There is much anxiety in Boston now. Apprehension of the remaining criminals is imminent. The city is on an unprecedented lock-down, and it is very scary but I have faith. Faith in the law enforcement that has diligently worked to get us to this day.
Maybe it’s because I have been working in Copley of Boston area all week and I have seen the Boston Police, the State Police, the FBI, and the military do such an awesome .work. I watched them do a great job as they secured the site, took care of the residents and established order in the city. I felt secure with them around. I watched the forensic scientist diligently combing the streets and rooftops on Boylston Street. I watched in awe and respect at their efforts. When I walked to the Cathedral to get a glimpse of President Obama’s car I felt safe in the crowd as the bomb sniffing dogs walked up and down the crowd. Yes, I am on high alert but I don’t feel beaten. I feel strength because of them, those many law enforcement officers whose job it is to keep us safe. I have faith in them.
The news is reporting that they believe the suspects are part of a bigger cell and many people have expressed fear but believe and have faith that our law enforcement officers are doing everything to ensure our safety. They are doing a great job. We will feel safe again and these persons will be brought to justice.
I am so extremely proud to know we have some great men and women working for us.
Who didn’t love to hate JR. Ewing but loved Larry Hagman? I know I did. I never seen an interview with him where he was not gracious, funny, and charming. His co-stars regularly said he was as stand up guy. May he rest in peace.
It’s been a bit. That is as close to ‘It’s been awhile’ I can get in Italian…
It has been awhile since I featured a foreign film on my blog and I saw a really heartwarming one a few nights ago.
Quiet Chaos (2008) via Netflix
Pietro Paladini is off enjoying the day at the beach with his brother when two women in the water cry out for help. His brother saves one and Pietro the other. The insane irony is when he returns home to find that his wife has fallen off a ladder and is dead in their garden.
Pietro is left to raise their daughter Claudia while dealing with her silent grief as well as his own. Dropping her off to school he tells her he will wait on the bench till she gets out, he decides to do this everyday. Pietro goes through is day working from his car oblivious to a big merger as he developes small relationships with the people surrounding his daughters school.
Low key with a few twists but very touching.
SN: Why doesn’t English sound as lyrical as other languages?
I love a good relationship movie. I love indie romance because it usually goes so much deeper than the commercial and big budget films. Medicine for Melancholy, visually puts me in mind of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It and delivers some deep thought on racism and dealing with feeling out-of-place. I know, how the hell does that fit into romance? Great characters is how.
Micah and Joanne wake up after sharing an intimate night at a friends party. Both are uncomfortable and hastily put themselves together for a quick exit. You sense the attraction he has for her right away but she seems cold and dismissive. During an impromptu breakfast and cab ride he asks questions about her but she could care less about him. When she leaves her wallet in the cab he has the opportunity to see her again. The beginning.
Micah is endearing, sort of like how Mars Blackmon was in Spike’s piece, he wears on you till you can’t do anything but laugh. That is his in with Joanne. They spend a whole day together riding bikes around San Francisco, getting high, eating and engaging in a little more sex. Through it all they talk about her white boyfriend and the gentrifying of San Francisco. Micah feels if he has to fight for his right to live there while Joanne feels he should just live and not worry about color or race. Her view is too simplistic and his may be too self condemning. Is there a medium?
The film is not fast but rather slow. I liked it for its conversation and arguments. I’m a sucker for watching the guy woo the girl even when it does not end the way I would like. It is mildly funny but completely interesting. I missed it in 2008 but gladly enough it popped up on my Netflix Suggestion List…scary they know me so well.
SN: Doe she not look like Lynn Whitfields daughter, or someone in Whitfield’s close family relations?
Please cease and desist the gutter street fighting. Why is it entertaining to see black folks fighting in the streets like its Dog Fight Night in the Hood??? There is so much wrong with WSHH but it obviously gets a great many hits a day…afterall, I can hear the fights, the cussing, and yelling every day from the cubicles around me as the guys in my office get a real big kick out of watching black on black fights, black girls cussing out folks on the train, and black parents berating and cussing their small children in the streets…YEAH, someone actually took a video with their phone of a black mother cussing out her own child in the street.
I bet you Bill O”Reilly looks at this site too and shakes his head with a big grin and says ‘See I told you they are animals’
Call me Team Cosby, Team Malcolm and Team Truth. Folks you have to do better, what happened to your pride?
French translation: A pornographic affair. English movie title: An Affair of Love. This is one of my favorite French movies.
One of the things I love about French films is that they make a lot of romantic films for women over thirty-five. Most romantic movies in the states are generally romantic comedies featuring a mostly twenty to early thirty–something cast. There have been a few gems like my absolute favorite Something’s Gotta Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicolson and I think as more Hollywood headliners age we’ll see more movies for my demographic. Old as shit.
Despite the French title this is a fine romantic film about two un-named characters recounting an affair via an interview. There is no pornography, at least none that the viewers see anyway but the slow burning fire of a growing attraction.
Nathalie Bayes character places an ad for a particular sexual act she wants to try. She never felt comfortable asking any of her committed partners to engage with her in this act, so now that she is single she feels she can try it with a stranger, only in the movies, right? Sergi Lopez answers her ad and they meet at a café. If you ever saw With a Friend like Harry, you may think this is going to turn out pretty bad. Psychotic characters are hard to forget. But Sergi is charming and sexy in the role. I, along with Nathalie’s character fall in love with his quiet sex appeal.
After meeting they both agree there is an initial attraction and walk to a nearby hotel. A red door opens and the two of them hesitantly step inside for their tryst and we are not privy to what goes on inside. We never know what the sexual act, its their secret and they teasingly joke with the interviewer about it but never give details. The following weeks they meet, they chat, and then off to their hotel room. Then it changes. He no longer looks at her like a stranger. His eyes are soft and you can see he wants more than just an afternoon tryst with her. You see and feel a budding friendship/sexual attraction emerging between them. She smiles at him differently than she did when they first met, she gets excited as he approaches her table but tries to act so cool about it. It is all very subtle, seductive and playful. He breaks from routine and asks her out to dinner. She hesitates but accepts. During dinner she asks if they could try something different their next meeting. She wants him to have regular sex with her. I’m still dying at this point to know what the heck they are doing that is not normal sex. Ce la vie
We witness their first ‘lovemaking’ and I as a viewer are rooting like crazy for them.
Neither are married or tangled in any attachments yet they resist each other believing that the other may actually feel something. She vows to tell him how much she has grown to love him. She recites this wonderful speech in her head about taking a chance on love. In his head he vows to tell her how much she means to him and how he wants to move forward with her. So, how the hell do they not end up together? That is what I hate about French films, unhappy endings. It did not end the way I wanted it but I really enjoyed it the whole way through.
From the opening credits this was a hard movie to watch. Anything having to do with rape is usually difficult but this movie was more violent than most I have seen.
Vincent Cassel plays Marcus the boyfriend of Monica Belluci (Alex) who, along with Alex’s ex-boyfriend Pierre (Albert Dupontel), seeks revenge after her brutal rape. The first major scene is of Marcus being taken out of a club on a stretcher. The movie starts at the end and goes back. I felt a bit confused the first twenty minutes. It’s dark and the director is taking a lot of liberties with the camera, so much so that I found myself tilting my head to try to get a better picture.
Marcus and Pierre are looking for la Tenia, who is in a gay sex club called the Rectum. There is a lot of full frontal male nudity, which does not bother me, but the sexual scenes did make me a bit queasy as they were violent and sadistic.
The movie then goes back to when Marcus and Pierre meet the two men who tell them they can help them find the man who raped their girlfriend. Then it pans to them at a party and Alex leaving to go home. She is raped in a tunnel underpass in the most drawn out and violent scene in the entire movie. I watched two minutes of the rape scene and had to fast forward the rest. It was heartwrentching. The act was horrible but the things he said to her, his voice, and his anger cut through to my soul. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.
The movie lightens up tremendously as the final scenes are of a beautiful and happy Alex and Marcus in bed together. She mentions a dream she had as she lays naked on his body about being in a red tunnel and it splitting in two. She tells him it is probably reflective of her period which is late. He asks how late and she says only a couple of days. The next scene is of her taking a pregnancy test. She looks at the results and touches her belly with a smile. I feel sick knowing that the character is now in the hospital fighting for her life after her brutal attack.
Despite the violence and the crazy camera this was a good film. Would I recommend it? No, I don’t think I can, even if I think the director did a good job. I can’t even say I’m glad I watched it. I think the director was brilliant with starting the movie in the end and leaving the beginning as the actual end. The last scene is of her peacefully reading a book on the greenest of grass, in the prettiest park. I needed the sunny ‘beginining’ to be the last scene rather than the scene of Cassel in the dark, scary Rectum.
Lately, I have felt like I need therapy! Quite frankly these racist online rants of the teabaggers who hate our President have me feeling like I’ve been shot in a drive by! I can’t even debate that the President is not the son of the devil because WTF you just can’t fight stupid! You can’t!
Subtitled Poster
Well, I’m not in therapy but if this ish keeps up I may be on someone’s couch. I watched the Portuguese movie ‘In Therapy’ Monday night. The Portuguese title is Diva which means, per Google translation, n. divan, couch, bed. Got it!
Couch
‘In Therapy’ 2009 stars Lilia Cabral as Mercedes, a 40-something woman who decides to seek therapy. In the three years she is in therapy she goes through some life changes like having an affair with a much younger man, divorce, and losing her best friend to cancer.
I’ve never heard of Llia Cabral before but I’m now a fan. Cabral has an infectious smile and laughter which she brought to the character Mercedes. Mercedes is my BFF in my head. When she sits at the table with her ‘other bff in the movie’ talking about masturbation. I. DIED.
I love movies with older women, probably because I’m an older woman myself, who are funny, still sexy (not Samantha Jones definition of sexy because she is just ho-ish) and still discovering wonderful things about themselves. In the movie Cabral has an affair with a much younger man because she feels her husband has lost his attractiveness to her; she wants to feel sexy. She is partly right but she is overlooking the strong friendship they have together. I think she should have initiated an affair with her husband to save the marriage instead of hooking up with a younger man. I cried when they divorced because it was not the right decision for either of them. Even though they reconnect as friends I was still sad to see it end for them.
In her last therapy session there is some closure and some growth. She realizes the only way to true happiness is to love and appreciate all the blessings and people you have whether you see them or not. This is grade A chick flick for women who may not be twentysomething but still laugh like they are!
He is a Hottie!
The trailer is not in subtitles but it is available on Netflix with English subtitles.
I have never spent over two hours at the DMV until today. I have heard stories about unreasonable wait times but never experienced it. Rhode Island Department of Motor Vehicles you should be ashamed! Well, not the processors/intakers or whatever they are called, they were polite and answered questions; even the state troopers were polite but it is a damn shame to have to wait 6 1/2 hours to register a car.
Last summer RI consolidated offices around the state and moved the Providence Main branch to Cranston. It actually is a nice building with a very friendly café staff-how many times do you think I bought a bag of chips and juice? Brighter and cleaner than the main office in Pawtucket and with all the people in and out of the place even the bathrooms remained clean. But still, 6 1/2 hours!!!!!!!!
Sure, I had a book to read but I forgot my notebook (of course I had one hundred pens) and wanted to write, my phone died, so I people watched most of the time.
One gangster or wanna be gangsta was telling his friend about his arrest and the people he shot. He sat right behind me and he wasn’t whispering. This to me is how you can tell when a person is a punk ass who nickel and dimes his way through life. Had he been a real criminal would I have known? So he’ll probably end up somebody’s butt buddy in another week or so because he is below stupid.
It’s 10am and obviously a lot of the women were smarter than me because they were already dressed for the club…at the DMV…10 in the morning on a Tuesday. Is it just me?
I know its difficult to deal with small children in places like this, especially if your wait time is 6 1/2 hours but do they really have to run and scream for the entire time? Why do some mom’s act like they don’t even know their own children? There was one sweetheart though that held on to a WOODY doll, OMG my daughter had a WOODY doll when she was little. I liked her but the others I wanted to toss. Guess their moms didn’t pick up on my loud sighs.
At one point a guy sat next to me with B.O. so bad my eyes popped out and the odor stayed in my nostrils for an hour.
I don’t mean to offend anyone but low-rise jeans and small t-shirts don’t mix well at all when your belly is either pregnant with a baby or pregnant with the cheeseburgersfrenchfriesdoritoscokepizzaetc that you scoff down daily. Maybe you need not register a car but a bike for exercise-I’m just sayin!
So that was my whole day. 6 1/2 hour wait for a ten minute process to get my registration and stickers. Luckily I don’t have to go back for a while, my registration is for two years and when I have to renew I can do it online.
