Twelfth Night!

I've been reading Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare for my summer reading. Scratch that - I've been practically memorizing Twelfth Night. I chose to read the play when I went to a Shakespeare Camp and I performed an abridged version of it. At the camp, I did many things with the text and with my lines specifically. I wanted to read the entire play and do all of the textual exercises with it. This summer, I've read the full play at least 5 times, and I'm pretty sure I'll end up reading it at least 2 more times. I've read it so many times that I've practically memorized it. Put all of this effort is not in vain! Each time I go through the play, I do a different exercise. Whether it's marking the lines of verse (iambic pentameter) with stressed or unstressed syllables, or paraphrasing the Elizabethan English into Modern English, each time I get something different out of the play. I know exactly what's going on in every act and scene, and now I can understand the Elizabethan English better than I could before. I've become officially obsessed with Twelfth Night, and consequently, with all of Shakespeare's work. After I finish working on Twelfth Night, I think I'll move on to Hamlet. I need to read it before it shows at the Folger Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C. I can't wait!! I found the above picture online the other day, I thought it pretty much got the gist of the final scene of the play.

Julie & Julia

About a week ago I saw the movie Julie & Julia. The movie is based on the true stories of Julia Child, the world renowned chef, and Julie Powell, a woman whose life was turned around when she created a blog with the challenge of completing all of the recipes in Child’s first cookbook in one year. The movie was fantastic and was well acted. I was inspired to write this blog after I watched the movie.

Today I was wondering if Julie Powell’s original Julie/Julia Project blog was still online. I typed in “Julie/Julia Project” into the search engine and found it. I was glad to see that much of the blog was like it was in the movie. The description under the blog title is “Nothing here but us servantless American cooks.” The description of the challenge is similarly similar. It was funny to see that she cursed more on the blog, because it reminded me of a line in the movie that her character had. At one point in the film, after her blog has become really popular and well known, and she’s been given offers to make books and movies about it, she receives a call from a journalist who tells her than Julia Child doesn’t like her or her blog. Julie is upset and asks her husband Eric, “Do you think it’s because I used the f-word occasionally?” I need to set aside some time to read the rest of her blog and both books (My Life in France by Julia Child and Julia & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell).

I find it hard to believe that Julia Child didn’t understand what Julie Powell was doing. Julie needed something to jumpstart her life. She hated her job, but she loved cooking. Powell set out to achieve a goal, and made sure that she completed the challenge by blogging about it. Blogging about it basically promised her readers that she would complete the challenge, and made her keep working at it. Although she came across challenges and meltdowns on the way, the end result was something better than she could have ever imagined. Her story was made into a successful book and film. If I were Julia Child, and was helping others without even knowing it, I would be flattered and would have eaten a meal with Julie Powell. I’m saying that now, but maybe if I were a world-renowned chef who was born about 100 years ago I would feel differently.

In conclusion, check out the blog! See the film! Buy the books!

The Met!

The other day my parents and I visited my aunt, uncle, and cousin in New Jersey. The second day we were there, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. My dad really wanted to see the Saint-Gaudens exhibit, so we went to the American wing and saw, among other things, his sculpture of Diana.


We also saw this gorgeous mantel-piece by Saint-Gaudens.


In that same room, I saw the Tiffany fountain. It’s an EXTREME fountain.


I loved the modern and contemporary art collections. We saw this machine. You have to press a button with your foot to start it. It goes for about 30 seconds. This is the only video I could find of it.



The period rooms were also a favorite of mine. We saw the Frank Lloyd Wright period room, and it was gorgeous. It reminded me of the time I went to Falling Water a few years ago. The period room was fantastic! There were beautiful glass windows, and there was a window seat that went the length of the room.


I noticed that like the guest houses at Falling Water, the period room had a Hiroshige print. I love Hiroshige’s work! This is not the print in the room, but it’s one of my favorites.


We also saw the Temple of Dendur.


It was gorgeous, and was built around 15 B.C., so imagine my surprise when I saw that there was graffiti from almost 200 years ago on the temple! I was amazed.


I was upset that we missed seeing the roof garden and the costume institute, but it was great to finally get to visit the museum. We could have been in there for weeks and we wouldn’t have been able to see everything in it! I really wish we could have stayed there longer. Maybe we will next time.

Zombie Lit!

Have you noticed that along with vampires, zombies are making their way into bookstores as well? Frankly, I’m a little bit tired of reading all about vampires, so I decided to look into some zombie lit. The other day I picked up The Zombie Survival Guide – Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks and I could not put it down. It was hilariously serious and deadpan. Giving descriptions of zombie’s anatomy, their strengths and weaknesses, how to kill them, what to kill them with, how to prepare for a zombie attack, how to fight the undead, etc. Although it was a little boring at times (it’s written like a typical guide, with repetitive subsections that give similar “explanations” and “insight” on dealing with the undead), all in all it was a good read. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself informing your friends and family about the need for the importance of being prepared for a zombie attack.
Still on my list of zombie books to read are:
• World War Z (also by Max Brooks, this book is an explanation of the zombie war, in which zombies outnumber the living, and humans become our planet’s only minority)
• Breathers – A Zombie’s Lament (your classic zombie romance: undead boy meets undead girl)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (this one looks hilarious! But I have to read the real thing first though)
• On the same note, just out recently is a book titled: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (same thing as Pride and Prejudice, I have to read the classics before I read their spoofs)

A List of Awesome Movies & A Movie Review

I’ve loved Japanese anime director and writer, Hayao Miyazaki, since the second grade, when a family friend got me Spirited Away for Christmas. From that point on came my extreme obsession with everything Japanese, especially anything having to do with the fabulous filmmaker. I love all of the characters in all of the movies, and I love the fact that he often has strong, independent women as the leading roles for them. He also believes in protecting the Earth and nature in general, and he demonstrates that in his some of his films as well. Here is a list of all the films I obsessed (and still obsess) over:

• Castle of Cagliostro (here’s the trailer)
• Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind (here’s the trailer)
• Castle in the Sky (here’s the trailer)
• My Neighbor Totoro (here’s the trailer)
• Kiki’s Delivery Service (here’s the trailer)
• Porco Rosso (here’s the trailer)
• Whisper of the Heart (here’s the trailer)
• Princess Mononoke (here’s the trailer)
• Spirited Away (here’s the trailer)
• The Cat Returns (here’s the trailer)
• Howl’s Moving Castle (here’s the trailer)

The other day I watched Miyazaki’s latest film, Ponyo (on the Cliff by the Sea) (trailer). It is a charming adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, “The Little Mermaid”. Only in this version, the little mermaid is a young fish-girl, and she wants to go up to land because she is in love with a five year old boy, named Sosuke, who also loves her. Sosuke names the fish-girl Ponyo, which Ponyo accepts as her new name (it’s a wonderful name when compared to the one her father had given her – Brünnhilde). Ponyo escapes her underwater home to be with Sosuke, but as a result, chaos breaks out at sea when Ponyo’s father is trying to get her back and the waves go out of control. (It doesn’t help that Ponyo is constantly changing from a human to a fish.) It was a good film, but it wasn’t quite as deep or multi-faceted as much of Miyazaki’s other work is. But it was still interesting and totally different than any children’s film we have here in the US. As usual, Miyazaki did a fantastic job of creating a completely different world from our own. As for the characters, the little kids were totally adorable and lovable. I was, however, finding it a little bit hard to like Sosuke’s mother. She loved Sosuke and was always doing what she thought was best for him, but she was sort of crazy and was always making unsafe choices (she drove like a maniac everyday and drove even more dangerously in the middle of a huge rainstorm). All in all, it was a really cute film, perfect for seeing with your five year old cousin or taking to a babysitting job.

"Daylight" in a club, "Lights Out" in the summer........

Here’s my first posting! I didn’t know exactly how I wanted to start off my blog, but I wanted to start writing, so I decided to just write a post about music on TV and in the movies. There have been lots of really cool songs in advertisements and movie previews lately. Here are some of my favorites:

· As seen in the Bacardi Mojito commercial, here’s “Daylight” by Matt and Kim (you should check out the commercial, it’s really cool):

Here's the commercial

Here's the song

· “Thinking Drinking Sinking Feeling” by Slow Club – as seen in the Lays commercial where the potatoes blow up like fireworks and all of the little kids catch the potato chips in containers (if only it really worked like that…):

Here’s the commercial

Here’s the song

· “Lights Out” by Santagold – as seen in the Bud Light ad titled, "It’s Not Summer Until You Bring Out the Beer":

Here’s the commercial

Here’s the song

· “Show Me What I’m Looking For” by Carolina Liar – as seen in the preview for the upcoming movie Post Grad:

Here’s the trailer

Here’s the song

· “Us” by Regina Spektor – as seen in the preview for the movie 500 Days of Summer (this music video was the only one I could find that wasn’t a live performance):

Here’s the trailer

Here’s the song