Vox Publica

We don't know how this movie got into Mike's list at Netflix, but we want to thank whoever recommended it to him. The story of Hubert, a tough-guy French cop who has been mourning for the last 19 years the loss of the woman who abandoned him, only to find out that she's dead and has left him with a daughter, is both tender and hilarious. It convinced me that Jean Reno is one of the finest comic actors of his generation. This is light fare, don't be mistaken, but completely enjoyable at that. I want a dad like Hubert! And so does Mike - though apparently for different reasons :)

Since Camila was born, I've been watching a lot of TV. Not only do I have a lot of dead time while I pump, brestfeed and bottlefeed (which add up to several hours a day), but this little girl insists on being held most of the time (just like her older sister!). Sometimes, like right now, I can manage to lay her on top of my forearms and type while she looks at the screen. That's not possible most of the time so I'm delegated to doing activities that only require one hand - there aren't that many of them. Thanks god for surfing and TV! And of course, there are also programs I just like to watch period.

In my current watching list I have:

Lost
I loved this series from the first episode (which was much scarier than the rest). I like the larger issues that they discuss (the dynamics of a new civilization) as well as how the background stories of each character is unravelling. Still, I think this series started stronger than it's now.

Desperate Housewives
Like everyone in America I love this dark, irreverent, funny and honest show. I wish they were a little bit more honest about what it means to have four young children (no way that mom can keep that house that clean, and where is her younger baby while she chats with her friends?), but I guess watching a real mom go around her day is not that exciting.

Survivor
The new season is on and apparently just as boring as other seasons, this is something I watch if it's still on.

Numbers
It's not the most interesting show in the world, but good fare for when I'm pumping as I don't need to pay too much attention to it. I love the guy who plays the mathematician (sp?) and I like the family relationship in the show.

Medium
I wouldn't have thought I'd like this show but I'm hooked. It also makes great pumping fare. I like how the whole issue of her paranormal abilities is shown - as something she's not happy to have and doesn't really want to profit from - and I like that beyond that she is a very real person, as is her hubby.

The Daily Show
Probably the smartest show on TV

The Apprentice
Got hooked on it this season.

The People's Court
It's the only court show I like, and it's often on at a time when I'm breastfeeding

Celebrity Justice
It's just amusing and often coincides with my pumping.

As an absolute skeptic about the supernatural, I would never have guessed that I would become a fan of Medium, an NBC drama about a psychic who helps solve crimes. But a fan I have become.

First of all, I like the characters and their relationships. Patricia Arquette, who plays Alison, the psychic, is one of the few women on TV who look real. Her teeth are a little crooked, her face is often too shiny and a bit reddish and while I think she has a great body, she is a few pounds heavier than your typical TV waif. She looks like a mom.

I love Alison's husband, Joe. He's is an engineer, a pragmatic guy but one who has had to face the reality of her abilities, and who isn't quite sure what to think about it. He is both supportive and skeptical, grounded and unnerven. He is also a genuinely nice guy, but one who is still human. The relationship between Alison and Joe seems very real, their fights are fights that you can imagine having yourself. On one episode, Joe harps on Alison for spending too much time on her "work", and leaving him to deal with their 3 children - only to hear her reply how she took care of the kids for years while he pursued his career. On another, he complains about his spending their money to go pursue a case in LA, she still goes and he's OK with it. The three little girls (or rather, the older two, you rarely see the baby) are also very "real", I can recognize my little girls on them all the time. In yesterday's episode the older girl tells the younger that they're considering exchanging her for a dog. She younger one asks her dad about it, who is too sleepy to understand what she's talking about, so she says she'll go ask mommy, mommy will know. Mommy is not home, and she comes to tell daddy this amazing fact, and when he explains that she's at work, she asks with her worried face how she's going to get ready for school without mommy. I know that this whole episode doesn't sound very exiting, but it grounds the show on the realities of family life with which I, and I'm sure many others, can identify. My one complain is that the youngest baby is completely ignored. We pretty much only see her when the mom drops her off at daycare, but beyond that she's a complete non-entity. As a mother of two young children, that seems very unrealistic to me. But who knows, maybe by the time you have 3, the last one falls off your radar.

The show itself is well done, her "visions" and her interpretation of them (often not literal) are always interesting, as is her ability to read or not read people. In the show, you do believe in her gifts, they are presented as reality, but if I can accept Buffy fighting vampires and demons, I can accept Alison's psychic gifts. It's a show after all. The show tries to go beyond formula on its storylines, refreshingly I can't usually predict what the plot will be or who the guilty party is.

In all, it's one of my favorite shows, though I see we'll have to deal with reruns for the next couple of weeks.

As you can see from my earlier posts, I've been reading quite a bit lately (mostly as I nurse), but I've also been watching TV programs and movies. The TV season is over (good, I can use a break from most shows, though I'd like to see more episodes of The Office) but I've been catching up on old episodes of Deadwood. I can't watch the show when Mika is around - every 3rd word, literally, is "fucking" or "cocksucker" - but its adult themes go beyond bad language and touch on the value of life and love, moral relativism and the corruptive power of money.

I've also started watching Oz, a show about immates in a state prison which has some of the same themes of power and violence as Deadwood. It's much more disturbing, however, as while I can see Deadwood as fiction (even though it was a real place at one time), Oz is all too much like the prisons I have read about. It is very disturbing to know that we support institutions whose apparent goal is to destroy the human spirit and make monsters out of anyone not already one when they went in.

In the movie realm, we went to see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy at Baby Brigade at the Parkway last Monday. I found it mildly interesting. Mike, who've read the book, enjoyed it a bit more but he said it was nowhere nearly as funny as the book.

I also just watched The Merchant of Venice on DVD. I went through a Shakespeare period when I was 14, but I haven't like the Bard since I was a teenager. I didn't like this play either. The movie was beautiful and well acted, but the underlying material was boring and the characters' seemed too shallow. Perhaps nobody was all good or all bad, but none of them was too wise - and who wants to watch a play about people who only wear anger but no wisdom? Give me a villain like Al (from Deadwood) anytime.

More satisfying was The Terrorist, a movie about Malli, a young Tamil woman who has been a guerrilla all her life and is recruited to assasinate a "VIP" through a suicide bomb. The movie explores her life as she prepares herself for the task. It was quite interesting, but its plot was too facile. Malli has flashbacks to her past life, she finds herself pregnant and starts reconsidering - all without saying very much. A deeper portrait of a suicide bomber would have been more interesting, but I was impressed that this topic was even addressed in a movie. I'm also fascinated by its star, Ayesha Dharker, who was also on Star Wars Episode II. I'm amazed how anyone can have such huge eyes, nose and mouth in the same face and have it all fit in. Her face doesn't look disproportionately big either.

Apparently The O’Reilly Factor is going to take on this Planned Parenthood commercial which has been airing on MTV:

http://www.ppgg.org/site/c.esJMKZPKJtH/b.1552217/k.9DBD/TV_Commercials.htm

The commercial seems a bit silly to me, but then again I am definitely not their target audience.

Mika has been saying that she wants to see the new Superman movie - it's been impossible to escape its publicity when you even have to walk under a Superman gate at Safeway to enter the store. She's not a big Superman fan per se, but her friend Emmanuel is devoted to him, when he is not Superman himself. So every time we see something supermanish (all the time), she thinks of Emmanuel and wants to buy it for him.

I was not at all sure that Mika could sit down through a whole "adult" movie at the theater. She's gone to see some animated movies, but her record hasn't been great. She walked out during one (too loud) and fell asleep at another. So I decided to get the old Superman and see if she could sit still for that movie at all. Just like I predicted, she couldn't. Not even for ONE minute. In a way it's good, I don't really want her to be staring at the TV for so long, but it definitely means we are not taking her to the theater.

I, on the other hand, watched it. I hadn't seen it for years, but I soon fell into its magic. OK, forget about the magic, the romance. The scene in which Superman takes Lois Lane flying has to be the most romantic scene in all of movie history. It still tingles all the right parts of me and brings me right back to the time when I was a young teen (or was I a preteen?) watching it.

I have no interest in watching the new Superman. I don't think anyone but Christopher Reeve could be Superman, and the actress they have playing Lois Lane looks like a child, not a woman. But I think I will rent Superman II, and watch those scenes in Niagara falls again (can't tell you what the rest of the plot was).

Note: This note contains spoilers

I don't know what to make of The Descent, the new horror movie that's getting greating reviews online. As a horror movie I didn't think it was that great. It relied on jolts and thrills - a monster appearing out of nowhere - which got boring after a while (though I still screamed when I saw them).

I was also disturbed by the movies allegorical meaning - but this was 'cause I couldn't find a concrete story behind the story. At its most evident, this was a story about a woman who is fighting her demons from the accident that took her husband's and daughter's life. But there are many other symbols in the movie that are not as easy to explain. For one, there are lots of phallic symbols: the sticks that killed her family, the logs on the truck at the end of the movie, the weapons they manufacture and use to kill the monsters and those cone-shaped mineral deposits so common in caves whose name for the life of me I can't remember. There are also several female symbols, of which the hole they climb down to the cave is only the first and most evident one.

Then there is birth. At one point all the women pass through the birth canal, or rather a small opening in the rocks filled with water. They do this head first, struggling to pass until Sara, the protagonist, gets stuck. "Breathe, breathe" says her friend, as she squirms and panics and can't get out. Once out the rocks fall down and they can't get back in. Imagine that.

Then there is the struggle to find their way, lost as they are in the big cave. Then one of them falls and injures herself, and then the monsters appear. The monsters are very similar to gollem from Lord of the Rings, but also to fetuses. The monsters eat the women until they kill them, though the women fight them.

But what does it mean? Are the monsters the women's demons? The women's subconcious? In the struggle for life, are we all willing to eat one another? Or is it our children who are eating us alive?

Can't really tell. Finally all the women die save for two, the protagonist and the Tombraider type who had been having an affair with the protagonist (Sarah)'s husband. Sara kills her - kills her hold over her? just expresses her anger? And later on, after she's reborn again (coming out of the cave, breathing, breathing) and escapes, she finds her seating besides her car. A new demon to fight, this one is not well dead.

So no, I'm not sure that it actually means something beyond some cool symbols the director thought to put together but especulating about it is more fun than waiting for each golem to jump up at you.

Well, I'm really tired, so much so taht I'm typing with my eyes closed (let's hope I have my fingers on the right keys). Time to go to sleep.

I've been too busy to watch much in the way of movies lately, and most importantly, to finish bad ones, but still it's one thing I've done beyond working on Mike's campaign. So here is a quick recap of what I've watched lately.

Vidas Privadas. This movie about a woman who returns to Argentina after 20 years on exile in Spain is just too unbelievable to make it worth your while. There are coincidences after coincidences, the whole tragedy of a nation is simplified and spoon fed and I'd even say the movie is an insult to those who survived the military dictatorship. In all, it mostly seemed exploitative and my whole reaction was "come on!"

National Treasure. This movie was so silly, so uninteresting, with such lack of character development as well as so improbable that I didn't finish watching it.

Harem. This was a movie about an Italian girl (I think) who was brought into the harem of the Ottoman ruler in the last days of the caliphate. Mostly it involved harem politics, though there was some boring sex as well. Whatever major point it was supposed to have I didn't get, and I didn't finish it either.

Hellraiser V. I'd actually seen it so I didn't bother with it. Hellraiser I was great, all the other ones sucked and I don't know why I bother with them.

Tristan and Isolde. I've never seen the opera but I figured I should familiarize myself with the story. The story itself is quite simple and predictive - but being so old, what can you expect?. But the production values were great, and the story kept me interested the whole way (no small feat lately). Plus I love Rufus Sewell.

El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba. This was another of those Salma Hayek Mexican movies based on an important work of literature, this time a great novella by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Unfortunately the story did not have enough material to extend it to a full length movie (that's why it's a novella, not a novel) which meant the movie itself drag throughout it. I didn't like the Mexico setting - why not keep it in Colombia - and mostly, I didn't like how the last line was delibered. The last line carries the whole of the movie - as is often the case on Garcia Marquez books - so getting this right (aka how I read it myself) is what makes or breaks the story. In this case, it broke it.

The Tooth Fairy. Another lame, lame, lame horror movie. Not scary and very boring. Keep away.

Ocean's Twelve. Why pull out a heist if you are not prepared to deal with the consequences and you fold as soon as you get threatened? Whatever. The second heist was lame and did not have the power and interest of the one from the first movie. Again, not worth your time.

so yes, I have had horrible lack in movies lately. I hope it changes.

I just saw it yesterday - and I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares about it last night. It's one of the most gruesome pictures I've ever seen, not for what Hannibal does, but for the reason given for why he does it. If you have kids, if you have a tender heart, keep away from it. I think I'm having post-traumatic stress disorder from watching it. If I could only get those scenes out of my mind!

I keep telling myself it's fiction, but it's too horrible to even be fiction.

And I say all this actually having enjoyed the other Hannibal movies (though Hannibal was boring), and having loved Silence of the Lambs. I love horror movies in general - but there are limits and this movie crossed them.

I *watched* that last night. It was one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. It had some graphic kill scenes, which I don't care for, but beyond that it was just boredom. Fortunately I fell asleep in the middle of it and woke up to see the end, I didn't feel I missed much. It was 2:40 hours which is just ridiculous. Where was the editor for this movie?

I just came home from watching Prince Caspian with Kathy and the girls. I've never read the books and I didn't see the first installment of the Chronicles of Narnia, so I was a little bit lost as to what the context was - though I surmised that the first must have been a story about the fight between God/good (the lion) and devil/evil (the witch). What the role of the four children was, I didn't get at all. I also didn't get the Christian allegories in this installment. The witch showed up for a minute, and there was a short period of temptation for a couple of the characters - but that has been done ad infinitum and it's not an exclusively Christian theme. And there was a bit about God not helping you unless you have faith. But beyond that, and perhaps some similarities between the battles in the movie and those of the Israelites, I couldn't see anything religious. Indeed, I couldn't see anything in the least deep. The movie, really, made very little sense. For instance, why would the Narnians be so ready to follow Prince Caspian? Why wouldn't the regent just kill Caspian earlier and make himself king?

What the movie did offer was violence, unmitigated, ever constant violence. I felt terrible having the kids there - how much death do they need to witness? But mostly I felt bored. Battle scene after battle scene after battle scene - even Lord of the Rings had some respite between battle scenes.

So no, I didn't like it.

I was just folding laundry and listening to I Love Lucy in the background, the episode called The Fashion Show. In that episode, Lucy goes to an exclusive Beverly Hills designer to buy a $100 dress - she doesn't look at the price tag of the one she buys, so she ends up with one $500 dress. It's been altered, so she can't return it. When Lucy says in the show that Ricky (her husband) will pummel her - I thought it was just an expression, just like we say "me va a matar", "he's going to kill me", commonly in Spanish. But later, as Lucy is looking for ways to diffuse the situation, she comes up with the idea of going down to the pool and getting what would look like a sun-burn, "Ricky wouldn't dare hit me", she says, if he thought she was sun-burnt.

Did I hear right? Was the expectation in the 50's that a man could and would hit a woman if she "deserved it"? I am flabbergasted - not just that that would be the expectation, but that a TV show would sanction it. Well, perhaps I misunderstood.

Mika (my 8 yo) wanted to go see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and she wanted me to go with her. After reading some reviews I was reluctant - it was mostly portrayed as a pour cousin to Harry Potter with similar, but less developed, characters and plot. And indeed, that's what it was - but it was a well crafted adventure movie, with great special effects, approachable characters and it held our interest. And, to top it all, it also taught us a little bit about Greek mythology (though you have to be careful not to take anything they say too literally). Hopefully it can be enough to spark a kids' interest in the subject (Mika is already into ancient mythology).

Camila, my 5 yo, found some parts scary and many boring, but she was a trooper and behaved through all of it.

In all, I'd recommend the movie for kids 7yo and older and even for adults who just want some mindless fluff.

I wasn't a big fan of having to transition to digital TV - specially as we had no plans of buying new, expensive, TVs - but the transition was all in all pretty painless (though we did have to spend some extra money on the conveters), and, as a bonus, I got two new TV stations I like.

Once is PBS World, which allows me to catch up on PBS and BBC news programs when it's more convenient to me, and the other one is Qubo, a channel that shows children's cartoons all day long. As we don't have cable, and I do let my TV babysit my kids, that's quite welcomed.

But what I like about Qubo is the type of programs it has. Many of the cartoons are based on books, such as Babar, Macy and Pippy Longstockings, and others are just very smart. Jane and the Dragon is about a little girl who refuses to be a maiden and tries hard to be a knight.

My favorite show, by far, is Adventures from the Book of Virtues - a show that teaches ethical/moral lessons from stories from around the world. Just a while ago, for example, they had the story of Damon and Pythias, two good friends from Syracuse. One of them stood up against the tyrant of the time, advocating democracy - he was arrested and sentenced to be killed (hey, doesn't this sound like what's going on in Iran as we speak?), and he asked as his last wish that he be allowed to say goodbye to his family. The other friend offered to stay on his place, to make sure his friend returned. I loved the story, not just because it teaches about the depth of loyalty and friendship, but because it reinforces the ideal I'm trying to teach my children, that you should stand up to tyranny even on the face of prison or death. I'm not sure that there are many shows around that are willing to tackle such complex ethical issues. And as if that was not enough, the show teaches my kids about important historical figures (like Plato).

The one big problem with Qubo is that all its commercials (between shows, rather than within them, which is a plus) are infomercials for stupid things. Some of them are for children, but many are for adults: furniture warehouses, adjustable beds, gold buyers, etc. They are also terribly long. But I guess that's the price for fairly good children's programming.