Archive for the ‘movies’ Tag
I knew a boy…
I knew a boy named Thayer Mangeress. I had the good fortune of being close to him… alphabetically.
It’s rare that a movie completely blows me away. The description of Teenage Dirtbag read like the story of Clair and John from The Breakfast Club so I wasn’t expecting anything groundbreaking. This movie left me on the edge of really wanting the cliche ending, and then astounded me by showing me exactly the ending that had to be. It tore my heart out and left me cold in only the way the truth can. I would say that this movie is a display of what’s wrong with teenagers and high school but the story line continues on into Amber’s collage life. Really this is about our ability to break down barriers and face our fear of intimacy and vulnerability. Amber says it best at the end of the movie:
“Your life didn’t matter to you, but it mattered to me. I tried so hard to keep you from getting underneath my skin that I never stopped to see that it was me underneath your skin all the time. I killed you a little bit every day. I understand now what happens when you don’t give love to someone who needs it; eventually, they die.”
There climax of this movie is an incredibly underplayed scene at 1-hour and 6-min into the movie. You don’t realize how poignant this scene is until you finish the movie and see how it all plays out. The acting here is phenomenal. The screen is filled with tension that is beyond sexual. Desperation, passion, anger, and fear envelop the two characters for the 35-seconds of this scene. It’s the little things that make this scene resonate. The way Thayers head falls forward onto hers as if he were fighting something. The way her hands go up to touch him when their foreheads touch. The way she pulls herself back with her hands in fists again.
Against the stark white layer of snowfall
I see bright orange bits of flesh.
Shrapnel of an insane man.
Words fall freely from the mouth of madness…
White
And orange
And black.
Words on paper
Wet and wrinkled…
Bleeding.
Bleeding all over my head
And my arms
And the back of my neck.
I know right now there is a regret to be had here.
I breathe deep the fragrance of regret.
Bright orange
Frosty white
Snow-covered doom
Encircling me now.
Paella!!
This week has been a total whirlwind so I’m just now sitting down to make up for a ton of missed blog posts from the week. Ideally these would all be posted while they are still relevant but I can’t blog while life is happening.
Last weekend was my “Rex Manning Dayâ€; the paella festival!! The past couple of years I have organized a ride to ride out to the festival. With all the team drama this year, I opted not to do the ride. I was pretty torn about that decision at the time but I realized I had a much better time when I didn’t feel like I needed to “entertain†the people I convinced to attend. Amber and Audra came on their own but we still sat together. I made it clear to everybody my first priority was trying as many of the 24-paellas as possible. These ladies did a great job helping me get really close to trying all of them. After everything, I had a great time not having to entertain a bunch of people who could have cared less about paella.
The next day was equally busy with Bonnie’s baby shower in the afternoon and Ender’s game with Brian in the morning. On top of that, I woke up slightly hung-over, very dehydrated, and feeling like death. Ender’s game was better than I expected though it was tough to not think of all the things that I loved in the book that didn’t make it to the movie. My only real gripe was that Petra’s character was not as strong as in the book. She was sort of motherly and caring towards Ender in the movie, but in the book she’s just one of the guys. They also left out the part in the final battle where she breaks. I suppose I should read something into the fact that the woman was the one to break. The point was that Ender depended on her too much. It was sort of an analogy to Graff and Ender.