i need some meaning i can memorize...

Exactly one year ago today, I embarked on this uncertain journey towards the blogosphere. I must say that it's very difficult to consistently maintain a blog for very long: life goes on, whether you have something interesting to say or not. Time's arrogant march forward humbles even the most willful among us as the days pass without having updated, without having reviewed, or without having commented.

In a sense, I became rather disillusioned with the fickleness of blogging; in particular, I grew to despise the fact that updating the blog had become a bit of a chore. Some days, the passion was utterly nonexistent. Indeed, I saw that too many bloggers would update their blogs because they had to, and not because they had anything of substance to say. I became one of those bloggers, and so I stopped. I could not justify wasting my time on uninspired postings. Sure, the readership would be preserved, as readers naturally come back only when one updates frequently. But I soon realized that sustaining the readership was neither the goal, nor the moral standard in the world of blogging; at least it would not be so for me. If preserving the readership was to be a categorical imperative of sorts, then so was a dispassionate inauthenticity. And that I could not accept.

And so the blog became less and less a priority. Instead, I focused on relationships with others around me. While it's true that the blog could connect me to great masses of people, such connections invariably remained transitory, wholly ephemeral. Granted, I have communicated with some pretty interesting people whom, I suspect, I would much enjoy getting to know in person. Unfortunately, due to the worldwide nature of blogging, getting to know these people in person is rarely much of an option.

I'm not saying blogging is bad, or that I will stop blogging. Don't get me wrong: I've enjoyed myself immensely, especially in bickering with Jim Dedman over such topics as the Second Amendment and Nine Inch Nails, and in writing my many film reviews. I intend to continue blogging. But this past year has allowed me a pointed recognition of the blogosphere's limitations. And they are many.

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)

Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow is a movie that depends solely on its visual effects for its viability. Certainly its plot, characters, and dialogue cannot help it there. The plot goes from the curious to the absurd in a matter of minutes. The characters are sentimental pansies predictably united by their goal of survival. And the dialogue--gosh, what could be said about the dialogue? Let's just put it this way: it's not exactly on par with Shakespeare.

About the biggest problem with this disaster of a film is its ending. The film presents us with a scenario in which a new ice age comes to alter the face of existence as we know it. However, the film ends at the point where the implications of the new ice age need be dealt with. It never answers the most important and interesting questions: How will people live? What of civilization? Etc.

This film is a tease, and a bad one at that. Despite the fact that it has chosen to hang its hat on its special effects, even they disappoint. About all I saw in the way of "special effects" was a flood, and lots of snow. Big deal. I've personally seen worse while living in the city of Cambridge, MA.

I'd give Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow a D.

SHREK 2 (2004)

Shrek 2 follows directly in the footsteps of its inventive predecessor, and that's partly the problem. The freshness of the first film is lacking in this predictable rehash. In particular, the sarcastic tone of the film is dulled by our expectation of such dry humor. Even so, the film as a whole is good enough to entertain, as all summer blockbusters should. Although we know how the story will end even before we set foot in the theatre, the characters remain sufficiently charming and likeable so as to make our trip to the last page of the fairytale an agreeable one.

At bottom, Shrek's fairytale is no different than those with which we grew up. Although it bills itself as an alternative, darkly irreverent kind of fairytale, it never quite approaches the ingenuity and unexpected darkness of the Grimm's fairytales. The moral landscape of Shrek's world is a reflection of our idealistic tradition; not so with Grimm's tales. For something more akin to Grimm's in cinema, check out Mel Stuart's 1971 classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The moral twists and turns in that film remain both frightening and fresh to this day. I cannot imagine saying the same about Shrek 2 30 years from now.

I'd give Shrek 2 a B.