El Laberinto del Fauno (aka, Pan's Labyrinth) was the 3rd consecutive Spanish-language movie I saw and the 3rd of four consecutive foreign-language films.
It is extremely good, and I recommend that you see it. It isn't for the faint of heart, so there is that one reservation. But anybody who can handle an extremely heavy movie absolutely has to see this film. It is exceptional. The film, which takes place just after the Spanish civil war, is what can be called a "dark fantasy" even though it takes place amidst a historally realistic situation. (This is how the 'war' type of film gets included among drama, fantasy, thriller, and horror.)
I'm a little annoyed at how the title was translated (from an impersonal to a personal noun), but there are few other flaws. The movie is gorgeous, and the intermingling of fantasy and reality was done extremely well. The translating was done very well, so don't worry about that being a problem if you don't normally see films that aren't in English. I was not the only one floored by this film: Lemming and my opera singer friend (Maria) both enjoyed the film immensely and Maria mentioned that she's been telling everybody to see this as well. (She doesn't understand how a certain rescue occurred either. I should check the wikipedia entry to see if somebody has come up with a plausible explanation.) The IMDB rating is very high as well, in case that provides further impetus.
The next paragraph has a bit of a spoiler.
In this film, everybody knew who the evil bastard was and the audience absolutely couldn't stand the guy, which provides obvious signs of the quality of the film and the acting. When Lemming and I saw this movie, a lot of audience members erupted into cheers when this guy got what was coming to him. (We hated this character by this point.) I have never seen that before. Just about everybody was into the film and we had definitely opinions about the important characters and we wanted him to get nailed. Anyway, this is to give you an idea of how everybody got into the story.
By the way, this story was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, who also brought us Hellboy.
I could write a lot more, but if you can handle heavy films, you need to see this film NOW! So this means people like Gazebo and Josh better go buy their tickets. (I think that a couple of the rest of you reading this may find Pan's Labyrinth to be beyond your threshold, though unfortunately this means you'll be missing out on a really great film.)
4 days ago
18 comments:
Seconded.
You almost make it sound we all saw it at the same time (Mason & I saw it together). Makes me wish my Friday night date was a hottie opera singer, rather than some mathematician/physicist dude. Or, hell, a hottie mathematician/physicist would be even better!
The way it went was that I suggested by e-mail that Maria go see it, but my advice proved to be unnecessary.
For those who don't realize it, I'm Lemming's quasi-regular Friday night date and I agree completely that something needs to be done about this sad state of affairs. :)
And I mean something other than "Love the One You're With."
However, I have bigger fish to fry at the moment (such as my present walking ability and either stomach flu or food poisoning, though I did start walking a little better after not being on my feet so much today).
I saw a trailer for this at Curse of the Golden Flower [1] with my quasi-regular movie date [2]. It looked intriguing, and based on your recommendations I'll try to go see it when I get a chance.
[1] Which I should write a review of at some point.
[2] Also a physicist dude [3].
[3] Despite the fact that he has a wife [4] and I have a girlfriend [5].
[4] She doesn't like action movies [6].
[5] Seeing a movie with her currently requires air travel. Also, this is a fairly recent development.
[6] Although Curse of the Golden Flower was more of a period drama with occasional action scenes than a straight kung-fu movie.
I lost my post, so I'll redo it (in a different format) and delay going to bed.
Let me comment on your posts one by one:
[1] I intend to write a review of this at some point as well. If I could only use one word, it would be "extravagent." If I could only use two, it would be "breasts." I'll write a longer review later.
[2] Se la vie.
[3] Congratulations! (That is, congrats to you---not to him. I probably should offer him my condolences.)
Alas, I can't report the same. I did vow to become better at meeting people, but a bout of the flu, a bout of either the stomach flu or food poisoning, and a conference have gotten in the way for now. (That said, I have been meeting prospective SURF students and fellow mathematicians and have in general been doing well with the opportunities I've had to meet new people of various types. That said, my main problem has always been going up to people in the first place, so everything has either been accidental or their coming to me. Thus, there is no evidence that I'm making any steps towards improvement.)
[5] Congrats again! This is also a potentially good barometer to see who among people who know you read my blog. Another (unintentional) good barometer to determine who reads my blog was a certain now-deleted 'Tales from the ArXiv' entry.
By the way, I don't envy the whole long-distance thing. I would like to have a local companion, although I suppose I do have Lemming (for better or for worse). I have plenty of people with whom to communicate long distance.
I mean "extravagant." I swear I can spell...
(I'm afraid I've threadjacked this post...)
I've found that meeting people is a tough skill for me to acquire, and only recently (in the past couple years) have I started to get better at it. And even then, my new girlfriend is actually someone I've known for 15 years, so it's not a consequence of this improvement.
I too have a strong bias against long-distance relationships in general. These particular circumstances are an exception, partly because we should be able to eliminate the distance within a year or so, and partly because Vanessa is particularly special--I've known her for a long time, and our feelings for each other have been intensifying for a while. I wouldn't have done this with anyone else.
AG: Considering that I've threadjacked a few of your posts, it would be a bit hypocritical for me to mind. Plus, this is juicy info. And we can use this to see who is reading my blog (and, in particular, this entry).
My situation is weird. I'm horrible at meeting people, but if I actually meet them, I can typically do pretty well talking to them. Plus, undergrads seem to think I'm charismatic or something---or at least more charismatic than other math and physics professors, which I guess isn't really saying much when talking about Georgia Tech or Caltech. And at conferences, the younger scientists seem to dig the fact that my ego isn't even a blip on the radar screen compared to almost everyone else in attendance. (These are the side benefits from all the times I've had to bend over.)
As for somebody being particularly special, how could one possibly not feel that way about somebody who is a significant other. I wouldn't expect you to feel any other way under these circumstances.
And it's definitely very good that you'll be able to eliminate the distance. For academics, only a year apart is very much on the short end without gargantuan career sacrifices.
I occasionally wonder if I would have been willing to make that kind of sacrifice if I had an SO while deciding what job to accept. I waiver back and forth on my opinion on the matter. Of course, now I've committed to going somewhere, so I'm not exactly going to be doing any sort of active search (not that I ever do that anyway) until after I move. Actually, I can't really claim that I have ever really actively searched. Once I move, the first keys will be getting settled and finding people with whom to hang out because I won't have the luxury of already having established friends around the way I did when I moved back to Tech.
Got plenty of sleep last night, and now I'm sipping on a cup of strong, black coffee and reading a jacked thread. Life is good.
AG - good news and all, glad to hear the gossip. Oddly, I'm more surprised by your facial growth and anime-style bangs, as evidenced by one of your recent Flickr postings. It looks good though! (No, not like moose-turd pie) You almost look like you could buckle a swash or two.
I too have a strong dislike of the old "LDR", at least at this point. I still stand strongly by my original opinion, of course -- if it's right, it's worth it and it'll work. It still sucks eggs, though.
Gah, the meeting people thing is a bitch. I have great intuition/reflexes sometimes, but it all goes to hell with the slightest mood change. I still occasionally cope with some massive anxiety when I go out, and it's hard to tell when it's going to strike. At least dancing gives me a way to interact with other people even with a complete brain shutdown.
I do seriously wonder about my head, sometimes. Don't really want to delve further in that direction on teh intarwebs, tho.
Well, there are some gorgeous ladies (for some of them that's an understatement!) who look forward to seeing/dancing with me, and I recently went out on a date for the first time in over a year. It was decently fun, but not really any interest in a second date (I can at least speak for myself). At least I got out!
I noticed that on the flickr page too---just the facial hair, actually; not the other part. Stay away from the moose-turd pie, however (and don't eat the yellow snow either). Maybe I didn't look at the picture carefully enough, but the facial hair just looked like the product of a week of laziness rather than something intentional. We could always all get synchronized goatees or something.
Lemming: I think you're better at meeting people than I am (or, at least, at going up to somebody for the first time, which I essentially can't do at all). Granted, I'm more comfortable at Caltech, so it's a bit easier to meet people who are/were undergrads just because we have stuff in common. With most of the grad turkeys and postdocs, I actually have less in common (and a decent number of them are tools anyway).
The facial hair is certainly intentional, and has been in progress for about four weeks (although I have been trimming it so it doesn't get too long).
AG - you beat me to the punch. I could tell it was intentional because it was significantly better-kept than scruff, even if it didn't yet have a ton of bulk.
Mason - When my head is together, yes, I'm quite good with people. I always end up surprising myself when that happens. More commonly, when my head is mostly together, I'm still alright. When I start tweaking out, however, it goes downhill fast. The difficult part is that this state is often brought on by being around people I don't know.
There's something that, on occasion, triggers a complete release from this problem, but I still don't understand it. There's this level-headedness that jumps out and gets me once in a while, and it feels great. I actually feel sane when this happens, and it's not just about social anxiety. I'm more productive at work, able to hold (non-ADHD) conversations, beat my high scores, etc etc etc. It's about as satisfying (and as common) as a good night's sleep -- both of which, fortunately, I get more of these days.
AG: Soon, you'll look like John Lennon. :)
I just have major difficulty overcoming the potential energy gap to go up to somebody and introduce myself. I am sitting in a deep local minimum of this potential energy landscape.
I just now noticed that that photo accidentally got put in the Project 365 set and so was appearing on the sidebar of my blog. Actually it doesn't qualify for this since I didn't take the photo myself. Yesterday's photo was supposed to be the one of redwoods... that's ok, it was a good photo of me. :)
For me intiating conversations with strangers or near-strangers is, as Mason said, a matter of having enough energy (or will) to overcome the shyness barrier. However, every once in a while at social functions I'll get into a mode that feels like (pardon the metaphor) a limit break--the shyness will suddenly disappear and I can walk up to somebody and start talking (or ask a stranger to dance) while feeling completely natural and confident. This comes coupled with a sense of instinctive action rather than (as I usually do) analyzing everything at a very self-conscious level. This mode usually only lasts on the order of ten minutes, and it's still a mystery what exactly triggers it.
I have yet to experience that---or if I have experienced it, I can't remember the incident.
Maybe I guess my fluctations in the shyness landscape don't have sufficiently high amplitude?
Yes, I've helped convert this to a nonequilibrium statistical mechanics problem, thus ensuring that I won't be going on a date for a very long time.
Mason, it sounds like what you could really use is some aptly-placed Gibbs phenomena. (doo doo, da doo doo~)
By the way, the Gibbs phenomenon is a mathematical thing. It's the same person as was involved in stat phys, but it's a completely different thing.
I know, I know, it was justa stupid joke about observing large oscillations. It doesn't have to make sense. :P
The key question, however, is whether these oscillations are stable under small perturbations.
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