December 1, 2013


Sunday - Rainy, clear in the evening for a while

An okay day.

Today when I got up I didn't feel that great.  I went back to bed and slept for another couple of hours.  Then I got up.  F slept for a bit too.  

In the afternoon, I had some tea and a piece of bread, F wanted to go out to see a movie.  I wasn't too bothered, but didn't mind.  

We drove out to Mikawa Mall and had a light dinner (or as I liked to call it, lunch!) then went upstairs and bought our tickets to Captain Phillips.  We both thought it was a good movie.  Tom Hanks really is a good actor.  The Somali actor Barkhad Abdi was excellent too.  

After the film, F and I drove out to the bookstore to pick up our nengajo book.  We spent a few minutes looking for one and finally got one that we both agreed on.  

We came home and have spent a quiet evening at home.  I'm feeling better tonight than I did during the day.  I had a nagging headache for most of it, but it's mostly gone.  

Tomorrow I'm not sure what I'll get up to.  I have a few things to do, and I plan to write my Christmas cards so that I can pop them in the mail soon.  They must get off soon or else!  That's it for me.  Night!

5 comments:

uthman said...

I hated Cpt. Phillips. How could they leave out the reason for Somali piracy completely? It never existed before. It came into existence because large mostly Western corps were dumping industrial waste off the Somali shore, killing the fishing industry.

It was really wrong that they left that out and it completely changed the story.

Helen said...

While they didn't talk about the angle of the industrial waste (I hadn't heard that myself), they did talk about the lack of fish in Somali waters. I thought that they tried to show reasons for the piracy.

uthman said...

I have to disagree. They touched on lack of jobs when Abdi said 'maybe in America' there was something other than piracy to Hanks.

It was all caricatures. The script had the Somalis 'acting' by bulging their eyes out and screaming constantly.

The real story isn't piracy at all. That's ended, policing has killed it off. The real story is the killing of a ultrapoor nation's fishing industry. They could have at least added a note about this before or after the film. Instead they made it all about one man, Mr. Philips (who has been bashed himself for ignoring advice not to sail in that area as it was). The coastal Somali people are much more important than one foolish captain of a cargo ship.

Lost all respect for Hanks after this. Shame...really liked him in Cloud Atlas.

Helen said...

I disagree with your disagreement! They discussed fishing boats from other countries coming to Somali waters and catching all the fish. The pirates in the film were high on khat, which is why they were screaming a lot.

To lose respect for an actor because he takes a role you don't like is odd in my opinion. That's what actors do, take roles and make them their own. They don't get to write their own scripts unless they write the movie too.

In any case, you didn't like the film. I get that. I did. Was it a perfect film? No. Will I watch it again? Maybe on TV someday.

uthman said...

KK...I must disagree with the content of your disagreement with my disagreement, but not your disagreement itself, as that would be disagreeable.

If they said other countries were stealing their fish (I vaguely remember this as well) - it was false. There just aren't any fish. The waters are poisoned and the fish stocks have collapsed. When it's Japan doing this with tuna or Canada to Atlantic fish stocks= uproar, because these countries 'matter'. When it's Somalia, the indignity is such they lie about the situation in even a Hollywood film= Somalia doesn't matter.

About khat. It does not jack you up - it was very odd it was portrayed this way. It's nothing like cocaine or speed. It's a drug that reduces people to tiredness and sleepiness. Yemen's national productivity is severely retarded because khat is so widely used and people become lazy, drugged out bums.

I didn't see any khat on the lifeboat and they were still bugeyed and hyper...

I give films leeway on cultural unfamiliarities...but when you have Tom Cruise leading the last samurai and Saigo Takamori, Keanu Reaves leading the 47 ronin, and Tom Hanks playing a fool who put his own crew in peril as a hero who fights off bugeyed Somalis...I have to call BS.

I suppose it's a matter of closeness of the topic to one personally and also cultural perspectives. I remember Westerners glowing proudly over Ridley Scott being 'fair and balanced' in Kingdom of Heaven. All I saw were anyone who wasn't Crusader portrayed as faceless hordes and every liberty taken with history that wasn't Crusader.

Tom Hanks chose the script. I am so turned off by the extended cut of his self-inflicted trauma at the end and giving Somali lives no dignity that he's someone I'll never watch again.

Ah, well. Night.