After my girlfriend found out I hadn’t seen Good Will Hunting, she said I had to see it with her. Well I just watched it, and I thought it was pretty good. One-line synopsis - Matt Damon is Will, a troubled 20 year old who is a math genius, and Robin Williams plays the therapist who is unwilling to quit on him. Here are a few thoughts.

Self-Education
“You blew 150k on an education you could have gotten in$1.50 in late fees from the library.”
I’m a huge believer in self-education, and Will is the epitome of the self-taught man. He’s read from all the great minds of the ages and knows he knows his stuff. He’s math genius and clearly has a powerful memory. But some of his other intelligences are missing.

Wasting Potential
“I mean, you’re sittin’ on a winnin’ lottery ticket. You’re too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that’s bullshit.”
As a gymnast, I have seen lots of kids with tons of potential. Kids who are super flexible, and strong and learn skills easily. And it is just heartbreaking to see when they quit gymnastics out of boredom, or because they are unwilling to work hard, or they are scared of something. And that’s what Will has been doing for most of his life. Until he finally sacks up.

Vulnerability as Strength
But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable … You don’t know about real loss, ‘cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself.
Will is an orphan and was abused by his foster parents. It made him scared of getting close to people. But he hasn’t realized that to be really strong, he has to face his fears of getting hurt again. You have to embrace life for what it is, pain and all.

The challenge of doing what you really want
This is a problem that Will shares with most of Stanford students. When you have so many opportunities open to you, what do you choose to do? Will works in construction, but could have any number of jobs - from Wall Street to the NSA. The same is true for most Stanford students, truly anything is open. But then the problem becomes - what do you really want to do? And most people have a bitch of a time answering that one.

All in all, a great movie. I recommend it.

I don't watch movies at the theater too often - one because I talk a lot at movies and my friends hate it, and two because I'm cheap and I don't want to spend the money. But I was home this past weekend and I watched Arctic Tale with my parents and my little sister. It's a movie from National Geographic , who also did March of the Penguins.

I really liked it. It mainly focuses on the life of two baby girls - a polar bear named Nanu and a walrus named Seela - as they grow up in the cold arctic world up north. The cinematography is amazing - beautiful panning of ice and ocean, lots of closeup shots of the bears and the walruses, and a great deal of underwater filming. The narration is by Queen Latifah, who is a bit funnier than Morgan Freedman, who did March of the Penguins. (PS After reading the wikipedia entry, I'm very impressed with Queen Latifah's accomplishments and I think a lot of people aren't giving her enough credit)

This film took over 8 years to film. That is incredible. It seems like it was made right on the tail of March of the Penguins but really this film must have been in production for a looong time. When you watch the movie you constantly thinking - how were they able to follow these families for so long, and tell a coherent story that intertwines the two animals and captures significant points in their lives. My hat is off to the dedicated National Geographic staff for putting such a big project together.

I have a hunch that I have a greater affinity towards The Simpsons than most readers of this blog. (My blog bio says one of my ambitions is to write an episode. Seriously, it does say that.) The knowledgeable Simpsonophile will note that I have at least one reference to The Simpsons in every conversation. I've noticed, however, even the most obvious references are missed more often when I'm conversing with undergrads as opposed to my grad school friends.

Maybe its because I'm a bit older than the average reader. I'm old enough to remember many of the Tracy Ullman shorts and got to see most of the first few seasons in their original versions, unedited for syndication. I always felt a bond with Lisa in many ways even as I was often no more mature than Bart or Homer. Maybe it's because I'm just nerdier or dorkier. I remember fondly the "Simpsons drinking games" while watching back to back episodes (sometimes even a third). Whatever the case, I'm a likely to be a bit more obsessed with The Simpsons than the average person in general. That's how I went into The Simpsons Movie: an obsessive, nostalgic, factoid-full fan. I wasn't really disappointed (More after the jump. No spoilers, don't worry)

I normally write blog posts about topics which relate directly to Stanford: our Folding@Home project, the sit-in this week, U.S. News college rankings. But today, I have a piece of advice which pertains not only to Stanford readers, but to everyone out there.

No matter how much you liked Pirates of the Caribbean I (or even Pirates II), DO NOT-- I CAUTION YOU AGAIN-- DO NOT SEE the newest installment, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. It's awful.

Clearly, lots of people were idiots like me and went to see this enormous, three-hour waste of time. (The New York Times is reporting worldwide $400 million worth of tickets were sold, in six days).

I promise you, those are three hours of your life you will never get back. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone mentions one positive: "Producer Jerry Bruckheimer does deserve a shoutout: It takes a kind of genius to sucker audiences into repeatedly buying the same party tricks."

And there was so much wrong with this movie beyond rehashed versions of the first two movies-- I don't know where to start. The plot was weak. And confusing. Actually, I'm pretty sure that even if I could have understood it, it still would have been bad. Gene Seymour writing for Newsday says, "It won't matter whether you've seen the first two Pirates movies or not. You'll still be confused."

I saw the movie at a 12:30am showing. We didn't get back to campus until 4am. We all walked out of that theater exhausted, bored and confused. "Ha! Christian," you might smirk, "That is surely why you did not enjoy the film!"

No. I spoke to a friend who say the movie at 4:30 in the afternoon and felt similarly. People who went into our showing with pirate hats and eye patches (who also gave out a hearty "yarrrrrrr!' with the opening credits) left the theater dispirited, like someone had taken all the air of their lungs.

And sorta, Orlando Bloom and Co. did just that. Despite the stirring theme song of the movie series (you know, the one that goes dun-dun-dun-dun...dun-dun-dun-dun), the chemistry, the script, something was very off.

The end is what sucked the most. I won't ruin it for you, in case you too are set on wasting $10, but let me say that it is one of those endings you simply don't want to buy into. As they're setting it up, you think to yourself, "Oh, they'll never let this happen..." You think (you hope, perhaps) it's one of those things where they'll come up with some ridiculous and unbelievable way to get out of it-- but at least the awful and seemingly-inevitable doesn't happen. Except in this piece of junk, it actually does! There is even a sappy beach make-out scene with Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley which instead of being romantic or hot, is, honestly, just awkward.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't go into this film expecting theatre (-re intended). I wasn't expecting a transcendental experience, something to sweep me away with its intricate characters or subtle artistry. I was expecting a swash-buckling pirate adventure movie. I was expecting airbrushed actors and skylines, awesome CGI battles and witty one-liners. I didn't even get all of that.

Honestly, just save yourself some time-- and unfulfilled expectation-- by watching the trailer.

The Strange Case of Salman abd al Haqq premieres this Wednesday, April 18th at 8PM in Cubberley Auditorium. Don't miss this important moment in Stanford student filmmaking and in the Stanford student body's response to America's torture scandals.

View the Trailer:

The first revelations of America's torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay shocked many in the Stanford community. Even more shocking were revelations by the ACLU and others that the use of torture (including approval of specific techniques) was sanctioned at the highest levels of the Bush administration. Then came news that the CIA, notorious for using the most "aggressive" techniques, was operating secret prisons abroad. And as if that wasn't enough, the US government was also shipping prisoners to other countries notorious for their sanctioning of torture, such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Uzbekistan. This extra-judicial process of holding prisoners in other countries is known as "extraordinary rendition," or as some would call it, "the outsourcing of torture."

With our government's commitment to human rights crashing down around us, one would hope -- no, one would expect -- that there would be some kind of artistic processing of the phenomenon from the Stanford community. A new film by Tim Gregory and Jeff Orlowski, entitled The Strange Case of Salman abd al Haqq, is exactly this sort of artistic processing. It is a forceful protest, in hopes that the American people and our elected representatives might begin to understand this moral crisis, and then really confront it.

To learn more about the film and the thinking behind it, I sat down for a few minutes with Tim Gregory, co-director, to discuss how it came to be.

The trailer for 300 is by far the best way to experience said film; one gets a montage of unconnected cool images. Problem is, once the filmmakers connect those images into a story, a much, much worse film emerges. In general, I rarely am vituperative towards films; I’m usually indifferent towards films I don’t like. 300 was different—I actively disliked it. The main debate for me is this: propaganda or not?

I’m going to answer affirmatively; 300 in plot and dialogue is trying to push something. It feels kind of weird to take the same position as the Islamic Republic of Iran, but there was a definite agenda being pushed. That agenda was not really pro-Iraq War, as some have speculated. Rather, it was one of the conservative worldview in general, specifically the neoconservative worldview.

Here’s why, with several spoilers: