Recommend Me Things!

The series Broadchurch on Netflix is pretty good (and it has David Tennant in it!). If you haven't seen Lost, that's a pretty wild (and extremely long) ride, too.

 

If you're into anime, my girlfriend and I just watched one called Psycho-Pass. Great story, great theme, great characters. It's on Netflix, too.

 

You know, one of the things that I can really respect about Krista and Jake is that, even though they're a couple, they are not the carbon equivalent of the other person. By all means, they are their own likable individuals, defined by their own characteristics, and heck, I don't even think they share much in terms of catch phras-

Now I see it.

Song of the Sea is unequivocally the best film that I'd watched for the first time throughout all of 2015. The art style is individualistic and truly gorgeous. All in all, it's heartfelt, meticulously crafted work, refined by a charming story centered around Irish folklore. Other favorites from the past few years include Inside Llewyn Davis, 12 Years a Slave, and The Wind Rises.

Off the top, the TV series Hell on Wheels is one of my favorites - centered around mostly fictional characters, but with a very true-to-life backdrop of the American west. Unlike many of the great westerns of the older times like Gunsmoke or Bonanza, this one goes out on a limb to further exemplify the darker reality that was the real Great West. The first season can be a little clunky in spaces, but it is a gradual burner that has become my favorite television show that I think I've ever been given the privilege to watch. The cast is absolutely phenomenal. Of a similar ilk, the series Vikings from the History Channel is pretty great, based off of, of course, Viking legend, and so is Hatfields & McCoys. Though I haven't seen it myself just yet, I've heard great things about the Fargo television series from friends, and from the shallower end of television watching sans historical value, I find myself consistently enjoying The Blacklist as a surrogate to the lack of 24 in my life now that that reprise is over with.

Reading! So many good books. I'm a tremendous fan of the works of Haruki Murakami - very psychological, fantastical (not high fantasy or anything like that; a very different breed) modern fiction that often carry malleable meanings that you can interpret any which way to suit your personal moral compass. Most would recommend Kafka on the Shore or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle for those who are just being introduced to his work, and I concur, though Norwegian Wood is also a beautiful piece more set in the sense of deep, dysfunctional romance if it's your bag at all, too, and After Dark is an underrated gem that wouldn't be too far off from a Christopher Nolan cut put onto paper (that said, perhaps a book that @Eebit would thoroughly enjoy, too). Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima details the life of a homosexual man in Imperial Japan, forced to wear a mask of propriety to hide his "shame" - a good look into our splotchier past from an eastern angle, which you don't see all too often. Other favorites: Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell, an impeccable western that really flips open the lid on what really happened at the O.K. Corral, Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama, for a different side of one particularly lucky, and musical (and fictional), World War II party's journey, and Benjamin Franklin's own autobiography - the lovable loon! The Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn is also AWESOME.

To cook, I would need some background to make sure I'm not recommending things that you'd find hideous off-the-top, but for starters, I'll say that this recipe was really good in that bad-for-you, good-for-indulgence-during-a-house-slash-cat-sitting-week sort of way: broccoli-cauliflower casserole. I'm pretty sure no one could go wrong with a good chicken curry (well, except myself since I've gone vegetarian starting this year), so here's an old favorite.

 

@whitesubtitlesoncanadianwinter - It's really a special film! Probably ranks in my Top 5 favorites ever. I think on the basis of "something that will make me cry," The Wind Rises ends up coming about as essential viewing at some point, too. Not unlike Harp of Burma, it takes a different spin on World War II and shows us an angle we wouldn't quite think of in the form of the hopelessly romantic and beautifully tragic history of the guy behind the design of Japanese planes in the war. It's not very war-focused at all, in fact,  and instead opts to show his personal views against Japan (and everyone else) on the war as more of a sideshow to the main events that occur throughout his life. Hayao Miyazaki is my favorite film director and I would say that this, from a plotline perspective, is his most important film by a mile and likely my favorite (if it were not for the nostalgia associated with Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away, that is).

I think that the western is commonly polarizing outside of the general American audience because they tend to be so damn patriotic - especially the oldies like Bonanza that I'd mentioned above - to an even unrealistic perspective. This was a gritty side of history, and it actually didn't leave Canada untouched, either, between the British Columbia Gold Rush and, probably most prominently, the series of raids staged by the Fenians in Canada around the same time that they were being cracked down on in New York while the U.S. Railway was nearing completion. I respect disliking a type of TV genre as a whole more than I do with music - it is much easier to generalize a plot line than a music score -- just know Hell on Wheels isn't obnoxiously American like oldie westerns (Hell, they'd even filmed in Alberta for the like past year, even though it's "San Francisco" and "Truckee" on the show. :5) or often extremely over-the-top and hyper-stylized like a Tarantino flick, either, and one of the reasons that I like it a lot because it dispels a lot of predisposed ideas about gender and racial roles in westerns with plenty of strong female/black/Chinese/Irish characters aboard for the ride.

The Blacklist clearly has its flaws and they mostly come from delving into a spy thriller, nearly movie-equivalent strings of episodes and then following them up with a string of blase, filler procedurals equivalent to more of a CSI or NCIS type of bag. That said, when it's good, it's good -- I think that with the current season, moving away from the "cop show" idea entirely in honor of the main storyline has been refreshing and I hope that they never go back to the procedural stuff ever. Holy moly. Only one episode involving a certain RV was stupid this season, and you know the one if you've seen it, haha. 

Ah, yes! I think I might just know the one; is it A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki? If so, I dug it, too. Glad that you'll be looking into more Murakami sometime.

No ragrets with that zucchini, right? :}

 

You should be able to--there's an English dub if you don't like to read subtitles. The English voices aren't bad, but I'm (not) a weeaboo so I watched it in Japanese. Though truth be told I liked the main character's Japanese voice more.

 

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