Start your week off right.

“I saw a whole other future. I can’t stop seeing it.”

For the people who keep finding my blog by searching for “revolutionary road home abortion:”

I finally saw the movie. It is pretty much the exact same as the book, as far as I remember.

It’s depressing, and it’s realistic, and it’s brilliantly acted. I watched the “making of” thing on the DVD and they had several intriguing comments on theme. The most interesting (and probably most important) one to me was the idea that it’s about not letting yourself get stuck in a life you don’t want, and if you do, then you can change it if you have the courage to. Because that can be extremely hard. April has the courage to – she doesn’t want to let anything stop them from moving to Paris and being happy. But Frank for some reason is afraid to. So the movie ends tragically.

Personally, I liked it. And I am fascinated by the phenomenon of people not pursuing their dreams. It is never too late, in my opinion, to go after it. But yes, it takes courage. It’s a risk. But it’s never not worth it. I have more than a couple of friends who are majoring in things they don’t even like solely because they want a steady job when they graduate – nothing to do with what they actually love doing. I’m a film major because my dream is to write for TV one day. I don’t have a backup plan. It’s risky. It’s scary. But I’m not going to regret it. I don’t know if that makes me brave. Maybe. I just know that I don’t want to end up in a life where I’m constantly dreaming about doing something else, somewhere else, with someone else. That just isn’t how I want it to go. And praise Jesus it doesn’t have to be that way.

A lot of my friends I think missed the point of this movie. They said it was a waste of time and they wanted their two hours back, but that’s probably because they were expecting it to be more romantic than it was just because of who was cast. Oh! A movie with Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio! It’s Titanic 2! Maybe it’ll be sad, but Titanic was sad. Titanic was also ridiculously romantic. Well, that’s not this movie. Sorry people. Just because it wasn’t what you were expecting doesn’t mean it was pointless and stupid. If you can’t see past Rose home aborting Jack’s baby (which I will admit is horrifying, but that’s the story), then you probably shouldn’t be watching this movie.

If, however, you want to watch a movie that will make you think, that will make you review your ideas about life and what it means to be happy, and will give you a disturbingly realistic portrayal of a couple living lives of  ”quiet desperation” after they decided to settle for lives they didn’t want, then watch Revolutionary Road.

Dumbest conversation ever:

During introductions in one of my classes.

Girl 1: My favorite book is The Host by Stephenie Meyer. She wrote the Twilight books. It’s real good.
Girl 2: Oh, is that good?
Girl 1: It’s real good.
Girl 2: Is that book good?
Girl 1: It’s real good. You should read it.

Um… okay.

Attn. Cows: You are Beautiful Just the Way You Are

real cows don't wear sunglasses or tape measures

Okay, um… I’m sorry, but if this “healthy ice cream company” really thinks this is an attractive logo, they are incorrect. Cows are supposed to be fat. Drawing a skinny anthropomorphic cow is not communicating an ideal, it is distorting nature into something that looks extremely messed up. I was creeped out when I saw this in the Ghetto HEB earlier today. If I saw a cow that looked like that in real life, it would be DYING. And I don’t even want to talk about how a real cow’s bone structure does not exactly allow for it to sit in a position like that.

Pretty much, this is letting me know that if I eat real ice cream and not their crappy low fat ice cream, I am, instead of a skinny cow, a fat cow. If you eat ice cream, you’re a cow, but you should at LEAST be a skinny one! Please… what kind of a message is that? Not to mention, using an image of a so-called ideal that is impossible for a COW to achieve isn’t exactly a healthy image to project to actual women.

It sure is a good thing cows are dumb animals, because otherwise this Skinny Cow business would have cow society turned upside down. It would be riddled with eating disorders and depression as the cows all started starving themselves trying to impress the bulls.

Dude, if I’m going to eat ice cream, I’m eating Blue Bell or Ben & Jerry’s. Something that tastes like ice cream and not like frozen cardboard. There’s no such thing as “healthy ice cream,” there’s just “crap” and “delicious.”

Skinny Cow = massive fail on every level.

District 9: You should probably go see it.

District 9 is an incredible movie. It is stunning. It has raised the bar for sci-fi. If you disagree, you are wrong. That’s all there is to it.

Because even if you aren’t engaged in the story, or you don’t like the characters, or anything else, you still have to acknowledge the beauty of it. This movie is brilliant because it took a relatively small budget* and used it to create a film that hit number one at the box office. The CGI is flawless. The performance from lead actor Sharlto Copley is utterly believable and dynamic.

Don’t get me wrong. It was hard to watch at times. (Spoiler alert.) There are scenes that are horrific and disgusting, atrocities being committed not by the aliens but by the humans who don’t consider this other form of life to be worth as much as their own. There’s a scene where they find a shack housing alien eggs, and the main character, Wikus, casually “aborts” them by unhooking their food source. As they torch the building, Wikus tells the camera in an almost excited voice about the noise the eggs make when they explode being similar to popping popcorn. It’s horrible. Almost worse is a later scene where there are businessmen standing over Wikus’ transforming body, while he is awake and listening and even pleading with his father-in-law (who is one of them), casually deciding to dissect him so they can use his changing DNA to figure out how to use the alien weapons.

But as gut-wrenching as these scenes are, they’re important. Because it isn’t hard to believe that these things could be possible. Because things like this are happening in parts of the world. And you know as well as I that there are no space aliens involved in those particular situations.

I loved it, and I wish there were more sci-fi films like this one – original ones. Not a remake, not a sequel (although there will undoubtedly be a District 10 movie in the near future, not that I’m complaining), something original from an untested director with unknowns populating the cast. Peter Jackson is my hero for funding this movie. I hope more directors and/or just people with money who know a thing or two about movies contribute their resources to more projects like this one. This is sci-fi at its absolute best.

*Compare District 9’s $30 million to Spider-Man 3’s $250 million and decide which one you think made better use of its money.