if there was ever a better reason to switch to digital photography, this movie is it. the movie was interesting, about a creepy photo development guy (robin williams) who ends up stalking this family, but his theories about photography are even more interesting, at least to me. like he says that people only take photos of happy moments, and that if aliens were every to visit the earth and see humanity through photos, they'd think we were the happiest people ever. little sayings like that in the form of dubbed over voice narration is what really sells the movie for me.

robin williams is creepy, but his creepiness seems harmless. although he stalks this family, and the focus of his stalking is on the wife, the film never portrays it as sexual. sure, he has a tabletop full of framed stolen photos of her, but we never see him doing anything sexual. he comes home to his single lonely apartment, watches television, looks over his photos. he is unusually obsessed with this family, particularly the wife, but it's just straight-forward creepiness, there's no law that says you can't be creepy. maybe if they threw in some sort of fantasy sequence would you be more understanding of his motivations, but the movie as it stands sort of leave that dangling.

the snapshots in the movie are funny. they try to fake candidness, the kind of photos normal people would take, but obviously they're taken by a professional, because the lightings too good, or the framing, even though they try to emulate the awkward positioning of your average amateur photographer, still seems too polished to be true candids.

spoiler: and that ending? did he or did he not take photos of the husband with his mistress? then how come in the end, when the fbi developes his role of photos, it's just snapshots of mundane things, inanimate objects? i think he was just trying to scare the husband. if he was really a dangerous psycho, he probably would've killed him and maybe his mistress instead of letting them live.

good movie, suspenseful, thoughtful in its study of the nature of photography, and if you do see it, please explain the ending to me.

the weblog validates my existence, it's the glue that holds the pieces of my life together. i go through a single day like an entry, i look for things to write about, i try to remember details so when i write it will be accurate. no matter how mundane a day might be, the fact that i'm documenting it seems to make it all worthwhile. as to what greater purpose this might serve, who knows. i've been at this for almost a year and a half now. at the end of the day i make my entry, sort of like a nightly ritual, like brushing my teeth. i don't even notice myself doing it anymore. sometimes it can be a choir because i can't be as lucid as i want to be every single night. occasionally i might miss a day or two, but in my mind i go over all the things that took place for that day and when i have the opportunity i make a past entry.

i went and saw the matinee of one hour photo with alex wong at kendall square earlier today. parking was a breeze as most of the free-on-sunday metered parking spots directly in front of the theatre were all unoccupied. later, i went to cambridge with the full intention of priming my living room. little did i realize, prepping the room for painting would take up the rest of the day. i started by covering the floor with dark pink rosen paper, so no potential paint splatter would mark the wooden floor. i unscrewed the ceiling fixture so i could paint underneath it, but i ended up unscrewing the whole thing and spent 15 minutes balancing on a ladder in the middle of my living room, holding up the heavy light fixture with one hand, trying to screw it back into the ceiling with the other. i couldn't just let go because the fixture was wired into the wall and the only way to take that thing down would be to unwire everything. i was trapped and i seriously thought i'd be stuck holding the light for the rest of the day but luckily i managed to screw it back into the ceiling. i then started wiping the walls with a wet rag, making them free of dust. during the cleaning i discovered some more dents in the walls from when the contractors put in the new ceiling, so i had to patch all those up. before i knew it it was past 5pm, my self-imposed finishing time, so i wrapped everything up and went back to belmont. after some sanding tomorrow morning, the living room should be ready to prime. the big 5 gallon drum of primer is already sitting in the living room along with all the painting tools.

back in belmont, the chinese chives have flowered, and a fairy ring of mushrooms grows in a shady part of the lawn. not really sure what kind they were, but i figured they were poisonous because they had skirts (actually, i think they're meadow mushrooms, fairly harmless, but i still wouldn't eat them). not sure why, but throughout the middle and end of the summer season, we get a lot of mushrooms in our backyard. i've seen everything from puffballs to stinkhorns to artist's fungi. never any fly amanitas though, i'd love to have those growing in the backyard because they look pretty, even if they are poisonous (hallucinogenic as well). i heard they have some sort of symbiotic relationship with birch trees, and if you have lots of birch, you'll have a better chance of seeing amanitas.

sunday night dinner i had with my parents and sister at the wuchon korean restaurant in union square. i had the beef ribs in spicy broth, which is a nice meal, but more suited for the winter instead of a hot post-season summer evening. it was a sweat inducing affair, but i finished it all up nevertheless.