Blade Runner

I've been putting off watching Blade Runner for months. Technically, it's been in my queue for over three years, but we'll say months. Why have I put it off so long? Rumors of three hours of snail-paced plot certainly factored in. Nonetheless, I vowed to view this acclaimed science fiction film before my birthday, and a mere one hour and fifty-seven minutes later, I have this to say:

Yes, the pace was slow. Yes, I found myself confused at times and unable to figure out what exactly our hero was doing, who he was chasing, and why exactly these villains were such a threat. Then, memories of Chinatown, not so subtly referenced, and all its ambiguity popped into my head. Despite all its plodding, Blade Runner did give me some valuable hints into how to make complex characters: Deckard's piano, the spider outside the window in Rachel's memory, and Sebastian's Methuselah's Syndrome prohibiting him from going into space.

Of course, let's not forget the set design. The opening vistas of Los Angeles, nine years hence, with the accompanying synthesized soundtrack, and the eerie spotlights that penetrated every corner of the character's lives prove nothing short of majestic. In short, visually, it was a treat.

Ultimately, I give it three stars, based on whether I'd be in a hurry to watch it again. The production value is great, and the soundtrack may be worth downloading, but there are other slow movies that I've found more engrossing, with characters that I cared about more, and a plot that kept me intrigued. Check it out just to say you've seen it. It may come in handy one day, should you ever find yourself at the mercy of a swarm of angry sci-fi nerds.

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 5)

Further quotes that led me to think. Damn them and their intellectualism!


186: “And incidentally: a pessimist, one who denies God and the world but comes to a stop before morality—who affirms morality and plays the flute—the laede neminem morality— what? Is that really—a pessimist?”


189: “Industrious races find it very troublesome to endure leisure; it was a masterpiece of English instinct to make the Sabbath so holy and so boring that the English began unconsciously to lust again for their work- and week-day.”


192: “Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page—rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and ‘guesses’ at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words—just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us simply to improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its ‘inventors.’ All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are—accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows."


193: "What we experience in dreams—assuming that we experience is often—belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced 'actually': we are richer or poorer on account of it, have one need more or less, and finally are led a little by the habits of our dreams even in broad daylight and in the most cheerful moments of our wide-awake spirit."


194: "Among helpful and charitable people one almost regularly encounters that clumsy ruse which first doctors the person to be helped—as if, for example, he 'deserved' help, required just their help, and would prove to be profoundly grateful for all help, faithful and submissive. With these fancies they dispose of the needy as of possessions, being charitable and helpful people from a desire for possessions. One finds them jealous if one crosses or anticipates them when they want to help.

"Involuntarily, parents turn children into something similar to themselves—they call that 'education.' Deep in her heart, no mother doubts that the child she has borne is her property; no father contests his right to subject it to his concepts and valuations."


199:: "Inasmuch as at all times, as long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of men (clans, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many people who obeyed, compared with the small number of those commanding— considering, then, that nothing has been exercised and cultivated better and longer among men so far than obedience—it may fairly be assumed that the need for it is now so innate in the average man, as a kind of formal conscience that commands: "thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally not do something else," in short, "thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. According to its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes upon things as a rude appetite, rather indiscriminately, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ears by someone who issues commands—parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, public opinions."

The Muppet Movie

I'm not sure whether it's a sin to have waited this long in my life to see The Muppet Movie, or Muppets: The Beginning. Nonetheless, it delivered on its entertainment claims. Completely lighthearted and whimsical, it delivered a solid hour and thirty-five minutes of eye-winking humor, adventure, and catchy songs.

While I was amazed at how the retouching and remastering kept the movie looking fresh and modern, I was rather underwhelmed with it as a whole. The characters seemed to be constantly explaining themselves and their actions (though I loved the use of the screenplay in the actual movie), and I had a hard time tracking their adventure. Maybe I've just seen too much of Miss Piggy, but I feel like she's made much more outlandish appearances in movies than in this one, minus one memorable moment when she squares off against Mel Brooks:
In any case, the highlights for me were the cameos and the songs, though the whole movie was definitely entertaining. I give it three stars, mostly because I think I can move on to other Muppet movies, but it has plenty of its own redeeming qualities, including its most eye-popping moment:

Big Bird

In So Many Words Volume 1

I actually finished Volume 1 of this project.  It's difficult to realize just how big a deal this is without taking into account that I recently learned about the "Justify" format option and how to make a Table of Contents and Index.  I sat down on Saturday morning, worked through two solid days, and had a finished project by Sunday evening.  My eyes burned, but the fact that I actually have something to show for the effort is phenomenal.  To give you an  idea of what I'm yammering about, take a look.

(excerpt from the Introduction)

"Four years ago, I faced a major transition, graduating high school and moving to a new state, a new culture, and an entirely different niche in the world of my peers. I wanted to take something along with me to keep me connected to my origins. Thus was born this project.

"Sadly, I didn‘t complete this project in time to bring it with me to college. In fact, it sat on the backburner for all four years due to more pressing priorities. It took the end of formal schooling and additional homework to complete, and now that I‘ve had a chance to look back on it, I don‘t think I could have ever appreciated the contents of this book without the experiences of the last four years.

"The works in this volume originate in the most innocent part of my life. They are, for the most part, adorable, silly, and perhaps a bit saccharine. However, the progression is what intrigues me. In the Prologue, I can see the buds of a thousand issues that would come back to bite me in adolescence, though it is also comforting to see, as I read my ultra-condescending eighth grade Valedictory speech, how much progress I have made since and how much more the coming years will bring.

"What you are about to read is a compilation of every document I have ever written that I have been able to salvage from the drawers, cabinets, basement piles and old books where they sought to hide. Many ended up in the landfill, but I have recovered my favorites. I have done my best to preserve their original flaws and charm, and I hope that in so doing, the delight I felt upon revisiting them will be contagious. Happy reading."

It's 361 pages long. It's full of pictures and irregularities. But it's awesome. This is one project I can gladly say has been smitten. Now, I just have to figure out how to make myself an affordable hard copy.

Beyond Good and Evil (Parts 2-4)

Rather than go into long, elaborate detail about my perceptions of what I have read thus far in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (translated by Walter Kaufmann), I will rather share directly some of the content that has most struck me.


25. "...beware of martyrdom!  Of suffering 'for the truth's sake!'  Even of defending yourselves!  It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrong against objections and red rags...you have to pose as protectors of truth upon earth--as though 'the truth' were such an innocuous and incompetent creature as to require protectors!"


26. "Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty, and the higher man must listen closely to every coarse or subtle cynicism, and congratulate himself when a clown without shame or a scientific satyr speaks out precisely in front of him."


30. "Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them."


39. "Nobody is very likely to consider a doctrine true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous--except perhaps the lovely 'idealists' who become effusive about the good, the true, and the beautiful and allow all kinds of motley, clumsy, and benevolent desiderata to swim around in utter confusion in their pond.  Happiness and virtue are no arguments.  But people like to forget--even sober spirits--that making unhappy and evil are no counterarguments."


40. "Whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable... A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life.  Such a concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends.  And supposing he did not want it, he would still realize some day that in spite of that a mask of him is there--and that this is well.  Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false, namely shallow, interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives."


41. "One has to test oneself to see that one is destined for independence and command--and do it at the right time.  One should not dodge one's tests, though they may be the most dangerous game one could play and are tests that are taken in the end before no witness or judge but ourselves."

"Not to remain stuck to a person--not even the most loved--every person is a prison, also a nook.  Not to remain stuck to a fatherland--not even if it suffers most and needs help most--it is less difficult to sever one's heart from a victorious fatherland.  Not to remain stuck to some pity--not even for higher men into whose rare torture and helplessness some accident allowed us to look.  Not to remain stuck to a science--even if it should lure us with the most precious finds that seem to have been saved up precisely for us.  Not to remain stuck to one's own detachment, to that voluptuous remoteness and strangeness of the bird who flees ever higher to see ever more below him--the danger of the flier.  Not to remain stuck to our own virtues and become as a whole the victim of some detail in us, such as our hospitality, which is in danger of the flier.  Not to remain stuck to our own virtues and become as a whole the victim of some detail in us, such as our hospitality, which is the danger of dangers for superior and rich souls who spend themselves lavishly, almost indifferently, and exaggerate the virtue of generosity into a vice.  One must know how to conserve oneself: the hardest test of independence."


43. "One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many.  'Good' is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it.  And how should there be a 'common good!'  The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value."


46. "From the start, the Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation."


49. "What is amazing about the religiosity of the ancient Greeks is the enormous abundance of gratitude it exudes: it is a very noble type of man that confronts nature and life in this way."

"Later, when the rabble gained the upper hand in Greece, fear became rampant in religion, too--and the ground was prepared for Christianity."


55. "Finally--what remained to be sacrificed?  At long last, did one not have to sacrifice for once whatever is comforting, holy, healing; all hope, all faith in hidden harmony, in future blisses and justices?  Didn't one have to sacrifice God himself and, from cruelty against oneself, worship the stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, the nothing?  To sacrifice God for the nothing--this paradoxical mystery of the final cruelty was reserved for the generation that is now coming up: all of us already know something of this."


76. "Under peaceful conditions, a warlike man sets upon himself."


90. "Heavy, heavy-spirited people become lighter precisely through what makes others heavier, through hatred and love, and for a time they surface."


99. "The voice of disappointment: 'I listened for an echo and heard nothing but praise.'"


119. "There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day."


120. "Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up."


146. "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."


149. "What a time experiences as evil is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good—the atavism of a  more ancient ideal."


160. "One no longer loves one’s insight enough once one communicates it."

Dexter: Season Four

It was a long haul, but I've finally finished watching Season 4 of Showtime's Dexter, one of my favorite shows on the air.

For the uninitiated, here's the premise: Dexter Morgan works as a blood spatter analyst for Miami Metro PD. Then, at night, he turns to his favorite hobby: killing people, specifically other killers who have slipped through the clutches of the law. Cheery, eh? Actually, it kind of is...

Season 4 came as a much needed relief from the previous one, which frankly, was boring. Dexter's life became more complicated with the addition of a family, and the new antagonist was none other than my favorite former alien, John Lithgow, who, for all his background in comedy, reprised the role of a truly awful villain with aplomb.

The series in general has always resonated with me, not in the matter of killing, but in Dexter's total lack of understanding of normal human life. He can't hold a conversation, he spends too much time in his head, he just wants some time alone... In this season, his surprise arc is that he actually starts to want to be rid of his "Dark Passenger" and comes to genuinely value his family. From the looks of it, though, the "Dark Passenger" isn't ready to let him go just yet.

The highlights of the season are in its stakes (What will come of Dexter's steadily growing carelessness?), its acting (Yes, John Lithgow, I will play trains with you!), its unconventional approaches to relationships (I never thought I'd buy Deb and Lundy as a couple back in Season Two), and finally, its twists, which... I'll leave without parentheses.

If you haven't given Dexter a try, I highly recommend it. He'll hook you right from the start, plunge a needle into your neck, and have to facing your darkest deeds before the hour's up. I give this season five stars for its complex characters, gripping tension, and excellent twists.

Here's the trailer for Season 5. Can't wait.

Writing...

The writing section of my To Smite List is the most barbaric, because it demands hours and hours of sitting in front of the radiation screen otherwise known as a laptop monitor, begging the muse to caress me with her voluptuous bosom. For a little bit today, she did.

I'm still working on the superhero script (M on the To Smite List). Deadlines keep getting pushed back further and further, but today, for a brief moment, I had some clarity. I let the muse channel some great visual, flowing material through my fingers and onto the page. And then I sat back, took a look at it, imagined my writing group tearing it apart, realized that there was no way this scene would work, and have been unable to continue today. Looking at the next two weeks of erratic employment, I wonder how I will ever get this thing to a point where I will be happy with it. I feel that this script alone will make or break my career as a writer. No pressure, right?

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

I added Hollywood Forever Cemetery to my To-Smite List in 2006 after it appeared in a friend's Facebook photos. In a macabre way, the idea of walking around and perusing the final resting places of famous people felt like a fascinating way to spend an afternoon. Well, yesterday afternoon, I finally got my chance.
Normally, when hosting an international traveler, one does not pick a cemetery as the entertainment destination of the day. However, when the visitor is your brother, who has just got himself a new camera and is feeling rather indecisive about what to do, cemetery ho!
I won't give the bit-by-bit details of every tombstone and name label we saw, but what struck me most about this historical place was that, despite being a repository for the dead, it was still being created. Death dates ranged from the 1930s to last year, and there were still blank spots in the mausoleum waiting to be filled. It's strange to think of a place like this as being incomplete.
The variety of tombstones also caught my eye, as well as their being designated into sections by ethnicity: Armenian, Russian, Thai, Celebrity. The Armenian ones in particular, with the photorealistic faces of the formerly living, etched into their reflective fronts. From an anthropological perspective, it would be tremendously useful; from a regular Joe's perspective, a little creepy. There were a few that did not quite capture their occupants' best side, and indeed, what a sad, sad thing to have a mug shot on one's final resting place.
All in all, I thought this cemetery was absolutely beautiful: well-kept, well-landscaped, and surprisingly full of life: squirrels, ducks, swans, and peafowl. And oh, were there crows. My brother commented that if a murder of crows is an omen of death, then clearly they picked the wrong place to warn anyone. Despite crossing this off my To-Smite List for having explored it, I think I would like to go back and explore a little more, or even attend one of the much-acclaimed monthly screenings of The Room. Should you find with a little extra free time around 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard, by all means, check out Hollywood Cemetery.