The Pianist, TRON, JCVD, and...

This post is going to be long and full of many delicious things. Two things are responsible:

1. I forgot to post on Monday (my deepest apologies), but I had stuff to post on Monday, so I'm making up for it.

2. I'm leaving for northern California tomorrow night and won't be back until Tuesday. If I can post, I will, but it's at least as unlikely as it is possible. So this post will hopefully hold you over until next week.

First off, I felt extremely compelled to discuss my recent experience with a very great film. This is what I was primarily going to talk about on Monday: The Pianist. I had this film from Netflix for a few days before I got around to watching it, and I ultimately decided Sunday afternoon was a good spot. See, it's a Holocaust film, and I consider the subject matter somewhat sacred.

If Sundays are for emotional experiences, then it was a good decision. I cried almost all the way through. I'm not the sobbing sort, as I've mentioned before, but I'm sure my eyes weren't totally dry from about ten minutes in to about thirty minutes after.

And here's the thing--cheap sentimentality doesn't work at all for me. What's remarkable about this film is that the deep sadness it invokes is absolutely earned, and absolutely real. A great film will stand you next to its characters and help you live through them vicariously, and it will make sure that those experiences are genuine, realistic, and powerfully meaningful.

I don't want to summarize this film beyond telling you its about a pianist who lived through the Holocaust in Warsaw.

Lately, I've been obsessed with WWII, the Holocaust, and Nazi Germany. The primary impetus for this obsession has been the fact that I'm right in the middle of reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a book which I very much recommend, and which I'll probably talk much more about later.

For now, I'll move on...

...to TRON! As it turns out, there's a new film coming out next year called Tron Legacy. I've heard rumors about this for a while, but yesterday, finally, I watched the preview. Oh man oh man oh man. Seriously, you must watch this trailer, just for the sheer NEWness of what this film is going to be, visually. Very, very slick. I haven't seen the original TRON for years and years, but the film definitely left its indelible mark upon my young mind. And it is exactly the kind that deserves some heavy modernization.

Gosh golly, everyone...TRON! Ha.

Here's one more film review before I move on to the final, mystery topic of this here exhaustive post.

I recently watched JCVD, which is about, you [may or may not have] guessed it! Jean-Claude Van Damme. I saw a trailer for this film maybe a year ago, and I was immediately intrigued. I'm not a huge fan of this B-list action star, but the film was clearly not typical Van Damme.

What it really is: a post-modern story about the man himself, Jean-Claude Van Damme playing Jean Claude Van Damme. And where do we find Msr. Van Damme? Fighting custody battles in court. Knee deep in legal debt. Struggling to find real work in legitimate films.

And...caught up in an amateurish but brutal hostage situation inside of a post office.

The film is funny, scary, and unexpectedly, profoundly moving. By the end, you cannot help but fall in love with the man--in all of his dignity, shame, strength and weakness--as a real person. There is a monologue somewhere about halfway through the film in which our 'hero' describes, in a surprisingly personal way, his life. The man, not the actor, is moved to tears by what he has to say. They are tears of regret, of confusion, of lonliness, and, finally, tears of an overwhelming sense of love and comradery with people and the person who comprises them.

I loved it. I was pretty sure I'd enjoy the film, but I loved it.

**As an aside, I'm not going to talk much about ratings. Some of the films I have reviewed and will review are rated R, and I've spend some time in the past talking about the reasons for such ratings, or the reasons I chose to see the film. From now on, I'll provide links to descriptions, reviews, or trailers for films, and the rating will be apparent, but I won't promise to discuss in any detail the motivation behind those ratings. I believe very strongly that the choice of which movies we should and should not watch is personal and very important. Just because I have chosen to watch a particular film does not mean that I believe everyone should watch it. And there are certainly plenty of films close and respected friends choose to see that I choose to avoid. My only constant and unchanging advice is that you research the films about which you feel at all unsure. If the R rating is a problem for you, that should be your first consideration, and I won't put forth a lot of effort to justify any particular movie. K, end of aside.**

The last item on today's overly long dispatch is mostly a link. The post to which I just linked is an abstract and commentary on an article entitled: Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man.

This article is not a joke. It was published by the New York Times under "Science." For those of you who actively fear a cyborg revolution, well...here's some more fuel.

It's not that I don't think we already have enough to worry about. Obama proves every day that he is more willing and able than most other forces to ruin our lives, and there exist entire nations dominated by people who are passionately convinced that the eradication of America and those who live therein would be a great blessing to the world. Also, there's disease, famine, poverty, hopelessly corrupt governments, and astonishing, endless human stupidity and ignorancce.

In short, we're just about primed to be taken over by computers.

Really, though, read the article and the post. They're very interesting. (All humans must be warned.)