Two Lovers: the purlieus of the heart

I just got done watching Two Lovers (2008) with Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Vinessa Shaw. It was a new experience for me. The story was inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short story "White Nights". There's a quote from Ivan Turgenev at the beginning:

"And was it his destined part
Only one moment in his life
To be close to your heart?
Or was he fated from the start
to live for just one fleeting instant,
within the purlieus of your heart."

purlieu |ˈpərl(y)oō|
noun ( pl. -lieus or -lieux |-l(y)oō(z)|)
the area near or surrounding a place : the photogenic purlieus of the Princeton.
• figurative a person's usual haunts.
• Brit., historical a tract on the border of a forest, esp. one earlier included in it and still partly subject to forest laws.

This is Leonard's predicament. His is a complicated character and Phoenix does a great job bringing out all the intricacies. This was supposed to be his last movie before his vaunt into the world of hip hop, as 'mockumented' in I'm Still Here (2010), which thank God wasn't true. Leonard is a heartbroken man and suicidal as a result. He had an engagement broken off and now he is in despair. He lives under the watchful eye of his Jewish parents in a Brooklyn apartment and works for the family business. He seems more at home talking with kids than adults. He has charisma but its full potential is choked because of his wounds.

He has scars on his wrists. His parents are worried, so their care is sometimes excessive, but what would you do if he were your kid? His life takes a turn for the interesting when he is introduced to the daughter of his father's business partner, Sandra. She is the good girl, the one you can bring home to mom. If we were at all in our senses, she is the wife we should all want. But when everything is there for the taking, when you already know you can get the girl, it's almost a little boring. This is human psychology. I believe this shouldn't be the case, but 99% of us feel it when it happens. The key quote that critics underline is: She wants to take care of him. She understands his pain and wants to nurture him out of it. But doesn't that make us recoil? I don't want to be your science project. I want to be nurtured out of my pain in a more indirect way. I wouldn't want that to be your motive. But all the same, she has good intentions, and probably voices awkwardly feelings that are more noble.

While he keeps his distance from Sandra (he's likes, but is not smitten), he accidentally bumps into Michelle. She is not Jewish. She is wild. A guy's fantasy. The girl you wouldn't bring home to mom. They have a wild night out on the town. But she gets a text that makes her cry. Leonard finds out it's because her boyfriend can't come out. Boyfriend! Not only did she didn't tell him, this idiot is married with a kid. This is the trouble with fantasies. There usually always screwed up. But Leonard is still smitten and wants her to be the girl of his dreams. But she puts him in the friend-zone and tells him all her problems. Doesn't this sound like an experience every guy has gone through? You have a girl on the side who you know you can have, while you chase a girl you know you'll probably never have while she puts you in the friend-zone? What this movie does really well is take these soap opera cliches and make them believable. The movie works because of the realism. It's so rare you see a love story set in Manhattan and not see it from the perspective of the middle class.

The movie is about unrequited love. I thought it did a great job on that score. Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Vinessa Shaw all were amazing. While Leonard was in the purlieus of Michelle's heart, even if she did let him come in for one moment, he learns that it is Sandra that he should truly love, and who truly loves him.

Feeling more in More than a Feeling

I’ve had a funny, yet wistful, experience today. I consider the art I’ve experienced to be a part of my identity. The experiences of the art are embedded in my memory, and re-experiencing the art not only reignites the memories of when I first experienced it, but some of the other times I’ve experienced it, and any of the other subsidiary memories that are connected to it. To give an example of this loose law of association (I’ll call it), I remember driving down Forestbrook road one day with the windows down on a particular balmy day when the smell of burning leaves whisked its way into my car and in my imagination I was immediately transported to memories that had been lying dormant for years, even decades. The result was an experience of a certain kind of wistful painfulness, a longing to return to those memories, a sadness that I couldn’t, and a thoughtful disappointment that even if I could, I’d probably feel, after a while, bored and disappointed at the banality of the memory: this would lend a suspicion to the level of sacredness I had with all my cherished memories. I say all of this for prefatory purposes. The main point I want to get across is this. With the particular art of music, since different musicians can give to songs their own interpretations, approved or disapproved by the original musician, the song itself, connected as it is with my identity, memories, and imagination, can take on a whole new meaning in the medium of these varying interpretations, and can thus effect sudden changes in the identity, memories, and imagination that were already in the song's hold. For example, I will never forget (If I live to be 85 years old, this memory will never leave me) the first time I heard or began to pay conscious attention to a type of music that affected my soul like none other I had heard up to that point in my life. The music was off Boston's first album and I remember each song having a power and poignancy to it that made me feel different than I had ever felt before. It was an experience and memory of beauty to my mind. This experience was in the mid to late 90's. Now, in 2011, I could hear a beautiful acoustic cover of this song by a gifted musician, reignite the memories of the experiences I had when I first listened to the song on that fateful day in the van (Matt J., you know what I'm talking about!), notice the more-than-a-decade span that has intervened since the two events, ponder all that has happened in my life in the interval, and the new interpretation of the song can actually make me notice the pathos of my life as the last years of my youth are slipping away.

Where there's a Will there's a way

Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetics result from his doctrine of the primacy of the Will as the thing in itself, the ground of life and all being; and from his judgment that the Will is evil. Schopenhauer held that art offers a way for people to temporarily escape the suffering that results from willing. Basing his doctrine on the dual aspect of the world as will and representation, he taught that if consciousness or attention is fully engrossed, absorbed, or occupied with the world as painless representations or images, then there is no consciousness of the world as painful willing. Aesthetic pleasure results from experience of the world as representation [mental image or idea] without any experience of the world as will [need, craving, urge].

I agree with this when I put my own spin on it. I do think The Will is the thing in itself. Perhaps not Kant's thing in itself. But I do think it is the ground of all being and life, since God's will is such a ground. What I particular love here is S.'s belief that art allows you to escape the suffering that results from willing. I want to distinguish this 'willing' from C.S. Lewis' desire for Something otherworldly, something outside of this space/time. I believe this 'desire' is the desire to merge with The Will. I also believe in this will/representation distinction. That it is another form of Lewis' contemplation/enjoyment distinction, and Kierkegaard's subjective/objective distinction, and Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian distinction. Perhaps it is this 'painful willing' which I shed for the moment that I am taken away by the music. But a part of me is suspicious, because there is an acute kind of pain which I feel during melancholy songs. But perhaps this is the feeling of catharsis, that my nameless, inner feelings are given musical expression, and the unspeakable feeling is given somewhat of a form in my consciousness, and it is in this sense that I shed 'painful willing' in S.'s sense. This sort of satisfies the thought that when we merge with God in the afterlife, the bittersweet desire that's been with me all my life will be swallowed up, that God will stoop to suit my puny representational capacities, like an ocean suits a canoe at that little part where the canoe happens to be floating.

For Schopenhauer, the Will is an aimless desire to perpetuate itself, the basis of life. Desire engendered by the Will is the source of all the sorrow in the world; each satisfied desire leaves us either with boredom, or with some new desire to take its place. A world in thrall to Will is necessarily a world of suffering. Since the Will is the source of life, and our very bodies are stamped with its image and designed to serve its purpose, the human intellect is, in Schopenhauer's simile, like a lame man who can see, but who rides on the shoulders of a blind giant.

It's amazing how close S. was to God. I wouldn't call it aimless. This is more in line with the 'elan vital' that Bergson spoke of in his book Creative Evolution. Or what Lewis hinted at when he spoke of the insolence of Nature to grow. And I think S. focused on the bad part of the Will to the exclusion of the good, and falls into the error (though a noble one) of the Buddha. I believe this Desire I have for God to be 'engendered by The Will', but I might not call it the root of all my sorrow, unless S. means the sorrow I have because that Desire isn't satisfied until Heaven. But his plan is to cut off the Will in this life for the negative of 'will-less' nirvana. He wants to remove the stomach because we're always hungry; I want to feed it eternal life. I'm with Nietzsche in thinking that S. was too negative and pessimistic, metaphysically. I love the metaphor of the intellect, like a lame man on the shoulders of a blind giant.

Schopenhauer's aesthetics is an attempt to break out of the pessimism that naturally comes from this world view. Schopenhauer believed that what distinguished aesthetic experiences from other experiences is that contemplation of the object of aesthetic appreciation temporarily allowed the subject a respite from the strife of desire, and allowed the subject to enter a realm of purely mental enjoyment, the world purely as representation or mental image. The more a person's mind is concerned with the world as representation, the less it feels the suffering of the world as will. Schopenhauer analysed art from its effects, both on the personality of the artist, and the personality of the viewer.[1]

It's interesting that even S. thought his philosophy was pessimistic. His solution, which I have complete understanding with, is that aesthetic experience is a temporary release. I feel intensely a sort of self-forgetfulness when I listen to War Pigs by Black Sabbath. My attention is focused completely outer and other. I melt away. Because of the 'contemplation of the object'. But it's a special kind of contemplation only possible because of Lewis' 'enjoyment' (as distinct from Lewis' brand of contemplation, inspired by Samuel Alexander). This is why it is then called 'purely mental enjoyment'. This probably completely explains the peace I feel with the so-called problem of suffering when I watch that part in the movie Philadelphia when Tom Hanks' character narrates during the Opera. Or why God answered Job the way He did in The Book of Job, in the spirit of the way The Tree of Life did it.

"Perhaps the reason why common objects in still life seem so transfigured and generally everything painted appears in a supernatural light is that we then no longer look at things in the flux of time and in the connection of cause and effect …. On the contrary, we are snatched out of that eternal flux of all things and removed into a dead and silent eternity. In its individuality the thing itself was determined by time and by the [causal] conditions of the understanding; here we see this connection abolished and only the Platonic Idea is left." (Manuscript Remains, Vol. I, § 80)

Wow. Perfectly said. We are 'snatched out of that eternal flux'. Doesn't all art do this? And this is the sense in which only the Platonic Idea is left. Through art we can harness the Platonic Ideas. I couldn't agree with him more.

Interpreting the trailer for TDKR

This is a good assessment of The Dark Knight Rises trailer I read.

The beginning of the teaser is little more than footage that looks similar to that of images from BATMAN BEGINS along with dialogue Liam Neeson gave from that film with text indicating every hero has a beginning and an end. From there we see Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) lying on a hospital bed on his side seemingly in a lot of pain basically begging who we can only assume is Bruce Wayne to bring Batman back. This begs the question that apparently Gordon now knows Bruce is Batman? Also, we assume that Bruce will hang up the suit at some point or perhaps right from the beginning and will be pushed back into action with the powerful threat of Bane now terrorizing the city.

From here Gordon says Batman must come back, followed by a blurry image of Bane and then a much clearer image of him starring into the camera, wearing what looks like a leather jacket. Then we see the teaser poster image with actual falling debris as it zooms in until the screen is completely white and the title card fades in. The final shot of the trailer is an awesome and brief glimpse of Batman backing away and getting into a weak fighting position as Bane lumbers in from the left side of the screen and then cuts to text that indicates we will see the end of the Batman legend.

I’ve watched the trailer over and over, but specifically the last shot trying to soak every inch of it in as I possibly can. I kept wishing I could see more of Bane, more of whoever that is standing in the background of the right hand side of the screen, but more importantly, just wish that I could watch more of this scene play out. I don’t have a single answer for any of the questions the trailer presents and that’s why I love it and believe it succeeds as a teaser trailer. Teasers are not supposed to provide closure or give you everything you want, they are supposed to do exactly what it’s called, a tease.

I have read lots of descriptions about the trailer before it was released, and lots of post reactions now that it’s been released and here is my take of the last shot in general. I’ve seen a lot of people say that what they interpret is Batman backing away scared or terrified that Bane is approaching him; that’s not what I see. What I see is Batman backing away completely exhausted and trying weakly to get his footing to try and fight off an impending attack and Bane walking relentlessly towards him unconcerned about Batman’s defense. The look on Batman’s face to me says “I have no clue what to do” where as the look of Bane’s walk is that of determination and no fear whatsoever of Batman. This gets me excited because if that’s the case I think we are in for some really tense stuff for the finale. I also don’t think that what we see here is the final battle between Bane and Batman. We are a year from release and to think the first footage we see would be part of the ending would be disappointing to me and unlikely. I would call this similar to when the Joker crashes Bruce’s fund-raiser looking for Harvey Dent in TDK and ends up in a tussle with Batman; so I would think this is an early tift between the two.

My last assessment of this scene is what I think the context of the scene is. There were viral videos released depicting a mass escape of Arkham Asylum and chaos with lots of chanting, which can be heard in the trailer as well. I believe this scene to be Batman going to intervene with what might be a riot at Arkham only to be overpowered by an escaped Bane and that the guy in the corner is a guard or another prisoner maybe. My problem with my own assessment is that Commissioner Gordon appears to have been injured severely by Bane and is begging Batman to come back, which wouldn’t quite fit with my thoughts and would be a conflict in the timeline of events.

He ignores the figure climbing out of the well and doing push-ups. Are those Bane too?

First Trailer for The Dark Knight Rises

Jim Gordon: [lying in a hospital bed] We were in this together, and then you were gone. And now this evil rises. Batman must come back.
Bruce Wayne: What if he doesn't exist anymore?
Jim Gordon: He must... he must...

This looks like this is going to kick some serious butt.

FROM MTV SPLASH PAGE: "The Dark Knight Rises" trailer took the web by storm yesterday, and it's no wonder why: between the introduction of Bane, the possible retirement of Batman and the likely destruction of Gotham City, all signs are pointing towards an epic conclusion to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.

The Thing: a Prequel

The Chicago Film Critics Association puts The Thing (1982) in 17th place among the scariest movies ever. I'd put it higher. I consider The Thing to be one of the best horror films of all time. Unknown to me, "Carpenter considers The Thing to be the first part of his Apocalypse Trilogy, followed by Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness." It is billed as a remake of The Thing From Another World, "a 1951 science fiction film based on the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr."

It tells the story of an Air Force crew and scientists at a remote Arctic research outpost who fight a malevolent plant-based alien being.

I've never seen the original, but John Carpenter's remake I have seen. And I could see it over and over again for the rest of my life. So, what is this Thing?

The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a parasitic extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates other organisms and in turn imitates them. It infiltrates an Antarctic research station, taking the appearance of the researchers that it kills, and paranoia occurs within the group.

The special effects were ahead of its time. Read: no CGI. And the dread remains. "Most of the horrifying special effects were designed and created by Rob Bottin and his crew, with the exception of the dog creature, which was created by Stan Winston."

The film's ground-breaking make up special effects were simultaneously lauded and lambasted for being technically brilliant but visually repulsive.

Ebert says it's "among the most elaborate, nauseating, and horrifying sights yet achieved by Hollywood’s new generation of visual magicians."

Now in the works is a prequel, which is supposed to explain where The Thing we saw in the 1982 version came from. "The film will take place right before the first film, following the exploits of the Norwegian and American scientists who originally discovered the alien." Three days before, to be exact.

Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and her two assistants Davida Morris (Davetta Sherwood) and Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen) join a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship buried in the ice of Antarctica. They discover a creature that seems to have died in the crash eons ago.

When an experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate, Adam and Davida join the crew's pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing and imitating them one at a time, using its uncanny ability to mimic any life form it absorbs through digestion, and potentially reaching civilization.

The filmmakers seem legit. Producer Eric Newman said:

I'd be the first to say no one should ever try to do Jaws again and I certainly wouldn't want to see anyone remake The Exorcist... And we really felt the same way about The Thing. It's a great film. But once we realized there was a new story to tell, with the same characters and the same world, but from a very different point of view, we took it as a challenge. It's the story about the guys who are just ghosts in Carpenter's movie - they're already dead. But having Universal give us a chance to tell their story was irresistible.

And I'm charmed and reassured that "Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. explained that he created the film not to simply be a horror movie, but to also focus largely on the human drama with the interaction between characters, as the first film had." That's what I loved about the 1982 version: character studies in the midst of terror and chaos.

Scary Movie Update

Check out The Silent House!



Plot:

The plot is based on a true story that happened in the late 40's in a small village in Uruguay. The film focuses on Laura, who, second by second, intends to leave a house which hides an obscure secret, unharmed. Laura and her father Wilson settle down in a cottage they have to renew since its owner will soon put the house up for sale. They will spend the night there and repair the following morning. Everything seems to go smoothly until Laura hears a sound that comes from outside and gets louder and louder on the upper floor of the house. Wilson goes up to see what is going on while she remains downstairs on her own, waiting for her father to come down.

We learn the house knows all your secrets and nightmares. True Story!? Can't wait to see it. I guess it was already released in 2010 where I'm at, but it'll be released soon in the states because it made such an impact.

Again:

The plot is based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. La casa muda focuses on the last seventy eight minutes, second by second, as Laura tries to leave the house unharmed and discovers the dark secret it hides.

Like Hitchcock's film Rope, this movie is one, long, sinuous shot, which makes it all the more intriguing.

La casa muda was shot in real time in one continuous 78 minute take, with no cuts. It is one of only a handful of theatrically released movies to be shot in one continuous long take, and it has been billed as the first ever single-take horror film, though this claim is the subject of some dispute.

A film called Infection (2005) might have beat it to the punch. Either way, can't wait to see this!

Open Your Eyes . . .

David: My dreams are a cruel joke. They taunt me. Even in my dreams I'm an idiot... who knows he's about to wake up to reality. If I could only avoid sleep. But I can't. I try to tell myself what to dream. I try to dream that I am flying. Something free. It never works...

I consider Vanilla Sky to be one of my favorite movies. In the beginning we are flying over various parts of New York City like a spirit from another world. Then we zero in on the flat of David Aames asleep. ‘Sabrina’ with Audrey Hepburn plays on his disappearing television symbolizing the dream of romance. His alarm clock is a recording of Sophia saying ‘Open Your Eyes’. The cover of Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin’ is seen in the background. The point is that we are beginning to see his world, what makes him who he is. He plucks a couple gray hairs, another symbol for the desire to live forever. David is off to work. Yet something is not right. There is not a soul in the busiest part of the busiest city in the world. As he gets out of his car, and he is running furiously through Time Square, every advertisement that flashes before his eyes seeks to be a cure for his loneliness. They are all band-aid solutions that don’t really solve the problem of the human condition in the long run.

But alas it is all a dream. We are disoriented. We now know that this movie is meant to disorient us, so we don’t know what is real and what is a dream. We now know that a dream about being in the most populated city in the world alone is a dream that perhaps a lonely person would have. This is the point where we realize that this isn’t going to be a simple, linear story. The structure of the movie is a flashback from a dialogue between a masked David and court psychologist Dr. McCabe (Kurt Russell) in a holding cell (almost a symbol for the inside of a trapped mind) trying to get to the bottom of why David was sentenced to a mental institution and why he was accused of murdering the love of his life. But it is also David telling Dr. McCabe his autobiography, the story of his life, how he became the man that he is, and how Dr. McCabe becomes the father figure he never had. We can even view glimpses of scenes from To Kill a Mockingbird (in which the motif of fatherhood is on view) in the room where the security guard is on post.

We discover Julie Gianne (Cameron Diaz) with whom he has casual sex, even though she secretly is in love with him. David is a man who has it all and yet is missing something. They are pretending to be in love. Jason Lee plays Brian Shelby, David’s best friend, who has a love for Julie, Radiohead, and has little pearls about life, the bitter and the sweet. He is a loyal friend and a talented writer, which David willingly funds and supports. I sense a nod toward similarities between Brian and Cameron Crowe himself. As David arrives to work at a Manhattan high-rise, we learn that he has 51% control of the company, while 49% belongs to the envious ‘Seven Dwarves’. David believes he was set up by the Dwarves for the murder of Sophia in order to gain control of the company. David’s father was a lover of adventure, but David feels like he let his father down, since he had do deal with petty issues like a fear of heights. Now he is at the reigns of an empire the Dwarves don’t feel he has the courage to lead. He is in the shadow of a father he never really knew and from whom he never got approval or love. David fears the heights that he has by chance reached.

“There are five basic emotions in life, David. Tell me, what emotion gripped him before he entered that cell?”, asks Dr. McCabe. “Was it guilt? Hate? Shame? Revenge?” Pause. Music. “Love?” I must say the editing in the movie was excellent, and I have a newfound respect for movie editors. With my recent fascination with the art of the movie montage, and my own thoughts about how I’d construct one of my own, I’ve paid more attention to the art of editing. Usually, I pay attention to cinematography. The photographic quality of an image, including the actors, background, angles, and lighting, are all fascinating to me. But editing is what juggles all of this artistry around, and weaves all the threads together into an organic whole. For instance, when Dr. McCabe mentions love as the possible reason for David’s descent into madness, there is a gradual close-up, a blurry transition, and then a past scene of David’s birthday party in his penthouse. It is one thing to write this; it is quite another to feel and experience the way the music, images, and dialogue are edited together to create a sinuous emotional element in the viewer. There are many mini-montages like this in the film, giving it more depth, poetry, and power: when David tells Dr. McCabe about his father, during David’s emergence from a coma, his resurrection from a Howard Hughes-like isolation (compared in the movie to the Normandy Invasion), the quick succession of images with a voice-over of all the things in David’s life he found meaningful as he plummets off a skyscraper in a Kierkegaardian leap of faith to awaken from what he now realizes is a lucid dream gone awry, because of his choice to prefer reality to fiction. All of these scenes gather power from the editing.

There are many cries from critics that the movie is a jumbled mess, that Crowe is out of his league and has wondered into unfamiliar, cinematic territory. But based on my own experience of seeing the movie, upon repeated viewings, the movie makes perfect sense. And even if it didn’t, what is wrong with admitting a few irregularities in a movie that admits to being science-fiction and fantasy? All seem to agree about the structure of the movie: the present timeline of David and Dr. McCabe in the holding cell and the past flashbacks. But the confusion begins after Julie crashes her car, sending David into a coma. There is a dream of a reunion with Sophia, but it isn’t yet the lucid dream manufactured by the program “Life Extension”, designed to put people into cryogenic sleep in order to give them a lucid dream in which past pains are erased and the preferred fantasy that the recipient desired comes to pass. But if there are problems, glitches in the program, ‘Tech-support’ is sent into the mind in the form of a person who helps the recipient escape the dream turned nightmare. All of this is the science-fiction portion of the movie, a part I think plays out very well. However, if you follow the sequence of events after he awakens from the coma, when he awakens on the sidewalk to Sophia’s ‘Open Your Eyes’ after he had passed out, the lucid dream sequence has begun, as evidenced by the sky which purposely resembles a Monet painting, since that same Monet painting was an integral part of David’s life and memory. The rest of the irregularities are explained by the glitches within the lucid dream. It’s as simple as that. In reality, when he awakened on the sidewalk, Sophia didn’t help him up, he attempted suicide (as the film explains), fails, and decides to undergo cryonic sleep to erase past hurt and renew a painless fantasy. In the end, though, the fantasy turns into a nightmare and he chooses reality, with the bitter and the sweet, and makes the leap of faith into reality. I would love for someone to explain to me what is so illogical about this plot.

I came away from this movie knowing more about myself, love, and life. The movie is an allegory of the human condition. We are all spiritually asleep and trapped by egoism and hedonism in our own ways. Once or twice in our lives we meet true love and our desire to unite with it is the beginning of our awakening to something real. The movie explored despair in a real and harrowing way. The facial disfigurement added a layer of horror. I especially enjoyed Diaz’s performance as Julie, the saddest girl to ever hold a martini. She is 27, an age where you start to have enough wisdom to know that you’ve blew a few opportunities, that you are passing your prime. There is a despair just beneath the surface of her eyes, especially as their color matches the car she was driving when she drove off the bridge. She is a spurned lover, and though people are quick to attribute her off color remarks about ‘swallowing David’s cum’ to a mental imbalance, I’d ask people to really notice that these aren’t the cries of a confused mind, but a mind thinking very clearly in response to her despairing situation. People are way too quick to attribute, for example, suicide to temporary insanity. I think that is too simple, and doesn’t pay tribute to the complexities of the human psyche as it relates to true despair. Those who say it is because of temporary insanity, I surmise, haven’t gone deep enough into their own despair to know exactly what they’re talking about.

Never Let Me Go

I try and make it a goal to read at least one non-grad school related book a quarter. My thought is this, I am reading so much about something that is so hard to put into words, something that people have spent years trying to articulate, reading some fiction could give a tired mind a break. And, to be honest, reading fiction is much more enjoyable than the new Systematic theology that changes everything or the Church Planting book that really does have all the answers.

Anyway, I began Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let me Go back in January. It quickly became (or slowly as the case may be) my official book for 2 straight quarters. Instead of reading this, captivating book, I found myself reading about Anglo-American Postmodernity and learning Hebrew verbs. Well, let me get to it.

Never Let Me Go is a science fiction novel. There I said it, Sci-fi. Don't let that deter you. When I hear sci-fi, I often get nervous because I do not know how to distinguish between good and bad sci-fi. I always get nervous that I really have just picked up a book that is a giant excuse for someone to read about alien sex. I mean, I'm into intergalactic pornography as much as the next guy but, I'm in seminary and I am not ready to come up with a Christian ethic for Space porn.

But seriously, Sci-fi is a tough world to explore. The closest I have come to "sci-fi" is Kurt Vonnegut and Ishiguro and true Sci-Fi fans will tell you, this is weak sci-fi. (I'm looking at you Mark King). Also, I'm not sure either of these authors would consider themselves Sci-fi authors. Nonetheless, this book deals with an alternate world. A world set in the seventies where society has developed the ability to create and nurture clones who will eventually, "donate" or provide vital organs to non-clones or humans.

The book is written from the perspective of the clone-protagonist, Kathy. The book looks back upon her time growing up at a school called Hailsham. It is a school for these boy and girl clones to learn and grow into thinking...things. Not quite people, but not aliens. Teachers invest in these clones educating them, training them to think and have feelings.

The book follows the relationship of Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. It is an interesting love triangle that spans over 20 years as the clones move from Childhood to Adulthood to Donation.

What makes this book excellent is how (pause for vague descriptor) hauntingly prophetic it is.

Here's what I mean by that book-flap adjective, technology is working at break neck speeds. Google is watching what I search for and read to create more suitable search results when I "google" something. The Governor of Minnesota recently vetoed a bill "Banning Human Cloning" continuing the legality of human clone research in his state.

Ethics aside on both of these issues, what Never Let Me Go does is show the possible results of such an existence. In an episode of the West Wing a character discusses the role of the writer, "An artist's job to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. If we stumble into truth, we got lucky. And I don't get to decide what truth is." I think this quote is helpful when considering the role of fiction and society. Ishiguro creates a world where cloning is common place and in this world these individuals think, feel, love and laugh.

Now, back to that overly pretentious and cliche adjective I used above. The reason I believe this book is a bit haunting and may be even prophetic...as much as I (a literature guy) want to deny the role of science and math in the world and live in a state of ignorance of science, numbers are not going away. What this book does is places the reader in this universe and forces the reader to occupy themselves with such topics in a engaging and often times beautiful way.

Ishiguro definitely has my attention and maybe even some truth.

What if only Systematic Theology was set in an alternate universe?

Book or Movie?

I just finished reading Steven King's On Writing and found this book extremely helpful with the craft of writing. It is a writers biography in the purest form. He discusses all sorts of helpful ideas to grow as a writer as well as elements of structure and style. But, one of the most glaring recommendations King gives in this book is to read. At the end of the book He lists about 200 books he has read to keep him sharp. Things from Dickens to whatever new hip author was out when he published On Writing.

After I finished reading that book, Roger Ebert tweeted an article that echoed King's sentiments. His conclusion is, Read...something, anything as long as you're reading.

I could not agree more!

At some point in my life I became really obsessed with the desire to read anything and everything. I will fully admit that it was more than likely a selfish desire to be the smartest guy in the room, but ego aside, I really did develop a liking to reading. At first it was books about Apologetics (boring), then it moved to theology and philosophy broadly (real boring) and then st some point I was introduced to the wonder that is literature. For dramatic effect you should pronounce this in your head, "lit-er-ah-toure." Let it roll of your tongue with pretension and you'll have it.

But, let me clear the air, this is not me patting myself on the back, I just want to ask a question. Well, 2 questions.

1. What have you been reading?

2. Do you prefer reading to film?

The second question I have been giving some serious thought to. Let me clarify. I don't mean would you rather read War and Peace than Watch Jurassic Park. I mean, do you prefer the film adaptation to the book?

I often leave the theatre of an adaptation desiring feeling let down and wanting something more or better. It is not often that people do what I feel like they should have done. But, that opens this discussion to a whole host of questions I am not prepared to deal with here (ex: creative license. Blah blah).

Two movies for your consideration.

True Grit and The Road I think are 2 good examples of adaptations, however the Coen brothers and the writer of The Road did not change much, if anything from the books. Both excellent books and films, but both can stand on their own 2 feet.

This really is just a bit of rambling, get some thoughts down. What do you think? Does it make sense?

Also, let me throw this move out for consideration. Adaptation starring Nicholas Cage, written by Charlie Kaufman based on a book. This move as far as I can tell resembled nothing of the book.

What do you think?

For Zachary Elvington

80's Slashers: A Cut Above

(Yes I know, clever title. Sometimes I surprise even myself.)

The 1980s were a very important time for horror films. After the extremely successful release of John Carpenter's Halloween in 1978, (a movie that was made with a budget of $300,000 and went on to make an estimated $60,000,000) everyone wanted to capitalize on it's success. So throughout the 80's pretty much all major and independent production companies started churning out these boogey man/crazed killer movies by the boat load, that affectionately came to be known as "slasher" films.

During this decade the world was blessed with not only many a delightful power ballad by Bon Jovi but also, 8 (count em, 8!) Friday the 13ths, 5 Nightmare on Elm Streets and 4 more installments to the Halloween series. But these are all movies everyone knows. Show a picture of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger to anyone over the age 10 and they will without a doubt recognize these horror icons. I'd like to take this time to pick out and share with the public some of my personal favorites of the slasher genre that, more often then not get over looked.

Without further adieu here is a list of my favorite wonderfully terrible 80's horror flicks.

1. Sleepaway Camp - The ending of this movie is one of my favorite endings to a film of all time. If you thought Andy Dufrain tunneling through a wall and crawling through a "river of shit" was a surprise wait til you see what Angela has in store.

2. The Burning - Once again, nothing says slasher movie more then a summer camp. Keep an eye out for a young Jason Alexander (aka George Costanza).

3. The Mutilator - This movie proves just how easy it is to accidentally shoot your mother in the face.

4. Prom night - This one is a little more known, mainly due to the godawful 2008 remake. As is most often the case, the original is way better.

5. The Slumber Party Massacre - If you think slasher flicks are just another way for the media to exploit and degrade women, you're probably right. But this movie was written and directed by a woman, so how you like them apples!?

6. Night Warning - It may be a low budget, cheesy horror film but for a movie released in 1982 that tackles the issue of homophobia, I'd say it was pretty ahead of it's time. Fast forward 11 years and 'Philadelphia' is taking home academy awards for the same subject matter. who knew? Often times these "lowbrow", "distasteful" films tap into more under lying social issues then anyone wants to give them credit for. But that is a topic for another time...

If you care to watch any of these titles I'm sure they're pretty readily available on line. If you can't find them there I suggest checking the vhs section of your local thrift store.

Much ado about Libya

Muammar Gaddafi has ruled Libya for 41 years. Now, protesters want democracy and a new leader. The protests started small and later grew into an uprising. Gaddafi responded by using the military, censorship, and blotting out communications. What makes this interesting is that Gaddafi's own defense minister, including the majority of his generals, wouldn't follow through with what Gaddafi wanted them to do. As the protests went on, soldiers foreign to Libya were attacking the protesters. Huh? Gaddafi wanted to talk it out, but the rebels don't want to talk it out. They want Gaddafi to resign, period. And if he doesn't, then he has got to be removed by force.

After the protesters organized a bit, they formed the Transitional National Council (TNC). And then the International Criminal Court comes along and accuses Gaddafi of crimes against humanity. Gaddafi's assets are freezed and his ability to travel halted. Gaddafi fought back, taking back many of cities the protesters had temporarily conquered, and then set his eyes on Benghazi, TNC's headquarters. And when it looked like things couldn't get any worse for Gaddafi, there came a no-fly zone over Libya. After Gaddafi called a ceasefire in response, we later found he was bluffing. The no-fly zone enabled many of Goddafi's air defenses to be decimated.

How did this all come about? The head-honcho before Gaddafi took the helm was King Irdis I, who was ousted in 1969. Gaddafi became the ruler for the 41 years thereafter. Gaddafi did what probably a lot of people would do in his position. Only family and tribal loyalists need apply. The government became filled with those sympathetic to whatever Gaddafi wanted. So that none of his sons become too excited about getting the crown, Gaddafi confused them by loving one son more one day, and favoring another on another day. And the same with loyalists. It's actually a skillful strategy. Rivals, of course, are killed or shoved to the margins.

Much of Libya is almost devoid of a middle class, because they don't see a need for one. Usually, we have a middle class so we can tax their income and strengthen the economy. Not Libya. 58% of Libya's GDP is money made from petroleum, a natural resource over there. So, the money they make from trading those resources goes to fund whatever the government wants to do for its people. And effect of this is that the quality of living over there is very high, even though unemployment is at 21%. Yet everyone wonders why unemployment was so high if there are labor shortages? There are millions of capable workers who don't work. Many of the protesters are these workers.

Why is Gaddafi such a jerk? In his 41 year rule he got rich. Really rich. What did he spend his money on? Charity? Helping the kids? Funding science research? Nope. He decided to buy lots of guns and to sponsor terrorism. Great. He also made Libya the most censored state in the region. Talk about progress! Oh, and if you want to dissent, you can if like to be thrown in prison and beaten. Want to create a political party? Sure. Go ahead. Execution awaits you. Chances are you'll have your 5 minutes of fame on television too. I think executions are on channel 4. Maybe you think you can talk politics with foreigners. Nope. Unless you want 3 years in the slammer. Fun fact: there's a million dollar bounty on Ashur Shamis. His crime? Being a critic of the Libyan government.

Gaddafi has a pretty insightful explanation for the uprising: alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs. Yes, sir! They can be found in milk and coffee. But who is doing the distributing? Gaddafi says its Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden, the favorite whipping boys. And lets not forget the whole Western conspiracy to subjugate the Libyans and get that precious oil!

Johnathan Johnson: Guest Blogger

Hello everyone. I am anticipating not being very present the next few weeks because of midterms. I know, "Cry me a river Matthew, you signed up for this. The person responsible is yourself." Well, save me the guilt trip. I decided to hire out this week. My 11 year old brother Johnathan, a budding film buff, recently watched Alien for the first time. If you haven't seen it, beware this review has some spoilers in it. But, I would be remiss if I did not mention that he is hilarious and you would be missing out if you did not read it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, Johnathan Johnson:

ALIEN

Alien is very good, such as those moments that are very suspenseful like when the kitty is in the box and stuff and the Alien is about to headbite people. (A headbite is where that extra mouth comes out) Ripley (The main lady) is on a ship with 7 other people, and they all die, leaving her behind. Th only choice she has is to run onto the shuttle, and blow up the ship… then.. the Alien is hidden in a corner. Without her knowing, she goes to get something, and she sees its hand try to grab hers. She freaks out, and runs to the closet, putting on a suit, and trying to freeze the Alien. Then, she gets it to the airlock, opens the airlock with the suit on, and shoots a harpoon at the Ailen so it goes out. Then, the harpoon gets stuck, and the alien flots to the engine. She sees it, then she turns on the engine, resulting in the Aliens death.

Sad story isn’t it?

(Written by Matthew Knuckles Johnson’s brother)

Layne Staley: martyr of despair

In the early 90's the grunge phenomenon swept the nation, an almost unrivaled force in the history of authentic music. It bred many imitators. But the original bands were and are the titans of music in their day. Soundgarden. Nirvana. Pearl Jam. Alice in Chains. Stone Temple Pilots. Jane's Addiction. The darkest and heaviest of the era, Alice in Chains struggled to find their sound in the beginning. Being heavily influenced by the superficiality of L.A.-based hair metal, they began generic enough. 1990's Facelift had some gems, but didn't yet single them out. It wasn't until Dirt (1992) that you could begin to discern a unique talent. Song after song toured the dark side of life, the despair and anguish and self-loathing brought on by heroine addiction. As if to recover from the unrestrained debauchery they had experienced, a calmer and absolutely gut-wrenching EP called Jar of Flies (1994) was released, with some of the saddest songs I've ever heard.

There is a price to pay when you plumb the depths of the human condition. As if cursed to go there by an addiction he loathed, lead singer Layne Staley's tortured soul put into beautiful music a reality that Black Sabbath only flirted with. A funny thing happens when you personalize any band. Staley seemed like he would have been a great friend. Funny. Goodhearted. Real. Humble. Despite all his talent, his addictions would get the best of him, as he was found on April 20th, 2002, only weighing 86 pounds, dead from an overdose. His death, while barely making a blip on the media radar, sent waves of sorrow throughout the grunge community and the fanbase of Alice in Chains.

As a hidden track on their collection of B-sides called Lost Dogs front-man for Pearl Jam Eddie Vedder created the song 4/20/02 (the day Vedder heard the news), the day he heard the news of his good friend's death. The song is filled with such desolation and sadness that such a talent and great friend was taken away. The song makes me cry every time. I don't care, because I don't know, where Staley is at in the after-life right now. I pray that his soul is healed. Here is Vedder's song, along with some of the more beautiful, yet heartrending songs Staley sings called Nutshell and River of Deceit, songs the feel and tone and lyrics of which tell me more about the human condition than lots of art that I've experienced.

Adventureland: A Greatly Underrated Film

The 80s and early 90s are often recognized for the films they produced that, for the first time, really seemed to resonate with young adults and adolescent youth.
It is a timeless tradition as old as movies themselves to market and promote films geared towards teenagers and young adults because after all, who goes to the movies more then highschool kids? But the great thing about this time period was that for the first time the films being made actually caused kids to examine their lives, connect with the characters, be affirmed in knowing that, "I'm not the only one that feels this way!" instead of just selling tickets and packing seats to the latest slapstick comedy or Friday the 13th picture (not that there's anything wrong with that!) We all know what movies I'm talking about, "Sixteen Candles", "Ferris Buellers Day Off", "Say Anything", "Pretty in Pink" yada yada yada you get my point, all great pictures, all held in very high regard. Adventureland is every bit as good as these classics.

Now, I don't want to go off on a tangent of simply summing up, or trying to sum up the movie Adventureland, that's boring, no one wants that and I'll leave it up to anyone that reads this to take matters into their own hands of watching or not watching it. I will however state that Adventureland is an incredible coming of age story and it blows my mind that when it was released in 2009 no one seemed to recognize or care. When, had this movie been released in the 80s and been directed by John Hughes everyone would have thought it was brilliant.

I guess I'm kind of painting perhaps a slightly untrue picture since the movie actually did get better then average reviews but I feel like it was just critics saying "hey the dude that made 'Superbad' made another pretty cool movie. there isn't much else out, go see it" and not "hey go buy this movie immediately and keep it on your dvd shelf in between 'The Breakfast Club' and 'The Outsiders'"
I for one choose to blame those obnoxious twilight movies for being the cause of why Adventureland isn't resting high upon the pedestal it deserves to be on. I guess no one wanted to see Kristen Stewart in a movie that actually didn't suck. But she was amazing in Adventureland and I'm fairly convinced she could be our next Molly Ringwald.

Kristen if you're out there...
please stop making twilight. You're so much better then that, you deserve the world, I believe in you.

Love Always, Zach xoxo

Three Generations of Hell Raisers

On September 17th 1923 in a log cabin in Alabama the world was changed forever. This date marked the arrival of Hiram Williams aka Hank Williams. Hank Williams is not only considered to be the god father of country western music and the writer of several number one hits but is also known to be music's first bad ass. Excuse the language but that's really the only way of putting it. Hank began his music career in 1937, had his own radio show by 1938, dropped out of school by 1939 and was a full blown alcoholic by 1940.

The 40s were a wild and wonderful time for Hank, he got married, had a son (Hank Williams Jr., you may have heard of him), played the Grand Ole Opry and was the first performer to ever receive six encores and also became addicted to drugs all in the course of a few years. His drug of choice: morphine and pain killers, that he would melt down and inject into his arm. Later Hank was fired from the Grand ole Opry and told never to return because of his constant struggle to be sober. (To this day the Opry still refuses to add him to the country music hall of fame.) In the same year his band left him, stating that he was "drinking more then the shows were paying."

I mean come on guys this was in the 1940s! These are the types of antics guys like Axel Rose and Scott Weiland wish they could have been doing.

Hank Williams died on January 1st 1953 of heart failure due to drug overdose at the age of 29. He was scheduled to play a new years day show that night in Ohio.

Some of his hits include: "Your Cheatin' Heart", "Lovesick Blues", "I'm so lonesome I could cry" and "Hey goodlookin'" (even if you don't know it, you've probably heard all of these songs.)


Hank Williams Jr made his record debut in 1957 and has been writing and recording ever since. He is accredited to helping create the genre of music known as "outlaw country" and is widely known for his huge hits; "A country boy can survive", "Whiskey bent and hell bound", and "Stoned at the jukebox" to name a few.

I'm not gonna lie, I don't know half as much about Hank Jr as I do his dad and son, so rather then just bs my way through a few more lines I'm gonna skip right to Hank III.

Now before I go on ranting about how awesome I think Hank Williams the 3rd (better known as simply Hank III) is, I'd like to state I haven't been a die hard III fan for years, I have never seen him preform live and up until recently I had never listened to his music. Just want to be up front with you guys. That being said...I have a total man crush on Hank III.

For about a year now I've been under the impression that I might actually be the only person that loves hardcore dirty metal and punk as much as I love country. That was until I saw a picture of Hank III wearing a cowboy hat, holding an acoustic guitar and wearing a misfits shirt all at the same time. Immediate actions were taken and thanks to Al Gore and his brain child we like to call the internet I was able to hear some of III's music. It instantly struck a chord. What have I been doing all this time not listening to this?! I didn't think it was possible to take the voice and old timey feel of Hank Williams and then some how fiendishly cross breed it with filthy Rob Zombie/ Alice Cooper style party rock. But he did and it's awesome.

Taking after both Hanks before him and other larger then life musicians he no doubt looked up to, Hank III has mastered the whole "I don't give a good damn" attitude and mentality, which comes across very blatantly in his music. I'll admit his music isn't for everyone and with songs like; "whiskey, weed and women", "the pills I took", and "P.F.F." (which stands for punch, fight, fuck) he probably wouldn't win the upstanding morality award, but neither would his father or grandfather. Which is part of what makes these men true icons and American legends.

Athletics

I am not an athlete. Not by any stretch of the imagination. At some point in every boy's life they have to make a decision which direction they will go. Either they will go the direction of the running back, high school stud going by such nicknames as "The Mule" or "The Bear Trap". (I'm not confident anyone has ever been called these names) Or the less impressive(but eventual owner of Facbook), artsy beatnik kid who reads Yeats and talks about his "angst" and wears scarves when it is 95 degrees outside.

I am somewhere in the middle. I have been known to make it out on the "Court" or the "pitch" as they say across the pond. But, from early on I know I just was not set up to be the baseball stats guy.

However, in the last 2 or 3 years I have become obsessed with the NBA. Watching guys like Blake "The Rhythm" Griffin cram a dunk down a dudes throat, Kobe "The Black Mamba" Bryant make a game winning shot, or Kevin "The Durantula" Durant embarass a defense, this is good television as well as nice distraction from the Quinean web of Epistemology I am way to often concerned with. To feed this need, I have been reading this guys sports blog, Tony Gervino. I like this guy because he's not an annoying sports writer who presumes that Sports-center (Da na na) is the only thing out there and references Henry James. Man after my own heart.

Well, in this spirit I wanted to try my hand at a "Sports" blog. Or at least offer my (unique?) perspective as a Humanities major now working on a degree in theology.

Let me list off what it is I like about the NBA:

1.Nicknames: His Airness, The Logo, The Hick from French Lick (More where that came from)

Whether you want to believe it or not, sports journalists are some of the cleverest writers out right now. They take something that has a dedicated audience week in and week out and makes it even more engaging. A simple way is to let people in on the secret, welcome them in to the club, is to give an athlete a nickname that everyone can refer to.( i.e. King James)

2. Dunks. Oh my dear lawd, there is nothing sweeter than a sweet Crammer Jammer!

The sheer athleticism of getting to the basket, with ball in hand, rising up and slamming that ball through the iron. Every little boys dream! Just watch this.

3. The Arrogance and Razzle/Dazzle

-Lebron James begins every game by putting powder on his hands and throwing it into the air. With flashing lights and some techno song playing in the background, I'm sure I would be in tears because of the beauty of it all.

-Yesterday a 48 years old Michael Jordan suited up and practiced with his Charlotte Bobcats. I'm pretty confident it's because he just wants to shoot a jumper over someone half his age, proving he still the greatest. He could probably still run with some of the b-players in the League, I mean why couldn't he? He is only Michael Jordan, he is why basketball was created.

Finally, I think the reason I have begun to develop an appreciation for the NBA (and maybe all of sports) is because of the narrative of it all. You can't tell me it was not a beautiful thing watch Boston win the world Series after 50 years of choking. There is something special about it all. Often, sports is the one thing that a son can talk to his Dad about, who am I to demean that?

(This may be the opposite of a "Proper" sports blog, something akin to if Esquire or GQ wrote a sports blog. Or the cliche' of a woman watching sports because of the "cute butts", either way I am hooked to the NBA. )

Blade Runner: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.

Rick Deckard is a retired police officer in Los Angeles in the year 2018. At one point, that time had some mystique surrounding it, but as 2011 is in full sway, it has waned a bit. But it doesn’t matter. We could watch the movie in the same spirit as one watched The Watchmen, in the sense that The Watchmen gave us a world that could have happened under different circumstances. Deckard in Blade Runner is in a Los Angeles that could have been, and if it hasn’t been yet, it doesn’t seem out of the question some time down the road. At a bar, Deckard is told by his old boss that some replicants are on the loose. We’re not given all the details, but we’re safe in concluding the replicants aren’t human. They were ‘created’ in some way, and they resemble humans in all the noticeable ways. The primary role for them, the reason they've been created, seems to be for fighting in wars or slaving away in a colony somewhere millions of miles from Earth. In this dystopia in the future, wars needn’t any longer be a threat to human life, or sweatshops needn’t any longer be a place for humans: the replicants are the replacement.



Before retirement, Deckard was a Blade Runner, someone who was sent to capture fugitive or lawless replicants and ‘retire’ them. A Voight-Kampf test is administered to determine whether the alleged replicant was human or not. If the suspect shows empathy to a series of questions, it’s spared and seen as human; if not, it is ‘retired’. When another blade runner, Holden, was giving the test to a replicant named Leon, Leon snaps and kills Holden. Deckard watches the footage on a video. Upon seeing the video, he agrees to capture the replicant responsible. But before he is on his way, his old boss tells him that Leon is under the leadership of Roy Batty and two others, Pris and Zhora. The strange thing about these replicants is that when they were made, they were designed to ‘shut-down’ after 4 years just in case they started to develop any emotion and desires for freedom. These replicants have escaped from a slave-colony on another planet, traveled to Earth, because they were intrepid enough to want to expand their lifespan in order to gain emotion and freedom.

Roy and Leon are on a quest to meet Tyrell, the creator of the replicants and CEO of Tyrell Corporation with the ominous slogan: more human than human. In the mean time, there is an interesting side-story involving Deckard and Rachael, an advanced replicant of the Nexus-6 model, who thinks she’s human, and who had to undergo a more advanced Voight-Kampf test to prove she’s a replicant. Tyrell ended up making her his master creation and implanted her with memories of his niece, so that in her consciousness, she’d think the memories were hers. Rachael has feelings for Deckard, but Deckard knows she’s a replicant, and after Deckard tells her that her memories are a fraud, she runs away in a despair, or the only kind of despair she’s capable of.

As Deckard retires one replicant after another, Roy presents a problem. Following certain clues, Roy locates Tyrell and asks for his life-extension.

Tyrell: [Tyrell explains to Roy why he can't extend his lifespan] The facts of life... to make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it's been established.
Batty: Why not?
Tyrell: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutation give rise to revertant colonies, like rats leaving a sinking ship; then the ship... sinks.
Batty: What about EMS-3 recombination?
Tyrell: We've already tried it - ethyl, methane, sulfinate as an alkylating agent and potent mutagen; it created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before it even left the table.
Batty: Then a repressor protein, that would block the operating cells.
Tyrell: Wouldn't obstruct replication; but it does give rise to an error in replication, so that the newly formed DNA strand carries with it a mutation - and you've got a virus again... but this, all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
Batty: But not to last.
Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. Look at you: you're the Prodigal Son; you're quite a prize!
Batty: I've done... questionable things.
Tyrell: Also extraordinary things; revel in your time.
Batty: Nothing the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.

Roy doesn't want to die! He's going over all the scientific ways to extend his life. But none work. He asking his creator why he has to die! He wants to live forever.

Tyrell: Would you... like to be upgraded?
Batty: I had in mind something a little more radical.
Tyrell: What... what seems to be the problem?
Batty: Death.
Tyrell: Death; ah, well that's a little out of my jurisdiction. You...
Batty: *I want more life, fucker

Roy kisses Tyrell, and then kills him. Deckard and Roy then meet in an abandoned building, but Deckard is no match for Roy's strength. For all that, however, Roy's 4-year lifespan is coming full circle, and he begins to die. Deckard knows he doesn't stand a chance, and as he is effortlessly saved from certain death as he was hanging off the side of skyscraper, and as life slowly slips away from Roy, Deckard is witness to one of the most heartbreaking scenes in all cinema:



Our lives are like tears in the rain. Beautiful. The movie about accepting our own death! The movie was adapted from a novel by Phillip K. Dick called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? The look of the film is so out of this world awesome that to praise it would be to say nothing new. The special effects gave Los Angeles a look that'll never be forgotten. The theme of Frankenstein is evident throughout. As I'm watching, the movie touches something in me. I don't want to die! Not yet anyway. And in your heart of hearts, you're wondering who the heck made me to die! Why do we die!? The scene above encapsulates the futility of mortality perfectly. If you haven't seen it, see it; if you have, see it again!

Jaws: Here's to swimmin' with bow-legged women.

Mr. Vaughn, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that's all.

I’ll come right out and say that Jaws is, and will continue to be, one of my favorite movies. It’s flawless. The acting, the story, the script, the directing, the feel of the film, the suspense, the terror, the social impact, the box office, the cultural impact: everything! It’s amazing what you can accomplish without CGI. Can you imagine what this movie would have been like if its makers somehow made it into the future and stole CGI technology, and created the shark that way? First of all, there’d be more of the shark, which would spoil the ‘less is more’ dread that is the trademark of the original. Secondly, for some reason, it’s gotten into the heads of filmmakers that a CGI creation looks and comes across as more real and convincing than special-effects make-up or props. No, no, no, no, NO! Not true.

Do you remember The Thing? No CGI. Horrifying. The original Nightmare on Elmstreet? Disturbing. Alien? Aliens? Predator? Even E.T. E.T.! What a note to end on? The original movie was perfect! But then the CGI-nazis came in and ruined it. I think it was like a 25th anniversary rendition, and they went in and made E.T. CGI! Blasphemy! It didn’t make any kind of impact, and in terms of audience reception, no one remembers it other than to make fun of it. If they go back to Jaws and make the shark CGI, I’ll lose my marbles. But back to the shark.

The shark finally made its appearance (besides those we see underwater, which was just the filming of real sharks), and it looked ferocious. If the jaws of Jaws looked fake because of the way they had to make it to make the shark’s jaws open and shut, the first thing I thought of when I first saw it wasn’t that it looked fake, but that this shark is such a monster that it even looks different from your everyday shark. You might as well make a movie about Moby Dick and remove the whiteness! Just because the prop isn’t going to completely resemble a real shark doesn’t mean you have to make it look like a cartoon, and it doesn’t mean the audience won’t click with some appearance-abnormality that you thought made the shark look fake, but which the audience thought made the shark more uniquely horrifying. When that shark jumped onto the back of their boat, and its weight made the back of the boat sink underneath its enormous weight, and Quint and Brody are struggling to stay at the front to keep of from sliding into the jaws, that shark looked absolutely amazing! You get a brief glimpse of it when Brody is throwing the chum off the side of the boat, but your imagination is just reeling about what this shark might look like completely out of the water.

I mentioned Moby Dick before, and it’s amazing to see how much Jaws and Moby Dick are alike, how Captain Ahab and Quint are alike, how Ishmael and Brody are alike in certain ways, and of course Moby Dick and the shark. Quint is one of my favorites. He is a man’s man. He is a veteran at the sea and, as we find out a later, a veteran of World War 2. In one of the best scenes of the movie, he tells the true story of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which was struck by two Japanese torpedos. As it sunk, 300 of the 1,196 souls on board died; out of the 880 that were left, only a small portion had life boats, or even life preservers. There they sat for the longest time because the Navy didn’t have any idea that they were in distress. Out of the 880, only 321 came out alive, with most of them taken away by oceanic white tip sharks. I can’t imagine the terror. Quint’s monologue is one of the best in movie history. This might explain his Ahab-like obsession with killing/catching sharks, especially his obsession with this shark, which seems to symbolize all his hatred against all sharks.

Roy Scheider gives an unforgettable performance as Chief Brody. He plays the perfect everyman. He is a family man, and due to almost drowning as a child, he has a fear of the water. Irony of ironies, he is chief of police and is notified about the recent mauling of swimmers by what Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) thinks is a rogue shark. Now he has to survey the beaches and be a glorified lifeguard, because the town’s mayor cares more about the money the town gets from tourists than possibly risking their lives in the jaws of a 35 foot, hungry, remorseless shark.

To watch the 3 characters (Hooper, Quint, and Brody) interact is the highlight of the film for me. Hooper and Brody have a kinship, because Brody sought Hooper's expertise, and Hooper knows Brody respects his knowledge and advice. Hooper is a peppery delight, probably a yuppie when not at work, but has enough charm and grace to not let his social class render him a snob. To more discerning characters like Quint, he won't let Hooper have a break, which oftentimes leads to hilarious exchanges. Just to see the expression on Hooper's face when, after Brody accidentally pulled the knot wrong that was holding up the compressed air tanks, and Quint says:

Yeah, that's real fine expensive gear you brought out here, Mr. Hooper. 'Course I don't know what that bastard shark's gonna do with it, might eat it I suppose. Seen one eat a rockin' chair one time. Hey chieffy, next time you just ask me which line to pull, right?

Or, when Hooper is playing solitaire and Quint tells him to stop playing with himself. Or, when they're arguing about fishing line and Quint says:

Well it proves one thing, Mr. Hooper. It proves that you wealthy college boys don't have the education enough to admit when you're wrong.

And Hooper makes faces at him. Or:

Quint: You have city hands, Mr. Hooper. You been countin' money all your life.
Hooper: All right, all right. Hey, I don't need this... I don't need this working-class-hero crap.

Hilarious. There are so many scenes that makes this movie great. When they're all comparing scars. When, after Quint finishes his beer and squeezes the can, Hooper finishes his water and squeezes a plastic cup out of some misplaced sense of competition. The ominous foreboding when Brody is flipping through the shark book: William's soundtrack is brooding and we see the flipping pages in the reflection of Brody's glasses, and we get quick cuts to horrendously grotesque shark wounds on various victims. Or the lighthearted scenes of Quint teaching Brody how to tie a knot. Quint scratching his nails on the chalkboard to get everyone's attention. The sleazeball mayor. Or, as the boat is sinking, and the water is up to their waist's, Quint humorously hands Brody a mini-water pump and tells him, "Pump it out Chief." Or the scene when Hooper is reluctantly going into the cage, and he's trying to wash his goggles, but he has no spit. Or when they're all comparing their scars. Or when you see the full length of the shark swim around the boat with Williams' score enhancing the sublimity of everything. The yellow barrels! When they pop up, you hear Hooper:

Boys, oh boys... I think he's come back for his noon feeding.

Or, when the light in the boat goes out, Hooper exclaims: "It ate the light." Or, how Quint wants to be cut off from the outside world or outside help, giving a real sense of Romanticism. I could go on and on. By keeping the shark off camera, we got suspense. As Hitchcock said, if you have a bomb under a table and it explodes, that's surprise; but if you have a bomb under the table and it doesn't explode, that's suspense. For nearly the whole time, the bomb was under the table.

Allegory: what's the fuss?

It is difficult to describe the movie Magnolia, its effect on me, my intellectual gymnastics in trying to separate my love for it from the fanatical attempts by movie-apologists to yank some allegory from the film. Now to be clear, I'm not against people who throw out allegories based on story-arcs; this is bound to happen, and it's happened in other artistic mediums, and I don't think it should be discouraged. If the allegory is probably drawn based on certain discerned themes the movie puts out there, then by all means point out the allegory if for no other reason than to illuminate your own experience of the movie, or the meaning the movie had for you alone; and if you meet someone else who pulled out a similar allegory, you can join hands in sharing your mutual experience and talk into the wee hours about the similar effect the movie had on you both. That's the beauty of it. My problem with the allegory-syndrome is that some movie-apologists try to foist the allegory on the audience, and that a failure to discern the allegory means a failure on the part of the moviegoer to discern the objective meaning of the movie.

But I'm trying to mesh this view with one I've always had a tendency to shy away from. I don't like the platitude that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But if I shy away from this, why do I not like the allegory-syndrome? Maybe this is what happens. Perhaps there is an allegory that, by the very nature of the theme in the movie, is a necessary part of the art; and that, by accident, the audience can tap into this inherent part, and by some further accident, hone in on this inherent part in such a way that this part effects the audience with some aesthetic experience: the audience is effected, and so the subjective and objective are for a moment bridged. My problem is that if the allegory is 'out there'/'in the movie', then the critic, or the movie-appreciator, has to examine it like a scientist examines some protoplasm in a slide under a microscope, and the subject-matter of the art is divorced from me/the subject; and it is a necessary part of art that it links/connects with the subject/me in a subjective way; and if it does that, it's impossible to - at the same time - examine in some scientific way the nature of the art that happens to be affecting me. Perhaps this is the appreciation/contemplation distinction coming into play.

In other words, there's a distinction between contemplating an effect in me made by the art, and actually being in the moment of being affected by the art. If you're watching a part in a movie that moves you so much it makes you cry, you can do a couple things. You can stay engrossed in the movie, focused on the story, on the screen, and what's happening on the screen, entering into the imaginative experience of the moviegoer, receiving that world, so for a moment you see the whole world through that experience, and you have a genuine aesthetic experience; or you can stop right on the threshold of the experience and start looking inward at how your whole biological system is reacting to the experience: a felt change of the nervous system, a fluttering in the diaphragm, a feeling of sickness, but pleasurable somehow. In the first case, you have appreciation; in the second, you have contemplation. Perhaps the allegory-syndrome comes from a process of contemplation that seeks to make sense of a prior experience of appreciation while in the aesthetic experience. But while I'm in the appreciation-stage, anyone who tries to tell me the insights of the contemplation-stage, that this or that scene is a perfect artistic rendering of the metaphor of Christ liberating us from the bondage of sin (for example), I'm repulsed, annoyed, and annoyed in such a way that when I happen to emerge out of the appreciation-stage and into the contemplation-stage, I remember those insights I was annoyed with, and because they annoy me, I'm denied certain inherent allegory-insights about the movie, because of a psychological disposition to shy away from them, because of the uninvited way they were foisted on me while I was in the appreciation-state.

I think the power of allegories in movies or any medium of art comes from private contemplation, from our thinking about the impact of the movie, or the meaning the movie has for us, in the privacy of our own imagination. It is very rare when you can discuss an allegory with someone else and have the power of the allegory affect them in the way you intended it to affect them and at the same time preserve the subjectivity that is at the root of all movie-enjoyment. Or, I can think of some other way allegory-hunting can be enjoyable: when you WANT to find an allegory. In that case, the 'want' is connected to subjectivity; you're seeking for an allegorical meaning, and when you find one that affects you, you seize on it as a means of understanding something or other. But this is delicate ground we're treading on, because subjectivity is delicate ground. So, I guess I can be open to allegories being inherent in movies; there's just a delicate way to go about talking about them. This could clear up something: that who cares how delicate we talk about the fact that the Earth is the third planet removed from the sun - that's a scientific fact, and it's proven objectively by science. But it's interesting that when we talk about movies, there is a delicate way we have to talk about allegory in movies; I find that this is because movies are closely bound up with our own subjectivity, even though there is an objective fact of the matter of whether or not there is an allegory, or whether the allegory inferred is right or not.

My opinion on the Egyptian Crisis

As everyone should know by now, Egypt is burning. Without any useless rhetoric, I'd like to just cut to the chase of what's going on. There are some dynamics here that need underlining. The Egyptian people are attempting to oust President Hosni Mubarak, because he is guilty of not promoting democracy, holding fixed elections, subjugating political opposition, backing police brutality, being responsible for various economic grievances, and corruption. On the face of it, this seems bad. Our moral outrage triggers right away, and we listen with impatience to any reasons (excuses, we'd say would be a better word) someone might have to not be on the protester's/rioter's side.



But as usual, it's probably more complicated than that. We all love democracy. The idea spawned from within a Western context, rife with Western sentiments of equality, fraternity, justice for all, liberty. It was an idea that spawned from a Western cultural context. We are sure that if the process is ran in this context, that - given the right checks and balances - we'd get a leader who would compliment Western sentiments, and who would try to the best of his ability to represent our worries and desires. When things get complicated is when we try to dislocate this idea from its cultural context and relocate it within a cultural context in which it probably won't find a home. By analogy, when monarchy was imposed from without by the English, as yet American sentiments ousted it in the Revolutionary War. American culture differed from English culture and we resisted and gained independence.

If we failed, and the English won, then, because of the cultural divide, there would be political and demographic unrest until the English sentiments prevailed, or until American sentiment won out in the form of a change in English sentiment or another war where America won instead. When I look at Egypt, I see a country whose government shares Western sentiments; but they also see that the governed primarily do not. Seeing this, they reason that if they let the democratic process go, leaders would be elected that would end democracy in the long run. A huge majority of the population are members of The Muslim Brotherhood. Their main goal is to re-institute the caliphate and have that Caliph rule in accordance with Shari'ah law, a form of theocracy, not democracy, a rule that they want to extend from Spain to Indonesia. Usually, the members of The Brotherhood aren't nice Muslims who keep to themselves; they are the aggressive ones, the intolerant ones, the ones who wouldn't be accepting of many religions, free speech, and basically all of the Western privileges we enjoy over here.

A pattern I see is that dictators are tolerated if they are Western allies and because the West sees that if they were to topple, an aggressive anti-Western, pro-Muslim government would certainly arise, extremely intolerant of all the Western sentiments we hold dear, such as free speech, women's rights, etc. So, these governments are tolerated to keep a constant hose on this smoldering danger. But then these subjugated Muslims can USE democratic rhetoric to denounce the behavior of their governments. For example, free speech. Yes, Egyptian government doesn't really have much free speech; but they have more than if Egypt was ruled by a Caliph. That's the best they're going to have because all the Egyptian government has to work with are these anti-Western sentiments of the ruled.

My opinion is that the stability of the middle east depends on tolerating these governments that might not be completely democratic; but they are our allies in combating the sentiments of intolerant and aggressive Islam, who, if given free reign to the democratic process, would elect someone sympathetic to the Caliphate, and would therefore be ruinous to any of the little freedoms they enjoyed lately. This effort to foist uninhibited democracy on the middle east is a sham, a futile operation not sensitive to the reality that, culturally speaking, people are just plain different from the West.

A final note: I've noticed something that might be an inconsistency with the way Obama is handling this. Remember when the Iranian people had a similar uprising, when there was rioting and protesting because of allegations of electoral fraud regarding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Why would Obama back Ahmadinejad (someone not pro-West by any means) against Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh (someone who IS pro-West), and against the protesters (all of whom were pro-West); but in the Egyptian case, Obama is backing the protesters, the majority of whom are The Muslim Brotherhood, even though Hosni Mubarak is pro-West, and pro-Israel?

Better late then Never-Thoughts about 'Gangs of New York'

I am a little late on this, It's hard for a man such as myself to stay up on all the events of film, television and music. So often times hit songs, summer blockbusters or witty sitcoms go unwatched or unnoticed by me for some time. Case in point; 2002's 'Gangs of New York.' A film almost a decade old now... I know, I must be slipping in my old age, but if anyone out there actually reads my blogs I'm not too terribly fascinated with modern things. I love 'Back to the Future', 1994 and the dixie chicks for God's sake.

I digress.

After hearing basically nothing but rave reviews over 'Gangs of New York' for the past 8 years I decided it was high time I watched and got my mind blown by another Scorsese picture, ole Martin rarely disappoints. So with the aid of my best buy gift card I was finally able to watch this critically acclaimed piece of cinema.

I was unimpressed.

Let me explain a few reasons why.

1. I felt it was way too over the top. The movie as a whole felt much more like a Michael Bay/ Jerry Bruckheimer production then a Martin Scorsese film. Relying too heavily on stylized action sequences, explosions and exaggerated outfits and weapons then story telling. Civil war era meets Tim Burton's 'Batman Returns' was all I could think of.

2. The character development of Amsterdam Vallon, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, was severely unbalanced in comparison to Daniel Day Lewis' character, Bill "the Butcher". Basically they show us that Amsterdam's father got killed by Bill the butcher when Amsterdam was a boy and he wants to avenge his fathers death. Thats his goal in life, kinda Like the shark from 'Jaws' Amsterdam only wants blood. And also like the shark from 'Jaws' Amsterdam is equally one dimensional. Meanwhile we see Bill the Butcher go through a range of different emotions, stages and insights into his life and just generally feel a more deep connection with Bill's character. Now I'm sure a good portion of that is due to the fact that Daniel Day Lewis is a much better actor then DiCaprio but that still doesn't excuse it. We're suppose to feel more connected to the protagonist, we want them to succeed, we want to feel for them but when the protagonist is completely void of depth and dimension we feel nothing for them. That is certainly the case with Amsterdam Vallon.

3. I'm an american, I don't like watching 3 hour long movies.

4. Any movie that Bono writes the music for I want nothing to do with.