Ken Turan, Roger Ebert and the incredible shrinking teamster

I've come to like twitter. I have little confidence in its long-term survival, but I like it. And hence I sometimes read the stuff of the people I follow, and sometimes I go along with the links they post and happen upon finding myself in an interesting article. And so it happened with Roger Ebert's twitter feed, and so I must thank him for this link to this article.

The article is While high school literary magazines are a bit removed from national film criticism, this essay brings to mind my days as an editor for the Ivy. For the first 2-3 years I was there, we followed a rule of whiting out the name of whatever piece we were reviewing. But then one year, perhaps we were just lazy, perhaps we were too smug in assuming of course we knew what was good, despite any personal feelings, perhaps we were just too informal and inattentive, but for some reason we stopped whiting out the names. The odd thing was we didn't end up favoring our friends much (maybe a few cases), mostly though we became more dismissive of people who weren't our friends.

But actually, thinking upon it more, it wasn't really a matter of who was our friends. It was more the case that we were dismissive of people didn't have an artistic reputation. I suppose the real reason not to review friends in our case was not so much that we might champion our friends, as that we became confident that we knew the scene and knew who deserved to be featured from it.

Film reviewers don't really have the option of whiting out the name. While no reviewing friends helps, just knowing who made what, affects the criticism, but on the other hand, deep analytical criticism often focuses on the filmmaker more than the film at hand, and sometimes part of the experience of the film rests in its context, including the context of who the filmmaker is. Most importantly though, film reviewers review famous things and even if they try to avoid it, they will inevitably hear from everyone who is in anything.

But perhaps the solution is thus, and this is an approach I try to practice when looking at films. Treat the film makers as abstractions, as phenomena, not as real human beings. Of course, you can analyze them as examples of human beings making films, but treat them as if they were not real, as if they were a legend, or better yet, a story unfolding in front of you. Indeed treat the entire film scene and history like that. I could go as far to say life... but I won't. Here's the reason I won't, life is something to be engaged in, to revel in, now analysis is part of that process of revelling, but it requires a particular focus to analyze something.

By focus I mean, you cannot analyze something and include everything that ever touched it in the analysis. Because, you as the observer are also touched by it and maybe you can appreciate that on an instinctual level, and maybe you can summarize it, but can you capture the whole of your experience with the object of your analysis? Say a film for example, can you really capture every aspect of how you viewed it, especially since how you experienced the film is intertwined with who you are and what your life has been, can you capture it all?

But if you start talking about the film as something real, something visceral, there's a subtext to it all, where you say "This is how I viewed it as me". And what does that give to anyone else who reads it? Since you cannot communicate the entirety of yourself, but your writing is soaked in the particularities of your experience, you leave the reader befuddled.

That is not to say do not make the writing personal, but rather make it personal in a particular way. Confine the personalness, to this or that aspect of your life. And try to detach the rest of your life from the writing. Now that's an impossible goal, but you try, and you might find your writing becomes more than just words but actual communication.

To get back to what I was saying about film criticism. The film critic cannot explain all of who he is in a citical essay, and if he views the film a real work that has lives and history and everything attached to it, then all his feelings about lives and history and everything, and really everything, becomes the subject of the essay. Usually that ends up at best a beautiful mess, and at worse an ugly one. So a degree of focus must be made, the film becomes an abstraction, and indeed the writer becomes an abstraction to himself, so that this particular aspect of the film and the writer's experience with the film can be detached and put on paper. And that is an impossible task but it's made harder when your personal ties to the film are dear ones. And yet...

Is it possible to communicate without that filtering, by just pouring everything out there? I'd say probably not. But perhaps if you're lucky, talented, or the medium suits you perfectly, you get the miraculous situation where pouring out everything is filtered just by the where, when, and how of your art, and thus despite the uniquely personal chaos of your thoughts, something to a greater or lesser extent universal comes out, or at least something shared by a few people.

The article that prompted all of this, is about a film review by LA Times film cricket Kenneth Turan where he breaks his own rule and reviews his friend's work. And does it create the beautiful mess that I implied would come?

No, but that's because the article by Kenneth Turan is not really about the film (it does contain maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs giving a brief ho-hum recommendation which sounds generally like a famous person recommending a friend's film with a touch of earnestness), rather it's about Kenneth Turan and the writing process. And here Mr. Turan does seem to abstract himself to a degree carving out a moment in his life, his writing of his review, and in reviewing himself, if not the film in question, he makes a fine essay.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

If stupid is as stupid does does that make me stupid?

Forest Gump is a great movie. Period. It tells a story, runs with it covers it fully and flavorfully and beautifully. Let me end any pretense of a review by saying it gets 10/10 in my book.
Now apparetly Bob Dole said that the movie affirms that the American Dream is within the reach of any man. I dunno about that, Forrest really doesn't have a dream. That's kind of the point of the film. He ends up in a lot of places and circumstances, but usually it's just through fortune. Where he ultimately ends up, living in a small town as a father of a boy smarter than him. I suppose that's the American dream, actually one version of the American Dream, which I used to subscribe to a bit more passionately, I suppose back in the days (it's always a bit odd saying back in the day when I'm 23) when I was more focused on my future as a family man, is that the dream ought to be that the next generation has a better life than the previous (of course that leaves quite a burden to those living pretty good lives to begin with), and perhaps his son would have that, with the intelligence of his mother and the loving parent of his father.
But again this is something stumbled onto, accidentally. But maybe what it is, is being the theme of the movie, is that a simple perseverance through the unfortunate accidents allows one to enjoy the happy accidents.
But perhaps another way to look at this isn't to see Forrest as the every man, stripped even of the intellect to differentiate him from others, but rather a highly sincere man. His sincerity allows him to throw him fully into anything he stumbles upon, and perhaps that's the key to his success.
Now is that enough? I dunno, I'm not sure, but I don't think so. One principle I hold is that a quality of a movie isn't how much you agree with it or the truth of its themes. If Forrest's sincerity isn't really enough for life, the movie paints his sincerity enough to make itself great. And what does that signify? Nothing really, but a great movie is worth noting every now and again. As I said, 10/10, well done movie maker people (I'm never sure how to allot the thanks for a movie, especially with a book before it), well done. And that's all I have to say about that.
So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!
And God Bless.

The inherent folly of internal isolationism

Casablanca is an awesome movie (as recognition of such, here's a link to a very nice fan page of said film). (The movie, though far from a comprehensive picture of the period, and far from an accurate picture of Morocco in the early 1940's, is all the cooler to parse from a historical perspective due to its omissions and selective inclusions) If you dare to question that I will have to smack you upside the top of your head. And as such, though from some angles it can seem down right pulpy, on many, many levels it speaks to the human condition.

Let me just pick one as if for random (or perhaps my mention of Casablanca was really a lead in to this topic, you'll never know! Actually the later case is the truth).

One theme in Casablanca I've always been fascinated by is the connect between emotional internationalism and political internationalism, or rather pragmatic apathy in personal relationships, like cheating a woman into sleeping with you, feeds into and onto political isolationism and apathy, like kow-towing to a viciously evil regime like the Nazis. In the same, "rank sentimentalism" feeds into and onto political idealism which allows one to give up a chance for love because of the larger causes of the world.

Thus Rick, who once ran guns for Ethiopia (wooo Ethiopia!), when a bitter romantic disappointment makes him turn callous in his personal relationships, becomes politically callous, at first dismissing the very idea that he help a man on the run from the Nazi's escape certain torture and death. And thus when he re-accepts the idea of personal love, he re-discovers his idealism, and is willing to let go because his love belongs somewhere else.

What a world... that Rick's love be so doomed by those circumstances... but the non-fictional world can be far more brutal... but then again it can offer even great beauties such as the film itself Casablanca.

I'm just saying...

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

A bit of a look: CNN and BBC

It is often said that American news sources are biased and lack depth. The latter I dispute to a degree, there's often a lot more depth of coverage that people simply ignore, and when you go to some of the more respected newspapers (say The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or go to some of our essayish magazines like Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker, you can find a lot of depth in those sources. But overall I must admit most American news stories, especially on TV are more oriented toward a quick rundown of events along with a debate on popular issues (this is true of even CNN, my perhaps main go-to news source). I actually don't mind that often, since it is really nice to have a wide-ranging skimming of world news, so you can have general idea of what's going on without needing to search and run around. I also believe that even more deeper sources are mainly there to point you into the direction of some news subjects you want to investigate more.

But sometimes a brief summaries of events just leaves you without a full understanding of what the events actually mean, or an understanding of how trustworthy the reports are or the moral standing of the players or the impact of incidents and such (moreover, with a limited number of "breaking" news events or popular issues to debate, things get repetitive fast). Take for example, CNN's coverage of the recent shooting of Uygurs in Xinjiang, which concentrated on the Chinese police reports and attributed the whole thing to an anti-Han holy war as per that report. Thus unlike BBC News, they did not take the rather obvious step of connecting the shooting to the long low-level separatist campaign in Chinese Turkestan, which BBC News on the other hand did so easily. Moreover, while BBC just said the Uygurs were shot dead, CNN said Chinese police killed them in a shootout (which is a questionable way of phrasing things since even the Chinese police say that the Uygurs were armed with knives though they were shot by police, which is justifiable if the case, but not exactly a shootout).

Yet the second usual claim that American news is extra biased is something that I'm going to object to a little more. I'm not saying there aren't biases in American news, or that perfect objectivity is possible (I don't think perfect objectivity is possible and I think that news readers should be aware of that, but I think that reporters should aim toward objectivity), but barring FOX News and personality-centric news shows (like Nancy Grace, Keith Oberman, etc.), I'd say overall American news is a lot less biased than a lot of other countries, especially my old friend CNN. Take again for example BBC, whose coverage of Uygur-shooting was more in depth (hence giving more room and potential for opinion and shaped depiction), had a stronger bias to its article (not that its opinion on the matter was necessarily wrong), and it more pushed an idea of the Chinese gov. being the real bad guy in the picture. CNN's brief coverage was perhaps a little more biased against the Uygur militants, but its lack of depth gave no claim to making an assessment of the whole of the matter, while BBC in its attempt for analysis does.

But if I was to recommend things, well, if it's an update on a news topic I already know about, I'd rather have the more objective, briefer story, but if it's a matter I've heard less about, well the less objective, more-in-depth might be good.

Still, when it comes to news, I always take the point that news sites and shows and papers are just the starting point. The world can't be summarized even in a whole magazine, even if people tried, but the resources are out there, and so I go out investigating and trying to learn and grasp things. After all, I at least have a vote to tilt things around, I can still send letters and complaints, I can still write, and maybe someday I'll be able to have a greater power of things.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

And are thee an equivocator?

It's easy for me to overstate my intelligence. I've done well in school, but not that well. I'm well read, but again not that well read. I'm a jack of all trades but certainly a master of none and indeed, there are some trades I haven't jacked quite yet. And while at times I feel dispassionate and analytical, how I feel about myself is by no means an objective metric of how I'm looking at an issue. So let me throw all those cautions out there before I proceed (I should make this a standard disclaimer).

Now The House Next Door is an excellent source for some excellent reads about film, tv and culture (somewhat less so since the departure of the irreplaceable Matt Zoller Seitz stepped down as editor, no insult to the current editor but note the irreplaceable adjective), however, there are some authors I like more and some I like less. One I like in a middling sort of way is Lauren Wissot. She writes with decent skill but is undermined by over-the-top political exclamations (actually, all and all, she makes a number of over-the-top generalizing exclamations in many fields, but the political ones are the most egregious and common). It helps that she is often on the right side of the issue, if very extremist on that side, but such extremism weakens the prose of her reviews and often blurs the reality of complex issues.

My disclaimer was not for my analysis of Lauren Wissot, I am fairly confident that I am correct in my assessment of her and I think, with the partial exception of that last clause, agree with the assessment. My disclaimer takes effect now though, since I am wading into one of the issues that I feel Ms. Wissot oversimplified.

The issue comes up in a film Ms. Wissot glowingly reviewed from the Human Rights Film Festival (human rights are always a good cause and often are shown in excellent and tragic ways in film, so even if you don't check out this film festival, I suggest you still check out human rights films) called USA vs. Al-Arian.

I don't disagree with her central point (or at least her central descriptive point, her central thematic point about the American Dream being a shame I thoroughly disagree with) that what happened to Mr. Al-Arian is a clear violation of the spirit of the law (if perhaps not the letter) and human rights, is a shame upon our country and never should have happened.

Granted.

But besides the demonizing of the Bush administration, her review in general seems to ignore the complexities of the issue, even if some of the less-flattering points she makes about the Bush administration and US gov. in general still stand.

Let me step back for a moment, from the chasm I am about to leap into, by explaining why I felt I needed the disclaimer before. Now for you, my dear readers, it is probably unnecessary, since your razor-sharp minds and ability to spot the many "may"s and "probably"s would likely show that I am a bit uncertain here on matter of fact. But the real reason for my earlier disclaimer is because I am morally uncertain here. Am I just trying to lessen the situation to weaken the shame I feel for my government and my country? Am I just trying to shoehorn this into my "they're wrong but not necessarily evil" vision of the Bush administration?

Or even worse, have I become an equivocator who can brush off any moral failing by saying "You're not looking at the full complexity"?

I hope and overall think that my fears are misplaced. This was indeed a great moral failing, even once complexity is given, and this is a moral failing worse than that of ordinary men and even most extra-ordinary men. The treatment of Mr. Al-Arian is a true sin, an act that moves the actor further away from God. What happened (and is happening (despite my cautions, I advise you to read the review and watch the movie (which I myself ought to do) to get a sense of things) was wrong, that is simple.

The depth of the wrongness and how it came to be, however, are matters for complexity.

Let me finally lay out the gist of what happened to Mr. Al-Arian (more of the gist is in the review and the full account of things can be found elsewhere or in the movie). He was a Palestinian rights activist, a rather famous one, in fact, and after 9/11 he was swept up in the arrest sweeps of "suspected" terrorist sympathizers on nebulous charges (if any) that plagued the country in the fall and winter of 2001 (in truth these things did not begin in 2001, or did they end after 2001, but they were not as bad before, and while still somewhat troubling now, are not that bad currently. But in 2001, these terrorist sweeps were truly tragic). Treated badly and publicly humiliated, the eventual case against him was typical of the weakest of the cases. He was charged with contributing to a terrorist organization through a charity.

The weakness of the charge is amplified by the maddening amount of wire taps that were taken against him over the last 9 years! (seeing as they never got more than this charge, how could they justify this? I am sure there may be some technical ground, but if the spirit of the law is at all adhered to?) (as I said things didn't start with 2001 or Bush even, 9 years before 2001 is well before Bush)

Here is a perhaps important, perhaps incorrect legal aside. The charges that came from contributing to charities linked to terrorist groups (linked and then banned in a vague manner, but in one that is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to overturn) veer very close to ex-post facto laws, that is laws made after the alleged crime was committed. There are ways that at any time giving money to these charities might have been regarded as criminal, since these charities often minorly or majorly support groups that are inter-linked with terrorist organizations. However, that is because some terrorist organizations, especially those claiming to be alternative governments, often do also try to support the community. This is not necessarily an Islamic thing, often anti-colonial governments or US political radical groups also had charitable sides (for example PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is linked, in an indirect way, with ELF, the Earth Liberation Front, a designated terrorist organization).

So there might have been an indirect degree of truth to the claim that Al-Arian was supporting terrorism, but if so it was in a way that had rarely before been labeled a crime, since the link is so incredibly indirect. As Ms. Wissot points out, it was admitted that the prosecution wasn't alleging a direct link to murder, but there likely was a credible case for an indirect link, but this was so indirect, and so overlooked in the past!

Yet this was 9/11, we had been attacked by terrorists who essentially declared war on us. Some might say that if we leave groups like Al-Quaeda alone, they'll leave us alone. I don't believe that. I've studied Al-Quaeda, and their ideology is so total and destructive that it is clear to me that that they want a world revolution, and they see the United States as the main stumbling block to that goal (as has been said before (hence where I got it from) by many experts in the field, Al-Quaeda doesn't resemble anti-colonial terrorist groups who their apologists cite, rather it resembles the more hard-core communist groups, who fight on until they're too tired or too drained of men to fight any more).

After 9/11, no link was too indirect, after all, all's fair in war, right?

But did we not say that "All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights"?

Isn't that the founding principle of the United States of America, right?

But apparently, it was deemed that rights were not the question here, any link to terrorism, even if the link by the spirit of the law should have been ignored, should certainly not have been publicly broadcast, and should never have been taken to trial, any link to terrorism was enough by the standards set forth by the government at that time.

And so Mr. Al-Arian went to trial.

A note here, Ms. Wissot makes a big deal about the sight of suicide bombings being shown and not the Palestinian side. It is questionable to show the suicide bombings because of the prejudicial nature of such sights, but in a trial about whether or not someone supported the murder of a group of people, the question cannot be "Well, did they deserve it?" Evidence to that point therefore cannot be shown. That's like showing photos of a girl who was raped and asking "Doesn't she look trampy?" The only way that could factor in if the case was being made for self-defense. But suicide bombings target mostly civilian targets, the only way you could argue self-defense was alleging that the whole of the people was attacking yours and you had to respond by attacking all of them. Such group-rights defenses are morally flimsy and open to endless interpretations, I could go into that more, but I am digressing a lot.

A more telling counter-point however, would have been to show Hamas' social services and such, and say that's where I was sending money to (I've been assuming Mr. Al-Arian innocent, it is possible he was giving via means that less distinctly allocated things, but I doubt it), anything else was like the 0.00001 cents that goes toward the spread of Christianity when you give to Catholic Relief Services.

But again, I am digressing.

Overall, the jury in Mr. Al-Arian's case saw through the fear and found him not guilty.

The exactitudes of what happened afterward likely are only known to internal government records. But Mr. Al-Arian was kept in jail, charged again, and eventually fell into a deportation sentence, which was then shifted to prison time, in a maze of legal abuses.

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. The reason why you might deport someone who was found not guilty is because "beyond a reasonable doubt" means that the person was 90+% guilty, which may be under your tolerance level for a person who might, just might be a potential terrorist.

Hey, he was giving to groups that have a tenuous tie to terrorism.

Hey, he was advocating for a case that is associated with terrorism.

Hey, now that we started this thing, we can't look weak, maybe we're just frustrated with how stupid people are being, maybe...

I'm tired of playing the devil's advocate.

There are mitigating factors here to what happened, but that doesn't mean what happened to Mr. Al-Arian isn't a massive abuse of the law.

I'm willing to admit to complexities here, but this is not a case where all sides are right. I will not equivocate a clear human rights violation, even if it does bring shame on the country I love.

And there has been so much to be shameful of in America's past, so much to be proud of too, but...

And yet we strive on, boats against the current...

The American Dream I always believed was more about fighting the current than actually getting somewhere, and so despite America's failings, I still believe in her. After all, I believe patriotism is about love, and I love the United States of America.

Anyways, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight. And God Bless.

Cause TV ain't easy

People will tell you tv is for bums. And heck there are bums that watch tv, but then there are tv conousseurs who are anything but bums. And I, my good friends are in the latter category.

So here's a quick run down of some nice tv I've been mulling over in my head lately.

Season 19 Simpsons - The season's over now and the verdict is... pretty good. I was surprised by this season, it had some very nice episodes including a few that I might dare (and I do dare for I dare!!! For I AM RAND!!!), most notably "That 90's Show" and "The Debarted." That doesn't mean these season hasn't had it's fair share of meh episodes like "All About Lisa" or "Love Springfield Style" and this season has had a few out and out bad episodes like "Funeral for a Fiend." Yet what this season shows is that The Simpsons can still turn out good, ney, excellent half hours of tv. This isn't a return to the glory days when even when the Simpsons was bad it was great, nor is it even a return to the uneven 10-13 seasons, rather it is a new phase in Simpsons-dom, maybe one that's been building. And if it is not back to the past, it is still a good future, and I wait with great anticipation to see what will come of it.

Battlestar Galactica - Any quick rundown of the web can give you a dozen better reviews than what I got for Battlestar Galactica (for one such source (also a good source of reviews of Lost, which I haven't even really had a chance to mull over) is the always excellent What's Alan Watching. What I'd just like to say is I don't think Battlestar Galactica's ending is going to live up to the hype, but on the other hand it can't. The hype's been built up with style and flair that has been one of the most interesting things about the show. To put it more plainly, it's not just hype, it's a well-built structure of suspense integrated into the story. I can't imagine the story actually living up to that suspense mind you, especially given this up and down season, but even if it all comes crashing down, the ruins will still be amazing to gaze at. So yes, yes I will watch Battlestar Galactica come to an end, even if it cannot fulfill my dreams.

Big Bang Theory - Weird show. From the premise I'd just assume it was awful, but there's something charming about it. I suppose it's the fact that at its best the show is an homage to nerdage, which doesn't shy away from nerdage's problems, but finds humor in both the greatness and the flaws of nerditude. It doesn't seem to have gotten into a groove where it can be put into that class of greatness, but it does have its moments. On the other hand, it does have moments of pure condesension or mockery toward nerds which is just irritating, and then there are moments of pure sitcom-i-ness. But I'm hoping that the best in it might flesh out. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Coupling - That's where I'm getting the perhaps, perhaps, perhaps thing. I'm not going to say much about it, except that it's highly confusing when you try piecing together what's going on. But what's going on is never the important part for me, it's funny moments are just perfect combinations of wit and characterization that, heck, maybe it doesn't add up to anything, it's still nice to watch.

Now for my final bit of tv rumination (although not the actual final bit of rumination in my head, I just need to get on to other things), what the television viewing public really needs is Rand on tv.

You know you want it.

So anyways, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Urge to kill rising...

Now that phrase comes not from my well-documented urge to kill... (just kidding, just kidding... please don't arrest me), but rather from the quite spectacularly awesome Treehouse of Horror Episode: Treehouse of Horror V (check the episode capsule here).

Still I like to think of myself as a media connaisseur, and the media world of late has not treated me especially well, although not especially badly either.

It feels a little bit strange moving from my usually heavy personal rantings, to this rather random media sampling reviewish type session, but SO BE IT!

Now, the #1 item on my media radar (which functions less as a radar than as a paperweight holding inside of it the secret to eternal youth) is Lost.

Ah, Lost, my on-again, off-again, tv-show lover. It's hard to hate Lost, no wait, it's easy. There are always sixteen different running plotlines which go from being overemphasized to forgotten, the flashback/flashforward structure is sometimes forced. The "mysteries" are sometimes without purpose except to yank the audience's chain. Many of the characters act in a bizarre, irrational fashion just as a story device.

Yet, it's also easy to love Lost. Even if sometimes convoluted, the plot twists are often surprising and serve to force the characters to act in a way more revealing of their personalities. That's the big point, Lost is at the end of the day, a series of character studies, and all the flashbacks and island weirdness serve to bring out, throw together and force into conflict the different aspects of different characters personalities. Sometimes this works better than other times. Sometimes the writers fail to bring out the full glory of the characters. But when things work... damn.

It's just awesome.

And perhaps, if everything holds together till the end of the show, which I'm not sure if it can (X-files for example, while building an amazingly complex and intriguing mythology for many seasons, fell apart in the last few years), might create an idea of the island which can serve as a character unto itself, with depths immense and complex, just like the show's characters at their best.

But if Lost can be pretty damn awesome, for most of season 3 and even a good chunk of season 2, it was pretty damn lame. But at the end of season 3 there was a solid rebounce, and now with season 4 we're seeing some pretty awesome episodes... until now. The first 3 episodes of season 3 were all grade A's, the 4th one's a C+ at best, but the season's not over yet, and so I'm still swinging for the fences and watching every episode.

If this is setting me up for a fall... well, you got to lose to love, and you got to love to lose, and so here I am a loser ready to love. Or something like that.

Anywho, sleep's a-calling, so take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

At home in the lonely hearts club

So I'm doing a semi-review, semi-link-centered, semi-exposition, semi-introspection, and all of it's going to be awesome.

Take a deep breath.

To help you relax, here's as the title might suggest a link to Sergent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as portrayed in Yellow Submarine. (By the way, while the song is pretty cool, I'm not overall a huge fan of that album, although I realize its merits)

So, under the unrelenting pressure of the TV writers strike (actually there have been moments of relention, due to various factors, but unrelenting sounds cool), mega-cool tv critic Alan Sepinwall has been taking a look at an old short-lived favorite (or at least fondly remembered) of his called Cupid (all of whose episodes can be found on youTube with a simple search (if you come up with more videos of music, such as the excellent though quite off-topic song and music video of Cupid's Chokehold by Gym Class Heroes, try searching for Cupid 1, since the episodes are broken into 5 pieces, as a general rule that's usually a good way to find broken up episodes on youTube). And obliged by my unrelenting loyalty to NJ's premier tv critic I have given it a shot.

I'm not going to do a real review because I haven't watched the whole series (currently I'm on ep. 9, out of however, I think only 15, although rumor has it that the series might be getting a do-over and being remade by the head writer) and my mind's still too sunk into the series to really have any sensibility to the review.

But some things to point out especially as they relate to that semi-introspection I've been hinting at.

First of all: The intro theme is pretty damn cool (the song's called "Human" by the Pretenders. At first, I wasn't crazy about it, it doesn't have that strong of a hook or an overwhelming energy, but it has a quiet intensity that grows on you. The nice little images of the intro also help with that.

So here's a link to Cupid's intro.

However, if what to see that quiet intensity really brought out in its intense sense (the Cupid intro more brings out the quiet, pleasant sense) check out the Pretenders video for the song which takes the intensity to a funny but really quite creepy place.

Also, notice the main line: "I'm only human on the inside." Where does the emphasis fall on that? If it's on the "human", the song is emphasizing her essential humanness, if it's only on "the inside" then there's the suggestion that on the outside she's something other than human, which the video also suggests. And if the song's having it both ways, then it's crazy, but heck, so are we all. After all, we're human on the inside.

But if I might return to that show Cupid. With reviews I usually have a lot of trouble explaining plots, not so much with Cupid, partially because the overall arches either were never finished or I didn't see them finish, but more so because this is an anthology show.

The focus is a couple of the week, either having problems or needing to be put together, and to help is Trevor Hale, who's convinced that he's actually Cupid, the Roman god of love, and he just might be (my view of the show is that it tends to say he is, but there's just a slight chance he might be otherwise...). Of course, if he's not Cupid, he's just delusional. And the spectacular feature of his delusion is that he's convinced he's been exiled to Earth as a mortal and needs to fix up 100 couples with true love before he can return to Olympus. To his fortune, he is placed under the care of a psychologist named Claire who sees his delusions as harmless and who runs a single therapy group. To his misfortune, Claire's views on love are very much different from his and often she works against his attempts to unite couples, although her actions often end up complementing his. Underneath it all is chemistry between Claire and Trevor, and to round out the cast is good old Champ, an actor and barkeep who's Trevor's roommate and acts in the everyman role.

Essentially its a fantasy-influenced romantic comedy with dramatic elements. If that doesn't sound that appealing, let me assure you that the comedy is very real and the dramatic elements often reach right to the core. Afterall, while it is melodramatic at times, it is melodramatic about the inherently melodramatic concept of love, which is truly beautiful none the less. But more than anything else, this show has charm to spare. I'm reminded of one of the posts my friend Howard did for me while I was away on vacation, Why I Watch the Tonight Show, and his conclusion is that its because of Jay's good-natured charm, well that's why I like Cupid. It's absolutely charming. And I guess that's because it's unashamedly about LOVE, in its both big and small, funny and dramatic, zany and serious forms, without taking itself too seriously or too lightly, and dancing away all the pretentiousness with mounts of utterly hilarious wit.

So for a preliminary review I'm giving it a 7 out of 10, because it is pretentious, it does get overdramatic, sometimes its storylines are silly or drawn out, sometimes its emotional arcs are rushed, but its got so much damn charm. (I think in the end you just have to label me a rank sentimentalist)

But I wanted to talk about this more because of its relation to the title of this post: The Lonely Hearts Club. And damn this show reminds me that I'm in that. If it wasn't so good, and heck, honestly if I was deeply involved with some other show (ie if Scrubs had produced a really nice season 6 and 7), I probably wouldn't watch it, because even when I'm laughing, even when I'm touched to the center of my being, it hurts. But maybe that's a good thing in the end. If you don't feel the hurt of love...

I have enough plans keep me busy forever. I have work. I have God. I don't need romance. But why then does a show like Cupid hurt? Just the wistfulness of could maybe be? In the end, no. Some don't need the dream of romance, but the reason why Cupid hurts is because I do. That's me. And so I need the pain, even if it is the bitter, bitter pain of loneliness, to keep that romantic part of me from decaying. Because I love romance with such a passion, to give it up...

Now you can't idolize romance, that's a sin. But to give up romance when it's such a central part of me, essentially because of fear, because despite the excuse of busy-ness, the real reason for avoiding romance is for me fear (especially given the questionable nature of some of my side projects), that's a sin. And as a good Christian, I must do God's will, not mine.

And besides, it's not that unlikely... it might be hard, but it's probably not that hard... it won't be perfect, but chances are it could be so good... maybe one fine day despite the tides of the past, there will be a woman who I can hold in my arms and love with total romance.

Perhaps that sounds sappy, perhaps that sounds foolish, perhaps there's a little crazy there too, but I'm only human on the inside, add emphasis where you choose.

Anyways, if you have something to drink (man, how I wish I had a glass of orange juice right now), let's raise a toast: To Love. And to God, the founder of the great feast of love, in all its many forms.

So take it to your head, take it to your HEART, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!


Post-script: I have a special feature: reviews of certain Cupid episodes I found mega-awesome and certain Cupid episodes that have had a mega-awesome impact on me. It's also possible that some time later I might throw in a full review of Cupid, plus a review of episodes of less than highest caliber, and those that I simply haven't seen yet. But that's getting far too ahead of ourselves. For now though, check out the episode reviews I have now (I put them on a separate page since this is getting obscenely long) because they kick up the reviewerness up a notch, but they also kick up some of the introspection too, overall, they kick up the awesomeness up a notch (because of that very reason, I might do some ep. reviews of other shows I review too, maybe, if only I have the time...)

Because it was a funny episode, of our lives that is

Cupid's a pretty damn good show (as I have noted here). But that said it's a pretty uneven show. No episodes are really bad or unwatchable, but some are only so-so. But those episodes that are good, they're solid gold. And moreover, they've got so many nooks and crannies that they're worth talking about, whether just for a little bit (as I do) or for quite a bit (as the grand NJ TV guru Alan Sepinwall does). So talk I shall... for I AM RAND!!!

But for reasons of time, and perhaps even interest, I'm only going to hit the upper-crust of the episodes I've seen. It's a mixed bag of funny, dramatic, relateability, and straight-to-the-heart (usually obvious, but still valuable) truths about love. Even if the truth hurts sometimes. Even if just thinking about romance for a man lonely in that department is painful. But if an episode can conjure up such an emotional response, that's a testament to its quality (isn't it?).

Because of that a couple of the best episodes hurt enough that I can wax poetic (or perhaps pathetic (but how can the mighty and glorious Rand be pathetic?)) about them, especially since they were a bit close to home. But let me first highlight just some generally very good episodes (I'm planning to go back and do this with a lot of the other shows I've reviewed):

Ep. 3: Heaven, He's in Heaven (you can get the start here, I'll leave you smart internet-pioneers to find your way to the rest of the episode) (And here's the comments of Mr. Sepinwall on the episode (including input from the show's creator Rob Thomas))
- Touching episode about death, loss, and growing old - and about your husband spontaneously bursting out into song and dance in the middle of the day (and he's surprisingly good at it too). Hilarious and moving. That's Cupid.

Ep. 5: First Loves (start's here) (Mr. Sepinwall's comments)
- The central concept is cliche, but Cupid's about love, so the show's unabashed by cliches, or if abashed, it still runs gleefully into them. And there's plenty of glee here. And some soft played romance (with a nice twist ending). And then there's some more weighty drama in the background. Perhaps most important in the episode is it shows all the characters being themselves in a softly spectacular way, and if you love those characters, then the episode's just gold.

Ep. 6: Meat Market (start's here) (Mr. Sepinwall's comments)
-Dude, for Halloween the guys dressed up as the village people. And one of them thought there was a milkman in the group. And one of them thought they weren't gay. Dude. This is a fun, fun, funnity fun episode, with little gems of small drama because the fun just demands you love the characters. That's Cupid (once more).

Ep. 8: Heart of the Matter (start's here) (Mr. Sepinwall's comments)
-This episode is a tricky beast. It brings in a new character who's got some real comedic chops. It puts up a real solid barrier to the romance. And then it hits you with a surprise that neither you or the characters really know how to deal with. Does the episode hit some sour notes? A little. The introduced character slips into Trevor's life a little too easily and with too few questions (usually characters friendly with Trevor take some getting used to his whole Roman god thing). But the balance of so many different emotions. It's like a house of cards, except the house is holding. Have you ever looked at a house of cards? Imagine if despite all the gravity and balance issues it held. That's this episode, and that's Cupid at its best.

So those are some generally good episodes. Now let me touch on some episodes that have a particular sense for me:

Ep. 2: The Linguist (full links: 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5) (Mr. Sepinwall's commentary as well) (well, I've got spoilers everywhere, but there's especially a lot of spoilers coming up about these episodes).
- This episode speaks to me for a couple reasons. First of all, the male of the week is a virgin. I actually don't like how this is played in the episode, since it's treated as a freak thing, which I don't think anyone outside of Hollywood would actually consider it (I mean its funny to talk about the 40-year old virgin when it's apparent that the whole thing is pure laughs, but here, while the show laughs at how other people react to a 35 (around that)-year old virgin, it also laughs at him, and that pisses me off a little). When I first saw that I basically felt I probably wouldn't like it. But even from the beginning there were a few elements of gorgeous charm.

First of all, the male was a linguist, and while linguistics isn't quite my field, it is still pretty cool. Secondly, it was dealing mostly w/ the university crowd, which I've grown up with (P-town all the way!!!). Thirdly, it had an interesting angle on how Claire might try to get to the root of Trevor's "delusions."

But then I thought about the reason why the man was a virgin. He had dedicated his life to his work. Sex, but more importantly romance, was a distraction and more importantly it sucked out his energy. But now his interest in work is fading, and he's still alone, and he's never really gotten the hang of the connections necessary for dating. Now I'm still highly interested in my work, but that could, without too much of a stretch be me in fifteen years or so.

And yet there is someone he has feelings for. And there's a secret he's hiding, one he doesn't really need to hide, but one which has defined him. But he lets that go for the woman he loves, and in helping her he revives his own interest in teaching linguistics. But through just tangles of circumstance, and more importantly tangles of prejudice, he starts to lose her. Yet with a bit of help from Cupid, well, he sheds his secret, and shows just how good a linguistics teacher he is, and then... well they were born to run. (funny thing, it's explicitly a quote from Bruce Springstein but they don't use his song at the end, probably because they can't afford it)

So let me give one more episode that struck me like The Thunderbolt:
Ep. 9: The End of Eros
-Again here's an episode that I started out disliking. The set-up was too cliche, a show about love and then there's a psychologist who doubts love. And I think (although my cultural time-line isn't perfect) this came out at a certain time when there were a lot of movies and such that dealt with people giving up on love (Down with Love, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Wedding Planner, etc.). But the male lead again struck me as interesting. He was an academic, in this case a cosmologist (ultra-cool field), he was petrifyingly nervous around women, but when he relaxed, say after he decided romance wasn't a concern, he was decently funny and decently happy and he had work and all that.

This could actually be me today, sometimes. Sometimes I just seem to give up on love. But love strikes him without his wanting. And moreover, it again uncovers a connection between his professional and personal love. Yet he resists.

Redeeming how pretentious anti-love is: Drunk Cupid. Drunk Cupid + Romance distracted Claire = male lead's not getting the help he needs. But Claire remembers about children, and she rallies Cupid's fundamental by nature belief in love, and they form a genius plan. Except, Cupid, wounded by events, scared to fail, wants to blow it all off at the last moment, except Claire says no! And they argue, all the while the plan seems to be falling to pieces. But then they bump into a button and a switch and a ... and all the plans they speculated on come up without them, even better than they planned, and then the planetarium lights up, and then it plays:

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

Beautiful. Maybe it makes me believe in love.

Maybe this whole show does. But if it does then what? Really, do I throw myself out there? Well, what if I do? What will that require in terms of school and projects and plans? It's so late in my college career and it's in such a critical part of my life and... And what about all of that and that and that and that?

I don't believe that everybody needs somebody. Some people will be more about friendships than romances, and some, from choice or circumstances, will be tied just barely to humanity, and while they need to hold on to those ties, they might not need romance.

And I don't really need romance. It's a Christian Creed that God's love is all you need. But it's not a sin to want romance. And I've always dreamed of it. And it's always inspired me. And... and... I believe in romantic love. And I believe in me and romantic love. And it's hard to imagine me giving up on it, without the surrender being at the root being about fear. And if that's the case... I think I can't really give up on love without giving up on a part of myself that's an essential part of who I am.

Cupid at its best is about that. That those who at their hearts are romantics cannot give up on romance without betraying a part of themselves; however if they keep chasing that romance, they might just be able to raise their soul a bit higher to a very special place. But you got to keep trying, even if it's damn hard. Ask and you shall receive, but you need to ask! It's an old lesson. But God bless Cupid for telling it to us again.

Now before I start whining like a little shojo baby (see Piro in Megatokyo), I think I need to wrap things up. If I have time, some time, I might go over the episodes I didn't get to and some of the episodes that were less than full outstanding level or didn't really hit the connection with me.

But until then, keep on chasing that green light, even if it's very far away.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

It's mighty cold in Juno

Juno, a review:

(note: the title of this session comes from a song I stumbled upon in the internet whose chorus was It's mighty cold in Alaska, but the location and author of that song are lost in the sands of my brain)

Juno, the main character of the film Juno, is not named after the city Juno, Alaska. She is as she points out in the film, named after Juno, queen of the Roman gods. It's a fitting name, because this film revolves around her in more ways than one.

Firstly, she is the star. It is Juno's unexpected pregnancy which the movie centers upon and while it takes two to have sex, Bleeker, her male partner stupendously played by Michael Cera, veteran of Superbad and Arrested Development, didn't really have a choice, as Juno makes clear to her friend later. Juno was just bored. Except even the passive partner in a relationship often has the oddest of effects on its course, and while this is Juno's story, at times it is also Bleeker's story.

Bleeker doesn't necessarily get too much screen time, but he has likely the 2nd most scenes, which show him as a devoted runner, a tic-tac addict, and a boy who's confused utterly by the world and most of all by the girl he likes. His reactions to Juno's pregnancy and Juno herself and his reactions to her reactions to him are subtle and wonderfully awkward, but they paint a deeply interesting and complex character, almost as well developed as Juno herself.

But as I said Juno is the star, and this film makes itself or breaks itself on her likability and depth. She is in 90% of the scenes (although not all of them), she gives narration, and she drives the action. But she is likable and her character is deep. She is utterly at ease with herself, and when she is not she vigorously denies that she is ill-at-ease. She is youthful looking (she doesn't wear a bra until her pregnancy) for 16, but maturely independent. Her interests in camp seem child-like but actually hold a very-teenagerish contempt for the world redeemed by a celebration of its ridiculous coolness. And she has the counterculture chique right down to the weirdo-hip language and the aloof disregard of popularity. If that all sounds pretentious, it is but the character is saved from pretentiousness by her sincerity and her flaws. She gets angry, she has burst of immaturity, she makes rash decisions, she refuses to deal with certain emotional issues honestly, and she is far out of her depth in dealing with an unexpected pregnancy.

She has help of course. This film boasts a wonderful ensemble of supporting characters, many highly established, including Jason Bateman who here plays the would-be dad of Juno and Bleeker's child, even though he played the father of the character played by Michael Cera in Arrested Development (that has to be some kind of weird). The main seconds here are Juno's parents and a couple who wants to adopt her child. Also in the mix, is Juno's best friend, Leah, and a bunch of more minor elements. Yet all these secondary characters have a little oddity to them, I noticed as I watched the film. Here's where I started to notice how much the film really centers around Juno.

Let me break for a second and admit to something. I read a review of Juno before I saw the movie and read some partial reviews in addition. Ideally I think you should watch a movie cold first, read about it, then watch it again, but that's very hard to actually arrange. But what you read changes how you view the movie and two items I read altered, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot, how I viewed Juno. Firstly, I read a NY Times opinions piece about Juno, I will discuss it later, but I also read a small item on Roger Ebert's website (I'm not sure if the item is still there, but basically it says that the dialog is too witty and Roger Ebert says the tone sells it convincingly).

The smaller piece I read, the one on Roger Ebert's website, had a greater impact I think. Because when I heard Juno's dad say Damn Skippy instead of a curse, I knew this dialog was far too witty to be realistic. Maybe some people do curse with Damn Skippy, but those people who do are rare, and by all other measures Juno's dad is a good-hearted, pretty hip, but essentially average blue-collar father, so for him to realistically say Damn Skippy... But why should this be realistic? Looking at the other characters I realized there's something surreal about them too. Juno's friend Leah is supposed to be popular and a teacher-phile (it's not terribly strange that she's friends with Juno, cliques these days aren't what they used to be), but she talks in the same way Juno does, or rather in a cool kid dialect of how Juno talks, and since Juno talks in a way cool kids generally only talk with sarcasm, such a dialect should not exist.

Moreover, the store clerk insults her when she goes for pregnancy tests. Why would he do that? Moreover, her parents let her drive her car at all odd hours of the night after she was pregnant (well, the step-mother does scold her briefly, but as scolds go it was fairly light). Moreover... moreover Fall and Winter are pencil sketched in the sky to signal their presence. That isn't something odd for modern movies, but what it represents has been forgotten by many modern filmwatchers and filmmakers. It represents surreality, where reality adjusts to the contours of the mind. And here, Juno's entire world, and her supporting characters fit perfectly the contours of the emotional and mental reality of Juno, who may be a fictional character, but who's complexities suggest a degree of emotional and mental reality. So the excessive wittiness, the oddness of the characters, the strangeness of some of the things Juno gets away with (like sitting in a trophy case at school during lunchtime (and not an isolated trophy case)), all just serve to help deepen her character.

Like I said, the film revolves around her. All this surrealism means that Juno is the center of this universe, she is its queen, and because she's such an engaging character, this film remains engaging, heart-tugging, and enchanting.

It even allows me to excuse some miscues that I would be far more critical of otherwise. One miscue I found glaring, was in the suburban couple who wants to adopt Juno's child. Let me point out here, as some people might have guessed, that this film in many ways parallels Knocked Up, as a woman gets pregnant and then falls in love with the guy who knocked her up, except here the girl is firmly the center of the film and the girl is 16 (the guy is around 16 too). Yet one way the film also seemed to be paralleling Knocked Up is in Michael Bateman's character, who was the suburban father-to-be who was an ex-rock star turned jingle writer, who is now worried about what he'll have to give up to become a father.

Eventually, this character sort of falls in love with Juno (and she, it is implied, kind of falls in love with him, although when confronted with his feelings she rejects him), decides he'd rather be a rockstar than be a father, and leaves his wife. On the surface very different from Knocked Up's dad-to-be character, who was an uber-slacker. But if you look at the ambition Michael Bateman's dream (it's not enough for him to have toured with the Melvins, there's still something more he has to do), his fancying an underage girl, and the relatively weak pressure from his wife's side (it is fairly obvious she disapproves of some ways he behaves, but on the other hand, she doesn't seem to harsh on him for it, although she usually gets her way), it seems like he's just having trouble growing up.

Yet the film doesn't let this fully play out. Instead Michael Bateman's character just leaves his wife after the first fight and it is implied that she then raises Juno's child as a single mother. The emotionally deep ground of the disintegration of a marriage and its complexity with this adoption is only superficially treated. But I understand that a film which encompasses most of a pregnancy must make some narrative choices, and I understand that this film is in the end Juno's story.

And yet, I also thought it was Bleeker's story, which makes another miscue by the film a little more annoying. Bleeker's emotional journey in this film is shown in odd scenes here and there, which is understandable, and it is most spelled out in his interactions with Juno, fine, the film is called Juno. Yet, his emotional journey in this film is all about him telling Juno how he feels and forcing her to confront those feelings and her feelings. It isn't at all dealing with the fact that the baby is his. Maybe Juno was the initiator of sex, maybe she was the driving force of their relationship, maybe she is the star of the film, still... I really would have liked to see Bleeker's reaction to the fact he has a child being born and eventually given away. While other characters were oddly shallow at times, I thought Bleeker was for the most part a fully developed character, and I was disappointed that I didn't see him act like a father. Perhaps Bleeker's story would have taken up too much time, perhaps Bleeker the boyfriend fit in better with the surreal world centered around Juno, but a little something about Bleeker the father would have been appreciated in the movie about Juno the mother.

But then again, in the end Juno isn't the mother. The suburban mom, now alone, takes Juno's child and Juno doesn't go see the baby off and the movie implies that Juno now has no role in the child's life. That isn't actually a bad move for the movie to make, because many teen pregncies end with similar situations. But not all end with the teen smiling in the sunshine and playing a love song with her boyfriend.

Juno is a fairy tale. So said that New York Time op-ed piece I read before (I told you I would get back to that), and that's because it neglects any real emotional aftermath after the baby is given away. I have to say that while I'm not as harsh on the film as the op-ed piece, the character of Juno is far too deep to fit in a fairy tale, I must say the ending is a bit off-putting. Not that Juno should have ended up sad and alone, scarred forever by her teen pregnancy. It makes perfect sense to end the film with Juno and Bleeker side by side happy. But the film should have shown some sign that the pregnancy left an impact on Juno. There should be some measure of emotional weight on her, even if she's capable, as her character should be by all we've seen before, of handling that weight. There should be some significance of the pregnancy to Juno's life. As it is, the pregnancy seems to have just been another one of those obstacles Juno had to overcome in her teenage years to grow up emotionally and become a good girlfriend.

Yet, let me not end on complaints. Because this movie is marvelous. It is immensely funny, it is full of a consistent liveliness, it is beautifully crafted in terms of filmcraft, and it paints a masterpiece of a portrait of the emotional life of a fully individualized, yet highly realistic (I knew kids sort of like this in high school, let me just call them the counterculture geeks, combine the aspects of both the counterculture groups and the geek groups, and you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about), 16-year old girl. It is simply an amazing film, and a wonderfully well-spend 2 hours.

So despite flaws that dig at me even now, the wonder that is Juno demands nothing less than 8 out of 10. I have to give it to her, it wasn't really my idea.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

But for a nail... 28 weeks after the fact

28 Weeks Later (The REVIEW!!!):

Yesterday I wrote a session on 28 Days Later and talked lightly about its sequel: 28 Weeks Later. I promised a second session later, and planned it to be lengthy an in-depth. This is not quite as big or in-depth as I planned, but that might be for the best for reasons of time and perhaps even quality. Either way, this is all you're getting so enjoy the quick (relatively) review.

28 Weeks Later, takes place 28 Weeks after an infection wiped out the population of Great Britan. A US-led NATO security force has killed the last surviving infected and are beginning a program to repopulate Great Britan. An ambitious dream, but there are many who still dream of Britan, especially the survivors of the infection and those who were overseas at the time. The military is confident that the infection is over but they haven't secured everywhere, and so only a small island is being repopulated.

It seems that while humanity is just as ambitious as in 28 Days Later (where the virus started as an attempt to cure rage, and an attempt by a military base to repopulate humanity led to its annihilation). But it soon becomes clear that just as in 28 Days Later, people are careless. The American soldiers guarding the island are joking around, and the military doesn't even bother to tell the medical officer that children are being reintroduced. And then when the children wander off, the military is agonizingly slow in picking them up. When a survivor with a mutated version of the infection returns, they maintain weak security and... of course the infection re-emerges. And of course they try to annihilate the population to stop the spread, becoming monsters in the process. And of course, they fail, and the infection spreads to mainland Europe...

The themes of ambition and carelessness so prominent in 28 Days Later are here large looming still. Another theme is the memory, as the choices of the father who survived the infection's first wave are driven by his guilt and doom the island, and the actions of his children are driven by their need for their memories and the hidden secrets of that father. All good, meaty themes, and with mixed success the film bears them out. I personally would have liked some revisiting of the idea of memories, with the aftermath of the children's memories, but since director decides to jump from saving the children to doomsday that I guess must be left out. There's another complaint, the film does show the virus traveling from Britan over the channel through the children, but there's no reason given why that must lead to a new outbreak.

I suppose something strange must of happened that doomed mainland Europe. Strange things happened throughout the film, incidental coincidences and odd mistakes, and tricks of chance, none impossible or violations of logic but all... well let's just say this movie features some very, very unlucky people. That's the thing that bugs me the most about this movie, it attempts a sense of realism, it attempts a sense of grandeur, it seems to preach lessons about humanity, but everything here seems to driven by bad luck. Furthermore, unlike 28 Days Later where most of the bad luck was stuff that probably was going to happen, the bad luck here is all so unnecessary. It gives the film a contrived feel overall.

But I can't dislike this film. It is too well crafted, it makes for some beautiful scenes and some beautifully terrifying scenes. It draws you into the horror, and draws you into the tragedy of the picture as well. In the best moments of the film, it speaks of the deep themes, even though what it says isn't necessarily apparent. And unlike 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later's characters earn a happy ending, and it gives the world a sad ending which 28 Weeks Later almost shows the world deserves.

But in the worse moments, the film seems pointless, excessive, and tiring. Still the better outweighs the worse although not by an immense amount.

Overall, I give it a 6 out of 10.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

28 Days later, 28 weeks later, 28 years later and forever

And then the world was empty.

That was 28 days after.

And when we tried to fix it, the world emptied again.

That was 28 weeks after.

And it began with monkeys.

Caution: Lot's of spoilers, very long, while this post will talk about 28 Weeks Later and 28 Days Later it will deal primarily with 28 Days Later and a second post will deal with 28 Weeks Later

(note: I kind of liked 28 Days Later better (although that might be because I watched 28 Weeks Later in 2 shifts, but I think it's because 28 Days Later is a better film, but also since I'm doing the 28 Days Later post first, it will probably be longer and more in-depth)

There's actually a good tradition of monkey-based sci-fi horror (see 12 Monkeys), but 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later strike things a little different than most. Let me start with 28 Days Later.

The film starts insanely. It starts with a monkey watching flashes of violence. Other cages of monkeys surround the scene. And then enter the animal activists. The scientist warns them, but they are some specially intense kind of stupid (well, perhaps a kind of stupid animal activists often have). And the scientist tells them. They're infected with rage: We have to understand it before we can stop it. You don't know what you're doing. Don't do it.

And then the monkeys are released, a monkey tears into an activist and vomits blood into her. And her eyes go red, and now she too is infected with rage.

28 Days Later.

Now the movie really starts. And this start is beautiful, elegant and supremely creepy. A patient in an isolation ward wakes up. The world is empty. There is soda and candy from the vending machines, he can live. But there is just pure emptiness, with only minute clues. Infection. Exodus. Quarantine.

These two scenes give the fullness of the film's atmosphere. It is a cross between creepy insanity and chilling beauty. The hospital patient Jim finally stumbles upon a hidden cache of the infected and the creepiness returns. A couple of survivors save Jim and tell Jim the truth. Jim can't take it, needs to see his parents. the empty house, the emancipated corpses, the chilling beauty returns. But Jim lights a candle near a window watching memories play in his head. This is when it becomes clear that this movie isn't just the an intense realistic zombie movie. The color saturated memory scene intensifies the chilling beauty. But then... you don't light a candle near the window when zombies are most active at night.

Careless. This is a repeated theme of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. People are careless, they release infected monkey, they give away their location to monkeys, they don't monitor the infected, they give complete access to one man without being careful about him, they kiss the infected despite blood-borne transmission. Just carelessness. It kills. It kills us all.

The light in the window signals the zombies and they crash through the window in a rampage. The super-fighter chick of the two survivors who saved Jim leads the defense and together they kill the infected, except the male survivor was bitten. And so, Seline, the ruthless, the beautiful, the survivor, chilling and insane and beautiful, kills the man she's spent so many days surviving with, the only friend she's had in the dead world. You have to, she tells Jim. Even if it means killing you. But I wouldn't says Jim. Seline's the survivor, Jim's the sentimentalist. Still they only have each other.

But there's a light in the window so far away. It's blinking. Night has fallen, the infected are loose, but the infected are mindless killers, and they can't work lights. So Jim and Seline venture to the skyscraper where the light was. There's a barrier of shopping carts, but these can be climbed. There are stairs to walk. But the infected can climb stairs. And so they're running. And Seline is leaving Jim behind and the infected are coming, but they're running and running.

A man in riot gear stands at the top of the stairs. He pushes Jim and Seline through to the upper hallway while he faces the infected. Jim and Seline bang on the door beyond but the man's daughter won't open it, she wants to see her father, and then...

The man beats the infected zombies, he tells his daughter to open the door and she does. Everyone shares a meal and even some liquor. It's a celebration, people are united, the two pairs of two become four. But Seline doesn't trust them, there's some reason hidden here. Seline's the survivor, but Jim's the sentimentalist, he trusts them, but he also thanks Seline, and she gives him a Sure, which she assures him is sincere.

I thought for a moment here this was going to be the standard hidden bad guy horror story where the people they join are actually evil. Well, that actually will come. But these two are good. And they know something Jim and Seline don't. There's a radio signal broadcasting a recording from a military group, promising a cure for the infection. And so they set off.

There are run-ins with infected but for the most part the trip has an odd feel to it. It is beautiful and romantic, the four become a family, and Jim and Seline start to fall in love. Very beautiful, but slightly creepy in this dead world where the infected could lurk anywhere. And where the urge to revenge might even urge one to seek the infected out and kill them, even a small child.

There's the undertheme, one repeated in 28 Weeks later, man becoming as vicious as monsterous as the infected. Even though as the film makes clear, their eyes are not the red that belong to the infected.

The four make it to the army base, but it is abandoned. It is empty, just like the rest of the world. Machines are there, buildings, but no people. The father is devestated, this was the future he had depended on, the future he needed for his daughter. Sadness, frustration, and he wanders around the deserted base, uncaring, careless:

And then a drop of blood falls on his eye. From an infected corpse. And the infection is bloodborne. The dad staggers. His daughter runs to him with concern but he calls her to stay back, and Seline grabs her. And Jim, the dad knows what Jim must do. But shots ring out. Snipers. The army birgade is still alive, even if they're late.

The army birgade has it all. A fortress with every defense against the infected. Lots of guns. Food. Water. Plans and hopes for the future with 9 young soldiers with a charismatic and fatherly commander. They do not have the cure, despite what they promised, but they do have an infected chained up, one they hoped might yield a cure through experiments (shades of Day of the Dead), but all they find, is the infected take time to starve. But enough time the commander knows they will starve, and then the world will belong to humans again.

The soldiers are a rowdy bunch, some desperate, some joking, some depressed, but they believe in their commander. And when the infected attack, they run to the guns and can fend off the attack. Here I notice something, Seline doesn't run to the battlements, but Jim does. It may be because Seline's now in love or because she needs to stay with the daughter, but still... that's a little lame. The next moment makes up for things.

The battle is over. The boys are cocky and triumphant. They see Seline, one soldier, the cockiest, takes here machete blade and boasts he will protect her now. She doesn't take well to this. He doesn't take well to rejection. He grabs for her, Jim defends her, he takes on Jim, the most depressed soldier takes on the cockiest, chaos is breaking loose and... the commander arrives. The matter is settled. And he takes Jim aside apologizing...

And then telling the truth. The boys need hope. They need a future. The world needs a future. But a future requires women. The commander had promised them women.

Jim rushes to the Seline and the daughter, he tries to get them in time. But the soldiers take the women, and beat down Jim. The depressed soldier tries to stop things but he can't. The commander offers Jim to join them. But he refuses, and so he and the depressed soldier will be executed.

The cocky soldier and one of the nicer soldiers take them to the woods. The cocky soldier isn't satisfied however with just killing them. He wants to use the bayonet. But the nicer soldier, he can't stand it, he just can't, and so... he shoots the depressed soldier. Deprived of his revenge for interference, the cocky soldier tackles the nicer soldier and in the struggle, Jim escapes. They chase after him, they shoot, they miss. He goes out of the wall. That's good enough for them.

There's a strangeness to the killing power of the infected. Sometimes it seems invincible, sometimes it seems fairly easy. Perhaps it's just a matter of whether they're in hordes, but these don't quite seem like creatures that could destroy civilization and the merry little island of England. Still, it is a disease, not understood at first, and supposedly highly contagious. Just a tear, or even a bit of saliva in a kiss as 28 Weeks Later would show. But the army men are convinced of their killing power (I'm a bit surprised there isn't infected hunts, well, so many have died in this movie, but still, it seems with enough guns and enough care... but as these two movies show again and again, people are careless.).

Presumed dead, desperate, alone, what is Jim to do... but there's a plane overhead, there's hope, there's a future, there's something to save Seline and the daughter for.

Perhaps it's this to convince Jim that even if the army men are survivors, their plans of rape deserve capital punishment.

I understand capital punishment for rapists, even though I don't agree with it. I can agree with killing a rapist to prevent a rape if there's no other choice, but what Jim does...

There's a breach at the wall and it starts to rain. The commander takes one soldier and goes himself, allowing the other soldiers to dress up the girls. It seems odd for the commander to do that, he's a rather utilitarian man, but then again he might want to preserve the boys ideas of society. But still dressing the girls up... it was shown that he feels bad about what is going to happen, but he believes that it is necessary. Do the other soldiers also feel like that? Some of them do, but some are just happy to get sex. And some are just far too excited. Why does the commander leave them to investigate the breach? Is he too disgusted with what's happening? Is he just scared of Jim's abilities? Is he just careless though?

The movie is a bit inconsistent about this. Why is Jim such a damn good fighter? He was a bicycle courier before the infection. Did he just learn along the way? But shouldn't the soldiers be even better? Maybe Jim's just more ruthless, but aren't the soldiers, well soldiers, who also have lived through all this? This actually bugs me.

But Jim fights. He kills the soldier accompanying the commander and strands the commander far from the fortress. And Jim also leaves a small squad of infected for the commander to deal with.

This hints at what Jim will do in the fortress. Jim makes it to the fortress, past the defenses and climbs on the outside, to a little internal courtyard. There they have a chained infected. Apparently, I guess because of the women, the infected isn't guarded, but maybe that's because it's chained so well. But not well enough for the gun Jim lifted from the soldier he killed. An infected is loose. Some of the soldiers go to investigate. They leave Seline and the daughter under low guard, and allow Seline to give the daughter some Valium so she just won't care about what she still thinks is going to happen (I wonder couldn't the commander have done something like this?).

But the infected are loose, and the soldiers are caught off guarded, and slowly the soldiers are either infected or dead. A few hide, one tries to flee, but Jim's there, with the bayonette. It doesn't matter that the soldier was fleeing, or even that this was the nicer soldier who had spared the depressed soldier the bayonette. And Jim doesn't give him a finishing shot. For though his eyes are not red, his face is blood covered and his mind filled with rage...

Seline and the daughter run, they hide, and all the soldiers die. 9 boys. Some too young to be anything but cadets. 9 of the few left in Britian. Even with the plane in the sky are there than many humans to spare? Yes, rape is horrible, but this? Perhaps that's why the filmmakers highlighted the bayonette. Perhaps Jim's not supposed to be the hero. Perhaps...

But at last there's just the cocky soldier, Seline, and Jim. There was another soldier, but Jim led the infected to him, and that was injured and Jim abandoned him. The commander's still out there, but he stopped to hold the hand of the dying bayonetted soldier. The commander cries, while Jim hunts. The daughter is then cornered by an infected but she hides behind a mirror. The infected stares at it, does the infected recognize himself, recognize what he's become? Maybe he just doens't understand a mirror. In the end, he leaves the daughter. If he hadn't... Jim saved one woman from rape while leaving one woman dead. But the daughter survives and then it's just the cocky soldier, Seline and Jim.

Jim surprises the cocky soldier and though the cocky soldier took Jim before, this time Jim isn't fighting like a man. He tears into the cocky soldier, ruthless, unstoppable. And then to finish it, hands in the eyeballs (to cement this as infected behavior, it is echoed by an infected in 28 Weeks Later). Seline can not believe this is Jim. She prepares to kill him as an infected, but... he then jokes with her, and she kisses him. I'm not sure even the killing that just happened was as creepy as that carefree kiss.

The daughter and Jim and Seline rush to the car, they need to escape, infected still are loose. But the commander is waiting there. You killed my boys. He shoots Jim, but the daughter manages to take the car and crash it just enough to kill the commander. Jim blacks out.

We next find them in a shed in the country side. The daughter is preparing something outside. Seline is converting the dresses into fabric for other purposes, and Jim greets her with a smile on his face. The day is bright outside, and the camera wanders. The infected now are truly starving, they lie with their stomaches distended, dying, finally. And a plane flies above it all. The daughter hears it far away and tells Jim and Seline to rush out, they rush to straighten out long sheets of fabric, and the camera pans back.

They spelled out a word in giant sheets of fabric. It's hello. Not help, but hello. Just a greeting that belongs to a world that as it turns out isn't actually dead.

The plane flies overhead, and Jim remarks: I think this time they saw us.

What does that mean exactly, really... the obvious and probably intended answer is that the plane probably did see them and they'll be rescued soon and the "again" might be referring to the last plane Jim saw or previous planes they saw before but couldn't signal to it.

There's another answer I'd like, maybe they've done this before, and before, and before. But the plane never lands. The infected are too mindless to spell out words so the plane would know that they aren't infected. But maybe, the plane knows that those who survived have been reduced to the level of the infected.

Jim with his hands in those eyeballs.

But the cheery sunlight, the cheery music. It's so bright. I have to wonder if the movie is suggesting not only that the three not only were saved, but deserved to be saved.

It's just something...

I dunno. There are the words of the depressed soldier, wondering if the normal was a world free of humanity, and that if humanity did die that would be a return to normal, defying the weeping of the other soldiers for the previous world they call normal.

There are scenes of nature, one is actually a painting which they drive through, there is a family of horses galloping. It is beautiful. And it is empty of humanity. The world dead of humans is still alive with nature.

Perhaps that's something.

Zombie movies always have a scare factor and a degree to which they are made just as a matter of emotional artistry (or attempted so). Of course some are just made as violence porn (sometimes perhaps this veers into that, was it really necessary to show the eyeballs being pierced, couldn't that just be implied?). But usually zombie movies are a critique of the world, where the zombies are in the end humans stripped of illusions (see especially Dawn of the Dead series or I am Legend). Is that the case here. The commander at one point says: Today I see humans killing humans and that's what I saw before the infection and before that. Rage was a condition of humanity. They were trying to cure it. They were so ambitious. But they were careless.

That ambition. Perhaps that's the flaw. The tragic flaw of humanity that dooms them. They were trying to cure rage, they infected the world, just like the dreaming conquerors of history. The soldiers were trying to recreate the world, but that what they believed was necessary, it killed them all. In 28 Weeks Later they tried to rebuild a nation, they end up infecting the world. How many nationalists have done the same?

Is it all about rage? Jim wakes up free of rage, free of any objects of rage, he apologizes for awakening the infected at first. Jim becomes an avatar of rage more than humanity. But he ends just smiling waiting for rescue. Perhaps then, the illusion is simply restored, and that it fell off was forgotten, especially since now the infected were starving, there were no more reminders it was easy to forget.

Forgetting... that would lead to what would happen The 28 Weeks Later...

I'm not sure in the end what everything meant from the piece. It still was crafted with utter care. It still brushed at things much deeper than violence porn which justified most of the violence and horror. It still showed a world reduced to another corner of hell. This earns the film a 7 out of 10 (which is very good in my book, I know that even with the same 10 point scale, the actual calibration of those points vary between critics immensely).

And hell doesn't simply go away. Even as illusions return. This 28 Weeks Later would show...

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Arting upwards and onwards or my review of the San Francisco Asian Art Museum

So San Francisco is continuing to be awesome. Now basically while I've been on vacation I've been accumulating sessions to post up in the future, and so I have far, far more than I could possibly actually put up. So... Also, I've been thinking about things and such and making plans and such, so... Well, let me put that all aside for a moment and talk about the San Francisco Asian Art Museum (since I visited it today)

Let me hit up just a few main points because I am sleepy:

First of all: The museum is awesome. That's just how it is.

Also:

- There's a massive amount and diversity of cool stuff

- There's a large regional variety (well, let's say there's a large number of art belonging to several distinct regions: China, Japan, Tibetan Buddhist areas, Southeast Asia, and India), and there's even a decent subregional variety (I got to give credit to the fact that the museum makes a distinction between North India and South India).

- Nice thing about Asian art: colors and details (if that seems like an extremely vague description, well, Asia's an extremely big continent).

- Cool building too, the ceilings are often highly decorated and give a nice atmosphere to the whole museum.

- You can just barely take it all in within a day but that if you do your mind will most likely explode (yeah, that happened to me)

- A lot of the highly detailed works lend themselves to repeat viewing, especially the Indian sculptures and Chinese paintings

However:

- The Southwest Asian and Persian Art section (which for some reason includes Muslim Central Asia) is tiny (one very small room), out of the way (I missed it in my first time around), and there's some nice pieces, but only enough to show they really need to expand this section massively.

- The history stuff is kind of weak, some of it is interesting, but most is superficial and some of it is misleading, however that might just be my history snobbery (I'm actually thinking of creating a separate history webpost so I can post more about history, but I'll cover some of my general complaints, which to be fair I have about most popular histories, in another session).

- Mongolia's gets very little love in the Himalayan and Tibetan Buddhist section

- Laos gets no love (although I didn't read all the labels so there might have been some Laotian art) in the Southeast Asia section

- The area's a little ghetto so try to leave there a decent amount before nightfall

Overall pretty awesome stuff. Really gets the brain juices flowing (maybe to the point of overloading) but forget utilitarian arguments the art is just beautiful (especially cool is the jade art exhibits (there's at least both Chinese and Japanese jade art), those exhibits might be temporary though, although they might be permenant, basically I'm not sure on that point. Also, obviously, Indian (or if you want to be politically correct South Asian (which I think, in disagreement with the museum, should include Sri Lanka) Art rocks!!!!)

There's more I could say, but again I'm sleepy so simply: Dude, you should go, dude. Dude.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Sometimes you need to go where everyone has a gun or my Arsenal review

Don't you need to go where everyone has a gun? ie, the Arsenal!

And so I watched Arsenal (I posted up the movie in parts in a previous session). Weird, stirring, long, meandering, epic, more adjectives stuff, it really is. The movie traces the full course (well most of the full course) of the Russian Civil War in Ukraine (I don't want to imply that Ukraine is part of Russia, but I don't have a good term for the action in Ukraine and in many ways it was an extension of what was going on in Russia, so I'm sticking with that terminology), it starts with the ending period of World War I, when all of Ukraine was devastated (really stark imagery in that), going to the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic (it was a short lived government that was German and later US/UK/France/Poland backed), moving on to the raging war between the White Russian Army and Ukrainian forces and finally to engagements between the White Russian Army and the Ukrainian Bolshevik Army. It doesn't quite get to the end where the Bolsheviks are triumphant but instead shows the triumphant Ukrainian Bolshevik spirit (I'm not endorsing here Bolshevism, I actually hate Communism quite immensely, but I'm just trying to give you a sense of the movie).

This movie is quite the mixed bag. It has been called a classic and I can see how people can look at it as one. It has amazing use of montage at times that juxaposes vivid images, creating immense emotional reactions. It also has immense symbolism to its scenes which are sometimes painstakingly crafted. Even some of the long takes which just dwell on scenes of men without legs or mothers who lost their children are heart breaking. In addition, as a historical document it is a fascinating as a document of the Bolsheviks defending their crushing of Ukrainian nationalism. As a piece of film theory it reflects early Russian theories of montage, of agi-film (agitation films), of semi-plotlessness and of semi-herolessness (for another good example of all this film theory stuff (an example I'll be citing), check out Battleship Potemkin). However, I can't say I'm thrilled with movie. It has many brilliant pieces. The best is probably when a soldier is hit by laughing gas (I don't think laughing gas was actually used in World War I (although mustard gas was), but I suppose its symbolic of the insanity of war as the soldier laughs at the corpses of his comrades) and an opposing soldier looks at him, and throws down his gun asking "Where is the enemy?" and then, as montage flashes with other scenes, the questioning soldier's commanding officer comes up behind him, orders him to pick up his gun, and finally shoots the soldier who refused to fight. There are several other moments like this where the film seems brilliant.

And yet, there lacks a force to string it together. The film lacks narrative tension. The plot is often absent, and when present it is stretched out far too long. Unlike Battleship Potemkin, which also stretches out a simple plot, the montage is too slow in many scenes (although there are scenes with quick cutting) and is too focused on exposition to provide visual tension. Perhaps the problem is that the film wants to do too much. It wants to explain the revolutionary cause, it wants to denounce Ukrainian nationalists, I think it even takes a symbolic swipe at Ukrainian anarchists. And it goes across a significant number of events without any developing any character (although there is a sort of main character he is largely blank except for his symbolic credentials as the Ukrainian worker) or even a sense of character in the masses (as Battleship Potemkin in some ways does (especially in the specialized mass of the battleship)) to personalize the events. Maybe I'm just not used to this type of film, maybe it's just because I watched the film in pieces on youTube (I know that sounds bad, but I watched them back to back and I think overall it didn't have too big of an effect), but I couldn't find any driving force between the moments of brilliance this film offered. Without some tension pulling me through the movie, I couldn't fully connect with it on an emotional or intellectual level.

I'm overall glad I watched this movie, and I can see how some people could absolutely love it, but I can't really recommend it. On the other hand, I can't not recommend it. If I had to rate it (and I do because I want to and I AM RAND) I'd give it a 6 out of 10. Maybe I'm being cruel to a classic, but if that's the case, well, sometimes you just got to seize the arsenal.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

We love big dreams, right? or my review of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

I'm Rand the great and glorious, so come on, of course I love big dreams! But I got to say I love the Haruhi Suzumiya's SOS Brigade as well. Even if they don't match the biggest dreams of all.

Kyon is an ordinary high schooler who has just overcome his middle school obsession with the supernatural. Unfortunately he happens to be placed in the same class as Haruhi, who's obsession is still alive and well to the point of her scorning all activities outside the supernatural. Haruhi also unfortunately sits behind Kyon and Kyon has the unfortunate habit of talking to her. This eventually leads him to attempting to talk Haruhi out of her fixation in one of the stupidest let's be normal speeches I've ever heard. His main point is the majority of people learn to be satisfied in the world, and only a small minority stay dissatisfied and they change the world. Of course this backfires and prompts her to change her world by forming a club to seek out aliens, time-travelers and esper (ESP-ers). Of course, she makes Kyon her first member.

She steals the room of the Literary club as well as its sole member. She "voluntarily arrests" a beautiful second year student, because all good supernatural stories have some sex appeal. And she invites in a mysterious transfer student. Of course, these are in order, an alien, a time-traveler and an esper. If this all seems a bit too convenient, well, that's because Haruhi's real power is that she can alter reality to suit her whims. As well as to suit sometimes her terrible melancholy.

I can sympathize with Haruhi, I always wanted to start a club to find the extraordinary, I came close to it in high school with John Corp (a name that sounds awfully close to Spreading Excitement All Over the World with the Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade). And I was also infected by that most terrible of melancholies, the melancholy of having extraordinary desires in an ordinary world.

Perhaps that's why I can relate to Haruhi, even if she is sometimes a cruel character (an amazon reviewer was quite disturbed by this). But her cruelty makes sense in a way, it does not stem from a cruel personality, even if she treats people poorly at times she doesn't actually purposefully mean any harm, but rather it comes from an infinite sense of energy and purpose (even if that purpose is perpetually scatterbrained (a charming feature, although sometimes it goes a bit too far and creates some akward transitions in the middle of episodes). And the energy is in the end infectious. It calls to the audience and it's hard not to respond. It also serves to bend the fabric of the show, creating a bizarre episode order (although the general idea, which is to spit up the central arc of exposition over the entire season without using the traditional bit by bit along side event of the week method is pretty ingenious). The extremeness of the characters personalities also seem to fit with this. In the end the entire series projects an intense excitement, as well as the titular melancholy.

In its quieter moments, the show conveys the desperate longing for something extraordinary in the ordinary world. This too is conveyed in the fabric of the show, as the bursts of intense supernatural activities are interspliced with scenes of the characters facing intense boredom (although the viewer is rarely shown this long enough to actually provoke boredom in himself). The fact that Haruhi is always cheated out of the real strangeness of her life by the determined efforts of those around her, adds to a certain pity for her, as her life is defined by that tension between being surrounded by the mundane and wishing passionately for the supernatural. The central arc approaches this tension with the necessary seriousness, but without ever losing its sense of humor. That made me however, sympathize with Haruhi even more, and it almost made me wish that she (unconsciously) destroyed the world to get a taste of her extraordinary.

I can't say I haven't had similar desires, a bit not that extreme. A wish for something disastrous to happen so that I might have a chance to become a hero. A wish for the entire world to be revealed as a fraud. A wish that I could stumble through the looking glass into a world of magic and never look back. I think we all feel that way sometimes, although it is usually manifested in simply a desire to run away to some different place where something so strange that it's almost supernatural might happen. But in the end we rarely run away, because there are too many people we care about, and too many people they care about, and too little solid out there to be worth risking all those relationships. And in the end, we never really want to destroy the world, because all the people we love are here.

At times it reaches slow spots, at times it jumps from topic to topic too fast even for an avid viewer, at times it is too bizarre even for me (the elaboration of the identities of the aliens, time-travelers, and ESP-ers are completely and utterly insane and make my head hurt), but there is so much energy to this anime, so much sincere effort, and characters that while at times cruel, are immensely charming in their exaggerated insanity. And it conveys so much love for supernatural mysteries that seem just right around the corner that it's hard not to become infected by it. And then it's hard not to be struck by the lack of supernatural mysteries, and then it's easy to relate to the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

All told, this anime gets an 8/10. So far at least, I hear they're coming out with a new season, which it's hard to imagine will be anything other than awesome.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!