Kimberly Steele's Blog, page 45
October 8, 2011
STAINED Movie Review
And you thought your ex-girlfriend was a messed up freak~
I recently rented Stained, a 2010 film written and directed by Karen Lam, through iTunes.
Main character Isabelle is a lovely, shy, intelligent woman who owns cool bookstore in the heart of the city. Isabelle has the sort of life that is the perfect setup for a romantic comedy: she's got three cats, Jenny (Sonja Bennett) an overbearing childhood best friend/foster sister who is pregnant, and an ex-boyfriend she can't forget despite her best efforts. Played by the luminously beautiful Tinsel Korey from the Twilight movies, Isabelle's life seems quite enviable at first glance–hello, her legs are like a mile long!–as long as you don't dig too deep.
Isabelle is a very high-functioning, gorgeous, Type A obsessive compulsive basketcase, tragically ridden with nervous tics and an inability to relax. The two young, hip employees of White Cat Books don't quite latch on to their boss's uptight, stoic approach to romance, which is basically to go without in favor of more agreeable feline companionship. Nevertheless, Isabelle agrees to go on a date with a hottie named Ralf when she gets set up on a date. Isabelle's date with Ralf is beyond awkward, ending in an upturned tray of delicious butter tarts instead of a hook up.
Serving up butter tarts with a side of lonely sadness 
Every time Isabelle starts to have fun, she is haunted by flashbacks of her horrible childhood. Little by little, more detailed flashbacks reveal Isabelle's childhood as tormented by bullies. Equally tormented is Isabelle's home life. She is desperately impoverished and her prostitute mother turns to inviting johns into the home in order to make ends meet. At age ten, Isabelle walks in on her mother in flagrante delicto with a customer. Later on, Isabelle's mom dies and the little girl goes to live with her friend, Jenny. Eventually, Isabelle moves on to the big city while Jenny stays put in the provinces, keeping in touch mainly via phone.
Jenny the pregnant friend doling out advice
Like a good depressive, Isabelle spends copious amounts of time daydreaming about her first love, emotionally abusive but hot James (Tim Fellingham) who was the first to rock Isabelle's world as a teenager. One of my favorite parts of Stained is how the relationship with James is treated. No one can ever compare to James, however, any way we look at him, he's a selfish prick. Fragile, damaged Isabelle cannot help herself; James is addictive like crack cocaine.
James played by Tim Fellingham
One day, James waltzes back into Isabelle's life, magically popping up without explanation. Don't get confused at this part of the movie, folks, just wait for it. Isabelle is over the moon with happiness. Yay! He came back! She's getting a second chance with her true love! Sure, James is a bastard and she knows it but they reunite and all is extremely romantic for a while, despite the remote objections of Jennifer back in the sticks.
Soon enough, James shows his true asswipe colors and upon Jennifer's phone advice, Isabelle breaks up with him and goes back to her cats. Things only get worse when the bookstore is broken into. From then on, the careful construct of Isabelle's life comes undone because she's fundamentally not a stable woman.
I won't give any more away. It will suffice to say I enjoyed Stained. Stained is, in one word, unique. Though there is nothing out there exactly like Stained, though there are clear references to a 1965 Catherine Deneuve film, Repulsion, where a lovely, psychotic girl alternately fantasizes and dreads rape and leaves maggoty body parts laying around and in the fridge. In other words, exactly my kind of movie. Another all-time favorite film Stained has tinges of Takashi Miike's Audition (subject of my Vegan Podcast and Potluck of Horror for October 2011). Stained shares Audition's idea of a stunning, damaged femme fatale who lures in men without trying. Both Tinsel Korey and Sonja Bennett do a fabulous job depicting codependent friends, one pathetically needy and the other drawn like a moth to the flame. I did wish that when James and Isabelle reunited that he offered some more dialogue, like the typical slimy ex-boyfriend line "I'm staying at the no-tell motel, hint hint" just so we could love/hate him a little more. Isabelle turns out to be quite a terrible person by the conclusion of the film, though I can't say I held out any hope for her after her epic mega-fail date with Ralf.
October 7, 2011
September 28, 2011
French Twist Hairstyle
I like this hairstyle because it's like having short hair for a day! Also, it's a nice professional look for work.
September 25, 2011
Vegan Peanut Butter Noodles
This is for you, Marie!! Thanks for commenting.
Ingredients:
Rice noodles or linguine, preferably whole wheat
Chopped green pepper (or red, orange, yellow)
1 cup firm tofu (optional)
1 cup chopped broccoli
1 cup finely chopped carrot
1/2 onion or green onion
2 heaping Tablespoons peanut butter
2 teaspoons of soy sauce
1/4 cup water for thinning sauce
Cook noodles according to package directions. I usually cook half a box of noodles at a time. Saute all vegetables and tofu at medium-high heat a large fry pan in a little oil (1 Tablespoon at most) for one to three minutes, just enough to *barely* cook vegetables. Make a well in center and plop the peanut butter in the vegetable pan. Add the soy sauce on top of peanut butter and stir in water as the peanut butter melts. Add noodles, toss well, and serve. Shown with Sriacha sauce on top!
Kiki's New House!
Daddy didn't stop at the deluxe bookshelf. He built Kiki a new house! Being a princess is a tough job, but someone's got to do it!
Daddy is the world's fastest/best modular furniture assembler.
Daddy attaches the feather toy.
Kiki can hardly wait before Daddy finishes assembling her house.
Finished!! Ready-set-go!
A climb-able bookshelf for Kiki!
Kiki has the best daddy in the world. He made this special construction out of plain IKEA bookshelves.
September 1, 2011
August 29, 2011
Transformers 3: A Waste of Four Dollars
Transformers 3: Dark Side of the Moon was oh, oh, oh so bad. I was so pissed that I wasted 2.5 hours (yes, TF3 was 153 minutes, WTF???) that I considered walking out. Even my husband said TF3 was the 2nd worst movie he's ever seen, second only to Leprechaun. Freaking LEPRECHAUN, people.
Where do I even begin? The tasteless Katrina meets September 11th style destruction of Chicago? The baroque-to-the-point-of-insanity CGI monster truck characters? The misplaced, weirdly inappropriate patriotism that all but proves that America is teetering on the verge of economic collapse?
Oh, for Pete's sake.
The ridiculous premise of TF3 is a lone surviving Autobot crashes into the moon sometime prior to JFK's assassination and that the entire US/USSR space race is a giant cover-up. Michael Bay and Hasbro figure that if you can suspend your disbelief that a race of mechanoids evolved on a distant planet just happen to look suspiciously like a cross between standing primates and their gas-guzzling cars, then surely you can get behind mechanoids standing in for the US's armed forces as world warmongers police peacekeepers.
The irony of a scene where a race of beings evolved to look like petroleum-dependent motor vehicles slams around a bunch of turban-headed desert dwellers was almost too much for this viewer to handle. Gee, I couldn't help but remember the two wars for crude the US is losing to the tune of a billion dollars every 24 hours. Kind of makes the Transformers 3 mega-budget look like chump change, however, a pro-military, obtusely nationalist pep rally for an oil-addicted empire disguised as a cheesy robot movie broadcasts the exact opposite message said empire wants its enemies to hear.
I can just imagine the thoughts of any intelligent non-American unfortunate enough to watch the TF3 debacle. He or she must assume that America is a very warped place that produces uniformly offensive, crazy, misogynist people. The first shot of a female character in T3 (Vickie's Secret model turned actress Rosie Huntington-Whitely) is of her behind. She's got a nice butt, granted. Perhaps the rear end is less off than her face, which resembles nothing as much as a pretty slack-mouthed anthropomorphic fish creature. I blame Huntington-Whitely's fashionably overinflated lips. You can almost hear Michael Bay's goblin-like snickering over Rosie's DSLs: "Eat your heart out, Megan Fox!"
I'm afraid this picture says it all.
Not that any actual acting took place among the CGI extravaganzas and ridiculous car-robot voiceovers, but it's a sad day when Megan Fox is a better actress than you. I've got three words for Huntington-Whiteley: STICK TO MODELING. The only thing bigger than Huntington-Whiteley's lips is the horrible acting ego of Shia LeBeouf's character, who sees every life situation, including meeting his parents, as an opportunity to stage hysterical screaming fits.
What a hero.
The robots are equally melodramatic: the crux of T3′s plot is yet another scheme where the Decepticon bad guys want to take over the world, this time to use human slaves to build (presumably) more Transformers. Huh? LeBeouf's character, Sam Witwicky, reprises his lame duck role as hapless protagonist, somehow surviving Titanic-like falls through floors of ruined buildings and seas of broken glass with nary a scratch and somehow walking from the Marshall Fields clock on 1 S. State Street to the corner of Jackson and Canal by Union Station in 15 seconds. I guess he must have teleported.
Eerily homoerotic in way only the most chest-beating, vehicle-exploding, gun-shooting movies can be, the Transformers series begs the question of how a bunch of male car-robots (ever notice that there are no female Tranformers?) reproduce themselves. Oops, I just gave Michael Bay his next multi-zillion dollar idea! Oh . . . NO. Rest assured that I'll be skipping Transf***ers 4: Inside Robot Pants.
Planning his next stinkburger.
