kultur archive
 
  If you ever doubted whether something disturbing could also be good, see A Clockwork Orange, which is a Stanley Kubrick film. The beginning had two rape scenes in it, which made Calvin leave and go talk with Annie (who he's lucky enough to be going to Homecoming with, for those of you out of the loop). Anyway, the movie went on to offer a very thought-provoking message about morality and whether it's worth the resultant order to impose a set of values on someone. Personally, I vote timshel. In any case, it's a great movie, and I strongly advise making yourself get through the beginning to watch the rest. I plan on reading the book once I read all of the other books in front of it in my queue. The movie was very skillfully written, if a little long.

The radio station I currently listen to is Star 100.7 here in San Diego, which plays mostly top 40, with some 80's music. I might listen to other stations, except that I get better reception with Star. However, I am not going to link to them because they have this whole condolence thing for Princess Di, who I think was a great person, but not worthy of the outpouring of sympathy she is receiving. She lived a lot better life than many people, and her kindness to the less fortunate was nothing less than should be expected from someone who had things as easy as herself. Mother Teresa gave much more of herself, but we all have a weakness for glamour through which we can live vicariously.

As for print media, I have some cool-looking books in my queue. There's The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, which I read a lot about in Harper's, and Earth, by David Brin, which my friend Wes recommended. Wes is going to Harvard. Hi Wes! I'm about sixty pages into it and it's pretty engaging.

I saw the coolest movie the other day upon my beautiful and brilliant friend Jen's recommendation. It's called Hotel New Hampshire and is a dark comedy with Jodie Foster. I won't ruin the surprises the way she did for me, but I recommend you see it.

In my neverending pursuit of passive entertainment, I rented another movie this weekend, La Femme Nikita. I'm not really sure how to describe it. I was expecting a skin flick and didn't get one, but I wasn't too disappointed because the movie turned out to be rather interesting and sentimental. There was some good action, too, and my buddy Richard said that "it was what Mission Impossible should have been." The movie was pretty puzzling for the most part, but overall was almost worth the usurious prices that Blockbuster charges.

My recent trip to the East Coast was not just fun, it was also a great opportunity to see some movies. Specifically, I saw Starship Troopers, which I thought was a nice little action flick, despite the many plot holes and a bit of corniness. I don't think it merits the comparisons to The Republic that I've heard, but it isn't completely devoid of brain fodder either. Then I saw Alien Ressurection, which I was too tired to stay fully awake in. The parts I saw were pretty gory but exciting. I also saw Boogie Nights, which is a very interesting movie, in that it contains an enormous amount of sex. This is to be expected, since it is about the porn industry. At least the sex served to get some sort of message across.

I recently saw Tomorrow Never Dies, which was probably the best movie out of the four. The script was intelligent (not-so-subtly attacking Ted Turner, Bill Clinton, and Bill Gates), the technology was great, the acting was awesome, and, of course, the action was captivating.

Continuing my winter movie fest, I recently saw My Best Friend's Wedding, which was a sweet, funny movie. (Imagine that! A sweet, funny romantic comedy!?) I also finally saw Contact, and I'm glad I did. Nifty trick: if your ears can't discern all the sound clips in the beginning, use your closed captioning. I also saw Jackie Brown, which, at two hours and forty minutes, was about forty minutes too long, but at least it had an interesting band of characters.

Guess what? I saw another movie - Titanic. It was not as good as everybody told me it would be; specifically, I thought the script was very cliche. It was certainly epic though, and I liked the music and the preacher. All I know is that if I was on the Titanic, I would've shot myself and spared myself freezing or taking someone else's spot. And if you see Mark Yen around, be sure to chastise him for spoiling the ending for me.

Wow! I also saw Wag the Dog. It was very funny, if a little bizarre and depressing. I promise not to see any more movies from now on. Honest!