Posts by Berck
Movies I’ve liked recently
We recently watched Fall which turned out to be an Eric Schaeffer movie, the same guy who wrote and directed Mind the Gap, which I’ve previously reviewed. (I really did mentioned it in there, somewhere… says mysql.) We really liked Fall. Or, hrm… I liked Fall. “Joanna, did you like Fall?” I ask. “Yeah, I liked it very much,” she says. So, like I said, we liked Fall. A contributing factor is certainly that Amanda de Cadenet is astonishingly sexy. Probably the accent. (Which isn’t French.) Or maybe just that she’s supposed to be the sexiest girl in the world, I start to buy into it after awhile. I could call it a romantic comedy, but that wouldn’t be right. It’s probably closer to a sex drama. It’s not rated, Joanna thinks because the sex would have given it an NC-17 rating. I don’t think so, because the sex isn’t graphic, though the dialogue is certainly explicit. (For some reason my spell check doesn’t like extra letters, and insists that I should be typing “dialog” instead.) Anyway we liked Fall enough, that I got If Lucy Fell. Or maybe I got If Lucy Fell because it’s Scarlet Johansson’s third movie. She’s 12, and looks just like she does now, only little. We liked it as well, but Fall was definitely a much better movie. I’m not sure whether to try more Eric Schaeffer movies or not. He always writes himself as a cool dude the chicks all want, but he just looks dopey.
Let’s see, there’s Empire Records, which was awesome. Silly, but awesome.
Some movies that sucked:
The Prestige
Babel
The Book of Life: 2000 Seen By…
Brick
Slacker
Funny Ha Ha
Other movies.. I liked Casino Royale but was somewhat disappointed in it. I expected it to be totally unfaithful to the book, and thus be more a typical Bond movie. The sort of Bond movie I like. But, no, it was just enough faithful to the book that the movie isn’t much of a Bond movie at all, but it wasn’t faithful enough to the book to make the plot worth while. But, still, I have a hard time saying anything really bad about it. Except that he didn’t drive the car long enough to justify its destruction, but at least they destroyed it which is more than we can say for the Z3. There were no gadgets. And Daniel Craig, while he does a decent job of portraying Bond as written, isn’t the Bond that’s in my head.
Borat was very entertaining, though I really could have done without the naked wrestling scene. Really, I think we all could have done without it. Otherwise, as funny as it promises to be.
12:01 came out about the same time as one of my favorites, Groundhog Day, and has a similar thing going on, but they’re very different movies. I enjoyed this one a lot, even if it does seem a bit dated now.
If you’re into dystopia, V for Vendetta is well worth watching. It was well done, actually managed to keep in suspense, and it has Natalie Portman. Even if she does shave her head.
Mr. Jealousy entertained us as well, but it falls well short of Noah Baumbach’s other work. Worth watching, but only if you’ve already exhausted his other two movies.
Hail!
Really. It’s not snow. Click for more.
3 Months Left
On August 3, if I haven’t found another one, I’ll be out of a job. As you might imagine, I’m suffering from a fair amount of anxiety as a result. I had seriously hoped that I’d have a job offer from a certain organization south of here by now. But I don’t. I still hope that I will, but in case I don’t, I need a backup plan. And I don’t really have one.
There are certainly several options available to me. One would be to continue working for my present employer in Arizona. It wouldn’t be a bad job, but it would be in Arizona, and Jonah would have to find another job. And we’d have to live in Arizona. I don’t want to live in Arizona.
Another choice would be to find a job as a flight instructor in Alaska. I could probably do that, but the pay would be half what I make now, and Jonah would have to find a job. It could be a very bad financial decision. But, it’s what I wanted back when I started this whole pilot business, wasn’t it? Don’t I still?
Another long-shot option is to try for a job with the airlines. I’m not well-qualified, but they’re reasonably desperate. It wouldn’t pay well, but we could keep living here and Jonah could keep her job. I don’t think I would want to make a career out of it– there’s only so many times you can fly to places like Alexandria, LA, Dothan, AL, Ft Walton Beach, FL, etc, and not grow totally bored. But it would get me the experience necessary to do something else. To do what, I dunno. Flying for some international cargo company, or flying fire bombers, or flying mail around Alaska…. I dunno. But I’m slightly better qualified for an airline job if I’ve taken and passed the Airline Transport Pilot written exam. I don’t have enough flight experience to actually get an airline transport pilot certificate, but I can take the written test. It’s 80 questions out of a possible 1,700. Studying for it is at least keeping me occupied. I’ll probably take the exam in a couple weeks. If I’m serious about this airline thing, I’d also need to get some instrument flight instruction, get instrument proficient again, maybe even multi-engine current… all of which would require spending a bit of money.
So these days I work, study, and sleep. The winter is very much over, and summer is invading. The thunderstorms are about the only part of the summer I like… and we had our first couple this week. Low-level clouds and stable precipitation all day today, the sort of rain that Colorado just doesn’t ever get… but May is the time it does happen. I wonder if this is going to turn out to be another wet summer.
Let the nonsense begin…
And this is the country founded on freedom?