There’s a part in Julie and Julia, where Julie is writing on her blog, and wondering if anyone reads it.  Is anyone reading this?  Am I just talking to myself?  And then she promptly recieves a comment from her mother that says she’s the only one who reads this blog.  Hardy har har.  Mother, if you’re reading this, your comments are always appreciated, but as I’m getting more serious about this, I have to ask myself the same question.  Is anyone out there?

         It’s not like I’ll stop writing if I don’t recieve a comment, I just can’t help but wonder.  I talk to myself all the time, what’s different about this?  Sometimes I’ll find myself whispering or thinking aloud without realizing that I’m making sound.  I’ve heard some say it’s a sign of genius.  But I’ve also heard that it’s a sign of insanity.  I’ve also been diagnosed as a verbal learner, finding it easier to absorb information if I tell someone about it.  So, for whatever reason, talking to myself is as easy breathing, sometimes easier, so don’t feel obligated, but if you have something to say, whoever you are, I’m all ears. 

           I am currently a phlegm factory.  It was misery drag myself to the alarm clock, hitting the snooze button three times, only to drop myself into a strangling pile of sheets and blankets.  I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I know this, not because I’m a light sleeper (I’m a sleepwalker), but because I’ve been waking up with half my bedding on the floor and wrapped awkwardly around me.  You know that part in the newest Parent Trap where the girls prank the cabin with tons of booby traps?  That’s what I feel like in the morning nowaday, slimy, crusty and tangled. 

          Well better luck tomorrow- maybe I can work on my morning entrances

         For those of you who thought that Robert Pattinson was just a pretty, pale face are in for a nasty shock, presuming they turn off their Edward radar long enough to actually take in his newest undertaking: Remember Me.  I’m not going to lie.  I went to Remember me because he was in it.  I had lost quite a bit of respect for Robert ever since he fumbled the character of Edward Cullen.  In the books, which are not extremely well written but do have a good showing when it comes to character development and dialogue, Edward is quick-witted, humorous, eloquent, and gentlemenly.  In the movies, Edward is brooding, slow, gloomy, and doesn’t display any real creativity with words or any particular display of manners.  I was profoundly dissapointed- but it’s a risk we take when trying to convert written word to the screen.

So I went to see Remember Me because a) I was intrigued.  I love a good romance as much as the next girl and b) I am of the strong belief that I cannot have an opinion about something without being informed.  Because of his poor performance in Twilight, I felt that couldn’t judge Robert as an actor until I did so outside of the Twilight franchise.

And I was impressed.

My awe at the movie is mostly because of how the director treated the ending.  spoiler alert: this movie has a 9/11 finale.  I remember the day the towers were hit.  Anyone over the age of five probably does.  My parents took my brothers and me out of school so that they could explain the situation to us themselves.  I watched footage the entire day.  Everything changed that day, and while I remember feeling scared of war and shocked at the tragedy of the whole thing, I never truly understood the impact.  my fifth grade mind wasn’t that far along in empathy to be able comprehend the entire tragedy.  But this movie made me understand.  This movie forced me to realize that on that day, people who had their whole lives ahead of them, were cut off.

The entire movie is not about 9/11.  It was about a broken family.  A young man, whose brother had committed suicide, whose sister was struggling to fit in, whose father was emotionally and verbally abusive, and whose sense of morality is being tested to it’s limit, meets a girl, who shares his own angst.  This girl adopts his family, his struggles and his pain.  By the end of the movie, everyone is starting to have faith in each other again.  And then the main character dies in the two towers, waiting for his dad who has begun to repent of his awful behavior.

I was shocked.  They didn’t prepare you for this ending at all.  There were no hints.  They didn’t allude to the date until the very end of the movie.  They spent the entire movie making you invest in this family, in these broken people, and then it shatters it.  I felt like I had lost something in the towers.  I cried.  The story was about to have, if not a happy, then a hopeful ending, and it was gone.

The directors handled this with great taste.  They didn’t use any real footage.  I would have probably shut down if they had.  They didn’t show the towers after the planes.  They didn’t even say the what was happening outloud.  The audience just saw the family’s reaction, and saw the family at the protagonist’s grave.  It was meant to speak to those who had been there; those who remember; those who, like me, maybe couldn’t quite express what happened that day.  This is for those people who lost something that day, that they couldn’t quite identify at the time.  I’ve never felt so moved by September 11th.  I have rarely felt so connected and invested in a movie.

A note- while I thought the film was extremely poignant, there is a handful of innapropriate moments: sexual content and a few f-bombs, but the film is rated pg-13- so they reign it in.  These are purposely broken characters, imperfect for a reason.

So Robert- good for you- maybe there’s hope for you after all

It’s come to my attention that I might need an explanation for this poem.  This poem is supposed to allude to the anxieties that comes with being a parent of small children, of how you watch them sleep, and how little noises startle you.  Hence- no rest for the blessed. 

Are they breathing?

Quietly opening the door

Just to hear them inhale.

Are they up?

Pausing the movie several times

To check the doors are locked.

To count the toes and fingers,

To watch them,

And whisper your affections.

If they only knew the fuss you made,

As they wander

Through scattered, heavy-eyed visions.

     “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” ~ William Shakespeare Sometimes I’m a little frustrated with my name.  No matter where I look it only seems to refer to a beautiful, exotic, fragrant, night-blooming flower.  My name is Jasmine.  I am not exotic.  I’m a mid-day bloomer.  And I certainly hope I don’t have such a heady odor as my flora counterpart.  My middle name, Nichole, is French for “victory of the people.”  So far, I’m a victorious flower of the people.  My mother named me Jasmine Nichole because she wanted the option to call me something a little cutesy- i.e. Jessy (which she does call me) or Nicky (which we call my dog whose name is Nicholas.)  I always like to hear about how she picked out my name.  She really did think a lot about it, but my mother is also someone who knows what she wants, no matter how much shopping she does.  She wanted something like Jessalyn.  Jasmine can be found in a variety of forms: Persian, Arabic, African, and French.  After some digging, I did find the Arabic meaning of my name: gift from God.  However, most name books and websites will merely insist that I am a flower, and won’t elaborate further.  Because I am a petite Caucasian girl with a tropical name, I have been called every wild version of Jasmine that my friends and acquaintances can think to call me: Yasmin, Yasmeen, Yas-mine, Jas-mine, Yas-mine-ah and Boardgame.  I of course know that Boardgame has nothing to do with the phonetics of my name, but it’s what my choir teacher named me sophomore year because I’ve memorized the monopoly board.    Of all of these, the one I prefer the most is Jasmine.  If said by the right person, I think that my name can be elegant or fun.  My family and close friends call me Jazz or Jazzy.  However, to the general public I prefer Jasmine.  but despite the frustrations that my name meanings present, and lack of exciting racial origins to match my colorful title, I like my name.  It reminds me that it’s not the name that defines the person, but the person who brings meaning to the name.But when it comes to literature, names can often define a character.  I love names.  I look up names for my characters all the time.  I love that a name can sound sinister, innocent, seductive, spunky, or dashing.  Names are the first non-visual impression that people get, and it can say a lot.  For instance, J.K. Rowling does a magnificent job using names to give an immediate impression of characters.  Albus Dumbledore means white bumblebee.  Hearing this name, how could anyone think anything sinister at all about this character?  Dumbledore makes him sound bumbling and cheerful, but Albus sounds intelligent.  However, there is nothing happy or trusting about the name Lord Voldemort, or Lucius Malfoy.  Someday, as a writer, I hope to have the skills with names that Rowling does.  For now, I research names and enjoy their sounds, and experiment with my own characters, while learning from the masters.           

      Who watched the Oscars last night?  I did!  And I was shocked that the Hurt Locker took so many general categories.  I’m sure it is an excellent movie, but it didn’t have any acting awards for the night, which makes me wonder if it’s just a political, special effects movie.

I am happy that the fabulous Sandra Bullock got Best Actress.

My last comment on the event is that I was surprised and pleased at Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin’s performance- very funny men :)  That’s all today- I’m going to take a bit of a me day.

     Yesterday, I went to see Alice and Wonderland.  Before going, I was told that the critics had declared it thoroughly and unforgivably Tim Burton with Johnny Depp given free-reign to be his bizarre self.  Well I loved it, even if I defy elite opinion.  Not only did it retain the brilliance of Lewis Carroll’s nonsensical style, while still allowing the viewer to grasp a basic understanding of the details of Wonderland, but it also infused fantastical dilemas of right and wrong, love and fear, and being practical while believing in the impossible.   The animation was brilliant.  The costumes in wonderland were humerously punk/fantasy, while the real world ones looked like Tim Burton’s animated world: pasty and gaunt.  the characters were apathetically larger than life- does that make sense?  I’ll try to explain.  While the main characters seemed to take everything normal in a scatterbrained and ADD way (Alice runs off during the middle of a conversation because she sees a rabbit- doesn’t that seem strange and slightly rude?), they seem to take the unusual in stride.  Once Alice is able to establish that, no, this place that is vividly real, where she can be scratched and putrified, where she has been thrown about, chased, and stuffed in a teapot, was, in fact, very real and not a dream, she was ready to fight.  Why she suddenly gained supernatural courage once she realized that she could indeed die instead of just wake up, I can’t explain, and I think that this is why these characters are so vivid.  They are never conventional.  This is the first Tim Burton film that didn’t somewhat disturb me, and I applaud him, and the wonderful cast, especially Anne Hathaway, who neve seemed to be able to decisively place her hands anywhere.

Once again, a successful trip to the movies.

Yesterday, for my birthday friday, my lovely family and I watched Julie & Julia.  I find this to be such an amazing and inspirational movie.  Not only is the music lovely and the Parisian setting to die for, but the story itself has stirred the same old things inside of me, the desire to be everywhere.  But it also served as a heartwarming and comical rebuke.  Both main characters seem to write constantly.  Julie, the woman from present-day New York, develops a blog that transforms into, not only a commentary on cooking, but an outlet for her thoughts and her real talent, which was writing.  Julia and her husband write all the time, because they write letters.  Why don’t we write letters anymore?  I always think of something infinitley cleverer than what I did say after I put down the phone, so why not take the opportunity for thought and write a letter…. or talk slower?  So there Amy Adams and Meryl Streep sat, Oscar participants speaking directly at me, saying “just start writing.”  If I write everyday, something will come out.  It could be entirely worthless to the rest of the world, but it won’t be worthless to me.    

           So today I am off to the movies to watch Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.  I am very excited- even though I heard the reviews were bad.  I don’t always like what Tim puts out there, but I’ve got to give him points for originality.  I don’t really think I could be a movie critic, because I don’t think I could ever call a movie bad.  My stragedy is to pick out what I like and what I don’t like, but I don’t think I could disqualify a director’s piece of work. 

           One more thought: I am going to be diligently watching the Oscars this weekend for my birthday.  I love to see actors take their art seriously, instead of seeing the tabloids tear down their characters- they really don’t deserve that.  I would love for Meryl to get another Oscar- she was just so charming in Julie & Julia.