Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Moar Movies

I watched the end of The Pianist last night. Adrian Brody's acting was ok, I guess. The circumstances in which he lived (and, really, survived) were pretty amazing. Eating some of that shit... staying in an apartment with 3-4 rooms for as long as he did. I'm surprised he could even walk after that. And actually play the Chopin Nocturne(?) he did - it was a pretty vigorous. I mean, not only is there a reason concert pianists practice for up to 8 hours a day, but the amount of energy he had - sure the preceding 30 seconds - 1 minute he could've been stiff with fear of ze German (Snatch reference; sorry), but he wasn't exactly full of bounce before that.

Overall, a sobering movie for me, but it feels at the end they suddenly thought "Shit, it's gone for 6 hours! We better wrap it up!". Meh.

I finished watching Fullmetal Alchemist on the weekend, too. All 51 episodes. I enjoyed it, the way they increased the power and explored more abilities as the series went, starting the series with an episode some time in the future, then going back and exploring the past and the path the Elric brothers took to get there. Ok, so people survived explosions and gunshots/stab wounds at a higher rate than normal, but it is anime, after all. I was left feeling a little lost at the end though; the final episode didn't resolve things enough, and it left it open for more.

As I found out reading the Wiki page, there's a movie which takes place after the series, so I think I better get that.

And, interest rates falling or rising? Hmmm. More interesting, though is this post about housing affordability, and this paragraph in particular:
What is really interesting here in terms of housing affordability is that real house prices remained virtually frozen over the period from 1990 through to 2000. It wasn’t until Howard started stuffing around with halving the capital gains rate and things like the first home buyers grant that real house prices started to accelerate.

Fantastic work.

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