i'm not gossip girl

Inglourious Basterds

2010-03-05T12:42:00.000-08:00

Summary: It's basically a Nazi revenge fantasy. Which means it's what the U.S. wish it had done to Germany in WWII. A group of ragtag Jewish-American soldiers led by a not-so-hot Brad Pitt head over to a Nazi-occupied France to kill as many Nazis as they can, scalping them and brutally murdering them which earns them the name "the Basterds." At the same time a young Jewish woman plans to avenge the killing of her family by the Nazi after a German war hero falls in love with her and arranges a illustrious movie premiere at the theater that she owns. The two story lines tie together for an intense ending.

My Pros: Definitely a super engaging, action-packed movie. I was pretty much on the edge of my seat the whole time, wondering what would happen next (isn't that the best type of movie-going experience?) and the dialogue was really witty and it makes you not even mind reading subtitles that much. The best character in this movie was the Nazi Col. Hans Landa, who is sooo good at being bad. He's seems all nice and sweet as he plays along with his victims and you think they'll get away until BAM you realize that he knows whats going on all along. Haha. Also really liked BJ Novak in the movie although he didn't add to much to it, I just love him because of The Office.

My Cons: I think I didn't know what I was getting myself into when I went to see this movie so I was unprepared for what I saw. I watched it in Taiwan, mainly because it was too hot to do anything else, and I had no clue what the movie was about (except that Brad Pitt was in it and it had something to do with WWII). I was totally unprepared for it to be a comedy especially for such a serious topic, and I didn't know it'd have so much blood and gruesome scenes (and I really don't like that kind of stuff).

Also unfortunate (although I guess it doesn't have too much to do with the movie itself...) was that when I was watching this movie I had this really bad cough. But this was the time when H1N1 was really a big deal in Asia, so I tried really hard to hold in my coughs until some loud bombing sequence in the movie so the people around me wouldn't freak out. And let me tell you, trying to hold in your coughs is like trying to hold back tears...freaking impossible.

On a deeper level, I think what bothered me about this movie was the fact that yeah it's cool to see the US with it's BA group of soldiers bringing some sort of justice to the terrible things the Nazis inflicted, but in actuality the US did nothing of the sort. We didn't have the balls to send our own people in there, and while watching this movie I kept wondering if this is the way the US tries to make up for what it didn't actually do. Will the next movie be about the US intervening in the Rwanda genocide?

Other people's opinions: Rotten Tomatoes (the only movie rating system I trust) gave this movie a 87%

Bottomline: This is definitely a testostrone-filled movie. It's good if you're not squeamish, like to watch things blow up, like clever dialogue (much in subtitles) and you appreciate some pretty sadistic humor. I personally think this is more of a summer movie rather than a Best Picture winner, though.

The Ultimate Guide to the OSCARS 2010

2010-03-04T17:41:00.000-08:00

The 82nd annual Academy Awards are coming this Sunday, March 7, 2010. I've never been that big of a fan of the awards show, mainly because I usually haven't even heard of half the movies, and it's just long and drags on.
However it does hold a special spot inside of me just because it's....annual. It's like no matter what's going on in my life, it's a constant. It's something to look forward to and to get excited about but forget really quickly after it's over. But also, I think in some places it's very VERY underrated. Like in Kitsap. Last year while I was living in Kitsap, WA my landlady's teenage daughter came into the room and asked me what I was watching. I told her i was watching the Oscars and she was like "Oh is that the one about movies?"

Yes, yes it is. So this post, this ULTIMATE GUIDE to the Oscars is for all those people out there who aren't sure what the show is about. And who haven't heard of half these movies. I, Angela, will sacrifice my time and energy to watch and review for you each of the ten nominated Best Picture films so that you all can see if the winner of the biggest award in Hollywood is deserved or not. Right now I've seen 6 of the 10, so I have 4 more to go before the big day arrives.
Anyway....on with the ULTIMATE GUIDE!!!!!
(to be continued...soon)

Limited Viewing

2009-03-18T16:42:00.000-07:00

About two Saturdays ago, I was able to watch the musical Jersey Boys with some family and friends. The tickets we got weren't cheap, and so we were immediately disappointed to find the words "limited viewing" on our tickets. After arriving at the theater and clamoring into our seats, it didn't seem too bad. We were sitting on the lower balcony near the center so we thought we had a pretty good view of the whole stage. It wasn't until the lights dimmed and the actors came out that we realized that the low overhang of the upper balcony blocked off the top half of the stage, and only by straining our necks could we see what the actors were doing on the second level of the stage.

Sometimes Northwestern feels like the seat I had at Jersey Boys. I think I have a fine view about everything going on--schoolwork, dealing with friends, writing articles for campus publications, leading meetings for my fellowship, and studying for tests. But what I have yet to figure out is that the upper balcony of this school is blocking my view of everything else going on in this world. Mainly I feel like being here is making me focus so much on myself and things directly relating to me that I can't see anything beyond myself, and I don't even really notice it. I guess proof of that is how I haven't blogged since coming back, because I have nothing to say, probably because I've been so focused on my day-to-day to-do list, almost oblivious to most things going on in the world. I mean I catch the major headlines, and I'm up to date on the latest breaking news (thanks to Twitter), but still, for an aspiring journalist, this is bad news. If I can get so caught up with the busyness of school and school activities that I don't even realize that I'm missing more than half of the show, how can I ever be allowed to inform others about the it?

It's not the school's fault just like it's not the theater's fault. Maybe it just means I need to get uncomfortable and strain my neck a little.

Step 1: Talk vs. Walk

2009-03-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

One time when I was in 10^th grade, I wrote a satire in my high school newspaper about the wealthy Calabasas bubble that seemed to trap the school’s students into focusing on materialism and dismissing the rest of the world. That day, a member of my swim team approached me and told me that he really enjoyed my article. Inside, I was elated that someone would read what I wrote…until it turned out that he mixed up my name with some other writer. When I pointed out the article that I did actually pen, he responded with “Oh yeah, that article was good too. But what I didn't like about it was that it only showed the problems of society but not the solutions.”

Years later when I went off to j-school to pursue journalism (OK, so it wasn’t that much later), his question would periodically pop up in my mind. Are journalists just describing what’s going on? What are they really doing to help with these problems? Are they just sitting around observing problems without getting too close so they can walk away from their subject guilt-free, thinking, “well, at least I wrote about.” But is that enough? The adage goes “Don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk.” Are journalists walking anywhere or are they just whining?

I think what every reader, including my swim teammate, wants after reading an article that uncovers the ugly truth, is a simple five-step solution to fix it. Something that doesn’t take too much effort, a one time event that won’t radically change their lives. Kind of like trying to fix life-long bad eating habits with a one-week diet. But the problem is that many problems don’t come with easy solutions. For journalists to be honest, they have to admit that many issues are complex and solutions may have unintended consequences that sometimes just makes things worse.

One time I interviewed a former Sudanese child slave who was leading a Sudan Freedom Walk in Chicago, and he told me that I “had the power of the pen” to spread his story and his message to people in the US. I guess that is the difference journalists are making, spreading awareness that public would most likely never know about.

However, I always felt that spreading awareness was a cop out solution because it just seemed like it wasn’t enough. Because once people know, then what? It reminded me of a scene from Hotel Rwanda, after Paul Rusesabagina, the Rwandan hotel owner, thanks a journalist for filming the atrocities around him because he assumes that once the public knows what is going on, the Western governments will intervene. But the journalist responds, “I think if people see this footage they'll say, ‘Oh my God that's horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.” It just seems so passive, and so dependent on somebody else reading the article and deciding to do something.

But after meeting people who haven’t heard of Darfur or who don’t know about anything going on in Africa except “there’s some fighting going on,” I think I'm getting a better idea of how important informing people really is. Without knowing about the problem, people won’t see the need for a solution at all. And even though journalists can’t cure apathy, it might inspire people to actually care and to want to make a difference.

So maybe for journalists, the “talk” IS the “walk.” The action they are taking to improve situations is telling people about it. It might just be the first step to a solution, but it's probably the most important step.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

-Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher

when life gives me lemons

2009-03-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

...my first reaction is to call up my friends and whine. I consider making lemonade, then realize I don't know how to make it, I'm too lazy to buy more ingredients, and I just don't feel like it right now, thank you very much, I'm having too much fun pitying myself.

If I'm lucky, some wise person will hand me the recipe, point me in the right directions and help me make a lemonade stand. I'll comply, spend all afternoon in the sun selling 25 cent drinks to thirsty neighbors, and end the day with $3.75 in quarters.

Only two years later when I'm rummaging through my purse, looking for spare charge to put into my almost-expired parking meter, I'll find a few of those blessed quarters and realize, "Dang, good thing I had those lemons."

The Rebirth of a Blog

2009-03-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

When I began this blog about a year and a half ago, I had great plans of writing in it everyday. I would record the myriad of thoughts that ran through my head day in and day out. My blog would be like sticky fly paper, capturing ideas that got too close and holding them up for all to see.
And clearly after a few days, I got bored, couldn't think of anything to post, and gave up.

Recently, while browsing through different blogs I had found through Twitter, I was inspired. While getting bombarded with all this random information and semi-insightful thoughts, I found an entry teaching me to write quality blogs.

That did it for me. I don't know why, but that entry made it all seem so easy and painless. I came back, dusted off this blog and now I'm breathing life back into this lifeless skeleton.

Then came to the questions of what am I going to write about? Looking at all those other blogs made me feel inadequate--they wrote about everything I cared about, but in more eloquent prose and with more passion. What in the world could my blog have that others don't?

I took a step back and asked, What do I care enough to spend time writing about?

1) God--who He is, what He's done in my life, how he's been teaching me
2) International news--issues ranging from genocide to child soldiers to terrorism to civil wars to lack of cultural understanding
3) Journalism--where it's headed, what's working and what's not, how stories still have the power to move people
4) Kyrgyzstan--after going there twice, this random country has a hold on my heart
5) Current events--quirky stories, cool links, movies, music, books, etc
6) and... Lists--there is something so attractive about them, the way they make ideas seem so clear

Ok, I guess #5 was pretty all-inclusive, but I didn't want this list to get too long.

Maybe writing this blog isn't so much for people to read, or to prove I know something others don't or to get news out first. Maybe it's to help myself figure out this convoluted jumble we call life, to track experiences and what I learn from them so I can try to avoid the same mistakes.

Maybe it's just so that one day I can read back on this blog and see how far I've come, not how far I've fallen.

The Push towards Multimedia

2009-03-04T12:11:00.001-08:00

As print fails and the Internet swallows up the whole industry, there is a strong push towards the implementation of multimedia, not only to complement the written text, but at times to even substitute it. For instance, after covering one event, I noticed that I spent much more time editing the video than crafting the story.
And it makes sense--the younger web-savvy audience want to be engaged, want to participate in their news, and want to see instead of read. I'll be the first to admit that I love roll-over graphics and audio slideshows. It just makes everything so much more clear.
However, the one hindrance I see from this is that it is inaccessible to the population whose internet connections aren't fast enough to load the video or Flash. It is so frustrating to watch a 2 minute video that stops every 3 seconds to buffer and reload. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my life waiting, and more likely than not, I'll just close the page. I know much of the rest of the US understands.
Especially when you get to countries where the internet has revolutionized the amount of information they have, and can now get the news from all over the world. Where they walk over to an Internet Cafe in 100 degree weather to surf the Web or write e-mails on computers that take forever to load. They are the ones who really need the news, and if large files are overwhelming their computers, journalists are losing their original purpose of spreading news.
In the end, like most things in life, it most be a balance. Even if the multimedia is entertaining and gives the reader extra information, it shouldn't be the main focus.
The text must be strong enough to stand alone, and the multimedia should supplement it.

my relationship with journalism...

2009-03-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

...is like being in love with a man with cancer.
And I'm contemplating if I should marry him or not.
Hear me out on this one.
There's a lot going through my mind at this point--especially the uncertainty if he will survive, how long will he survive, and what I will do if he doesn't.
And as I am conflicted and torn as to what I should do, I start talking to people who are older and wiser and more experienced in this area. People who have survived the tough times and have advice for me. They tell me that he'll survive, that things might be different--he might look different, a little skinnier, a little more weary, but he will make it through.
However, already I can see signs of him deteriorating--functions that used to be so strong are now failing--the Rocky Mountain News (in print for almost 150 years), the Seattle Post-Intelligent, San Francisco Chronicle just to name a few.
And so I sit here and start to doubt a little bit. I wonder if it is possible there is someone else I could love this much, someone else I would be so excited to spend so much time and energy on everyday. Who says there is only one true love?
But then I start to worry that I only think like this because I'm not willing to sacrifice enough for him, I'm backing out before it begins. Do I care enough about this passion? Do I want it bad enough?

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
I have 9 months to figure that out.

One thing

Hollywood Bowlin'

2008-08-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

The music of a single violin vibrates around the thousands of people sitting in the darkness of night. A man with boyish hair sways with emotion as he entices the audience with his encore performance of the 2000 Oscar winner, The Red Violin. Joshua Bell, known as one of the great violinists of this age is young, agile and pretty darn good. Looking into the audience however, his fans mainly fall into two catagories—senior citizens, and Asians, mainly Korean. It should be added that the Korean Times sponsored this Hollywood Bowl performance, and Fidelity has recently given out free Bowl tickets (which would explain how I got there.) Not to say there weren’t young non-Asians there, oh there were the young couples who found the Bowl a nice inexpensive date, and others who found it sophisticated and brought along their bottle of wine for a pre-show picnic.

Which brings me to my first observation—the Hollywood Bowl needs more grass. Given that it is situated in L.A. where land is money and grass is hard to keep up if it never rains, nothing is more family friendly that picnics. Ask any American. I was forced to eat my egg and ham sandwich on a bite-size piece of grass by the box office, crowded around an extremely large group of Koreans and old ladies galore. There seems to be an obscenely large LA Korean network because while I ate, the Koreans just kept adding people to the group. And I bet if my Koreans friends were with me, they would have recognized them and joined the group too. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Koreans. I actually love eavesdropping into their conversations not because I can understand the language, but because it just sounds so pretty. The only problem was that that patch of grass was getting mighty crowded with all of han gook there.

And so the concert began with a quick piece by the LA Phil that made me excited for what was coming up next. I’m not too big on classical music because I get bored easily, so the short piece ended nicely—with a splatter of applause, and Angela still awake. Then Bell stepped onstage. He started with a moderate piece, nothing that excited me that much, but fair enough. I’d give him a B, maybe a B+ if I was a generous grader. But I expected more. Next came the Saint-Saens. To be the honest and bias person I am, the best classical music to me is music that I recognize. Bonus points if I’ve played it before—so Saint-Saens was already one step up. Saint-Saens’ Concerto No. 3 was the last piece I played for quitting the violin, so it has good memories with me, and although Bell played the Intro and Rondo, I was still floored. Great piece, great player, and great encore. By the intermission, I was glad I came and excited to get his autograph after the concert.

Then came part two. Bell had left the stage, and now the Phil was going to a Russian ballet...minus the ballet. So the conductor told the plot, which was a complicated story about puppets and a Pinocchio-like rag doll that comes alive, ghosts and magicians, and the orchestra begins to play. I usually try to envision the story in my head to go along with the music, but this one was difficult. Because not only did I have to envision the story, but I had to envision the story as a ballet, and that would include pirouettes and jumps and whatnot, so my mind was bored and wondered elsewhere. The large screen near my seat showed me close-ups of the different musicians in the orchestra and I made striking discoveries with this screen. I noticed that all the men wore matching cream colored suit jackets over a white button-up shirt with a black bow tie and black pants, except for the concertmaster who wore a suit jacket of a more banana cream color. He looked like he was in the wrong orchestra and needed someone to point him to the right one. Then I noticed that the women weren’t matching. They seem to have all be told that their dress code was to “wear a white top and black slacks” and nothing more. So there were women in suit jackets, in blouses that seemed to date back to the 70’s, button-up shirts and an array of different styles. Some of their clothes were reminisced of yesterday’s episode of “What Not the Wear” (of course, of the clothes worn before Clint and Kelly came to the rescue). It just didn’t seem professional to tell your orchestra members only to match in color, when the whole orchestra is meant to look like one body, one creature with every section’s actions and sounds matching the other. Matching colors is what we did in Youth Orchestra where there wasn’t a budget and we weren’t the LA Phil.

I also noticed that the guys playing the bass clarinet looked like they were smoking bongs. Perhaps it’s because I just watched “Pineapple Express” yesterday that I noticed this, but it really does. It reminded me of this one bass clarinet player I sat next to as I sat in the back of 2nd violin at the New West Youth Symphony Orchestra, who had shoulder-length orange hair, was reading “The Clockwork Orange” and toted a Sponge-bob SquarePants backpack. And that reminded me of the odd homeschooled students at New West who were friendly, but acted differently from the rest of us. One girl wore a dress with a wheelbarrow print and seemed to play the violin with forced emotion. Those were the only group of homeschoolers that I had ever met.

After the long piece, the whole audience moved as one out of the Bowl even as the conductor was still on stage. Most of them wanted to get ahead of traffic, but we wanted to get a place in the head of the line that was forming for Bell to sign our CD’s. Unfortunately our seats were on the wrong side and we ended up in the end of a long snake of a line, with people cutting and pushing to see the grown-up boy genius. To add to our bad luck, behind us stood an annoying Asian girl with an annoying voice while ahead of us stood too many people to count. We waited and waited until we finally reached Bell. I was star-struck and I couldn’t think of anything to say because I wasn’t actually a fan. He must of known of my fledging loyalties because he muttered a “let’s make this quick” as I asked for a photograph with him. We walked off looking at the long line that had continued behind us and all I could think of was how rude he was. His fan demographic may be loyal but it wasn’t very strong in terms of screaming groupies, so he had better be nice to the ones his got. And to the people who waited in long lines to meet him. Gosh, cockiness ruins even the best of us.

Mr. Bell, my mom and I

Screwtape Letters

2007-12-20T10:37:00.000-08:00

I finished reading the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, and it was a really interesting book. It really gave me a different outlook on the spiritual aspects of what human beings do everyday. Also is really creepy how so many of these thoughts and little actions we do seem to be like little nothings, when actually it does sway us one way or another...and they are all the devil's way of pushing us further away from God. The scariest quote is "Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts" (61, Lewis). It scares me because I see it happening all the time in my life, as my laziness makes me skip quiet times once, or prayer once, or even simple things like doing my homework or going to do community service. It's so gradual that I barely notice it when I stop doing these things all together. Another quote that gets to me is "The more ofthen he feels without acting, the less he wil be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel"(67). That too is me. I make up all these excuses as to why I can't do anything about what I say, and deep down in my heart I know that if I really desired to do something, I could do it.

Just the style that C.S. Lewis writes in--although Mere Christianity and the Narnia books are the only other works I've read by him--makes the complicated seem simpler and everything seems so logical. I guess that is the mark of an intelligent man, that he can make deep intellectual statements seem accessible and understandable to everyone. However, I read these books as a Christian and a follower of the faith, so most of these concepts are not entirely new to me, although through his books I have learned a lot. I wonder if the book would be as simple and logical and I proposed to someone who doesn't know much about Christianity at all.
I'm thinking that it's like the parables Jesus when he was on earth. Instead of dumping deep theological truths on the people that only the elite would understand, he told stories that the simplest and most plain farmer would understand. Actually his agricultural parables would probably be easier to understand by the farmers. It's so tricky because he's telling it in a way that everyone can understand it, but only people who wanted to know what it really means had to dig deeper themselves and Jesus would reveal to them the meaning. Or now it is the Holy Spirit who does that. It's those people who lagged behind and took the time to draw closer to Jesus that understood what it meant.

So similarly with these C.S. Lewis books, most people could read it and know what it says, but I guess it's those who draw closer to the faith that can really understand the deep truths and see that things like demons and temptations are really going on. It's not just us, there's a whole other spiritual world.