Pre-marital Counseling

Nicole and I are now finished with our pre-marital counseling at Calvary Chapel, Pasadena and we're cleared for take off. We did our counseling with Pastor Tony, whom I haven't spent so many hours with since I was thirteen when he was teaching my junior high Sunday school class.

Two things he said were strangely surprising to me. The first one concerned the likelihood of divorced women over 40 years old getting married again. He said, "What are the odds of a divorced woman over 40 getting remarried?"

"Uh," says I, "It's not impossible..." This he chuckles at.

Says Pastor Tony, "The odds are that a divorced woman over forty is more likely to be struck by lightning than to get married again."

"How can this be?" I wondered. Surely women over 40 can still be charming and attractive and hook up for life with a suitable guy. Indeed, it is so. But the odds are apparently very low that ladies that age want to be bothered with having a husband anymore.

Says Pastor Tony, "Women do just fine on their own. They learn that they don't need men. What do you think is the average amount of time that divorced men over 50 stay single?" I don't venture to guess. "18 months," says Pastor Tony. Men that age don't know how to function on their own, they need somebody to take care of them.

The second thing that surprised me was the idea that women are physically weaker than men. Of course I know this, but I never think of it in terms of rest and needing sleep. I always assume that women like to take naps and sleep because it's their style, they like to relax and wear pretty things. I mean some of them like to wear pretty things. But tons of them like to go to the spa and to get skin treatments. I usually put their desire for rest and lots of sleep in this category.

It turns out that women physically really do require more sleep than men. I can't count the number of times I've become annoyed, while watching a movie, because some woman (could be Mom, could be a friend, I'm just speaking generally) I say, some woman says, right in the middle of the movie, "Gosh I'm tired. I think I'm going to go lie down and take a nap. I'll watch the rest of this movie later." What the frig?!! Aren't you the least bit involved in this movie I've picked out for you to watch? You're gonna go lie down, huh? Well that's the last time I try to introduce you to my world, you ingrate! Why do I bother trying to haul these Philistines out of their mundane lives and get them to think on higher levels? (sorry Mom.)

As I say, it turns out that they're actually tired; after a long day they don't feel like staying up late watching movies, they wanna go to sleep. I myself would prefer to prop my eyelids up with toothpicks and watch a couple more movies before going to sleep at 3 a.m., but (unlike me) they aren't physically designed to do this. Interesting.

Now I have to determine if Nicole was really tired when we turned off "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" right in the middle or if, as I suspected, she just thought it was disgusting. Or both.

Speaking of getting married, Nicole and I set up our wedding registries on the internet. We're gonna stick with Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Pottery Barn. Given my personality, it's not surprising that registering is difficult for me. Every time I try to put something on the list I hear a non-existent uncle saying, "Dang, you want me to buy you an $80 shower head? Whaddaya want that for? Why don't you buy a cheap one at the Target? What did you ever do for me? You're a loser." I saw a yogurt maker that I wanted, but I thought that folk would make fun of me for wanting to eat yogurt. And what's more, I don't deserve to be given a yogurt maker. What have I done to earn a free yogurt maker? Maybe uncle is right. Anyway, it's gonna be a slow process.

Vampires Aren't People Too

I managed to catch the late show of "Night Watch" at the Ken Theater in Kensington. Here is how the Landmark Theatre guide describes it:

"For centuries, undercover members of the Night Watch have policed the world's Dark Ones - the vampires, witches, shape-shifters and sorcerors that wage treachery in the night - while the Dark Ones have a Day Watch to police the forces of the Light. The fate of humanity rests in this delicate balance between good and evil, but that fate is in jeopardy...Set in contemporary Moscow, this horror-fantasy is the biggest grossing film in post-Soviet history and the first of a trilogy bast on the best-selling sci-fi novels of Sergei Lukyanenko."

My reading and writing in Russian is improving, but I'm still frustrated with my limited ability to understand spoken Russian. Nevertheless, I was able to pick up some interesting contrasts between the subtitles and this movie's Russian dialogue. For example, according to the subtitles, the film's conflict involves "Others" (these supernatural types) and "humans". According to the dialogue, the conflict involves the supernatural types and "people".

I missed the exact Russian phrasing, but one of my favorite subtitles was for a scene in which one vampire was shouting at another vampire to finish off their victim before Night Watch arrived: "Drink him! Drink him!"

I was pleased that I at least didn't need the subtitles to understand the guy in a car trying to pick up a vampire girl walking on the street by calling out his window the Russian equivalent of "Hey baby! Hey baby!" The manner by which this minor character became a vampire was that when she was a human (that is, a "person") she and a vampire fell in love, and in order for her to become a vampire, the Dark Ones had to get a permit issued to them from Night Watch. Soviet Russia ahoy!

My favorite scenes in the movie featured the Night Watch emergency response truck. It resembles a jet-powered U-Haul, completely inefficient aerodynamically, but with flames shooting out from underneath it nevertheless. In one sequence the truck has to get from one side of Moscow to the other in less than a minute and the drivers don't know the exact address they're looking for. I think the scenes with the truck darting in and out of traffic at super high speeds, driving on the wrong side of the street, was a Russian in-joke since, by all accounts, the street traffic in Moscow is a circle in Hell.

What's "Crash"?

When "Crash" won the Oscar for "Best Picture" last night, my brother Jim said it was as surprising as when "Shakespeare in Love" won the Oscar over "Saving Private Ryan". My cousin Mark mentioned "Crash" was one of the films he liked in 2005, and my good pal John said that he didn't like it at all. As far as I know I don't know anyone else who saw it.

I don't know why I listed "The Nomi Song" under the "More 2005 Movies That I Wanted to See, But Didn’t" category in the Nosferatu Pix, it's clearly a 2004 movie. Whatever; the important thing is that I watched it on Friday night and I found it wildly entertaining. Here is some data from the Amazon description:

"Born Klaus Sperber in Essen, Germany, Nomi dressed like an alien, sang like an angel, and electrified new wave-era New York. The classically trained tenor moved to the US in the 1970s. Influenced by Maria Callas, Marlene Dietrich, and 1950s sci-fi films, the "opera-singing pastry chef," as writer Glenn O'Brien described him, developed a unique look and sound that stood apart from every other act to emerge from the East Village."

In the documentary, Nomi comes across as a non-man, a non-woman, and a non-human. He seems like a real life "The Man Who Fell To Earth" except instead of starting a business he became an opera diva. And he would have been the ultimate guest for Dieter on "Sprockets". The DVD includes a recipe for Nomi's lime tart and the movie features a television clip of Nomi demonstrating how to prepare it.

Nosferatu Pix 2005

This was a terrific year for movies, one of the best. And I sort of blew it. In 2004 I did pretty well with seeing the good movies. My top five for 2004 were:

Million Dollar Baby
Napoleon Dynamite
The Passion of the Christ
Sideways
Super Size Me

The only movies I really regretted not seeing in 2004 were:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Hotel Rwanda
In the Realms of the Unreal
Motorcycle Diaries
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

This year I fell into the sin of 2003. Of the movies I saw in 2003, these were my favorites:

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lost in Translation
A Mighty Wind
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Of the movies available to see in 2003, these were some that I missed that year:

21 Grams
American Splendor
Cold Mountain
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The Missing
Monster
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

And this year, 2005, to my shame…

Films I Can’t Friggin’ Believe I Didn’t Manage to See in 2005:

Breakfast on Pluto
The Constant Gardener
Constantine
Corpse Bride
History of Violence
Match Point
Munich
Tristram Shandy

More 2005 Movies That I Wanted to See, But Didn’t:

Ballets russes
Bewitched
BloodRayne
Bubble
Cache
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Devil's Rejects
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Fever Pitch
The Fog
Four Brothers
Funny Ha Ha
High Tension
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
House of Wax
The Interpreter
Last Days
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
Man with the Screaming Brain
Manderlay
March of the Penguins
MirrorMask
The Nomi Song
Oliver Twist
Red Eye
Reel Paradise
The Ring Two
Serenity
Shopgirl
Sin City
The Squid and the Whale
Syriana
The Three Burials of Melquiades

My resolution for 2006 is to see, if not more movies, at least better movies. I knew it was a mistake to pay full admission price for “The Jacket”. Just one of those disasters I’ll try to avoid in the future.

I’ve been waiting for Brian De Palma’s movie “The Black Dahlia” (based on James Ellroy’s novel) starring Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank since last year’s Nosferatu Pix. I think it’ll never come out.

I didn’t find any particularly wacky “titles of films I didn’t see” (such as last year’s “Angry and Moist: An Undead Chronicle”). However the title “Duma” got my attention - I thought it would be a movie about the principal legislative assembly in Russia. Then I read the plot outline: “An orphaned cheetah becomes the best friend and pet of a young boy living in South Africa.” Huh?

Anyway, it was definitely a very entertaining year.

Best Film:

2046
Batman Begins
Good Night and Good Luck.
Grizzly Man
Memoirs of a Geisha

Honorable mention:
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Best Actor:

Simon Baker “Land of the Dead”
Phillip Seymour Hoffman “Capote”
Tony Leung “2046”
Joachin Phoenix “Walk the Line”
David Strathairn “Good Night and Good Luck.”

Best Actress:

Jennifer Connelly “Dark Water”
Dakota Fanning “War of the Worlds”
Q'Orianka Kilcher “The New World”
Reese Witherspoon “Walk the Line”
Ziyi Zhang “Memoirs of a Geisha”

Best Supporting Actor:

George Clooney “Good Night and Good Luck.”
Will Ferrell “The Wedding Crashers”
Cillian Murphy “Batman Begins”
Edward Norton “Kingdom of Heaven”
Ken Watanabe “Memoirs of a Geisha”

Honorable mention:
Michael Caine “Batman Begins”
Morgan Freeman “Batman Begins”
Liam Neeson “Kingdom of Heaven”
David Thewlis “Kingdom of Heaven”

Best Supporting Actress:

Catherine Keener “Capote”
Gong Li “2046”
Gong Li “Memoirs of a Geisha”
Tilda Swinton “Broken Flowers”
Ziyi Zhang “2046”

Honorable mention:
Michelle Yeoh “Memoirs of a Geisha”

Nice to see them working:

Faye Wong “2046 ”
Robert Downey Jr. “Good Night and Good Luck.”
George Romero (director) “Land of the Dead”
Noah Taylor “The New World”
Rebecca De Mornay “The Wedding Crashers”

Wasted time that I’m never going to get back:

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
Hostel
The Jacket

Favorite Music:

5x2
2046
Good Night and Good Luck.
Memoirs of a Geisha
Walk the Line

Painful Probes:

5x2
Good Night and Good Luck.
War of the Worlds

Beasts Getting Hold of Women and Degrading Them:

5x2
King Kong
Land of the Dead
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Wedding Crashers

Folk Being Physically Violated Against Their Will:

5x2
Capote
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Grizzly Man
Hostel

Slumming:

Jane Seymour “The Wedding Crashers”
Stellan Skarsgård “Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist”
Keira Knightley “The Jacket”
Jennifer Jason Leigh “The Jacket”
Dennis Hopper “Land of the Dead”
Takashi Miike “Hostel”

Favorite Moments:

The foxes in “Grizzly Man”.
Ziyi Zhang dancing/writhing around during her big show, "Memoirs of a Geisha".
Colin Farrell as John Smith wandering around in the swamp in his armor, “The New World”.
Obi-Wan Kenobi shoots Count Grievous with a gun, “Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith”.
Will Ferrell calling for his mom to bring meatloaf, “The Wedding Crashers”.