Watched: 乱 [Ran]

That Akira Kurosawa, what an actual legend. This is one I've been  meaning to watch for literally years, since I saw Seven Samurai and Rashomon and read that this one was the real masterpiece. And that argument is warranted (although I still love the creativity and questions about subjectivity posed in Rashomon best). This film is not only beautiful and epic in scope, it also seamlessly combines inspiration from Japanese history (the feudal lord Mōri Motonari) with western storytelling (King Lear) to tell a story about greed, violence, brutality, mercy and the tragic consequences of hubris. Pretty classic Shakespeare stuff, I'd say, and stuff Kurosawa is pretty fond of himself.

This is one of those rare films that is like three hours long and completely warrants it. Kurosawa takes his time, really digging into the characters and the setting and the history before letting the tragedy sweep through. It's worth settling in and devoting an evening.

Watched: Over the Top [Rifftrax]

This movie is so, so, so, so stupid. Words defy me.

  

Pretty cool child abuse there, Sly. Very cool movie, so inspirational.

Watched: The Dark Knight

Hot take: even though The Dark Knight is empirically a well made film (not just by superhero genre standards but as a fast-paced thriller/action film) I still find it a little bit boring. I can't tell you why, exactly. But whenever the Joker's not on screen I find my attention wandering. Christian Bale, despite his talents, has never been a particularly magnetic actor for me (outside of American Beauty) although the few moments of levity he's granted from the script are much appreciated in a film that does a LOT of monologues about the nature of man and evil and heroism and vigilantes. It's well-written, well-filmed, well-acted and yet it leaves me a little bit cold. 

Breaking it Up: Bratislava

"A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win....but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost."

 --Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Is that artsy enough of a quote for you? It is for me. But this is an artsy blog post. Because I'm writing about Bratislava, and I'm writing about a small town in the South Moravian region of the Czech Republic called Břeclav. But I'm also not really going to write about those things. I have some pictures, but you could probably find them on Google Images if you wanted to.

I had planned this trip as carefully as I could, so I bought a ticket on the Eurolines bus from Prague to Bratislava, Slovakia far in advance. The night before I was leaving Prague I had looked up the route to walk to the bus station, screen-capping streets and directions. I had calculated what time I needed to leave the apartment based on how long it would take me to walk to the bus station. But I hadn't factored in two elements: how the vicious cold of pre-dawn, mid-winter Prague and a solid 20 pounds of wintertime clothes stuffed into my backpack would slow me down. I also decided to deviate from the route I had mapped out, ended up on the train station which was across a highway from the bus station. Five minutes before my bus was leaving. So I made a new plan: bought a train ticket to Bratislava.


Dawn from the Prague train station.

Except then I made the exceptionally stupid decision (which I can only blame on Dayquil, my never-ending cold, and my own idiocy) to exit the train at Břeclav. Except that Břeclav is actually still the Czech Republic. And I walked about thirty minutes into the town before I actually accepted that I was not in Bratislava. Then I had to turn around (still in the freezing cold, still carrying my massive backpack) and return to the train station. Where I found out the next train was not coming for another hour. Except that it was delayed an hour. And then it ended up being an hour and a half delay. So I spent an interesting afternoon hanging out in the Břeclav train station bar, drinking my woes away. And then I finally arrived at Bratislava just as the sun was setting.

So all in all, one of my less successful days of travel. The next morning Cait, Christian and I went out to explore the city for an hour or so before it was time for us to leave for the airport.

Buying excessive amount of American junk food in a store we stumbled upon near our hostel. The people working in the store were kind of bemused by our enthusiasm but seriously, Reeses's and Kraft Mac 'n Cheese in Europe? Goldmine. 

Exploring the Bratislava castle from the outside/courtyard.... not going inside because it's a museum and nobody felt like paying.

And that was more or less it for our winter break, except for the night Cait and I spent in Skopje in a hilariously weird AirBnb where I decided it was probably time for me to leave the Peace Corps. It was a good time and also a bad time, thus my only getting around to actually writing this blog post seven months later. Although let's be honest, I'm not exactly a prompt or timely blog post writer.