Creepy! I appreciated the sparing use of standard horror film schtick in freaking the audience out, my imagination was not feeling neglected. Morover, I never knew Cousin It had a younger sister.

A triple-marathon of a film, spanning nearly six hours and pulling no punches as it relentlessly introduced character after character with six and seven syllable names right up to the bitter end. This is the tale of Yudhishthira, Arjuna, Krishna, and four score other characters, many related by blood or what passes for blood given that children are frequently born of multiple wives, or of gods, or in one case, multiple husbands. The Mahabharata is apparently one of the world’s largest texts and after seeing this sprawling film, I can easily believe it. The straight-from-the-stage feeling evoked by the minimal sets, complete lack of special effects and periodic reuse of the actors is at times charming, but more often laughable. None the less, the operatic plot kept me mostly attentive and ensured that just about everyone was dead by the end.

I’m all for sentimentality and there was no shortage of it in this film. The professor was certainly a charming, quirky old man, but he must have been one hell of an orator to inspire such devotion in his students. I must admit that Kurosawa’s decline seems apparent even in this film. It must be difficult to know when to stop, to know in your heart of hearts that you no longer have the energy and force of will to pull greatness out of the mayhem of filmmaking.

Alas, even Kurosawa seems to have taken to self-indulgent soap-boxery in the end. The best of the dreams were simply strange, the others unconsidered criticism of modern life or hollow nostalgia for days of yore. I can hardly believe this is the work of the same man that so keenly and vibrantly expressed the human condition through film time and time again.

Another unfortunate incidence of quantum physics ponied out as some sort of hocus pocus explanation for notions that are at best the realm of psychology or possibly molecular biology. The film was saved by the occasional sense of humor and otherwise good intentions. I don’t purport to have the key to helping the world to understand that they are in control of the unfathomably complex and magnificent system that is their own body and thus their own destiny, but I certainly would not approach the problem with this kind of hand waving and scientific sounding but otherwise empty discourse. I’d probably start teaching people physics and they’d all be asleep in the first fifteen minutes.

A poignant lesson in filial responsibility that would likely sway the heart of even the most wayward child. The scenes of fifties Japan provide a fascinating backdrop as well.

I was recently thinking about how the sum total of people in history who had the ability to create works of art that might impact my life compares to the sum total of people alive today that have the ability to create works of art that might impact my life. I think the former is indeed a much smaller group and yet they are so much more well known. Thus I decided that I should do my part to spread the word about people that I think are achieving greatness in this very day and age.

The fundamental idea, that mind is comprised of a hierarchy of cooperating agencies, is surely an insightful and robust foundation for the construction of theories about the operation of the mind. However, Minsky’s deeper exploration of those ideas in terms of K-lines, pronomes, frames, etc. were almost too detailed for a book speaking in such generalities. Without a problem domain and some sort of toy system with which to evaluate his proposals, one is left dissatisfied with the ideas, unable to point to immediate inconsistencies but also uncompelled by any innate elegance of the ideas themselves to expend the mental energy to think up a toy system with which to put them to the test.

There is a huge billboard in Shibuya with a digital display counting down to this inscrutable EXPO thing, the nature of which remained a mystery to me until now.

Leave it to Japan to blow untold quantities of cash on something so touchy feely as giving everyone a “global perspective” to work toward solving the environmental problems that have reared their ugly heads during the 20th century. Indeed, more likely the insatiable construction industry in Japan ran out of places to erect new buildings in Tokyo and needed something to satisfy their craving for government funds.

None the less, a full-scale replica of the house from My Neighbor Totoro is worth a few billion yen no questions asked.

“Let us do this for all life and the future of our planet!”