STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS by J.J. Abrams

It wasn't until the classic orchestral soundtrack blasted out of the black silence in the movie theatre as the yellow text began to scroll into deep space that I realized how truly revolutionary and significant this cinematic experience was about to be for me. Of course the original trilogy came out before I was born, and then the prequels were released well before I was old enough to appreciate the history of cinema, or consciously appreciate cinema itself really. This was the first Star Wars film I had ever seen in the theaters, had ever seen through its release. I was never a Star Wars fan, really. But sitting in the theatre as the Star Wars theme blasted through speakers, I felt what a historical monument it was. And what it was continuing to be with this film.

Is it enough to say, I absolutely loved it?!

This film was awesome as all hell!! The fighting was bomb, the sound was fantastic, the chemistry between the actors was brilliant, and this was probably my favorite narrative episode of the entire franchise. The plot borrows heavily from the previous films but I liked it. It was like a homage to the story that started it all.

Rey is such a badass. She's all of the skills and powers of the original trio in one. She's a pilot, an engineer, a fighter, and an untapped jedi of massive power. Daisy Ridley, who plays her, has a strikingly similar voice and face to Keira Knightley, another veteran of the Star Wars franchise. Finn was adorable and great! John Boyega I think really had a lot to do with why Finn was such a lovable character. His delivery and passion breathed humor into the film and his portrayal of Finn highlighted Finn's innocence, his human fear, and his human compassion.

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**Review Continues with Spoilers Below**

Finn and Rey's relationship is really special. They are both totally alone and I love how desperate he is to stay together with her. Their relationship is very intense, but not very romantic. I feel that this is because Finn is like someone who's just been born, he has no identity and no family. When he meets her, he fights very hard to keep her in his life. He runs full out to try to save her from abduction even though there's no way he could have possibly made it in time. There's a war going on but he instigates a plan of attack, returning to the First Order, solely for the purpose of rescuing Rey. He doesn't know how to fight with a lightsaber, but he battles Kylo Ren in an attempt to save her. And she saves him, too, but more often than not they save each other through team work, which is the best part!

Finn has a similar relationship with Poe, though they don't get very much screen time. Their bromance is much gushed over. I think what's at the heart of both of these relationships is Finn's transparent eagerness to show his affection. As articulated exceedingly well in this article, "Finn, kidnapped at birth and raised to obey people without any relationship to them, is starved for human contact, and especially for affection. His tendency to cling to Rey and throw enamored looks at Poe is...because they're the first people who've treated him as a fellow human being."

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To be honest, I think I'll have to wait for episode VIII to say anything much about Poe himself. He didn't really do a whole lot in this film and I hope we get more of him later. I assume he'll fill the Han Solo shaped hole as a dashing knight and handsomely confident leader figure.

I do actually like Kylo Ren as a villain. I love how Adam Driver and the writers were able to clearly articulate his conflict between the light and the dark side. His internal battle is reminiscent of a holy man's battle between sin and vice, except if you equated the light side with vice and sin and the dark side with righteousness and virtue. His pull to the light side is something he acknowledges and feels is a damnable temptation, the way someone tries to fight against their addictions. When he asks Han Solo for help to do the difficult thing he knows he must do, I knew exactly what was going to happen. He spoke like someone who was fighting hard to do the right thing. This indicates it was difficult for him to kill Han Solo, but he was acting in his deepest convictions.

Tom Hiddleston in an interview about his Marvel character Loki said that all villains believe that they are the hero of their story. I think that applies to Ren. However, comparing Loki with Kylo Ren, Loki had to constantly justify himself. He knew it was a grey area and he understood why others didn't see things his way. Kylo Ren is different. He is acting from a personal belief of what is right, not veiled narcissism or machiavellian power plays. I find him fascinating!

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BBC Television's LUTHER: Episode One Reflections

Preliminary summary of the show. Idris Elba plays a london detective with a few anger issues. His wife is separating from him and he is returned to work after a ethically questionable interrogation of a pedophiliac serial killer. His first case back and he's stumbled upon a very intriguing suspect. Alice Morgan, played by the lovely Ruth Wilson, is the Moriarty to his Sherlock, and it's excellent! The show itself hasn't especially impressed me in this first episode, but Ruth Wilson's character has definitely got me interested.

First of all, I love Ruth Wilson. I have had my eye on her since I saw her portrayal of Jane Eyre in the 2006 BBC miniseries (10/10 would recommend, by the way)....(Also, I just realized that was TEN years ago. Holy crap!). I knew Wilson was in this show, and I anticipated her role to be one of the standard consultant or lawyer as often appear in such procedural shows. I was puzzled, then ecstatic, to discover that she was the villain! I kept trying to convince myself that there was no way she could be.

And I have to say I'm so pleased they did this. For one, it's great that a female character isn't always portrayed as the sidekick or even as the pillar of righteousness. Her character is perverse but not in an overtly sexual way. She's unhinged but eerily normal. It makes me believe I might know an Alice Morgan in real life.

The other thing I love about it is how great of a role it must have been to play. I'm sure actors like Andrew Scott (who got to play Moriarty in the BBC series of Sherlock) and Tom Hiddleston (who played the corrupted and complex villain, Loki, in the Marvel films) had a blast portraying their respective characters as wild and unpredictable crazies. I'm glad that a female actress has been given the space to play in such a role, as they don't often get the chance.

And of course, Wilson is excellent in it.

Happy 2016!!!!

I know that I only have two followers (Hey, guys!) and that makes it all the more awkward to try to post an address to a general audience, rather than to the pals I know are most likely to view this. But in the spirit of attempting with earnest the projects I've always been too self-conscious to put out there, I'm going for it. Hopefully with more follow-through than my attempts in the past. My friend says that 2016 is going to be all about of letting go of fear. I think that's a great sentiment and I hope that it turns out to be true.

This holiday break, I've been setting aside time, not just to simply veg and relax, but to purposefully pursue the interests and projects that I necessarily put off during the semester. For me, this means to get through my two towering bookcases of beautiful novels and to crunch through my long list of films and shows, old and new, that I have yet to have the pleasure of viewing.

Film and literature are my passions. So, to me these are not just idle pursuits of leisure; I deeply care and appreciate the experiences of both mediums and the work that goes into creating them. Because of this, I also love to discuss them.

Therefore, I am now establishing this blog as a site for my opinions and reflections on any such TV show, film, webseries, and books that I feel like. I have a separate site for official book reviews at CircaBooks, but I want this to be an informal space. And so, I get to talk about whatever I want!!! Yeah! And I won't inhibit myself! Woohoo!! And I won't even be all that bothered about editing or typos or about the length of blogposts! I'll just say and share what I feel. Letting Go of Fear 2016!

I'm excited :)

Like many college students, I came home from college hoping to get a summer job. I searched a bit, eyeing a retail job at the nearby bookstore and a part-time library aide position at my local library. As you can tell, I was anxious to work with books. I was also not anxious to involve myself in high-stress work environment. While I had heard all the negativity surrounding job searching experiences, I was like whatever, it can't be that hard.
Well, after finally getting rejected from both positions previously referenced, I realize, it's not that it's hard. It's that you start to realize how under-qualified you are. It's dejecting and makes it hard to remember what might make you a valuable employee to any other hiring employers. You also start to realize that before you can even start paying your dues in your pre-career background employment for whatever career you're aiming for, you have to work in a job that is more waiting than forward-moving. Dr. Seuss warned us about the waiting room in Oh, the Places You'll Go. It's happening. I'm there. Waiting.
Therefore, tomorrow I'll be hoofing it to a small hardware store in my neighborhood and seeing the manager at CVS to apply for work I know I'll dread everyday on my way there. It sounds like the beginning of a summer contemporary novel by Sarah Dessen. In fact, I think I've read it.

Ivy expected a long summer of boring work at a local nondescript retail store. With all her friends away for the summer she only had her stupid blog to look forward to. What she didn't expect was to meet a tall, brooding musician with a secret hidden deep. She also didn't expect a purple pegasus to come flying through the sliding automatic doors of CVS, decree that she was a wizard, Harry, and send her on a whirlwind adventure of love, laughter and, most importantly, friendship. New York Times Best-Selling author, God, is at it again proving that you can't always judge a book by it's cover. And neither can I.

Holy shit. It's sad how funny I think I am sometimes!

Oh, How long it has been...

Years later, I look back and I don't know exactly what I was thinking when I posted my first message on this blog. I'm not sure what I was imagining would happen when I even created the account. What was I going to write about? Well, after a whirlwind blogging spree of exactly TWO posts, this site pretty much hit the breaks. And stalled. For, what? Five years? Clearly, I didn't have a few key qualities of a worthwhile online figure.
Commitment. Inspiration...
I didn't have a purpose. What was I going to blog about? I wasn't going to blog about my life. I posted on the internet reiterations of information I had l gotten from the internet. Mostly because I felt something formal and impersonal was the best way to have an online voice. WRONG! I've noticed that my favorite online voices are those who talk you casually and with a LOT of humor and enthusiasm. Like, with the amount of energy that would be too much for real life.
Most importantly, I didn't have self-confidence enough to believe that I could say something to the world and that it could possibly be worth hearing. But you have to put something out there. We all have to have something in our lives to hold up and be proud of. Otherwise, it's hard to sleep. It's hard to think on any memory without imagining yourself as just a series of mistakes, embarrassments, and failures. Most of the time it's not true; it's just a funhouse reflection.

I think an internet life, while lived by many introverts, is indicative of a social personality. Otherwise, we'd all just write in our private journals and be satisfied. Online communities are still about interacting with people, despite their apparent antisocial stigma.
Well, I've mostly been in my private journals for the last few years. And I'm pretty much admitting that I'm still all of those things I was before: insecure, noncommittal, and antisocial; but I'm going to give it a go. No idea what I'll post about. But if I keep getting as many views as I have been, it won't really matter anyway :P

Fuck-it program initiate!

TROCK!!

I have been a fan of the popular British sci-fi TV show, Doctor Who, for several years now but only recently have I discovered a thing called "Trock". It stands for Time Lord Rock and is a new genre of music devoted to the fabulous world of Doctor Who!!! I have really only found one specific band that performs (and I believe created) Trock. The band, named Chameleon Circuit, is made of of four British guys and most of them are also very successful YouTube vloggers. The ones that I have been able to identify are Charlie McDonnell, from charlieissocoollike, Alex Day, also known as Nerimon, and Liam Dryden, who goes by Littleradge on YouTube. I really enjoy Charlie's YouTube channel; he gets major points for the Harry Potter watercolor on his wall and the "His Dark Materials" poster! He also shaved his hair off for his 18th birthday for charity; he is the one in the photo with no hair. I don' know that much about Alex Day or Liam Dryden. I do know that Dryden has a girlfriend in Australia and that he has a shockingly strong resemblance to David Tennant! It's kind of awesome really that he looks so much like David Tennant. Ok, I just found out that the last guy goes by "Cow in Parachute" but he also calls himself Ginger Chris. He has got a crazy 80's rocker hair style!

Anyway, their Trock music is really great and it's even better if you are someone who loves Doctor Who, like myself! Here is a video from charlieissocoollike. It's a song he wrote before they made the CD, therefore it is only Charlie performing the song. The song is named after an episode of Doctor Who Series 3 called Blink written by Steven Moffat. It is one of my all-time favorite episodes of Doctor Who, guest-starring Carey Mulligan (Pride & Prejudice, An Education) and Finlay Robertson (Persuasion, Robin Hood).

So, check out Chameleon Circuit. It's kind of awesome!

You can find out more and buy the CD here.

A Truth Universally Acknowledged

At the moment I am reading a book discussing the novels of 19th century British author Jane Austen. I love Jane Austen; I have read her six popular novels many times and loved the movie adaptations. I have not read her shorter and less known "Lady Susan" or "Love and Freindship," which is really supposed to be spelled like that, but I plan to very soon. This book I am reading now is a collection of essays written by other Janeites and the first one so far has brought up an interesting issue. This person writing the essay states that the future generations will not be able to enjoy and love the Jane Austen novels like so many of us today due to societal differences; the dilemmas in Austen's books are not translatable for future audiences.

I was wondering if you believe this to be true or not. The writer points out how marriage has changed in the last 200 years, examining Anne Elliot's choice to marry Capt. Wentworth, which would mean a life of ships and the company of sailors. In another scenario, Elizabeth Bennett's marriage to Darcy entails a different life, one of lofty estates and preparing dinner parties for other Lords and Ladies and possibly visiting tenants. In another point, she mentions how money dictates less nowadays in one's choice of spouse. Would Lady Russell have been able to persuade Anne not to marry Wentworth if the story were set today? Could Lucy Steele maintain her tight grasp on Edward Ferrars for four years with the societal norms of this century?

Personally, I believe all great stories can be told with different settings and still maintain their themes and morals. I think Lady Russell would be able to separate Anne and Wentworth, and that Edward's character will always obligate him to his duty to Lucy Steele. All of Jane Austen's stories and scenario's can be set in the future or the past and still hold on to their power. Jane Austen was a master of human nature and as long as humans remain the same their is no reason for the power of her writing to be reduced.

But what do you think? Even if you haven't read Jane Austen, do you believe that some stories must remain in their time? How much do you think the time and place of a story dictates the story or the actions of the characters?