I'm not exactly sure when Kari and I started going to the movies. There was a time, early in our partnership, when we barely saw a few movies in the theater a year. Maybe it was because the movies we did drop the cash on were films like Just Married, Ashton Kutcher's epic masterpiece about opposites falling in love and honeymooning in Europe. But somewhere in Australia, in our loneliness and need to escape, going to the movies became a part of our lives. While we saw almost anything on our weekly Friday day off, it was in Sydney when we first started going to the arthouse theater for films that would eventually land on the Oscar list. I suppose this is when we really fell in love with film. And thus far, six years after boarding a plane and moving back home, we're still walking down the street to the movies. Thanks to the fact that we live with our friends and can monitor sit, we managed to see 27 movies in the theater in 2010, including most of the this morning's Oscar nominations. Here are my personal favorites (winners in bold).
BEST PICTURE:
The Kids Are All Right
Cyrus
The Social Network
The Kings Speech
Shutter Island
127 Hours
Winter's Bone
BEST ACTRESS:
Juliane Moore [The Kids Are All Right]
Natalie Portman [Black Swan]
Leslie Manville [Another Year]
Helena Bonham Carter [The Kings Speech]
Annette Bening [The Kids Are All Right]
Jennifer Lawrence [Winter's Bone
BEST ACTOR:
Leonardo Dicaprio [Shutter Island]
James Franco [127 Hours] [lead actor]
Christian Bale [The Fighter] [supporting actor]
Barry Pepper [True Grit]
Colin Firth [The Kings Speech]
John Hawkes [Winter's Bone]
Andrew Garfield [The Social Network]
Geoffrey Rush [The Kings Speech]
Jackie Earle Haley [Shutter Island]
BEST DIRECTOR:
Danny Boyle [127 Hours]
David Fincher [The Social Network]
Martin Scorcese [Shutter Island]
Tom Hooper [The Kings Speech]
Christopher Nolan [Inception]
Darren Aronofsky [Black Swan]
BEST SCREENPLAY:
The Social Network [Aaron Sorkin]
The Kings Speech [David Seidler]
127 Hours [Danny Boyle]
The Kids Are All Right [Stuart Blumberg]
Cyrus [Duplass Brothers]
Winter's Bone [Debra Granik]
Shutter Island [Laeta Kalogridis]
In the end, my favorite movie of the year was The King's Speech. Between the performances, directing, writing and cinematography, this film was the clear winner for me. The most fun I had at the movies was the Duplass Brothers', Cyrus, which made me laugh as much as any other movie this year (other favorite comedies included The Other Guys and Kick Ass). The biggest snub of the year - and I still can't believe it's not being mentioned - is Shutter Island. Maybe it was the early release, or the fact that Leo and Mr. Scorcese ALWAYS get nominated, but either way, I LOVED this film. The scene at the end still gives me goosebumps. "Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?"
January 25, 2011
January 21, 2011
After landing a beautiful piece of art from my talented friend Kate, I decided to make a frame for it out of our reclaimed wood scraps. With a saw, some glue and a router, it didn't take more than an hour to create the frame. I picked up some glass from our local stained glass shop for under $5.
The wood is from the Yorba Linda Regional Park in Orange County and after years of California weather, the Doug Fir has turned into a gorgeous silver rustic color.
The picture, Where We'll Be, shows an old cabin in the woods, among the trees. I envision it being somewhere far away, where a fire cracks and good food sits on the table. It's the exact kind of place Kari and I have ventured to over the years and I imagine it's where we'll be again.
To see more of Kate's amazing artwork, you can visit her Etsy store or her blog.
The wood is from the Yorba Linda Regional Park in Orange County and after years of California weather, the Doug Fir has turned into a gorgeous silver rustic color.
The picture, Where We'll Be, shows an old cabin in the woods, among the trees. I envision it being somewhere far away, where a fire cracks and good food sits on the table. It's the exact kind of place Kari and I have ventured to over the years and I imagine it's where we'll be again.
To see more of Kate's amazing artwork, you can visit her Etsy store or her blog.
January 10, 2011
January 5, 2011
I keep having this vision. Part trite and part hopeful, it's vividness hasn't escaped me for some months now.
I'm seventy years old, laying on a rickety mattress somewhere in the world, holding Kari's ever increasingly dainty hand. We are close to the sea, perhaps in a beat up cabin off the coast somewhere. She is laying next to me and we're laughing, giggling actually, about who knows what. Our aged bodies are weak and I can feel the fragility of my bones as I lay in bed, doing my best not to cough while I laugh. We are staring at the worn ceiling, with its cracks and spots and rugged beauty. The wind blows in from the open windows, the ceiling fan spins in vein.
We have very little in terms of money, or property or even possessions. Our will is somewhat laughable, which is precisely what we may be giggling about. We seemed to have stripped our decades of life and homes and living room furniture and tools and cars and trips down to a few unglamorous belongings. There are the books of course, which I hold dear, clinging to the Steinbecks and Chabons for how they made me feel and what they taught me about life. There are the postcards and patches, those increasingly significant collections that have been slowly growing since my boyhood, since my first trip to the Astrodome and my inaugural passport stamp. They remind me of my Father and Mother, who quietly pushed me onto the earth's edge, telling me it was okay if I didn't look back. There are a few paper pictures, still attached to handmade frames, each nearly equal in significance. There is the one of my three sisters and I with our Father, sitting in front of a cabin, all wearing funny faces. There are several of Kari and I through the years, the picture always taken by my outstretched hand, camera looking down on our sheepish grins. There are too many of the kids, way too many, because neither of us have the guts to let go of them, each one carrying a memory of one kind or another. There are other pictures perhaps, my vision only taking me so far.
Our kids are grown and gone and I miss them dearly. We worked at letting them go from the time our first daughter took off across the park without looking back, as if she would cross the city before noticing. Even now, as they have their own lives, own families, own traditions, there own way of doing Christmas, letting go is no easy task. I ask myself where the time went, and I can't believe I have fallen so hard into cliche. The kids turned out exactly like I thought and nothing like I thought, another one of life's complications, which after all this time seems appropriate and inevitable.
I glance over at Kari, her hair thin and short, and feel our aloneness. Through decades of spending time with family, of friends dropping in an out, of moving from one home to the next, here we are. Just the two of us. Alone together in a small room, fifty years after first bumping into each other. I can suddenly feel the weight of this one decision, the act of throwing myself into this spirited and tender woman so many years ago.
My influence on the world around me, after decades of depositing here and there, is mostly insubstantial. I left no great mark, especially considering the mark I thought I was going to leave in my early twenties. Between family and work and friends and the occasional walk to the theater, there simply wasn't enough time to do something grand. Simplicity and widespread influence never seemed to mix very well for me.
As I lay there, hands now folded together and resting on my chest, contemplating my past, mulling over the joys and heartaches, considering my life as I remember it, I am suddenly overcome by a comforting thought.
I am content.
I'm seventy years old, laying on a rickety mattress somewhere in the world, holding Kari's ever increasingly dainty hand. We are close to the sea, perhaps in a beat up cabin off the coast somewhere. She is laying next to me and we're laughing, giggling actually, about who knows what. Our aged bodies are weak and I can feel the fragility of my bones as I lay in bed, doing my best not to cough while I laugh. We are staring at the worn ceiling, with its cracks and spots and rugged beauty. The wind blows in from the open windows, the ceiling fan spins in vein.
We have very little in terms of money, or property or even possessions. Our will is somewhat laughable, which is precisely what we may be giggling about. We seemed to have stripped our decades of life and homes and living room furniture and tools and cars and trips down to a few unglamorous belongings. There are the books of course, which I hold dear, clinging to the Steinbecks and Chabons for how they made me feel and what they taught me about life. There are the postcards and patches, those increasingly significant collections that have been slowly growing since my boyhood, since my first trip to the Astrodome and my inaugural passport stamp. They remind me of my Father and Mother, who quietly pushed me onto the earth's edge, telling me it was okay if I didn't look back. There are a few paper pictures, still attached to handmade frames, each nearly equal in significance. There is the one of my three sisters and I with our Father, sitting in front of a cabin, all wearing funny faces. There are several of Kari and I through the years, the picture always taken by my outstretched hand, camera looking down on our sheepish grins. There are too many of the kids, way too many, because neither of us have the guts to let go of them, each one carrying a memory of one kind or another. There are other pictures perhaps, my vision only taking me so far.
Our kids are grown and gone and I miss them dearly. We worked at letting them go from the time our first daughter took off across the park without looking back, as if she would cross the city before noticing. Even now, as they have their own lives, own families, own traditions, there own way of doing Christmas, letting go is no easy task. I ask myself where the time went, and I can't believe I have fallen so hard into cliche. The kids turned out exactly like I thought and nothing like I thought, another one of life's complications, which after all this time seems appropriate and inevitable.
I glance over at Kari, her hair thin and short, and feel our aloneness. Through decades of spending time with family, of friends dropping in an out, of moving from one home to the next, here we are. Just the two of us. Alone together in a small room, fifty years after first bumping into each other. I can suddenly feel the weight of this one decision, the act of throwing myself into this spirited and tender woman so many years ago.
My influence on the world around me, after decades of depositing here and there, is mostly insubstantial. I left no great mark, especially considering the mark I thought I was going to leave in my early twenties. Between family and work and friends and the occasional walk to the theater, there simply wasn't enough time to do something grand. Simplicity and widespread influence never seemed to mix very well for me.
As I lay there, hands now folded together and resting on my chest, contemplating my past, mulling over the joys and heartaches, considering my life as I remember it, I am suddenly overcome by a comforting thought.
I am content.
October 4, 2010
My latest spare-time-project was this credenza for our dining room. I wanted to build it for as cheap as possible, so I picked up three pallets for free behind a local business that throws them away. Interesting, each pallet had a different IPPC stamp on them and they represented Germany, Spain and Italy. These pallets turned credenza have literally been around the world.
The top is made of reclaimed Java wood, which I had left over from the dining table that I built with my Dad. I tried a few new things including tapered legs, dowel joinery and doors, which proved more time consuming than I thought.
The top is made of reclaimed Java wood, which I had left over from the dining table that I built with my Dad. I tried a few new things including tapered legs, dowel joinery and doors, which proved more time consuming than I thought.
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