Who keeps letting me write posts?
Silver Linings Playbook
Look for the signs
Every year, my sister and I go to the movies on Christmas Day. We’ve gotten all of our Christmas-y activities done by Noon of that day and we rarely go to the movies the rest of the year. This year the pickings were slim for Christmas blockbusters. We weren’t interested in Les Miserables or The Hobbit so we might as well have gone home. But we were determined (by boredom) to go to the movies. We picked Silver Linings Playbook primarily based on intrigue.
IMDB labels Silver Linings as a comedy and it hardly is. At times it is funny, but there are never moments of prime comedy or laughter. The story is heavy, raw, dramatic, and refreshing, but not refreshing like Young Adult. I was very happy with the ending. I thought it was an excellent stroke to a very real depiction of mental illness and nailed the silver lining.
Number of re-watches: At least one more
Young Adult
“Young Adult – that’s industry-speak”
Young Adult was refreshing. Mavis is a complicated, self-centered, realistic character. Prom queen-turned-divorced young adult novelist, Mavis is already emotionally unstable and receiving the birth announcement for her high school boyfriend’s sends her reeling – all the way back to her small hometown. She makes quick work of her high school classmates and lets everyone know that she is better than them. Mavis got out of Mercury. Mavis is a successful writer with a cool apartment in the big city of Minneapolis. Yet, you wonder through the movie why such a cool person would be hung-up on their townie high school boyfriend after all these years.
No spoilers, but the resolution is very well-done. The conclusion is realistic. Mavis is a complex character, and sometimes when we are faced with life lessons, we don’t learn anything at all.
Number of re-watches: None, because Mavis is a cringe-inducing train wreck to watch.
Ingredients: the local food movement takes root
“Sometimes I like to learn” I told my co-worker when I checked Ingredients out from work. I thought it was an insightful and beautifully documented film about the positive impacts of thinking about where your food comes from. The most interesting part was the history of food-producing agriculture. The historical traditions of immigrants was a component. Fascinating!
Right now I don’t buy locally, or even freshly, for two reasons. A) I don’t have control of my kitchen, and B) I am not aware of agriculture in northern New Jersey. I do care though. I care about food and preserving the environment. Perhaps my buying patterns will change in 2013.
Number of re-watches: A couple
Super 8
Normally I don’t review movies, and I am not sure why. They are library material in the same way that books and graphic novels are. They circulate. They can be found in a book drop. Why not? Well, I am going to start smaller reviews of them.
Actually, I probably feel compelled because of Super 8. I am not sure why I put off seeing this movie for so long. It was incredible! Released in the summer of 2011, Super 8 was set to be a summer blockbuster and was just that. A science fiction-thriller set in 1970s Ohio, Joe is mourning the death of his mother and is navigating his fraught relationship with his father and his first crush that way that young teenagers do. Abrams more than made up for Cloverfield with this movie.
Abrams successfully balances a dramatic plot inside an action movie – never allowing for one solely takeover. Perfect symbiosis that doesn’t feel like an identity crisis. The watcher laughs when there are jokes, tears up when there’s reflection, and grips through seat through conflict. My only regret, like I mentioned earlier, is not having watched this sooner. I imagine that it would have been incredible to watch at the Harvest Moon Drive-In between Lock Haven and Williamsport on a warm summer’s night…
Peppered with dashes of humor, action, and friendship, I will re-watch Super 8 for years to come. Note: That how I judge whether or not I like a movie – if I could re-watch it or not. That being said…
Number of re-watches: Infinite
Found : The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items From Around The World
Inspired by listening to the Too Beautiful To Live podcast featuring Davy Rothbart and reading his other book My Heart is an Idiot, I picked up Found at the library.
Found: The Best, Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items From Around The World is exactly what the title says it is. The book contains the notes, birthday cards, to-do lists, ticket stubs, and napkin confessionals picked up by people who are not the owners of them. FOUND is a magazine that Rothbart was inspired to compile after finding the “Mario Note” on the windshield of his car in 2000. He mentioned in the TBTL interview that, when he started the project that submissions came in droves. There is a universal intrigue in finding things. Pennies on the ground…ticket stubs…notes on windshields…In fact, I have a few notes and bookmarks that I’ve found in returned library books over the years.
In finding things, there is a sense of hope and mystery. The book of FOUND is a little messy and disorganized to keep up with, but what do you expect from a novelized version of a magazine put together with scissors and scotch tape?
Thumbs: 1 out of 2.
The Walking Dead
I am a glutton for punishment. The Walking Dead series is one of the most graphic books I have read – comic and novel alike. Yet, I read them. I don’t want to, but I want to know how it ends. How does a future zombie outbreak? Does it?
We’ll see.
And like that, my first semester of grad school is complete
I submitted my last term project of the semester on Friday and it was graded by Monday. Just like that, my first semester of graduate school is complete. I am relieved to get to read again, but anxious to get back to work. One semester down, two more to go.
In a heart beat.
Is Dewey Dead?
Check out my latest post over at Public Libraries Online! This week I discuss nontraditional classification systems in public libraries, like color-coordination and the book store-subject model.
Cassidy B. Charles 