The Last Samurai was an excellent movie. Normally, I don’t care for Tom Cruise, or the Japanese culture, but I think the stars aligned just right. I have to say that the thing that drew to this movie was that it was both epic, and the only things halfway decent playing that I hadn’t already seen. Anyhow, I’ll explain why I liked the movie.

The story of the Last Samurai was both epic, and emotionally effective. However, one of the interesting things about the movie was that it stayed so focused on the characters. I would say in most epic movies, there are only a hand full of real characters, the rest of the cast are essentially props. And, while that is somewhat true hear, I feel that you gain at least some attachment with almost all of the characters.

The battles were also quite awesome. The scale was big for this type of movie (though I think it will look more like a small skirmish compared to Return of the King). The battles pull no punches and it is quite visceral and somewhat shocking at moments. The whole thing was very satisfying.

The cinematography was also quite enjoyable, verdant if you will. I won’t try to explain it here. You’ll just have to go see it.

The film is entirely about the clash between the old ways (samurai) and the new ways (go America!). Ironically, history makes the results utterly predictable: six decades later, “modern” Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. But, American spirit pervailed, and we drop “the bomb.” But, I have already jumped to far ahead! Let’s go back to the 1870’s. The story basically focused on the samurai who are grossly outnumbered fighting for a cause they truly believe in. Stories like these are always well received, even back in the days of Greece, particularly the battle of Thermopylae, which is strongly referenced in the movie. I think this underlying motivation gives the movie much of it’s passion, and drive. It’s all about the grand storytelling, and the underdog fighting for victory.

That Last Samurai will likely end up on my top ten list for the year. But, whether or not it wins any awards, well that is anyone’s guess. The Academy is officially dead to me. So, I guess it does not really matter.

No one, ever take MTH 465. Don’t. I cannot stress this enough. If I ever have to try to find a hamiltonian circuit in a graph that DOESN’T HAVE ONE; I am going to explode.

Well, I haven’t been posting here for a little while. Mainly because I have just been busy doing “normal” things, so nothing seemed worthy enough to write about. Yesterday I did a much needed update on another one of my websites: Valinor. It a Lord of the Rings roleplaying game website. Or, more specifically, I am pretty much the only game in town. It has been several months since my last update, and the third movie is nearing quickly on the horizon. So, the people who sent me things are starting to come out of the wood work requesting postings. I granted most of them their desire, as I posted an unheard of 15 things yesterday. Ironically, at the time of this posted I generated 600+ hits since I posted the material. This is a significant surplus considering in my absence, the daily hit rate dropped to about 100.

Well, my decent into madness seems to be going quite well. I have such a horrible migrane that I cannot program, think, or sleep. It is quite a horrid situation. And, I think that other thing is quite obvious. Let it be known that when hard drives fail they go directly to hell. Do not pass go, do no collect two hundred dollars.