I’d found the book a fun read. The movie was a step down, it felt hollow, cheesy and full of clichees. I got to thinking while watching it, and naturally, I got to thinking about religion.

As usual, I came out with the conviction that religion is a farce. Not that my belief (or lack thereof) is based on a movie, or a work of fiction, but rather, on my faith in humans and their ability to form logical connections, as well as their worse talents; manipulating the ignorant masses. I’ve wasted a lot of breath on this topic, but whatever.
Christianity , let alone Islam, are merely ways to control those masses. A god wouldn’t be so needy as to request devotion from “mere humans”. On the other hand, were that the case, then there is absolutely no reason for prophets and scriptures to be a one time thing. Temptation? Testing? The search for truth, resisiting, playing hard to get? What is this, my girlfriend?!
The church categorically refuses change. Texts such as Thomas’ or Judas’ gospel, as well as others, are rejected simply because they might offer insight into new faces of J.C., and might endanger the hard-wired rules which the church uses to rule with an iron fist.

The bible’s rigidity is, in and of itself, a testament to the fact that religion is not the answer. Let’s put it this way: selective religion is pathetic. It’s a way for the weak to attach themselves to something higher, more mystical and more powerful, and to hope for life after death.

If you believe, you believe it all. That would mean that you’d have to live in previous millenia. An omniscient god, transmitting his teachings to us, would have taken progress into consideration. Or, he would send a Jesus 2.0 into the world for an update. The lack of such a thing simply supports that this whole thing is a farce. God, knowing that we are “smart” creatures, would have taken such a thing into consideration.

There are no half-measures, it’s all or nothing. The all is unconvincing. So it’s the nothing.

The movie is ridiculous, by the way. I hated casting Tom Hanks in the starring role from the start. The deep analysis and details of the book are smudged in the movie. The story is rendered into a simple ‘fun’ adventure/thriller. Bah.

Syriana: Syriana sucks. A very lame attempt at making a mind-blowing political thriller…. all it does is present some cheap cliches and over-simplify everything by making it all part of a complicated plot. Not recommended. Although, seeing George Clooney like that is fun.

Underworld: The only reason I went is for a fun time, and hot vampire chick in latex. The movie is a pop-corn flick, give it that, but there was too little latex, too few hot vampire chicks and the action wasn’t that remarkable. The first was better. Watch it only if you’re bored.

Million dollar baby: Clint Eastwood is an overrated actor, in my opinion. He’s an Ok director, and the movie is sad, to say the least, but it had a LOT of potential, and it didn’t really live up to what it could have been… clint mumbles a lot… it pisses me off. Watchable, but not up to the hype.

Rules of attraction: A little cheesy flick that tries too hard to be a cult hit. Don’t watch this. Shallow characters, silly plot(s), stupid college kids (I can call them that, now ). One main character walks around with a bottle of Jack in coat pocket… that was cool.

Igby goes down: The only cool things about this movie was that Kieran Culkin can act circles around his big brother, Jeff Goldblum plays his role marvelously, and Claire Danes is one of the few blonde (the curls…. roar) actresses that I have ever found attractive. Other than that, nah…. don’t bother watching it.

I just finished reading Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception’…. again….

“Neither agreeable nor disagreeable,” I answered. “it just is.”

And along with indifference to space there went an even more complete indifference to time. “There
seems to be plenty of it,”

However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for.

besides making me want to try mescalin,  huxley dissects the human psyche in ways i’ve never imagined before… he completely convinced me that by just slightly tilting my head, I can see a whole new world in front of me… It’s fantastic, and seriously overwhelming, to read words that you can understand, but that seem to be written on another world, a world of heightened senses and deeper perception.

A great body of literature, that again affirms my conviction… our senses can easily shape our lives if we let them… forget about the heart… the mind is a treasure chest encumbered by logic and societal norms… one day I will shed those shackles.

Carpe diem.

I’m not a fan of anti-war movie per se… I’m not a fan of the whole anti-war movement, actually. I must say, however, that Jarhead is a great movie.

It’s a fascinating dissection of the military psyche. The movie doesn’t come through as a “blockbuster”. It’s rather a quasi-indie with more depth than action, and more inner-reflection than special effects. Some of the scenes left me shivering with rage, or nodding In agreement. I have never used a combat weapon, but I could almost taste the protagonist’s fascination, anticipation, and disappointment in various phases.

It goes beyond war, and becomes more of a study in passion and dissillusionment.
It’s a well thought out movie with nice cinematography and good acting. Definitely recommended.

I had read about this somewhere, a few days before, and was wondering how to get my hands on an account (since Thursday, it’s been in invite-only beta mode…) when I read Mark’s announcement that he had invites to spare. Perfect.

Thanks to Mark, I am now a beta user over at Newsvine, a modern news portal that collects stories from well known news sources, and allows members to also type up their own news stories (to be displayed along-side the “official”, formal one). Well, it’s more than that, with a rating system similar to that of digg, user comments, providing links to articles without further reporting, your own personal column, etc. I was a regular contributor on shortnews, some time ago, and I’m still very interested in citizen journalism. I was bored with shortnews because it was somehow limited to that.

Newsvine brings in a modern internet paradigm (ok, ok, they STRESS that they’re not a regular Web2.0 company like others), but it’s very much user and service-oriented, relies on a certain level of trust, depends on user-generated content, offers several syndication alternatives, etc… Naturally, there’s still more to it than this. Tagging and categorizing content allows it to be presented intelligently, with relevant and related items near to each other. Basically, you’d have to look over it to get what I mean. Simply put, it does to online news what flickr did to merely having a page with your photos online. Sadly, you can’t. Haha.
The icing on the cake? You earn a part of the revenues made from ads on the pages holding your articles, columns or what not. A nice touch, I’d say.

Edit: Ok, my bad. I actually now have invites to give out. If you’re interested, send me an email (or just leave a comment with your email address).

Three movies, briefly.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: Sucks. The book is hilarious. The movie fails. The voiceover says it all. When you need to read sections of the book, in the movie, it’s a failure. For someone who hasn’t read the book, the movie wouldn’t make lots of sense, the plot isn’t coherent, and the characters aren’t well-developed. The effects leave a lot to be desired. The book is a rich witty, colorful work, the movie barely scrapes the surface.

Batman Begins: Surprisingly good. I went in with low expectations, too many bad batman movies for me to hope for anything good. The acting was good, the effects were fun, and I loved the way the story delved into Bruce Wayne’s character… it’s dark, grim, (necro :), and very believable, sort of. It’s no Gone With The Wind, but for an action film, it’s pretty good.

The War Of The Worlds: Great. Seriously. I don’t like the book, apart from it being avant-garde, there’s not a whole lot to it. The movie, on the other hand, was pretty good. It veered away enough from the book, to make the story interesting. I was literally on the edge of my seat for entire segments… It was scary, it was thrilling, it was real, humans were weak, and well, human… I won’t go on and on. But, like the book, the movie takes you to the brink, and leaves you hanging… Apart from that small mishap, the movie is very entertaining, very emotional, and believable. Another very entertaining movie…