Friday, August 11, 2006
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Updated supplemental application workshop page for Julia and James. Created draft of new oath of a pharmacist in InDesign. Made live city tours. Homepage news small edit. Archived data to DVD. Lunch with Joel at Ten—I treated. Coded admissions calendar 2007 for James, sent it to him for review. Archived student cdrom source files to DVD. Started work on a new video to go online. Dinner at home with Patrick. Patrick cooked a delicious Chinese meal: chicken glazed in hoisin sauce, Chinese flowering cabbage with oyster sauce, tossed noodles with ginger and scallions, steamed rice, fujian jasmine. Afterwards, we watched an advance copy of The Promise on DVD. This film is so Chinese, filled with poetic storylines bordering on saccharinity and in the story nearly every character is forced to choose between two seemingly arbitrary and absurd fates. It's part of the poetry of the film, but it just didn't work for me. Unlike many recent martial arts films that have made it to the USA, this one does not include a scene in which Zhang Ziyi's clothes are passionately torn away from her body. Patrick was disappointed that the film did not contain as much martial arts as, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but he still enjoyed it for its cinematic beauty. The film is somewhat noteworthy for integrating more fantasy and fantastical elements than similar films of the past, and it also has more horror and suspense film techniques which bring a unique perspective to modern martial arts films.