Things were originally looking bleak this weekend for the baseball teams I root for. The Braves lost big-time against the Cubs Saturday, but I just looked on their website and saw that they came back and stomped the Cubs on Sunday by almost the same score, winning the four-game series. And the Bulls lost against Norfolk in the game Saturday night that I went to, along with my dad, but they came back the next night and won, tieing the two-game series there. So Saturday, when I actually watched the games, both teams lost. Hmmm, hope there's nothing to that.

On Sunday, I saw a matinee of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which Hollywood, in its acronym fantaticism for science fiction/action movies, has labeled T3. I went into it with rather low expectations, since neither James Cameron nor Linda Hamilton were associated with it, though it got really great reviews by the film critics. And it absolutely blew me away.

Mild spoilers below, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, feel free to skip ahead a bit.

The casting of Nick Stahl as John Connor was an excellent idea. He reinvents the role from the squeaky-voiced street-smart cocky thirteen-year-old from the last film into a world-weary, paranoid, lonely drifter unable to stay in one place for very long. Claire Danes does wonderful job, as usual, playing a tough and bewildered vet's assistant who gets caught up in the end of the world. Kristanna Loken plays the very sexy T-X, the most lethal terminator yet (and my friend John said there weren't enough naked scenes of her). And Arnold is Arnold, though he displays a suprising range of acting talent, which came as a big shock to me.

The premise of the movie is that the events in T2 did not stop Judgment Day - the day that the machines declare war on humanity by annihilating 3.2 billion people through nuclear devastation - but postponed it ten years. Skynet, no longer developed by Cyberdyne Systems but by the US military, is almost online, and the T-X has been sent back in time to attempt yet one more time to kill John Connor, as well as his lieutenants in the coming war. And naturally, the human resistance sends a terminator of their own to protect him. There are lots of great action sequences and chase scenes and explosions. The major difference between this film and the previous two is the treatment of fate. As opposed to the first two films, where the future is malleable and can be changed, T3 treats the future as inexorable an unchanging. This philosophy is what makes the ending so powerful, and not at all a Hollywood ending.

They did a phenomenal job with this movie. I think James Cameron would be proud of it.

Okay, spoiler alert over.

And finally, based on the recent news about governmental finger-pointing when it came to the war in Iraq, here's something to chew on, courtesy of Caitlin Kiernan's blog:

"Naturally, the common people don't want war. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

--Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia and, as Adolf Hitler's designated successor, the second in command of the Third Reich

---

Now Reading:
Kalpa Imperial by Angelica Gorodischer

Stories Out to Publishers:
16

Books Read This Year:
27

Novel Word Count:
9200