Reviews and More

Reese Witherspoon is one of my favorite actresses, so I’ve been wanting to see Walk the Line ever since I heard that she won an Oscar for her portrayal of June Carter Cash. However, I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to see the film because of the subject matter. I’m not a country music fan and barely know who Johnny Cash was, so I didn’t think I’d be all that interested in the film.

But I was pleasantly surprised by how good the movie was. Even without knowing anything about Cash or his music, I found that I was still able to enjoy Walk the Line. That’s because it was basically a love story about how Cash (played by Joaquin Phoenix — another brilliant performance) fell for Carter and pursued her for more than a decade before finally getting her to marry him. Their marriage lasted 35 years until June’s death in 2003. Johnny followed her to the grave just 4 months later.

I just watched Ray (the Ray Charles biopic) recently, so I felt that the plot of Walk the Line was very familiar. Poor kid suffers through tragic death of sibling. Check. Poor kid grows into young man determined to make his mark in music. Check. Success comes almost immediately. Check. With success comes alcohol and drug addiction. Check. With drugs and booze comes women. Check. Marriage falls apart. Check. Musician cleans up his act and becomes a legend. Check. See what I mean?

But Witherspoon’s presence as June Carter made all the difference in Walk the Line and kept me watching. This is definitely a movie that was worth all the Oscar hoopla.

I live in Japan for part of the year, so I’m always on the lookout for good information that will help make life in that country a bit easier. There are a lot of websites dedicated to Japan, so it can be hard to sift through all of them to come up with a quality one. But GaijinPot.com is one of the better ones.

GaijinPot is a pretty comprehensive site that can help foreigners (“gaijin” in Japanese) get answers to common and not-so-common questions or problems they might have. These answers come from the message board, which is frequented by both short- and long-term expats who have personal experience with living in Japan. The site is mostly geared towards job-seekers (it has a whole section where you can post your resume, apply for jobs, etc.), but other aspects of everyday life are covered too. The message board categories include Shopping, TV, Travel, Shipping, Banking, Accommodations, and other relevant topics.

You have to put up with the usual B.S. that comes with a public Internet message board, but most of the information is indeed helpful. I’ve posted questions on several occasions and have always gotten satisfactory answers.

Check it out!

I finally got around to watching Brokeback Mountain last night. I borrowed the DVD from a friend of mine and it’s been sitting on top of my DVD player for like the last two weeks. I’m not sure why I didn’t get to it sooner — I was perhaps afraid of being let down by the movie. After all, there’s so much hype surrounding it that I thought it would be almost impossible for me to be impressed now.

Boy, how wrong I was! Brokeback Mountain is every bit the spectacular film that everyone says it is. From the cinematography to the score to the acting to the storyline, the movie was just an amazing experience that is hard to put into words. It’s been a long, long, long time since a movie has affected me so much. I cried during the film, of course, and really haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger were absolutely fantastic as two young men who fall in love while herding sheep together one summer on Brokeback Mountain. They think that what they have going is a “one shot deal,” but it turns into an affair that spans more than 20 years. It’s heartbreaking to watch these two men constrained by society and unable to live the way they want. They both end up unhappy, and, ultimately, alone.

Brokeback Mountain is an incredible accomplishment and has put director Ang Lee at the top of my list of favorites. You must see this movie! Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

I watched The Butterfly Effect last night, and I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the movie as a whole. I didn’t know anything about the movie prior to watching it except that Ashton Kutcher was in it. I had never seen him play a dramatic role, so I was looking forward to the change. I wasn’t disappointed!

Basically, Kutcher plays a guy named Evan who studies psychology. He’s doing research into memories or something and learns that he has the power to go back in time and change the bad things that happened to him. What he doesn’t count on is the fact that a whole bunch of other things change along with the bad incident. So every time Evan changes something, he comes back to a present that is different than the one he knows. This is the “butterfly effect” and it usually works out in a bad way.

The problem Evan faces is that he wants to save his childhood friend Kayleigh from committing suicide as an adult. So he goes back several different times until he finds the one incident that he can change which will allow Kayleigh to have a happy life.

Overall, this was a pretty good movie. Sure, there are plot holes if you try to pick the script apart, but the general concept was very cool. Check it out!

I have an interest in language, so I was thrilled when a friend gave me a book called 2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings & Expressions by Charles Earle Funk (of Funk & Wagnall’s dictionary fame). As you might expect from the title, this book traces the origins of various idioms that have become such common fixtures in the English language.

This book was first published in 1948, and Funk’s writing style is a bit on the archaic, long-winded, academic side. His paragraphs are very long and he makes frequent use of commas, which results in rather tedious reading at times. But fortunately, this isn’t the kind of book that you sit and read straight through. It’s a reference, and as such can be taken up to look for a particular phrase or can be read for a few minutes just for personal edification.

Once you get past the writing style, I think you’ll find that the book is very interesting. I’ve actually learned quite a bit from this book and therefore recommend it to everyone!

I thought this was a pretty slow-moving episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I lost interest about halfway through it and kept glancing at the clock to see how much longer it would be on. Not a particularly good sign, huh? Here’s what happened:

Bailey: The hospital had some kind of conference where the doctors got together to talk about recent mortalities. Bailey totally got blamed for the Denny mess even though it wasn’t really her fault. I guess the other doctors thought that since Izzie was her intern, Bailey should have been more on top of things. Yeah, like what’s she supposed to do, institute a 24-hr watch on all the patients her interns come into contact with?

Izzie: Normally, I like this character, but she has been grating on my nerves this season. I’m sorry, but I simply cannot believe that she fell completely and totally in love with Denny. The guy was in a hospital bed the entire time, for god’s sake! Sure, there could be an attraction. Maybe even strong feelings. But love? True love? I highly doubt it. But here’s Izzie moping around like she just lost her husband of 50 years. Plus, would anyone really act that way about an $8.7 million check? Put it in the bank, you idiot!

Addison/Derek: God, he is such a jerk. I like Addison — she’s become one of my favorite characters. She deserves so much better than Derek. Thankfully that divorce is final now. Let’s move on, people.

Meredith/Derek: I don’t even care anymore. Seriously? Seriously.

Cristina/Burke: These two are playing with fire here. Burke is suffering from tremors or something, but only Cristina knows about it. Instead of having a specialist look at the hand, they’re trying to cover up the existence of a problem. Cristina jumped in to finish off a procedure that Burke was struggling with. This can’t lead to anything good.

George/Callie: George tries to make up with Callie, but she’s not having any of it. She insists that she’s not there to compete with his friends, and literally slams the door in his face when he shows up with a bucket of chicken and some video games (his peace offering, I guess).

Alex: For someone who can be such a complete ass at times, he can also be really nice and considerate too. He showed off this side at the very end when he told Bailey that he had a chance to stop Izzie too (re: the whole Denny thing) but didn’t do it. In other words, he was saying that it wasn’t Bailey’s fault, which is exactly what she needed to hear — even if it was coming from an intern.

What can I say about Amazon.com? If you’ve never heard of that site, then you’re either completely new to the Internet or you’ve been living in a cave. Amazon.com is one of the premiere online shopping sites for several reasons. Let’s go through some of them.

First of all, Amazon offers all kinds of products, from housewares to jewelry to electronics. Do you remember way back when Amazon only had books and music? Wow, they’ve really expanded in the last decade, haven’t they?

Second, Amazon offers some of the lowest prices on the Internet. Because they’re so huge, Amazon is able to give its customers discounts that we simply can’t get from other sites. Even if I don’t intend to purchase from Amazon.com, I always use that site as a pricing guideline to see if other places are charging comparable amounts.

Third, Amazon.com offers fast, accurate shipping. I’ve order a lot of products from that site over the years and I’ve never once received a late shipment or inaccurate order. They’ve got an excellent track record with me.

In short, you can’t go wrong with Amazon.com! They haven’t let me down in 10 years, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon!

I’ve studied from a lot of Japanese books over the years, and have therefore had a chance to look at some really good ones (and a few terrible ones as well). One of the good ones, in my opinion, is Japanese Phrases for Dummies by Eriko Sato. As you can tell from the title, this book is from the for Dummies series, and is therefore arranged in much the same manner. In other words, it is a very easy-to-use reference manual.

There are several reasons I like this book. First of all, I think there’s just the right mix of grammar and useful phrases. Despite the title, this is not a phrase book alone (those are kind of useless if you don’t know grammar). Instead, Sato lays out some very basic grammar rules for the reader, which makes the book infinitely more useful in the long run.

Second, I like that this book is compact. It’s small and lightweight, making it easy to carry in a purse, backpack, or briefcase. There was a time when I always had this thing with me and would pull it out to study whenever I had a few free minutes. After a while, I had the material down pat, and my Japanese improved.

Third, the layout is fantastic. I really enjoy the For Dummies series anyway, and this book is no exception. There are icons letting you know which items are the most important, so if you’re in a hurry you can look at just those parts and skip everything else. Plus, there are cultural notes, extra grammar explanations, etc.

In a word, this book is awesome, so check it out today!

Moonlighting was by far one of my favorite television shows when I was growing up. I loved both David Addison and Maddie Hayes as individual characters (played, of course, by Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd) and I loved the way they interacted with each other as partners in the Blue Moon Detective Agency. So when I heard that Moonlighting DVDs were available I just had to buy them.

There were just five episodes plus the pilot in Season One, so the DVD set combines Seasons One and Two in order to give the viewer a bit more value. In total, there are 24 episodes (if you include the pilot as an episode) spread out over six discs. In addition, there are a couple of bonus features, including “The Story of Moonlighting,” “The Moonlighting Phenomenon,” and commentaries for several of the episodes.

I thought it was a lot of fun reliving all these old episodes. I was surprised at how many of them I remembered — especially since the show went off the air way back in 1989 and I hadn’t watched any reruns since then. It just goes to show how memorable the characters and their escapades were.

If you’re a Moonlighting fan, then you’ve got to get your hands on these DVDs. Check them out today!

When The English Patient came out on video back in 1996, I tried to watch it a couple of times, but couldn’t get past the boring beginning. Plus, I was completely turned off due to that Seinfeld episode where everyone loves the movie but Elaine hates it. I remember her sitting in the theater with her boss J. Peterman and screaming “Just die already, DIE!!” at the screen as she writhed in boredom.

But I figured enough time had passed to give it another chance. This time, I didn’t think it was all that bad. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think it was a great movie or anything like that and I’m not quite sure why it won the Best Picture Oscar, but it was ok. It took me four sittings to get through the 2 hour and 40 minute running time, though.

I remember everyone saying that this was a great love story, but frankly, I didn’t see that at all. The Count and Katherine Clifton were committing adultery, after all. Hey, I’m no prude, but that hardly seems like the basis of a great love story to me. Of course something like that would end in tragedy!

Overall, the film was just average to me. I certainly can’t imagine ever watching it again, but at least now I can at least say that I’ve seen it!

Read Roger Ebert’s somewhat enigmatic review of The English Patient right here.