Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The (Useless?) Things in My Brain

I was thinking of writing a post fitting of the title during the weekend, but Saturday was spent finishing season 1 of Les Revenants and on Sunday, I had a massive headache caused by a strain in the neck and so I didn't manage to write anything. Now more than 12 hours later since I watched Season 3 Finale of Homeland, I still couldn't shake off the sadness that Brody died :'( and so this post will be about tv and all the things I watched which most probably be too many and will make you think that I seriously have no social life and to that I say you are spot on :) I have no social life but the love for stories are just innate in me. I loved reading when I was young and too bad the many distraction in my adulthood have steered me away from reading more, though I do try. I always love tv, I am the one who sneaked out of the room during nap time to watch tv and how weird that when I was a kid, I detested having to nap and now I am longing for it. I love movies and watched a lot of stuff and yet I still feel I haven't watched many good movies out there. Bottom line, all those love points to one basic and simple truth, I love stories :) I just do. With that, let's do this.

Let's begin with Homeland. Hiks :'( Season 3 hasn't been so Homeland-ney if I can say so. I think I wrote before that I thought season 2 was better than season 1. Going to 3, I was like ... err. It so happened, when I got round to watch it, it's on the same evening as The Walking Dead season 4 and I always did it as such that I would watch Homeland first then The Walking Dead and it was a good way to do it because this season of Homeland was rather slow at times (I really do not want to use the word "dull") to the point that if something happened, I was rather excited when in retrospect the thing that happened wasn't that amazing to begin with but when you set it against what's been going on, you just got kinda pleased. It was so in contrast to how The Walking Dead been presenting itself this season; they were bang bang, fast speed on the get go, from the first episode. Either way though, I was still watching Homeland because I remember how much I loved it. This weekend as I was thinking that the season finale is coming soon, I was thinking about how people in the internet have been saying that Brody should die and I was thinking I will not be ready for it to happen. Had I written this post on the weekend, I was already planning to write something like, I hope they didn't kill Brody. They did do and it was so surreal I guess. As the scene was developing, I was thinking something's gonna happen, like Quinn would suddenly already swoop down to Iran to go all badass and save Brody. It would perhaps speak a lot to Quinn's character as someone who really just follows order as he was the one who was assigned to assassinate Brody in season 2. That didn't happen and I thought Javadi would use a body double during the hanging, but that didn't happen. As it really did happen, I was in an okay mood. There was no tear shed, no "Oh my God!!!". Weird. I guess I was in denial, thinking that perhaps he's not truly dead, that it is another conspiracy thingy. It did sink in and I did feel truly truly sad as evident by my tweet after watching the episode. I got even more sadder this morning as I read recaps and interviews with the creator and it added more finality to the whole thing that Brody is truly dead :'( Now going back to the last episode, I feel it was more tragic because Brody and Carrie didn't have their last resolution to how they feel about each other. Yes Brody now knew that Carrie is pregnant with his child, but there was not a last kiss or even a hug. It was all so sad and I personally feel worse because I've taken a lot of liking for this character. You see, in season 1 you have Brody as this bad guy and you really just want to root for Carrie to take him down and just hate him, but then the unpredictable Carrie factor really just changed what should be a straight forward thing, and she managed to turn Brody and you really just start to want a happy ending for him and you began to think it could happen in season 2 until his confession video was released out framing him, arrrgghh :'( From then on, it seems he just didn't have a chance all the way to the end. So sad. I know Brody wants everything to be over but it still is hard to accept his death :'( If he has to be gone, I would rather he's just be alive in exile somewhere. Love Damian Lewis in Band of Brothers and love him again in Homeland. His death really makes me not so excited about season 4 anymore :( Perhaps it could be something that I watch when I have nothing else to watch rather than something I eagerly keep up with each week *sigh* Even the presence of Quinn whom I love in season 2 cannot soothe this sadness :'( and by the way, didn't Quinn say he's gonna quit CIA once all this is over? So why is he still there 4 months later?

So that's that. It's rather weird that I'm feeling this big loss over a character dying. When Hank died in Breaking Bad, I was sad even though I knew there's no way out of it, but in the end I was okay. Maybe if Jesse had died, it would have been a different story, but overall I was okay with how Breaking Bad ends even with Walt dead. Perhaps because it's a series finale, hmmm. Then we have the The Walking Dead mid-season finale, where we also had one of the main character died. The governor died which was good riddance for me since I really dislike him. Then Hershel died, I was feeling sad as it was going to happen, but overall I was okay. The weird thing was that I was okay as Brody was dying, but then after the hour was done, I was feeling really really sad :'( Hiks ... Anyway, looking forward for The Walking Dead to come back soon. By the way, as the boy who plays Card grows, I begin to think there's so much Daryl in him. They kinda look alike too. In this universe of zombie apocalypse, I just see that when Carl is an adult, he's gonna be all badass like Daryl :P

Speaking of the undead, last week I finished season 1 of Les Revenants or The Returned as it's called in English and I do recommend all of you to check it out, asap! I found out about this because I read an article that the Americans are planning to make the american version of it. It's french so I thought I should check it out, hopefully at the same time I could get same french knowledge into the brain. I was ready to watch it without the subtitles but then I found versions with english subtitle and I have to say that my french is super bad and the subtitle is much much appreciated. I guess it's also because they speak in a more casual manner, like for anyone learning Indonesian, they may have difficulty understanding how Jakartans speak because we unconsciously structure our sentences differently. Anyway Les Revenants took a different view of the undead. I guess with zombie, we're just accustomed to see them as something monstrous, but what if dead people can come back and be seemingly normal and not in pursue of eating other humans. This is the theme presented by Les Revenants. The human drama and reaction of the family finding out their loved ones come back were interesting for me. There was the mother who was undoubtedly happy, a twin sister who cannot deal with what's happening (after all if you have tried to cope with a death that ruins your family, being pulled back to like nothing ever happened is a lot to digest), then there's also the guy who cannot accept that his love has moved on with life (it was kinda selfish of him not being able to see what 10 years of having to accept death can do to someone). Of all, I was most taken by the grandpa who's so freaked out that he decided to just burn his dead wife along with his house and then commit a suicide. However the undead will just be undead and so the wife returned back. Also an interesting question, how do you feel if the person you killed comes back, how do you react? While it may seem like it's all human drama, Les Revenants is much more than that. There's a sinister undertone and it's intense and suspenseful without actually shoving blood and scary deformed zombies into our face. One of the character that I'm so curious about is the little boy, Victor. This boy is so cute (when he speaks) and creepy (when he doesn't) that you don't know if you want to feel good about seeing him on the scene. Love seeing him, but I start to feel worried because the thing about child actor is that they grow and if he has to be written out because he's grown so much, it's kinda sad. Anyway, I feel it has a Lost-esque feeling about it with all the mystery, like who gets to come back, and why now, why this village, and where's Victor had been all this time since his first sighting 4 years ago when he caused the bus crash. There are only 8 episodes in season 1. At episode 7, for some reason I felt it was getting weird and going to be silly, but by episode 8, it was so gripping and intense and all without actual violence happening. At the end of episode 8, I feel like, what's going on?!??!!? It's too bad that season 2 is not even in production yet. I hope they're going to be really clever in explaining the mystery.

As I do hope the people in Sherlock will be when they have to explain how Sherlock survived the fall. Yes, that is another thing that I watched. Starting in January, along with Community which I'm quite excited about since Les Revenants made me feel like I need to watch something funny. Before all that, we still have Downton Abbey Christmas special we have to go through. Now that I wrote that, perhaps I'll survive Brody Homeland death just as I have survived the death of Matthew and Sybil. Those 2 were quite hard to take as well. Oh yeah, it's rather amusing for me that Les Revenants in France has a warning that it's not recommendeded for kids below 12. One episode even had a 10 years old and below warning. Yes, there's not much violence, there's nudity which is expected for something french, but still I thought the vibe can be too frightening for teens. After I watched the last 3 episodes back to back, I was wondering if I can sleep alright :P

On other news. Last Italian class last Saturday. Not gonna sign up for the new class. Not sure what I'm gonna do next year. I feel like I should start planning things. Really feel like I should learn another language, but like everything else I don't know what I should be doing :( Anyway, in class, there was an exercise where Sara asked us to watch a muted short clip and try to think about the dialogue happening in that clip. There's a clip when Marilyn Monroe was about to sing Happy Birthday to President Kennedy. Before the clip was shown, there's the black and white image of Marilyn and Sara asked us if we knew who that was and what's happening. I answered it's Marilyn and I guessed it's the Happy Birthday clip. In retrospect, I wonder if my classmates knew who she was, like I wonder if I should have answered with her full name, but seriously who's the most famous Marilyn out there. She can go on a first name basis. Then as we watched the clip, one of the classmate asked which president she's singing it to. I was seriously stunned and I had to tell her it's Kennedy. They were also laughing at my other classmate version of the dialogue which involved her singing happy birthday in a breathy tone. I think they didn't know it was really like that. This got me thinking some things. One, I have so many useless things in my head? I know things like this. However you see, I feel proud and good that I know all this and the evil me do look at these people like they're just not my kind of people. I am an elitist as I think people have tried to allude. I'm not that smart smart though, so I guess I cannot be part of the elitist because they will look at me the way I look at these people. Two, I begin to think, I seriously SERIOUSLY need to be with someone who can match this knowledge of mine. Maybe it is too much to ask, hence I am still alone, but I cannot imagine being with people who don't know stuff. Lastly, I begin to think that perhaps I see myself as too young. I mean perhaps and there's a big possibility that all these girls, my classmates with their ignorant questions are way younger than me. Maybe I look old and I'm denial about it. I wonder if people see me and they straight away think I am 30 something? I guess if these people are like younger, perhaps I can pardon them a bit, but I do wish if they're in their late 20s that they would have more general knowledge. So with that very snobbish and arrogant note, I should end this post before I sounds more like an ass.

:) eKa @ 7:23:00 PM •