Christmas 2005 (5)
.: I was in Calgary overnight, visiting Chris and Debra. In the evening, after driving through what felt like most of a seemingly abandoned Calgary, we arrived at the cinema to watch Brokeback Mountain, a good film about a love story between two sheep herders, which as one might expect, ends tragically. We finished the evening sharing some very delicious takeout from a local Chinese food outlet. It was warm in Calgary, and I couldn’t sleep last night because the room I was in wouldn’t cool down. There is little to no snow throughout most of the southern half of Alberta, while the east is getting hammered by another snowstorm. We need snow cover to protect the land from erosion and to prevent drought. Driving back from Calgary, it was brown landscape everwhere.
I was hoping this would be a relatively quiet week. Next week, when work resumes, will be a return to choreographed insanity.
.: Reuters has issued its 40 Best Pictures of 2005. Most of the choices are good ones, with the exception of a picture of Madonna, which for me has no place on this list. Check out Time’s Best Photos of the Year 2005. (Update: I agree with Katie’s comment that the pic of Courtney Love doesn’t belong on the Reuters list as well.)
December 27th, 2005 at 21:33
am i blind? i don’t see a photo of Madonna on there. amazing pictures though. thanks for the linky.
December 27th, 2005 at 21:44
#32.
December 28th, 2005 at 15:39
I’d also omit the picture of Courtney Love. Otherwise, these are amazing shots.
December 28th, 2005 at 16:11
Katie: Agree completely, and forgot to mention it in the first version of the post. – Randy
December 28th, 2005 at 16:23
I thought the time photos were much better than the reuters photos and by a good measure.Thanks for the tip on Brokeback Mountain, now I know I can skip it completely. I have never been a fan of Ang Lee. I haven’t liked anything he did except CTHD and that with some reservations. To me it’s not so rewatchable and his other movies are even more unwatchable. There are so many better Chinese movies than that CTHD. I did get some nice CTHD action figures.
garth
December 28th, 2005 at 22:04
I did not dislike Brokeback Mountain. I thought it was well made – great acting and screenplay, stunning cinematography (of Alberta, standing in for Montana.) It does not feel like a “gay cowboy” movie, whatever that means. Overall, it didn’t resonate with me like I thought it might, given the hype it has received, and the awards it has received or for which it is being nominated. Check Rich Cline’s The Shadows Sweepstakes, which assigns points to films based on awards and nominations. Brokeback Mountain is way out in front of everything else. I think it’s a rock solid film, but not that memorable for me. Otherwise, I think Ang Lee has made some amazing films, including The Ice Storm, one of my top ten favorite films of the 1990s.
December 29th, 2005 at 07:16
2005 Weather
Randy mentioned the untypical weather in Alberta in one of his Chrismas posts, Christmas 2005 (5). Winnipeg has had a strange December. Lots of snow, but very warm for the most part. The explanation for Winnipeg, as far as it goes, according to a story…
December 31st, 2005 at 00:48
I wasn’t disinterested in Brokeback mountain because of the gayness but the tragic nature of it. I don’t need to see yet another sad film which ends tragically. The movie we saw tonight ends tragically but it’s a more interesting genre film(aliens and Zombies) and not a drama. I prefer my human life lesson in a more lively genre. I put The Ice Storm on a shelf with movies like Krammer vs Krammer. 105 minutes of yelling, who wants to see that, especially if there are no monsters, or villians. I can’t think of a drama off the top of my head that I have. I just had a look in the video room and the close I could come is something like Punch Drunk Love, or The Truman Show, unless it has Kirsten Dunst in it. I have some of her tv movie dramas. In one she’s 15 and pregnant, a typical after school type of story. In another she’s Marion Davies to Edward Herrmann’s William Randolf Hurst, witha side of Eddie Izzard playing Charlie Chaplin. There was a murder on Hurst’s yacht in 1924 that was hushed up. It’s one of those scandal stories that might or might not be true. Movies like Barton Fink are the path I follow when it comes to drama. Crime things, those are good, everything else in my collection is comedy or sci fi and horror. I bet i don’t have 50 dramas out of the 2300 movies I have, unless you count crime dramas, of whcih I have a lot of those types.
I did not like The Ice Storm at all, it is one of the few Christina Ricci films I don’t have. I found all those people to be horrible and hated them. It might have been well made but that doesn’t matter much when you turn off your viewer. The only other Ang Lee movies I’ve seen are CTHD, Ride with the Devil an the Hulk. I didn’t like any character in RWTD and that’s important to me. The Hulk I thought had too many dads in it and that ruined the story. I did enjoy the Hulk tossing the tank. I have only read one 5 issue story in the Hulk universe in the last 30 years but I know that the movie Hulk didn’t do much to capture the feel of comic book. Especially when compared to the first XMen movie and the recent Batman Begins.
anyway I must go to bed, finally getting tired.
garth