It's been a cooking week

[fabrisse]

Monday night, I cooked a Valentine's Day dinner for moria923 and thorbol: Filets mignons in a brandy cream sauce, spinach with butter and nutmeg, noodles, and Cointreau chocolate mousse. The next big meal I'm cooking is at the end of the month: Duck with other, unspecified, stuff.

Last night, though, I took my payment from Valentine's day (filets and spinach, uncooked) and fixed them for me and eanja. We didn't have any brandy, so we had to make do with Southern Comfort, but I think it was all right.

Change of Subject

The House of Flying Daggers wasn't as good as Hero. Maybe I've seen Casablanca too many times, but I would really have rather seen the final battle between the Chinese army and the Flying Daggers. Frankly, the problems of three little people didn't amount to a hill of beans in that crazy world.

Unlike many people, I even preferred Hero visually. Other than the echo sequence and the costumes, I just didn't find it that impressive.

Comments

[eanja]

I know we discussed this a bit before, and disagree, but I liked the fact that House of Flying Daggers focused on the individuals. It's reasonably rare that a movie looks at people, but still shows how much they are affected by the larger situation - usually we get either sweeping epics w/ the individuals nearly lost, or we get personal stories where the outside world is only really there as an obstacle - here you had people who'd given up years of their lives and contact w/ loved ones over the large issues, and lovers who were forced to choose between their ideals and each other (or they would have had to if they hadn't all died). It wasn't all- oh, I love you and nothing else matters, but rather, I love you, and that doesn't fit in neatly and and what do I do now?

After all, what is the whole crazy world if not just a conglomeration of individual people, and what was Casablanca if not an intimate look at a few people whose lives were derailed by interesting times? House of Flying Daggers may not have done it as well as Casablanca, but I think it's exactly the same type of storytelling, at exactly the same scale. A love triangle, with war as a backdrop. We weren't shown any of the larger battles or final outcomes in Casablanca either, we just happen to know about them from history class.

Although I admit to being dissappointed in Leo at the end of the film- if he'd kept playing grownup for just a few more minutes, no one needed to die at all.

crazy world

[thorbol.livejournal.com]

I love your comment about the conglomeration of individual people. Without assuming anything about your own view on the matter, it reminded me of my long-held notion, usually damn near impossible to articulate without sounding downright crazy myself, that society exists as the means for the individuals who constitute it to meet their needs and better themselves; we individuals do not exist for the whole, however useful that whole is. And I mean ALL those individuals, EQUALLY, as far as that's possible, which should distinguish this view from the sort of "individualism" that seems to justify greed and self-indulgence at the expense of others.

How did the daggers fly, by the way? Do you think the same technology could be used to make a carving knife or steak knife do its job without my help?