People Who Eat Darkness - by Richard Lloyd Parry

My interest in Japanese comics has clearly shown me to be a Japano-phile, so it's no wonder that I started reading (actually, listening to) this (audio)book as soon as I heard it's about a British girl who went missing in Tokyo in 2000 while working as a hostess. It's a non-fiction in the true crime genre, and I had never known that this genre could be quite so engrossing.

Lucie Blackman was 21 years old and working at a hostess bar in the foreigner-filled district of Roppongi, Tokyo, in the hopes of saving up money to pay back the debts she accumulated back at home in Britain. Before coming to Japan, she had worked as a flight attendant for British Airways. This fact gets mentioned mostly to establish her as a "legit" person, who had a legit job, who was not some drug addict  who met a predictable demise. In other words, she was not your typical "high-risk" girl in a vast metropolis, and I acknowledge that makes the tale more intriguing, and it also reveals the ugliness that we all would be less interested if she were the typical high-risk girl lost in sin city.

"Hostess", however, sounds a lot more shady than "flight attendant." It captured the Western fancy of all the unspeakable acts associated with the underbelly of a strange land in the Far East. Prostitutes? Geisha? Escorts? Take your pick, bu none can completely define the essence of this uniquely Japanese industry, where girls get paid for their company in a bar. Flirting, singing, dancing, drinking, and sex with middle-aged men who are often married, all for money? Different hostess bars draw the line at different places, and sex is usually not on the table (at least not openly), but it can be as sketchy or as harmless as you imagine it to be. And that leaves a LOT for imagination.

Looking for Lucie was such a painful process that tore her family and friends apart. With divorced parents who were bitter to start with, her family wasn't that together in the first place. The Japanese police seems like ... just such a fat wallop of help, neglecting important leads, confused, stuck, well-intentioned but bumbling. If you get to choose which country you go missing in, apparently Japan is not the place to go.

Lucie was found, 7 months later, dismembered and buried in a seaside cave, wrapped in plastic, head encased in cement.

The eventual arrest of the suspect, Joji Obara, was unclean and indecisive, none of the "You are the MURDERER!" thrill of Japanese detective comics or crime dramas or even CSI.

Obara, a wealthy businessman from a wealthy Korean family settled in Japan, denied everything, and the court failed, even at the end of 6 YEARS OF TRIAL, to charge him with Lucie's murder, but he did get sentenced to life in prison because ... HE HAD BEEN DATE-RAPING WOMEN FOR ALMOST 30 YEARS. And it's not even like he's a mastermind serial rapist who has been extremely careful.

Obara kept meticulous journal entries of his "conquest plays," which numbered in the hundreds, and even video-recorded himself in the act for most of the women he drugged and raped. He had a fetish for Caucasian women, and several foreign hostesses who fell victim to him had reported the incidents to the police over the years, but there was absolutely no follow-up. One Australian woman, Carita Ridgway, fell ill due to liver toxicity from the chloroform he used on her and died in the hospital BACK IN 1992, and still nothing. He wasn't even on the police's radar, even though they questioned him a few days after Lucie's disappearance because neighbours complained of banging and sawing noises from his apartment. When he answered the door, the police saw a disarrayed apartment where he was mixing cement, and there was also a frozen dead dog on the floor. Is that such a common occurrence in Japan that the police simply couldn't bother to be alarmed? I think not. The policemen were probably like, "OK, this dude is really creepy, but he said the dog is a dearly departed pet and he seems harmless enough, and I really want to get out of here, so let's just tell him to stop banging and leave him to whatever he's up to. I'm sure it's not like he's burying a dead human body or anything."

It's highly remarkable that while Western media and records identify him mostly as a Japanese businessman, the Japanese wiki page emphasizes he is Korean. I can't read Korean so I don't know what the Korean wiki page says. Zainichi (Koreans settled in Japan during the Korean colonial period) have always had a tough time with discrimination in Japan, and I wonder how many Japanese people secretly thought, "Yep, that sounds about right for a Zainichi" or "thank goodness he's Zainichi and not really Japanese" when they heard about Obara's crimes.

Obara still hasn't admitted he did anything wrong, and since Lucie's body was discovered too long after death, there was no viable forensic evidence to determine her cause of death. Unless Obara confesses, we will never know the details of Lucie's last moments alive, though it's easy to speculate that Lucie probably died from an overdose or toxicity of the date-rape drugs he used. All of his known victims survived their horrific encounters with him except for Carita, so killing doesn't seem to be part of his MO, and his inexpert way of body disposal suggests he hasn't done it before, or at least not many times. Which makes it all the more appalling that it took the Japanese police so long to find Lucie.

The book is fairly balanced. Richard Llyod Parry started living in Tokyo since 1995 and is the editor of the Asian edition of The Times. The overwhelming number of interviews he has done with the relevant parties ensures that everyone gets heard. It's not sensationalist, it's not unnecessarily titillating, but it can be very painful at times. Which, I think, is the purpose of the book -- to examine facts objectively yet still gain a tiny sliver of understanding into the pain involved in this heartbreaking loss of life.

Homeland - Season 2 Episode 4

How are those Secret Service guys not like, "Those damn kids and their impromptu trips again... you know what, I'm gonna sit this one out and let them make out in some dark corner of DC until their lips fall off or they... just come back safe and sound"?! Again, no major spoiler.

Popping a blister hurts. And it'll keep on hurting for a while. But then it heals. Or it gets infected. Let's see where this takes us.

The Walking Dead - Season 2 Episode 2

RIP, Big Tiny. Any named character whose life on screen only spanned 26 minutes deserves a shout-out. Oh shut up, that's not a major spoiler.

And Rick, you are finally growing some balls.

Prometheus

Did me likey? 6.5/10

I figured that if I keep things simpler, I'm more likely to update this. And this actually helps me keep track of movies/books I've gone through. So I'll try to keep things short.

I've been dying a little to see Prometheus. It sure has pedigree, with its Alien mother and all that. But to be honest, I did not find Alien quite that special in my heart, even though I find some brands of sci-fi entirely fascinating and will love anything disgusting by principle. True, I'm from a generation jaded with special effects, and there were certainly points in Alien that even I gasped and found memorable, but it just didn't quite do it for me, even after several viewings and some serious analysis in an English class where the lecturer beat "strong females portrayed in films" to death (literarily, not literally, of course).

So I was really hoping Prometheus would finally hit the spot, what with the advanced technology and green screen. And I absolutely love all three leads (Noomi Rapace, whom I adore from the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; I've been a fan for Charlize Theron since the Reindeer Games and Trapped days; Michael Fassbender can basically do no wrong (except for that seriously creepy grin during one particular shot of The X-Men: First Class)).

But alas, it was not to be. The story line is a bit ... convoluted and thin at the same time. The characters are quite 2D (despite the 3D presentation) and their motives are random and contrived and inconsistent. With the Alien franchise, it's not important to have Ripley's backstory, to know how she came to be Ripley, but it's important to know where she is going. In Prometheus, you are not very clear where anybody is going. It does not help matters that it's hard to like any of the characters and you don't very much care what happens to them. In fact, the character that you may grow most attached to is a robot who can't die but can dye his hair platinum blonde to imitate his cinematic idol.

The visuals are pretty impressive in some aspects (the planetarium scene with the said robot comes to mind), but the human prototypes are strangely jerky and un-life-like. But the landscapes and the hollow caverns and intricate sets make up for some of it. Maybe.

So overall, visually pleasing, semi-enjoyable, but ultimately disappointing. Oh well. I was just hoping that a film with so much money and passion invested in it would have considerably more substance than, say, Alien vs Predator. The latter actually may prove to be more fun.

PS. When are we going to have the technology required to make wrinkles look convincing on actors?


POSSIBLY SPOILING THOUGHTS:
===========================

• The self-surgery machine was cool, but really, Dr. Shaw? You really just severed all your abdominal muscles, got the monster out, STAPLED your tummy shut and freaking DASHED DOWN THE HALLWAY?! That's not how a C-section works, no matter how high-tech your staple gun is.

FML

OK, so this is obviously not a review, and I haven't been on here for .... a LONG time. I know I have 0 regular readers, so if you are reading this, consider yourself in ... prestigious company. Mostly because there are so few of you out there.

So I went to the DMV today to get my driver's license renewed and to change my address. I'm fairly new to NYC and this was the first time I've ventured to that part of the town. New bus route, new scenery, everything. I basically had no clue where I was going except for the precious little information I've gleaned from Google map.

I get to the bus stop to catch a bus. (Again, first time I'm riding this route. For anonymity purposes, let's call it Route XXX. Yes it's a bit erotic, but hey, what the heck.) There is a XXX bus at the stop , I run to catch it and almost reach the door when it slowly drives off. FML.

I notice there are metrocard machines at this bus stop. This is the first time I've seen these machines at a BUS stop. Wow, this must be a super great important automated stop, or so I think to myself. I already have my own metrocard so I make no use of these machines and do not look at them closely.

I wait a few minutes and another XXX bus approaches the station, followed by a XXX Select+ bus. I have no fracking idea what the difference is between the two, and I realize there are two different signs for XXX and XXX Select+. I figure Select + must be some special bus (it even looks newer and more pimped out), and Google told me to take XXX, so let's not deviate from the plan even though the regular XXX bus looks like a run-down pile of ... crap. This is just in case the XXX Select+ goes a different route or makes different stops.

I hop onto the XXX and unsurprisingly, it is slow as heck. But hey, I wasn't expecting much. The XXX Select+ zooms right past us and disappears far ahead. I curse myself slightly for not having the guts to hop on the clearly faster bus.

I fidget a lot in my seat b/c of course I end up at a seat with a not-great view of the road signs, so I can't tell exactly when to get off. I squint through the dirty and not-so-transparent bus window, trying to catch what road we are passing now and how far I still need to ride. Just as I start to think I missed my stop, I catch a sign outside that is the street I should pass right before I get off. I jump out and go toward the exit and get off the bus uneventfully. So far so good.

2 hours at the DMV go ... pretty smoothly for someone in there alone for the first time. I mean, I get fidgety again b/c I'm not super clear about the procedure, but things go okay and I get a number and wait a long time. Oh well, everyone else has to wait a long time too. I can take it. No missing document, no un-filled out paperwork, I'm all set to go.

But what if they want a photo ID besides my expired license? I instinctively reach for my pocket where I keep my keys and student ID and discover that .... they are not there. WHAT? Where could they be!? Did I lose them on the bus when I was squirming around trying to read road signs? My mind starts running through all the possible scenarios and counting all the keys and other attachments to that keyring, not to mention my student ID that gets me into my building. What do I need to replace? What constitutes a potential danger (i.e. someone else picking up my keys and finding my apartment and ...?) How much will everything cost? FML FML...

I stew in my frantic daze for quite some time. Then a sliver of hope hits me: maybe I just left my keys in the apartment when I left in a hurry. Maybe. I can get into the building with the help of the security guard and get into my apartment if my roommates are nice enough to let me in. It should still work out. Then I'll find my keys lying on my desk somewhere and my troubles would all end. This gives me a little bit of reassurance as they finally call my number.

The DMV charges me $80.50 for renewing a license. Quite a bit more than I expected, as exclaimed by the woman in front of me, but hey, I understand, people all get charged this. I can deal with it.

I leave the DMV. It's already dark out (which is not conducive to someone who is not familiar with the way back home). Luckily, the return trip is the pretty much the same bus in the opposite direction. Right outside the DMV, I see a XXX Select+ bus about to leave the stop. I figure that no matter what special route it runs, it will probably have a stop on the opposite side of the street where I got on a few hours ago, so it should take me home alright. It might be more pricey, but it's dark and cold out and I just want to go home.

I take out my metrocard and hop on. The bus door closes and the bus drives off. There is someone standing right next to the driver, talking to him, blocking my way to the card reader (that's how you pay for your fare). I walk toward the card reader and the talker makes no movement to allow me access to the reader. The bus is already in motion at this point. I look to the driver and he looks at me and doesn't say anything. I get really confused and awkwardly put away my metrocard, thinking maybe this is a free bus? Free transportation for rush hours? Or the driver just doesn't care that I haven't paid? Did I catch a lucky break?

I start cursing myself for not taking the Select+ bus earlier. It would have saved me some money. And it's faster. We blow past some stops and I realize this is an express bus that skips some stops. At the next stop, people get on and none of them swipe their metrocard at the card reader. This convinces me that this is somehow NYC's way of ... showing hospitality? Kindness to weary workers/students who just want to go home? NYC is awesome! All touristy cities should do this b/c it would boost tourism so much! I wonder if this is what socialist Scandinavian countries are like? Free public transportation? All these thoughts really, literally ran through my mind.

Then at the next next stop, an MTA official gets on board and starts saying "receipts." I think to myself that he is talking to himself or the driver. But the passengers around me start digging into their pockets and I realize this is not a free bus. The official is like a conductor asking for tickets and I have just evaded paying proper fare. My heart sinks a little bit from the fact that it is not free like I thought, and the fact that now it'll be a bit humiliating as I make up paying for the fare. I'm quite a law-abiding citizen and I've never done anything like this. I take out my wallet and metrocard, thinking I'll need to pay up. The official says, "Step off the bus" and I again think he is talking to someone else.

He says it again, and I realize he is talking to me. My heart sinks a little bit more because now I have to miss this bus and probably pay for the fare at the fancy machines at the bus stop. His tone sounds soft, a bit resigned, perfunctory, uncomprehending, and ... disappointed. I am disappointed in myself too for thinking this could be a free bus.

Then he leads me off the bus and I start to realize something is wrong. There are other uniformed officials at the stop. A few other people like me get busted too and get led off the bus, and the officials look so stern and the people look so dejected. Come on, making up the fare would just be $2.25, no need to look so gloomy... ?

The official (Officer A) asks for my ID and starts writing on a little pad. I start panicking inside. What is going on? Another official (Officer B) comes by and asks something and I catch the phrase "is she resisting?" and Officer A says "no, not at all." WHAT IS HAPPENING? Am I going to get arrested? For getting on the wrong bus???

It's a bit of a blur from there. I am scared crapless. Please understand that I have never smacked into the law before. Not even a parking ticket. This is made worse by the fact that I had absolutely no clue exactly what I did wrong or what will be done to me. I have no mental preparation at all.

Officer A maybe can tell how confused I am. He says Officer B will explain. Officer B explains that the Select+ buses are express buses where you pay for the fare at the fancy machines BEFORE boarding the bus and keep the receipt. The MTA is reinforcing this by checking for receipts at random stops. I say I'm new in town and didn't know this at all. Officer A interjects a bit impatiently and says this information is posted all over the fancy machines (the fancy machines that I did not bother to examine closely). I must have looked so scared. Officer B looks down at me with ... pity? and says I need to be careful along some streets where the Select+ buses are running. He tells me the Select+ buses have blue lights. He also mentions I could try appealing.

Officer A continues writing and explains to me that basically I'm getting a ticket for not paying the fare. It's like a parking ticket, nothing criminal, and it will not affect employment, parole (? Do I really look like some convicted felon?), or other such records. I will, however, have to pay a fine of $100. He then looks to my ID (which happens to be my expired driver's license) and asks "are you from Upstate?" (since my old address is on there). I say I just moved here. He asks for my cell phone number. I tell him (it is also an out-of-town number). He asks what I do. I say I'm a student. (On the ticket he writes "unemployed" when there is an option available for "student", as I later find out when I examine the ticket more closely. I don't know what he is thinking.) He asks me my weight. I am like, "my WEIGHT?" He is like, "Yeah, height and weight." I tell him, and he finishes writing and tells me how to pay the fine or show up for the hearing and all that (all new to me since I HAVE NOT EVEN HAD A FRACKING PARKING TICKET IN MY FRACKING LIFE). He even underlines a phone number on the back of the ticket that I can "call and pay the fine in $20 installments," since I'm a student and have no money. (Um, HELLO?! I'm a STUDENT. I have NO job. NO money at all. NO income whatsoever. It doesn't matter if you let me pay in 100 installments of $1.) He gives me the ticket and turns to leave, and I ask, "what was that appealing thing the other officer mentioned?" He takes back the ticket and draws an arrow next to some writing on the ticket and says to just follow the procedure.

Hold up, hold up, hold up, a $100 FINE FOR NOT PAYING $2.25 OF BUS FARE? I understand the MTA is trying to crack down on people skipping out on fare, but $100?! (I later find out he gave me the maximum fine he is allowed to give.)

I clearly didn't know what was going on. You could even tell from the officers' voices that they know I was just confused. I was so shocked and scared that I was speechless. Just answered what I was asked and ... well, I thought I was gonna get arrested or something. I would have to say goodbye to the career I'm working on and my family would be shamed and that's the end of my life as I knew it. Please excuse me for being a little non-responsive.

Thinking back, if I just explained everything clearly and appealed to them, maybe I wouldn't have gotten the ticket. Thinking back, maybe there was even a pause before Officer A started writing the ticket. I should have just spoken up. Instead, I shrank like a deflated balloon and maybe that made me appear even more guilty. I feel like Officer B was a bit surprised that Officer A was giving me a ticket despite the fact that I clearly didn't know what I have done. Officer A was more like "eh, she's not talking, I could give her a ticket and she wouldn't fight it, so I might as well just give her one."

In my state of shock, another darned Select+ bus pulls into the station. I take out my metrocard and go toward the fancy machines, thinking I'll need to pay for my fare now and get on this stupid bus and go home and cry. The officers say to me, "no you are okay to get on." Like, "don't worry about it, this one is on us."

FML FML FML. That's probably not enough. FML FML FML FML FML FML!!!!!!

PS: my roommate came to the door when I rang the doorbell and saw me standing outside the door looking VERY dejected. I guess I really did catch a lucky break b/c at least someone was home to open the door for me. I was gonna get a nice little cherry-on-top kind of FML when I saw my keys were not on my desk. After a few seconds of hitting rock-bottom, I found them on my shelf (I never leave my keys on my shelf). This really isn't my day at all. And it's only Jan. 6. Should I be worried that 2012 as a whole is not gonna be my year?

X-Men: First Class

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
8/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
8/10

Year released: 2011
Runtime: 135 minutes
IMDB page: here

Always been a fan of the X-Men movies. Unlike a lot of the other superhero movies, X-Men never lost its classic touch and never compromised with boring villains that no one cares about. There's always central conflicts that hit close to home, and the acting is always a joy to watch.

This latest addition to the series is no exception. James McAvoy as Charles Xavier/Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto have been called "casting triumphs." In addition to the hotness factor, both men exhibit a sensitivity and vulnerability as the two characters meet, work together, understand each other, and then come to realize their goals are not the same even though they both want the best for mutants.

Ah, I kind of take it for granted that everyone is familiar with the gist of X-Men. In a nutshell, there are mutants with superpowers co-existing with normal humans. Humans are fearful (understandably) and try to keep mutants under control. While Professor X's X-Men attempt to counter this by helping humans and making them understand mutants mean no harm, Magneto's Brotherhood tries to destroy humans to make way for mutants, the next step of human evolution, as Magneto sees it.

This movie explores the two men's initial encounter and their subsequent cooperation to help avert the Cuban Missile Crisis, an incident led on by the manipulation of one Sebastian Shaw, a mutant from whom Magneto inherits his views on the mutant-human relationship.

The only question I may have on the movie is .... WTF is Kevin Bacon doing in an X-Men movie? He can have the creepiness factor, but you really don't think of him as the evil mastermind type. He does pretty well in the movie, but just seeing him in one of the opening scenes threw me off.

The soundtrack is very fitting to the epic nature of the tale. "Love Love" by the British man-band Take That serves as the ending theme. It is currently (08/28/11) being featured on the blog.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

Get this book. You may think you are busy. You may think books are boring. Not this one. You'll make time for this book once you read into the first 10 pages. Honest.

The overall plot may not seem that original. Basically the machines take over the world from humanity, a la Terminator or The Matrix. But they have vastly different selling points. Terminator is about how one robot time-travels to save John Connor, and The Matrix is about an alternate reality created by the machines. Robopocalypse is about the details of exactly how the machines take over and how the humans try to fight them off. Lots of very creative gore involving human deaths/mutilations at the hands (ahem, appendages) of robots. The most disturbing part is how these were carried out mostly by mundane everyday machines like smart cars or domestic robots (well, this is a sci-fi novel after all. Of course everyone has domestic robots that mostly just carry groceries for people and stuff like that).

It certainly helps that Daniel H. Wilson is a robotics Ph.D so he knows what he's talking about when it comes to AI and robotic joints and diagnostic tests and such.

But this story also has a humane core. It reminds me of Babel, where lots of people's storylines come together and the action of each person contributes to the big picture. All of these people start out being extremely ordinary; you may have seen them on the bus today, which is what makes them extremely easy to relate to. And that makes the hardest impact when these people are faced with extraordinary circumstances and have to make extraordinary decisions.

This book has all the necessary elements to make you want to keep going even though it's already 4am. Or maybe I'm just crazy. But Steven Spielberg has already signed up to direct a movie based on this novel, scheduled to be released in 2013, so I guess I'm not the only one.

True Grit

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
8/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
7.5/10

Year released: 2010
Runtime: 110 minutes
IMDB page: here

Not much of a Western fan either (man, I hope this is not going to turn into a blog of things I'm not a fan of), and I realize last time I said that about country music, it was also a Jeff Bridges film (Crazy Heart). But yeah, this is a great film. I'm a bit of a fangirl for the Coen brothers. They've got this brand of humour that is not very much in your face and sometimes requires a double-take. But the hidden barbs are delicious brain teasers. And things are almost always unexpected (case in point: No Country for Old Men).

However, True Grit has got to be among the more rule-following and heart-warming of the Coen brothers' works. Based on the novel of the same name (of which the 1969 John Wayne movie is also based), it is the story of a 14-year-old girl in the American West in the 19th century trying to track down her father's killer with the help of an alcoholic, weathered and slightly trigger-happy US Marshal. And a Texas Ranger who talks too much.

The acting is quite beautiful; the language of that time period is spoken with such fluidity and everything is so believable, which is hard to achieve in this day and age of cynicism, especially toward Westerns. Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld makes a deep impression as Mattie, stubborn and clear-minded and sternly reasonable, way beyond her supposed 14 years. Jeff Bridges as the Marshal is ragged, ruthless at times, and seems unreliable until he comes through for you. Every time. Matt Damon is the proud Ranger who always has a comeback for you but you just can't help but doubt if his money (or skills) is really where his mouth is. Watching the relationship between the three characters flourish during the course of the pursuit is the most rewarding part of this film.

I don't know about winning all the awards (speaking of which, Golden Globes this Sunday night!), because this film doesn't necessarily have that much ... shine to it, but it definitely has the makings of a classic that you would want to watch on some afternoon years afterward.

Yeah yeah...

I realize how much of a crappy blogger I am. It's dubious if I can call myself a blogger at all. But I try, sometimes, I really do. Not most of the time, but still.

On a brighter note, let me give a quick update of things I've watched/read in the recent past (in no particular order):

Movies:

1. Inception - I'm sure if my friends didn't build up my expectations so high, I would have found this movie a lot more impressive. As it is, I still think it's a very enjoyable movie, and the rules and logic of the dream world are pretty delicious to analyze. But there are also holes in the story and loose ends are not as neatly tied up as they should be. Also, one of my friends complained the movie was unnecessarily long. Some of the fight scenes in the snow did not add to the story and could have been cut. I have no problems with violent, creative fight scenes but I do see her point. But then I also have no problems with overly long movies.
2. Wild Target - See, no one built up my expectations for this movie. And it turned out to be great. Well, I kind of randomly stumbled on it and got hooked due to the cast. Bill Nighy (Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean)plays a by-the-books 55-year-old assassin, Emily Blunt is his free-spirited target with no morals, Rupert Grint (of Harry Potter's Ron Weasley fame) is a clueless young man who fumbles into the act and Martin Freeman (from A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and more recently, Dr. Watson from the BBC-produced Sherlock) is the creepily smiling secondary assassin with absolutely no gravitas. This thing is a comedy, don't get me wrong. The plot isn't all that important; what matters is these quirky characters come together and thin
3. Toy Story 3 - Need I say more? Pixar, Woody and Buzz Lightyear. Hmm... strawberries.

This is only violently outdated. I do apologize.

Crazy Heart

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
7.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
6/10

Year released: 2009
Runtime: 112 minutes
IMDB page: here

Please kindly notice that I just changed the featured music to... another piece from the OST of the NieR game. I swear, this will be the last one. I mean, they are good, but my obsession should come to an end because... there is so much more out there.

Now, back to Crazy Heart. I think it's an extremely good movie. It has strong pedigree and the acting is superb (Jeff Bridges got an Oscar for the main character, Bad Blake). If I were a country music fan, I would go nuts over it. As it is, I still liked it, and that is a great deal more than what I can say about country music. That's how good the movie was.

Plot: Bad Blake has been a tough-living country singer. A true has-been. After the ravages of booze, 4 divorces, and lots of years, there is not much left of the man. Except for his song-writing genius. Amidst the bitterness of watching his protegee achieve much more commercial success than him, he meets a lady who just might pull him out of the dump.

Honestly, even if you are not a country fan, you can still watch for the acting. And a good story.