I’ve been listening to a lot of Djavan on Spotify lately. I love this song. He’s so cool.
Category: I Like It
Notebook
I love using graph paper notebooks, but the problem is that the graph lines are usually too dark or too thick. I found this notebook at Muji in Los Angeles and it is perfect! Instead of lines, it has faint dots in a grid pattern. It is excellent! I kind of wish I bought a few more of them.
Rocky
Last night I watched “Rocky”, the classic 1976 movie which surprisingly I had never seen before. When I was growing up, this movie was so popular, but I think I might have been too young at the time to be into it. I would have been 8, after all. Later on, I think I saw a couple of the sequels, but never the original. So I rented the blu-ray from Netflix and watched it last night and liked it! It was kind of cool to see a young Sylvester Stallone. He was a pretty good actor! I liked all the characters, except for Rocky’s friend Paulie, who is a complete jerk! I really hated that guy. Why anyone would be friends with him is beyond me. Obviously Rocky just wanted to get with Paulie’s sister Adrian, but after that, he should have just dumped Paulie.
I watched the movie by myself, except for the final fight scene. Koa watched with me, but I’m not sure he liked it. It did look a little dated, but still not too bad. My favorite scene is the famous workout montage featuring the classic song, “Gonna Fly Now”. When you hear that song, you can’t help but get so inspired! Anyways, if you haven’t seen Rocky before, it’s worth your while to rent it!
From Up on Poppy Hill / コクリコ坂から (2011) – Movie Review
I’m not sure how I missed watching “From Up on Poppy Hill” when it was showing here, but I corrected that mistake by ordering the blu-ray version and watching it last week. After seeing some high ratings, I was expecting a great film and I was not disappointed; I loved it! It had everything going for it: beautiful artwork, and interesting setting, likable characters, and great songs and soundtrack.
To me, the story’s setting was so cool. Early ’60s Yokohama is depicted as a busy and hopeful town, and I just loved the small details, like the old posters on the walls. My favorite scene was when Shun was taking Umi to the shopping area on his bicycle, and they were speeding down the hill. That was excellent! I just love slice-of-life stories, and From Up on Poppy Hill was one of the best so far. There wasn’t anything supernatural about it; the only thing that came close was Umi’s dream sequence. But the characters and story really didn’t need any of that. To me, the story was great; my only complaint is that the ending is too abrupt. I wanted the story to develop a little bit more. Is it too much wishful thinking that there will be a follow-up movie? Maybe now that Hayao Miyazaki is retired, it’s a possibility.
Below is the trailer for the US release. I prefer it over the Japanese trailer, although I did watch the Japanese-language version of the film. If you haven’t seen it yet, waste no time!
My rating: 8/10
Want!
I was browsing Zappos on my tablet last night and came across this pair of Adidas shoes. I love them! I really want to order them, but I have too many pairs of shoes so I really should decide what pair I can throw away first… Anyways, they don’t have my size in stock right now but they are definitely on my short list of next shoes. Maybe for the summer!
