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Welcome to Holidailies, where certain members of the journal community make a pledge to update our journals on a daily basis as a special Christmas gift to you, our loyal readers. Anyone who sent me email on the weekend, re-send it, because something seems to have eaten it all. So on the Thanksgiving episode of Friends, Monica and Chandler, so far unable to germinate a child of their own, got the call saying they will be adopting a baby as soon as it hatches. Being this is a sit-com, I see only one real outcome of this. Monica will get pregnant. Most likely this will happen in the very last episode. During that episode, which will also contain them picking up their adopted child, Phoebe and whathisname getting married, Ross and Rachel getting back together for the last time, and Joey announcing he's moving to California to continue his acting career, Monica will suddenly discover she's pregnant for real. So there you go. You don't even have to watch the rest of the season. Went and saw The Last Samurai on the weekend, thanks to Safeway and their little Air Miles/Movie Ticket giveaway. Go for groceries, see a free movie. Good deal in my books. I liked it. I agree with Ebert (the horror!) that the ending was off-kilter, but really good for the most part. Lots of cool Japanese culture, wicked battle scenes, and great story... woo hoo! We haven't done a chart in a long time, so let's chart it! (Minor spoiler warning) Material: The writing was excellent, although the end scenes with our hero and the Emperor did not have the same feel as the rest of the movie. The Anvil of Meaning was brought out and hurled bodily at the audience. We went from a movie filled with a mixture of action and silence in the Japanese style, to the typical blah-blah-blah crap of American cinema. The audience would have been better served by the movie not wrapping up everything in such a neat package. I give it 4 out of 5. Production: Stellar. The camera work, from the battle scenes to the long quiet shrine shots, was uniformly excellent. The costuming was astounding and the set design perfect. 5 out of 5. Performance: The actors were all excellent, living their roles and making us believe them. Tom Cruise suffered from the same problem he always does: he did not become the role. This is an essential part of Tom's acting ability. He cannot be any character other than Tom Cruise, but he can make us believe that Tom Cruise could be anything. That make sense? It's like he plays Tom Cruise in every movie. Tom Cruise the Samurai, Tom Cruise the fighter pilot, Tom Cruise the lawyer. Doesn't matter what name they give him (Nathan Algren, John Anderton, Brian Flanagan, "Maverick" Mitchell, whatever), he's still just Tom Cruise in a new job. Anyway, half a point off for that. 4.5 out of 5. The chart of this movie looks like below. When we compare the area of the triangle shown to that of a perfect movie, we find out The Last Samurai's rating.
The Last Samurai: 81% In Ancient Times...
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