The Final Cut and other thoughts

I haven't had much of interest to write about lately and haven't had a lot of time to devote to coming up with semi-interesting topics to write about anyway. So, in lieu (spelling?) of anything which is actually interesting, here are some bullet points of random things running through my mind.

I've heard through the rumor mill that my childhood favorite soap opera couple, Patch and Kayla, have returned to the town of Salem on Days Of Our Lives. Yes, I admit that I used to watch Days religiously in my late teens/early college years and still maintain a loose knowledge of the goings on in Salem. I might have to start tuning in again, especially since the rebroadcast on SOAP makes it more convenient to watch at different times.

I'm going to see SUPERMAN RETURNS tomorrow night and am keeping an open mind. Early word from industry friends who have seen advance screenings is that they like but don't love it. Honestly, I'm most jazzed about Marlon Brando's return to the silver screen. I was fascinated by Brando for years and years and years and this is probably the last time I'll ever see a 'new', albeit manufactured, performance from him on the big screen. Being dead will do that to a fellow.

I'm also the world's most faithful Superman fan and I don't need the film to be perfect in order to love it. I just want it to be good and respectful to the characters. I will say before going in that I really wish Lois Lane had been cast older. Even in the previews, she looks like a kid next to everybody else and I already don't buy that she's a single mother of a five-year old. But like I said, I'm keeping an open mind and have my fingers X'ed.

Never in all my life did I imagine there would be so many mixed martial arts cards to watch in such a short span of time. Between the UFC running three full cards in two weeks as well as Pride's fantastic card taking place in Japan this weekend, it's almost an MMA overload. It's a golden age for fans of this little sport.

Finally, I watched a film called The Final Cut with Robin Williams (currently the leading choice to play The Joker in the next Batman film) the other day. I remember when it came out in theaters, taking note of what I felt was an intriguing premise: That a biological camera installed in our heads would record our lives from start to finish and that those memories would be assembled into something like a film for our loved ones to keep for generations on down the line.

The movie itself was a jumbled mess but there was one small scene tucked into it that genuinely touched me. Early on, Robin Williams' character shows his girlfriend a short 'film' he's assembled (he's what's known as a CUTTER, basically an editor of these life films) of an old man at the end of his life, shaving in his bathroom mirror. The film then flashes back 10 or 12 years and we see that same man, younger, in the mirror. These flashbacks continue and the man progressively gets younger until we finally see him at the age of nine, still a boy, trying to shave for the very first time.

I'm not sure what exactly touched me about that sequence except that getting older is one of the main themes I constantly play with in the back of my mind and in my writing. I'm simultaneously fascinated and scared by the idea of aging, losing my youth, and becoming an old man. Seeing an entire life, even a fictional one, condensed into a thirty second span somehow spoke to me. To see where and how a person ends up in life and then flashing back to the beginning of that life, where every door is still open and the future is unwritten...to me that's powerful stuff. Poignant even.

Or maybe it was just the sentimental music playing over the scene. What do I know?

That's all for now.
Keith