Movie Review: Cowspiracy (2014)

Cowspiracy is a documentary with an agenda: uncover the biggest cause of pollution on the planet, and find a solution for Mother Earth to thrive. As a rabid closet environmentalist, I wasn't entirely surprised at what the filmmakers found: that animal agriculture is the devil. From their website:

Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and pollution, is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry, and is a primary driver of rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topsoil erosion, ocean “dead zones,” and virtually every other environmental ill.

Let me back it up.

The film begins with director Kip Anderson describing his reaction to seeing Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth: he did everything he could to save water, reduce his contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, recycle, et cetera. But when he reviewed the literature, he realized that environmental scientists were pointing to an entirely different culprit: meat and dairy consumption.

To really boil it down:

1) Land and water use: Cows need a lot of pasture, so forests are cleared for their grazing, leading to habitat loss and species extinction. They also drink a whole bunch of water, which could be used for better things, like a golf course. (cries)

2) Waste products: Yes, cow farts are pretty deadly, but also, all that cow poop is not processed in sewage facilities, so they end up in the ocean and cause dead zones.

The film uses excellent, clear graphics to underline these points. Paired with the silence of environmental groups like Greenpeace on the issue, it adds to Anderson's subtext that there's a conspiracy -- a "cowspiracy," if you will -- to maintain the status quo. For instance, in the US, animal rights activists are high on the FBI watch list, while in Brazil, they just straight up kill you if you get in the way of the rancheros.

Not content to stomp all over hamburgers, Anderson also notes that our eating bacon, eggs, and fish is similarly unsustainable. He shows this through graphics, footage, and interviews with prominent authors and educators. What really stayed in my head was something Dr. Michael Klaper said, which was essentially, "The purpose of cow's milk is to transform a calf into a 1,200-pound cow as rapidly as possible." And I went, "HMMMM THAT MAKES SENSE, DOCTOR KILLJOY. WHAT ELSE CAN I NOT CONSUME ANYMORE?"

As it turns out, pretty much everything that isn't plant-based. "You can't be an environmentalist and eat animal products," says Howard Lyman, a former cattle rancher.

Overall, this is a tough film to watch because of the message, and I wish the filmmakers had spent more time with alternative eating habits. But perhaps that is a lure to their website, where under the "Take Action" tab, you can choose to be a vegan for 30 days "for free!" Which immediately made me go, "NO THANK YOU," because a 30-day free trial is inevitably followed by badgering emails and unauthorized credit card charges, just ask my mom.

TL;DR: Eating livestock = killing the planet. :(

This post brought to you by okonomiyaki bread! Okonomiyaki bread: available only in Chinese bakeries and my darkest nightmares!

Movie Review: The Martian (2015)

The Martian is about the human spirit: driven to overcome, to survive. While the title and most of the running length focus on astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) and his lone struggles on desolate Mars, the movie emphasizes that the united effort of diverse actors is the key to ensuring that Watney can return to Earth.

The trailers tell the essential story: a storm forces the crew of the Ares 3 mission to abort and return home. Watney is hit by debris on the way back to the ship, and is presumed dead by his commander and other crew members. Watney wakes up the next day and must face the enormity of his situation: he's trapped on a planet inhospitable to human life, with only 31 days of supplies -- and the next manned mission is scheduled in four years.

Science to the rescue!!! Watney methodically plans for his long-term survival, taking stock of existing supplies and creating a solution to his food situation via poop and to his water situation via fire. He explains it all as he does it, don't worry. I'm pretty sure this film inspired a bunch of young people to go into STEM fields, just so they can be awesome like Watney. I approve.

There are a great many pleasures in this latest Ridley Scott space adventure. The most welcome one is the writing: all the characters are smart and make calculated decisions, from Watney to the hard-nosed NASA Director (Jeff Daniels) to the satellite tech (Mackenzie Davis) who first notices that the "abandoned" Mars mission site shows signs of activity. The dialogue is laced with humor -- Watney is full of wisecracks as he makes video logs of his survival plans, perhaps to make his bleak situation more bearable. Kristen Wiig, as NASA's PR Director, has a choice line that drew big laughs; Ares 3 crew member Gonzalez (Michael Peña) has a hilarious apology for leaving Watney behind; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's reactions to NASA's demands are pretty comical; and so on.

As for the soundtrack... hahahaha... let's just say it's also a source of humor.

And I about died when a Lord of the Rings reference appeared and Sean Bean obligingly stepped up. EEEEEEEEEEEEE

Of course, The Martian is beautiful. Mars looks stunning, the set designs are impeccable, and the use of Watney's space suit cams makes for interesting visuals. On Earth, camera work is straightforward, with no gimmicks to distract from the people doing their best to help the Martian.

Overall, this is a wonderful story told extremely well by a talented cast and crew. Props to Matt Damon for being a very likable lead, and to Andy Weir for writing the 2011 book that served as the basis for this film. We have Weir to thank for Watney, his daunting obstacles, and his determination to "science the shit out of this." Hubby read the book and said that the film hews pretty closely to it, with some liberties taken for dramatic effect.

And yes Scott Ridley, this does make up for Prometheus.

TL;DR: Watch immediately.

This post brought to you by coffee, surprise surprise!

Movie Review: The Loft (2014)

The Loft is a murder mystery with poor writing, terrible acting, obnoxious cinematography, and a soundtrack that thinks it’s in a better film. It tricks the unsuspecting by dangling Karl Urban and James Marsden as bait, and by the time viewers realize who the real villain is, about three minutes into the film, it’s already too late. Like a traffic accident, the rest of the disaster must be witnessed to satisfy our morbid curiosity.

The title refers to a loft shared by five friends, for secret dalliances with women who are not their wives. Their personalities are established through flashbacks: there’s the alpha, an ambitious architect (Urban); the fat one, who’s “funny” (Eric Stonestreet); the crazy violent criminal, as a red herring (Matthias Schoenaerts); the conscientious one (Marsden); and the repressed nerd (Wentworth Miller). A crime occurs in the loft, and the movie jumps back and forth between the police questioning, the friends’ initial reactions to the scene, and the moments leading up to the crime. OMG WHODUNIT???

Which leads us to the true answer: nobody cares.

Nobody curr, because:

The acting is awful—There’s a range of awfulness, too, from over-the-top (Schoenaerts) to scenery-chewing (Urban) to wooden (Miller). Marsden seems like he’s trying but wasn’t given much to work with, and I don’t think Stonestreet was acting at all.

The characters are gross—There’s no one to root for. All the main characters are douchey, all their wives are unpleasant, and the two other plot-crucial (-ish) women are bland. The only okay characters are the police detectives (Kristin Lehman and Robert Wisdom), and that’s only because they kept yelling “Bullshit!” (essentially) at the five guys during questioning.

The cinematography is painful—The crew seemed to think that dramatic swoops and intense close-ups would distract viewers from the morons onscreen. But they just made the experience worse.

The soundtrack deserves better—If you just listened to the film score, you’d think really exciting and suspenseful events were transpiring, instead of sad men and women making one dumb decision after another.

And the writing is bad, because if we don’t care about the characters, then we’re not invested in the “twist” or even the “reveal,” and definitely not in the “other twist.”

It’s like all the elements in the film combine to make everything as bad as possible, e.g. the dialogue becomes extra cheesy from being delivered with a B-movie grimace, while the camera is two centimeters from the actor’s face and the soundtrack is all, “This is thrilling!”

If this was intentional, then that is some fine trolling right there, cast and crew of The Loft.

In conclusion: UUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH. If it sounds like I'm harshing too much on this movie, it's because Eomer and Cyclops had earned my trust.

so betray
such crush
wow

TL;DR: Avoid The Loft. 

This post brought to you by Netflix!

Junior is One Year Old!

I have three takeaways from Junior's first, rollercoaster year, but before that -- I must brag.

My son learned to walk before his first birthday.
Item 1: Regularly lifting 22 pounds every day was doing a number on my lower back.
Item 2: Junior's crawling skills had become so advanced that he could do the Cockroach Scuttle -- a lightning fast movement from Point A to Point B, designed to evade hunters.
Item 3: Junior had been cruising for a month, a precursor to actual walking.

The prep: In the three days before his birthday, I encouraged him to walk "long" distances with me, holding his hand and beaming encouragingly as he waddled three feet, his ponderous belly leading the way. He would fall, get boosted up again, waddle another three feet... you get the idea. I also took him to the park and pointed out all the other kids who could run, then helped him waddle to an area where he could cruise.

All our practice paid off. The big day came and he was all:

Just so unbearably cool and walking, NBD.

Here are some party photos. His cake was a Chocolate Birthday Cupcake from Georgetown Cupcakes on Newbury Street, because my baby deserves a $300 cupcake for his special day! Just kidding, divide that amount by 100.

Anyway, at first he had no idea what the cupcake even was, being much more interested in the bright shiny glowing thing that mommy and daddy blew out and quickly put away. Then he got a taste and his brain went "thing = delicious" and it was a choc-splosion. It got into his hair, his ears, the back of his chair (which he then licked off), and we had to take him to the tub to clean up.

That's how babies party!

***
And now... my three big takeaways from having my little peanut for a whole year:

1) Baby = (Time)(Effort) - Sleep
The simplest tasks are compounded by the Baby Factor. To get out the door in the morning, I get up at the crack of dawn to nurse. Then I have to shower, dress, feed myself, feed Junior, dress Junior, and then do one last diaper check before heading out, because chances are 50/50 that he just pooped. #timing

Or, say we stay in one day. Even though he broke his fast on an entire banana and a bowl of cereal, an hour later he'll be all:

And he'll do this while I'm preparing his snacks.

I tell younger people to wait before having babies, because their size is inversely proportional to the effort it takes to keep them alive and unharmed.

Now that Junior's one and walking, Hubby and I can leave him alone with his toys for minutes at a time, it is amazing. And he's even sleeping through the night, except when he's teething, which he will do for the next year! Oh, well.

The upside, as Hubby found out when he went on a work trip up north, is that we're now able to function normally at five in the morning, which helped him with his 5 a.m.-7 p.m. work days. Engineers: working overtime since forever because we need more of them!

2) It takes a village
It's been awesome how nice and helpful strangers are. When we're at restaurants, food servers will stop and do funny faces for him when he starts getting hangry. In fact, he's very willing to be carried around by waitresses for an impromptu restaurant tour. When we're on the train, other passengers will wave at him so he can practice being polite and adorable. Passersby will open doors for us. Faced with all this extra and very welcome participation, I reciprocate as best as I can when I see other parents with their little humans. 

Single moms are fucking heroes for doing this on their own, pardon my French. There were times, especially in the early days, when I had to walk away because I don't know what I would have done in my sleep-deprived state. Those times, Dad would heroically step in. (Obviously he steps in at other times, it's just that I was the main food source for the first 12 months.)

Having a kid is draining. It's also awesome and fun and will touch you in the feelings, but tending to all the needs of a whole 'nother human takes energy, and I, being an Energy Vampire, require at least one other adult as sustenance. Yay Hubby! Yay other people!
 
3) It gets better

The journey from screaming hungry raisin goblin to smiling hungry chubby cherub is fraught with peril and delights, but the love and joy outshine everything. I mean, look at that face.

The best part: no more pumping! *intense happy dance*

***

In case I'm giving off the vibe that I'm all happy-happy-motherhood, let me share this gripe: it's so annoying when other people are like, "Oooh, wait until he starts walking!" or "You can't wait for him to start talking, then you wish he'd shut up!"

I'll have you know that in my family, children are encouraged to be talkative, because tradition! My mom even expressed concern at a lack of pekpek ng baboy (pig vagina) here in the US, because in her hometown, that is what one feeds babies so they grow up to be chatterboxes! Apparently I ate a bunch of porcine unmentionables, and it totally worked!

The point is, parenting can be a blood sport, so new parents must forge Anti-Judgement Armor, and also refrain from firing Judgement Bullets. Of course, parents who shove their nostrils into the air and drawl about how little Wilder was nursed until age four, only ever eats artisanal organic kombucha (question: what is kombucha?), and didn't watch television until age five (lies!) are their very own parodies, so when you meet one, grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.

***

Unrelated: Junior tends to dance at random moments, and this is what he looks like:

Source: a commenter on Jezebel.

TL;DR: My baby turned one this month, see photos.

This post brought to you by Cerave Moisturizing Lotion! Cerave: well, my fingers haven't gotten worse, so it works?

Game Review: Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (PS3)

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a terrific sequel to Tales of Symphonia (my review here). It boasts a better story, superior graphics, excellent music, a non-lame (but still hideously attired) Big Bad, and a fun combat system. Dawn also lets players collect monsters to serve as battle buddies, but alas, this new mechanic can only be truly enjoyed by the Mindlessly Obsessed.

Now, when I say "better story," I really mean "slightly less needlessly complicated." As a sequel, Dawn benefits from being set in a world already familiar to players of the original, ergo, a place where mana exists in all living things, and where a tree is the source of mana. Dawn deals with the fallout from the previous mana tree being destroyed in Symphonia -- the tree's Summon Spirit, Ratatosk, finds out about it, and boyfriend is pissed. Also, a group called the Vanguard is assaulting towns, claiming to protect Sylvarant (Sylvarant being the less advanced of the two worlds united in Symphonia). Are the two plot lines connected? Maybe! (Yes. Yes, they are.)

The game's main protagonist, Emil, pledges himself as a Knight of Ratatosk to protect the female lead, Marta, who bears the mark of Ratatosk on her forehead. As a result, Emil goes from being timid and reasonably dressed to aggressive and dressed in something that stumped a civil engineer ("How does he put on his outfit?" I asked Hubby, who concluded that it was not physically possible to put it on.) ((He is actually correct, because Emil got his new clothes via magic.)) Anyway, Emil and Marta go on adventures to collect the McGuffins needed to restore the balance of mana, McGuffins that are also sought by the Vanguard and Lloyd, the hero from Symphonia. At various points along the way, Emil and Marta meet members of the Symphonia cast, who join the party as playable characters.

I enjoyed the two major conflicts in Dawn: first, the one between Emil and Lloyd; and second, Emil's internal conflict. While the former was more of a distraction (Lloyd is an obligate do-gooder so it was obvious that Emil was barking up the wrong tree), the latter makes players aware of two distinct personalities with competing desires, world views, and tactics--all in one androgynous body! Pretty sure a lot of players were rooting for the other Emil, known as "Ratatosk Mode," who is strong, confident, and brusque--the diametric opposite of the soft-spoken and despondent boy that we begin the game with.

Another awesome element in Dawn is the side quest option, which netted me lots of EXP and shiny new equipment that I used to gleefully plow through underleveled monsters in dungeons. The ability to synthesize items was also useful -- I mainly went for better weapons and armor. More exotic products would have yielded far cooler results, like turning my tiny Killer Fish battle buddy into a beastly Jaconius, but I just couldn't get the one rare drop I needed for it. sadface

Best of all, Dawn doesn't skimp on the after-battle reward money like Symphonia did! I could barely afford basic healing items in the original; meanwhile, I finished the sequel with like half a million bucks. Sure, it's also partly due to my synthesizing and side questing, but these options were soooo much better than the cooking feature in Symphonia. See, in Symphonia, you can cook food to restore health, etc., so you don't have to buy healing items, but you have to buy ingredients to cook food. And you had to collect recipes from an idiot called Wonder Chef who hides in every village. Granted, you still have to do that in Dawn, but the food is only for your monster menagerie, and you have enough money for person healing supplies.

***Note to people playing Symphonia: once you have Zelos, give him the Personal skill and make him the point character to talk to women and girl NPCs -- you can rake in the cash!***

I found out only after finishing the game that the choices I had made throughout determined the ending I saw, aka the True Ending. How nice! If only I could do it this effortlessly for every game, I am looking accusingly at you, Final Fantasy X-2, which I have yet to finish because the combat system is driving me nuts!

Speaking of combat system...Dawn is heaven, I tell you, heaven. Apart from the wicked combos and unison attacks, it's so easy to perform a Mystic Arte (/Ultimate Move). And, once Symphonia characters join and get the needed skill, players can use Mystic Artes to wipe out an entire battlefield. Spamming Mystic Artes is how I got through the penultimate and final boss fights, which were hard and took several tries. Whew! World-saving, such hard.

TL;DR: It was worth playing the flawed original for this sequel.

This post brought to you by daycare colds! Daycare colds: your kid shares with you, you share with the world!

Movie Review: The Babadook (2014)

With hubby out of town for a couple of days for work, I decided that it would be a great idea to watch The Babadook, a horror film about a single mother and her young son. It was an excellent life decision and I regret nothinggggg!

Plot: A widow and her young son read a sinister children’s book, which triggers frightening events.

Let’s get to the point: if I read the actual Mister Babadook book, complete with its disturbing pop-ups, I too would be wailing like Samuel, the child in the movie. And I’d flambé it on the grill like Amelia, his sleepless mum, the second time it mysteriously shows up in my house. That is one scary book.

The monster, meanwhile…not so much. As a supernatural threat, the Babadook was utterly unimpressive and its reveal actually eased the feeling of shrieking dread that the movie had been building up to that point. Real life offers scarier visuals (c.f. the 2016 candidates), plus the sound team couldn’t muster anything more imaginative than the monster saying “BA BA DOOOK” in a pack-a-day smoker voice, followed by a triumphant T-Rex roar. I mean, really?

However, as an allegory, Mister Babadook is terrifying. It’s a wrenching story about grief, loss, trauma, love, family, and human connection, and the actors’ performances do justice to the broken humanity that is the film’s central focus. The main characters, played by Essie Davis and little Noah Wiseman, are almost immediately sympathetic, which makes the escalating threats by the Babadook all more horrifying. They’re an isolated dyad clinging to each other but also separated by unspoken resentments. The set design and lighting also brilliantly portray the self-neglect and creeping madness caused by the Babadook.

On a more personal note, as a mom, I can relate to Amelia's sleeplessness and irritation at her son's high-pitched whinging. Dealing with the Babadook is just icing on that poop cake. But at the end of the film, moved by the ending (tiny critique: was expecting The Scream to be more primal), I rushed off to pick up Junior from daycare and smothered him with affection until bedtime.

Also...y'know what? I like saying "babadook." It's a fun word! "Babadook!" "Babadook!" Kind of sounds like it means sheep poop.

Final note: there’s a lot of interesting background about this film – its writer/director and cast are Australian, but the crew is international, the production used Kickstarter to get off the ground, it grossed over three times what it cost to make, and so on. This was a labor of love, and it shows.

TL;DR: More sad than scary, and definitely worth a watch.

This post brought to you by impending rain!

A Review of the Back Bay Chocolate Tour, by a Non-Lover of Chocolate

The Back Bay Chocolate Tour is a two-hour journey to several locations that either specialize in chocolate, or use some sort of special chocolate as an ingredient. The two rules of the tour are:

#1: No chocolate left behind.
#2: Be friendly.

My group had almost 20 people. Here is a summary of our choc-tivities:

Location	Choc-tivity	Reaction
Flour Bakery	Learned history of chocolate chip cookies. Ate chocolate chip cookies.	Publicly declared my love for the tour.
L.A. Burdicks	Told of marriage between interior decoration and chocolate craftsmanship. Given tiny wrapped white chocolate mouse.	Carefully placed mouse in backpack for later. Somehow lost mouse at next stop.
Georgetown Cupcakes	Handed insane menu of specialty cupcakes. Had to protect tour guide from tourists/vultures trying to see what was being handed out.	Ate two chocolate2 cupcakes.
Ben and Jerry's	Lecture about ethical sourcing. Ate brownie fudge ice cream. Easily the best thing I ate on the tour.	Froze to death during lecture due to intense a/c.
Teuscher	Lined up to eat mini champagne truffles.	$30 for 9 tiny balls. No.
Sugar Heaven	Ran wild in the shop.	Will take Junior there if he is especially good.
Gourmet Boutique	Ate a selection of imported chocolates.	Brought extras home for Husband. Forgot to give to him.

I mentioned in the title that I'm a non-lover of chocolate. Let me explain in terms of ice cream: I prefer vanilla. So this tour was fun but my mouth would have been happier consuming every single item on the menu of the Roving Lunch Box food truck.

Every. Single. Item. It will happen, I promise.

TL;DR: Ben & Jerry's ice cream RULES.

This post brought to you by Hump Day!