Random Public Thoughts #2 - Best Pix Oscar

I like to see movies - to me, a good movie is like a good book. A good movie engages me, it expands my world, it gives me new insights and new experiences to enrich my own life.

My teenage daughter works at the local cinemaplex and as her mother, I can see movies there for free as her fringe benefit (though she doesn't see it as a benefit to have her mom there). Also, there is a second-run movie theater about a half hour from our house which has movies for just $1 on Tuesday nights. Great!

So, I've seen all five of the films which are contending for the Best Picture Oscar.

Of the five, I think Ray is the best. Jamie Foxx definitely deserves Best Actor - no contest! I felt like I was watching Ray Charles himself. It was an INCANDESCENT performance. However, the ENTIRE supporting cast was also excellent - truly a first class ensemble performance. Ray Charles' life story was compelling: although I had never followed his music or career closely, the movie gave me a sense of his genius, his shrewdness, his joy, and his complexity. Best of all, I felt that the whole movie had a positive message: the power of a mother's love. This pulled the whole movie together in the end and made it feel powerful and satisfying.

Million Dollar Baby was well-done, well-acted, well-crafted. It gave a feel for the grit of boxing. Clint Eastwood, Hillary Swank, and Morgan Freeman all deserve their Oscar acting nominations. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freemen were both understated and believable; Hillary Swank was an equally believable Maggie. However, the ending left me a bit cold. It seemed a bit too pat and easy to turn off the respirator and add some adrenaline to the IV - machines go flat and Maggie's gone, peacefully and painlessly. No alarm at the nurse's station to indicate a problem, and Frankie then disappears into the night. In real life, he'd be hunted down for murder.

Aviator was also well-done, sumptuous, and well-acted, but like Million Dollar Baby, it left me a bit cold. Like Ray, it conveyed a sense of the genius, vision, and madness of Howard Hughes. However, his survival of two major plane crashes and Ava Gardner coming back to make him presentable for a senate hearing stretched my credulity.

Finding Neverland was a gentle and sweet movie which also did a good job of recreating a certain period. Johnny Depp deserves his best actor nomination, too! He conveyed a sense of Barrie's gentle sweetness, his loneliness, his whimsical creativity. However, what I could NOT understand was why Barrie's wife was so cold to him. My gosh, what wouldn't I give to have a husband like that, huh, a Johnny Depp lookalike and sweet, gentle, and well-educated to boot!?! Also, movie makers seem to like TB (Moulin Rouge as well as Finding Neverland) - actress coughs, then dies quietly and peacefully with no impairment to mind or to appearance.

Sideways was amusing. The actor character was a hoot - yeah, he deserves that Oscar nomination. However, it was a lightweight film. Miles is SUCH a loser - c'mon, even stealing money from his mother?!? So what on earth did Maya see in him besides a snobby disdain for Merlot drinkers?

I've seen some other films that I liked a lot, notably The Incredibles (a great story with some memorable characters and terrific animation), In Good Company (a happy and unrealistic Hollywood ending, but I liked the characters), House of Flying Daggers (lush and cinematic), and Ocean's Twelve (a confusing story but with eye-candy George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Julia Roberts, what's not to like?).

My 16-year-old daughter said that everyone should see Hotel Rwanda, and that Don Cheadle does indeed deserve his best actor nomination.

Random Public Thoughts #1

OK, here's my very first start at a web log. . .

I cannot fathom how my daughter could even have a link to the CONTENTS OF HER PURSE on her website!?!

And yet, I found it interesting. . .perhaps because she is my daughter?

However, I recently stumbled upon a blog done by a high school classmate, and I was fascinated to read HIS random thoughts, 35 years, a wife and two kids later, even though I was quite disappointed with his political views.

So, I'm giving this a try.

A bit about myself (and no, I am NOT going to tell you the contents of my purse): you've probably gathered than I am a 52-yr old female. I was born & raised in Hawaii, and have been all over the place since graduating from high school. I attended Swarthmore College for 2 years (with a year wandering around Europe in between), finished up at the Univ. of HI with a degree in entomology, got my MS in Plant Pathology at UC Davis, and then moved to the midwest with my husband. My hubby's company was based in the Chicago suburbs but we lived all over the U.S. (Hobbs N.M., Lake Charles LA, Robinson IL, Indianapolis IN) and the world (Indonesia, Egypt, and China) until 1990. We raised 3 children (currently 24, 20, 16), and when the youngest entered kindergarten, I returned to our local community college, took the minimum coursework required to sit for the CPA exam, and then took and passed the exam. This helped me to get my one and only Real Job doing accounting/finance stuff for the company that my husband work(ed) at (my husband moved on to another company about 3 years ago, after over 22 years with the company that I am at presently).

It's been a good life and I have no complaints. I actually hung out a lot with botany grad students when I was at the Univ of HI, and the best course that I took in my life, the course that CHANGED MY LIFE was . . . Plant Taxonomy!?! When I was on a Swarthmore general biology field trip I overheard my professor telling another person that the best liberal arts course that one could take was plant taxonomy - you can then go anywhere in the world and feel at home. It sounded weird, but I tried it - and it was true!?!

Other life-changing and fascinating courses include a course at Swarthmore on "The City," (it changed the way that I saw urban environments), a course at the Univ of HI on Soil Physics, and a course at UC Davis on cereal crops.

Actually, I liked almost all my classes. Most of them changed the way that I saw things and made everything interesting. I loved a class at UC Davis on plant diseases of horticultural crops - we drove all over CA looking at crops ranging from orchids to cherry orchards to cabbages. Fascinating! I wonder if they still have the budget for classes like that in CA. I also loved a class on fungi - I had NO IDEA that fungi were so fascinating with such interesting fruiting bodies (I'm talking about microscopic fruiting bodies, not mushrooms or shelf fungi). Those classes with field trips were terrific - I saw vernal ponds, hunted for edible mushrooms, saw all kinds of soil types, and there was even a field trip where we got to stay for several days in some cabins in the high Sierras (we were looking at forest diseases).

Did these classes on insects - plants - soils - art (I took lots of Art History classes at S'more) get me a job? No. . . but they sure made life interesting!!! And they were SUCH fun!!!

My hubby went "on the road" right after our first child was born. Thus, our oldest child grew up in a car (a huge old station wagon, for our US "road" jobs) and then in Indonesia and Egypt. When she was four, we left her with my parents in Hawaii and SF & I went on to a small town two hours outside of Shanghai, China, where our second child was born (the first foreign baby to be born in the refinery hospital). Our youngest was born in Beijing, China while SF was on a 3-year assignment there.

In 1990 SF came back to his company's headquarters and we've lived in our current home ever since - the longest we've lived anywhere in our life except in Hawaii (where I grew up) and Hong Kong (where SF grew up). We've had to deal with corporate life and office politics. Yuk! But an experience, I suppose.

The good thing is that we lived extremely frugally when we were young and invested what we saved. My budget for food when we were in graduate school was $1 a day. We were living on my $350/month scholarship stipend. The apartment was $210/month, utilities were another $20, so we SAVED money each month!?! Not only that, we were always having people over for dinner! How did we do it? UC Davis was an agricultural school, and there always seemed to be produce around from various experiments, especially during the growing season. All I bought was rice and a little bit of meat, which I'd stirfry with our free veggies. We NEVER ate out unless my parents came to visit and treated us to dinner. Our idea of a big splurge was to buy an ice cream cone and share it. When SF got his Chicago job - $18,000/year - it seemed to be an immense, princely sum after $350/month. Our apartment was more expensive and there were no free fruits and veggies, but we continued our frugal ways.

Thus, we have financial freedom, thanks to the power of compound interest & dividend reinvestment! We were lucky, too - good health, no accidents, SF had a good job, and my parents were generous.

Well, time to close for now!