My life has become a series of ticking clocks, all set to ring in the next 7 to 11 days or so.
Leaving town, leaving the country, finishing an academic monster of experimentation, finishing another piece of work I’ve been tinkering with, all happening very much in the now. It’s a good feeling.
Just because your certified , doesn’t mean your qualified
It was my sister’s 18th birthday earlier this weekend and today we caught the new Sam Mendes-directed, Dave Eggers-and-Vendela-Vida-written dramedy called Away We Go. Worth seeing, I guess, but there are some definite issues.
I wanted to like this movie—I really did!—but the whole time I couldn’t get over how much the movie wanted its audience to dislike everyone except for the main two characters, Burt and Verona. It was as if the movie itself were a bully, chastising and criticizing a catalogue of characters loosely connected to the main couple. To see this display, one after the other, was troubling. They even mock the main guy’s father because he likes to use the word outstanding. And outstanding is a fine word! The primary virtue of this movie comes across in the couple’s affection and the reality that many young and good couples do go through this type of geographic confusion…though those two virtues aren’t enough to make a movie. Charming, sure, but at what cost?
In the past I’ve liked and defended some of Eggers’ work, though I trust him and Vendela a little less after this display that, in some ways, comes off as more than a little tasteless and vaguely mean in its smugness.
P.S.The Alexie Murdoch, despite being all right music, didn’t help the maudlin sentimental elements of the movie.
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
— Lao-Tze