Movies and More (17)

Okay, Here is my non-professional movie review from last night. We watched two movies. One I loved and one I thought was so weird, it might be a cult film. The first movie I watched was Departures, the foreign film of the year for 2009, received a Academy Award. I loved that it was Japanese with English subtitles. This was a good movie to watch last night because as much as I love watching movies with Brad, he doesn't have much tolerance for subtitles. He likes American films or all English language movies, John Wayne and all that! On the face of it, this movie seems simple, with themes of loss and redemption, but it is more complex than that. The cinematography is spectacular and what I kept thinking throughout was that it seemed to be set in the 1960's Japan but then I noticed laptop computers and the characters used cell phones. They had a huge flat screened TV in their rundown traditional Japanese home. The cultural setting was great because I know so little about Japanese traditions. Great flick. ****
The second movie we watched was Adaptations. This movie had Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage, and Chris Cooper acting in a farcical mental escapade about screenwriters. All I can say is this is not Meryl's best acting and this maybe why Nicolas Cage declared he was bankrupt. Chris Cooper received an academy award for best supporting actor for his role(2004).Nicolas Cage plays Charley Kaufman AND his brother Donald Kaufman. Talk about mental diarrhea! This is a Spike Jonze directed film. My son says he loves this movie cuz it is so weird. Go figure. VBM (very boring movie) Tonight we have three other movies to watch, although we probably will only get to one or two of them. One of them is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which was written and screenplay by...you guessed it...Charley Kaufman! The others are; Last Orders and Ladies in Lavender. I'll let you know.

Beeks? He and Max were happy to be up on the bed, getting lots of touches.They didn't seem to mind all of the mundane dialog. Today I took Beeks with me to Parkland for a little outting. It continues to rain here and so we are all getting a little cabin fever. I am soooo over Winter. I started researching places that we could vacation with our dogs. Websearching yielded a lot of entries, mostly for "pet friendly" hotels. This isn't what I want in a pet vacation. I want off leash, open spaces, dog friendly cabins in mountian/beach settings. Out-of-the-city vacations! I happend to find only a few sites that weren't soley hotels or retreat classes for people and dogs. I googled dog vacations. Next I will look through past issues of Bark Magazine to see if they suggest any. Three years ago Brad and I took a great vacation to a horse ranch in BC Canada. Then we had our two other Newfoundland dogs, Belle and Beau. We all had a great vacation on the horse ranch. My daughter inlaw suggested a website; smallanimalchannel.com. I went to that site and they had a link to dogchannel.com. It is funded by Dog Fancy magazine. I wasn't successful finding a link there eather but nice website. Check it out.

Max just now did the funnest thing. He and Beeks have been inside a little too long lately. They are like kids when they don't get enough exercise, they get rambunktious. They were really going to it, with Beeks running around Max, growling (friendly like)but both of them getting wound up,when Max started bucking. Only he kept his back legs on the ground and pounced up and down with his front legs. He did this in a circle, keeping his hind legs in the same spot. Beeks moved out of the way, and Max continued to pounce in a circle like he couldn't help himself,and how excited he was making himself. After about four complete circles, he stopped, gave a big sigh and total body shake. I think he didn't know what to think of his behavior either. I wish I could have filmed him. We once saw a young bison in Yellowstone, do the same behavior to a plastic yellow police tape that had been used for construction. It was just a hoot then also. We need to get outside! The weather report is for continued rain thru Monday. I know this is good for my flowers. I have Crocus and Daffodil coming up. Seems like it's too early for flowers, but I welcome them.