Valdivia Weekend

Today I'm getting the remainder of my Chilean photos up, so that I can start posting Hungary photos guiltlessly!

 Space: truly the final frontier.

 GIVE ME ALL OF YOUR KUNSTMANNS.

 I went to the movies (to see Oblivion, it was forgettable but still worth it just to be in the theater). Out of all the movie posters this one was my favorite translation: from Cabin in the Woods to THE CABIN OF TERROR. Perfect?!

 "Further places remain to discover... Use your imagination!"

The wonderfully underwhelming Kuntsmann brewery tour.

 This is all we got to see of the actual production!

 But at least it came with this complimentary beer and mug.

And we got to hang out with these super creepy German mannequins: WIN.

Marijuana legalization rally/march in downtown Valdivia. Perfect end to the weekend.

So.

I moved to Hungary. More to follow.

Watched: Jane Eyre (2012)

Romantic. Mysterious. Beautiful. Painful. I love this version of Jane Eyre, perhaps even more than all the others.

Watched: X-Men:First Class

So super duper great! Really just a breath of fresh air for X-Men fans everywhere after the so-called "Ratnerfucking" (not my phrase although I don't disagree with it, if you know what I mean...) of X-Men 3: The Last Stand and whatever that abomination that was Wolverine: Origins was. I'm not a big comic-book reader and never have been, but I loved the Saturday morning cartoons and I love the mythology of the X-Men, so I enjoyed them going back to the beginning, both creatively and story-wise. Also for those who have seen the new Wolverine movie (which I obviously did because 1. I am hopeless. and 2. Even a bad X-Men movie is still an X-Men movie!!) know that in the credits tag they're building up to the sentinel storyline, which is going to be really great, I think!

So yeah, this movie is enjoyable and is liberally peppered with great great actors (January Jones aside). It of course has Michael Fassbender, one of my absolute favorite actors and beautiful beautiful man as Magneto, so if the movie had just been him traveling the world killing Nazis, I probably would have been screaming from the rooftops that it win ALL the Acadamies! But it also has James McEvoy as pre-Professor Xavier, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggart, a glimpse of pre-X-Men Stryker (literally he's in it for like a second), a glimpse of Nightcrawler's papa, Kevin Bacon doing a whole super-nuclear villain thing, and a whole bunch of delightful 60's fashion. What more could you ask of a movie! After re-watching a couple of times I don't even mind Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Mystique that much anymore. At first she just seemed really awkward and not-as-strong a player as McEvoy or Fassbender and I still don't think she's at her best, but after seeing her give way better performances in Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook (I still haven't seen Winter's Bone, I'll get around to it eventually!) I think she must have been going for somewhat ungainly. Hopefully in the next movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past, she'll be able to become much more of the major operator that Mystique eventually ends up being. Time will tell!

But in the meantime, at least we have X1, X2, and this movie, which are all good times!

 

Watched: Deadfall

Charlie Hunnam is so pretty, isn't he? That's mostly what I took away from this otherwise kind of by-the-numbers crime thriller. It's a bit of a half-baked movie full of characters who are only sort of actualized. Which is not to say it's not enjoyable (double negative, what!); it's enjoyable. But in a bland, this-will-pass-the-next-hour-and-half-with-basically-the-requisite-amount-of-entertainment-for-this-kind-of-movie style. It's just... fine. Not terrible, not wonderful. It's just okay.

Watched: Take Shelter

Is there nothing that Jessica Chastain is not perfect and beautiful in?? She is truly my ginger lady hero. I've now seen her in Tree of Life, The Help, Zero Dark Thirty, Lawless, and this movie, Take Shelter. She's never been anything less than exceptional in any of her parts. Really love her an awful lot. It's kind of weird that her success just seemed overnight, like two years ago she was on Law and Order and that's about it and now she's huge! But I'm not complaining.

Oh, but the movie. The movie is great! Very upsetting with a lot of strange dream-state imagery that makes sense and yet does not sense, in the way that dreams do and don't simultaneously. Michael Shannon is perfect as well, he's another one who is just unfailingly talented. I saw in Superman: Man of Steel earlier this summer and loved him as Zod. Apparently he's great on Boardwalk Empire as well, which I have never watched but which is on one of my many, many lists of things to watch. Anyway, he's great. Everyone is great in this and I was left feel kind of sad and disturbed but also [SPOILER ALERT I GUESS BUT SO ARE A LOT OF THE PICTURES IN THIS BLOG POST AS ARE MOST OF MY BLOG POSTS SO YIKES, WELCOME TO MY BLOG I GUESS] redeemed by Shannon's character's redemption. Even if it is going to be almost immediately followed by his destruction. Worth it!

The child actor is also not horrible. Perhaps because her character is deaf so she doesn't really speak.

Watched: Felicity, Miscellania

People actually liked this show?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?/????????!!!!?????

After watching a little over three seasons with my sister-in-law and brother, I have to say, I think this show is 92% garbage. The other 8% is composed entirely of Javier, Megan's bitchy comebacks, and the, like, 3 times in four years worth of television that they let Scott Speedman do something other than mope, sulk, menace, or wallow. It did breed this wonderful gchat conversation with my brother, however. You may not fully grasp the hilarity of this (for me) unless you've suffered through the show in one prolonged viewing, as I have. In which case you understand that one verbal crutch that the writers of Felicity use beyond the point of cliche and into self-parody is characters asking each other permission to talk, when what they really want is permission to speak at that character, unchecked, while they unburden whatever that episode's maudlin revelation is. It becomes at first funny, then annoying, then enraging, and then funny again. And that's just per episode. That being said, here is the conversation I recently had with Ben:

Emily: hey
can i talk to you for a second?

Ben: yeah
fire away

Emily: i just want to talk
do you have a minute?

Ben: yeah
about 30

Emily: can we go somewhere and just talk?

Ben: then I gotta catch my train
hey
I see
what you'redoing
here
goddamnit
I fell right into your trap

Emily: i am laughing so hard
i am crying
oh my god
that was so great
i have never been prouder of myself

Ben: I
I have nothing
no reason left
to live

Emily: hahaha
it's okay
felicity gets the better of all of us, in the end

If you don't understand the humor of this, thank your lucky stars. You've been left unscathed by the horror that is this show's writing.

In other news, I'm back early from Chile. It's a long story. It's sort of boring and sad, but ultimately okay. At some point I will post the last of my pictures from Lago Ranco, Valdivia, and Bariloche (Argentina). But that's about all I have to say about my time there. At least for now.