Review: Yojimbo

Up this week: Yojimbo.

The plot is relatively simple. A wanderer comes into a town split by rival gang factions. He keeps himself outside the action and plays them against each other, eliminating both elements and freeing the town. Sound familiar? It was remade as Fistful of Dollars by Sergio Leone, starring a then-up-and-comer named Clint Eastwood. Ring any bells? ;)

The story is actually based on a Dashiell Hammitt story "Red Harvest," published in 1929 with an American P.I. as the lead. In Kurosawa's version, the story is set in medieval Japan, and the wanderer is a ronin, a samurai without a master to serve. He's really rather an anti-hero. At the beginning especially, the ronin seems out for all he can take. You don't see how he's setting them against each other, just how he's trying to sell himself as a sword-for-hire to the highest bidder. Toshiro Mifune is wonderful as the ronin. Steals almost every scene he's in! You never really know how heroic the ronin is, or if it's all a game to him because he was bored. He just seems so amused by all that's happening in the town. And Mifune is one of the best at the scruffy, anti-hero, too-cool-for-words sort of character! His expressions are priceless, and he has a presence that is felt throughout the movie. It's so hard to imagine anyone else in that role. Mifune worked with Kurosawa on many movies, and they made a great pair.

Kurosawa created a great action movie, with surprisingly little action. The movie has a lot of build-up and suspense, leading up to the important action, which take up relatively little screen time. There's a lot of dark humor, and the result is a highly entertaining film. If you don't like subtitles, deal with it - this movie is worth seeing!

Like a lot of Kurosawa's films, Yojimbo influenced a lot of other movie makers. Watching this movie, set in medieval Japan, complete with Japanese sentiments and culturalisms, you can still see how easily it translated to an American Western. The deserted street scenes, dust blowing on the wind as scared townsfolk shut their doors and windows while the duelists gather... Just in Kurosawa's version, the duelists carry swords, not six-shooters. :)

Overall: 5 of 5. If you've never seen a Kurosawa movie, this is the one to start with. (The Seven Samurai, also starring Mifune, is excellent as well, but very long). Highly entertaining on it's own, and a must for movie buffs.

Z is for...

Zach!

Yeah, didn't have to think hard about this letter. :) Very convenient that my husband's name starts with Z (made it one less letter that I had to worry about!) AND 'Z' conveniently lines up with our 1 year anniversary (yes, we're still relatively newlyweds).

Nothing long and sappy for this one, just a good picture of him :) This picture is actually from before we met, when he and his folks were visiting Arches National Monument a handful of years ago (2003?). Still one of my favorite pictures of him.

Merry Christmas!

Yup, all I'm gonna post today :) I'll have pictures up this weekend, though!

Massive Knitting Update :)

I've been knitting like crazy recently. Have a lot of dishcloths to catch up on by New Year's Eve, am trying to finish Abrazo, and I'm still plodding away on the baby blanket (why do those things take so LONG??) It's worked out really nicely, actually, that I've had knitting time at work too, since the snow kept everyone at home for a while, besides knocking out my Internet and e-mail at work, and almost the entire post population is out of town for the holidays (seriously, who'd stick around here over Christmas if you didn't have to!?). The result is a very quiet work place, with plenty of time to knit in the afternoon after my day's work is done. So, here you go, the results of my hard labor:

From left to right:
Love to Knit (July), Redbud Leaf (August), and Elvish Leaves (mid-August).

Ironically, I didn't like the Love to Knit dishcloth at all. The pattern took too much focusing, besides taking extra concentration to make sure lefty-me didn't get it backwards. And it was just a HUGE dishcloth. I think it's the widest one we've done this year. (That's why it's striped - I ran out of the color I was working in). I like Redbud Leaf a lot. I'm not usually a fan of the picture dishcloths (like Love to Knit). I prefer the all-over pattern ones - much easier mindless knitting, good for TV watching. If every line is changing each time, you're spending more time counting stitches. Redbud Leaf was a good one, though. Nice and simple pattern, and a pretty, clean design at the end. Speaking of allover patterns, I like Elvish Leaves too. Not exactly mindless, with all the arcs, but still enough repetition within the rows to make it more relaxing. And it's pretty when it's done too :)

And again, from left to right:

Schoolhouse (September), Woven Cables (mid-September), and Frankenstein's Monster (October).

Schoolhouse is cute - could definitely see making it for some teacher friends I know. I really liked Woven Cables. I like cables anyways, and as a dishcloth, this one will be nice and scrubby (good texture). Frankenstein's Monster is actually pretty cute. He even has little stitches (took me a few moments looking at the final picture to figure out what those extra lines were!).

One more time, left to right ... well, there's only one on this row :)
Illusion Candy Cane (mid-November). I like illusion patterns, I'm finding. Fun stuff.

And Abrazo, which is all in one piece and off the needles, but awaiting all those finishing touches, like weaving in ends and the crochet trim around the edges. Should have all that done, and hopefully some pictures taken by this time next week:

No new pictures of the baby blanket, as it looks much the same as it did when I last posted about it :\ Still, it's coming along, though!

Y is for...

Yarn!

Couldn't go through the whole year without this knitting-related one! This is a pile of yarn that I took a picture of just because - no reason really. I was sorting my stash, trying to organize it :)

I've been knitting since I was about 10, when my grandmother taught me. I didn't pick it up seriously until I hit college about 8 years later :) Definitely stuck that time! I'm getting better all the time (isn't that always the goal?) and I love trying new things, but I also like instant gratification projects. Little bit of everything. I don't like color work so much, mostly because I'm very lazy about knitting in ends - so annoying. I like lace work and cables though - nice textured patterns :)

I'm not a yarn snob, mostly because I can't afford it. That's a side effect when you start knitting in college - you start knitting with a college budget! I don't mind the acrylics now, though I usually try to go for nicer acrylics (like Jiffy or Simply Soft, instead of basic Red Heart) or the inexpensive acrylic blends (Wool-Ease, etc). If I can afford nicer yarns, I try to splurge once in a while, since those yarns are just soooo nice! Sale shopping is key! I've been trying to work through my stash this year, though. My downfall in stash-building, is that I do buy yarn with specific projects in mind, not so much the straight-out impulse buys. The problem with that is that I knit slower than my stash builds up! As a result, I have a queue of projects waiting to be tackled! So, gonna keep trying to go through them (and probably keep that resolution going next year too, now that we're getting close to that time of year!). But, still gotta admit, I loves me yarn!

X is for...

Xing! Tank Xing 'round here :)

(I know it's hard to see in the picture, but the road says Tank Xing)

I live on an Army post, home to a Cavalry unit. Nowadays, obviously, cavalry isn't horses, but tanks and the like. So, to accommodate the tanks rolling around out there in them thar' hills, there are tank crossing signs along the main road leading into post. Rather a funny thing to get used to when I got here back in March (I'm a little more used to signs for deer and schoolchildren). The kicker, though, is that they use a lot of different pictures of tanks on all these signs!! The ones below are just a sampling. Makes me smile :)

(Sorry this post took so long. I've known what I wanted to post for X since we moved here, but hadn't had a chance to take the pictures I wanted until recently! Kinda held up my alphabet...)

Review: Quantum of Solace

Wow, haven't done a movie in a while! Have a few that I want to chatter about, though, so here's the first (I'll space out the others as we go along). Let's hit it off with Quantum of Solace.

Plot? Bond, James Bond. 'Nuff said. Yeah, there's some stuff about South American dictators and environmental asset control, and a secret organization that sounds something along the lines of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. from the older Bonds, but really, it's all about Bond.

Daniel Craig has officially won me over as Bond. My favorite Bond is still Sean Connery, and I like both Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan in the role, but Craig is definitely movie up the list of my favorite Bonds. I had first seen him in Sharpe's Eagle as a bad guy. Yes, an outright villain, and a reeeeeally creepy one at that. And heading into Casino Royale, that was the only image I had of him, not having seen anything else he'd done. So, was pleasantly surprised with how he handled the role. I wasn't opposed to him for the blond thing (apparently a LOT of fans were outraged by the idea of a blond Bond). Never really bothered me. I just couldn't shake the image of creepy Lt. Berry for a while. But, he has totally shaken that role and I approve of the current Bond. My favorite Bonds are the ones that aren't quite so campy (translation: not most of the Roger Moore ones, Thunderball, etc), so Craig's movies fit in beautifully with my Bond taste. Bond should have some dry humor, but not over the top punning, should look equally beautiful in a tailored suit and kicking bad-guy butt, and be rather cold and suave and aggressive and aloof and charismatic (yeah, I know, big shoes to fill). Craig: Check, check and check.

As a Bond movie, this is a good one. I've been very pleased with both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. I guess it's the current production team? Any good action movie should have enough plot to keep things moving along, but not so involved that you lose track of who's who. This, being a continuation of Casino Royale, has Bond still brooding over Vesper's death and betrayal. His way of finding peace? Kick bad-guy butt. It's very helpful therapy for him, then, that Vesper's death was tied to her connection with big-bad-secret criminal society. Gives Bond lots of bad guys to go after. He has a few tender moments too - another friend's death, some moments thinking of Vesper. I have liked the more human moments in the most recent Bond movies (like the scene in the shower in Casino Royale). I like it in the same way I like the newer Batman movies - still good action movies to the core, focused on beating up bad guys and saving the world even if the world doesn't know or appreciate, but with enough brooding angsty-ness to round out the lead. Makes Bond a little more than a martini-sipping, fast-car-driving, gun-slinging lust machine. Don't worry though - all that stuff's still there too :)

The action scenes were both really good and really frustrating. Some of them were awesome. I loved the last shot of the one where he's hanging upside down in the rope - great shot. But some were edited oddly - very close, very fast cuts. Made it harder to tell what was happening in the scene. In the opening chase scene, for example, it was hard to tell who was chasing whom, or really what was going on. And it didn't help that both cars were dark! Get a few scratches and busted windows on them, and a dark grey car and a black car are EXTREMELY hard to tell apart!

For Bond girls, Camille (played by Olga Kurylenko) was probably one of my favorites. She can hold her own in the fight scenes, and actually didn't hop into bed with Bond! I think that makes her unique in the realm of Bond girls. And no horrible "I thought Christmas comes just once a year" puns. Yes, Christmas Jones was one of my least favorite Bond girls - Denise Richards is just NOT believable as a Nuclear Physics PhD!!

The opening theme was unique. I thought the song was OK (a first for me - not usually a fan of Jack White) but it wasn't as slinky as a lot of Bond themes are. Just a thought.

Overall: 5 of 5. Good action, good cars, good gadgets, good suits. One of the better Bonds.