Woke up feeling a lot better this morning, even though I woke up late enough to miss Bioethics.  But, you gotta take one for the team, I suppose.  On the plus side, I did get an idea for my Bioethics paper.  So good times.

It has been a good day.

I have to accept that my life currently blows.  I’m not sure I’m in denial of it.  I mean – I can acknowledge the fact that my life sucks.  I go to school, I come home from school.  I do homework.  I might write a little, read a little.  Cook something.  Go to bed.  Wake up.  Do it all over again.

It’s a cycle, and I don’t know how to break it.  Was it always this way?  I don’t know.  Memories say no.  Memories say things were different.  I don’t know.  It’s as if the darkness has grown worse and worse.  It’s so dark now I can’t tell what’s up from down.

Try to smile, but there’s no reason for it.

It’s like I’m empty.  I haven’t felt anything in a long time.  I’m trying to remember something – anything.  The only thing that comes to mind is boredom.  I remember feeling bored – because that’s what I am right now.

I know, I know.  I’ve misbehaved.  I haven’t written in two days.  But, I promise, it’s with good reason… ok, no, not really.  The only good reason I have is that I’m lazy and I haven’t brought up wordpress at all.  Which is a bad reason.  So I apologize.  Mea culpa.

Now, what I have been up to this week:

Children of Men: Good movie.  In fact, I’m willing to up that to “great” movie.  It’s a great movie not in the sense that a grand film is a great movie.  It is not, in fact, a grand film, and anyone who calls it such deserves to never see cinema in his life again.  It’s lacking too much to make it a grand film.  It is, however, a great film, because it delivers every single thing you could possibly want out of 120 minutes of entertainment: Great characters, wonderful plot, a world where you can escape to for a few hours and then safely leave behind at the end of the film; a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The basic premise of the movie is that the world’s gone to Hell in a handbasket, and England is the last great haven of civilization.  Human women have stopped giving birth.  The youngest person in the planet is 18 years and some odd months old – and the opening scene is a coffee shop playing the news of his death.  Our hero is a gruff, uncaring bastard named Theo played beautifully by Clive Owen the way Clive Owen can only play gruff, uncaring bastards.  In perhaps the best moment for the character, Theo, without batting an eyelash or bothering to even come up with an inch of emotion, tells his boss that Baby Diego’s death (Baby Diego being the aforementioned youngest person in the world) has hit him harder than he thought, and he should go work from home.  Thus we are introduced to the basic dilemma: Foreigners and immigrants are illegal and sent to concentration camps, a group of scientists called the Human Project are looking for answers to the infertility question, and England Soldiers On, despite terrorist attacks from every extremist group you can think of, and some you can’t.

Enter Theo’s ex wife and current terrorist (rebel?) leader Julian, who needs Theo to get passage papers for an illegal immigrant girl across England.  Our hero agrees, but lo and behold complications arise and Theo and Kee – that’s the immigrant girl – are caught in a complicated plot of terrorism, insurrection, and national safety.  (Kee, you see, is pregnant – no big news to anyone who’s seen the trailer.)

Chiwetel Ejiofor makes an appearance as the rebel’s second in command and (spoiler alert) villain.  His is probably the greatest role in the entire film – at the end, you don’t know whether you love him or hate him.  I understood, every step of the way, why every character was doing what he was doing.  Moreover I sympathized with all of the main characters, and could actually see myself making the decisions that they were making were I in their particular situation.  So you end up in a hazy, murky world of gray, where your One Good Man isn’t all that good, your Bad Guy isn’t all that bad, and what’s at stake is a young, confused girl who really has no idea what’s going on.  (Oh, and she’s about to pop, so better hurry.)

The movie never explains why women are infertile.  It never explains why the world went to hell (though it hints that women going infertile was a part of it.)  It doesn’t bother filling in the trappings of its existence.  And that works.  It works perfectly.  None of the characters in the movie know.  There’s no reason for them to learn the whys and wheretofores.  There’s no reason for the audience to learn the whys and wheretofores.  It just simply is.

Children of Men, at the very least, is an example of a movie made well.  It doesn’t bore the audience with unnecessary trappings.  A movie set in contemporary New York doesn’t need to explain to the audience that six years ago Something Really Bad happened – and not because everyone already knows but simply because it’s probably not necessary.  If its a movie about terrorism, you’ll mention the attacks, but you won’t go into a discussion of the political climates that led up to it.  That’s boring.  And it’s poor cinema.

The hero is also something to be admired.  He’s a pretty average Joe – no special abilities, no special training, no super karate ninja person.  He’s a guy.  He’s not good with guns – in fact, the only time he touches a gun in the whole movie he tosses it away.  He’s not a very good fighter.  He’s not especially tough.  He’s a guy, like you and me, put in a fucked up situation.  When his feet get cut up, he spends the rest of the film limping.  He’s not Rambo – he is, in fact, the anti-Rambo.

Which is compelling.  And it’s good.  And it worked.

I love Young Frankenstein.  That is all.  Just Frankenstein.

The only thing that’s amusing about the State of the Union address is the rising and falling of Congressmen and invitees as they go about their standing ovations.  It’s kind of funny – “And now the left side of the room rises… good, and now the right… people in the center, give me your loudest!”

Also, did anyone else think Condoleeza Rice looked a bit like an angry bulldog?