Daddy's grown up girl

You’ve loved me in every way you knew how

You brought me “kill bill yellow” flowers,

And traveled across oceans to surprise me.

Your crooked smile never failed to mend my broken heart.

You taught me harsh lessons,

And pretended to disappear.

I know I never called your home mine,

I know it upset you,

I know you worried about a place I could call home.

But everywhere I wandered,

I had a sense of home,

Because I had you.

You were my superman.

My only man.

There was no kryptonite in my version of your story.

I didn’t see it,

Because I was it.

I wish I had.

I wish I knew.

I wish all that you taught me included that.

I’d eat all the onions,

Scrape my plate and cringe,

If I could change what I did today.

I’m sorry you taught me so well.

I was always your little girl,

But after today,

I’ll be grown up for you. 

Storm Chaser

I spin around in circles,

To make myself dizzy.

I don’t like the calm.

It’s not for me.

Spin around,

Settle down.

That’s the feeling I miss.

It’s too calm in my head.

The world is too settled.

I’m waiting for a storm,

To pick me up,

And take me away.

Some place far away.

I lean my head out,

Hoping to catch it first.

The storm laughs,

And blows me a kiss.

"I’m only passing through", he says.

I know this feeling,

I’ve had it before.

So I brush away the wind from my hair,

And offer him a coke.

He prefers juice and a smoke instead.

I smile at the irony,

Of chasing a storm,

When all I thought I wanted

Was some peace and calm.

Hanna and her slip ups.

I was sure I didn’t like Hanna until I realized that people are loving it! And when I say people, I don’t mean the masses who have scrambled eggs for brains, I mean people I associate myself with, the sunny side up for brains, and I’m trying to figure out what they liked about it. Because I came out of Hanna feeling… nothing.

So I thought about it… and then it hit me. I didn’t hate it. In fact, I never hated it. And that’s the thing. While you’re watching it, you’re not bored; in fact, you find yourself smiling a lot of the time, because it’s ingenuous! It’s violent, yet funny; thrilling, yet sensitive. It has Cate Blanchett and Saoirse Ronan, who deliver great performances and might I add, bear a striking resemblance to each other. It has great characters, great cinematography and a great sound score featuring the Chemical Brothers. But as it happens, snippets of greatness do not a great movie make.

The attention to detail by setting the tone of the movie in greys and reds is very arty and it’s combined with great action sequences cut in perfect sync to the music, which is all very well, but these two great facets don’t come together.  At one level you love it for the former and at another for the latter, but as a whole, it’s neither.  It’s not an art film, it’s not an action film and neither is it a music video.

And as much as I respect a director’s choice to make something out of the box, I failed to grasp the meaning of wanting to do so. Clearly he had something else to say with the film, because it started out as an action thriller and then it slowed down, with the promise of being something more, but it never quite delivered on that promise.

So as much as I have nothing bad to say about this film, I really have nothing great to say either. You want to give it a standing ovation on the grounds of bravery and choices well made, but it falls short on so many accounts, that your knees give way just as you’re about to stand up.