a film to see

I have just one full week left in Seattle before I leave for Tokyo. I'm very glad that I decided to take my mom's advice and planned to stay in Seattle for about 6 weeks before leaving. It's given me time to digest the upcoming change and get things in order without feeling the need to rush. Also I have plenty of time to take advantage of the things I will miss about Seattle, like beautiful crisp air and inexpensive produce and libraries where I can check out excellent movies like "Touching the Void" and CDs like Radiohead and make MD copies to take with me.

A little more about "Touching the Void". Have you seen it? NO?? Never has a movie left me with (sorry for being un-lady-like) trails of snot running down my nose from crying. I remember seeing previews for the film last year and thinking, "I will never watch this, I hate scary people-falling-into-bottomless-crevasse movies like this." Oh how wrong I was. It's based on a true story about a mountain climbing adventure gone very unpleasant. There's re-enactments with actors, using very little dialogue. Nothing is melodramatic, even though it's a weighty and existential story. The breathtaking mountain scenes and landscapes do so much in communicating the loneliness and struggles that the characters go through. But the real show stopper is what's said in the on-camera interviews from Joe, Simon and Richard, the actual people. I really can't describe it, it's just amazing.

Oh, and the score is beautiful too.