We've seen several movies recently that are definitely worth a mention and nearly all are out on DVD and Blueray already.
The first of these, Cloud Atlas, I absolutely LOVED and I'm sure I mentioned before. It's wonderful how it shows a greater scheme of our intertwined lives rather than just the assumed mundane here and now that begins with birth and ends with death and does so in a way that can only be described as positively majestic, covering the progression of an interlocked group of souls from 100 years in our past to 100 years in our future.

Some of my favorite lines from the movie are...

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

“You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.”

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

“Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.”

Wonderful, wonderful, deeply meaningful movie.

We also saw Oblivion in the theater and, as far as I know, is still there, or at least not yet out on DVD. That one was great too, albeit a bit predictable. Both Jeb and I knew what was going down each step of the way. This did not diminish the story/movie in the slightest though. We still loved it.

Les Miserables had good reviews and some of our favorite stars in it, so when it came out on DVD, Jeb went and got us a copy.

I picked up Femme Fatale and The Passengers at a thrift store a few weeks ago and they proved to be really good finds. Maybe all of you have heard of them or seen them before, but I hadn't.

My favorite line in Femme Fatale was more of a one liner by Antonio Banderas when the bad girl in question, having gone through considerable pains to look the maiden-in-distress to him, walks ahead of him into her suite and starts casually stripping right in front of him while, shocked speechless, he stays frozen in place until she's down to her white lace underthings. Then, with a look on his face reminiscent of his big-eyed kitty character, Puss and Boots...

...he asks, "Are you flirting with me?" and then gulps audibly at her answering smile and he's so johnny on the spot on... well... let's just say he makes up for lost time so fast it come across as flat out hilarious.  Priceless! And I think "flirting" is way too weak a word for the situation. LOL  Later, by the time he realizes she's playing him and that she's more than a little bad for him to put it mildly, he still proves unable to resist her even when he's trying, quite literally, his damnedest.  He is so cute and she is sooooooo BAD!

The Passengers was kind of trippy in a very subtle way.

This young counselor (Anne Hathaway) is working with the survivors of a devastating plane crash and is perplexed when they don't all tell the same story of what happened but tells herself it's just because they're traumatized. Their memories are jumbled. One of the passengers, however, is even more confusing than the others: this hunky, funny guy is as cool as a cucumber, singularly undisturbed, and flirting with her relentlessly and being very sweet and supportive to her, like their roles were reversed, while all the while telling her, "I'm not your patient." Against her better judgment, she ends up falling for him in a big way. He's like a tsunami: irresistible. But then the other people she's counseling start disappearing and she begins to suspect a cover up. But it turns out to be something far weirder and much more wonderful. But I'm not going to tell you what, because that would be a spoiler.

Had to laugh yesterday morning when I looked out the window at some baby rhododendrons I planted yesterday. A squirrel came down from the pine tree next to one and stood for a time parting the leaves and flower clusters with his little hands as if checking for flaws. Then, apparently satisfied it was perfect, he dropped onto the dirt and rolled around for a while like a playful kitten before jumping up to go and examine each of the other things I planted. He was soooo cute!

Anyway, what movies have seen lately and what did you think of them?  Name me 5 good ones back that I haven't listed here?

1. You need: one box Jiffy corn muffin mix, 2 eggs, 1/2-cup sour cream; 1-cup shredded Kraft mexican cheese mix; 2 TBSP soft margarine/butter; 1/4 cup carmelized onion (the Asian grocery store sell this mashed in a jar but you can always carmelize the onions yourself), 4 TBSP minced garlic, Johnny Season salt, paprika, & cumin to taste.  Stir together.  Spray muffin pan with cooking spray, half-fill each of the 18 cups, and bake at 355 F. for about 20 minutes.  Yummy when fresh!  We had these for dinner last night instead of potatoes with salad, barbecued steelhead trout, and salsa picante.

2. Dreamt I was being escorted through a hospital or something like one by my mother and a young co-worker named Amber.  I needed to be "adjusted" or something like that.  The floors of the very broad corridors were highly polished and white.  The walls were mint green.  There were many swinging doors on either side and personal in white/pale uniforms of somesort. I couldn't walk.  I kept floating up into a horizontal position, unable to help it if they didn't hold me down very firmly.  The oddest thing about this dilema was that it felt VERY familiar, as though I frequently had this problem.  I'm actually wracking my brain try to figure why.

3. I meant to fight off the spring fever this year and not waste time gardening again only to fail again, but damn it was gorgeous out this weekend and last.  So I've succumbed again.  Back out in the garden pulling weeds and planting things again.  I couldn't help it.

4.  Spent a lot of time working on an underground house design I may shortly post pictures of.  I'm having so much fun with this one, learning all kinds of new things en route.  Had an error in the program though and lost all the work I'd and done (and yes saved) on Saturday.  It was corrupted and couldn't be retrieved, but that's okay: I remembered what I'd done and just redid it, only better the second time.

5.  Went dancing at Noc-Noc on Saturday night.  Had as much fun dancing as watching the other dancers. 

A guy I've nicknamed the Energizer Bunny is there every single time, dancing every dance, a regular boss on the floor, and always all by himself, but a fantastic dancer.  Looks like he could perform on Broadway.  Very professional looking.  He had a rival this time though.  A guy with short-shorts and jazz shoes entered the floor with a very primly dressed young girl on his arm.  He danced with her for less than a minute before pirouetting away from her and taking over the dance floor with some fantastic dance moves the included high leaps, fast turns, and launching off the wall while she ended up dancing by herself in a corner.  I don't think she was his girlfriend though.  He did not appear to be a straight guy by any stretch of the imagination.  But he was a great dancer. 

I have a feeling that both these guys are regular performers in the burlesque shows that the club put on other nights of the week.  There are quite a few really good dancers that come on Friday nights to dance alone or in groups of one gender or the other, both male and female, but Energizer Bunny is the best of them.  Once, when a young woman was crossing the dance floor with 3 drinks clutched between her hands, he deliberately teased her by dancing a circle around her, pirouetting at each of the 8 points.  Must have made her awfully nervous.  LOL. 

A very mismatched couple also took the floor... temporarily.  He was a slender young man, Asian or Latino, very clean cut and good looking, in a tailored looking formal suit and tie with highly polished dance shoes on.  She was a head taller than him, only moderately overweight but dressed badly for her body type in tight short dirty jean cut-offs, short top high heeled boots, and a loose sparkly top.  Her greasy looking curly blond hair was tied back in a pony tail and she was wearing B & C glasses.  They looked odd together.  Odder still when he tried, repeatedly, to lead her into a swing dance.  She kept glomming onto him, hugging him so tightly he must have had trouble breathing.  Then he'd push her back into dance frame and try again.  She insisted on glomming.  He had the patience of a saint and made several attempts before finally giving up halfway through the song and leading her back off the dance floor.  Poor guy!  I wonder how they ended up together?

What did you do this weekend?

I dreamt I crossed a threshold into one of my parallel realities that must have been initiated many years in my past because it was VERY different.  Just the place I came over looked like a place I was familiar with... White's Nursery.  Go figure.  But the technology and many aspects of the culture were different enough that I was terrified of being noticed by other people so kept a low profile.  Wish I remember more about that, but that's it... and I was trying to find my way back without being noticed. 

For some reason, I felt that if I went to the beach at the foot of town, that would be my gateway across because the beach would be nearly identical in all my realities.  That's what I figured anyway.  But I had trouble finding my way down there.  There were houses and streets in the way, in different places than in my own reality and, desperate, I started just cutting through people's yards and thick forest. 

An old man saw me emerging from the forest, the ocean so close now it was singing to me, and told me, "This way girl; your other part is here."  I didn't know what he meant but for some odd reason (not like me at all), I trusted and followed him into his house and down into the daylight basement that faced on the sea from atop a cliff.  And there I was standing by the sliding glass door, turning to smile at me and offer a hand: my doppleganger, the me that belonged to this reality. 

Neither the beach nor the sea was my door as it turned out.  It was her.  I walked into her and she into me and I was home again, just waking up.

I dreamt last night that all the family were gathered together at my grandparents house... only the house was different than the one they actually lived in during my lifetime.  Possibly it was the one they raised their kids in.  In any case, we all sat together at one long table, both living and passed on, including my grandparents. 

My grandmother passed away this November past at the age of 97, my grandfather passed 10 years previous, so it was surprising to see them sitting there chatting with everyone including my uncle Grant who died before I was born.  I recognized him from photographs: young, dark haired, cocky grinned, and looking a little bit like Elvis, though not nearly so much as my Uncle Keith did.  Everyone except my mom and step father was laughing at chatting, but it still struck me as a little strange. 

Grandma laughed at something someone said and commented, "I'm getting too old for this," then, jokingly in a pseudo quavering voice, "I'm just a fraaaaaiiiil little old lady," clearly not meaning it.  She looked great and was her usual bouncy lively self as was Grandpa with his dead pan teasing and pranking and chuckles breaking out over his face at anyone who fell for it.

I glanced over the table at my mother and step father Fred who were sitting there looking... baffled, bemused, confused, doubting what they thought they were seeing and hearing.  So I asked them, "Do you see what I see?  Do you see Grandma and Grandpa and Grant and the others."

They shot me sharp looks as if daring me to say it was so, and Fred very slowly said, "yes... I do," and Mom asked me, "Do you?"

"I do," I answered, wondering to myself why even I felt a little startled.

Mom looked as though she thought I was messing with her.  Her lips tightened and her eyes swam.

"See? I told you they were still here," I said a lot more confidentally than I felt.

She nodded acknowledgment at me and the tears spilled over.

Grandma stood and went around the table to encircle her shoulders with one arm and giver her a squeeze saying, "Why Dolly, what are you crying about?"

Mom turned and kissed the hand upon her shoulder and started sobbing in earnest then.

And that's all I remember.

I love that name.  It  describes a perfectly beautiful pristine garden, quiet and serene except for maybe monkey calls, birdsong, the chuckling of little streams, the soughing of wind in the treetops, gracious plenty for all that live there... 

Guess what we won't have a lot of if the population keeps exploding as it has been?  All of the above.

From MoveOn.org:

Eden Foods--a major organic food company--is suing the Obama Administration over the rule that insurance companies must cover birth control under the new healthcare law. Why? Because as CEO Michael Potter put it, they believe that "these procedures [birth control] almost always involve immoral and unnatural practices."

To that I say "Over population means overstressing the environment, increasing crime rates, overcrowding schools, more highways and traffic, exceeding our natural resources, overflowing dumps, and driving many species into extinction with insufficient land, resources, and pure water left for them. No one who actually wants to practice responsible birth should be prevented from doing it! That's just all kinds of wrong! You want to talk about morality here, how about starting at home?"

If you too would like to give Eden Foods a piece of your mind and/or sign the petition again them, please click HERE.

Anyway, the first place I ever saw Eden used as name of person was in a movie about President Teddy Roosevelt going up against Arab cheiftan in 1904 to rescue and American woman and children the cheiftan had murdered the husband of and taken hostage over there just to embarrass the Sultan.  It was called The Wind and the Lion.  The American woman's name was Eden.  Great movie!  The only other person I've ever heard of with that name is right here on Xanga: @shining_garnet.

Eden Foods doesn't deserve to have such a beautiful name if they're going to maintain such earth killing policies as dissallowing birth control from their employees.  Just saying...