Weekend reflections…
My sis and I saw “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” on Saturday in Brooklyn Hts. The website and the trailers are quite cool; the movie’s pretty good. A thumb’s up on the Ebert and Siskel scale; a grade of B — but I could push it to a B+ were I in a good mood. You don’t have to have read the book or heard the original radio show or seen the original BBC-tv show to enjoy the movie. Marvin the Chronically Depressed Robot is so cute (well, putting aside the depression stuff, which is majorly depressing) – the voice of British actor Alan Rickman! (“You could press that, but you won’t like it.” “I’m so depressed.” “Here I am, the brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to help you navigate? You call that job satisfaction? ’cause I don’t!”). There’s also more heart and sweetness to the movie than I recalled from the book (I’m one book and a half through the five book “trilogy”). I recommend the movie.
“Star Trek: Enterprise” – well, that episode was rather – – – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine-esque, with the galactic politics in play (we are supposed to be building toward the founding of the Federation, after all); human xenophobia (“xenophobia is bad!”), bad relationship building (umm, yeah, right; Star Trek does not do romance very well, oh…). Hmm…
Asian Pacific American Heritage Festival at Union Sq on Sunday – food, fun, and stuff. Music was all right. The amazing dancers. Everybody was more or less milling around for the guest of honor, Jet Li, who was being honored for his humanitarian work in Indonesia since the tsunami (as he was in one of the Indonesian resorts that day and he and his family had to make a run for higher ground). Well, the bigger cheers were for Morgan Freeman, who got to introduce Jet Li. After all, Morgan Freeman’s the Big Oscar Winning Actor/Cult Favorite (for “Shawshank Redemption” and possibly even for “Electric Company” for a certain bunch of Generation X’ers). Freeman and Li are starring in a movie coming out; they were at the festival for some five minutes. Oh, and I’ve a gripe about tall people – must they move to the front, as if their 6ft frames can’t allow them to see the stage? I mean, this tall guy walks right in front of me; pain in the ass! Makes me wish I were taller, but I’d blame that on genetics… Otherwise a good time was had by all.
So it goes; nicer weather, if a bit cool temperatures…