Three sentence movie reviews: Star Trek


I’m a minor consumer of the Star Trek franchise, which means I saw that movie where they saved the whales and a few episodes of the original series. I didn’t expect to love this movie, but I did! The first scene choked me up, the majority of the rest had me alternately smiling, laughing out loud, peeking through my fingers, or jumping in my seat; I can’t ask for more than a movie like this.

Bechdel rating: The movie has two women. Yep. Who talk to each other. Not really.

Leverage filming here. Lucky us.

In walking to school from the Max, I cross a parking lot and the attendant and I have our friendly morning wave. This morning, the parking lot was packed. I was puzzled, until I walked by the next parking lot I encountered and remembered that the TV show Leverage is filming here. These trailers for the production were taking up two parking lots, forcing the usual parkers into the first lot.
I know little about the show, aside from the fact that all the press releases state that it stars “Oscar winner Timothy Hutton.” To me, the fact that they have to advertise that Timothy Hutton is an Oscar winner doesn’t really scream, “I want to spend my time watching it.”

Here, they have commandeered the parking lot nearest to my school.
One of my favorite thing about movie/TV crews is their self importance. More than once, I’ve been walking down the street, headed toward my intended destination and had someone with a walkie talkie and a tool belt tell me in an arrogant tone that I will have to walk a different way “because we are filming.” Once, I had to circumnavigate an entire city block to get into the library because their “filming” was much more important than my returning my books.

This crew was no different. Every morning, from 9:45-10:15, the children at my school go into the North Park Blocks for “Morning Movement” which is a large motor movement P.E. thing that the teachers run. This morning was no different except that not one, but two teachers were approached by crew members asking them to keep the children quiet because there was “filming going on.” Seriously?

Seriously.

Houses and Plans

I first noticed this house when it was being renovated. It is a huge and beautiful house with a huge and beautiful double lot. I had plans to buy it and take in foster children and we would have a huge garden. They would learn self-sufficiency skills, I would get to run a large household–without giving birth to any children, the house would be full of life and all would be right with the world. Alas, it seems they are dividing the lot and putting in more houses. I’m a fan of infill, just not sometimes when it keeps me from double lots where I could have a stupendous garden.

Scenes from a bike ride

I meandered a bit on my way to Garden Fever this morning and caught these pictures.

My favorite kind of North Portland house: set back from the road, colorful paint, huge garden, and artistic touch.
The gate had these great trees sculpted on it. Notice also the cinder blocks keeping the gate from falling open. That would be a sign that the artist lives in residence and made this him/herself.
This is one of my favorite houses on N. Williams St. It looks very farm house-y and has a productive front yard with a great chicken run.
Taking a closer look, you can see that these hens are partisan.

Flower Communion

Flower Communion was today at church. I love this ritual. It is simple, but moving. Everyone brings a flower and places it in a basket, the flowers are blessed and everyone takes a different flower upon leaving. It was started in the 1920s in Czechoslovakia by Norbert Capek and brought to the United States in the 1940s by his wife. Unitarian Universalists adapt many religious traditions as part of their faith; this is one of the few that was created within the church.

Three sentence movie reviews–William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream


The fairies in this film were a bit too twee, and the title makes me laugh (did they think we would confuse it with the other guy’s Midsummer Night’s Dream?) I saw this in the theater, but was again reminded how Sam Rockwell (Sam Rockwell, of all people!) managed to steal an entire scene. Might I also observe that Calista Flockheart is unable to look anything but ridiculous in Edwardian garb?

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1999/william_shakespeares_a_midsummer_nights_dream_ver2.html

The only poem I’ve ever memorized

Juke Box Love Song
Langston Hughes

I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem’s heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day–
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

I studied Langston Hughes my junior year of high school. We each had to pick an American author to read for the year and I chose Hughes, partially because of this poem, partially because he was black, and partially because I knew that it would be easy to read the majority of his works because poetry goes down more quickly than prose. I was a lazy high school student.

I enjoyed reading Langston Hughes much more than I thought I would and so I will always be thankful for Mrs. Pirose and that year-long assignment. Though Mrs. Pirose and I didn’t get along. I ended up transferring out of her class three-quarters of the way through. Still, there was some good with the bad.

I am embarking on a new project. Each month, I will choose a poem to commit to memory. I think someone famous like Winston Churchill said that if you have memorized good poems, you will always have good company. On my bike rides back and forth to school, I have ample time to declaim to myself. Check back at the end of the month to see how I did with this month’s selection.