i had an opportunity today on aim to ask laurie about metropolis, a movie she had seen last week. "how was it?" i asked. "it was okay," she said. "is that your code word for it sucked?" "yeah." should've taken her quick review to heart, but i was curious and i've never been much of one to listen to the the recommendations of others, good or bad.

first, let me say that i am not a fan of anime. maybe when i was first introduced to it, i was very much in love with the medium. but the more i saw, the more they seemed to be all the same. the novelty of sophicated animation for adults wore off. in the end, anime is essentially eye candy, leaving me with an empty feeling afterwards. i shouldn't only say anime, i'm not a big fan of animated movies in general. i wouldn't be caught dead going to see a disney animated picture. i will however occasionally dabble in some cgi movies, but i am always very suspicious of animation in whatever form.

so, metropolis had an uphill battle if it was to win me over. in the end, i was entertained, but i felt the story to be weak bordering on stupid (a lifelike robot girl who is the centerpiece of this weapon that can destroy the world). i didn't care much for the character animation, too cartoonish. however, i found the design of the world they lived in, this huge multilayered metropolis, to be pretty cool. the music was also kind of interesting, swinging 20's tunes, and occasionally the animation would have an old-fashion feel to them, especially the circular spotlight closing into a point transitions. i found a lot of similarity between this movie and akira though, and i didn't like akira that much either.

i don't consider it a spoiler, but in the end, a lot of things get destroyed, which is often the case with these japanese anime. the scenes of giant skyscapers toppling over made me feel queasy though, with all that's been going on recently. that stuff is serious now!

i wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone. i don't regret seeing it, it did hold my attention and if the story was boring, i could always admire the set design and the interesting futuristic architecture, of which there is a lot of in a movie called metropolis.

to be honest, i don't remember what day it was today. the fact that we had our monday morning company meeting was my only clue that it was monday. today was timeless, a day without shape or form, no top or bottom. consumed by work but enjoying every minute of it, the only time of the day where i did something personal was during lunch when i changed into my turtleneck and shorts and went outside for a run in 40 degrees temperature. eliza, whom last week was eager to join my lunchtime fitness regimen, apparently hurt her foot last friday on our maiden run. i ran alone then, sweating in the sun and freezing in the shade. a hard run today, cramped up after the first mile, but i made it to start of the longfellow bridge without stopping, which is all that i ever ask for. being that today was president's day, not a lot of people were out along the charles. maybe the cold weather also had something to do with it. coming back i bumped into alex, returning to work despite having the day off. he mentioned something about how i run fast according to eliza, and i tried to convince him that wasn't the case. i came back to the office, showered (thank god i didn't have a seizure, the downstairs bathroom lights were flickering incessantly), and went upstairs to microwave some campbell soup from a can for my lunch. later rebecca would also mention the rumor going around the office that i'm a fast runner, which i completely deny.

despite the fact that we were all set to make the delivery starting at noon, time has a way of shrinking the closer we got to the deadline, and the final burns weren't finished until close to 7pm, by then joel and i had already left the office, eliza was in charge of finishing the last burn and later delivery the latest package at one of the few opened fedex places in the local area. the final few hours of work involved me running downstairs to deliver the latest burn of the delivery for testing and running back upstairs to make some fixes and burn again. i must've ran up and down at least 7 times today. i could've walked, but that would've taken me a few minutes. running, it takes less than a minute, and with all my previous running experience, it's relatively effortless, regardless of the fact that i was horribly out of breath when i made it downstairs. the whole upstairs downstairs business sucks. and this whole 8x cd burner business sucks as well.

after watching metropolis at kendall, joel gave me a ride to harvard square. i bought a copy of physics for game developers from wordsworth and proceded to wait for the bus. unbeknownst to me, the bus was on a weekend schedule today. not wanting to wait 40 minutes to catch the next bus, i ended up calling my mother, who just happened to be getting out of work, and getting a ride from her.

sam send me this url today explaining the meaning behind david lynch's mulholland drive. i take back much of what i said about the movie after reading the article, and i think lynch's academy award nomination for best director is totally justified. the movie makes a lot of sense now, i just wasn't smart enough to decipher all the hidden meanings. definitely worth a revisit.