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Movie Review: A.I. Artifical Intelligence (2001)
Summary:
In the near future, robots, aka “mecha,” have become the norm. They exist to serve humanity, have self-protecting pain aversion, but they do not have emotion. One research team sets out to make a robot who can love. A child robot designed to always love the parents. Monica and Henry, whose son is in a coma, try out the first prototype named David. He winds up being more than they bargained for though, and unwilling to return him to the company to be destroyed, they abandon him on the roadside. He then begins a quest for the blue fairy to become a real boy.
Review:
This movie is long, nearly 2 1/2 hours, yet I was entranced with the story for every minute. It truly addresses one of the most basic questions–what makes us human? If it is intelligence, emotion, a sense of self, then David has all that. Is he therefore worthy of love? Worthy of being treated as more than a toaster? The film leaves us with no easy answers, but it explores the question in such a creative, intriguing manner.
In addition to being wonderfully thought-provoking, the film is also well-done. The special effects are stunning for the early 2000s. Of particular note is David’s toy robot bear, who walks and talks as an individual. The make-up is done subtly, providing just a few hints at who is mecha and who orga. A slight plastic sheen to the hair, perhaps, or a lack of hair on the arms.
The film boasts an all-star cast, most notably Haley Joel Osment in the leading role and Jude Law as a sex working robot. Osment brings a stunning combination of intense creepiness and vulnerability that gives the character of David exactly the right amount of relatability and disturbing moments. Jude Law similarly displays mechanical movements while simultaneously expressing just the right amount of possible emotion passing across his face.
Given all that, I’m not sure why I didn’t love this movie in lieu of really liking it. I suspect it has something to do with the ending, which rubbed me the wrong way a bit. It just seemed….odd. Particularly in comparison to the rest of the film.
However, don’t let that detract you from seeing this movie. It is highly enjoyable and leaves you with philosophical thoughts and queries for days. I highly recommend it to fans of scifi and philosophy alike.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
Friday Fun! (Exercise and Zombies)
Hello my lovely readers! I hope you all had lovely weeks and are enjoying your Augusts. Remember that scientific studies have proven that you’re more likely to have a bad Friday the 13th if you believe in the curse, so just don’t believe it. ;-)
I’ve had a busy, but fun week. As a way to try to strategize against my anxiety until my doctor’s appointment next month (where I’m hoping to finally get some anti-anxiety meds), I’ve been seriously increasing the amount of physical activity in my week. If I’m exhausted then maybe I’ll be too tired to be anxious, eh? Well, it worked in uni anyway. So I started doing the 30 Day Shred
One of my pepper plants is blooming! But the blooms tend to wither up after one day and die. I have no idea if this means I’ll be getting peppers or not. Are the blooms supposed to whither? Anyone know?
So I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the increasing zombie trend. (If you haven’t heard much about it yet, trust me, you will be). Where is this obsession with a global pandemic coming from? I think maybe, on some level, everyone knows that the way we’re going right now isn’t sustainable. We have too many people using too many resources. A key element of a lot of the zombie lit is that it wipes out the population to a sustainable level, and the survivors are forced to return to the ways of our ancestors–growing their own food, going to sleep when it’s dark out, being physically active, etc… So people clearly know that two of the main issus are overpopulation and over-use of resources, and yet most people do little to nothing about it. What used to be a key element of our survival as a species–the instinct to reproduce as much as possible–is now our downfall. Whereas we used to lose a lot of people in childhood (seriously, as a history major I can tell you, kids were so disposable, some families named all the boys the same name because statistically only one would survive. It was that bad), now you pretty much have a really good shot at living a long, healthy life as long as you live in a western nation. And of course there’s that problem on top of the overpopulation problem. We currently have plenty of resources, but they’re unevenly distributed. I’m not saying there’s something wrong with there being some variance in the levels of comfort, but it’s so incredibly wrong that we have some people with multiple million dollar homes and an entourage they pay for and clothes that cost thousands of dollars while other people are living on the street or in dirt huts or are starving to death. And the thing is, I think everyone knows that the world is fucked up, but we’re tired and we’re beaten down, so we just figure the world is coming to an end, may as well have fun imagining it. My friends and I started talking about whether banding together to fix things was possible or if it’s just too late. One of my friends thinks it’s just too late. I’m inclined to agree with her. I think there’s just too many people who would rather live in happy ignorance than face the facts they know and make drastic changes to fix it. Of course, that’d be a lot easier if so much of the population weren’t debt slaves…., but that’s another rant for another post.
Anyway, so that’s what’s been going on here this week! Lots of physical activity and lots of philosophical discussions, lol. Oh also, I bet you’ve figured out by now that there’ll be a review of a zombie book next week. Those of you who follow me on Twitter already know which one. ;-)
What do you guys think about zombie lit? Where’s the popularity coming from?
Happy weekends!
Product Review: DeVant 4 Tier Mesh Shelf from CSN Stores
My lovely loyal readers will recall that I announced that CSN Stores offered me a free product in exchange for my honest review. Well, it arrived, and I’m excited to tell you all about it!
After pondering the possibilities for the price limit they set, I decided what I really needed was a shelf for my kitchen. Boston apartments are notorious for being cramped spaces, and much as I love mine, it seriously is lacking in cabinetry/places to put shit. My cookbooks were stacked up in messy piles under the microwave. Not the best for ready reference while cooking! Anyway, so I measured one of the narrow nooks in my kitchen, found a shelf that matched the proportions and was within budget, and ordered away. The delivery was faster than the spacing of my blog posts implies. It arrived a couple days or so after I placed the order.
It arrived in a nice, plain box. This is good because some companies have a tendency not to wrap the box in another box, and then it gets left on my porch for hours announcing to the world the free awesome stuff inside they could steal. So yay for plain packaging! Also, it was really easy to open. (My cat at this point in time was taking a brief break from rubbing her face all over the box. She REALLY loves boxes).
This is exactly how it looked right out of the box. Not too intimidating, eh? (To those wondering, at this point in time my cat was attempting to stuff her tubby self into the very narrow box. Hilarity ensued). I was a bit surprised that there was exactly one page of instructions for assembly, but it turned out to be quite easy. Anyone who has assembled Ikea furniture would find it to be a piece of cake. I had a few doubts at first that it would be at all stable, but actually once all the pieces are in place, it’s pretty darn stable. I wouldn’t go putting super-heavy things on it though. It’s not made for that.
Here it is all set-up! Later I moved it to be centered in that space. I don’t know why I had it in the corner for the picture. Who knows. Anyway, it fits the space well, and I now have two open shelves to do what I want with. I actually am enjoying using the top shelf as extra counter-top space when I’m cooking. It comes in handy.
And here’s a close-up of the cookbooks, because I know at least a few of you love shelf p*rn! It turns out I have a lot fewer cookbooks than I thought I did. I think this totally justifies me acquiring a few more when the budget allows it, don’t you? If you *must* know what books are on the shelf, from left to right:
America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, Perfect Vegetables, Vegetarian Bible, Adventures in Microwave Cooking (college), stir-fry cookbook, vegetarian cookbook (the actual names of those two elude me), Vegetarian Cooking for Dummies (from when I first went veg, it’s an *awesome* book!), Vegetables, The Little House Cookbook, Pumpkins, Vegetarian Italian Cooking, a vintage southern cooking cookbook (bday present from my dad), Nestle’s Best-Loved Cookies, and a family cookbook from my dad’s side of the family.
Hokay, back to the review! Overall, my interactions with CSN Stores were entirely pleasant. The site is easy to navigate with convenient left-bar search features such as price, size, color, etc… Many items on the site ship for free, and the shipping was *fast*. The item arrived well-packaged, and assembly was fairly easy. I do wish the shelf was a bit sturdier, but it does its job well enough, particularly for the price. Overall I would definitely recommend buying items from CSN Stores. Their prices are competitive, they have good customer service, and their products are items any home would need.
Book Review: Song of Susannah by Stephen King (Series, #6)
Summary:
The ka-tet faces three challenges: keep the chap from the Crimson King, save Susannah, and get Tower to sell them the rose. With the help of the Manni, they get the door to open two final times, and it sends Eddie and Roland to Maine to see Tower and Jake, Pere, and Oy to NYC in a final desperate attempt to save Susannah and the chap. Meanwhile, Susannah must face not only the foreign woman inside her, Mia, but also the figurative demons of her past and her personality in her mind.
Review:
There are elements of this book that are beautiful and quite literary, primarily everything to do with the title. There are of course two songs about Susannah. One is immediately evident. Each chapter ends with a stanza of a song, remarkably like the commala songs sung in the previous book, but of course the content of the stanza references what happened in that chapter. There’s also a song from Susannah’s past that winds up showing more about who she is and what her life has been than anything else in the books has done. What makes that beautiful is that it’s just a traditional folk song and wasn’t written by King for her at all.
Of course I’d consider this book a failure if all it did was develop Susannah’s character. The Dark Tower is about characters and the quest equally. Thankfully, this entry in the series addresses both. Various mysteries are addressed such as what the Low Men are, who Mia is, how Pere wound up in a book from another one of the worlds, and more. Plus a few new mysteries are added. But in the end the main questions remain: will the ka-tet make it to the Dark Tower and will the Dark Tower fall?
In spite of the well-written action sequences and character development, there is one aspect of this book that rubbed me the wrong way. King writes himself in as a character, but not just any character. He is the Crimson King’s opposite. In other words, he’s the essential good guy. For some reason when he writes his stories they have an impact on the worlds, so he must stay alive and keep writing the Dark Tower series if the ka-tet is to have any hope. The whole thing just reads as egotistical. Plus it forced me out of the story. I can suspend my disbelief for other worlds, but to suspend it enough to believe that the author is not only vaguely aware of these worlds but also his writing impacts them, well, it leaves you going “huh?” and kind of takes the escapism out of it. So I skimmed over the parts featuring King and tried to just focus on the ka-tet. It wasn’t that hard to do, so the King bits definitely didn’t ruin my experience; they just dulled it a bit.
Overall, this is a very good entry into the series. The characters and the plot move forward, and there are some wonderfully memorable scenes that will stick with you for a long time. If you’ve stuck with the series and enjoyed it this far, you’ll definitely enjoy this book.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Borrowed
Previous Books in Series:
The Gunslinger, review
The Drawing of the Three, review
The Waste Lands, review
Wizard and Glass, review
Wolves of the Calla, review
Book Review: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Summary:
Late at night at a party, a gentleman offers to read a ghost story. He claims this story occurred to a woman he knows personally. The narrative then switches to the governess’s voice, and she tells of going to work at her first job as a governess caring for an absent uncle’s nephew and niece. Upon arriving there, she discovers that the property is haunted by the ghosts of the former governess and her lover….or is it?
Review:
I loved the prologue about the party. It’s full of clearly intelligent and world-wise people, which is rare of the Victorian era. I was then disappointed when it switched to the governess’s voice. She is painfully innocent and frankly annoying. She frequently waxes lyrical about how simply delightful and angelic the children are to an extent that it made me sick to my stomach. I frankly would have given up on the story if it wasn’t for the fact that it was my audiobook download, the reader had a pleasant voice, and it’s very short, so I figured, why not finish it? I now am glad I did.
Upon arriving at the end, I found myself wondering if I’d missed something, as I was a bit confused about what happened, and my mind does wander sometimes when listening to an audiobook. Since it’s a classic, I decided to look a bit at the literature guides online just as I would have gone into lecture in university excited to hear what a professor had to say about a work that I found confusing. Well, lo and behold, apparently critics have had two distinct opinions on what exactly happens in the story pretty much since the day it was published. I don’t think it’s a plot spoiler to say that James intentionally wrote it as ambiguous as to whether the ghosts actually exist or the governess is insane. It can either be read as a straight-up ghost story with some sexual innuendos or as a commentary on the ill effects of the tight-laced Victorian culture on women. That’s kind of cool, and for the record, I prefer the insane governess reading of the story, as I think that’s actually more creepy than the ghosts.
After reading the commentary and about James’ opinions in general, I realized that James probably found the governess as annoying as I did. I enjoyed the prologue, and the prologue was a reflection of James and his friends. This makes so much sense now! I am certain if I had approached this book with the knowledge of James’ criticisms of Victorian society that I would have enjoyed it much more than I did approaching it as a straight-up traditional ghost story.
Overall, this is a story that will be best enjoyed by readers who thrill to the challenge of ambiguous tales and who are critical of Victorian era mores and norms. It is not exactly the right fit for readers looking for a traditional ghost story, however. I also feel it necessary to add that I believe this story is not ideally suited to being an audiobook. Due to the ambiguity, certain passages lend themselves to a desire to be re-read that is not so easily pulled-off when being listened to.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Librivox recording via the Audiobooks app for the iTouch, iPhone, and iPad
Friday Fun! (Being in Your 20s)
Hello my lovely readers! Sorry for the relatively small number of posts this week, but I do hope you enjoyed them! Things will be back up to snuff next week. I’ll have at least two book reviews plus my very first product review for you all in spite of the fact that I have a rather large homework assignment due next week. Yay!
Last weekend was pleasantly relaxing. I went shopping with one of my friends, primarily for shoes, as I tend to wear through mine like nobody’s business. I blame the large amount of walking that’s necessary when you live in city. I also saw Dinner for Schmucks (definitely worth the ticket price) and had Thai food. Yum, Thai food!
Last night I was hanging out with two of my friends and we got to talking about our experience with being in our 20s so far. We all started our 20s highly idealistic and determined to change the world (samples: hippie tendencies, tv is evil mentality, save the planet, etc…) only to now have fizzled a bit on that. We got out of university and encountered the real world and the real world kind of beat down on our aspirations. Now we don’t want to save the world; we just want to be happy. I’m wondering if the next phase of our 20s will be some sort of moderation between the two: helping the world but striving for personal happiness and improvement simultaneously. That sounds like a happy medium to me, but I guess we’ll see. Anyone currently in their 20s or someone older who wants to reminisce on the experience? I think it’d be interesting to hear.
I hope you all have lovely weekends! Anyone have any special plans?
Movie Review: Shrooms (2006)
Summary:
Five Americans–two straight couples and one single gal–go to Ireland with two sole purposes: take shrooms and land their Irish pal as a boyfriend for the single gal. Their friend takes them into the forest and aids them in gathering the shrooms. As they are making the tea, the Irishman tells them the tale of the Black Brother and the Lonely Twin, an evil priest and the boy he tortured at a now abandoned school for troubled youth nearby. As the night wears on the next day comes, the friends are left wondering if the horrors they are now seeing are the result of an open portal to the supernatural or just a bad trip.
Review:
This was a fun twist on the slasher flick norms, obviously not too heavy on characterizations as I can’t remember most of the character’s names. I do know the annoying jock guy was named Bluto, because that’s just a hilarious name. Anyway, the story is told from the perspective of the member of the group who ate a bad shroom and is now having premonitions about people’s deaths. That part is rather like Final Destination
The Black Brother is deliciously creepy. He alternates between moving on what appear to be broken feet, floating, and crawling down from the trees. His face is always obscured by his monk-like robe. The cinematography is pretty good for a B-level horror flick. The premonition and supernatural bits are just wobbly enough to give the viewer a bit of a high feeling themselves without being too distracting from the story.
The acting is typical of what you find in B level movies. The actors all have their shrieking down to a science. They’re good at being scared, which is all that really matters. Unfortunately, the actor who plays the Irish guy is completely incapable of an Irish accent and manages to just sound British the entire time. That’s a bit distracting, but oh well.
There is one scene early in the movie that sold it to me right away as a slightly laughable but still creepy slasher flick. It involves a hallucinated cow who warns Bluto that he’s about to become a “dead fucker.” I mean, a creepy talking cow? Total B-movie win!
What really moved Shrooms
If you enjoy B-level slasher flicks with a sense of humor, such as Final Destination
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
Book Review: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Summary:
Lauren is an empath. She feels other people’s pain as intensely as they do. She lives near Los Angeles in the near future in a walled community. The gap between rich and poor has increased to an extent that being street poor is the norm. Lauren’s community is one of the few “middle-class” ones left. In the confines of the walls, this preacher’s daughter starts to come up with her own religion that she calls Earthseed. She gets the chance to put it to the test when their walled community is destroyed, and she a few survivors strike north, hoping to find better land and jobs.
Review:
A lot of dystopian novels clearly establish a believable dystopian society, but struggle with characterization. This was interesting in that it was the opposite. Butler establishes multiple, easily distinguished characters, both sympathetic and non-sympathetic. Lauren in particular is believable and understandable in spite of the fact that she’s essentially starting a cult. Lauren’s inner life is eloquently drawn out in such a way that her actions are almost entirely understandable to the reader, even when they aren’t to the people around her.
On the other hand, the dystopian society was not well drawn-out. In spite of the fact that the older generations were all around when the shit hit the fan in American society, not a single one of them even attempts to explain why everything started to go wrong. We get one glimpse of the world between the early 1990s and the US 30 years later in which the book takes place, and that isn’t really enough to establish how the dystopia occurred. The how isn’t necessarily necessary for stories that take place far into the future, but 30 years isn’t very far off. It’s reasonable to expect a bit of an explanation for how society fell so drastically apart.
The sections where Lauren discusses her Earthseed beliefs are pleasant to read, but there’s nothing earth-shattering about them. They’re basically The Secret mixed with Buddhism mixed with Deism. There was nothing that made me stop and think about my own world-view. A character does address a similar criticism to Lauren about Earthseed, but she only admits to being “influenced” by eastern philosophy. Similarly, she won’t admit to creating her own religion. She insists she just found it. Whether Butler sides with the critical character or Lauren, I still would rather that the reader saw something appealing in Earthseed, since so many characters do end up clinging to it. It makes the whole situation a bit less believable.
There is a relationship in the book between a teenage girl and a man old enough to be her father. It is presented as a bit odd, yet positive. Honestly, the whole thing made me squeamish. It might not have if I hadn’t found the older male character creepy from the instant he was introduced. I’m really not sure why Butler chose to go there. It certainly has no point in this book, although it might in the sequel, Parable of the Talents
Overall, Parable of the Sower is a pleasant read, but not one that makes much of an impact. If character studies are more up your alley, and you don’t mind dystopian settings, you’ll probably enjoy this book. If you want a solidly established dystopia, you should look elsewhere, such as Brave New World
3 out of 5 stars
Source: SwapTree
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Opinions of a Wolf 