassionate view of the world as I did with their voices and melodies.
So I came at The Carpenter waiting for the one song that would grab me around the throat and choke me, the way "I and Love and You" did the first time I heard it. The album takes a little while to get there--it isn't until "February Seven" that I start feeling like I'm really listening to the Avett Brothers--but by the time "Through my Prayers" and "A Father's First Spring" comes around, that familiar goodhearted, bright-eyed longing is back in full force: "I have been homesick for you since we met."
Best song on the album? The last one, "Life."
"We're not of this world for long."
And that's what I love most about the Avett Brothers--they remind me of the bigger things I was born for, of the bigger worlds that exist in honesty, in forgiveness, and in loving each other.
listen here: Of Monsters and Men's new album "My Head is An Animal" is about to change your spring.
the group is from Iceland (big surprise--music this beautiful and textured can only come from a place similarly so).
this is the kind of music that all music hopes to be: haunting, calming, and bursting with joy.
the melodies of the album braid together, carve deep, reverberate.
like echoes in the mountains.
or a cableknit sweater in the wet-chilly forest air.
"Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson's lead vocals, appropriate to the land of fire and ice, intertwine beautifully before erupting into rousing sing-along choruses. Each song demonstrates wide-eyed, openhearted exuberance. It's an album that rings with unbridled joy, just in time for spring." (Kevin Cole of KEXP)
the album's available April 3. until then listen here.
"We finally discovered that season of love. It is only found in someone else's heart. Right now, someone you know is looking everywhere for it - and it's in you."
(i watched 'peyton place' for the first time last night. there are so many things i love about old movies:)
1) how slowly they move
2) how real the characters' conversations seem to be
3) how courteous everyone is
4) the clothes (particularly the fedoras)
5) how earnestly the characters speak
6) the humor
7) having friends to watch them with who love them as much as i do
THE DESCRIPTION: crispy wafers and cocoa creme in Cadbury milk chocolate
PRICE: .......under a pound. a Scottish pound that is.
AS PURCHASED:
AS OPENED & EATEN (on the bus through the scottish countryside):
THE REVIEW: the cocoa creme was kinda grainy. and the bar was so sugary i felt a little queasy afterwards. but thegrocer.co.uk says this bar is limited edition, sooooo.....glad i ate one i guess? additionally, this bar was apropos to our trip in scotland, as the theme of the trip was "and miles to go before we sleep." big race. long race. miles and miles to go.... .
have no fear: despite my lack of vigilence in posting about my excusions through the chocolates of london, i have been faithfully eating my way along.
today's bar of chocolate: topic THE CUTLINE: none. huh. but it does have a fire red-orange wrapper. THE DESCRIPTION: milk chocolate, hazelnuts, soft nougat & smooth caramel centre. (note: it's caramel and centre, not carmel and center. this means it tastes better.) PRICE: £ 0.65, corner fruit stand on Gloucester AS PURCHASED:
AS OPENED & EATEN:
THE REVIEW: silkeeeeeeeee. light and soft, small pieces of hazelnut. like crawling into cool covers in a moonlit room. yes please.
SCORE:
texture: scored "thoroughly delightful" out of 10 taste: scored "gentle-like-a-whisper" out of 13 ease in opening the wrapper: scored "oh COME ON!!!" out of 30. persnickety little glue they used to seal this puppy. likelihood of being a return favorite: scored "definitely a possibility" out of 27
TOTAL: yeah, not even going to fake like i can come up with how to total those scores.
{me + andrea at "little eagles", just off the swiss cheese--i mean swiss cottage--stop.}
little eagles is the story of sergei pavlovich korolyov, the man behind sputnik and the other ingenious Soviet cosmonaut endeavors. it is an important story, with important questions:
1) what is worth sacrificing your life for? what is worth sacrificing others' lives for?
2) how can you memorialize the dead, the brave, and the lost?
3) where is the balance between achieving greatness and enjoying the simplicity of a quiet life--an apartment, a yellow wall, sunshine.
here's what i thought of the production: the aesthetics were great. a big metal sheath for the rocket. interesting the ways metal appeared and reappeared throughout the play.
i also liked the moments when the cosmonauts were suspended in space on stage. and the accuracy to the historic moments in the story. i thought the acting was pretty good, and that their choice to not use russian accents was a wise one. made us feel like we were on the same side of the fence as the actors, not outsiders looking into the story. as did the opening with stalin delivering his gulag speech to us the audience.
now. i would have liked to have felt a stronger emotional connection to sergei's character. i left feeling pity for him, but not the sense that i had seen some deeply human something within him. i guess that's what i live for in theatre: moments when i see that "thing" in the character. that's why, despite its flaws, i still cried in "children's hour": there was that moment when i felt what joe cardin was feeling. with sergei, he was such an intense character the entire play that i had a really hard time having those glimpses into the human tick-tickings of his little soul. granted, i understand there is a cultural difference between russian expressions of emotion and american ones. so to for
k i just got distracted by people returning home to talk about the plays they went to today. when i looked back at my computer, i'd typed "so to for". i have absolutely no idea where i was going with that.
human tick-tickings. okay. sergei's character was very intense. i wanted some softer moments. that's all.
so everyone raves about how good london's chocolate is. as you and i well know, chocolate is something i have a particular affection for. and by particular i mean rather enormous. thus, i embark on a tasty sojourn through the bars, fudges, and other such treats of london. sheer revelry.
scoring of the chocolates will be based entirely on subjective and whimsical criteria.
tonight's tasty treat (wouldn't it be more fun if it was spelled "treet"?) is cadbury's double decker.
THE CUTLINE: soft on top with a crispy bottom. intriiiiiguing.
THE DESCRIPTION: Cadbury milk chocolate with a soft, chewy nougat top & crunchy cereal bottom.
PRICE: £ 0.55
AS PURCHASED:
AS OPENED & EATEN:
THE REVIEW: the nougaty top was indeed soft and chewy. the cereal bottom was indeed crunchy. think rice krispies, only krispier. the most enjoyable part of the bar is the texture--the crunchy cereal bottom is held together by soft chocolate, which makes for a delightful textile experience. the nougat was a little much i felt. how bout peanut butter? i guess the brits aren't really as into the ole P.B. as we are.
In 286 pages, Yann Martel creates a world. You enter at first as an onlooker, and a skeptical one at that. A boy who practices three religions? Please. A tiger on a lifeboat? Please. Cutesy story, I'm sure. Would make a nice picture book.
And then suddenly you're on that lifeboat with Pi, braving heaven and hell. With the adventurous magic of the fantastics of childhood bedtime stories, this story captivates mind and heart, clenching them, refusing release until it has squeezed every last voice of skepticism, of "being an adult" from you.
And without warning, you are free again, back in the realm of "Reality." And in that realm, your imagination, your invention, your Faith is held in the balance, held up to the light.
This is a story to make you believe in God.
This is a story I will be thinking about for many, many days.
saturday night, no plans. my buddies grant and daniel and i invent find-the-perfect-taco night. and off we go in search. (*thanks to daniel for being our photographer)
stop 1: diego's taco shop. while pleasantly surprised to find the game playing and the place twice as big as before (they took over the tattoo parlor next door), we were slightly underimpressed with the tacos. the meat was a little charred, and heavy on the onion. not bad, but not the perfect taco. overall score: 3.0
stop 2: taqueria el vaquero. better meat, cheaper price. their fixin's were better as well--green sauce, red sauce, cilantro, onions, cabbage, limes...and they have a big screen. overall score: 4.3
stop 3: el taco riendo! while the diner-turned-indian-restaurant-turned-taqueria perhaps did not have the most authentic atmosphere (not to mention the neck-strain in reading the menu), the meat here was the best we've had yet. juicy, and very flavorful (not just salty either). the tacos left our fingers greasy, but our mouths happy. the one downside: the tacos are approximately 22% smaller than the previous two places'. overall score: 4.6
stop 4: el gallo giro: this place gives you chips! the meat was savory (though grant's large chunk of fat was a little scary--see picture), and of all the tacos of the evening, these came the most quickly and the hottest--so hot, in fact, that i had to blow on mine (see picture). grant vouches for the authenticity of their horchata. while definitely better than both diego's and vaquero, the rooster doesn't quite outstrip el taco riendo. overall score: 4.45
after a night full of carne asada, i have a slightly overstuffed belly + one scarf, two blue dangly earrings, and a pair of skinny jeans, all of which smell like tacos.
Battle Studies. Gripping title. The first two songs ("Heartbreak Warfare" and "All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye") anticipate the likewise gripping slew of songs, increasing in heartwrenching beauty and innovation in theme and musicality, that we've come to expect of John Mayer. But, while the album does bring the warm familiarity of John's vocal texture, it lacks the vitality, brilliance, and boyish exuberance, even curiosity, so playful in his earlier work. Battle Studies misses the melodic punch of "My Stupid Mouth," the personality of "Comfortable," the sexiness of "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room." Ditch the subdued, bring back the colorful!
