I saw this movie when I was in my teens. My Uncle Rick (rest in peace you great man) showed my Dad and I his new movie system in the basement. It was great but a little awkward when it was just me, my Dad, and my uncle and the scene with the sex workers was there “Don’t just stare at it, eat it.” I wanted to comment on the ending scene, basically Patrick Bateman is a tortured soul, however that’s all internal. One of the characters, Bryce (the most stand-out character who in the book just sort of disappears), is commenting on Reagan. “He presents himself as this harmless codger, but inside…inside” and then Bateman thinks to himself “but inside doesn’t matter.”

In regards to Reagan it actually did matter because he was lying to America and knew it (the Iran Contra scandal) and there was a lot of internal stuff that affected millions of lives. But I agree with the overall point in that “Inside doesn’t matter” because a lot of our lives are dictated not by what we think, but how we ACT. If you internally believe you are a devoted husband or father or humanitarian that’s fine, but you need to actually live that. Most of the time I think people spend time THINKING about things and not doing them. There are way too many reasons to do or not to do something but beyond that I think people often value the flexibility. When time runs out you can then at least say “there wasn’t time” but there definitely was, you just didn’t prioritize properly. On that note, I’m cutting this short (goes with the picture I guess), I’m tired and need sleep.

American Psycho is great though, that, the Matrix, anything discussing reality V. simulation is great.

This will be a short one but I remember discussing this at Ben’s housewarming party. It’s a movie that was recently free on YouTube and I watched it again. The first time I saw this movie I thought the ending was left ambiguous (or rather maybe I remembered it that way?). The way the lead character and his music teacher are constantly struggling it’s almost like you’re never truly believing if the main character is a GREAT drummer or not (like he wants to be). Certainly the main character is good, but is he great? The true test according to the movie is that a GREAT drummer would be able to undergo anything and still be great. Like, if you put a piece of metal in fire, the fire might burn away some other stuff but the metal will remain. That’s the point of the movie and that’s what the main character wants. At the end it seems like they are still messing with each other but watching it again it’s pretty obvious that’s not the case.

Close to the very end the lead character is humiliated and is going to give up drumming (again) but then before walking away to be comforted by his dad he goes back on stage. The lead character starts taking over, giving others in the band orders, and basically screws up the program. The music teacher at first is antagonistic and seems shocked “what are you doing? you’re done, you’ll never work again” type of comments but being a showman he doesn’t stop things because the audience still is watching. The lead character continues stealing the show but then toward the very very end you can tell that the music teacher is recognizing (maybe for the first time in the movie) that the lead character is going above and beyond all expectations. He’s a master of his craft. It might be that there’s a further scene in the movie where the teacher is like “no, you blew it” but I doubt it. At the very end the lead character is rocking out an amazing solo and the teacher is guiding him, not in a forceful/commanding way, but more as a friend or just an advisor, bringing out the obvious talent. The lead character again exceeds all expectations and in the very end the teacher smiles.

That’s the ending, it’s happy. The student and the teacher both recognize (and the teacher smiles genuinely) that the lead character is, after all this hard work and dedication, a true genius talent of drums.

So this is supposed to be one of the greatest novels (if not the greatest novel) ever. I listened to the audio for free on Youtube (all 38 hours of it). I definitely get where Dostoevsky’s existentialism shines through. There’s a great message in terms of surviving and living for values/honor throughout. I would say it was a GOOD book, but certainly slow/meandering at times and definitely a product of its time (1879). If you think about it, this was before mass electricity or most modern technology.

I will sort of spoil the book, it involves a hedonistic man who gets rich and just completely indulges in sensual pleasures. He has 3 (possibly 4, but 3 legitimized) sons but doesn’t raise or really care for any of them until they come back into his life as adults. The boys’ mothers are well connected or have money so in a lot of ways it is a story about the Russian nobility. Sometimes peasants are mentioned or there are allusions to revolution or freeing the lower classes, but it’s usually at most a “Well we are rich and have a lot of servants, but maybe sometimes you can serve them tea, but only sometimes, you know, because we’re so nice.” Still it’s a really progressive book considering when it was written and there are allusions to nihilism, communism, the fall of religion, lack of meaning, all things that were well ahead of their time.

So I liked the book but I think where it falls short would be in its over-emphasis on THE SOUL or THE DEVIL or just religion in general. It doesn’t beat you over the head with it, in fact it often takes the side of “Well what if there is no God?” and develops a lot of atheist ideas. I think at its core though, the characters are all very much aware or at least adherent to the dominant Christian religion. Like, you can tell it’s hard for people to come to grasp with “What if there’s no religion?” because it’s sort of unthinkable at the time it was written.

I would also say I liked that the book takes you through the murder of the father in a fairly in-depth manner. The only problem I have is that the end sort of falls flat for me. The suspected murderer, one of the brothers, is an interesting character and it was cool to see the trial and everything leading up to his arrest. However, after his arrest there’s a lot of emphasis on side characters and the youngest brother not really related to the main plotline. The ending as I mentioned is also flat/stale because major drama, like the 2nd brother dealing with his father’s true murderer, the eldest brother (the suspected murderer) just likely getting out of his sentence due to bribery, and just not much happening at the end. Like, why go through the whole idea of punishment and consequences when in the end you just use money to get out of the consequences. I think a better ending would have been similar to Crime and Punishment where there are actually consequences. Maybe this wouldn’t be satisfying considering the eldest son is wrongly accused (OR IS HE?). The eldest son DID commit a lot of crimes and it’s only luck that he didn’t accidentally murder his caregiver when he was a child. It’s like, I get it that he’s supposed to have a “good heart” and he’s very contrite AFTER the fact, but he still almost murdered an old man and DID assault his father and almost kill him in an earlier scene. The consequences beyond him being in prison for a bit just aren’t there. It’s sort of indicative of humanity that even back 150 years ago we still had a two-tiered justice system, we still had elites, we still talked about “the decline of society” (from when? when was society so great? 1779?). A good book, the BEST BOOK EVER….no. See Dune. See Joe Ambercrombie’s The Blade Itself. See Nine Princes In Amber. Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse 5. Thank me later when you read books like those and not some interesting but ultimately dated “classic” like this book.

Son’s waking, gotta go.

UPDATE: I forgot this in the review but one interesting thing, in the book they mention (toward the end at the trial) you have power absolute but with great power comes great responsibility (or something to that effect). Spiderman was a rip-off!