dollop of solipsism

dollop of solipsism will be on hiatus until after february 6th, 2008. i will be in seoul for 10 or so days driving myself, and my mother, crazy. or at least, that’s the plan.

i am posting some long-ass ‘essays’ i’ve written on my facebook account to make up for the ‘hiatus.’

so long.

william fidgets in the confines of the plush velour couch. he hates velour.

no, strike that. he doesn’t hate velour. he hates his shrink. or he thinks he hates his shrink.

he finally settles by folding his legs in and hunching like an anorexic model so that his contorted self dwarfs within the ginormousness of the couch; for the couch has to accomodate small, medium, and large sized people. it is texas, after all.

shrink
so what’s on your mind this week?

william
nothing terribly much…not much.

shrink
is there anything you’d like to focus on for
this session?

beat.

william
i feel aged.

shrink
why do you think that is?

william
i read this short story by alice munro called
‘powers’ and in it, there’s a character named ollie
and he talks about how when he was young, his
thoughts existed within this box…this way of thinking
that went something like, ‘you have to make your life
important and great.’ but eventually, you’ll hit a certain
age and you just step outside the box and accept that
perhaps your life isn’t going to be so important or
great. i turn 26 this year. and i feel arrested.

he feels a bit embarrassed by this reveal.

shrink
i guess the important question would be: what
do you think importance and greatness means?

no shit, genius.

he imagines the grave he’s just made.

william
it means i get to say the oscar speech i’ve been
rehearsing for ten years.

his face warms and turns pinkish.

shrink
(blankly)
you can say the speech right now.

he’s decided he hates her and not the velour couch or himself for paying the ridiculous fee to speak to the bitch.

william
i’d like to thank…

last week, i didn’t have to teach at school. i had this gap of nothingness between the hours of 5pm-10pm. i could fill it up with something productive, but mostly, i spent these hours indulging in my idiosyncrasies—watching movies, absorbing random topics on wikipedia, spending hours on msn’s scrabble blast!, reading, stretching, eating korean ice cream bars, cleaning, looking at myself in the mirror, and so on.

the exorcism of emily rose was on my computer. i found the english subs online, which was great because i prefer to watch movies with subtitles (and i watch tv shows with the captions turned on). i turned out the lights because i didn’t want to see my reflection in the black bars of the computer screen. i didn’t know what to expect, really. i remember when emily rose came out a few years back, it did surprisingly well at the box office. and i love laura linney (i met her once—she is so gracious and so nice—can’t wait to see the savages). and it’s a ’scary’ movie, which is something i enjoy.

the movie starts. it’s a courtroom drama. boo. there’s no humour. blah. it’s about religion. jesus.

despite all those things, i did like the movie. i’m not a religious person, but i’m not anti-religious people. some of my best friends belong to religious organizations. i’m an open-minded person when it comes to beliefs, because i don’t want to dismiss the possibility of something that exists that is bigger than myself. i believe in cosmic forces. i believe in astrology. i believe in karma. i believe in kismet. i believe in dimensions. i believe in ghosts. i believe in these things because no one has proven that these things don’t exist. they are possible; and that’s what the exoricism of emily rose is about: the possibility that demons (six, to be specific!) can enter and inhabit the body of a young woman, a very tall, skinny young woman who should’ve pursued a modeling career.

but does the exorcism of emily rose work as a good movie, minus all the religious stuff? i will say that it’s quite effective. the scenes with laura linney in her apartment alone are spooky. the exorcism sequence at the end is ridiculous, harrowing, and uncomfortable to watch (which is a positive). i had to stop multiple times to take a breather. thus, i believe the movie is an effective horror movie. campbell as the prosecutor is a bit annoying, and colm feore as laura linney’s boss is insufferable. the climax, though, is a bit anticlimactic…so emily wanted the priest to share her story? she was a martyr? and she just wanted people to know that demons exist? i don’t buy that. her story should’ve been more compelling; more meaningful.

a day or two after the exorcism of emily rose, i decided to finally watch the da vinci code. there’s been so much hoopla about the book and movie, and i’m slightly proud that i knew nothing about the book or the movie. i tend to be a few years behind when it comes to hype and phenomena. harry potter? didn’t started reading it until after the second movie was released. titanic? never saw it in a theatre. the macarena? just started doing it at home. so me watching the da vinci code now makes sense.

i love art history; i know stuff. the movie…i find the da vinci code to be long, heavy, and didactic. i’ve read reviews that claim the book is highly unadaptable, and it shows. that lecture tom hanks gives audrey tautou in the prostitute park is minutes of words being spoken (confusing words). i had to wonder if tom hanks actually had any clue as to what he was saying (probably yes, because he’s an amazing actor). that lecture on the last supper and mary magdalene ian mckellen gives? fascinating, but still, just words. there are things a novel can do that a movie can never do, and one of them is going into a religious, historical discourse that goes on for minutes. that arduous, preachy passage in a portrait of the artist as a young man? unfilmable.

i do enjoy the possibility that, as the movie sort of claims, the magisterium—i mean, the church—is all based on lies. i also see why some religious groups attacked the movie. i don’t have many opinions on christianity, just christians. and i like the ruffling of christians’ feathers. oh, and i do like the puzzle-piece aspect of the story. i loves me a puzzler.

looking at the movie itself, it works. it’s just not good. ian mckellen’s sudden personality switch at the end is incongruous. the ending is contrived. paul bettany and alfred molina (who just disappears) are annoying beyond reason. can someone tell me what dan brown’s position on religion is? to me, he seems a bit…sacrilegious. ::shrug:: i’ve always had problems with ron howard movies. he’s just a studio director. which is probably the worst thing you could call him. ron howard, youz just a studio director.

yesterday, i finished reading philip pullman’s ‘the golden compass,’ part I of his dark materials trilogy. it’s wonderfully imaginative and really complex for a children’s book, though i believe they classify the trilogy as young adult.

i LOVE the idea of daemons. LOVE. IT. after careful consideration, i’ve determined that my daemon is a male lynx named jude (upon even more consideration, i’ve changed the name to ‘chimera’). we sit around in our imaginary fireplace and banter like old biddies. he watches me sew and i watch him play with yarn.

i think lyra belacqua the character is a perfect heroine; she’s clever, spunky, and totally special. she’s going to save the world. she should be harry potter’s dark mistress. i like the idea that the aurora reveals a completely new world (dimension). i love that this world contains armoured bears, witches, tartars, etc. it’s a different world (except texas still exists (as a country!). holla!), and i admire pullman for creating it.

i do not, however, admire his literary style. the plot reminds me of an ocean’s surface. it builds, climaxes, falls, builds, climaxes, falls, builds, climaxes, and falls. the undulation of the plot makes the story overlong, disorganized, and pooey (yep, i said pooey). the reason so many people are dissatisfied with the movie is because if you take the book’s plot and film it blow-by-blow, you’d have a crappy movie. i will deconstruct later; let’s continue trashing pullman’s writing style. i would go on for paragraphs without having anything sink into my brain. i’d have to read certain paragraphs and sentences 3, 4 times to understand what he was talking about. i am not a moron. ian mcewan can hold my attention with long passages filled with beautifully written, winding sentences. here’s an excerpt of pullman’s writing and you tell me that it’s fluid and not confusing:

[Iorek Byrnison] listened, and then took the lid of a biscuit tin and deftly folded it into a small flat cylinder. [Lyra] marveled at the skill of his hands: unlike most bears, he and his kin had opposable thumb claws with which they could hold things still to work on them; and he had some innate sense of the strength and flexibility of metals which meant that he only had to lift it once or twice, flex it this way and that, and he could run a claw over it in a circle to score it for folding. He did this now, folding the sides in and in until they stood in a raised rim and then making a lid to fit it. At Lyra’s bidding he made two: one the same size as the original smokeleaf tin, and another just big enough to contain the tin itself and a quantity of hairs and bits of moss and lichen all packed down tight to smother the noise. When it was closed, it was the same size and shape as the alethiometer. (Pullman, 222)

the dude will not let go of clauses within clauses and cataloguing. by the time sentences are finished, i feel empty and pissed off. what the hell was that sentence about, now? there are worse-written passages in the book. i just didn’t want to share them. because i didn’t want to find them.

as for the message? i’m not entirely sure. parts of the book are labored with propagandistic passages: the final conversation between lyra and lord asriel, the talk between lee scoresby and serafina pekkala in the balloon are ones that stand out ::eye roll:: let me think…oh yes, dust as original sin. the magisterium doesn’t want the people to know that dust exists, labels dust as original sin, and wants to cut children from ever experiencing original sin. something like that. this world has the bible, and in this bible, adam and eve have daemons. interesting. so now, lyra has to go to the other world to prove to everyone that dust is good, and not bad. because at the end of the book, we’re still not exactly sure what dust is. sigh.

i like the sci-fi elements of the book way more than the thelogical elements. i’m not against the questioning of christian stuff (because i’m not religious); i’m just not interested in general. as an action-adventure story, the book works. i enjoyed reading it, especially part II. the ending leaves me confused and grossed out. seeing lord asriel and marisa coulter engaged in some weird love scene when roger has just died leaves me feeling grossed out. i like the characters mrs. coulter and lord asriel because they’re complex and 3-dimensional; i just don’t like what they do.

anywho, as for the movie, i like it better. and not because i saw the movie before i read the book. for a movie to work, we have to follow the protagonist (lyra). the inciting incident is that she wants to save roger from the gobblers. for the rest of the movie, she faces obstacles (mrs. coulter, her crazy evil monkey, the fly-spy, the armoured bears, and finally, the intercision center in bolvangar), meets new characters that help her in her quest to find roger (gyptians, witches, iorek byrnison, lee scoresby). chris weitz, the writer and director of the golden compass, just streamlines all the events and character appearances so that it can fit into a 2-hour movie. there are movie conventions he must follow. he’s not gonna tell us that mrs. coulter and lord asriel are lyra’s parents in the middle of the movie (like it is in the book!), or place the bear fight at the end of the movie after the burning of bolvangar (like it is in the book!)…the main story is lyra vs. the oblation board. i commend christ weitz for making a well-made, organized film with the same spirit that the book has.

i haven’t decided if i want to read books 2 and 3. will decide that later. i do hope they make the second movie…they probably won’t. nicole kidman as mrs. coulter is perfection. the girl who plays lyra is wonderful. the CGI daemons are spectacular.

in summary:

1. the exorcism of emily rose: faith is important, even if your faith is christianity.
2. the da vinci code: christians are liars.
3. the golden compass: the church will create any crazy reason to make sense of science.

2 out of 3 tell me christians are no good. and emily rose just scared me into believing in demons—christian demons. so really…what does all this tell me about christianity?

best picture 5 for 5
best director 4 for 5 (jason reitman)
best actor 4 for 5 (tommy lee jones)
best actress 3 for 5 (cate blanchett, laura linney!!!)
best supporting actor 5 for 5
best supporting actress 5 for 5

total: 26/30 (not bad)

below are my nominations predictions for the 80th annual academy awards (big 6 categories):

best picture:

• no country for old men
• atonement
• there will be blood
• juno
• michael clayton
• alternative: into the wild

best director:

• joel and ethan coen, no country for old men
• paul thomas anderson, there will be blood
• tony gilroy, michael clayton
• julian schnabel, the diving bell and the butterfly
• joe wright, atonement
• alternative: sean penn, into the wild

best actor:

• daniel day-lewis, there will be blood
• george clooney, michael clayton
• johnny depp, sweeney todd
• viggo mortensen, eastern promises
• emile hirsch, into the wild
• alternative: ryan gosling, lars and the real girl

best actress:

• julie christie, away from her
• ellen page, juno
• keira knightley, atonement
• marion cotillard, la vie en rose
• angelina jolie, a mighty heart
• alternative: laura linney, the savages

best supporting actor:

• javier bardem, no country for old men
• casey affleck, the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford
• tom wilkinson, michael clayton
• philip seymour hoffman, charlie wilson’s war
• hal holbrook, into the wild
• alternative: tommy lee jones, no country for old men

best supporting actress:

• amy ryan, gone baby gone
• cate blanchett, i’m not there
• tilda swinton, michael clayton
• saoirse ronan, atonement
• ruby dee, american gangster
• alternative: catherine keener, into the wild