¡Sarah!

"I don't know if anyone is still around, but here is an update" seems to be a common theme in my friends list these days, so - I don't know if anyone is still around, but here is an update.

The last time I posted (in December 2015!), I was working at an eikaiwa in Tokyo. In April 2016, I moved to a different department within the eikaiwa and taught for a year at a university in Tokyo. I returned to Canada in April 2017 and since September 2017 I have been working on my Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. The readings and the discussions have been very interesting, but most of it has felt pretty distant from actual classroom situations, and I am pretty eager to get back there! I somehow managed to finish my coursework in three semesters, and now I am taking a semester to write my final project. Sad to say I have just as much internal motivation to write this essay as I usually do, which is to say that I have none. :) But I will do my best!

Earlier this year I started lifting weights (!!), last month I started trying to get back into sewing, and as always a large portion of my free time is spent studying Japanese, but honestly the main thing that's been occupying my thoughts these past few weeks is old movies! The combination of TCM, YouTube, the public library, and my university library's web site has provided me with an endless free supply. As usual I have been watching a lot of movies from the '30s, '40s, and '50s, but after I discovered Buster Keaton in 2016 I started watching a LOT more silent movies than I ever did previously and I am loving it! The most recently silent movie I watched was 1921's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which was really interesting and also made me cry. So clearly I am getting pretty into these things!

For various reasons I have greatly reduced my online presence over the past couple years, but I continue to update my Trojan War blog infrequently. The current top post is ALL MY THOUGHTS on this spring's Troy: Fall of a City miniseries, which was flawed but I LOVED it. I think that kind of super long post is not really sustainable now that I am turning into someone who doesn't want to spend all her free time on the computer, so I'm trying to figure out how I might change the way I've been writing my posts there, but rest assured I still enjoy exploring the world of Trojan War adaptations!

Also, today is Morning Musume's 21st anniversary, and I still love them too. <3

I hope all my LJ friends are doing well! Feel free to let me know if you read this. :)

So I fail to post all of December (and it's probably a good thing that I did, I was pretty grumpy for most of it), and upon my return I bring you a most useless entry: a list of the movies I watched (or rewatched) this year. It's organized by decade because the past few days I've been feeling really curious to know how many movies I watched from each decade. I'm actually not all that thrilled with the answer. Every year I think "I want to watch more older movies!" and I thought I'd done better this year but looking at this I'm not sure I did? How is the 2010s list the longest one? Did I really only watch four silents? And how did I fail so hard at the 1930s when I seriously love 1930s movies?? Well clearly I am just going to have to make sure my 2015 movie list looks rather different.

(I am pleased to report that I watched three Rosalind Russell movies this year though. Great actress or greatest actress?)

Also, this is just a list because I'm lazy, but you are more than welcome to ask for my thoughts on any of these!

( Sarah's 2014 Movies )

Also, in the summer I got it into my head that I was going to watch a whole bunch of old animated shorts, and in the end I kind of didn't, but if anyone is interested here are the fifteen that I did watch. Perhaps this is another list I will try to beat in 2015~

Special note, the 1953 "Tell-Tale Heart" is perhaps my favourite thing that I watched all year, you should totally watch it and let it creep you right out.

( Sarah's 2014 Cartoon Shorts )

Movie Documentary series!

Terry Jones' Barbarians (2006)
Quite an interesting four-part series covering the groups of people (the Celts, the Goths, the Parthians, the Vandals, the Huns, the Greeks?!) that the Romans considered barbarians. It was pretty interesting and, I'll admit, was more intelligent than I thought it would be (I didn't expect that one of the guys from Monty Python would be a historian!). I liked when they paired modern-day footage with Jones' narration of historical events (like, he'd be discussing some ancient battle and meanwhile you're watching tourists wander around Rome), because, as usual, I love me some juxtaposition. So yeah, it was pretty good, although as usual I don't think I retained anything. :3

Book!!

The War That Killed Achilles, Caroline Alexander
So my review of this book can be summed up the same way almost all of my Trojan War-related reviews can be summed up: this book is FASCINATING. Now, for all I know it could be filled with information that everyone else already knows; I heart the Trojan War but it's only recently that I've started reading academic works about it, as opposed to novels. But oh man this book was amazing and if I didn't have such a huge pile of library books to get through I would totally have started rereading it already. ( brb fangirling )

So my dad sometimes goes on this local TV show where a host and several guests (usually people in the media) sit around talking about issues in the news. Having noticed that women are only invited onto the show about 10% of the time, and the only non-white guest is invited on maybe once a year, my dad developed a habit of looking around at the others just before filming begins and announcing, "Well, I'm glad we're representing the full diversity of the community - from middle-aged white male to middle-aged white male." So he thinks it's his fault that they recently hired a second host, who is younger than middle-aged (although he's still white and male) ... and of course my dad hates him. haha! Apparently this new host comes from the Stephen Colbert school of interviewers, twisting your words around in a desperate attempt to make it sound like you're arguing in favour of something horrible. Keep trying, Dad! ^^;

I realize that lately I haven't been posting at all about what's actually going on in my life, lol. Yesterday my manager asked me how many shifts I want in the upcoming weeks and I had to remind him that I'm leaving in eight days! (Those of you who remember the fiasco surrounding my JLPT weekend may come to the conclusion that this is kind of in-character for him, haha. I really like him when he's not making a mess of my schedule!) I'm nervous of course, and still kind of panicked about getting everything done before I go, but I've also started getting really excited. :) I've just returned from one last doctor's appointment, I'm done all my shots and oral vaccines, I guess now I mainly just have to finish packing and finish writing our itinerary for the first week. I got my volunteer placement a little while ago - I'm going to be working in a daycare that's run by SOS Children's Villages, which is actually a child sponsorship organization! (You might have seen their TV commercials starring Mike Holmes.) So that should be interesting, and hopefully enjoyable. I always wish I could hang out with kids more often so I guess here's my chance! :) the_wykydtron told me last night that she thinks I'm going to return home speaking little kid Spanish, lol! Maybe! xD

Anyway, I'm off to bombard my volunteer coordinator with some more annoying questions. xD

After reading its Wikipedia page, I feel like kind of an idiot thinking I should rush to my LiveJournal to announce to the world how Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" is like the second coming of Ace of Base, right down to the way she sings the lyrics, but seriouslyyyy! I know I don't talk about them that much anymore, but from the end of elementary school and all through middle school Ace of Base was my favourite group, and so it is a big deal to me that someone would write a song so obviously influenced by them. Seriously, how did I not know about this sooner, I love it. xD

Movies!

14. Push, 2009
the_wykydtron and I had been sorta kinda wanting to see this for over a year, and finally we did! And I think that she summed it up best when she commented on some new plot point, "This twist would be really interesting if I cared at all!" This movie had a really cool setting and some characters that potentially could have been really compelling, but somewhere along the way the writing and the editing failed. Which is frustrating! I would still watch it again though, just for Dakota Fanning as a psychic thirteen-year-old who goes out and gets drunk when she's frustrated with the other characters for never doing as she tells them. Seriously, how randomly awesome is that. xD

15. The 300 Spartans, 1962
Rounding out our evening of movies that have no interest in creating any sort of suspense at all is this tale about the Battle of Thermopylae. I don't think I hated it to the same extent that the_wykydtron did, but it certainly wasn't great. I would love to see this film remade - less talking, more action, less secondary character romance, more greenscreen, and, I dunno, maybe that guy from The Ugly Truth in the lead. I mean, I dunno, I'm just sayin'.

16. Much Ado About Something, 2001
Lolariously enough, I don't think this documentary includes anything that the Wikipedia entry doesn't at least touch upon, but it was still an interesting watch. And surprisingly casual - we see clips from interviews that took place while the subjects were driving, eating in the cafeteria, and even gardening! Anyway, this documentary discusses the idea that Christopher Marlowe was not killed, but in fact went into exile, where he wrote all of the plays that today we believe to be Shakespeare's. I find the Shakespeare authorship theories kind of interesting, although I have yet to be convinced by any of them. This one doesn't rely entirely upon anagrams, which is a point in its favour, but I still didn't find it all that much more compelling. It basically goes like this: "Shakespeare wasn't smart enough to write the plays he wrote, but Marlowe was! Oh, he died in 1593, you say? Well, uh, no he didn't! He just went into exile! In, uh, Italy! Yeah, Italy! 'Cause Romeo and Juliet is set there! Here, have a list of lines from Shakespeare plays that are very similar to lines from Marlowe plays and obviously prove that they were written by the same person, completely ignoring how we already know that Shakespeare was a master at stealing inspiration from wherever he could get it!" So ... yeah. x)

While I'm on the topic: I have a bit of an inexplicable love for Christopher Marlowe, to the point that my favourite part of Shakespeare in Love is the way they handle his death. Especially when I went into that movie not expecting him to be in it at all! SO AWESOME.

NBC Confuses Terry Fox for Michael J. Fox

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

I have no idea how well known Terry Fox is outside of Canada (feel free to educate me on this), but holy man. Seriously, my feeling watching this clip is OH NO YOU DID NOT JUST

Especially because, according to Wikipedia, At the 2010 Winter Olympics, a Terry Fox Award will be awarded to an Olympic athlete who embodies Fox's characteristics of determination and humility in the face of adversity. El. Oh. El.

I enjoy how my patriotic pride comes out in small and angry bursts, but SERIOUSLY.

HE IS THE SECOND GREATEST CANADIAN.

TRY HARDER.

I mean Michael J. Fox you know I love you but seriously.

Seriously.

So I never before thought to look up the Iliad on TV Tropes, but omg it is perfection. There is a trope named Achilles In His Tent!! Oh my goodness, I need to start writing more about the Trojan War again, I loves it so.

My life has been so uneventful these past few days that I have little else to say except that I am going to Sherlock Holmes with athena_crikey and the_wykydtron tomorrow, yay!

HAHAHA OMG YOU GUYS

55. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2009
APPARENTLY I LOVED THIS MOVIE SO MUCH I TOTALLY FORGOT TO WRITE ABOUT IT WHEN I SAW IT FIVE MONTHS AGO

Uh, as I recall, Draco was awesome but then they cut out the best line of the book, and oddly enough I have yet to have a desire to watch it again. Oh, me and my on-again off-again Harry Potter fandom ... :P