Film for Lovers: (500) Days of Summer

What a week it's been. (Pretend.) We've looked at films on love in all its ups and downs, from warm highs to deep, painful lows. From Ireland to Hong Kong to California, Japan, and now, to wrap up Film for Lovers 2010, we return to Los Angeles, California for something recent, familiar, warm, and bittersweet.

I speak of none other in this case than one of my personal favorites of 2009, (500) Days of Summer.

Film for Lovers: Dolls

As we all know, the world is afflicted with many terrible, corrosive, addictive things. But there are none more terrible than the near-suicidal thirst for the next part of my Film for Lovers series. Yes, I know, it's all my fault - I got you hooked on the junk, and now it's up to me to get you your fix. We'll get you clean someday.

For part four of the five, we take a look at Takeshi Kitano's heartrending Dolls, which he himself considers his most violent film despite its utter lack of on-screen violence.

Film for Lovers: Shopgirl

Yes, I am, in fact, telepathic, and I'm reading all your minds as we speak. Funny how your thoughts seem to have synchronized around a single topic: WHERE IS THE THIRD PART OF FILM FOR LOVERS 2010!?
Worry not, dear readers - it's time for you to get your fix. For part three, we look at the 2005 adaptation of Steve Martin's Shopgirl novella. Martin wrote the screenplay, and he even plays one of the three leads! Imagine that.

Film for Lovers: Chungking Express

Last year's original Film for Lovers feature covered four English language films and one trilingual Thai release featuring a script split between Thai, Japanese, and English dialogue. Save for the Thai film, all of the aforementioned drowned the viewer in their warmth and humor in a lovely way - not to say that Last Life in the Universe was lacking in warmth or humor, but that it had more going on beyond that as well.

Today, we leave Dublin for Hong Kong in Film for Lovers 2010's second film, a work presenting a more complex look at love and human connection, in acclaimed auteur Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express.

Film for Lovers: Once

It's the week leading up to Valentine's Day, the "commercialize my love!" holiday. (Someday that will be an unironic hit pop song. I promise.) You know what that means. Time to drown an unpleasant time of the year (And pretend the Super Bowl wasn't the other night - let's be honest, who cares?) in good love-themed cinema. As opposed to the ocean of cinematic dreck out there that purports to have something to say about love. (Llamas have more to say about love than those movies and they don't even speak English.) Commence Film for Lovers 2010!

To kick off this week-long feature, we begin with none other than the 2007 Irish film, Once: a film about love and music, yet not a musical. In Once, the music takes on the role of a third central character, present all around the two leads.

Science vs. Romance

Hey, look, another semi-consistent update! (Zany.)

Conan's been over for about three days now, and in the least, they're showing one last week of reruns from last fall before the show goes off the air entirely. (I've got it on in the background at the moment - after the current commercial break, they'll be reairing one of those last Triumph the Insult Comic Dog remotes. The one at Hofstra University, making fun of people at the spin room following the second presidential debate.) As such, I haven't gone into withdrawal yet. (The key term naturally being yet.)

February's winding down already, with the month coming to an end this upcoming weekend. This has been a productive month here at Spiral Reverie, as with this being my 10th post this month, this is easily the most active the blog's ever been. (And I'm hoping to better maintain this level of productivity after how much I slowed down my blogging in the latter half of 2008.) That Conan liveblog managed to bring in an astonishing number of hits for this dusty little corner of the internet (Hey there, Cone Zone fanatics finding this blog through Google!), and I'm quite happy about that too.

Anyway, I'm not sure what all I'll be writing about in the future yet - I've got some rough writing cobbled together for a series of posts on the video game industry, its current issues, and problematic attitudes online that I plan to target at normal people who might be interested in learning about the state of things on that front. (Considering how much the market has exploded in recent years thanks to the Wii and DS appealing to far more people than the usual stereotypical gaming crowd, and the severe lack of writing for people who aren't obsessive 'in the know' gamers arguing back and forth over brandnames and genres.) And I'm hoping to come up with some more interesting subjects for posts between those so that I don't just spend a month or so alienating people with video game rambling, either. (Though you've all been warned thoroughly, I am a huge nerd. Of course, the same may be true of most people who spend their time blogging or reading blogs.)

Getting back to the main subject of this post, I promised last week that I'd be doing another love and science post, as I wrote a couple of those last year. With February, the love month (Because we needed one of those to balance out the other 11 hate months. There's a precise science to that, too.), coming to a close, it's time to bring my general posts on the subject to an end for now. (Of course, who knows what else I'll blog about later this year?)

While one of those posts last year focused on the science of kissing, this year? Some new follow-up scientific findings have been announced on the matter. The very act of kissing itself apparently releases chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes, and encourages bonding in men. (Though not as much in women, interestingly.) So yes, kissing apparently does indeed relieve stress. Science!

According to findings in a Lafayette College study (Led by dean of faculty and neuroscience professor Wendy Hill), saliva chemical compatibility can be a means of assessing a potential mate. (To slip back into the all-important scientific/National Geographic vernacular here.) In the study, pairs of heterosexual college students kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music, during which time they saw chemical shifts in their oxytocin (Which affects pair bonding) and cortisol (Which is related to stress) levels. How did they study this? Through blood and saliva samples, of course. Science!

Cortisol levels dropped in both sexes, while oxytocin levels rose in the men and dropped in the women. A test group only held hands and experienced similar chemical changes. That seems to make it apparent that physical affection between a pair of lovers is good for reducing stress in general.

Beyond the obvious from the empirical evidence to the conclusions about stress reduction from this experiment, there's still much to be learned about what the body and brain go through chemically in love and affection. This particular experiment was conducted in a student health center, and Hill intends to repeat it in a "more romantic" setting. Lovely!

Hill announced these findings at a session on the Science of Kissing, alongside Helen Fisher of Rutgers University (Whose 2008 findings I wrote about in that last post on the science of snogging. The was also on the Colbert Report earlier tonight.) and Donald Lateiner of Ohio Wesleyan University. Fisher noted that 90+% of human societies practice kissing, and she breaks it down to three components: sex drive, romantic love, and attachment. These components can be effectively viewed as phases: you're driven to assess a variety of partners by your sex drive, then you become focused on an individual through romantic love, and ultimately through attachment you're able to tolerate that person for long enough to raise a child. (And then comes phase 4: Divorce!)

Getting more into the chemicals of kissing, Fisher found that men see kissing as a prelude to copulation. (That little thing we call foreplay.) She also noted that we apparently really like "sloppy" kisses as so to pass on chemicals including testosterone to women through our saliva. In turn, testosterone bolsters the male and female sex drive. (This space reserved for a highly inappropriate chemical date rape joke.)

Fisher also pointed out that an enormous part of your brain becomes active when kissing, and that if you kiss the right person, romantic love can last a long time. (There's a little pat on the back for those of you already completely disillusioned after reading this post.)

At the end of the session, it was naturally included that the science of kissing - philematology - is under-researched. (As such, you can no doubt look forward to more blog posts on new findings on the subject in the future. You'll learn so much that you'll begin to find the very concept of kissing reprehensible! Just remember, brain chemistry is love!)



Feeling disheartened enough yet? Don't worry, there's more! At the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, a team of scientists have successfully isolated the brain's "love circuit." This particular region of the brain has been named the ventral tegmental area. (Or VTA, for short. Very Tasty Area, indeed.)

So, how exactly does love work, you ask? (Yes, that's exactly what you're asking as you put your hands over your ears, shut your eyes, and start singing gibberish as loudly as you can to block out what I'm sharing with you here.) Functionally? Love works just like a drug addiction. The love you have for your significant other and the love an addict has for sweet, sweet crack aren't too different, as Helen Fisher pointed out. The VTA manufactures dopamine and disperses it in different brain regions, which people get hooked on pretty easily. (And quite naturally, of course.) Like any drug, love has its highs and lows - times when you feel on top of the world, and times when you want to crawl into a hole and die.

To put a more positive spin on things, though, the addiction that comes with love seems biologically ingrained as so to keep us together - to effectively add a sense of increased value to love itself. Further connections between love and addiction have been made in studies of the brokenhearted as well. The heartbroken deal with cravings not at all unlike a drug addict in withdrawal.

The most recent brain scans in the study were focused on couples who'd been married for roughly 20 years and still acted like a lovey-dovey couple of newlyweds. (Who, of course, are an absolute minority in married couples, considering the ever-increasing numbers who fall out of love and end up being deadened inside by the whole experience of matrimony.) In both the men and women in these couples, two more areas of the brain reacted in addition to the VTA: the ventral pallidum (Which is associated with attachment and stress-decreasing hormones) and raphe nucleus (Which pumps out serotonin, creating a "sense of calm"). These particular areas essentially create a general low-level feeling of happiness, like all is right with the world. (Basically, your brain is lying to you.)

Naturally, there's some controversy around this research. University of Hawaii psychology professor Elaine Hatfield cautions that we shouldn't take too much from these studies on their own, and that they should be meshed with the work of traditional psychologists. But potentially, its findings could be used to produce brain hormone-based pills to help troubled relationships in addition to therapy. ("Don't worry, honey! If we take these happy pills, you'll eventually feel okay with all those times I slept with your best friend! By the way she's coming over tonight so if you don't mind scramming and pretending you know nothing, that's be awesome.") Potentially, this research could lead to advances in understanding and treating social-interaction conditions like autism. Fisher herself is researching the brain chemistry of attraction between individuals, using her findings as of far at Chemistry.com, a popular online dating/matchmaking site for which she serves as the scientific adviser.

In facing limitations in researching living humans, brain researchers have turned to the prairie vole, as it's one of the 5% of mammals that basically bond for life. As such, they're an ideal research subject in looking to figure out what makes this lifelong bond possible. In females, the key bonding hormone was found to be oxytocin (Which is also produced in both voles and humans during childbirth). When scientists blocked the female prairie voles' oxytocin receptors, they stopped bonding.

Male prairie voles' key bonding hormone is vasopressin. In putting vasopressin receptors into brains of meadow voles - a cousin of the prairie voles that doesn't bond like the prairie voles do, instead breeding with a variety of partners - and found that they began to bond like prairie voles then. A genetic variation was found in a few non-monogamous prairie voles as well, which they also found in some human males. The men with that variation ranked lower on an emotional bonding scale, had more marital problems, and their wives were more concerned with their attachment. (As reported by Hasse Walum, a biology researcher in Sweden.)

According to Larry Young of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, romantic love can theoretically be simulated with chemicals, now that scientists have found the key chemicals and means of stimulating their production. But if you really want a damaged relationship to recover or to get that "spark" back, you need to engage in behavior that will naturally stimulate the release of these hormones and emotions. (Such as hugging, kissing, and intimate contact, as found in that earlier article.)

Yes, this was the first long one in a while. But hey, it was interesting, wasn't it? (Yes, yes it was.) The science of love is an interesting topic, but if you can, don't let science's way of draining love of its romance get you down too much. Remember, as musician Jenny Lewis has put well, we're not robots in a grid.

Because I Love You I Must Remove Your Eyes

Yet another post? Why!?

Because I can.

Just another little post-Valentine's post this time. I commented on scientific studies a couple of times around this time last year. People seemed to enjoy those. So why not do that again this year, too? (At least, now that I've found a couple of interesting studies to comment on in the past few days, the second of which I'll talk about either later this week or early next week.)

Scientific American recently reported on research that found individuals married or in a serious monogamous relationship had developed an aversion to attractive members of the opposite sex. The idea here, of course, being that there could potentially actually be something of substance to the tired romantic cliche of people claiming to "only have eyes" for one another.

The test reported on in particular involved having subjects choose between quickly displayed attractive and average faces, then proceeding to stimulate their thought processes (And in turn, stir up some chemicals in that mass of gray matter in their skulls - there's no more romantic way to put that. Brains are love. Or at least, technically speaking, as much as we love to romanticize it, love's all about brain chemistry. Dopamine and serotonin are your friends.) and had them take the test again. Half of the subjects were asked to write about their feelings for their partner, while the other half were simply asked to write about a happy experience. Those who wrote about the happy experience continued to be drawn to the attractive faces, while those who wrote about their partner found themselves unconsciously turning their focus away from the attractive faces.

The Florida State University Psychologist who conducted this research - Jon Maner - suggested that this unconscious trend in attentional bias could be a reaction evolved to help men and women maintain monogamous relationships. Of course, this is also an evolutionary psychology study - a field frequently criticized as being largely speculative, given the exceptional difficulty of pinpointing the line between learned behaviors as a result of cultural practice in human beings and what comes naturally to the species. (As well as exactly where certain behaviors effectively evolved into our unconscious behavioral processes.)

But even while it's a largely speculative science, they raise some interesting points here. The evolutionary spin's more or less an interesting possibility by which to frame the study's empirical findings. Their findings aren't exactly unbelievable, though it seems like something that could use some more research in general. (As the science of love tends to.) Unsurprisingly though, the comments on that story are loaded with disbelief of the results, given the increasingly popular cynical viewpoint on the internet that monogamy is unnatural. (Though for all the praise polyamory gets as a lifestyle from an outspoken internet minority, you'll find more horror stories than success stories on that front, running counter to the lovely arguments in favor of polyamory, looking at themselves as "more evolved" for attempting a multi-pronged relationship. Personally, I think these people are completely insane. Human relationships - deep, meaningful ones in particular - are extremely difficult to find and maintain with so much as a single human being. Polyamory generally smacks of naivete and people trying to idealistically have their cake and eat it too, so to speak.)

Don't you just love putting love under the microscope?

Film for Lovers: Last Life in the Universe

Well, I've killed all of you with an overdose of my blogging. Good going, me! See what happens when you get too much of a good thing? Good thing it's so easy to reanimate people into zombies incapable of cognition beyond reading this blog. It's all about the right concoction (or "secret blend") of herbs and spices and a little detachment from that inconvenient "reality" thing.

So here we are at long last, at the tail end of my five-part daily series on notable movies with love as a central theme. (To reiterate one last time, the rest of the series consists of Paris, Je T'aime, The Baxter, Before Sunrise, and Before Sunset.) Valentine's Day is over - personally, I mostly spent it trying to sleep and failing, and then played some Animal Crossing. (Not only romantic, but productive, too!) It's not too late for this one last hurrah, of course, so here we are. Maybe I'll find some more subjects to blog on more regularly soon.

Either way, to conclude this series? The fantastic 2003 Thai film by Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Last Life in the Universe. (The original Thai language title is Ruang Rak Noi Nid Mahasan, which can be interpreted in English as "Love Story of Noi and Nid, a Lot" or "A Small/Little Love Story That is a Lot.") The film itself is a collaboration between Ratanaruang, cult Japanese director Takashi Miike, and actor Tadanobu Asano. (Miike and Asano have worked closely together before, most famously on Ichi the Killer.) Ratanaruang having studied in the United States, the film's also a self-conscious work of art house cinema.

Co-written by Ratanaruang and author Prabda Yoon, Last Life in the Universe tells the story of two deeply-suffering individuals united by tragedy. Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) is a librarian at the Japan Foundation in Bangkok living in apparent self-imposed exile in Thailand for reasons unknown. He lives an obsessively tidy, precise life in an apartment resembling a library, constantly flirting with suicide from the very beginning of the film for reasons even he can't completely articulate beyond wanting to depart from his present life. While Kenji wouldn't exactly be an anomaly in Japan as an introvert, he faces some alienation within his own culture as a result of his allergy to fish - an important staple in the Japanese diet.

Kenji's brother - a member of a yakuza group - abruptly shows up in Bangkok, interrupting Kenji's latest suicide attempt, and imposes on him by moving in. We learn from a fellow yakuza member at a hostess bar with him that he's on the run from their group's leader for raping his daughter. It's at this bar where we're introduced to one of the hostesses, Nid (Famous Thai actress Laila Boonyasak, the character's name literally meaning "small"), and her older sister, Noi (Laila's real life older sister Sinitta Boonyasak, her character's name literally meaning "few" or "less."). The sisters quarrel over Nid having recently slept with Noi's boyfriend.

Back at Kenji's apartment, the other yakuza kills Kenji's brother for their boss and prepares to kill Kenji, who recently came into possession of a gun himself. A lucky shot or two later, Kenji has a real problem on his hands. He considers jumping off a bridge into the river below. Noi and Nid's fight continues on the same bridge, and Noi has Nid get out of the car. She notices Kenji about to jump to his death, and finds her own life instead abruptly lost to a speeding motorist.

The shared experience of this tragedy brings Kenji and Noi together. Two people who'd suffered strained relationships with their siblings up until their sudden deaths. Unable to continue living in his apartment with two dead bodies stashed there, Kenji returns home with Noi to the Thai countryside - much further from Bangkok - and rejects her offers to drive him home. Kenji, being an obsessively clean person - unlike Noi, who'd allowed her house to fall into relative ruin - begins to sort through her ramshackle environs and organize things again, overstaying his welcome. After a fight over Kenji's snooping a little too much, the characters naturally begin to develop a closer bond, sharing a bowl of noodles for lunch - passing it back and forth between them, each demonstrating the extent of their knowledge of the other's language. (Making little jokes throughout.) This is the heart of the film: Two interesting personalities coming together - diametrically opposed yet complementary - to tell a subtle love story between two very damaged people.

Language, communication, and its intercultural successes and failures despite lack of a common fluent language act as one of the film's central themes. Something mainstream cinema generally doesn't explore, lacking an audience interested in such things. Where Kenji's relatively monotone, reserved, and constantly apologetic in his speech, Noi's much more extroverted and vocal with her emotions, speaking in much more forceful and expressive tones.

Intercultural communication and miscommunication is presented far more realistically than in most films featuring individual cultural exchange as a central theme, with the two leads speaking little of one another's languages, and communicating through the lingua franca of clumsy English (Making this a rare fully trilingual film), neither of them fluent in that either. As you'd expect, there's a whole lot of "What?" in the dialogue where communication fails, like in real life miscommunication.

Like the recently reviewed Linklater love stories, Last Life in the Universe also features an element of time constraint. The entire story takes place over only a handful of days, with a deadline in Noi being set to move to Kyoto a few days after taking Kenji in, with the question of what would become of him once she left. And like the Linklater films, the heart of the story lies in the love story between the two main characters and their getting to know one another, despite both of them being relative closed books as people. (Unlike the leads in Linklater's films.) The characters begin to noticeably grow as a result of their time together, their unbalanced personalities beginning to find a bit more of a balance towards the end.

Surrealist elements set the film apart from many others stylistically in how its narrative unfolds, as well. These elements include the movement of inanimate objects as though possessed by ghosts, and visual character displacement - elements of characters combining at one point, and the actors for two primary characters briefly switching without any narrative clarification occurring in those scenes. Last Life in the Universe is a complicated, multilayered narrative with a great deal of depth both within the script and visual direction of the film itself, warranting many viewings to fully enjoy all the ways the film can be interpreted.

A key underlying focus of the narrative is the decisions people make and the changes that can happen in their lives throughout the film. In its dreamy, surreal atmosphere, it's difficult to determine for certain how much of the story actually occurs, and how much amounts to imagined possibilities. That less concrete approach to the narrative is an interesting thing to watch. And personally, I think there isn't enough being done with fluid, abstract narratives these days.

As the film winds down, Noi gets ready to depart and Kenji faces some unexpected challenges in a rush back to his apartment, the audience wondering if the two will manage to safely end up together. How it ends, of course, I won't say. Only that you should absolutely see the film for yourself.

In many ways, Last Life in the Universe can be compared - both in some of its themes and the sort of atmosphere the film sets - to Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, which was made in the same year. While Coppola's film is certainly very good in its own right, it pales in comparison to what Last Life in the Universe accomplishes. Ratanaruang's film sets its sights even higher - telling a similar, but far darker and more elaborate story with far more compelling characters - and scores on all fronts.

Film is primarily a visual medium, and Last Life in the Universe is an absolute labor of love in that regard too. The brilliant Christopher Doyle (Who directed one of the short films in Paris, Je T'aime) served as the cinematographer in this project as well, finding beauty in even the most desolate bits of Thai scenery. Tense and slow-paced, the entire film is beautifully shot, without a single moment or scene that isn't perfectly framed by the camera lens. There's a quiet seductiveness and element of sexuality bubbling underneath the characters' cautious interactions and gradually developing intimacy throughout the film. The camera brings these things alive.

Hualampong Riddim and Small Room provide the film with an absolutely haunting original score (Which I've had the fortune of importing from Thailand myself.) that enables the film to further give the viewer goosebumps from the incredible atmosphere all these elements come together to build. An absolutely expert, top of the line work of cinema. Last Life in the Universe is easily the darkest of the films I've focused on in this series, but also one of the best, telling its tale of a subtle love between damaged people in the wake of personal tragedy.

Well, that's it for this five-part series on notable non-mainstream movies on love. Next up, I'm thinking of doing a couple more love-themed entries - though with slightly longer breaks between them (Hopefully not as long as usual) - to round out my February entries with a couple of love-related scientific studies I've seen in the news recently. Intriguing stuff.

Film for Lovers: Before Sunset

It's past midnight and I'm back at the keyboard again, so you know what that means. That's right! Time to blind you with science- I mean another Valentine's season movie review post. Tonight's post is the fourth and next-to-last of the series, preceded by: Paris, Je T'aime, The Baxter, and Before Sunrise, for the sake of providing links back for any who come across these posts via linking from elsewhere or search engines. (You know you're dying to read all of them. Quite literally, this entire blog is coated with a powerful toxin taken in through the eyes that can only be neutralized by reading everything. You can't say you haven't been warned.)

In following Before Sunrise last time, this time around, we take a look at its sequel, Before Sunset. This time, Linklater wrote the screenplay with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in a rare case of the lead actors having even more of a direct hand in the development and writing of the characters they play. (Delpy has since had a round in the director's chair herself, writing and directing 2 Days in Paris, a very Woody Allen-esque relationship comedy in which she co-starred with Adam Goldberg.) The 2004 film is set 9 years after the events of the original film, following the exact time lapse since the release of Before Sunrise.

Taking that in mind, should you be disinterested in spoiling the ending of the first film and wondering what becomes of the two characters before seeing Before Sunset, you may want to skip this post. That said, in my discussion of the film itself, I'm going to avoid spoiling anything too much - as I try to in general - as so to further encourage you, dear readers, to give this one a look as well.

In taking inspiration from his night in Vienna with Céline, Jesse writes a somewhat successful novel and finds the last stop of his European book tour in a small corner of Paris. As he speaks with local journalists about the project, we flash back to his night with Céline, connecting the narratives. Three of the journalists represent the viewer's way of interpreting the end of Before Sunrise: a romantic who believes the characters must meet again, a cynic who believes they don't, and one caught in between, who wants to believe in the characters' love but allows realism to hold them back. In this way, the film slyly breaks the fourth wall early on in addressing the first film's fans directly. Céline appears in Jesse's audience at the bookstore, and upon completing his discussion with the journalists and readers, the two are finally reunited.

With a few hours free before Jesse's plane ferries him back to America, he and Céline choose to spend that time catching up. From there, the film returns to the stylistic approach of the original, with the couple separating from "normal" time and entering a world all their own, centered around their wonderful stream-of-consciousness style conversation consuming the rest of the film. Of course, this time they have much less time to spend together than they did in Vienna. In facing those time constraints, their conversation becomes much more personal far more quickly than in Vienna.

The two of them now in their mid-thirties, we first learn again about their politics and work, and see how they've grown and changed in the near-decade since their last encounter. As the afternoon progresses and they confront their impending second heartbreaking parting, they grapple with their feelings for one another and the disillusionment they'd experienced with love in growing older after all the youthful idealism they'd shared together that night in Vienna. That night proved to be a pivotal one in both their lives. At the end of the afternoon, they face difficult decisions with the question of whether or not they'll ever see one another again, regretting never having exchanged contact information in their youthful foolishness.

Where Before Sunrise represented the best of '90s art house filmmaking, Before Sunset does the same for 2000s art house cinema. Between the writing, cinematography, and atmosphere of the films, each retains the distinct feel of the times they were made. Progressing technology certainly made a notable impact as well, with the cameras used in Before Sunset capturing and bringing to life a gorgeous Paris mid-afternoon in ways that couldn't be done quite as effectively a decade prior. The use of natural lighting - the entire film having been shot over 15 days - only helps to accentuate the visuals, as Paris is just as generous a backdrop as Vienna had been, absolutely vibrant and alive. Music plays even more of a role this time around as well, Nina Simone serving as a wonderful subject of conversation late in the film, and the soundtrack sporting three songs by Julie Delpy. (All of which complement the film extremely well and enhance the atmosphere with their addictive French folk charm.)

Ethan Hawke himself has commented on the film's existence, and acknowledged that there was never really any demand for a sequel. They'd simply decided to make one because they felt like it, and wanted to revisit the characters. Frankly, the reasons one could have for making a sequel don't get much better than that - especially if the film's a labor of love as so to avoid falling into the pitfalls many unnecessary sequels do. (And Before Sunset avoids those pitfalls handily.) It's clear from the writing - and the number of elements from their own personal lives invested in their characters - that Hawke and Delpy have poured a lot into these characters. If there're any roles that really define their careers as actors, these characters are undoubtedly those roles. Hawke has also suggested in interviews that there may be a third movie about Jesse and Céline yet.

Before Sunset is another film that fits into my personal categorization system as one that I cannot recommend enough. For personal reasons, I was certainly able to connect to the whole idea of reaching out to somebody through a book, as Jesse did to Céline. And if there's any drawback to the whole film, it's that it's a good forty-ish minutes shorter than Before Sunrise. The pacing and writing are even tighter as a result, the viewer being able to really feel how much less time these characters have together than last time, but it definitely leaves you wanting more. And so I conclude my discussion of these two intertwined films by simply saying that you should absolutely see both of them. They'll leave you blissed out.

Next up? I figure out which film I'm going to write about for the 5th and final post in this series. What could it be? Stay tuned! (This thing's hits seem to have been rising daily as of late, so it seems the whole "blogging more regularly" thing can indeed be good for traffic. Who'd've thunk it?)

Film for Lovers: Before Sunrise

Egad, a third daily entry in a row. How is this even possible? Science, my friends, it's only science. (And also magic, but keep that on the down-low.)

Tonight, we've arrived at part three of my five-part series of posts on noteworthy generally non-mainstream love-themed films for the Valentine's season. Because why should you even consider spending the holiday conversing and deepening your relationship when you could be spending it sedentary, letting good movies do all the romantic work for you? Actual human interaction's for chumps - perhaps in this postmodern society, that goes without saying.

After spending the past couple of entries looking at Paris, Je T'aime and The Baxter, this time we take a look at Before Sunrise, an all-time personal favorite film. (Which might sound sappy coming from someone as cynical as myself - especially so in regards to love - but you'd have to be completely dead inside not to fall in love with this movie.) A story minimalist, naturalistic, and stream-of-consciousness in its conception and execution, Before Sunrise is a love story of a variety rarely seen in cinema: one that's truly believable.

Written by Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, A Scanner Darkly, Fast Food Nation, Waking Life (Which also features a brief appearance by Before Sunrise's leads.)) and Kim Krizan and directed by Linklater himself, Before Sunrise is a 1995 film in which the characters themselves are the story. Like all love stories, we have two central characters. Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American, is on his way to Vienna to catch a flight back to the United States. Céline (Julie Delpy), a young French woman, is returning to school in Paris after a trip to her grandmother's in Budapest. The two of them meet on the train, and after some convincing from Jesse - suggesting that a decade or two down the line, she might not be satisfied with her marriage and wondering what could have been had she picked up with another guy, and that he was just another boring, unmotivated guy like the rest - Céline agrees to disembark with him in Vienna.

The two of them spend the rest of the day and night exploring the city on foot, the entirety of the film playing out as a thoroughly enjoyable, naturalistic day-long conversation between the two characters as they talk about life, love, and everything else around Vienna. Enjoyable dialogue and character development are Before Sunrise's meat and potatoes. As the film progresses, a very organic romantic chemistry develops between the characters, Hawke and Delpy's performances being of a caliber that allows the viewer to forget you're watching performances and instead feel more as though you're spying on two ordinary people falling in love. Night falls, and the couple has to figure out how to spend it, lacking the cash to get a room anywhere. When morning arrives, they're faced with all sorts of complications in having agreed to never see each other again after spending that one day together.

Conceptually, Before Sunrise undoubtedly isn't for everybody - certainly here in America, you'd be hard-pressed to find a mainstream audience interested in watching a film that amounts to essentially eavesdropping on a two-hour conversation between two people. But it's that unpretentious, unglamorous take on a love story unfolding between two people that lends the film its realistic atmosphere. (With a touch of magic, of course, as there is in all natural connections.) The central themes of self-fulfillment and self-discovery through interaction with a lover is one not explored anywhere nearly as well - and often not even addressed - in mainstream romantic cinema. (Which frequently doesn't seem to have a clue how this whole love thing works.) The film's supporting cast consists of mostly small name to no-name European actors (And undoubtedly in some cases, ordinary Viennese), and the soundtrack complements the film well, between use of a fair amount of classical music and a notable scene featuring Kath Bloom's "Come Here." The cinematography itself gives us a beautiful street-level view of Vienna, the city acting as a silent third character alongside the leads, a perfect backdrop for their romance.

While all these things are wonderful and only contribute to the brilliance of Before Sunrise, the real stars, of course, are the script and leads. You'd never see a Hollywood romance with a script quite like this, largely because by Hollywood standards, a naturalistic, believable love story isn't generally considered to be very interesting or marketable. Before Sunrise is absolute proof to the contrary. All you need is the right leads, an excellent script, and someone behind the camera who knows how to direct with the right amount of subtlety and sensitivity that mainstream and Hollywood cinema by and large lack in their focus on flourish and grandiose story arcs. That sort of cinema is all about the big stories - but those aren't the stories most true to life. Life's all about the small, beautiful stories. And Before Sunrise is all about life. Together, Céline and Jesse embrace and experience life to its fullest in getting to know and understand one another, and through that, themselves as well. It's a heartfelt celebration, cinematic love at its finest.

Film for Lovers: The Baxter

What's this? A new Spiral Reverie entry less than 24 hours later? What happened to the usual 2+ week gap!? I haven't had enough time to prepare! Believe me, I'm as surprised as you are.

Of course, now we're in the midst of a series of posts on good Valentine's season movies. (While I'm effectively proving here that if I felt like it, I could update this thing much more frequently. I might be able to retain more regular readers if I did that. I just can't guarantee a consistency of quality if I post too often. That's my excuse for the moment, anyway.) In particular, focused on highlighting films that don't get that much - or nearly enough - attention in the mainstream. Obviously, I began with Paris, Je T'aime last time. Tonight? We take a few minutes to look at an independent romantic comedy that'll make you laugh instead of rotting your teeth.

The film in question is, of course, none other than The Baxter, a film by Michael Showalter of the absurdist Stella comedy trio. (An off-shoot of the '90s MTV sketch comedy series, The State, which in turn spawned Viva Variety, Reno 911!, and short-lived Stella TV series on Comedy Central. Michael Ian Black and Ken Marino (Who also had a recurring role on Veronica Mars) of The State also had regular roles in the second half of the first season of Reaper. Other movies by The State have included: David Wain's Wet Hot American Summer, The Ten, and Role Models, along with Ken Marino's New England clam-digging drama, Diggers, and Robert Ben Garant's Reno 911!: Miami.) The Baxter is considerably less crass than Wet Hot American Summer's '80s summer camp movie parody humor.

Selling itself as "a romantic comedy for anybody who's ever been dumped," The Baxter tells the story of Elliot Sherman (Michael Showalter himself), a "Baxter," as defined by the film: the dull, nice guy who always gets dumped for the far more exciting protagonist as a standard romantic comedy trope. (See: A whole lotta John Cusack films from the '80s.) The dull guy women settle for when they can't be with who they actually love. As we're introduced to the character, we look back through his life and see him being dumped by girlfriends time and time again for more exciting guys who put it all on the line for her.

Elliot meets the film's two heroines through his accounting work - woman of his dreams magazine editor Caroline Swann (Elizabeth Banks, who's appeared in other Stella and The State works) and similarly geeky office temp Cecil Mills (Michelle Williams). And ultimately, Elliot ends up engaged to Caroline, only to have things start going wrong during the wedding planning between the numerous compatibility issues the couple faced and the appearance of the love of Bradley Lake (Justin Theroux), love of Caroline's life. With a break-up seeming imminent, it's up to Cecil to help Elliot learn to take risks in order to become the assertive leading man type he needed to become in order to take control of his life and escape the Baxter curse.

A gentle, enjoyable film that I've no doubt men and women could enjoy equally as much, The Baxter features a lot of small laughs in its offbeat script. The film's a pleasure to look at, with colorful cinematography and plenty of breathtaking shots of New York. The sentimental piano soundtrack complements the film well and helps to build its atmosphere. And in addition to the aforementioned cast members, the film sports a strong supporting cast, including: Showalter's fellow Stella members Michael Ian Black and David Wain, Peter Dinklage, Paul Rudd, Zak Orth, Catherine Lloyd Burns, A.D. Miles, Joe Lo Truglio, and Ken Marino.

Adorable and intelligently clever in its writing, The Baxter's a fresh take on a genre defined by being safe and inoffensive, and possesses an infectious rewatchability in the simple pleasantness of the experience. It may not initially seem like much on the surface (As that's the genre), but it's both an expertly crafted tribute to the genre (Particularly taking after an older style of genre writing) and an effective subversion of the genre at its most tired and trite. A very light film, this one will leave you smiling.

Film for Lovers: Paris Je T'aime

So yeah, as I said last week, I was planning on doing a series of posts on love-themed cinema for Valentine's Day this year. Of course, V-Day's in only three days now, so I'm a little late in getting to that. (I've been keeping myself distracted with Spaced on DVD at night lately anyway, because Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright are fantastic. As is Jessica Hynes.) At any rate, I'm kicking off these posts (I'm hoping to get 3 or 4 done for this series in total, with the last one perhaps being posted late on the 14th - likely technically in the early morning on the 15th.) with a look at the veritable platter of love-themed cinematic hors d'oeuvres that is Paris, Je T'aime.

The 2006 film consists of 18 short films (Or arrondissements) by 22 different directors spanning roughly two hours, each between four and seven minutes. Within these few minutes, each director tells an intimate and quirky little bite-size tale of love between a couple of characters in different locations throughout Paris - and this isn't your Hollywood's Paris, either. Each of these directors pouring their artistic passions into these personal love letters to both the city of love and love itself, you get very different perspectives on the tiny slices of the city you see from film to film as the movie plays out.

The film opens with Montmartre, a short by writer/director Bruno Podalydès and even starring Podalydès himself as a bitter man who parks his car on a Montmartre street and comes to the aid of a passing woman (Florence Muller) who faints nearby. Montmartre opens the film with a short tale of hope and connection for a bitter man in a gentle and pleasant start to Paris Je T'aime as a whole.

From there, we're taken to a tale of young people connecting with a cross-cultural undertone in Quais de Seine, a film by the married team of American screenwriter Paul Mayeda Berges and Indian-British director Gurinder Chadha. The short focuses on a young man (Cyril Descours) harassing passing women by the Seine river who ends up drawn to and connecting with a clumsy, charming Muslim girl (Leïla Bekhti) irritated by his friends' behavior. The short has a sort of "this could be the start of something beautiful" feel to it, in its charming leads and the sort of cross-cultural connection never seen in mainstream cinema.

The matter of cross-culturalism comes up again in the third short, American director Gus Van Sant's Le Marais. This film focuses on a young man (Gaspard Ulliel) drawn to another (Elias McConnell) working in a print shop, and his efforts to explain the intense feeling he was getting that the other young man was his soulmate. All while unaware, of course, that the other young man didn't speak much French. A charming short film of unaware miscommunication of strong feelings, and Paris Je T'aime's inclusion of a same-sex romantic connection as well, as love is naturally limited to no one sexual orientation.

The Coen brothers made the fourth short, Tuileries, a more physical and comical film. An American tourist (Steve Buscemi) waits for the Paris Metro to arrive at the Tuileries station and makes the mistake of making eye contact with a turbulent couple making out on a bench across the station. A short with the kind of comical execution that perhaps only Steve Buscemi could have pulled off as well as he did. Short and simple as the film is, it's quite enjoyable, and helped to raise my opinion of the Coens again after how disappointed I was by their recent Burn After Reading, which simply failed to satisfy as a farce or entertaining piece of cinema in general.

The fifth film, Loin du 16e, focused solely on a young mother (Catalina Sandino Moreno, whose performance in Maria Full of Grace I've been meaning to see.) singing a Spanish lullaby to her baby before leaving it in a daycare center. We watch her daily commute through Paris before she arrives at her wealthy employers' and sings the same lullaby to their infant. A simple story, but beautiful to watch unfold.

And the six, Porte de Choisy, was directed by Australian director and brilliant cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and written by Doyle himself along with Gabrielle Keng and Kathy Li. This comical short focuses on a beauty product salesman (Barbet Schroeder) making a sales call on a Chinatown salon run by an imposing and difficult woman (Li Xin). This one's definitely gotten some mixed reactions online due to the surreal, non-linear approach to the narrative, focusing more on strange and mesmerizing Chinese imagery (No doubt influenced by Doyle's long track record of phenomenal cinematography in noteworthy Asian films, including work with directors like Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-Wai, and Pen-ek Ratanaruang.) than telling an overly cohesive story. What I recommend with this one is letting go of your senses and and simply letting the atmosphere of the film and its visuals draw you into its world. It's a strange, short trip, and certainly a memorable one.

Bastille, the short by Spanish writer-director Isabel Coixet, feels much like the quintessential European art art house film crammed into a few minutes. She approaches the story through a detached, cerebral third person omniscient narrator who tells the story we watch unfold of a man (Sergio Castellitto) preparing to leave his wife (Miranda Richardson) for a younger woman when she reveals that she is dying of a terminal illness. Immediately sympathetic, the man breaks things off with his lover and stays with his life, rediscovering his love for her after some effort. A very bittersweet and touching little story.

Japanese writer-director Nobuhiro Suwa takes Paris, Je T'aime someplace even more melancholy with Place des Victoires. A mother (Juliette Binoche) grieves the death of her young son (Martin Combes) and finds herself walking into a sort of fantasy vision of her little boy playing in a nearby city square, where they meet a cowboy (Willem Dafoe) who arrives to comfort them and escort the boy to the beyond. It all boils down to a simple, but emotionally gripping naturalistic fantasy sequence carried by the emotional weight in Juliette Binoche's performance. Place des Victoires adds much to the emotional range of the film project.

The emotional heft of the previous two films is balanced out by Tour Eiffel, a humorous and visually gripping piece by French animator Sylvain Chomet. Though performed in live action, the entire short feels much like a children's cartoon as a young boy tells the tale of his parents - both mimes - met in prison and fell in love. This one will undoubtedly put a smile on your face. (Unless you hate mimes, in which case it might just give you the willies. (Which is also a turn of phrase people should use more often.))

Mexican writer-director Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) made the next short, Parc Monceau. The entirety of this film's story is told in a single continuous shot as an older man (Nick Nolte) and a younger woman (Ludivine Sagnier) meet and walk down a sidewalk in Parc Monceau while discussing a third person - a Gaspard - who would likely have a problem with their meeting. Throughout the short, you're left trying to figure out the relationship between these two characters and identity of Gaspard, but I won't reveal that here, simply because it's worth seeing for yourself to find out in how well done the script was. Another enjoyable little look at a different variety of love.

French writer-director Olivier Assayas' Quartier des Enfants Rouges tells the story of an American actress (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who buys some hashish from a dealer (Lionel Dray), who becomes enamored with her. Like the others, there's a very naturalistic chemistry between the characters in this short that only elevates the short, and there's a fantasy costume element that adds a degree of surreality to the unfolding narrative.

German writer-director Oliver Schmitz's Place des fêtestakes the film back to darker territory again. The story focuses on a dying Nigerian man (Seydou Boro) attended to by a paramedic (Aïssa Maïga) whom he'd met and fallen in love with at first sight before. In a surreal, jolting fashion, we walk back through his memories in a manner reminiscent of Michel Gondry's directorial approach to the lucid memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and jump back to the present as his mental condition deteriorates. An absolutely heartbreaking little film.

The next short, Pigalle, by American writer-director Richard LaGravenese, has a bit more of a classical American cinema feel to it. The story focuses on an elderly couple (Bob Hoskins and Fanny Ardant) acting out a fantasy argument in front of a prostitute in Paris in order to keep the spark alive in their marriage. Just the sort of thing you could see Americans doing. Overall, I actually think this is one of the weaker links in the film - largely because the premise feels slightly contrived to me - but it's still not bad, either.

Canadian writer-director Vincenzo Natali takes things back into lovely and strange territory after our brief American interlude with Quartier de la Madeleine. One of the most visually stylized shorts in Paris Je T'aime, the film comes off as a fun tribute to early cinema - in particular, Nosferatu, which birthed the vampire genre. A backpacker tourist (Elijah Wood) witnesses a killing by a vampire (Olga Kurylenko) and enchanted, offers himself to her. Stunned, she resists, but after slipping on the previous victim's blood and falling down the concrete stairs he'd recently ascended, an unconventional and vicious romance began between the two. There's a definite quirky sweetness beneath the spooky and slightly gruesome filming to the film. I'd take this kind of vampire love story over adolescent garbage like Twilight any day.

American writer-director Wes Craven departs from his usual horror offerings with Père-Lachaise. The film focuses on a young English couple (Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell) visiting Père Lachaise Cemetery. After the woman leaves her fiance over being fed up with his humorlessness, he hits his head on a tombstone and receives advice from Oscar Wilde (director Alexander Payne) that allows him to redeem himself. A short and sweet little film, different from anything I was expecting to see from Wes Craven, certainly. Payne's cameo's amusing, and Emily Mortimer's charm carries the short.

German writer-director Tom Tykwer - a personal favorite - made the next short, Faubourg Saint-Denis. The short is both ambitious in scope and execution, essentially being told in the sort of hyperkinetic flashback montage Tykwer's mastered in his films. A young blind man (Melchior Beslon, who was also in the excellent The Princess and the Warrior) reflects in flashback on the development and decline of his relationship with his girlfriend (Natalie Portman) after it seems she's broken up with him over the phone. Visually arresting and enthralling the whole way through, this is easily one of my favorites in the entirety of Paris Je T'aime, and that's saying something considering how much there is to love in this movie.

Quartier Latin, the next-to-last short, was written by American actress Gena Rowlands and co-directed by Gérard Depardieu and Frédéric Auburtin. This one feels similar to what the Hoskins/Ardant film was going for, but more on-target. It tells the story of an old couple (Ben Gazzara and Rowlands herself) meeting at a bar (Run by Depardieu) for one last drink before divorcing. A film that simply reminds that even in old age, love doesn't necessarily last, and it can spring forth anew for other people. There's no shortage of life in Gazzara and Rowlands' characters, and in general, this is a spirited way to wind down the overall film.

14e arrondissement by American writer-director Alexander Payne (Sideways) brings things to a close with a mail carrier named Carol from Denver telling her French class in broken/very-American French about her first trip to Europe, and in particular, what she loved in Paris. It's very funny and very American, but at the same time very sympathetic and human too. A resonant, goofy, touristy way to end things as Feist's performance of "We're All in a Dance" plays - with lyrics in both English and French - as the end credits roll.

All in all, Paris Je T'aime is a perfect film for the Valentine's Day season, celebrating love in the city of love as well as it does in so many ways. A film for lovers of Europe and romance, of mirth and the joy of being alive.

Earlier this month, the producers of Paris Je T'aime released a follow-up short film project in New York, I Love You - more of the same sort of thing, now in New York. I'm looking forward to eventually seeing that (Undoubtedly when it hits DVD) and writing about it here as well.

My Love For You Is Like A Truck

At last, the day you've been waiting for has arrived - Show Your Partner You Care Through Simple Consumer Economics Day! (Sponsored by Hallmark and Stover - because any other brand of chocolate may as well be full of arsenic, you worthwhile pile of human garbage!) Er, that is to say, "Valentine's Day." But that just doesn't have much of a ring to it these days, does it?

Of course, as you all know well by now, I am something of a "love guru," you could say. (Some have even described me as a "luru." I put a stop to that.) And you, the varied internet masses of numerous levels of consistent hygiene, have once again turned to me for advice on the matter.

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now, but no, no. Just for you, because I'm a glutton for punishment, here's three ideas for a successful, overwhelmingly romantic Valentine's Day. Remember, if you "score" (I'm not entirely sure what this means. It seems to be something sports-related, and as we all know, I know nothing of those matters.), you have me to thank for it. And you can thank me with money - $12,000, specifically. I'm kind of in a little trouble - made some bad investments in hobo bonds.

1) No Matter What It Is, Say It With Flowers - That was close to some sort of slogan, wasn't it? If not, let's play along. Who knows what love is better than corporate entities, after all? Love is to be bought, neither earned nor freely given - so the free market has dictated it. Hey, get away from the keyboard, Ron Paul! Your kind isn't welcome around here! Sorry about that. Freaky. Anyway, flowers - the Valentine's season is huge for the flower business - especially roses, because it's too much effort to be original in your romantic expressions. This year, why not kick this up a notch? Don't just send your lover flowers - or send them to yourself and pretend someone else had like 8 million Americans do every year. And scattering rose petals up to and around your bed? What rock have you been living under? Instead of that tired old crap, you should find a different flower, one that says something about your relationship - I got you this Venus Flytrap because I secretly want to flay you alive and eat your flesh! Happy Valentine's Day! - or maybe just a general cheap flower, better yet, maybe steal some from a public garden. (This would show that you're willing to commit petty crimes for your love. And who doesn't love a mediocre outlaw for their love?) If you go the cheap/stolen flower route, throw them everywhere - and I do mean everywhere - and even serve them for dinner, regardless of whether or not they're edible. (Hint: They're probably not.) If you're feeling especially kinky, hide petals in your orifices or superglue them to your naked body to give your lover an extra special surprise in the bedroom! Why merely go through the motions on the holiday when you could traumatize your significant other, ensuring that they'll never be able to forget you if you ever break up? (No matter how hard they try. There are some things in this world no amount of alcohol can erase.)

2) Chocolate from the Heart - Yes, Valentine's Day is a chocolate holiday. (Apparently in a different sense from New Orleans being a chocolate city. If you don't know what I'm talking about, ask an adult.) Whether it acts as an aphrodisiac or you simply "enjoy the flavor," nary a V-Day passes without mass consumptions of chocolate. (Which lead to eventual arguments about perceived weight game and messy cycles of break-ups and reconciliations, completing the messy fractal that is the diagram of modern love.) Once again, though, why be uncreative? Cheesy cartoon heart-shaped boxes of mystery chocolates - half of which are full of garbage, anyway - are pretty dated. It's the 21st century - and who cares if you can't cook - show your love by making your own homemade scale model of a human heart entirely out of bitter baker's chocolate. You get bonus sexy points if you can successfully simulate your significant other's mitral valve prolapse that threatens to ruin your sex lives forever if things don't improve.

3) A Little Game of Pretend - You've probably been together a while now, huh? (If not, let's just pretend. Even if it means pretending in regards to an already-imaginary significant other.) Things're probably pretty lukewarm in the bedroom at best - that Alf puppet fetish just makes everything awkward. This year, why not spice things up with a little role-playing? Specifically, spend several weeks beforehand mastering another tone of voice - but only when your beloved isn't around, you can't be ruining the surprise, can you? - then buy a heavy coat, ski mask, and handgun. (In a pinch, a model gun that looks relatively close to the real thing can work as well. It's a February evening, still dark out enough that they won't be able to tell.) From there, you rent a car, stalk them outside of their workplace, and the moment they're alone, angrily, violently accost them and shove them into the back of your rental. (A windowless van would be most ideal - bonus points if there are visible bloodstains in the back.) Blindfold them and bind their hands and feet - it's getting pretty hot now, huh? - then drive off, handling the car aggressively enough to ensure that they'll get knocked around quite a bit back there. Spend the next several days driving aimlessly from shantytown to shantytown - ideally crossing at least several states' lines. (Bonus points in this case if the kidnapping is caught on surveillance and you end up on the run from Johnny Law. Why not make it a trip to Cleveland?) Once you've traveled far enough, pull into an empty, poorly lit Stuckey's parking lot (If need be, substitute the parking lot of a similar establishment.), get in the back of that van, remove your partner's blindfold, and then your ski mask. They'll be so relieved to see you that all you'll have to do then is get ready for love-making like you've never experienced before! (Or the most horrific relationship conflict you'll ever face. This is an as of yet unproven method and may still need some ironing out. Also, try to make sure your significant other doesn't die over the course of the post-abduction road trip - this cannot be emphasized enough.)

I bet you're feeling pretty romantically inclined now - are you?

What?

Don't give me that look.

Man, all I did was try to help. Fine. Be a living cliche. I'm gonna go spend my Valentine's Day alone again, probably playing video games. Like cool people do.

The Science of Smooching

The "season of love" continues. (Hey, wait, wasn't that supposed to be spring?) Has anyone come up to you on the street and waved a knife at you, threatening to "put their love inside you" yet? No? Nobody? Good. You had me worried for a second there. Man, what a bad viral marketing campaign that'd be.

Of course, by now, you're probably already making plans for Thursday night with your significant other. Romantic plans. Some bad French accents might be used to enhance the mood, maybe a seductive handshake or two. (What the hell are those, anyway?) Why, you might even "get" some of that "down" thing I've heard so much about. (It isn't related to that Down's Syndrome, is it? I couldn't see that being too romantic - maybe inwardly depressing, and fodder for an overly sentimental Hollywood cash-in.) Naturally, you might even kiss each other - on the mouth. Risque! I haven't kissed a woman in over seven years now. I'm honest, I can admit it. Sure, my attempts at something romantic with my novel are probably futile, knowing my luck, but at least I'm trying, eh?

Anyway, that's the big subject of the first V-Day entry this week - lacking more romantically-inclined inspiration at the moment. (I'll save that kind of glorious love-bitterness for Thursday morning.) And what'd put you in more of a kissing mood than discussion of science!? Why would you want to think of anything else when kissing but how your brains were responding, after all? They call the brain the love muscle for a reason, after all.

What do you mean they don't?

The scientific community has, apparently, more or less avoided tackling the matter of the science of tonsil-hockey - perhaps because they wanted to be able to continue enjoying it themselves. Lousy selfish scientists. In fact, science still hasn't unraveled and pinpointed everything that makes love what it is yet - and when they do, won't it be glorious realizing how little our emotions suddenly mean in the grand scheme of things, because they're just cerebral chemical impulses and hormonal urges? Maybe that's why everything was boring and white in all those '70s science fiction movies - everyone was too dead inside to care. Plus, we couldn't have anybody illegally stimulating their brain with anything - or anyone, for that matter. It's where we're headed if we keep trying to legislate morality and dumb it down to a black and white issue, anyway.

Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher presented her findings on kissing in the October issue of Evolutionary Psychology - light tabletop reading that I'm sure you'd find right beside the latest TV Guide on every kitchen counter in America. (Except for the fundamentalists who take everything too literally - they read Creationary Psychology, which is a lot like Tiger Beat magazine, but with more Jesus centerfolds to set young ladies' nether regions aflame. Is that a loaf of bread in his pocket? I don't think so! Man, for repressed puritans, they sure are perverts.) Fisher's findings came down to perceiving kissing to be all about choosing the right mate. (And sometimes it's about getting the boys' attention with your best friend at Mardi Gras after a few too many Brewskis, am I right, ladies? ... Ladies? Drat, they all left. What the hell was I thinking with the Brewski reference? Nobody's used that slang in twenty years.)

The mouth is one of the most sensitive areas of the body, with the brain seemingly having evolved an oral fixation that'd make Freud's head spin and perhaps dispense candy. While people have even been stabbed in the back before without noticing - their brain was having none of that - but the slightest touch to the lips or mouth is felt intensely. (Let me tell you, going through major oral surgery - jaw surgery, in my case - is no picnic as a result. And not just the whole no-solid-food-for-months part of it. I thought I would lose my mind by the end.) Naturally, this is why the mouth is often so intrinsic in romantic contact and sensuality, whether in popularized cheesiness like that whole blindfolded-strawberry-feeding thing, or something as widely beloved as oral sex. With so much of the sensing part of the brain focused on the mouth, it's only natural that kissing would be some kind of big deal.

There were some gender differences noted in their study as well. For instance, women place more importance on the taste and smell of who they kiss than men. Historically, women have always been typically known for being more sensuous than men, so this doesn't exactly come as a great surprise. (I wasn't sure how to react when my first girlfriend informed me that I had a scent she'd liked, back when I was 16. My first thought was, as I recall, something along the lines of "Holy shit, do I stink?" Of course, as a lifelong allergy sufferer, I'm lucky when I can smell anything at all, so unless there's particularly strong smelling food around or someone's wearing perfume, I don't pay much attention to that particular sense much of the time, intrinsically important as it is to taste - I pay far more attention to that one.) Likewise, there was a massive gender gap in regards to the importance of kissing before the initiation of sexual congress. (Which would be a great name for a politically-charged R&B album, you realize. Who wouldn't get down to the smooth sounds of Tax Reform and the Civil Rights Bunch? .... Yes, I realize I am quite possibly the whitest guy on the planet.) Most men, as you can imagine, were fine with the idea of getting into the horizontal mambo without so much as the slightest oral contact. (Because that's just how men are, am I right, ladies? ... Oh right, you're still gone.) Conversely, of course, most women felt the opposite. C'mon baby, all I need is 5 minutes, then you can go back to sleep.

Of course, kissing, in being a part of this National Geographic Human Mating Processes special, serves as something of a barometer as to what kind of lover someone would be. Naturally, I'm screwed in this area too, as I never had a chance to get good at kissing to begin with. Damn me and my getting severely traumatized in love halfway through my teens on top of already being an awkward, standoffish nerd to begin with. If only there were some way to twist the very fabric of reality itself in my favor...

Anyway, with these ramblings aside, hopefully they've given you something to think about. And hopefully I'll come up with something more compelling by Thursday morning, lest I just write some random love-themed comedy piece with no real point then.

Remember! Next time you're kissing your significant other, think of science!

If You Love Me, You Will Punch Me In The Face

So, I've been busy with Project 27 Days - making more good progress with editing and polishing - and am feeling kind of uninspired in regards to writing in here at the moment. But hey, you guys like it when I write about the subject of love, right? Right? (Play along, there might be a cure for syphilis in it for you later! But I make no promises.) Valentine's Day, everybody's favorite holiday scheduled right in the middle of suicide season is coming up in just under a week, so let's talk relationships! (Specifically, I'll be looking at this theme here over these next several entries. Enjoy!)

This time, we're looking at a common hurdle shared by all relationships - and yes, I do mean all relationships. (Including the ones between you and your cats, Mittens and Bootsy. What the hell were you thinking with those names? Damn, you're lonely.) This hurdle? Conflict.

Relationships can be tough on everybody involved. People, by nature, annoy the hell out of each other. Sometimes there's no real point to it - it's just a little thing we do. (For the sake of awesome, that is.) Other times, we do it because love and hate are inextricably connected as emotions go, being that they're effectively the strongest emotions the human species possesses. As creatures, we're too complex for our own good, often too much so to completely comprehend ourselves. (Brain chemistry? Neuroscience? You mean hexes concocted by witches!) So we can mix up these emotions, even if only for a moment. Bottom line, we inevitably start to bug each other if we spend too much time together. And when in love, we're prone to clinging together so closely that inevitably, the friction that comes with it leads to static buildup and discharge. (We're all really irritating sweaters. Try wrapping your brain around that one.) When this happens, we get angry with one another.

So in this situation, what do you do? Fight and get it out of your system? Try to ignore the issue, bottle up your anger, and let it corrode you inside like rust on a sewer pipe? Stratego? Given my own unhealthy penchant for bottling up my emotions, I'd probably pick the second one. But truth be told? I'm wrong. The correct answer is, as you no doubt ascertained half a minute ago already, the first one. (Sorry, Stratego fans, looks like there is a bad time for it after all. You lose this round.) When conflict arises, to put it in semi-obscure video game reference terms, you've got to Fight It Out! By which one means, as a recent study concluded, you need to be willing to let your anger out, to blow off some steam at each other - if you can't reconcile as a couple following a conflict, after all, you fail at the relationship.

Conflict resolution is serious business - it's something that you either learn in life, or you don't. As the study found, one can potentially learn from the example of one's parents, but more often than not, couples don't know how to go about handling their conflicts. Some amount of experience with serious relationships would somewhat remedy this, you'd think, but then, everybody experiences many aspects of daily life in different ways - conflict included. You can't bottle up your anger, spending your time brooding and essentially resenting the other person until that ultimately brings the relationship to an end - you aren't a teenager, are you? As such, when conflict arises, as painful as the experience may be - crucial as painful experiences are to human development - you need to address it and resolve it. Relationship problems don't just disappear, no matter how much you may wish they would.

If you simply contain your anger, it'll stress you out even more, and as I'm going to write on at some point as well - stress kills. You don't want to die from stress, do you?

Letting your anger out, on the other hand, is actually healthy, unpleasant as the emotion itself is. The study found that people tend to make better decisions when letting their anger out, with the emotion causing the brain to ignore other cues and focus on the matter of what's made you angry. (Take note that this is not always the case. Domestic abuse, for example, is often the result of a fit of unbridled rage. Despite what the study says - and this entry's title - beating your significant other is never a good decision. Don't be one of those people.) Likewise, a past study showed that release of anger can lead to feelings of optimism and control over one's situation. (Which isn't necessarily good if it isn't a situation you have any actual control over, or any real reason to be optimistic in regards to - that's pole-vaulting over into delusion territory.)

In short, though this goes without saying, as it's on every daytime TV talk show, in every self-help book, and pretty much anyone giving advice on relationships will reiterate this point - communicate with each other. Respect each other enough to be open and honest with each other, even about unpleasant things, and unpleasant emotions. Don't lock them up inside where they'll eat away at you. Trust each other to listen and try to understand one another. You might then have a legitimate shot at overcoming whatever obstacles and conflicts you yet face as a couple. Hey, who knows? You might even not be completely miserable with each other someday. Let's just try to keep the fisticuffs to a minimum, eh?

Man, what a sappy entry. Damn you, Valentine's Day!

Ambition and Unrequited Love

Another entry on love - don't you all just love these? Seems to be one of the subjects I'm capable of writing somewhat more compellingly on, anyway, so pull up a seat, grab your snack of choice, and hopefully enjoy.

In life, we've all our own aspirations - owning that house, having those kids to live vicariously through, winning that lottery, beating up that celebrity - and sometimes, every now and then, people's aspirations turn to something soft and sappy. Specifically, I'm talking about that love stuff. (Because everyone reaches that certain point when they're too old to be anything but pathetic in searching for meaningless sex, and when that time comes, you've gotta begin that desperate search for someone, anyone, willing to settle for you. That way, you don't have to feel so alone and can pretend you're actually in love with each other. Pop out some kids, while you're at it! Nothing strengthens an already fundamentally broken relationship like chucking some children into the equation!) Yeah, that junk some of the people you slept with along the way might've felt for you - and that you also might've felt for them. (Yeah, remember that time you wanted to see someone you slept with again, and not just for more sex? Clearly, ignoring and dismissing that impulse was your finest hour.) Or hey, remember that friend you had that you flirted with and had this unspoken and unacknowledged romantic tension with for years that maybe one of you should have said something about? And instead you let yourselves get out of touch instead of trying to stay in contact and really be open and honest about everything, because you might risk making yourselves vulnerable to one another, let alone perhaps even risk falling in love. There was always something more that needed to be said, something more to be done. Instead, you both stubbornly kept your traps shut in hopes that if anything were to happen, you wouldn't be the one to initiate it. Now that's love in the modern world.

As people become more afraid to truly open up to one another, to reach out and connect on the deepest levels (The kinds that actually don't involve genitalia.), unrequited love becomes all the more common an affliction. In my case, this is compounded by a history of scarring experiences with love and intimacy and my own introversion and general beta maleness. (Opposite the stereotypical alpha male, we live quiet, unobtrusive lives and tend not to do remarkable things, with risk evasion a central pillar of our character. Though obviously, both of these classifications are oversimplifications of individual character, simply going on sets of traits that tend to go hand-in-hand with many people.) These matters quickly turn something important in life, as we woefully incomplete creatures by nature ricochet around like pinballs, searching for someone to love and be loved by, into one's own personal Mt. Everest. And we humans? Most of us don't have it in us to climb - let alone surmount - a personal mountain of that scale.

Now, I'm not exactly a bag of sunshine and puppies myself, let alone any sort of optimist. My experiences with love have taught me firsthand that if I'm to use my brain at all in matters of the heart, it should be to suppress any impulse to say anything or act on any feeling. You fool, do you want everything to go horribly wrong again!? That's just how it is. Never anything along the lines of: Hey, she actually likes you as a person! You might just have a shot! Just imagine, what if she has feelings for you too! Going on experience, my brain immediately dismisses that possibility. Yeah, whatever, douchebag. My brain is kind of an asshole, but sadly, that's the product of my experiences. Traumatic love experiences do not beget confidence or optimism. I've been openly cynical and skeptical of all things love for a very long time now, even to the point of suspicion of my own feelings until I can ascertain that they are what I'm really feeling beyond the shadow of a doubt. That usually isn't too difficult though, at least, having learned to trust my own feelings more in recent years, and for some unfathomable reason, having actually developed a modicum of self-esteem - believe it or not.

Despite being that sort of person - hardly the picture of what women typically find attractive, going on firsthand experience and what I've always been told - I'm breaking beta male character, as I've touched on here before, in dedicating my first novel to a woman I've been in love with for nearly 6 years now and never confessed my feelings to. (I am finally doing so through plot subtext in this novel.) Despite plans to finish it by the end of last summer falling flat, my efforts to complete it by this coming spring (ETA sometime in March or April) are coming along smoothly. In fact, just the other day, I completed my full, polished draft of the first chapter and began sending it to test readers. I tend to be my own harshest critic at all times, in all aspects of life, but my readers so far, they have had no complaints in regards to the chapter. In fact, they apparently loved it, and are looking forward to the rest now. A bit of an ego booster to be sure, as I'm hardly used to being complimented, and never know how to take compliments. (Hence my not exactly responding to complimentary comments on here, though believe me, I do appreciate the kind words. They're quite encouraging.) And with that important milestone reached, I'm beginning to feel a bit of a nervous adrenaline rush. I've never gone so far as to do anything of this scale for anybody, after all. And as I've established, I'm no optimist - even at best, I'm expecting embarrassing rejection in front of the internet and world, in having publicly written at all about what I'm doing here. (Not with any goal of making this a spectacle in mind, but to personally challenge myself to admit things publicly I generally struggle with, and simply be honest with myself when effectively facing my entire bad history with love and standing up to it and all the baggage that entails.) I've already begun to lose sleep over the very thought of what I could be facing by later this year or sometime next year whenever the book hits shelves - as I need to find an agent and publisher within 2008 if it kills me (In the least, I've been getting good encouragement from readers, which definitely helps to spur me along in finishing this project and beginning the aggressive search for an agent, as I am writing this to be a story people would get something out of and want to read - something professional, that would sell. Of course, every other aspiring author on the internet says this, no doubt, but I will not allow myself to be knocked down. There is far too much at stake to settle for less, especially when working under a somewhat limited time frame.) - since as you can imagine, in going this far to express one's feelings for someone that you've kept buried for so long (And I can pretty much guarantee that this is the grandest thing I'll ever do for love. I don't know how I could top it, personally, and if it fails as it likely will, knowing my luck (Though it'd be fantastic if I were wrong for once, and something incredible came of my taking a risk like this, breaking out of my usual shell.), it just cements my being an epic failure in love.) tends to produce a great deal of anxiety. But I'll learn to deal with it.

(That last paragraph was a real mess with all those parentheses. I promise you my novel writing is a lot cleaner and easier to read than that. Best if you take the parentheses and the madness they make reading that paragraph as an indication of the havoc the complexities of love can easily wreak upon one's thought processes grammatically.)

At any rate, as I move further into 2008, the completion of my first novel - which is easily the best work I've ever written - and move towards the agent/publisher hunt are so close that I can practically feel them at my fingertips. It's both terrifying and exhilarating at once. Overwhelming, even. Having finished my undergraduate half-decade of college, the real world is coming at me full force as I juggle looking into grad school with getting a driver's license, establishing myself financially so I can manage loans for grad school, all while finishing up and moving to publish my first novel and pour out the contents of my heart to a woman I've owed that much to for many years now. I feel like I've just jumped out of a jet, and am caught in the free fall, keeping my fingers crossed that my parachute opens and everything works out before I hit the ground and gloriously completely self-destruct. Life, the real world, love - these are all terrifying things. But if you don't face them all head-on, then what is life?

There we go, a first blog entry of '08 that some of you might find worth reading. If you are interested in seeing the first chapter of Project 27 Days posted as a teaser in here, leave a comment, as I am quite tempted to post it here sometime in the coming month or two in order to see if I an drum up a little more interest before publication. I need this to succeed one way or another if it kills me, easily being the most important thing I've set out to do in this foolish, awkward life of mine. At any rate, it's always nice to get a little feedback, rarely as I do. And as usual, thanks for stopping by.