Edge of Tomorrow

Over the weekend we saw The Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt.  It was So. Good.  I highly recommend it.  It's one of those movies that's kind of better if you don't know that much about it, so I will not summarize.  It turns out it's based on a Japanese novella called All You Need is Kill.  What a title.  M doesn't like Tom Cruise but my love for him is eternal and everlasting.  I got so excited about Tom Cruise I watched Mission Impossible III on Sunday, pausing half-way through to browse the internet for pictures of Tom Cruise and Suri.  Then for a bizarre 20 minutes or so I fantasized I was Suri and Tom Cruise was my dad and he held me in his strong, powerful arms and protected me from the glare of the paparazzi.   I'm not proud of that.  Then I put Far and Away in my netflix queue - another fact of which I am not proud.

On Sunday night M and I watched Her, which I also thought was wonderful.  It really got me to thinking about consciousness and the body and I suppose I need to read some Alan Watts to follow up on all of that.

Right now I'm in Utah at a conference and I can't quite seem to get over the exhaustion of travel.  I am So. Tired.  Also it's really cold here.  But, it's awfully pretty.

Maleficent

This past weekend we went to Indiana to visit our families, particularly M's Gran, who isn't doing very well.  I find a good solution for high anxiety is the alluring, mind-numbing power of tv and movies, so my moms and I went to see Maleficent.

I'm not a big Angelina Jolie fan, but, I have to tell you, this is one of the greatest movies I've ever seen her in and certainly one of the top movies I've seen this year.  I thought it was super-fun to watch, I loved the visuals and the story and everything!  It really does for Sleeping Beauty what Wicked did for The Wizard of Oz (OMG, will there be a musical in a few years?  I wouldn't be surprised...).  It makes you think about the story in a completely new light, considering the entire tale from the point of view of the soi-disant "evil queen".

Without giving too much of the story, I'll say that the story begins in a magical land (near a norm-core land) where all types of fairies and magical beings live, and Maleficent is a young, winged girl who's inquisitive and kind and helpful and strong, etc.  And she meets this human guy from nearby who eventually fucks with her.  If there's one person in the entire world you shouldn't fuck with, it's Angelina Jolie, right?

If there's one thing I didn't like about the movie, it was the lipstick on Maleficent - it was kind of like Barbara Streisand's fingernails in The Prince of Tides... (yeah, I just made an uber-cool reference to a 13 year old movie nobody's seen) too distracting.  The whole time you're thinking, like, Does she have a tube of lipstick in her cape?  Where does she go to get more lipstick?  Sephora on the Glen?  But, otherwise I thought her look was totally amazing and a nod to the glamour of the queen in the 1959 Disney movie.