JANUARY, 28, 2004 | . 13

Big

The Bitter Old Man’s Take:

For God knows how long, Hollywood has been shovelling carbon copies of copies of copies of good,
original ideas—particularly in the field of the dramatic. With each movie in which some generic ‘love-
able nice guy’ falls in love with an ‘unavailable because of something that’s beyond her power’ woman,
loses her, and then gains her back, the hope for an original drama dwindles more and more. Granted,
there have been a few exceptions that keep the entire genre away from becoming low-grade to the
extent of being sluffed off as something of about the same artistic merit as one of those ‘harlequin
romances’ that occupy a little rack at nearly every small convenience store with a shirtless Fabio lay-
ing the mac-down on some random fainting woman adorning their covers. Adaptation and, to those
who appreciate a slightly stranger approach to film, Punch Drunk Love have been two examples that
have foregone the formulaic structural norm without melting the content down into an indistinguish-
able puddle of ‘misunderstood artistic genius’ (known to the layman as ‘crap’).

This is another such movie.

The story is very run-of-the-mill with the interesting twist, as anyone who has seen an advertisement
already knows; half. of the story is presented to you not as truth, but as a story. The visuals in this
movie are incredible—director Tim Burton, renowned for his ability to pull the ‘dark and scary’ angle
in films such as Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare before Christmas, proves his mettle as a
master of the director’s chair, successfully tearing us from the dark movie theatre and planting us in
the sublime world of the movie. The story is incredibly well-written (based upon a book by the same
name, written by Daniel Wallace), breathing life into characters surreal enough to captivate us, yet still
holding realistic undertones to them strong enough to keep us involved,

Here is where I normally give you the down side. The problem is, I didn’t find one. Well written,
well acted, well directed, well presented, great characters, great dialogue, great cinematography...

Fish: Two Opinions

Movie review —

Stephanie Morgan Says:

In the true nature of fish storics, Big Fish generally takes the bait. Cliches aside, Big Fish is a won-
derful feel good movie that brings Tim Burton’s normally cclectic style (read: Beetlejuice and Mars
Attacks to name the goofier ones), to a more realistic fruition. -

The movie starts out focusing on Will Bloom (Billy Crudup), and on the complete disbelief he hélds
his father’s life stories in. It follows the traditional father-son argument, which in turn causes Will to
stop talking to the elder Ed Bloom (Albert Finney). In the natural course of things in movies of this
nature, Ed Bloom manages to-catch himself a terminal illness that, m1 turn, causes Will to return to
meet with his estranged father one last time. Their meetings are strained, though a relationship that
was untended tends to breed that, aud Will spends the rest of the movie relearning things about his
father he had Tong thought untrue.

This brings Josephine (Marion Cotillard), Will’s wife, into the first real interaction with Ed since the
wedding. Thus a majority of:£d’s “fish stories” are reiterated for, on Will’s part, the thousandth time,
Josephine. ‘These stories are,guite moving-and inspirational amongst themselves and, while they seem,
at first, cloyingly unrealistic, the younger Ed (Ewan McGregor), is one of the most entertaining aspects
of the movie.

While the movie's themes, and the diches involv§d,’are tite, the movic itself is anything but. It is
definitely a stunningly crafted piece of cimema, fully of artful shots, and amazingly well transitioned
switches.

kkk

great movie.

Oh, I’ve got it. Due to time constraints, I actually had to buy popcorn and pop there. And that
took out about half of my student loan.
This is definitely the best movie I’ve seen this year, and the best drama that’s been released in a very,

very long time.
kkk

The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

by Earson Gibson

Lucid dreaming is being aware
of yourself within a dream, and
being able to exert some control
over the events of a dream. Most
people have experienced an acci-
dental lucid dream at some point,
often remembering the details of
them for decades afterwards. They
are perhaps the rarest kind of
dream, and to those of us who
associate dreaming with spirituali-
ty, are the most desired state of
consciousness.

Lucid dreams occur when our
brains bypass a_ psychological
mechanism that functions to sepa-
rate the dream projection of your-
self from your waking cognitive
mind. Instead of being a passive
character within a dream, lucid
dreamers have control over the
dream projections of themselves,
able to make choices about where
to go and who to talk to. It’s like
the difference between watching
yourself in a movie and actually
being on the set.

The amount of control people
can exert in lucid dreams depends
largely on how much experience
they have had at it. Experienced
lucid dreamers claim they have
powers comparable to the holo-
deck patrons of the Enterprise!
They can sprout wings from their
shoulders, visit any place they have
ever seen, talk to anyone they have
ever met, and you can imagine the
dream sex these crazy people have.
Some of the most experienced
lucid dreamers arrange to meet
fellow dreamers at an agreed upon
spot, like their high school baskct
ball court, then have a discussion

with their comrade and compare
notes in the morning. Any similar-
ities between the dreams of people
trying this sort of experiment are
superficial at best, yet some still
claim to be able to recount the
conversation in the morning and
find it almost identical to the expe-
rience of the other person.

How can you try to have a lucid
dream? The best chance would be
to set your alarm clock to an hour
or: two before you usually get up.
When it rings there is a good
chance it will wake you up from a
dream, but don’t let that worry
you. Turn your alarm off, (try not
to open your eyes while you’re
doing this) and immediately
resume your sleeping posture
again. Try to remember what was
happening in the dream, as your
subconscious mind will probably
already have a dreamscape set up
that you can re-enter. The dream
will probably continue again in a
minute or so, and if you can relax
enough to go to sleep while at the
same time keeping an awarcness
of yourself, chances are you will be
aware within your dream.

There are some common difti-
culties beginner lucid dreamers
encounter, and can only be over-
come with practice. The first is
waking up the moment you realize
you are dreaming, Don’t be dis-
couraged if this happens, at least it
means you are making progrcss.
The second difficulty is maintain-
ing awareness of yourself within
the dream. The best way to
achieve this is to consciously think
about what you’re secing in the
dream as soon as it materializes in

your vision. Don’t look around
too much when you first notice
visual detail around you. Instead,
focus on the ground in front of
you, and when that becomes clear
focus on things in the near dis-
tance. Looking around to quickly
can be too much for your brain to
handle, and the shock might wake
you up. Once your surroundings
are crisp and clear, (this only takes
a few seconds, and you may be
astonished at the amount of detail
in your dreamscape) go for a slow
walk towards something in the
near distance. Again, looking
around too fast can wake you up,
so try not to do a full 360 look until
the dream is stable.

You will know that the dream is
stable when you can do things like
stomp your foot on the ground,
feel the impact in your leg, and
hear the sound. At this stage you
will have the freedom to go galli-
vanting around your dream, meet-
ing people you know in real life
and having conversations with
them, doing extraordinary acts
such as climbing up walls like spi-
der man, kung-fu fighting with
zombics, pretty much anything
you can imagine! There is no
other fecling like it.

One final point, dreaming is
good but dreaming too much will
steal your initiative. Remember to
wake up for class in the morning,

/Manga review

«hack:
// Legend of the Twilight

>> Tokyopop 2003

By Dana Schwehr

Well, by now, most folks have heard something about
the .hack (pronounced dot-hack) phenomenon that has,
in recent times, become very popular. For those of you
who live under rocks with 56K internct conncctions,
here is what you have been missing. Project .hack con-
sists of video games, anime, and manga, all of which are
about an online MMORPG (that’s Massive Multiplayer
Online Role Playing Game for you nou-nerdy types)
called “The World”. Problems plague this game from
the start. People begin collapsing in the real world, oth-
ers arc trapped ‘ri the game, and the gamc is still run-
ning. At the time the manga starts, however; the early
bugs secm to have been ironed out, and The World has

* about 20 million players worldwide. The legendary -hackers, Kite and Black

Rose, have passed into the mythology of The World, and no onc really knows
if the two were real or not. None of that really seems to matter much anymore,
until 14-year-old Rena wins the right to use the avatars of Kite and Black Rose
in the game. Since she obviously cannot use both characters at once, she drags
her twin brother Shugo along for the ride, and wacky hi-jinks cnsuc. Of course,
not all is hilarity and fun, especially when the two Level | characters are set
upon by a Level 40 monster, in an area of The World where no Level 40 mon-
sters should be. Shugo is “killed” during this attack, and he then mects a mys-
terious girl, Aura, who may or may not be a part of the game. She restorcs his
“life”, gives him Kite’s Twilight Bracelct, tells him that hc has been chosen to
carry on the legend of the .hackers, and promptly vanishes.

After all the interesting revelations in the beginning of the manga, the pace
of the storyline slows down drastically. Of course, this allows the reader to meet
interesting characters and explore the artwork of The World in greater depth.
The artwork of the manga is reminiscent of the styles used in Digimon, but
without the big fect and hands that the Digimon characters had. The charac-
ters are all really, really cutc, and some of the situations they get into are down-
right silly, which makes this manga a light-hearted foray into the world of RPG
players. If you have had no experience with the .hack games, or the
-hack//SIGN anime scries, then some parts of this manga will mystify you. It
is a welcome addition to the .hack universe, and gives the Project -hack team a
chance to continuc the story of The World.

>>Dana