19 January 2016
This post will be a lot like a diary entry, so if you’re not into that you can consider yourself warned (you can still check out the pictures of course). Alright, enough of disclaimers for now.
Me and Vidar arrived at Stanford this Friday. We’ve been quite busy setting up all the things that you have to set up when moving to a new country. It turns out to be a whole lot. Therefore I haven’t had any time for the blog, but here is a post now finally.
Even though these things takes a lot of time (the contract I signed for renting had 60 paragraphs, filled over 10 pages and required 11 signatures), I’d say things have gone pretty smooth considering. When we arrived at the airport, Ulf (a family friend) was superkind and picked us up at the airport in Oakland. We had dinner with his family before he left us at our locations in Menlo Park. I quickly felt asleep since I had been up for over 24 hours.
On Saturday we took our bikes and explored the area a bit. We got phone contracts (which we might change later for cheaper ones; these things are so hard to get right at first try), lunched at Umami Burger (which was great) and did some grocery shopping at Downtown Menlo Park. I got set up in my residence and worked a bit on my bike (feeling unnecessarily manly). After the first full day in California I think both me and Vidar were extremely tired, so it felt good to go to sleep. I slept for a few hours and then woke in the middle of the night feeling super alert. Damn you jetlag! (I managed to go back to sleep so it wasn’t that bad though).
On Sunday Ossian (our fellow PhD student who has, just like me and Vidar, studied Engineering Physics at Uppsala) hanged out with us for a bit. We started off by having lunch and watching football at a classic American bar. Later he showed us the Stanford campus and some of the building of interest to us, but we only saw a very small part of the campus all in all.
It’s actually hard to grasp how big the campus really is, since it’s basically a small city. There is a shopping mall and a church, which feels very exotic and weird for someone used to Swedish Universities. The big gift shop selling cups and clothes (and much more) with the Stanford logo could not exist in Sweden for sure. It’s comical to imagine such a store with Uppsala’s logo. It’s kind of a bummer though and I’m sure I’ll buy some merch in the end.
This Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, meaning that there was no school for us, so we decided to take the train to San Fransisco. Most of the stores and museums took the day off as well, so we took the opportunity to walk around the city. We walked a lot and I was really tired (especially in my feet) when I returned home, but we saw a few cool things. One of the first things we encountered was a protest march. We walked with them for a bit and I took some photos, which you can see below.
We continued past Union Square and ended up at Pier 39, a pretty cool place where we had lunch. After eating at a fish restaurant we continued towards Golden Gate. We realized however that the view wasn’t the best that day, since there was a lot of mist. Instead we walked back to the train station. It was nice to see San Fransisco and I’m sure we’ll return a few times to see more of the city. We still have the mayor attractions left to explore and I’m really excited to get a closer look at both Alcatraz and Golden Gate.
That brings us all the way to today, which has been the first day at Stanford. We met up with Eric, got our Stanford Id’s and American bank accounts. Tomorrow we’ll hopefully start to get going with our project. It feels really good to have most things setup now and I’m really excited to resume the work.
That’s everything I had to say for now.
Take care.
9 January 2016
Here’s a post with a few pictures of Mikaela’s new apartment, where she’ll live while I’m in California. The building is completely new and everything is really nice and fresh. I have to say that Mikaela has done a great job with the interior design. Yesterday we took a walk towards the city and passed by the swan (more like duck) pond. Just so you know that the last picture is not of the bathroom or anything like that.
22 December 2015
If you read the last movie-review-post-thingy you know the drill by now. Here’s another five movie reviews. By the way, I think it makes sense to recommend IMDB sometime now. As many of you know it’s a database (well, more like a site perhaps) about movies that contains most of what you need to know about the film industry. I tend to be most interested in the Hollywood stuff, but there’s lots of information about extremely obscure movies as well. I’m into IMDB mainly for two things; the watchlist and the ratings.
The watchlist is a list where you put movies you want to see in the future. Of course you could have such a list in a document (I had it like that for a while), but once you start to use IMDB you’ll see that it’s much more fun to use, since you get information about actors, covers and trailers. A great way to find new movies is also to browse around for a bit, watch a few trailers and then add some movies to the watchlist.
Then we have the ratings. Everything is more fun with statistics (I really think so) and it’s great fun to rate movies. It makes me more invested in the films, since I pretend to be a reviewer and therefore try to give fair ratings. You can also see what the press and the users of IMDB thought about movies, which can sometimes be surprisingly interesting. There’s also some social media thing going on and if you like you can check out my profile and perhaps give me some movie suggestions or somethings. Or just find some good movies to put in your new shiny watchlist.
Alright, enough about IMDB, let’s look at another five reviews.
After the glittering vampires in Twilight the vampires were in desperate need of a makeover, and it turns out that they got their redemption a couple of years ago from this magnificent movie. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are both great in this slowly paced and beautifully filmed drama. As with all good fantasy there are lot’s of references to modern issues, all handled with care and thoughtfulness. The vampires are fighting with distance relationships, fame and with finding the motivation to live the slow and very long life of a vampire. Their relationship to blood have many similarities to drugs, which I also found very interesting. The high rating from me here is mostly because of the slow pacing of the film that I’m a sucker for and because it’s so stunning visually and also musically. It’s easily one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. With one of the best titles, so there’s that as well.
9/10
This is another pretty slowly paced and beautiful film, but this time we are in the territory of science fiction. And as with all good science fiction this is in a future that seem to be right around the corner. As you might have guessed already the theme here is artificial intelligence. Unfortunately I thought that this movie suffered from a few clichés, like the lone genius who somehow manages to be brilliant and do great work while at the same time being a drunk. Towards the end these amazing smart people act stupidly all of a sudden in order to create drama, something I’m allergic to. But these reservations I have are not so severe and overall I have to say that I enjoyed the movie a great deal. There is much to like, starting with Alicia Vikander’s great performance (go Sweden) and the way they update the Turing test in a meaningful and smart way. It’s an extremely focused film that follows my favorite quote by Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. There are no unnecessary characters, plot twists or locations. If you are at all interested in technology and artificial intelligence this is a warm recommendation.
8/10
Alright, it’s time for even more vampires. It turns out that the people behind Flight of the Conchords can make movies as well as tv-series. “What We Do In The Shadows” is a story told as a documentary about a couple of vampires living together. The interaction between the vampires is what makes this movie so great and you’ll immediately recognize the absurd and cute humor from FotC. The vampires argue about who should do the dishes and about which club to go to (of course they end up in a really lousy and empty pub). They meet aggressive, but gentle, werewolves reminding each other as they lose their temper: “We’re werewolves, not swearwolves”. And the list goes on. Perhaps this is not everyone’s humor, but to me this is great and I laughed out loud on several occasions. If you like FotC or are intrigued by the trailer, you will most definitely love this comedy.
8/10
Perhaps I would like this movie more if I had any relation to Mary Poppins, but I really don’t. The story is about Walt Disney’s fight for the movie rights to Mary Poppins in the sixties. It quickly turns out to be way more work than Disney first thinks, since the author P. L. Travers is hard to cooperate with, which is the understatement of the century. And there you essentially have the entire plot. Travers is never satisfied with anything Disney and his team comes up with and sees Disney as a loud, childish and … well American personality. Or with her British words: she puts up with his silly, absurd, ridiculous, foolish nonsense. While the interaction between Disney and Travers is only mildly amusing, the photography is good, the music is great (but perhaps a bit generic) and the scenery is just amazing. If it was up to me, every movie would take place in the American sixties. This is a good movie, but at least on one occasion it felt painfully sentimental. It is also very Disney-friendly (the movie is Disney-produced) and I have strong doubts that P. L. Travers agrees that it was in fact Disney himself who saved Mr. Banks in the end.
5/10
Chappie is a cute, but rejected robot who is suddenly given artificial intelligence from another one of these sole geniuses that tend to pop up all over the place in sci-fi movies. What makes this particular movie stand out, despite the extremely conventional premise is Die Antwoord, an extravagant gangster music group. Due to deus ex machina Chappie finds himself being raised up by these strange musicians. He quickly gets himself a nice cars and some bling, despite his creators complaints. Chappie (the robot, not the film) is supercute and amazingly animated and Die Antwoord are so photogenic that you don’t really mind the story loosing tempo at several occasions. What really drags this movie into the dirt however, is the hollow and pointless villain (I don’t think I have ever seen Hugh Jackman in such a crappy role) and the fighting scenes that made me yawn every time. On a Niell Blomkamp scale going from Elysium to District 9 this one goes somewhere between. Alright, alright, here is your 1-10 traditional verdict as well. See it though, I try to be a bit harsh with the grades.
5/10
4 December 2015
Lately me and Mikaela have been catching up on some of the most interesting movies of 2014 (and actually one movie from 2015) and I though it would be fun to write something about them and also to recommend them, because it turned out that all of them were well worth the time.
And while I’m at it I would recommend renting movies from the Itunes Store. My television/movie consumption is based around streaming (in our case Netflix and HBO Nordic) nowadays, but one problem that these services have is that they very seldom offer the latest movies. Actually, I would even say that if you have a specific movie that you are interested in, it’s quite rare that you’ll find it. So you kind of have to browse around and hope that you find something. But if we’re being honest, for 79 kr (10 dollars) a month this is reasonable.
Also buying new movies (like blu-ray copies) is very expensive. Just when they are released you will sometimes have to pay around 200 kr, which is crazy. The prices drop with time, but sometimes you want to watch right now without being ruined. In this situation Itunes is great, because you can rent even the really new movies for 50 kr, which I would say is cheap. Of course you could just use Pirate Bay, but that’s kind of wacky, annoying and morally questionable, so I tend to avoid it.
So without further due, here are some movie tips:
This is basically a Bond (or at least secret agent) parody and beleive it or not, it’s really great. It is such a strange movie that you just have to love it. There is loads and loads of violence, all extremely well choreographed and filmed with an interesting technique. Perhaps Martin could help me out here, because I don’t know how they have done it, but it’s almost like they have removed some frames and somehow made the action fast and jagged. The whole film is extremely over the top and oftentimes points out just how ridiculous the old agent cliches are and even discuss how sex and damsels in distress are portrayed in these movies in a really shocking way. There is also a meta layer to the film, which I really enjoyed. I could go on about a lisping villain and great characters, but in short just see it. I is so much better than it seems when you just hear the elevator pitch.
6/10
This is the first movie about drumming that I have seen, so right from the start I was interested. The first thing I thought about was this old (and quite amazing) music video from Arctic Monkeys. In this dark and intense film Miles Teller is an extremely motivated music student who meets his new musical director JK Simmons (whom for me will always be Peter Parker’s angry boss at Daily Bugle) when he starts at one of the most prominent schools in the US. It turns out that JK Simmons is a very angry man once again and the rest of the movie portrays Miles Teller’s long and hard battle for the approval of JK Simmons. The theme of the movie is ambition and the sacrifice one has to make to really become great and also coaching and leadership. I do think that they sometimes took things a bit too far; there is quite some blood and sweat and I found it to be unnecessary at some times. That does not keep this from being one of the most unusual and interesting movies I have seen for quite some time.
7/10
This is more or less a two hour long car chase in the desert. But just as with Kingsman - The Secret Service there is much more to it than what first meets the eye. George Miller directed the old movies from the eighties and has during the last years been working with Babe and Happy Feet. I just had to mention this since I find is so surprising. Anyway, now Mad Max is back with a really great movie. I think the reason why I like it so much is mostly because of the visual presentation. The cars and trucks feel heavy and real and all have this really cool homemade feeling to them. Everything is half broken, dirty and rusty. Even the people living in this desert all seem fragile and insane. I also found it cool and really modern that Tom Hardy (Mad Max) is almost a minor character in his own film, while Charlize Theron steals the show.
8/10
If you only have time to watch one of these movies this is the one you should see. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a lonely and cold young man desperate for work. By chance he meets a night crawler, a reporter working nighttime to find news stories, and decides to give it a go himself. He quickly becomes successful, mostly because of his unthoughtful and egocentric nature and by being really intrusive. As the movie progresses he gets more power over his life, which quickly leads to disturbing scenes where he takes advantage of his new situation. It is really a movie about a person who should never have power over others, but somehow gets it anyway. What makes the movie great though, is how delicately this person is portrayed by the creators and by Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s never clear that he is a sadist or an evil person, he just seem to lack something deeply human. The subtle way something is off with his laughter, his handshakes and his body language is just stunning and the primary reason why you all should see this.
8/10
I dawned on me now that all of the above movies will be mostly liked by men and I would guess that Wild is Mikaela’s favorite out of these five. So if you’re not that into men being agents, men drumming, men driving cars or men filming perhaps you are more interested in a film about a young woman finding herself. There is really nothing unique with Wild and much like The Lord of the Rings this is mostly a film about people walking. Reese Witherspoon plays a young woman who has been depressed for some time and decides to walk the Pacific Crest Trail to find herself. She is extremely unprepared, which lead to quite a bit of comedy, but also sincere and touching moments. My favorite aspect of this film is that it feels realistic and that the creators never really compromises with that vision in order to create drama.
6/10
28 November 2015
Here is another post with concert photos; this time with Swedish popband Deportees. Me, Mikaela and Martin went to see them in Linköping at Klubb Din Mamma. The concert was (obviously) amazing, and I found myself completely immersed into the quite detailed landscape they are building on stage.
There is so much to love with Deportees, starting with Peder Stenberg and his sweeping and sticky melodies. He has one of these voices that you recognize from the very first second you hear it and never grow tired of. His voice is somehow both smooth and coarse and you never grow tired of it. And the melodies are just out of this world. I find myself humming on some of them from time to time and I have still not grown tired of a single one of them after hours and hours of listening (and singing). The lyrics are also really good and there is one line that keeps speaking to me at this moment
If you love me like I’m gone
I will love you like I’m not
Deportees - Love Me Like I’m Gone
I just have to mention the drummer Thomas Hedlund as well. He has such intensity when playing and it’s truly a wonder to watch him live. I really think he is one of the more creative drummers I have ever heard and you just have to love the way he manages to include a cowbell and a really huge cymbal into his drumming. It was a shame that there was so much smoke on stage that I could not get a good picture of him.
Deportees also seem to love xylophones. That, together with (repetitive but still amazing) guitars and synthesizers drenched in delay and reverb give them a quite distinguished (while not completely unique) sound. It was a great concert, which ended with the members of Deportees selling t-shirts and records in person, which I found very sympathetic and intimate. They all seem so very down to earth, which makes them even easier to like. So if you never quite gave them time, perhaps you should do it right now.
The background picture was borrowed from humlan.org.
