Movies: Breakup with the devil

Devil Wears Prada

The book was decent but a stretch to be good. A lot of verbiage around one idea, working for a fashion magazine sucks and writing for New Yorker is all high and lofty and for this, Andrea was willing to compromise everything. Truth is, working for Runway isn’t all that bad—even Andrea admitted it at the end of the book. While I am aware that Devil Wears Prada was a work of fiction, this realization still leaves one with a bad aftertaste in the mouth. Weisburger achieved fame and fortune solely based on her personal experience working for Vogue and Anna Wintour, two things she tried her best in the book to distance herself from.

No matter. The movie was a hit simply because the buzz and controversy it generated around the idea that Miranda Priestly was based (not so loosely) on the real-life editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine. To this end, the movie was OK. The book was a bit “bitchy” to certain extend, but at least it’s largely based on personal experience with some heart felt pain and some not-so-pretty truth about working your way up the ladder while crushing others whenever you can, the movie was masqueraded into a good-guys-win-in-the-end comedy by Hollywood. I mean it’s entertaining all right, and with all the high fashion as eye candy, who can complain? I just feel bad for Meryl Streep, a wonderfully versatile actress playing a cookie-cutter boss-from-hell. Even the few sprinkles of humanity in Paris when Miranda was coping with the divorce were quickly lost. Hollywood wants us to believe that Miranda is just no-hope. But it’s probably just a small project for her anyway… I really like Stanley Tucci’s Nigel and a few glimpse of Gisele. The writer, whatever his name was, what a sleeze ball.

The Break Up

The review was crap, but I actually like the movie a lot! While Jennifer Aniston was typecast again to play a metropolitan white-collar working girl with great apartment and even better looking shoes, I feel she played this role much much better and true to life. The conversation, which escalated into a fight by the seconds passing, over the number of lemons Brook had asked Gary to buy played out like a Déjà-Vu for me. Similar thing happened when Brook and Gary fought over Gary’s “want” to do the dishes… Quite spooky. I swear I had at one point or another had this conversation with Kam. It’s quite funny hearing and seeing it on screen in a movie theater, but all the agony and frustration. UGG!! Great job!

Tags: movies

Books: summer reading 走马观花

Haven't had time to reflect much, but let me put them down first and get back to it later. I am 1/5 into The World is Flat and I am truly convinced that the world, in fact, is flat, and it's getting flatter by the day. I would say this book has saved me from the emotional downturn I have been experiencing since last weekend. Always relate personal experience to the grand scheme of things and don't lose perspective. I am so glad to have picked it up although it's been published for almost two years. I felt a surge of restlessness knowing the world is getting flattened and the playing field is being leveled by the minute all over the world from Banglore to Dalian to Colorado Springs to Salt Lake City. I am still here seemingly accomplishing nothing and fret over things that I have no control over...I have to think fast and act fast now.

The World is Flat A brief history of the twenty-first century
by Thomas Friedman

Freakonomics
by by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner


One L : The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School
by Scott Turow


The Time Traveler's Wife
By Audrey Niffenegger
Hands down the best romance novel I have read this year! I often cringe when someone recommends a romance novel to me, but Amy's enthusiasm convinced me to pick it up and what a pleasant surprise it is, romantic to the core, not in the least of the corny or cliché plaguing the bookshelves these days.

The Mermaid Chair
by Sue Monk Kidd
I like the style of the prose better than that of the Secret life of bees, but I think the story is a bit too idealized.

In the Company of the Courtesan
By Sarah Dunant

Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
by Agatha Christie
Peril at the End House (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
by Agatha Christie

Third Girl (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
by Agatha Christie
The Body in the Library (Jane Marple Mysteries)
by Agatha Christie

Categories

• books

Rants and raves: The unbearable emptiness of being...

The wedding is over...
Post-wedding traveling is over...
Family left...
Amy left for another year of Pork-less days in Jordan...
LQJ is going off to school and probably will be super busy from this point on...
World Cup is over...
20 pounds came off of me for good (at least for a while)

I have been so involved in the past 6 months with wedding prep, visa, arranging for travel, losing weight, and going to school and working at the same time. Looking back, everyday was filled with "things". I was always rushing from place A to place B. Towards the end of planning, my days were charted out in hourly increments, and I was getting no more than 5 hours of sleep every day. While I was traveling with family, we ate whatever was available and rushed from one mode of transportation to the next, as if we were trying to score the hit-as-many-famous-place-as-we-can-in-the-least-amount-of-time prize. And now, all has gone and all is quiet. I am left with an unexpected emptiness in my heart, so vast so boundless that it fills me with sadness and longing for... what? Do I want to go back to the hairpulling days of wedding planning? No. Aggrevating incidents of applying for mom's visa? Absolutely not. Sitting still in rushhour traffic on 101 S, eaten alive by the fear that I was going to miss my final? Hmm... No. Maybe I need to find new purpose in life. Summer still has not reached its height, yet to me summer is over.

Categories

• [random
• rants]