The Blind Side is different than I expected. For starters, I don’t like sports movies, pretty much as a rule, because I don’t really like sports. But, like Invictus, which I reviewed earlier, The Blind Side isn’t so much about sports as it is about the human condition, hope, and faith. But, while it was different in that the sports aspect was pretty much glossed over, it wasn’t too different than everything else out there and what you ultimately have on your hands here is a feel-good movie. A feel-good movie done well, but a feel-good movie nonetheless.

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Last night’s LOST was an absolute mind trip and I loved it. For the purposes of time—it’s tight this week—I’d like to completely skip the recap aspect of my review and get right down to the cold hard theory.

My thesis: The flash-sideways timeline occurs between the time that Juliet sets off the hydrogen bomb, and the survivors wake up, on the island, in the present day (2007) timeline.

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Tonight’s episode is going to be about Desmond. We know this from the bagpipes in the preview and can surmise it from the fact that Desmond arrived on the island as the “package” last episode.

I thought, first of all, that Desmond was going to be an important chess piece in a game that Charles Widmore was about to play with Jacob’s Nemesis. Remember, to leave the island the Man-in-Black needs all of Jacob’s candidates to go with him. Or, possibly, he needs them dead. Desmond is a candidate. But, there’s more to it than this, I think.

Remember, Desmond recognized Jack on the flash-sideways Oceanic flight. That means that Desmond has some kind of memory of knowing Jack previously. That means that perhaps Desmond is aware of the real timeline going on simultaneously. Why? Because Desmond has had flashes like this before and perhaps he’ll recognize this flash-sideways for what it is.

The previews for this week’s episode have talked about a “path” being found. Putting two and two together, in an episode about Desmond perhaps the path that’s found is a result of Desmond doing, or remembering, or realizing something. If he figures out what the flash-sideways is all about and if he somehow figures out how to right it all, then there’s our path. Poof.

The writers did say that sometime, about half-way through this season, the two timelines would merge about become one. Could we perhaps see that tonight? And does Desmond have something to do with it. I think quite possibly, yes.

Not only is Desmond important to Widmore as a bargaining piece, and something to prevent the Smoke Monster from leaving the island, but perhaps Widmore also knows what’s going on with the two timelines and needs Desmond to make things right. Then again, perhaps I’m completely off-base, but that’s half the fun of LOST: making these wild predictions.

The path, of course, could be something entirely different but at this point in the season, given what we know about the two timelines merging, I’d venture that this is what we’re up for.

It was the mid-1980′s. I was being born. Paul Simon was recording with Black South Africans to create a new record: Graceland. Aside from being, in my opinion, the greatest record ever created, Graceland is an absolute piece of music-changing history. Along with Peter Gabriel, who was recording around the same time, Paul Simon brought world-wide attention to the aptly-named genre of world music. Sounds and songs not found in our Western musical palette but imported from overseas. In the case of Graceland, it was South African musicians that Simon brought on board to help him craft his record. But it was certainly more important than just bringing a new sound to the world.

Paul Simon traveled to South Africa, teamed up with Black South Africans, right in the middle of that country’s most radical racial segregation known as apartheid. At a time when blacks and non-blacks were radically separated, Simon went in, or brought musicians out, and made music with them. An act of incredible defiance of the country’s policies, and a beautiful artistic gesture.

The result, when all was said and done, was not only an incredible record full of rich, new sounds, but a global awareness of an issue that few had really understood or acknowledged previously.

Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes

This video comes from Simon’s Graceland concert. A 1987 performance that he staged in neighbouring Zimbabwe featuring a whole host of South African performers, some who had been exiled from their country for previously collaborating with white musicians or speaking out against their government.

Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes might well be my favourite track ever, if I had to pick one. It’s got it where it counts. I mean, just listen to the bass line.

The Pacific, Parts 2 and 3 are very different animals. While Part 2 follows the first installment pretty closely, and deals with some very fierce jungle combat, Part 3 finds our characters on leave in Australia and it’s this action-less episode that’s garnered significant criticism around the intarwebs. Now I feel like it’s my duty—nay, obligation—to level some pretty harsh criticism of my own at those who had a problem with Part 3, but I’ll try to be nice.

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In his article this morning on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, sci-fi writer, tech guru and University of Waterloo prof. suggests a series of very compelling reasons why he won’t—and we shouldn’t—buy a new Apple iPad. Clearly, he’s thought a lot about it and his article is such a wonderful breath of fresh air in a tech market that’s gone nearly out of control.

The cliff notes:

If you can’t open it and take it apart, you don’t own it. You’re locked into only the content that Apple says you can have. It won’t save the journalism industry. It’s over-simplified. It takes away from what makes computers and gadgets great: being able to mess around and share them. It’s a fad.

A highly recommended read.

Truly, An Education wasn’t what I expected it would be going in.

To be fair, it was probably my fault. Concerned about sexual content, I looked it up on some family-oriented movie review sites. The kind of sites that warn parents about inappropriate material in films, and tell you which to stay far away from.

This particular website described An Education as pretty terrible. In not so many words, it said that the film was about a young girl being seduced by an older man who wanted to have sex with her. It said that the majority of the film surrounded this attempt, by the older man, to get the younger girl to have intercourse with him. It said that that was essentially the point of the film. I had my own reservations as well. Having recently seen Crazy Heart, I was still smarting from the classic Hollywood older man is swooned by much younger woman fantasy that that film let play out. An Education seemed like it would be much the same. But, as I’d find out, it wasn’t all about sex and it wasn’t just that same old Hollywood story.

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