Airy Nothing Chatter

Watched Mississippi Masala tonight. I was expecting a typical Indian style love story. It is a love story, but not typical, certainly not typically Indian (R rated with an obvious love scene). It's not romantic comedy and has a lot more meat than typical love stories. It addresses issues of love, family, loyalty and racism. It was fine acting by every one, but especially Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury.

Mississippi Masala is set in Uganda and Mississippi and juxtaposes the racism, both subtle and obvious in each country. It also shows the love and loyalty in each country, that transcends race. The movie also addresses the meaning of home. Is it where our ancestors come from? where we're born? or where we (and our family) are?

Meena's family is forced out of Uganda when Idi Amin takes power. Eighteen years later they are in Mississippi living in a motel run by other Indians. Her mom runs a liquor store and her dad is still trying to get his land in Uganda back. Meena, now 24, is a maid at the motel. She meets Demetrius when she runs into the back of his van. Okay, the romance is fairly unoriginal, but it's all the rest of the movie added to it, that makes it a good movie.

Yeah, this is the weakest of the three. More about blowing shit up than about humanity. It also has an inconsistent time line. How could John have been 13 in 1997? Probably the most interesting character was the Terminator, himself. He and Kate are the only characters who changed.

Given the very short span of time, her change is unrealistic to me. She got over her fiancé's death way too easily. They needed her to become the kind of woman she became (will become?), but I seriously doubt that would override emotions that easily that fast. Sarah was much more emotional in the first movie. Kate showed more emotion for her father and her acceptance of his death made more sense given she could see much more clearly that Blondie wasn't a rogue robot, that everyone was getting killed and then the final scene in the bomb shelter with the defense people calling, knowing that the bomb was really going to happen. She'd definitely breakdown about her dad later. Maybe for the fiancé, but I just didn't sense that she felt that much for him. (Or is that what the early conversation with her dad was about?)

Even though the Terminator is a different one in each movie, it's interesting how his programming each time built on the last. To see his self awareness become fully actualized is what made him the most interesting character, to me. Maybe if someone had bothered to think about Asimov's 3 laws for robots, this whole fiasco could have been prevented But whether John thought about Asimov's laws or not, he seemed to learn that they were needed.

John didn't seem to change, to me. He just was able to finally do what he had been prepared all his life to do. Between T II and T III he was just waiting off the radar, as he explained in the narration. His wasn't a character change, but a situation change.

The delays are over. I'm looking forward to the new movie.

Well, Sarah was no longer that wimpy (not quite!) funny looking chick from the 80s, that's for sure. You can see why John talked about her to his young dad. (It definitely is hard to wrap one's head around that.) For a 10-12 year old, John was no slouch, either.

This time, though, I was focused on what, to me, are inconsistencies. It just seems to me that as soon as they wiped out the prototype for SkyNet, the two terminators and John should have disappeared. I don't know where that would have left Sarah, but very likely not blowing up shit, someplace.

Son says, there are two more movies, so obviously it didn't stop the WAR. And that makes total sense. As John said, while watching the two children "shooting" at each other, "We aren't going to make it, are we?" We don't seem to need intelligent or sentient computers to blow us up. We can manage that all by ourselves, thank you very much.

And I think that maybe that explains what seemed to be inconsistencies. It is possible that the guy John sent back wasn't originally his father. You have to trust that certain things are meant to be, no matter what, for this to work. John didn't have to be the exact make up of Kyle and Sarah. It was Sarah alone who formed who he became. She seemed to have hard luck with guys and maybe life led her to the kind of men she hung out with between movies.

Also there would be no SkyNet before the Terminator came back to be crushed in the factory. At least is wasn't the same thing it was for the liquid guy and the good Terminator. And I remember Kyle saying that they blew up the time travel machine after only two went through it.

So, they didn't avert the coming disaster, but they did change the future. John's father went from unknown to known, SkyNet became more elaborate, they didn't blow up the time travel machine right away and the machine technology in 2029 was a lot more advanced.

I don't have a clue about the next movie, but I'm hoping it reflects this or explains it another way. I'm pretty sure humanity didn't get 90% exterminated in 1997. I'm very curious to see what horrors the next movie brings from the future.

This movie was made after the end of the "Cold War," but it makes a pretty good case that nothing has really changed. I'm pretty sure we all have that fear of self destruction somewhere in our heads. I don't think Sarah had it completely right when she said that men couldn't understand creativity the way a woman can (woman creates life, men create destruction). I mean, she has a solid point there, but if that is the whole of it, then humanity dies out in destruction or for a lack of men (getting rid of the problem). That won't work.

Hmmm... Maybe Arnold had it right when he did the movie in which he had the baby.

Well, we'll see what's next.

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I really felt sorry for Dyson. He didn't know what he was doing. Also, I was expecting him to be the vacuum cleaner inventor, lol.

Saw The Terminator for the first time tonight. I was commenting on how unimpressive the situation was in which that famous statement was made, and then he came back. Ah! After 25 years, I finally get it. Don't stone me, please. I'm about ten years older than Sarah Connor and the ads made it look like a "guy movie" that was all about fighting and blowing things up.

But now I get why so many women like the movie(s). Sarah looks kind of like someone I knew back in the 60s [Odd case where the movie star isn't quite a cute as the "ordinary" person.] I can really see the appeal to women. And it's not naked men or romantic interludes. She's just like us. Sarah starts out so ordinary. Actually, through the whole movie she remains fairly normal, everyday type in a not every day situation. What makes her remarkable is not so much that she rose to the demands of the situation, but that she didn't fall apart afterward, as attested to by the fact that she was in such a dire situation (and Kyle's statements).

It really makes me think. My nephew is almost exactly John's age and my son is only a few months older. Could I have raised him to be a John Connor? I honestly don't know. (If my sister knew what Sarah Connor knew, she could have!) I think I could rise to a drastic situation 95% of the time, but to live in preparation for what was to come, to know what was to come and prepare my child for it... I really doubt it. I'd have been a basket case after that thing was finally "dead." I have no doubts that I can make it in the world as it is, should I need to, but I have like having someone to lean on. The daydreamer in me says "Of course I could do it," and I'd like to believe it, but the realist is not sure at all.

Is this the sort of thing other women think about after this movie?

Shoot! I don't even know any women my age who have seen it. Most of the women I know here on LJ who have seen it were born in the 70's and 80's. Was Sarah a great role model? She sure beats Lucy, Jeannie, Samantha, Laura Petrie or even Lt Uhura (though she's much closer than the rest). [And isn't it sad that those are the only names I can even think of -- oh, yeah, Della Street and, briefly Lois Lane (who I suspect you wouldn't even recognize from the movies or later TV show). Of course, when I was a kid my dad ruled the TV. Maybe there was someone stronger, but I doubt it.]

The creepy thing about the movie was it was the defense computers that went wacko -- and this was before 9/11. I wonder if the young people who grew up on these movies had a fear that it was/is really going to happen when 9/11 happened, that 9/11 was a precursor.* Anyway, we know that people have gone a bit haywire over national security. I'm not sure that computers can become in any way sentient (Sorry, Data), but they can be programmed by nut cases who think they know what they are doing and it's not impossible that a program could be mutated (intentionally or otherwise) to ensure total destruction. I don't think it would come to the same course of events (machines taking over), but I don't doubt that it could create a serious world wide nuclear war. People could quite possibly create events similar to the Terminator aftermath.

It came to me as I was writing that last paragraph, that this is a Cold War** era movie. As I grew up, I pushed deeper a lot of my Cold War fears, already acknowledged only in my dreams. Mr Bush woke them up. Even now, when I hear a military jet go overhead, a part of me tenses in fear. I can't imagine living with that kind of fear minute to minute.

I've been rambling. I haven't really thought a lot about this. Tomorrow I will see the second movie and on Saturday or Sunday night, I'll see the third. I'll possibly have more to say after each and I already want to see the new movie (although I assume Sara isn't in it -- but I've been wrong before, too).

Ten years ago, I wouldn't even have watched this movie. Back in the late '90s I remember my son liking it and saying it was good. I respect his taste in movies, and did then, but it still wasn't enough to induce me to watch it. (But he got me to aee all 4 Alien movies!?!?) A good part of the credit for my change of mind/heart has been reading about Sarah Connor here on LJ. You gals rock!***
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*The scary thing is that sometimes things do follow fiction. I recently read a story written in 1998 that pretty accurately described 9/11, except that in the story it was one plane going for the Capitol building and succeeded. Don't forget there was a plane headed for the White House that the passengers foiled. Had someone on that plane read the story?

**Interesting article about the end of the Cold War that I found while verifying that the movie was made before it ended.

*** Try not to laugh at my attempt to sound "with it" or whatever the current terminology is. The sentiment is real, even if the specific phrasing is a bit unfamiliar to my lips.