gurdymonkey | Movie intensive weekend.

Met up with the gang for "Brave" in Berkeley. Will not post spoilers, but I will say I enjoyed it almost as much as "How To Train Your Dragon." (Which I love!) It was followed by a late lunch of NY style pizza at Arinell's, and a stop at the Half Price Books outlet as Sylvia was looking for a specific title. Ended up hanging over at James & Sylvia's for a screening of Inagaki's "Samurai Banners" with Toshiro Mifune, purely for research purposes (yeah, right). Well, kind of, because there was a particular type of monkish hat that Mifune's character wears after taking vows. After scrutinizing it from various angles, I'm sure I could replicate it - it appears to be a rectangular length of fabric tied to the head with a strip of fabric, pouffed up over the crown in a mushroom like shape with the long tails of the recgangles hanging at either side. Just the thing for a shaven Buddhist monk to keep his head and neck from the hot sun. (And of course I can't find any stills showing it.) I seem to recall having seen it in a period source somewhere, I just can't remember which one. Further searching is indicated. Also sat through a DVD of a performance called "Shaolin: Wheel of Life," which was at turns beautiful and disturbing.

Met Sylvia this afternoon (James had to work) to check out "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," Some of my readers may recall my reaction to the appallingly bad writing displayed in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," requiring this writer to fling her copy in bullet-time-slow-motion across the living room in disgust. Sure, there were implausibilities aplenty, but it was entertaining. We repaired to Angeline's Louisiana Kitchen for late lunch: she did the buttermilk fried chicken plate, I tried the Voodoo Shrimp - simply shrimp done in a light, mild barbecue sauce over rice. We split an order of beignets, then walked several blocks up to Telegraph to see if Moe's had the book she was looking for. They didn't, but I picked up a used copy of Storm Front, as I keep hearing from people how good the Dresden Files series is. We headed back downhill towards Shattuck to pick up the BART back to her apartment, poked inside Pegasus Books along the way and I scored The Art of Japanese Calligraphy from the Heibonsha series, plus a copy of Topsy Turvy 1585, which I hadn't known about before. Damn, I wish I HAD, before A&S. It's a translation of a Jesuit report on hundreds of ways that the Japanese are different from Europeans. I am looking forward to reading this one.