Little Victories

Roger

Roger

I tried.

I tried to make him laugh. But he was way too serious.

Walking around Deoksugong when it was still closed was not so much fun. Nice outer walls though!

Samcheonlo
Had a wonderful tea with a former TEFL alumni. I need to remember the tea's name. It was a plum tea. Such a quiet place from all the hustle and bustle of Seoul. I am so lucky to have friends in an unfamiliar city!

back at the hotel jet-lag hit me like a train.
Yawn...
I think I yawned 50 times.

Somewhere between 50 and 51, I fell asleep...

...one hour...

...two hours...

...three hours...

I woke up starving. And this is what I met when I went out to eat.

Found a small busy place with a lot of local Koreans.

Nine minutes. Nine minutes and I'll board my connecting flight to Incheon, South Korea.

I saw four movies on this first leg of the flight and started watching the first one again. Here they are AND here's my non-expert review of each:

1. Prometheus. This was the most anticipated, scary, truly creepy 'Alien' franchise movie to come out this past summer. So when there was so much bad scuttlebutt about this movie after it came out, I did not bother to watch it in the movie theaters. This supposed loose prequel of the the most excellent original Alien movie (first screened nearly 20 years ago) had a lot of high expectations. It had me hooked at the mural scene showing what appears to be the traditional Alien creature depicted as pets, 'dogs on leashes' as it were, of humanoid masters. Also, I really loved all the archaeology stuff. Ok. Long intro. You can tell I wanted to like this movie, so I had very low expectations. The general plot and story was pretty good and scary. There were some really 'oh no! this is scary' moments. Mostly related to, when we find out what the 'engineers' wanted to do, what happened and what they tried to do later. The scenes connected to the first Alien movie were also good. What about the characters? The characterization of the relationship between the 'two scientists' started well but fell flat and empty at the end. Kind of burned up in flames actually. There were other scenes and relationships that could have been amazing: the triangle between Rikkers, Weyland, and David could have been explored more- their final fates developed mored. There was a crew of 17 (supposedly) so I did not expect everyone to be fully fleshed out.

Wow, this is turning out to be a super long review!

All the alien/guts/creature stuff was a bit too much for me. I wanted more mystery and innuendo but some scenes just seemed too long.

The movie felt loosely edited as a whole. I give it a B-.

2. Brave. Great Pixar/Disney movie about a relationship between a mom and a daughter. Finally. Great stuff. Teared up. Disney still has that pixie dust. The only tiresome thing was the 'Scottish Highlander/crass/accent thing got a bit tiresome. Did I just write 'tiresome' twice? My point exactly. A-.

3. Love Fiction. This was a Korean movie. It was funny, but seemed to hit on all the similar themes of love/relationship movies. The best scene was the bar/cafe scene where the main protagonist acts noble in front the girl whom he is madly in love with. B.

4. Jaws. Saw it when I was a kid. Those barrels still scare me. Still great. I was much more scared of the first scene when I first saw this movie decades ago. A.

5. Prometheus (again). I wanted to watch the opening scene again. So much mystery, and believability. Well, that's it. Thanks for your patience. I promise, the topics will be about Seoul and my misadventures here!

Picture: 'EAU' water from Dunkin' Donuts

Roger

Roger