Welcome to Brexit!

The UK has spoken, and spoken loudly.  Bye bye Europe.  And best of luck with those Donald Trump trade deals.  You'll need it.

It was another great full moon party, held Wednesday evening.  It was the coldest day and night of the season so far, and the wind was gusty.  No more snow as yet, and with some luck we will make it to Solstice without the white stuff.  The walking program continues as a result of clear sidewalks.  

Wednesday was also blood work day, for both of us.  Tuesday we returned the VW Tiguan to the dealer, as the 4-year lease had expired.  We now have a single vehicle, the VW Golf wagon.  Once astronomy season fires up, it's going to be a bit of a challenge with just one car.  But the way that greenhouses are popping up in our county, with lights on all night, I would say my astronomy days are nearly over anyway.  It's getting to be a sadder and sadder world each and every day.

This weeks movies were both in colour!  Diamantino was Deb's pick, a new film that just popped up on Criterion.  It began rather well, with a unique character.  But the movie soon fell into the modern plot trap.  Diamantino is the world's best soccer player, playing for Portugal.  But he misses his big shot at the world cup, and his team loses.  He gives up on soccer.  He is a very innocent man, who knows nothing about money or girls.  His money is looked after by his evil twin sisters.  He encounters refugees when on his boat, and he wishes to adopt one.  Instead, he gets a secret service undercover agent, trying to find out where he is laundering money.  Of course it's his sisters.  But the plot gets even sillier, and we are soon involved in a spy caper, with the Portuguese government secretly trying to clone Diamantino.  There are guns, of course, and violence.  The movie got ruined less than halfway through.  What began as something truly different just became the same old same old.  Watch the first half hour for some fluffy puppies that give Diamantino his luck at soccer.

My choice was Chungking Express, a Hong Kong film from 1994.  The film consists of two stories, both completely separate, but with both stories linked to a small take out restaurant in the market section of central Hong Kong. While both stories are interesting (there is considerable violence in the first story), the real star is Hong Kong itself.  This is not the glamourous banking and high rise version, but the real version where people live and work and shop.  The environment is like a very sunny and cheerful Blade Runner set.  In the second story, the main actress (Faye Wong) is a slightly off center young woman with a pixie hair cut, who slowly falls for, in her own strange way, a uniformed police officer that stops by for lunch where she works the counter.  Her character is hilarious, and though harmless, she does manage to upset things without meaning to.  There was to be a third story, too, but it was left out and became another move by the director, Wong Kar-Wai, called Fallen Angels (it's now in our queue).

It's fascinating to see the famous escalator in the movie, too.

The famous Hong Kong escalator features in the movie. 

 We are way overdue for a visit to Detroit.  Maybe this weekend.  Stay tuned.

M.