Kung Fu Panda! — No spoilers

There is no charge for awesomeness.

And so it begins. :-)  What a ride!  I loved how it was funny — Jack Black definitely brought all his talent to bear — while staying true to the kung fu genre; it had something for everyone.  My favourite character was Oogway: I could’ve watched that moment when he stopped Tai Lung in his tracks a dozen times in a row; so awesome!  Plus, the second scene under the sacred peach tree of heavenly wisdom… so kung fu!

The whole premise was great too: they hinted at how it would go down partway through, but it still made for a great finale; I don’t know if believable is the right word, but it was certainly a great story that was told well.

The art was amazing too.  (I’ve just added the book to my wish list.)  The villains in the opening reminded me of a coffee table book my parents had when I was growing up; it was full of caricatures of jungle animals, ending with the lion, of course.  I wish I could remember the name of it; searches on “king of the jungle art book” were as useful as you’d imagine.  It was a parody, though, ’cause these animals were messed up: the hippo was wearing a ballet tutu, the rat (O.K., maybe characterizing the book as ‘jungle’ was my first mistake) was smokin’ a cigarette, the lion was sittin’ on a throne — no, not the throne; it wasn’t that messed up — munchin’ on a drumstick, I think… And a bunch of them had dirty T-shirts on, or maybe it was just the heavy black that outlined them and permeated every page.  But it was the beady eyes in Kung Fu Panda that brought me back to that book; the small, beady eyes in overly large faces.  It was a disturbing book, actually; probably why I still remember it.  Strange.

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Alice Munro’s The Children Stay and Eyes Wide Shut

The Children Stay reminded me of the pot-smokin’, bedroom scene in Eyes Wide Shut.  That scene really disturbed me.  For months — and even years — afterward, I found myself wondering whether a mother could really feel that way: the immediate, almost undeniable, urge to leave everything — even her young children — for a stranger.  I even asked a few women in my life for their opinions; those that I didn’t feel too sheepish asking, that is, as even then I was aware of my implied naivety.

I was skeptical of Kubrick’s, and co-screenwriter Frederic Raphael’s, ability to truly know any woman.  (While I did read Eyes Wide Open by Raphael — partly in an attempt to glean a better sense of whether this understanding was there, no doubt — I did not read the work the script was adapted from — Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle — for some reason.)  Now, finally, Munro offers a compelling, female perspective on the subject.

The story cast the novel Anna Karenina in a similar light, so now I’m curious about it again (even though I don’t feel up to tackling Tolstoy right now).

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Should Britain send more troops to Afghanistan?

Just posted the following comment on the subject BBC’s Have Your Say:

In reading through many comments, I was surprised to find little support for the NATO mission in Afghanistan (AF). Equally surprising was some of the supporting minority’s linking the mission with winning common Afghans over from the Taliban, and, incredibly, reducing opium production. The main points to keep in mind are: 1) AQ were more successful when they had a haven (AF); 2) no regime (whatever their principles) should see hosting AQ as fine — think North Waziristan now, as we help AF.

Most assuredly a simplification — darn character limit — and, particularly in the case of the first point, debatable: AQ-inspired success continued after September 2001, but one wonders whether the inspiration would peter out, were AQ core unable to comfortably operate anywhere at the same time as contravening messages were promulgated (the latter being something we need to do more of, incidentally).

Re BBC on food packaging

I just sent the following message to BBC’s Have Your Say:

I just heard the tail-end of a World Service spot on food packaging and I had a few thoughts: the argument that we should be looking beyond the food packaging we see in the grocery store to all the packaging that has gone into getting it from the farm to there, and that seemingly-wasteful, visible packaging could actually save waste in intermediary packaging and spoiled food is both excellent and insightful. However, it and subsequent statements during the spot rely on a few assumptions that I feel deserve some scrutiny.

First, it assumes that access to food in the developed world should be as close to uniform as possible: that is, that we should ship strawberries and pomegranates as far as is feasible, without seriously considering equivalent nutritional value. Or, put yet another way, that variety for variety’s sake is more important than eating locally (even if your ‘locally’ could reasonably be called regionally).

Second, specifically regarding grocery-shopping intervals, that shopping every other day for certain products (e.g., loose produce) is unacceptable; and, following from that, that having the developed world shopping once a week for groceries is sustainable.

I’m sure there are many people who would say that these assumptions are reasonable, but I think it strengthens the debate to explicitly consider them when discussing sustainable means of feeding the planet.