Posted 4:57 AM by Blah blah

Wow! Great news! Myanmar Opposition Aung San Suu Kyi May be Released From House Arrest. Imagine, this Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner has been under house arrest, with her phone line cut, since Sept. 2000. She's been unable to see her husband and family since then, who live in Britain. Crossing my fingers...

Report: Clinton Discussing Own TV Talk Show (Reuters). Clinton as Oprah? Probably this is pure fiction, but I can just imagine what a Clinton talk show would be like. Part Charlie Rose, part Oprah, and part Howard Stern.

I.B.M. Chairman Lines Up a Book Deal for Himself (NY Times)

I'm adding another artistic writer to my list: Elen of * The Space I'm In *. She's a Filipina girl who lives in Vienna, Austria, married to a Viennese guy. Found her from RBJ and just from the "look" alone of her site, with the serif font, I can tell she's cool writer! Again, she's with Diaryland. Why does Diaryland have a tendency to attract some of the best online writers?? Someone please tell me.

My Favorite Movies

I was slacking off again, visiting Rice Bowl Journals' forum on classic movies. Here's my post:

Hey everyone! This looks like THE place to hang out! I so rarely meet young people who like old movies, and when I talk about Cary Grant they'll say..."Oh, he's related to Keanu right?"

Scott, you are funny! I guess when Frosty the Snowman melts, that's considered a "summer blockbuster."

V, I see why we have this online connection now. We like so many similar movies! "Bringing Up Baby"---YES YES YES!!! This Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn pic is one of the funniest I've ever seen. And Superdk, you too. I like just about all on your list.

I grew up watching classic movies without caring whether they were "classic" or not. They were just the best stuff out there and helped develop this super interest of mine in film. I liked to think of the people in classic films as representing my "ideal" America and the ones who helped inspire me with "American values" when I was growing up.

Some favorites:
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Ben-Hur (1959)
Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962)
Night of the Iguana (1964), plus...

Top Hat (1935), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Casablanca (1942), Now, Voyager (1942), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Rope (1948), On the Town (1949), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Roman Holiday (1953), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958 ), Inherit the Wind (1960), West Side Story (1961), my favorite musical, From Russia with Love (1963), the best James Bond movie, The Sound of Music (1965), The Lion in Winter (196 ), The Producers (1968), Sleuth (1972)

More recent stuff I love:
Gandhi (1982)
Schindler's List (1993), plus...

Superman (1978 ), The Elephant Man (1980), Tampopo (Japanese, 1986), Pretty Woman (1990), La Femme Nikita (French, 1991), Raise the Red Lantern (Chinese, 1991), Malcolm X (1992), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Braveheart (1995), Amistad (1997), Anastasia (1997), The Rainmaker (1997), Shall We Dance? (Japanese, 1997), Gods and Monsters (1998 ), The Negotiator (1998 ).

[Modern stuff I like: Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Truman Show (1998), American Beauty (1999), Blast from the Past (1999), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), Bedazzled (2000), Gladiator (2000), The Tao of Steve (2000), Quills (2000), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), The Wedding Planner (2001), Shrek (2001), Memento (2001), A Beautiful Mind (2001)]

From The Best Movie of 2001?

I missed a lot of great movies last year. Of the ones I did see, "A Beautiful Mind" tops my list.

As well as "Memento." Too bad I missed "Amelie." David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" was quirky and didn't make sense, but the lesbian scene made it all worthwhile!

Oh, I pretty much fell asleep during "In the Mood for Love." It was my first Wong Kar-wai movie (and maybe my last?) It LOOKED beautiful, but I would have rather watched lovely Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in a fashion magazine, where I could turn the pages at leisure. It was excrutiatingly slow and the repetitive music annoyed me after the first 4 times.

[Oh well, I gotta try one of Wong Kar-wai's faster movies, like "Chungking Express" (1994) with Tony Leung. What do you think of Wong Kar-Wai or Leslie Cheung? I just saw "He's a Woman, She's a Man" (1994) last weekend. It was funny/silly the way I like those cartoonish Hong Kong movies. About homosexuality. Anita Yuen, who pretended to be a man, was irritatingly childish. Because she looks so unglamorous in this picture, it was surprising to learn that she was Miss Hong Kong 1990.

Since I grew up watching those American classics above, I have barely watched any Hong Kong films at all. It was my first time seeing Leslie Cheung in action, besides "Farewell My Concubine," (1993) and he is awesome! Carina Lau is a "real woman," very sexy.

It's amazing to me how the Hong Kong scene seems to be the same few actors starring in movies over and over, in slightly different combinations. And they all seem to sing and date each other too! Carina Lau was living with Tony Leung. Leslie Cheung (who is rumored to be gay) has played some sexually ambivalent roles, as in "Farewell My Concubine." He had some big gay scenes with Tony Leung in "Happy Together" (1997), set in Argentina. Anita Mui was first known as the "Madonna of Hong Kong" for her singing career, before she became an action martial arts actress, starring with Jackie Chan in various films. (Last weekend I saw "The Enforcer," with her and Jet Li, and it's much better than any of Jet Li's American movies. I was especially impressed by Tse Miu, who plays Jet Li's kung fu master son who fights beside him. He's only a little kid, but he has presence and devastating kung fu skills. Tse Miu has a fantastic future ahead.)]