How long has it been

Why yes reader, it has been a while. You must be wond'ring what i've been up to. What has happened to Viet? Where has he gone and where has he gone to? Is it a place with hummingbirds? Numerous gorgeous women perhaps. Maybe a llama.


Alas reader, all of the above are erroneous. Though were they, had they, could that they were true it would indeed have made for a wonderful story indeed. A story in fact, to regale you with mirth and humor and make you smile like you did while you were an infant watching Barney, blissfully unaware that the anthropomorphic dinosaur was an unholy creation borne of The Womb of Satan (c). But all is not the case, I have not been on epic travels, I have instead been refurnishing my room in the most extreme manner possible: with paint.

Now Viet, as many an astute reader might note, wouldn't a more extreme form of renovation be to actually BLOW UP your room? Indeed, but reader what you do not understand about this paint is that it is GREEN.

behold, a green room

And not only is this paint green, it is green only on two walls of the room. Two adjacent walls are green, the other two adjacent walls are also green albeit a slightly darker shade. The last touch was the chinese lanterns purchased recently from San Francisco's Chinatown. Together it transforms what was originally an ordinary room into now an ordinary room that bears a striking similarity to a Japanese restaurant. Astute readers may also note at this point that I just mentioned that the depicted lanterns were purchased in Chinatown, therefore there is no possible way that the room could look like a Japanese restaurant. Fortunately those same readers have been told to shut the hell up and read like the rest of us do.

Other than renovating my room, I too have two products to plug to you as strongly as I can. One is Across the Universe, something that i've been harping for quite a while now but have only recently been able to see. And as all the major reviewers have contributed their opines upon the matter, I feel it is only fitting that as a major reviewer (a lie) I contribute my opinion so that I may be paid exorbiant amounts of money for simply observing other people's works and criticizing it (also a lie).

Across the Universe is a muddled mess of a picture. It is at times eye-rollingly melodramatic, the first reel commits to big-screen release some of the same cliches that brought to life the undead amalgam creature that was Bratz: The Movie. It is uneven, poorly-characterized, and at times so banally literal that you could be as unabashedly vulgar as Seth from "Superbad" and still be more subtle than this movie's interpretations of the Beatles songs.

So why am I recommending it?

Because for all its' follies and flaws, its mediocrity portions and uneven execution, and nonexistent plotting, its triumphs are astounding and utterly mind-blowing. Taymor has created the ultimate love song to the Beatles via their own music, doing nothing with the work but thematically linking them all together in the lives of 5 20-somethings in the 60s. It is not an inventive device, but plot hardly matters in a movie where image, interpretation and spectacle are on display so utterly and entirely.

It is where Taymor brings her own work to the table, be it with an acapella arrangement of singing 20-somethings in a field of grass or a mechanical carousel of morphine-injecting salma hayeks, that the work gains its greatest heights of spectacle, wonder, and amazing visual interpretation.

Scenes like the above mentioned, and various others (none of which spring to this reviewer's mind at the moment) are so utterly enjoyable and fantastic in their conception and execution that it almost makes up for the ticket price of awkwardly written college student dialogue and early drama that ring of nothing but page 309 in the writer's guide to movie cliches

much props to asian-american actress T.V. Carpio for getting so much screen time as a asian-american lesbian from ohio turned hippie playing not a caricature but a fairly believeable portrait of an asian-american citizen. Save for the very odd phenomena whereby parents in this movie are either cliched in speech or entirely nonpresent

So in the end Across the Universe should be treated like your children, should you have or ever have them. Forgive its flaws, appreciate it for what it is, and you will enjoy it. You might return to it someday, but enjoy it for what it is, where it is great. Because when it soars, it soars higher than any musical in recent or past history has ever gone before. So enjoy it where it is, where it will be remembered, and where it'll go soaring Across the Universe.

And seeing as how that's such a frigging awesome ending, i'm just going to call this post quits where it is and call her off 'till later reader. I will see you where the sun rises to the west again.

-Viet