Human Relationships

It occurs to me now that up until now this blog has been centered around movie critiques. well how about a change of pace? lets talk a little bit about relationship philosophy! Those of you whom know me well know that recently me and my long term girl friend have broken up. Fear not, this is not some emo attempt to write away any and all feelings I have for her through a pineing if only column. No this and subsequent events have brought the the subject of relationships to the front of my mind and it occurred to me that i should get my thoughts down whilst they were still fresh.

Humans seem to be the only known beings whom can not seem to agree on our own mating habits. We cannot seem to to decide individually, much less as a species. Everything else in the animal kingdom is ether monogamous, or seems to be only obsessed with single encounter which will perpetuate the the gene pool in a lust which is the closest thing to emotion other than fear they will ever seem to have. Why is it that we as beings have such a widespread spectrum that ranges as far if not farther than the absolutes of the animal kingdom? In fact not only do we go so far as to stop our conception and purely mate for sexual gratification, but we also on the flip side are willing to give up everything that we are and will ever be and forsake all others for one single individual. What is it that brought us to this stage? Simply put it is our minds. Since we have crawled out of the perveribal tree we have found our selves try to out think our world. The more we thought, the more we were able to invent and avoid trivial things such as fighting for our survival. The less time we spent on survival the more time we spent just sitting there contemplating things much as i am doing now. It has broght us to terms in our existance that could are in most cases debatably true or not (that is another blog entirely).

Perhaps the concept which is most pertinent to this post, that was raised by this unique talent of humans is love. What is love? is it purely a euphoric sense we get from hormones for happening to be with some one? is it some deep energy connection we manage to create when two souls meet and truly understand one another? Try as we might no one on this planet knows this answer, they say they do and proclaim themselves correct. The fact of the matter is that no matter how sure some one is on the subject there is a way to shake them to their core belief system. Faithful monogamists can become bitter and harden philanders. The most shallow and amorous amongst us can be turned into die hard romanticists. I myself have bounced between the two concepts numerous times and upon each transition have thought that I had found the true path to happiness. Contemplating these situations have lead me to only one logical conclusion.

If I may barrow from the eastern philosophies for a moment i believe the solution to the human emotion problem is that of the middle way. There must be some kind of balance between the two. Do what you feel you must at any point in time. If you manage to feel that coveted and ever so longed for emotional connection absolutely make a commitment to be with that person as long as you want to. If it feels right to have a lust filled encounter with some one whom you have never met before much less know their name then by all means dive right in. But whatever you do do not let your self become trapped into the cycle of ether purely for the cycle or some misplaced ideal about human nature. If you are to be with one person and only one person, then make sure it is because you truly love that person and not because you simply do not want to be out of your comfort zone. On goes their now miserable lives because they will not do the right thing and not let the other go and fine some one else they might have a connection with. The flip side is just as irritating. The perpetual single person whom refuses to let any one get close to them because the seem to think they have human nature figured out. All this achieves is to stop those who may care about them the most from becoming some one who is truly special in their life and experiencing the joy of having a soul mate.

Please understand that in all of this I aim for two things, being fair to your self and to other people. I in no way condone infidelity, or speaking miss truth to some one and using them for sexual release by promising them more than your willing to commit. Do what makes you happy while doing what you can to make the people your involving happy as well. a fine trick to master I know, and not always possible but if you work at it you should be able to come close. If faced with a hard decision, go with your gut do what you feel is right. Either way you go remember to be safe in everything you do (particularly for STDs and children, make sure your ready for ether). If you chose a steady relationship I think that the sitcom Scrubs said it best with the message of " People who are right for each other wade through the same crap as everyone else, but the difference is that at the end of the day one of them will stand up for the relationship and fight for it." If your not willing to fight for it then please let it go. Alternatively if you find your self next to your next emotionless partner and you find something lacking afterward, please consider becoming more to some one.

Let your self feel what you feel, do not suppress whatever the emotion is. Become what you feel like you need to be. Let the truth of a situation shine through. And no matter what do what feels right.

The Joke is on Me

Spoiler alert: Small amounts of spoiler for The Dark Knight.

It was about three years ago when me and my friends were first astounded by Batman Begins.
It had managed to take a dieing movie franchise and turn it completely around and turn it into an excellent piece of film. Eagerly snapping up every clue to a sequel we could we were again surprised at the ending scene in which James Gordon sets Batman upon the Joker case. " They want to redo The Joker?"we asked each other in disbelief. "But Jack Nicholson is The Joker, who could possibly live up to his standard!" Alas many months ago we found our selves in an irritated disbelief once again as they began letting out whom they had picked for what roles in the eagerly awaited sequel. "Heath Ledger!?" we asked out loud in disgruntled voices, how in the world was a actor who had thus far made his name by mockeries of medieval history , reinterpreting Shakespeare , and being a cowboy exploring his homosexuality (sadly with out pudding). supposed to play debatable the most evil, flavorful, and beloved villain in the whole DC universe (if not the entirety of all comics). Not only that but how is he supposed to live up to the expectations set forth by the last man to play the Joker! With all out skepticism firmly in place we knew that the young man had talent and that he did in fact have a small chance at succeeding in such a demanding role, basically our only hope was that he did not "mess it up to badly."

The months passed and we found our selves with tasty tidbits here and there, such as a side shot of the Joker's makeup or a glimpse of the Bat Bike, we were becoming both more and more excited and more and more skeptical at the same time. Standards are a odd little things we posses, have you ever notices how sequels seem to suck 90 % of the time? It is because we are consistently comparing them to the original in every aspect, after all I'm sure you have herd the phrase "It was okay but no where near as good as the original" The Dark Knight could have very well have been ruined for us because of our expectations. We could have built them up so impossibly high that no movie ever made could have surpassed them. In fact we did, the standards were so astronomically high that we even recognized it and came to worrisome conclusion that Batman Begins had in fact set its bar to high.

Armed with a prior knowledge of the characters, of the actors, as well as our own expectation level we filed into the theater last Thursday with the thought that we would most likely be disappointed in this movie. And it looks like the joke was on us. The Dark Knight has again risen the proverbial bar far past its predecessor. It is the BEST Batman movie to date, It is the BEST movie this year, it is the BEST comic book movie to date, and as far as this author is concerned it enters the highly debatable field of one of the GREATEST movies of all time. High praise, but as I have yet to find a single person who did not at least like the movie if not love it i think it deserves it. But to what dose this movie owe its greatness? All of the actors did a great job in their respective parts, and I'm sure the director had a small hand in it as well :: winks::, but one person stands out beyond all the others in this cinematic masterpiece, one person is what bumped this movie from great to an almost indescribable level of amazing. Heath Ledger, the man I am ashamed to say I underestimated gave what I consider the performance of his all to short life.

Ledger managed to capture everything that is the The Joker and made it his own, everything about him in this movie was so deliciously, wonderfully, hilariously Evil. He exudes the sense of maniacal psychosis combined with a genius intellect in every minuscule thing he did. I can not think of any one else who could manage to fill the audience with fear, horror, and Laughter all at the same time. Mr. Ledger if there is in a life after this one, and for some reason it allows you to hear and or read the words from this one, and for some reason you ever read mine here, please accept my whole hearten apology for doubting you so much. Even though it is not common practice for the dead to be able to win an Oscar let it be known that Ledger deserves it for this role, it is hard for me to imagine any party who would deserve it more, that being said most of this post is about me being pleasantly surprised now isn't it?

Unfortunately nothing is perfect and even a movie as wonder filled as this one had a couple of minor ones. The first is a bit insubstantial, once again I feel my self worried that it was to good, and that no other Batman movie or villain after this will be able to live up to those seen in The Dark Knight, but all I can do is cross my fingers and hope that I am again proven wrong. The second problem is a bit more concrete, it did suffer from some pacing problems.It felt long ( which it was at 2 and a half hours), mostly because there were about three areas of the movie that seemed to have the feel of an ending. Personally it felt as if they had shot enough footage for two movies, then after Ledgers untimely death they decided to combine them into one. If I were the one directing/editing the movie, I would have edited out the whole sequence where Twoface goes on his murder spree and used that as the opening to the next movie, thus having a great villain in place already and cutting down on the time and beat issues in the current masterpiece.

Now that the minor gripes I had with it are out of the way, I highly recommend every one who can go out and see this movie as soon as they can, it is an experience to be had in the theaters! But if you have small children I do not recommend taking them unless you really want them to have a latent phobia of clowns.

Comic Interconnetion on screen it has finaly come to be!

SPOILER ALERT, INCLUDES MARVEL SPOILERS OF ALL KINDS

Many a Marvel fan has been disappointed by the string of ether bad or only on par movies which their beloved company has been allowing to see the light of day. X3 was generally bad on so many levels that it is hard to determine where to start, Fantastic Four 2 garnered about as much respect as its predecessor ( which unfortunately will be just enough to make them want to release another one) and Spiderman 3 pales in comparison to its first two counterparts. Why do these all of these movies have such and epic fail rate amongst the ones who the production company should have striven the most to impress? At least one of the reasons has got to be that here we come to second and third generation of a movie and they don't seem to even HINT at the shared continuity that most Marvel comics have.

Thats right, for those of you who do not know; weather you be some one new to comics, a DC fan-boy (or more aptly put living under a big shinny red cape) Marvel has a shared continuity. What this means is that characters stories can cross over and really affect what is happening (unlike DC continuity which is famed for having super boy punch reality), and that huge cataclysmic events that affect the whole world affect every one! for example
the how the recent Mavel Civil War pitted all the superheros against each other, or more recently :: shudders:: the Umpteenth Skrull Invasion that is under way right now.

Ah but back to the subject at hand, the lack of that shared continuity in the movies. Finally there is a few rays of jubilant hope that they will in fact eventually bring the whole of the marvel universe together in the epic fashion which it deserves. This summers first major block buster Iron Man shows many levels of great promise for the future. The last scene makes a promis that from all appearances at the moment will be filled. in it Nick Fury (THANK THE GODS THAT HE IS NOT BEING REPRIZED BY THE ORIGINAL ACTOR) breaks into Tony Stark's house and informs him that he is not the only superhero in the world, and asks if he has and experience with The Avenger initiative . Now many people might just shun this off to the side as a nice quip to end the movie on, however there is other evidence that supports my hopes. In the up coming Incredible Hulk movie ( which should be better than their last attempt since Ed Norton unlike Eric Banna has prove many times over that he could in fact act his way out of a paper bag) we see Robert Downy Jr. to make an appearance as Tony Stark (Heres hoping the Hulk buster suite will appear with him). Additionally with the Captain America movie title being changed to The First Avenger: Captain America, and with Thor the last major member of the legendary super team slated to get his movie in 2009 it is a sure be that some time around 2012 we will have our selves an avengers movie.

But the The Avengers are not the only super heroes whom seem to be making a nod to the shared universe. The most recent installment in the x-men series X-Men Origins: Wolverine has perhaps one of the greatest heroes ( in a very loose sense of the word) of all time ever Deadpool portrayed by Ryan Renyolds. This cross over to another comic book ( albeit slight since Deadpool's origins are part of Wolverine's) helps show Marvels willingness to make the leap into shared universe.

All in all the future looks bright for the genre of comic book movies hopefully these trends will be maintained

Sewing together a new monster from film and pieaces of an old classic.

Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein dose not simply butcher the old tail which has influenced numerous bits of culture, but it reinvents it. All the changes and liberties it takes are not only designed to expand upon the plot but also as a reference to earlier works in cinema history.

The mediums of story telling themselves necessitates certain different focuses, after all it is very hard to spend much of a book dealing with scientific concepts that would seem dry on page, but which when portrayed in a cinema are visually grabbing and perhaps even exhilarating. The whole process of creating the monster which was skipped over in about a paragraph in the book was expansively and graphically shown in the movie.

Two of the biggest changes in the plot were the death of Victors mentor and the use of his brain in the experiment, as well as the reanimation of Elizabeth coupled with the creation of the second monster. The former can be seen as a bit of a throw back to the film legend Frankenstein where the monster's brain originally intended to be that of Dr. Frankensteins former teacher Dr. Waldman. The latter is a throw back mostly to The Bride of Frankenstein which actually did show the animation of a second monster which would become the bride of the monster had she not rejected him and the destruction of the laboratory and mansion followed. These throw backs to the classic interpretations of the great story not only help comfort those whom are accustom to only these visions, but allows Branagh the same opportunities that Shelley her self took advantage of during her writing with her constant reference to Paradise Lost and other great literature.

Additionally the combination of these and other liberties taken with the plot allow for a more passion filled and better understanding of the message being delivered of both tellings. where the book seemed dull and wooden the movie allowed for real connection with the characters and the emotions they felt. Where the book was unable to establish a truly fanatic tone the movie was able to create a feeling of intense urgency, regret, and foreboding. Where the book had to specifically state connections between character the movie could show and be more subtle.

This is one of the few movies in history that in this authors book will go down under the category of " Better than the book" because it is so much better at conveying to story and messages of a classic.

And so it begins

Welcome to the medium in which you can see brief glimpses in the workings of consciousness which currently inhabits the pile of flesh many know as Uriah...