Every new beginning is some other beginning's end...

A thought occurred to me while I was rambling in the corner about how Anette Olzon, despite being a good singer by all accounts, cannot replace Tarja Turunen as lead singer of Nightwish. Stories play a rather big role in throughout human history. History is told, legends are told, myths become much more awesome over time, stuff like that. Without stories, we could never escape from this mundane feeling called life. It doesn't matter if its a magnum opus like Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner or small and pathetic like my FanFics. It doesn't matter if it's a book, a film, or a video game. Most people nowadays like a good story, even if its just a story told by a drunken friend about how she would totally do Shagrath of Dimmu Borgir because he's as dreamy as Duke Devlin.

Now where was I...oh right. One thing that most people seem to forget that it's not the end or the beginning that truly matters. It's the journey and how you got there. The people you met and the people you said farewell to. But I know you guys. You deny the Grey Havens, deny the Republic of Heaven, deny the 19 years later, and deny the returning of the main character back to the beginning in an endless cycle of Hell. You want a good ending. You want to put down the book and breathe a sigh of relief. But what exactly does a good ending entail? Let's find out.

First of all, let's get one thing straight: there is no such thing as a happy ending. People romanticize this so much that it's not even funny (and I couldn't think of a joke for it). A happy ending is not realistic. Plus, you don't know if it really is a happy ending. For all we know, Harry Potter becomes an angry drunk that constantly beats his children and his wife after the 19 years later scene. So, no there are no happy ending. There are just endings. BUT! This doesn't mean that an ending cannot end happily. This just means that the characters are happy. And isn't that all we really want in a story? For the characters to be happy (as far as we know)?

So, you have just read a book. You have grown to love the characters. You felt fear when they did, you felt compassion when they cried and you went AWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!! when they confessed their love for someone (or something, depending on what you're reading). In want to know that these characters come out okay.

So what is a good ending? The ending to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would be considered a good ending. Everyone's happy, right? So to all you people who were in my senior seminar class who thought the ending to Harry Potter sucked (you know who you are), you can just suck it because it was a good ending because everyone was happy!

Idiot: "But Tim,you handsome, charming yet oddly single, Newtonian Metalhead, you spent all your time detailing what you thought was a good ending, but what about books such as His Dark Materials, which ends where no one is happy?"

Well, stupid idiot (and thank you by the way!), that would be a bad ending, wouldn't it? Granted, there is hope that Lyra and Will will meet each other again when they die, however, at the moment they aren't happy. But how about a story where no one is happy? Animorphs.

Rachel dies, Jake goes emo on us all, Tobias hates Jake, Cassie has to live with some jerk no one cares about because Jakes gone emo, and Marco...well, he's Marco and no one cares about him. And Ax? Killed when he is assimilated by the One, whoever the hell he is. No one is happy! This story's ending is horrible! We have come to care and love these characters, K.A. Applegate, how dare you make them not happy! Granted, war changes all things and there is bound to be some changes to their personality and they'll probably have to deal with PTSD, but still! We want them to be happy! We want them to be smiling because they won the war and can finally pursue their romantic interests! WTF!?!?!?!?!?

So that's my shpeel. Tell me what you think has a good ending and what has a bad ending in the comments below if you want. Or not, I can't stop you.

Cheers.

Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Yup, I got to see Harry Potter opening night. It was packed, I was hot and halfway through the movie, I had to pee. Badly. Like when the movie finally ended, I had the most...orgasmic pee, ever.

So, I'm a Harry Potter fan. I love it, I really do. I've read them all through at least three times already. So does the movie hold up to the book? Let's find out, shall we?

BTW, I'm assuming everyone has already read the book, read it again, had sex with it, fell asleep with it in your arms, woke up the next morning and found it was gone. So, spoilers abound below.

The Good

First of all, get it out of your head that it has to be completely like the book, because it isn't. It basically follows the basic outline of the book but ultimately comes away from it entirely. And you know what? This is fine! It really is! Because there is enough they put into the film to satisfy everyone.

Don't think that because it doesn't follow the book, it means that it is going to be bad. When are people going to realize that they can't fit everything from the book into the movie without making 4 hours long? Of course things are going to be taken out because you people can't pay attention to anything for more than an hour before you start itching to blow something up.

But what they did leave in and what they added in was phenomenal. You'll notice that there is a lot of moments where you will literally laugh because...well it was freaking hilarious! The kinds of coming-of-age crap people go through is just funny to watch. There's an entire plot line where Ron is hounded by a crazy, obsessed girl named Lavender. This entire thing is just really amazingly good fun. At that point, I didn't care which parts was in the book and which parts were. Plus, who else doesn't want to see a Harry who is completely acting stoned? ON LUCK!!!!!!!

Don't think for a moment that its all fun and games, though, because this movie is dark. And I mean "I can't believe this movie got away with a PG rating" dark. Yes, this movie is rated PG and I can't believe they got away with it. One particular scene that was pretty dark was a scene where Harry has to force Dumbledore to drink a potion that causes him extreme pain and agony. This was pretty hard to watch because we begin to see Dumbledore beg Harry to kill him and Harry continues to give him this potion. Plus, Dumbledore dies so I don't know how that worked out with the rating guys.

Not to say I thought the dark scenes were bad; far from it. They were exceptionally good and well done. The intensity was perfect and I wanted more. I'm just surprised that a movie this dark got only a PG rating.

As for the actors, only a couple of them really shined. The one I feel shined the most was Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy. In this movie, he is played as far from an evil, comic relief character into a scared individual who is afraid of failing and in essence, afraid of dying. In one scene, we see him finally break down and begin to cry when everything seems hopeless. These little things are what really makes his character so interesting and so three-dimensional.

In essence, all the actors have really matured and have truly gotten to become better actors in the long time we have known them.

The Bad

They have once again rushed the ending. I remember the ending in the book lasting about 50-100 pages after Dumbledore dies. Instead, there is a good five minutes of wrap up after he dies and then boom. Credits roll. Why are so many directors afraid to drag out the ending? I mean, it worked in Lord of the Rings why shouldn't it work for Harry Potter?

For instance, the end confrontation between Snape and Harry was a good two minutes long compare to the actual emotional 10 minutes I envisioned. This in turn made the revelation that Snape was the Half-Blood Prince (oooooooooo, spoiler), very lackluster and anti-climactic. This maybe that the actor for Snape can't yell or scream to save his life (I've seen him in a couple of movies but I've never actually seen him shout at all).

I also remember that the Death Eaters didn't just walk up to Dumbledore, kill him and then walk out. I kind of remember Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Neville and some of the teachers actually try to stop them. I understand you have to cut out some things, but that was kind of a big plot hole you left out.

On another note, when Dumbledore died, I felt nothing for Harry. Daniel Radcliffe, I think, is not that good of an actor. Sure, he can be funny, but he can't really be emotional. Dumbledore is dead! You're supposed to be crying! You're supposed to be sad! You're supposed to be grabbing his chest and pushing his body, trying to wake him up! I got none of that!

Closing

This film completely kills all the previous movies, in my opinion. I loved it. It was funny, it was dark, it was romantic, it had something for everyone. If you can overlook a bunch of little (and I mean, little) stuff, then you're in for a treat. Because this movie is truly about relationships between different people, and the director did a great job on that. I heartily recommend this movie to all who like the book or for those who have never read the books before.

Oh, and if you can stand the trailer for New Moon (pause for screaming fan girls at the sight of a shirtless werewolf thingy), then you should watch it anyways.

Cheers.

R.I.P Michael Jackson...I guess...

Let's get this out of the way first: I'm indifferent when it comes to the supposed King of Pop. My opinions of him have shifted faster than a transvestite can change their gender. When I was a kid, I thought he looked cool. When I grew older, I thought he was just a weirdo with a fucked up nose and strange taste in bed-partners.

But let's be clear: when a person dies, it's sad, but natural. It happens all the time. Which, as my friend Joe states, makes the beginning and the ending not as important as the middle. Death is just as natural as breathing. So when Michael Jackson died, I knew it was sad, but then I did a miraculous thing: I got over it.

You'd think Jesus Christ himself was crucified again what with all the publicity that's been going around the news. For an entire day, the radio was packed with Michael Jackson songs, the TV's were rolling with news of his autopsy (seriously guys, WTF? His autopsy? If I were to perform an autopsy on George Washington's corpse, I guarantee that no one will care and some people would probably label me a necrophiliac or something. Is the USofA so hungry of news that we are all craving for some guy's autopsy?). And around this time, I was beginning to get annoyed.

I realize that Michael Jackson changed the way that we all do music and influenced many artists in today's world (most of them I've never even heard of and play noises that can't possibly be called music in any sense of the term), but seriously, why do people care so much about it?

I know he's touched the lives of so many different people (and allegedly, small children), but most of these people who are apparently crying over his death have absolutely no business to do so. The reason being is the following word: fan. Yes, you heard me, they're fans. They are the consumers who buy his work and listen to them, relishing in his crotch-grabbing music that seems to appeal to so many people. And yet, these people are crying over him. WHY?!?!?!?!?!? They didn't know him personally, didn't grow up with him, aren't members of his family so why are they crying? And this goes for a lot of other people who cry over their beloved idols. These people have no business crying over them because they weren't connected with them at all.

What I mean by this is simple: fans are usually just people that like a person/companies products and continue to buy them regardless of whether or not they actually need them to exist in the next second. But in the end, they are not buying the person/company, they are buying the product the person/company sends out. How connected they feel to person/company depends on how much emotion a fan puts towards their product. I feel very connected to the book entitled The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho because I feel it has changed my life. It is this strong connection that pushes me to feel that Paulo Coelho has changed my life. I don't know him, I have never talked to him, I have never even seen him in person. And yet I feel this strong connection with this person through a book.

This is the main reason I dislike how people are crying over his death: most of these people don't know him personally enough to cry over his loss. They have only bought his music and probably seen him in person. But in the end you are not really connected at all to this person. The only connection you have to them is that you've listened to their music or read their book or seen their movies. This connection you may feel to them is superficial at best; at worst, a lie.

You can argue that when a person writes a novel, or writes music or acts that you are looking at a part of their soul. In this sense, you are seeing into a bit of their personality and soul (if you believe in one). And I guess, in this sense, there is a connection. But the connection is paper-thin. You can only peering so far into someone's soul through the words they write or the actions they make. These things don't make up an entire person. Only bits and pieces. Not enough to claim to know them and then cry over them when they're gone.

So now we get to my main annoyance: one guy's death going all over the news and radios. I know he was the supposed King of Pop, but seriously, he's getting more air-time than when the Pope died (at least it feels that way). There's so much news on him that now, he's taking the place of the other news that are (usually) news worthy. To get my point across, I'll note some of the news that you have failed to notice because of Michael's death.

• Jon Gosselin finally snaps (you know he wants to), kills his wife, Kate, and his 8 children, uses their bones as a makeshift fortress and spends the rest of his day flinging his poo at anybody who gets too close. Negotiations haven't even begun yet because "no one wants shit all over them."
• Billy Maes died (supposedly from one of his lungs collapsing from yelling at me to much).
• Farrah Fawcett died two hours before Michael Jackson (she was, incidentally, never heard of again, despite the fact that she was a hell of a lot hotter than Michael Jackson was).
• Gandhi comes back from the dead, cures cancer, looks around the world, says "Fuck it, you're all hopeless," and goes to Vegas. He is later kidnapped by four drunken guys on roofies, one of them missing a tooth. He is locked in the trunk of the car and when he does get out, he grabs onto the nearest guy and beats him with a crowbar. See "The Hangover" to find out what happened next.
• Spawn destroys Heaven, Hell and the Earth and transports the souls of the humans to another planet Earth, where he resurrects all of them, so that God and Satan can have their little bitch-fest without putting humans in the crossfire. No one thanks him for this.
• The Master Chief returns from space and destroys the League of Evil along with Brock Samson, Chuck Norris, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor. Dethklok provides the background music while the team is destroying the League.
• Kim Jong-il gets ass-raped by a nuke thrown by Alex Mercer and Cole MacGrath.

...the list goes on.

Halfway through the list, you've probably realized that I am, in all sense of the word, joking. But my point is set across nonetheless. The news is feeding the needs of the fans who are feeling a weak and infinitesimal connection with a dead musician. Noted: a very famous musician who revolutionized the music world but he is in all sense of the word...dead.

Death is sad, but a natural part of life. It would be awesome if we humans didn't die but if we didn't die, then I would probably be saying how it would be awesome if we died. Whatever.

Michael Jackson did great things, I guess. But there is no need to cry over him if you didn't even know him. That's the job of his family and friends, not you. You can feel sympathy, but it is not in your place to cry over him. Unless you feel sympathy for someone by crying. Then that makes you too sensitive. Like the people who want the National Anthem changed because they think the current one is about rockets and explosions and that there is no evidence that we are the bravest country in the world.

Do you want to change the National Anthem because of this bullshit reasoning?

Cheers

Saw Enchanted the other day

...

...yeah, it was alright I guess...