the 3rd house party hostess: 3rd House Party Movies & Books

Che rides...

Sun, 17 Oct 2004 00:37:27 GMT

Cinematography of South America: gorgeous

Gael Garcia Bernal: también

Rodrigo de la Serna: very entertaining

La Poderosa (the motorcycle): hilarious

The story: Interesting; rambling like a long road trip, with lots of the very small moments and discoveries that cumulatively add up to a portrait of a young man on a journey encountering things that will change him profoundly and set him on the path to the myth – but all before the myth: a sensitive, intelligent, complex, and sickly soul just forming, just becoming a man. I should also say it’s often very funny.

Resonance for today: The injustice in the world, sometimes appallingly cruel, will always call forth some movement to counter it. In this case communism, in the current world, terrorism. These movements create their own injustices, of course. But so long as the powerful refuse to recognize and address the real issues, to hold their own power and that of their friends as their own birthright with any means justifying the end of staying in power at the expense of others, we will continue to have revolutionaries – terrorists of our day – striking out to try to call attention to and redress the problems. (The movie, by the way, addresses Che’s life long before he becomes a revolutionary. What may happen with similarly bright young men today encountering today’s injustices, much of which they can point to the West, to the U.S., as either being responsible for or supporting?)

Venue: Avon Cinema on Thayer St. in Providence, near the Brown University campus – kind of what Harvard Square used to be before it yuppified, only much smaller. With actual parking within a couple of blocks of where you want to go!

So, do I want to go to South America? You bet! But with more reliable transportation and a bit more cash, bourgeois as I am.

Maria Full of Grace

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 19:31:17 GMT

From a longer post:

Yesterday afternoon, in the rain, M made the relatively short trip up to Chelmsford and then we drove to see “Maria Full of Grace.” It’s about a young woman who becomes a drug mule as a way out of the bleak prospects of life working at a Columbian flower plantation. It’s harrowing at times, but a fascinating look at one immigrant’s dangerous journey to New York. The Columbian actress playing Maria gives a subtle performance as a quietly determined young woman who is uneducated but sharp enough to size up situations pretty clearly. But will her instincts and enough luck get her through? You pull for her all the way.

What is essential is invisible to the eye

Tue, 29 Jun 2004 17:41:42 GMT

Today is the birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince (from The Writer's Almanac). For the entire book online see this site, and note that it reads: "This site is best viewed with the heart."

     "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
     "What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
     "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
     "It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

Movies this weekend

Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:54:39 GMT

Last night I saw "Control Room," the eye-opening documentary about Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the US invasion of Iraq. It focuses on how Al-Jazeera (and other media outlets) covered the war, what they aired – which unlike US coverage showed a lot of bloody civilian casualties – and how they struggled with balancing their journalistic ideals with their Arab allegiances. It also showed the spin the US military spokesmen gave reporters. It asks what is more or less truthful, the coverage by Al-Jazeera or that of Fox News, and questions how much “truth” one can present in war coverage. It also presents some interesting alternative views of events, such as so-called Iraqis pulling down the statue of Saddam, which appears to have been staged. And there were several fascinating, complex characters as well.

Some ironies: The clips of Donald Rumsfeld saying of Al-Jazeera, “We are dealing with people who are willing to lie to the world to make their case,” got a big laugh from the audience in Cambridge where I saw it. Equally ironic was the clip of Bush deriding Al-Jazeera for airing footage of the American soldiers taken prisoner and then saying how well the US treats its prisoners and spouting platitudes about adhering to the Geneva Conventions.

After the movie, we walked a few blocks away and ate at The Helmand, appropriately enough. The Helmand serves delicious Afghani food and is owned by the sister of that most elegant of world leaders, Harmid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan. (Note to bald men everywhere: lose the baseball caps, here’s how you top a bald pate with style.)

If you get a chance, you should definitely see "Control Room." Oh, and eat at The Helmand, too, if you’re in the Boston area. Did I mention how delicious the food is?

---

I saw “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” Friday night. I hadn’t seen either of the first two Harry Potter movies and have not read one word of the books, though intend to, but I still enjoyed this movie very much. I love the director, Alfonso Cuarón, of "Y Tu Mama También" fame, and my companion said he thought this one was better than the previous – more atmospheric and darker. My only problem was that I was so cold in the theater that I thought one of the Dementors had swooped in and sucked my soul right out of me. These movie theaters should hand out blankets like they do on airplanes, especially in the summer when they turn the A/C up full blast.

After the movie, I warmed up with a glass of wine and some yummy grilled fish at the nearby Outback Steakhouse while my companion tried out his pantomimes of characters (human or otherwise) from the movie for me to guess. I’m afraid I was very bad at it, mainly because I didn’t know who anyone in the movie was, really, this being my first exposure to the stories. The only one I could imitate was Harry (okay, just make two circles with your fingers and put them around each eye – I know, very lame). Then we came home and watched the Red Sox come from behind to beat the Giants, heh heh.

Summer reading

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 17:34:03 GMT

I have about 80 pages left to go in Middlesex and could have stayed up reading it into the night last night except that my eyes were already tired from working at my computer all day. I recently reached a crucial, pivotal stage in the story, which means I don’t leave it entirely when I put it down. It stays with me, unsettling my dreams at night and making me feel during the day like I’ve forgotten something, like I had a conversation with a friend interrupted and I need to call her back. But this also helps me pick it up and get right back into it – say, a few pages while eating my lunch or a few paragraphs during commercial breaks in my telenovela. I think I’ll miss it when I’m done.

So what to start after this? I have a copy of The Lovely Bones I’m planning to read. I also want to read The Prince of Providence. Any suggestions? What’s on your summer reading list? Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction for summer reading? Light reading or heavy? Or is it any different during the summer from the rest of the year?

Update:

Yikes! The New Yorker summer fiction issue just arrived. I guess that solves that problem!

Wings of Desire

Sun, 06 Jun 2004 03:40:19 GMT

From a longer post:

Wings of Desire

I saw other winged creatures tonight on cable – they were showing Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire,” one of my all-time favorite movies. I saw it when it came out, in the theater, and it’s one of those movies where you walk outside afterwards and all the world has changed. Set in Berlin (1987 movie), it’s about an angel who falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist and decides to become mortal. He wants to experience the transient things of a mortal life – the actual taste of an apple or a cup of coffee, to know what color is, to feel the cold on his hands, and of course the experience of love. All the beautiful things that we take for granted, things that we fear losing and yet fail to fully appreciate when we have them.

I missed a lot of the movie this time, because I was home and therefore distracted with some of those very mortal things – making the spaghetti sauce, a little later than I planned; explaining to my housemate what she missed because she came in late; and talking with her about things of more immediate import than some of the endless ramblings in German (the angels listen in on the thoughts of mortals, but these being German mortals there is some heavy shit going on in there!). Peter Falk is wonderful playing himself. And Bruno Ganz, the angel who falls in love, may have the most beatific smile I’ve seen on screen.

By the way, there was a Hollywood remake you may have seen, “City of Angels” with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan. I was prepared to hate it, but I think they did a pretty good job of transporting the basic story line to a completely different time and place and sensibility.

Good Bye Lenin! and Don Juan de Marco

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 18:20:51 GMT

From a longer post on June 1st:

Saturday night I went to see “Good Bye Lenin!” with some friends. It’s about young East German man, Alex, who tends to his mother, an avid socialist who had a heart attack and fell into a coma just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. When she wakes up, the doctors fear her heart is too weak to withstand the shock of finding out how much the world has changed. So Alex goes about trying to restore the past in their little apartment, including refilling old socialist-era pickle jars that aren’t sold anymore and so on. The well-intentioned scam becomes harder to keep up, requiring more elaborate ruses. It’s often very funny and at other times quite touching. We all enjoyed it.

Sunday night my housemate Kathy and I watched “Don Juan de Marco” with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando on some cable station I’m now getting. What a wonderful movie! Kathy hadn’t seen it before, and I hadn’t since it came out almost 10 years ago. Funny, enchanting and romantic.

Reading: Middlesex

Sun, 30 May 2004 18:40:41 GMT

Passages of delightful writing in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex bring a smile to my face every time I pick it up. I’m not quite halfway through. Here’s a bit I just read… In the midst of telling the story of his birth – after the epic story of his ancestry – the narrator (a hermaphrodite) pauses to reflect:

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever…

– from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction

I'm Not Scared

Tue, 25 May 2004 22:28:51 GMT

From a longer post, the movie review part:

I’ve had a very busy weekend to make up for a very slow week. Friday night I saw the Italian movie, “I’m Not Scared,” which I really enjoyed. The story is seen from the eyes of a 10-year-old boy and it’s a wonderful and dark tale, and the visuals of the fields that he and his friends play in and other scenes are beautiful and sometimes astonishing. It reminded me of a really good children’s book complete with gorgeous illustrations of the lands and some of the beasts that live on them, human and animal, all very real.

Bon Voyage

Tue, 25 May 2004 22:26:25 GMT

From a longer post, the movie part only!:

After dinner, we went to see “Bon Voyage,” which was quite the romp – a French farce set in the 1940’s in Paris and Bordeaux just before the German occupation – hey, how fun is that? Very fun, actually! Maybe it was more enjoyable because we weren’t expecting a lot, but I’d recommend it – very entertaining.

What Princess Bride character are you?

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 23:54:34 GMT

I love The Princess Bride! (Via Twilight Cafe.)

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

Curious incidents in the night-time

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 21:02:10 GMT

There’s been a discussion over on Susurra de Luz’s blog on whether when you look up at the aurora borealis, or even at the moon and stars, do “you find it more reassuring to feel puny in the context of the universe, or more terrifying?” I said I rather like it. I posted a quote in the comments that I found last night in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I just finished it today – a wonderful read. The narrator, Christopher, is a 15-year-old autistic boy:

And when you look up at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don't even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in your life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means that they are so small you don't have to take them into account when you are calculating something.

Besides giving a fascinating look at the world from the perspective of an autistic person, the writing is interesting in that the narrator’s detachment helps illustrate the old writing dictate: show don’t tell. For example, when Christopher describes his parents reacting to him, as in “Father put his hands over his face,” it gives you a simple but effective clue to their frustration in trying to cope with him. The exchanges are often both poignant and funny at the same time:

     It was 5:54 p.m. when Father came back into the living room. He said, “What is this? but he said it very quietly and I didn’t realize that he was angry because he wasn’t shouting.

     He was holding the book in his right hand.

     I said, “It’s a book I’m writing.”

     And he said, “Is this true? Did you talk to Mrs. Alexander?” He said this very quietly as well, so I still didn’t realize that he was angry.

     And I said, “Yes.”

     Then he said, “Holy fucking Jesus, Christopher. How stupid are you?”

     This is what Siobhan says is a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer. It is difficult to spot a rhetorical question.

Grab the nearest book meme - variations

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 14:19:40 GMT

Here's a meme that's going around (last seen at All About George):

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 23.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence on your blog.

I decided it might be interesting to select five:

This smell brings me back to flour paste and papier-mâché days in my Brownie troop and grade school.

from Keeping a Journal You Love

The sense of having met a kindred spirit comes when our energy vibrations connect both in tone and vitality.

from A Home for the Heart

When I looked up through the web of trees, the night fell over me, and for a moment I lost my boundaries, feeling like the sky was my own skin and the moon was my heart beating up there in the dark.

from The Secret Life of Bees

A good hostess will bring you one anyhow, but on some anterior level she’s thinking, “Sure, here’s one in your lap, schmuck.”

(on using Tráigame un café to order coffee; preferred: ¿Me trae un café, por favor?)

from Breaking Out of Beginner Spanish

I like the uniforms and the machines.

from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Waiting for bees

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 14:22:40 GMT

It’s been raining here in New England for days. Yesterday we got 3-5 inches (a real soakah!) and the forecast shows rain or drizzle through Saturday night. One good thing is that we need it. The other good thing is that it may have cured my insomnia, because all I want to do is sleep. Sleep, eat and read.

I finished The Secret Life of Bees last night. It’s been a long time since I’ve really gotten sucked into a good story and this book did that for me. I got a very strong sense of the characters, including the distinctive voice of its young narrator, Lily, and the specific setting of South Carolina during the civil rights era. The female empowerment and friendship themes were good, although perhaps somewhat idealistic. I’ve had discussions with some friends about the ways that females, particularly adolescents, can be really mean to each other. See Margaret Atwood’s chilling Cat’s Eye for the other side of the story. But this was a different story, and intentionally uplifting. Here’s a passage:

“All this time I just figured you liked pink,” I said.

    She laughed again. “You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart—now that matters. The whole problem with people is—”

    “They don’t know what matters and what doesn’t,” I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

    “I was going to say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.”

A week ago we had a couple of lovely warm days. I dragged my patio chairs up from the garage, dusted them off and put them out on the deck. Then I made myself a cup of tea and brought my book outside to read. I’m looking forward for a return of that kind of weather. And I imagine the return of our local bees will soon follow.

Food and love

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 13:07:36 GMT

I didn’t get to see “Monsieur Ibrahim” yesterday because my friend had to bail on me. But last night the Sundance channel was running “Mostly Martha,” which was on my list to see. I enjoyed it very much – food and love, love and food. My kinda movie. (My kinda life. Damn, I need to marry an Italian!)

It was interesting also to see how sometimes family finds you. Martha, an elite chef, has everything tightly under wraps when two things happen to change everything: her sister dies and she suddenly has to care for her young niece and the restaurant owner adds a boisterous Italian chef to the kitchen. I suppose it’s a bit predictable what will happen, but I still found the way Martha slowly softens and lets these two into her life heartwarming.

Movies to see

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 23:34:40 GMT

I'm planning to see a couple of new movies this weekend: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Monsieur Ibrahim.

I also recently put together a list of movies that are now out on DVD that I managed to miss in regular release. I find when I go into a video store I end up standing there with my mouth open staring at all the choices but forgetting the ones I wanted to see but missed. So here's my list so far, with Rotten Tomatoes' tomato-meter ratings (% of critics recommending a movie):

~~Mostly Martha~~ 86% √

Ghost World 92%

Lantana 91%

~~Shattered Glass~~ 91% √

Nine Queens 92%

Russian Ark 89%

Read My Lips 96%

Time Out 95%

The Taste of Others 100%

Some good reads

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 11:17:43 GMT

I’ve been looking for a good book to get into, as opposed to the deluge of newspapers, weekly New Yorker’s and of course lots of online reading I wade through every day. The last book that I tried to read and got partway into before giving up was Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. I admired the writing but it was incredibly dense and peculiar and hard work to get through.

Yesterday I picked up The Secret Life of Bees and read the first 50 pages last night. I’m really enjoying it. I’ll try to write my impressions when I’m done. I also picked up The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, written from the perspective of an autistic boy. I read bits of it in the bookstore and the writing is delightful. Looking forward to it. Also on my list to read is Middlesex, which has gotten great reviews; it’s now out in paperback. And I’m waiting for The Lovely Bones to come out in paperback. Guess I’ll be spending a lot of time with my nose in a book.

My housemate has been going through my bookshelves and reading some of my old favorites. Right now she’s reading The Sixteen Pleasures, set in Florence in the late 1960’s. It’s been many years since I read it, but I can vividly recall scenes – the intricacies of book restoration and art restoration, cafés in Florence, and those pages of priceless medieval smut bound into an old prayer book. She also read my copy of Smilla’s Sense of Snow, another great one for learning things – the different kinds of snow, the cultural conflicts between Greenlanders and Danes in Denmark – while getting propelled along in a thriller. And she read the very unusual The Giant’s House, by Elizabeth McCracken – good story.

One other book I’ve been looking for is my copy of Kent Haruf’s Plainsong. I must have lent it out to someone. That book has some of the loveliest understated writing I’ve ever read. I’ll have to try to track it down.

The Cooler

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:47:54 GMT

Last night I was in “The Cooler” – the movie, not the local weather pattern (more on that later). William H. Macy plays a guy who is such a loser that his bad luck rubs off on anyone he stands next to, thus his job as a “cooler” in a Las Vegas casino. The opening bit where he walks through the casino leaving ruination at one table after another is hilarious. When he becomes involved with an attractive cocktail waitress, played by Maria Bello, his luck completely turns around – as does his ability to “cool” a table. Thus the dilemma of luck. Alec Baldwin is superb as Macy’s old-school casino boss, a vicious thug with a heart, of sorts.

It made me think of my post last week on luck, and the four tips for being lucky. “Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

As for the weather, the high today will be in the balmy upper 20°s F. Wednesday and Thursday this week are predicted to have highs of 8° and 10° respectively. Highs. And the weekend looks like more of the same.

Mystic River accents

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 13:31:19 GMT

I saw “Mystic River” Friday night. Anytime a movie is set in the Boston area, the local gauge of whether it’s going to work or not is in the accents. It seems to be nearly impossible for actors to get the accent right unless they’re Matt and Ben or the Wahlberg boys who all grew up here. In “The Perfect Storm,” Marky Walhberg was one of the few who got it right among some atrocious tries. Some actors try to sound like the Kennedy’s, who have an accent all to themselves. Others sound like Vermont farmers, which is nothing like the urban Boston accent. So sometimes it’s better when actors don’t even attempt it because it’s just distracting.

In “Mystic River,” I thought Sean Penn did a good job with the accent. It didn’t sound overdone. Tim Robbins must have been good because I don’t remember noticing. Only Laura Linney stood out as having a really bad accent to my ear. Kevin Bacon, Lawrence Fishburn and Marcia Gay Harden mostly sounded fine, with maybe an odd note here and there.

I should point out that I’m not sure I could do the accent any more. I grew up around here, but I’ve been told many times by people from elsewhere that I don’t have an accent. I can occasionally hear it in myself when I’ve been spending time with people who do have accents. A few brewskis in a bah with locals will do the trick.

So other than that, how was the movie? I enjoyed it. It has a complex story line that keeps you guessing and the acting is excellent. I think the character development was the best part of the story for me – none of them are one-dimensional “types.” There seemed to be a lot more going on inside each of the key characters than what was immediately apparent and as the story progresses you wonder what that is. A good part of the satisfaction of the final scenes is just that – discovering what was underneath the surface all along. Director Clint Eastwood's interspersed scenes of the river's surface provide the perfect metaphor.

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 16:53:09 GMT

Preacher's friends recommend movies
There's a good list of the top movies that readers of Real Live Preacher recommended here. Many of my favorites are there also. I should put together a list of my favorites. But another day, another post...

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 23:47:01 GMT

Met State

I caught most of this cool short film by Boston-area filmmaker, Bryan Papciak, at the Waltham Open Studios today. I was walking past the studio space and glanced in, then couldn’t take my eyes off it. “Met State” was an official selection for the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, among other awards. You can view short clips at the Handcranked Film Projects site, or download the entire 10-minute film at the Sundance Online Film Festival site.

Here’s the description: “A short film exploring the graphic nature of derelict space through an experimental study of an abandoned insane asylum." It's appropriately spooky for this time of year.

Thu, 23 Oct 2003 00:35:11 GMT

New indie films take steps toward connection
This article in the Boston Globe talks about two of my favorite movies this year, "Lost in Translation" and "American Splendor," and a couple new ones I want to see, "The Station Agent" and "The Cooler."

In a year when many mainstream studio efforts have been box-office disappointments, audiences seem hungry for the bittersweet refrains these smaller films offer, their soulfulness and sense of loss. These films are superbly nuanced, to use a term that has come up again and again in cultural writing this year, consistently avoiding formula and breaking new ground.

There's a nice quote from William H. Macy, who stars in "The Cooler":

"Indies started off being about fringe elements of society... Now they're about things people find in their own kitchen or backyards -- the mundane things in life."

Right where I'm looking. (3rd house = the mundane, day-to-day)

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 14:53:01 GMT

Under the Grafton Sun

Yesterday I went with my friend Lori to see the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. There’s a lot to love – the scenery, Diane Lane’s performance, the always enjoyable theme of picking oneself up and starting all over again. Of course it helps if you have a ton of money and you’re stunningly beautiful. And serendipity sends you to Tuscany, where you happen upon a villa, with a handsome realtor, and you get it at a great price because… Well, I don’t want to give anything away. Just be warned that you have to squint away some real “oh as if” moments. Then it’s very enjoyable. Did I mention the scenery? And, gals, I mean all of the scenery.

Closer to home, it was 30°F overnight in Grafton. Flannel sheet weather. This morning it’s bright and sunny, but lovely as it is here it ain’t Tuscany. And my house ain’t a villa either. The movie didn’t make me want to move to Tuscany – I’m too practical for that – but it did have the fortunate effect of making me want to come home and clean, if not redecorate. It also stirred up my travel fever a bit, though I have to squelch that until the economy picks up. Something our heroine in Tuscany appeared not to have to worry about.

Italian weekend

Saturday night I went to a party in R.I. where we watched the original and the remake of The Italian Job. The original was made in 1969 with a very young Michael Caine. The remake was just released on DVD and features Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and Edward Norton. I nearly fell asleep during the original, partly due to having just stuffed myself with Marianne’s scones, cream and jam, and someone else’s pumpkin pie. (Hey, it was an Aussie tea and New England pie and Italy kinda night.)

The original often rambled pointlessly, and ended about as pointlessly, but the escape scenes with the Mini Coopers were great fun. The charming Michael Caine had it all over Mark Wahlberg, who I usually like but who was awfully bland here. The remake, which begins in Italy but otherwise is set in the U.S., was fast paced and suspenseful, more amenable to our modern attention spans. Unlike the completely embarrassing ditzy women in the 1969 version, Charlize Theron got to kick some butt in this one while being both intelligent and sexy. And the Mini Cooper scenes are just as fun in the remake as in the original.

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 19:34:55 GMT

I saw Lost in Translation yesterday (see reviews here). It was excellent, especially Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson as two dislocated Americans stranded in Japan. Great story and direction by Sophia Coppola. The movie had some very funny moments and also very touching ones. I really felt the two characters’ dislocation and loneliness. But on my way home I also felt a certain lightness and hope – sometimes you unexpectedly find a real connection with someone, and it makes all the difference in the world.