The Lake House **spoilers** June 16, 2006

It was a lot messier than the Korean original timewise, and even Il Mare had some problems there. I mean, I didn’t think the final scene was in the right time. Some of the things that had already happened in the future wouldn’t happen if the final scene took place… but anyway. Il Mare worked anyway.

This one didn’t for me. Maybe it would have if I hadn’t rewatched Il Mare last weekend and had it fresh in my mind. It was like me reading the Brokeback short story before I saw the movie. I didn’t come to it fresh, so I couldn’t take it in the same way. I always had something else in the back of my mind as I was watching. In this case, it was Il Mare.

They changed one thing I thought made Il Mare so emotionally affecting, namely the girl’s love for the guy she couldn’t have, the guy she had lost (not the lake house guy). So at the end…

***major spoilers***

…when the girl goes racing to save the lake house guy, she’s not saving him from something she caused. So the emotional impact is lessened. And in this version it wasn’t as clear what she was saving him from. We knew, but we hadn’t seen what led up to it as clearly, we hadn’t seen her ask him to go there (because she didn’t). In Il Mare enough things were implied but enough things were also shown. This one didn’t show enough. And what it did show was the wrong things, the wrong relationships, not things that grabbed me as strongly or raised the stakes high enough for me.

So I didn’t think it measured up to the original. I didn’t really expect it to but, you know, if I had been the one doing the adaptation, I would only have changed the things I thought were weak in Il Mare. Not the things these writers changed.

Maybe I’m too melodramatic. It’s possible. But I certainly wouldn’t have cut the things that made me cry in Il Mare. The exact mailbox scene was in this one, the same scene of the girl collapsing on her knees and holding onto the mailbox the way she did in Il Mare. But it didn’t work the same way. Because the lead-up was missing.

The Lake House was also missing a unifying theme. Or rather, I could see that the writers had made an effort to put in a “the right things at the right time and no sooner” theme, but it wasn’t reflected in all the major relationships the way I thought it should have been.

I don’t remember a unifying theme in Il Mare at all, but hey, Il Mare made me cry. I think I’m addicted to movies that make me cry…

I give The Lake House two stars.

Il Mare, or the Sea of Tears June 11, 2006

I don’t remember crying the first time I watched Il Mare. I cried this time. The impossible love, the yearning for a love that can’t be, the self-sacrifice out of love… I want to write movies that will make people cry. I want to write movies that will make ME cry. I’m afraid, um, that means I aspire to write Korean romantic dramas.

Not necessarily, though. I cried at Tsotsi, and that one I saw in the theater, where I’m more reserved about crying. It’s the self-sacrifice that gets me. Self-sacrifice out of love, and the loss of love, the love you can’t have for reasons beyond your control. It doesn’t have to be romantic. It wasn’t in Tsotsi. But it has to be real, and it has to be impossible. And then I’ll cry.

I guess there’s a reason why everything I write, or at least all the good things I write, all the things that work, are ultimately about love. Usually it’s a difficult love, a love that maybe everybody involved wishes weren’t there. But it is. And they have to deal with it.

I’ve been writing that theme for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why. But I guess there’s something I’m looking for or something I need to resolve.

Eateries June 9, 2006

So I was inspired by a post on somebody else’s blog (you know who you are), and I started thinking about my favorite restaurants. And I realized a couple of things: (1) I don’t have many favorite restaurants, and (2) I can’t post some of my favorite restaurants because they’re too close to where I live or work and there’s always a chance some crazy stalker might go looking for me there. To be fair, the restaurants that fall under #2 don’t really belong in the “favorites” category. They tend to fall into the “it’s close and I’m hungry and I don’t feel like cooking or I didn’t bring my lunch” category.

So if you asked me my favorite restaurants in LA, they are:

1. For Italian, Fabiolus Cafe. I have yet to figure out whether it’s pronounced FAB-iolus or Fabi-OL-us (I’ve heard both). However, it didn’t take me long to figure out that their tiramisu is to die for. Their entrees are delicious too, but you’ll really want to take home half your meal so you have room for the tiramisu. At least that’s what I want to do.

2. For Korean BBQ, not that I’ve tried all that many different places, but what the hell: Manna. Sent straight from heaven to feed the Israelites… I mean, um, the people of LA.

3. For pies, House of Pies in Los Feliz. I’ve never tried their actual meals, which I’m told aren’t that great. But this is the only place I’ve ever come across in my entire life that makes pies as good as the ones my mom makes from scratch. And that’s saying a lot.

Um, that’s it. Three of them. There have been lots of other places I’ve enjoyed but haven’t been back to. And one of the conditions of getting on the “favorites” list was, obviously, that I had to have been there several times.

So that’s it.

P.S. I am totally procrastinating.