oongawa!!!

Ahhh, June 1st, it's summer time and it's time to cut some dead weight in the NFL too.

Today's movie review is one that's frightening and depressing not because of the movie itself, but because of the subject matter. Lilya 4-ever (IMDB link here) is a Swedish made film about the modern human slave trade. Lilya (played by Oksana Akinshina who i realized only the other night was in the Bourne Supremacy) is a girl living in an impoverished town in the former soviet union. At the beginning (or near the beginning) of the film she's all joy as she is going to be moving to America with her mom (who has married a U.S. based Russian through a marriage agency). However things quickly go to hell when her mom basically leaves her to rot and moves to America on her own. Left with just an uncaring aunt and virtually no money, she turns to prostitution to support herself and her one friend. She is then befriended by a very nice Russian man who offers to take her to Sweden where he lives to give her a better life. Against the wishes of her friend, she decides to go as she has nothing left in Russia. To her horror, when she arrives in Sweden, she finds out she's become a sex slave in a Swedish prostitution ring.

Things are completely hopeless for her there. She is locked up in an apartment till she's used by her pimp, and she can't run to the police as she's been threated to be killed (also she was travelling under a fake passport so she could possibly be deported back to Russia). In the end, she ends up killing herself to escape the hell that she found herself in. The movie was based on the real life story of a girl named Dangoule Rasalaite and i'm sure this happens alot in real life (not just Russians either).

I'd heard about this movie two years ago but obviously since it's a Russian/Swedish production (the movie is in Russian, Swedish, and a little english) I knew it wasn't going to have much of a chance for a stateside release. The IMDB even says that it isn't available in the US, but Netlfix recently released it as part of their foreign film catalog (the DVD itself is very basic looking, just a gray background with the name of the movie and a NETFLIX stamp on it). The movie probably could have been much more graphic (it alludes to a lot of sex and rape but it's not shown as the star was only 15 or 16 at the time) but it gets the message across pretty well.

Man i can't believe the year is almost half over! Seems like only recently i was just getting back from the Philippines and being jetlagged!

Todays random exercise thought: Well back to the grind today. I skipped my monday class since it was cancelled due to Memorial Day. I skipped working out yesterday just because i was lazy ha ha.
Tonight is my Piyo class and running night (hopefully ha ha). I a little (very little) exercise last night but i've been maintaining weight so i must be doing something right (but need to lose more weight dammit!)

b!