Remember how awesome Kenneth Branagh used to be?

He was.
I mean, nowadays, I think the best thing he's actually managed was (essentially) playing himself in the Harry Potter films. Thor wasn't that bad, either.

But... he used to kick ass at directing, and even managed to act well from time to time.

***

Dead Again is a very, very strange mystery film about reincarnation. Aside from his own performance as a private detective, we're also treated to:
- Emma Thompson as an amnesiac whose only memories... are of a past life
- Derek Jacobi as a hypnotist/antiques dealer
- Robin Williams as a foul-mouthed former psychiatrist
- Andy Garcia in... one of the most stomach-turning performances I've ever seen

It's basically one of the best things I've ever seen in my whole life.



Here, he offers up some of what he does best: Shakespeare. Blah, blah, blah, Henry V, blah blah blee. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, thank you.

I'll admit that there are some blatantly corny moments in this one, but it's still fantastically awesome. I mean, aside from Keanu Reeves being EEEEEEEVIL (or maybe Keanu Reeves being evil just helps it. I can't decide! I don't know, though. I think if a person is named 'John the Bastard', they're... kind of predisposed to being... a bit mean-spirited.)
Brian Blessed is loud (even as an inconsequential side character), Robert Sean Leonard's eyebrows are enormous (His character's only purpose? Eyebrows and stupidity.), Michael Keaton is fucking crazy as Dogberry (this man should only do comedy, ever), Emma Thompson is Beatrice, one of the most fantastic snarky ladies on the planet, and Denzel Washington is wonderfully smarmy as Don Jon.
My Mom and I have probably watched this 40,000 (or maybe 12) times and it never gets old. Ever.



Oh, Branagh.
What, what, WHAT WERE YOU DOING?
Look at your life. Look at your choices.
I like Helena Bonham-Carter and all, but...
Well, let's just say I think know where your career started hitting the skids.

Even if Robert deNiro was fuckin' awesome as The Creature.
(I'm not hyperlinking you to Robert deNiro, though. If you don't know who that is, there's no help for you.)



Maybe he knew his talent was tanking. Maybe he just recklessly burned it all out by powering through with this thing. Time may only tell.
1996's Hamlet is just... overwhelming. It's so on-point in every regard that it's difficult to try and write about coherently.

The weird visual mish-mash of criss-crossing anachronisms melds together into perfection. The costuming, the sets, and the color composition of the whole thing are all stunning.
Every shot is perfectly framed.
This owes a lot to the way it was filmed. Most films (before the advent of digital filming, of course) were done on 35 mm film (the same width as camera film). This particular film (all four hours of it) was done on 65 mm film.
That doesn't make the picture itself bigger; it makes it possible to capture wider, more inclusive shots. (It also makes for higher image resolution.)

I can't find fault with anyone's performance. It's a very, very long movie in its entirety (as the complete, full text of the play was filmed, which is quite unusual for adaptations of Shakespeare), and in view of that, the emotional nuance needed for the scope of the thing is incredibly well-realized. (In stage adaptations, that tends to get lost in view of the fact that it's more important for actors to exaggerate a bit in order for their voices and gestures to be seen and heard properly by the audience.)

Not only that, but in the style of his better movies, it's utterly jam-packed with blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos.

So... nearly everything he's done since Hamlet has, indeed, SUCKED... but I'd say that's one hell of a ($18,000,000) magnum opus all in all.

The party is not over, but sometimes, you just need to step out for air on the porch.

So to speak. But life goes on.

I spent the weekend in DC - a much more action-packed weekend than last weekend was. Aparato came down with a headcold during the week, so he was a little bit laid up, but it was still a good time.
When Mačka got home Friday night, he was... far more chatty and animated than I'm used to from him. He was trying to talk to the cat (they have two), and he was quite giggly about everything. We got a pizza, and he insisted that we watch Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus - an inspired choice, if I may say so myself.
(The pizza choice was, if I may say so myself, was INSPIRED - I'd been praying for a hangover-curing quesadilla, but a pizza with chicken on it was JUST AS AMAZING.)

Saturday, Aparato and I went museum-hopping finally, Saturday afternoon. The National Gallery (West Building) smells... disturbingly like sunblock. The building itself reeks of sunblock. It was making me laugh uncontrollably for some reason.
The museum actually closed soon after we got there, so we went across the street to their outdoor sculpture garden - which also promptly closed. (I didn't manage to get any pictures there, though - I finally had a goddamned camera with me in DC for once in my life, and I forgot it on the god-damned coffee table. Unbe-freaking-lievable. I should have good pictures of the sculpture garden next weekend, though.)
We then ended up, successively, at the Museum of Natural History and then the National Museum of American History, which were... well, okay, those two were kind of boring. I don't know. I like museum-hopping, but there's something about overloading on them. I prefer art museums to history museums, for some damn reason.

We then ended up at Legal Seafood for dinner, and as we're standing there on the sidewalk, I look up at the advertisement board for the Regal across the street. I mention offhandedly, calmly, as we wait for Mačka to show up, "...You know, I heard Thor was supposed to be decent."
But I didn't push the matter. I knew he had a head cold, so I wasn't gonna ask him to sit through some loud-ass movie for two hours or so.
Mačka shows up, and the only words Aparato can get out is, "What would you think of going to see Thor aft-"
"There's a 9:10 and a 9:50 show."
(MAČKA, WHY ARE YOU AMAZING AND PSYCHIC, I LOVE YOU.)
So we went in for a wonderful dinner at Legal. Can I just say that if you ever have the chance, go to Legal Seafood in DC if only to have the opportunity to experience the bathrooms there.
Pictures would not do it justice.
The hallway that the bathrooms are in is partitioned by a mirrored wall down the middle - the ladies' bathrooms are on the left, the mens' on the right. Each "stall" is actually an individual bathroom, walled off with a full door, and each has its own toilet, sink, and hand-dryer.
AMAZING.

Having said that, their food also amazing beyond belief. If nothing else, the crab cakes. Good lord.


Thor was also pretty fucking good.
I will admit that the story got a little muddy and over-jumbled because there was too much attempt to give equal screen time to Earth and Asgard.
I like Chris Hemsworth - he has some pretty good comic timing. He kind of looks like he got hit in the face with a cement block, though.
The guy who played Loki looks like a young Data (don't be a plebe and act like you don't know who Data is), but I enjoyed his acting for the most part. (I'm still not entirely sure what they were doing with fucking around with Loki's backstory. I'm not going to spoil it if you haven't seen the movie yet, but suffice it to say that if you're familiar with the traditional comic canon, you're gonna be a little thrown off.)
To quote the good Turtle, "Anthony Fucking Hopkins was Odin Fucking Allfather", and... well, I mean, what more can I really add to that?
Aparato and I geeked out like nerdy, nerdy children during Hawkeye's twelve seconds in the movie. I can't speak for him, but on my end, it was not only for the character, but it also means that I get to have a good ogle of Jeremy Friggin' Renner once The Avengers finally gets made. 
(Contrary to my thoughts on Data, I won't consider you a plebe if you don't know who Hawkeye is.)
(They really need to stop cockteasing us with these setup films and just MAKE THE FUCKING AVENGERS ALREADY, OH MY GOD.)
(I also like how I'm judging Chris Hemsworth for looking like all smashed-faced, but I'm a Jeremy Renner fan. I don't even know.)


After the movie, though... oh, I don't know. Being away from home for so long is just... stressful, no matter how good it is to be able to be in DC every weekend for almost a month.
Make of that what you will.


Today was pretty uneventful. I had to buy a new backpack before I left DC - one of the straps was fraying pretty seriously on the one I had.

We had dinner before I left - chicken and rice and corn), and dinner was just so... hilarious.
We were sitting at the (what I assume to be IKEA) table, listening to a Cure station on Pandora, eating a good home-cooked meal, and they would not stop arguing about the best way to cook rice. They're such bickery bitches, I love it.
(I've got certain proclivities of my own, I'm not judging harshly. Their bickering is just fucking hilarious, I can't even handle it.)



I'm sitting here watching Netflix, and all I want to do is drop out of training, quit this job, go home, and fix my life.
I don't want these past few weeks to have been wasted, though, so... looks like I'll be in class bright and early tomorrow morning.

I'm just so done here, you guys. I miss all of you.

(Even though I prefer the old music video for this song, have the song anyway.)

Our Nation's Capitol, Week 1

I think that I'll skip describing the actual first week of my training class here, because here is all you need to know: I was bored out of my mind. The instructor was teaching people how to use the 'Alt' key to get to the menu options in the program we're being trained in. There was nothing for me to take from this.

Last Wednesday afternoon, however, I took a brief afternoon trip to Washington, just to see how the trip would go. Once in Union Station, I took a walk up the the Capitol building, and then came back to the station, bought a sandwich, bought an umbrella, and came back to Wilmington. I'll be honest, all of my previous trips to DC have been in the summer - the foliage in the parks there in the spring is absolutely amazing.

Friday afternoon, it was time for me to go down properly for the weekend to visit my Uncle (Tío Aparato) and his gentleman (Mačka), two of my favorite people in the whole world.
I was originally supposed to go arrive at 6:30, and they would have picked me up... but I left for DC as soon as I was out of class, thus instead arriving at 3. I took the subway over to their house.
I have to admit, I've always loved the subway system in DC. The ceilings of the stop platforms are quite vaulted, and I've always thought that they're incredibly pretty, even though they're just cement blocks. In my agnostic mind, I consider the DC Metro stops to be cathedrals, of sorts... but I digress.

The Dynamic Duo moved since the last time I was there four years ago, but are still situated near the same Metro stop, so I knew the way... but nothing really looked familiar once I was street level. It took three blocks before I found the neighborhood Starbucks, and I instantly had my bearings back.
I headed South off of U street for a few blocks, and soon.... I had arrived.
Aparato was the only one at home, but that was alright - this was my first trip to the 'new' house, and he and I don't talk overly often anymore.
I must say one thing, first - their new house is amazing and perfect. It's four stories if you count the basement, and it's perfectly decorated, aside from the carpeting on the staircases. (In that case, the house is admittedly still a work in progress.)
But... it is a beautiful house. Tío Aparato and I sat out on the deck and talked for about two hours before Mačka got home, and then we decided to go out for food.
We ended up somewhere called St. Ex, and I had my first-ever Prix Fixe meal. The appetizer course was something akin to beef stroganoff minus the beef, the second course was roasted chicken with a some sort of large fritter (made of 'ramp', which the internet tells me is some sort of wild leek), and dessert was Earl Grey cheesecake. It was all, if I may say so myself, friggin' delicious.
When we got back to the house, we sat down to watch some television. We ended up watching Doctor Who, which I haven't done since David Tennant left... there was always just something a little bit too weird-looking about Matt Smith to me, I guess.

I was, however, pleasantly surprised - both by the fact that Matt Smith is actually sort of okay, and also by the fact that OMG, WAITER, THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME BADGER IN MY DOCTOR WHO, please give my compliments to the chef on this amazing and delightful notion!
(Things that make any show automatically better: Badger. Do I realize that he has a real name? Yes, but that point is immaterial.)

We watched some other stuff, too, but I'd been up since 7 AM, and it was nearing.... 11 PM? We watched an episode of Chopped, and we started watching Good Eats, but I was pretty much about passing out on the couch, so... it was bedtime for Ms. Millay.

I woke up around noon on Saturday, in the understanding that my cousin would be coming by and that we'd go museum-hopping... but that was, it seems, not to be. Ma Cousine was, this year, a freshman at AU, and she was caught up with helping some friends move out that afternoon.
Once she did finally show up, the four of us went out for Thai. On the way (I have no idea where were were - things not in walking distance of the house or certain Metro stops are kind of one big blur of city to me.) we had some sort of techno station blaring on the radio. I'm not overly fond of Rhianna, but the particular remix of 'S&M' we were listening to was actually pretty good.

But, as I was saying - Thai, pretty good place. We then went to see Source Code which was.... Hrm. Well. Look, I like looking at Jake Gyllenhaal as much as the next person, but... it was not a particularly amazing film.
In the same breath, I'm excited for On Stranger Tides and Thor. (I'm not usually such an unwashed plebe when it comes to movies. I don't even know.)
We got back from that and Ma Cousine went to go meet some friends, and then Aparato, Mačka, and I watched the second episode of the Doctor Who thing - MORE BADGER, with an added side-dish of awesome.
And then it was, once again, bedtime.

Woke up at around 1 on Sunday, and Mačka, Ma Cousine and I went to do some minor shopping. Not fancy shopping, shopping-at-Target shopping. We got home, and I went to evening church service with Aparato and Cousine.
Now, I was raised Catholic for a few years, but... I'm not. I don't consider myself Catholic, I don't identify as Catholic... but I never see these people. I figured I could do the decent thing and spend an hour with them.
It's also been a very, very long time since I was in a church for anything that wasn't a wedding or a funeral. Being in churches makes me nervous. I've never had that great of an attention span, and there's something about that Catholic Mass Incense that just makes me lose any chance I have at concentration. Then I get nervous that one of the really ardent older people will see me blatantly zoning out and think that I'm a heretic and try to have me burnt alive for heresy, and... well, I get nervous.
I might also add here that the church we went to was very elaborate inside, and I was very spaced out, and... all I could see around me were potential handholds.
The following text conversation took place directly after church with Ivan the Boyfriend:

(P) Well, I figure hell really is a forgone conclusion in my case, but… Still. I was in a church during mass going ‘it would be simple as fuck to get to that dome.’ lol.
(I) At least you didn’t start climbing? lol
(P) Basically.
(I) “LIZ! What are you doing?”  “I swear to god there’s a feather up there.”

It should be noted that I managed to not randomly free-run in the middle of Mass. I also didn't go to Communion... I don't care about ~desecrating the Sacrament~ or anything, it just would have felt... disingenuous, I guess.

We went to dinner at kramerbooks (having stopped to collect Mačka along the way), which took FOREVER even though it was delicious... and then we had to hustle back to the house so I could get my suitcase and get back to the train station. Père Du Ma Cousine had arrived just as we got there, though (he had come to collect Ma Cousine to take her back home for the summer). I literally had about 90 seconds to talk to him as I was running upstairs, and then back downstairs to the car.
We made it to Union Station with not a moment to spare - I ran back to the gate, out onto the platform, and onto the train. It left 45 seconds later.

I then came back to the hotel room once the train got in to Wilmington, and found that my cable was out.
Which isn't a big deal... I will watch TV when I have absolutely nothing else to do, but I do not watch it habitually by any stretch of the imagination. (I have recently begun watching television shows on Netflix, but that's not really the same thing as sitting down at a certain time every day or week to watch a certain show. If that makes sense.)
I decided to take a walk down to the river.
Along the way, I texted Ma Cousine to let her know that I'd gotten back safe. She texts back, "That's good. Also, apparently Osama bin Laden is dead."
I... didn't even know how to respond to that.
I sat down on a bench on the boardwalk to try to collect my thoughts, but... nothing was coming.
I walked back to the hotel room - of course my cable was out on that night of all nights.
So I fired up my netbook, found CNN, and waited for the live stream of Obama's statement to begin.

9/11 was the day before my thirteenth birthday. (Yeah, you know my birthday now.) Talk about a kick into your teenage years, right? Now, I'm not frothingly political, I'll admit, but there was really only one thing at the forefront of my mind:
Not that bin LAden wasn't a horrifically awful human being, but... at this point, was he really anything more than a symbolic figurehead? Please, someone feel free to prove me wrong on that point - and I don't want that to seem like I'm picking a fight with The Internet on that. If I'm legitimately incorrect in my assumption there, please correct me.
I've never felt so unaffected my the death of a human being, though. Like... I just cannot even care, for some reason. I remember airports before 9/11, and bin Laden's death isn't going to make the full-body scanners or the invasive searches go away. Nothing has changed.
I mean, call me cynical, but... will airport security decrease? Are any of the wars in the Middle East suddenly over?
No.

On that note, I think it's dinner-time, and I leave you with a song that always reminds me of the D.C. Metro lines.

Some words on things that I have read since I've been in Delaware, and the weeks leading up.

Now, my job itself is not exciting. Not to spoil what it is precisely, let's just say that I'm a glorified receptionist, and that I have a lot of down time.
Prior to this job, I spent a number of years in the food service industry. I got out because... I was not a lifer.
My current job involves providing customer service with large swathes of down-time inbetween.
For the first time in a few years, I can just sit around and read all day.

First things first, I flipped through The Club Dumas. This is the book upon which the film The Ninth Gate was very loosely based. (VERY loosely, it turns out.) I'd always liked the movie (despite my long-standing antipathy towards Roman Polanski), and I figured it was high time to get around to the source material.
The book took my brain and punched it in the face. Gone are almost all traces of the Satanic themes of The Ninth Gate, and in comes a long, fanciful riff on themes from much of Alexandre Dumas Pere's work.
Needless to say, I am hopelessly in love with the book now.
The Three Musketeers and related works by Dumas are, without a single doubt, some of my favorite literature in the whole wide world. Not only that, but I will never say 'no' to watching filmed adaptations of the same stuff. I went in expecting Satanism and the occult, and I came out with a book nerd's ultimate mystery adventure story.

I ripped my way through the first three books of Mercedes Lackey's Bardic Voices series next. I'd read them before, but it had been quite a few years.
I will admit that Lackey's work tends to be a little bit too heavy-handed when it comes to overly-lucky protagonists and romantic themes, but at the same time... she gives a lot of detail to the settings and clothes, so I think that that aspect is fascinating enough.
It's not deep, challenging reading, but I like it well enough.
(One of her Elementals novels, The Fire Rose, is a wonderful play on Beauty and the Beast. It runs in to a lot of the same problems that I mentioned above, but the characters get a little bit more fleshed-out than the Bardic ones tend to.)

I next made my way through The Complete Sherlock Holmes, though I admittedly skipped a few stories here and there. I can honestly say that for as much as I LOVE the stories for the most part, I also love the recent Guy Ritchie adaptation quite ardently; I always felt that the Holmes stories could have used a little bit more actual adventure.

I then moved on to Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. I know that a lot of people aren't fond of the emerging mash-up genre, and I can respect that. Someone taking a work (or historical figure) that you loved as-is and splicing in weirdness... I can see how that would be off-putting. At the same time, though, I find that I actually quite like the whole idea.
Theres not a whole lot I can say about the book at hand, honestly, than that making Abraham Lincoln a vampire hunter is almost as good as making him a werewolf hunter, in my eyes.
(See also: Abraham Lincoln Hates Werewolves, a companion piece to the Jesus Hates Zombies comics.)

The last book that I read before I left was Game Of Thrones, which was... well. Lots of things.
Firstly, I'd have to say that George R. R. Martin has a wonderful sense of intricate world-building. Next, I'd have to say that it took me until I was nearly finished with the book to realize that this entire book was pretty much a complex series of setups for what I imagine are going to be a very long-reaching set of payoffs.
There is some body horror, though, and that was distressing as hell. (WHAT THE FUCK, DANAERYS, is all I'm going to say here.)
I honestly think, though, that instead of 'A Song Of Ice And Fire', it should be re-named 'A Song Of Ice And How Tyrion Has Far, Far Fewer Issues Than Any Of You Crazy Bastards'.

On the train, I started Snow Crash. This is my first-ever Neal Stephenson, and I have to say that I'm a little bit in love with it. The way he slowly layers more and more nuance onto his characters, and the way he can invoke wonderfully-formed settings without going into gratuitous detail is amazing to me.
On the other hand, he goes into just enough detail during Hiro's conversations with the Librarian regarding the nature of human language and religion that I was astounded. I'm not going to spoil anyone here, but this book is basically flawless, as far as I'm concerned.
(If you have previously read this book, I might recommend the Otherland quadrology by Tad Williams. It is definitely not as casual of a read, by a LONG SHOT, however.)


I'm going to be starting A Clash Of Kings (the second book of Ice and Fire) fairly soon, so maybe we'll have that one posted about in short order.

In the mean time, it's time for bed - I'll most likely be posting again tomorrow afternoon. (THIS afternoon, I suppose I should say.)