Jae Walker’s blog

This is priceless - the cat yodeling near put me on the floor...

I simply cannot praise this movie too highly.  I found myself completely immersed in the experience - I cried twice, I yipped, I flinched - I cared.

I'm unaffected by shaky-cam nausea; alas, at least one of my friends who went to see it at my urging threw up in her popcorn bucket half an hour in. When it comes out on DVD, I'm sure that seeing it on the small screen will mute the shaky-cam nausea effect.

It's hard to talk about why I enjoyed it so much without spoilers, so I'll just say this: they did it right.  There's no sound track - lots of ambient sound, but no dramatic music to warn you the bad things are about to jump at you, or to signal when you should expect an emotional moment.  Instead you have the echoing not-quite-silence of an abandoned subway station as the backdrop to one character haltingly giving his mother bad news via his cell phone.  I cried.

Oh, and word of advice?  When all of the rats are running toward you, turn around and run with them.  Outrun them if you can.  Smart animals, rats.

I have no idea why I put this in my Netflix queue.  Someone must have said something good about it - I tend to add to my queue while I'm reading blogs.  It's not the kind of movie I'm particularly drawn to - it's essentially a character study.  It's also subtitled French, but that's not such an obstacle.  Again, I'm not sorry I watched it, but I finished it mostly with a sense of obligation because I'd started it.  I kept waiting for something to happen.

I quote Netflix for what it's all about:

Unable or unwilling to find a long-term romance, aging hair stylist Angèle (Nathalie Baye) settles for the salon's distaff camaraderie and for living by proxy through her co-workers. But her life gets upended when a stranger -- a shaggy-haired, bohemian stud named Antoine (Samuel Le Bihan) -- abruptly declares his love for her. The guarded Angèle faces a dilemma: Should she take a chance on intimacy, or remain inside her protective shell?

A number of my friends on Livejournal are trying to watch and blog about 100 movies this year.  Give my Neflix addiction, I thought I'd do so as well.  At least, I'm starting.

#1 Angels & Insects

I put this in my Netflix queue on the recommendation of someone on my LJ friends list. It's a Victorian period piece, chronicling an anthropologist's somewhat uneasy return to civilization.  The photography is beautiful, and the costumes are perfect.  I found it hard to really care about the characters, and was reasonably satisfied with the story.

I don't feel a need to own it, but I don't want my 2 hours back either.

This video of two cats having a "conversation" is cute enough on its own...

What decision changed the course of your life? 
Submitted by Ally.

Not taking the job as a private investigator right out of college.  It would have undoubtedly been a very different life...