PS. Merry Christmas

Hope everyone is having a good time with their family and such. Though we missed the actual day, we had Christmas the next morning. Some things I got...

From Dad in Toronto (movies, all picked out by me - with a distinctly foreign theme):
- Amores Perros (2000, Inarritu)
- All About My Mother (1999, Almodovar)
- Amarcord (1973, Fellini)
- Pulp Fiction
- Sin City
- Short Cuts (1993, Altman)
- Scoop (2006, Allen)

From parents:
- Very nice hair straightener
- Joss Whedon T-shirt
- And then there were none (aka 10 little indians)

Lots of good movie watching for us, especially including all those ones the parents got. Really all I want to see is Kill Bill Vol 2.... even though I've seen it before. Vol 1 whet my appetite. A sidebar on it, perhaps: I like violence. I mean I really, really like violence. Maybe you wouldn't guess it from my seemingly sweet demeanor but I enjoy nothing better than a good, highly conceptualized bloodbath. This is what Tarantino provides better than any other recent director because he's kind enough to include some kind of plot. I don't think KB is quite in the leagues of Pulp Fiction - it's just a bit too out there. But it's meant to be, of course. The wacky 70s music, campy dialogue (that Matt pointed out), etc. is all part of a certain style of Hung Fu that he was aiming to "Tarantino-ize". I don't even find the violence in these to be all that much, because it's all very cartoony. Lots of blood waterfalls and swordfights, but no close-ups of severed limbs or bulging eyes (although one unfortuante victim did have his eye removed...). Altogether not much realistic violence. {end sidebar}

Speaking of movies, I've recently compiled a rough draft of both my worst and best movies of 2006 lists. I still have a few more I want to see to fill out the latter (Letters from Iwo Jima, The Good Shepherd, Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men). Expect the first entry somewhere between February and March.