Precious

          I had some mixed feelings about this film prior to seeing it because although it won several awards, it got some very negative reviews from some people who saw it.  After seeing Precious, I conclude that if you hated it, it's because you didn't understand it.  It is based on the book, Push, by Sapphire.  The first thing that you need to understand is that this book is written from the point of view of an illiterate 16 year old girl, and the ignorance and innocence transcends into the film.  A lot of people said there was too much profanity and the hardships that this girl was faced with were just unrealistic.  I think all of those people are very lucky to have never had to experience or witness a life so full of tragedy, but they're extremely naive if they think such people don't exist!  I will agree, however, that this movie is not for the faint at heart.
          The story starts in Harlem in 1987, and follows 16 year old, Precious Jones.  In the beginning of the movie, Precious is being suspended from school for being pregnant for the second time by her own father.  A lady from her school tells Precious about an alternative school she may be able to attend, and wanting to better her life from that of her mother, Precious goes.  In the beginning, she reads and writes on a 2nd grade level (but to be honest, my 5 year old reads and writes better).  Her mother seems like a heartless, angry woman, who makes Precious do all the cooking and cleaning while she sits watching television all day.  Her mother is also physically abusive.  She is supported on welfare for Precious and for her first child, Mongo, who is an adorable little girl who suffers from down syndrome and lives with Precious' grandmother.  She only sees her daughter when the social worker comes around, and her mother allows Mongo to come over so that it will appear that she lives there.
          In the beginning of the movie, Precious is very quiet.  She conforms to the things in her life for the lack of better knowing.  After a few months or so at Each One, Teach One (the alternative school), you can see that she gains confidence and happiness (as much happiness as a person in her situation could experience).  She begins writing in a journal every day to her teacher, Ms. Rain.  Her story begins to touch the teacher and she starts giving Precious advice and inspiration in her return letters.
          After giving birth to her second child, Precious returns to her mother's house where they get into a physical altercation, after he mother tosses her newborn baby into a chair.  She is upset about losing her welfare after Precious told her own counselor that Mongo did not actually live with them, and that her mother had lied in order to get welfare.  Precious defends herself and her child and goes to the only place she knows she is safe, Each One, Teach One.  After trying for hours to find a place for them to go, Ms. Rain allows Precious and her newborn to stay at her house with herself and her female life partner.  Precious gets herself into a halfway house with her teacher's help and it seems that she is on the road to get her life together.
          Precious' mother comes to visit her at her halfway house to inform her that her father has died, and that he had died of AIDS.  She tells her mother that she should get herself tested and walks out of the room.  Precious reveals in the next scene that she has tested positive for HIV and that she will die.  Ms. Rain convinces her to continue to write and tell her story so that she can help other people in similar situations.
          At the end of the movie, Precious' mother asks her counselor to reunite her with her daughter.  Precious agrees to the meeting.  The meeting is a little odd as you realize that this woman is not heartless, just broken by her own life.  She admits to hating Precious for taking her man away.  She reveals that she believed that no other man would ever love her, and he was loving Precious instead of her, that Precious had stolen her man away.  She was upset that he had given Precious more children than he gave her.  She truly breaks down in a tearful jolt of mumbling, some of which makes little or no sense.  After her mother leaves, and returns with Precious' daughter, Precious takes her daughter and her son and walks away from her mother, never planning to see her again.  She wants to create a better life for her children, while knowing she will not be there to raise them.
          The movie was not glamorous at all.  There were no special effects.  The dream sequences were a bit outrageous.  But I got the impression that all of that added to the real, deep, dirty truth of Precious.

Splice

          I can't tell you how excited that I was when Rich said he picked up the movie Splice from the Red Box.  I have been so excited to see it and didn't even decide that it was complete and utter SHIT until the credits rolled at the end, so no one can say that I didn't give this movie more than a fair chance.  

          It is a movie about a young scientist couple, specializing in splicing animal and plant DNA for medical and pharmaceutical uses (and they have a title like splicologists or something), who is trying to get permission from the board who funds their program to approve introducing human DNA into an experiment.  When the board refuses, Elsa and Clive create this animal/human hybrid splice in private.  Elsa obviously wears the pants in the relationship and Clive does everything that she asks and she is the one who pushes the whole thing, and you find out later that she uses her own human DNA which only allows you to believe that she has serious mother/daughter issues, since she doesn't want children at all, just pets with her own DNA.  As they become completely consumed with their hybrid pet/child thing, their lab (N.E.R.D.) is failing miserably at the task that the board has given them to find where the protein is coming from that is so helpful (which is the reason for the whole experiment).  They are experimenting on Ginger and Fred who are a male and female pair of plant/animal splices that look like big nasty blobs of flesh.  They had noticed that Ginger's estrogen levels had dropped, but didn't realize until their huge science conference that Ginger had actually turned into a male when Fred and Ginger kill each other and splatter blood on a crowd full of other scientists (not a very good impression).

          After the major set back, the lab is being taken over by the big bosses who are funding the program and in order to protect their secrecy, Dren, their animal/human hybrid (whose name, btw, comes from their lab's name backwards) has to be moved to Elsa's farm, which used to belong to her dead mother (there is DEFINITELY a weird, fucked-up back story which I kept waiting for them to explain, which they NEVER did.  Her mother was crazy, and now she's dead, and Elsa has issues, and that's all they EVER let you know!)  Dren is growing at a rate of days in minutes, so her life is rapidly progressing before their eyes.  They have by this time discovered that she can breath under water, and has wings hidden away under her skin, and blah blah blah.  In earlier days, Dren had favored Elsa, like you would a mother, and despised Clive, who did actually try to kill her once and tried to talk Elsa out of ever creating her in the first place, but as she reaches what would be her teenage years, that is if she aged in years, she begins to resent Elsa and favor Clive, but not like a father.  She seduces Clive, and Elsa walks in as they're having sex.  Elsa is disgusted that Clive has cheated (and with something that wasn't even human) and they have a big fight, but agree to settle their differences and deal with Dren.  They return to the farm to find her sick and dying.  She dies soon after, at which time they dig a hole and bury her, only to have her come back to life as a man, at which time she kills Clive, rapes Elsa, and then gets killed by Elsa.

          In the last scene, Elsa is giving the board the right to further the study.  They offer her a lot of money, which she accepts, then she stands to reveal she is pregnant, which insinuates that furthering the study would mean studying her unborn hybrid incest child which I find absolutely disgusting.

          The acting wasn't great.  The story line was flaky.  The details were a bit outrageous.  They didn't define the characters well at all.  You never understand where Elsa's mother issues come from, or why Clive is a freak who likes hybrid women (I say she seduced him, but basically she kissed him and he pulled his pants down), or how Elsa can forgive her boyfriend of 7 years for cheating with her half random-animal daughter in one conversation, or how Dren thinks or feels at all, or why Elsa was so adamant about keeping Dren to herself, to study by herself, but she's willing to sell her unborn, inbred child for science.  Even in a science fiction movie where the plot is unbelievable, the characters should be believable.

I give this movie a 1 out of 5.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

We just watched the first episode of the Starz series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand.  It was racy, saucy, and sexy.  There was a lot of blood, some power struggles, lots of nudity, and several sex scenes.  We were going to watch the first 2 episodes, but by the end of the first, Rich was practically attacking me!  I recommend this show to anyone :)

Charlie St. Cloud

Last night we watched Charlie St. Cloud.  It wasn't terrible, but I was the only one who stayed awake, if that tells you anything.  Spoiler Alert!  If you haven't seen the movie already, this will ruin the ending for you!  Its a very cliche depiction of a guy who has everything going for him and loses it all, blah, blah, blah.  On the day of his high school graduation, with a sailing scholarship to Stanford waiting, Charlie gets into his car with his little brother, Sam, without the permission of their mother.  On their way to wherever it was they were going (Charlie wants to go to a party and Sam wants him to drop him at a friend's house on the way) they are struck from behind by a drunk driver, and then t-boned on the passenger side by a semi-truck.  They both die, but the paramedic miraculously brings Charlie back, while his brother dies beside him.  After the funeral, Charlie makes a pact with his brother's ghost to meet up every day in the same spot in the woods by the graveyard where Sam is buried.  So, the kid gives up everything to be near his dead brother so they can play catch every day at sunset.  Charlie gets a job working for the graveyard, so he's close by Sam all of the time, and occasionally, he even sees, and talks to, other ghosts as well.  Everyone in town has him rumored to be crazy of coarse.  He runs into a girl who had a crush on him in high school and they seem to hit it off for a brief moment before she takes off to test her sail boat out for her big 6 month long sailing trip around the world.  She returns to the cemetery where Charlie works, and where her father is buried, to have yet another well-played out conversation with Charlie where he offers to make her dinner.  Having her leave and come back being the only way that he could still meet his dead brother Sam for their sunset game of catch and conversation.  At dinner, Charlie and Tess really hit it off and they do the dirty, or so you gather since they don't show anything :( and he awakes in the cemetery only to find Tess has taken his old sail boat out.  They get out on the water together and everything is all romantic until Charlie realizes it's almost sunset and runs off into the woods to meet Sam.  Tess follows, finding out that Charlie spends his sunset every day with his dead brother, of coarse, makes her think he is a little crazy and has some issues to work out, so she tries to help, but Charlie sends her away, drinks Jack Daniels all night to wake up with a hang over, needing some coffee, which he gets from a local diner.  While Charlie is trying to kick the headache, some local law enforcement announces that Tess's boat had never returned after she took it out into the storm for a test 3 days ago, and thus she had not returned either.  As this is going on, Tess takes her dog out for a walk in town and realizes that Charlie is the only person who can see her and that she doesn't actually have a reflection.  It is a surprise to them both that Tess seems to be one of Charlie's ghosts.  At first, he believes that she is dead, but soon realizes that she is just lost and is coming in and out of the "in between world".  Charlie takes off to find Tess, and he finds and rescues her while missing his sunset date with his brother.  Sam finally crosses over, and Charlie and Tess recover from their icy cold adventure.  Charlie sails up to Tess's dock in an old sailboat he bought and she tells him that she has been dreaming about him.  As she recalls parts of the "dreams", Charlie tells Tess they are actually memories and then recalls some of their very intimate conversation to convince her.  They sail into the sunset where you assume that they live happily ever after..........

 

Labels

I have decided that since I have drawn a blank about what I am supposed to "blog" about, I've come up with some fun categories to keep this thing going.  Maybe after a few posts, I'll really get the hang of it, and then this whole thing won't seem so difficult!  I must admit that some of my ideas were inspired by other blogs, such as http://onemetwomonsters.blogspot.com/ -  and here they are:

Fun with Food (where i share recipes and cooking experiences)

Crafts with Kids (where i share the things that the kids and i create and how we create them)

Lists (random lists of things)

Date Night (where i share saucy details about how romantic my love is)

Whoores (where i rant and rave about customers and other hooter girls)

Spoilers (where i talk about movies i've seen and ruin them if you haven't)

What do you think?  I'm sure more will come to me, but if I concentrate on sharing these things, I'll probably have more than 3 posts in the next month, don't you think?!

Chicken and Dumplings

You will need:
4 lb. Chicken (whole chicken or chicken breast)
(1) 14 oz can of chicken broth
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons corn meal
2 teaspoons sugar
a pinch of salt and pepper
5 tablespoons butter
1 large egg
1/2 cup of milk

The first thing I did was fillet 3 large chicken breasts equaling 4 lbs and placed them in a large pot and brought them to a boil.  I kept them on a slow boil for the entire time it took me to prepare the rest.

I put 1 can of chicken broth and 4 same size cans of water into a large pot and placed on low-medium heat as I prepared the dumplings to go into it.

I combined the flour, corn meal, sugar, salt and pepper, egg, and butter into a medium-sized mixing bowl and worked into a ball.  I added about 1/2 cup more of flour as I kneaded the dough to make it tougher and kneaded into a tight ball.

I used the rolling pin to roll the dough flat to about 1/8 inch thick.

I used a pizza cutter (you may also use a knife or cookie cutters) to cut the dough into even squares.

I finished by adding a layer of butter to the square dumplings to prevent sticking.

I placed the dumplings one at a time into the chicken broth and water and allowed to boil while I tended again to the chicken.

I removed the chicken from heat, drained it, and cut the breast fillets into smaller pieces, then added them slowly into the broth/water/dumpling mixture.

Finally, I reduced heat to low and let simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Christmas 2010 Pictures

We got our pictures back today and we are SO excited.  They turned out so nice!