Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy T-day to everyone!  I hope you all have a great time and a great meal.  I myself will be very busy today not eating turkey, relaxing and watching football, as I have a lecture, a seminar, a talk to go to (although since it features Phillip Pullman it'll probably be pretty cool), a group meeting for my Design project, and right now I need to got put in some design work before the lecture and seminar so the group meeting goes better.

So for me Thanksgiving Day (observed) will be on Saturday, when a bunch of the people here are getting together for dinner.  It will also be my first attempt at cooking a turkey.  I really hope I don't screw it up.

Moive Madness

I'm always confused by the way international movie releases work.  The first time I studied in England, there were of course a bunch of films that had been out in the US for awhile at that point, or had already left theaters.  But I did see two movies that hadn't been released yet in the States-and indeed didn't come out until a few months after I got back.  I found this to be pretty freaking awesome, as the movies were O Brother, Where Art Thou and Memento, two very cool movies that I got to see before pretty much everybody else (except Erik, of course, because he was there too).

I can report not much has changed in this respect.  Up, which I missed in the States, is still out in theaters here, mostly because it didn't get released until October 9th.  At the same time I've seen two movies I've seen here that haven't come out yet in the US yet, at least not in wide release.  I highly recommend both The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.  Mr. Fox is very well done, with a funky stop-motion animation that fits the style of the film.  It's immediately recognizable as a Wes Anderson flick, and if you've enjoyed his previous films there's a good chance you'll like this one.  I can't remember the Roahl Dahl book all that much, so I didn't have to content with comparing the film to the book, which honestly was kind of nice.  All in all very much the sort of movie I was expecting after seen the trailers and Anderson's previous movies.  Mr. Fox didn't supplant The Royal Tenenbaums as my favorite Wes Anderson movie, but it's nonetheless quite good.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is a little less straightforward of a film.  I quite liked it, but I can understand that others might not.  Like most Gilliam movies (who, I found out from IMDB, was born in Minneapolis, MN!) it's quirky and weird, but visually awesome and conceptually quite cool.  It's also Heath Ledger's last movie, which is initially distracting but it goes away faster than you'd think.  His character is replaced during the film by three other actors, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell.  You might think this makes no sense, but honestly, it really does.  In fact, the changes was so seamless plot-wise it felt like the decision to change actors was made based on the script, rather than out of necessity.  

I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just say I really enjoyed The I of Dr. P.  It reminded me most of Mirrormask, albeit with a more tangled bunch of characters dealing with more mysterious (and adult) problems.  However, I suggest giving it a try if you get the chance...at Christmas when it actually goes into limited release in the US.  It's already out of the Oxford theaters.  Hmm, maybe I'll get the chance to see it again.

More Iranian News

There's a very good article in The Times about Arash, the Iranian guy who did my course last year, then got caught up in the post-election protests and now can't go home.  I was just talking to one of the Professors on my course, and they mentioned how much they're hoping he'll get a job soon.

You can check it out here.

Lion vs Deer

For some reason, a young deer decided to literally jump into the lion's den at the National Zoo in DC. Everyone on the video is rooting for the deer-is it wrong that I'm rooting for the lion? Also, much like the Packers Offensive line in the Metrodome, the lion seems distracted by all the cheering.

Who to call

Happy belated Halloween to everyone. I hope you all had fun-I certainly did. Just a quick post with a very nice cover of a classic song. More newsy-type posts soon, as I ramp up my procrastination in the face of my marketing test on Wednesday.