You’ve probably seen the abusive parent film before. You’ve also probably seen the inner city inspirational teacher film before too. There are certain conventions of postmodern dramas that keep cycling back, the previous two among them. In fact, you’ve likely seen both of these tropes in the same film. But you haven’t seen Precious (2009). Precious is something else.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is a difficult film to sit through. Probably the most difficult I’ve seen since Million Dollar Baby (2004). It follows Clareece “Precious” Jones, an illiterate Harlem teen pregnant with her second child. At the suggestion of her principal, she enrolls in an alternative school that helps students get their GEDs, but this alone is not the solution to all her problems as she hoped it might be.

Unlike what the film’s trailer may suggest, Precious is not all heavy. There are a decent amount of laughs peppered throughout the film, starting as early as the opening sequence. Like any well executed drama, these moments of comedy are used to pace the film and offset some of the feature’s heavier themes. However, in this film unlike in others, the comedic sequences are handled in a way that is, itself, rather saddening: Precious uses her imagination to get her mind off of her troubles. While her father rapes her, for example, she pictures herself on a red carpet in a flowing dress, gossiping with paparazzi. There is humor in Precious, but the humor is also an interrogation: it forces the audience to ask itself “Why am I laughing?” “Is this really funny?” and “What’s really going on here?” They’re tough questions.

There are numerous performances I’d like to highlight from the film, but in the interest of space, there’s one I will focus on in particular. Gabourey Sidibe is the perfect Precious (hard to imagine it’s her first film!), Paula Patton as her inspirational teacher is touching, and Mariah Carey as the hard-hearted social worker is pitch perfect; but none of these ladies stands out quite like Mo’Nique as Mary, Precious’s abusive mother. The role requires her to walk a fine line between love and hate, which she does with expertise. Mary is a loose cannon, sedate one minute and volatile the next, her words and actions barbed with the same maternal menace. Every scene in which she’s in the room, Precious--and the audience, for that matter--may as well be in a cage with a tiger.

I had the excellent fortune of seeing Mo’Nique speak at USC last fall and, let me tell you, this is one woman who has been beaten around by the Hollywood machine. She built her career from nothing, and has, until now, only had crappy jobs to show for it. Her work almost discredits her name. But as anyone who’s ever heard her speak can attest, Mo’Nique is a very inspiring individual. She has a wonderful grace and love that one wouldn’t expect from a half-rate comedienne. But in Precious, she finally has a role fit for her ability. Mo’Nique didn’t leave a dry eye in the whole audience at the screening I attended. There is no doubt in my mind she will be nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars this spring. And in fact, I’ll be damned if she doesn’t win it too.

Seriously stop whatever you’re doing and go see this movie! You won’t want to be sitting on your couch dumbfounded come March 7, 2010 when this picture steals the Academy Awards and you missed it.

Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire opens in select theaters this Friday, Nov. 6.

Paranormal Activity (2009) has been slaughtering--pardon the verb--the box office lately! Granted, This Is It (2009) won last weekend, but that’s not being reviewed because that’s not a real film. According to Box Office Mojo, Paranormal Activity, which only cost $15,000 to make, has raked in upwards of $80M domestically--a big win for Paramount. I’ve already made my opinion of the film clear, but regardless, that’s the horror film Halloweeners chose to see this weekend...which is unfortunate, but this is the film they should have seen.

The House of the Devil (2009) is the latest entry in a recent 70s/80s throwback trend: Black Dynamite (2009), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and Drag Me to Hell (2009) with it to name a few. This one in particular is a babysitter slasher about Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), a college student who answers an ad to babysit for a very curious family to make the money to pay her rent. When she arrives, she learns she’s actually watching an elderly lady and not a child as expected. This is the first signal of odd things to come--oddities that escalate to the fever pitch horror fans have come to expect by a film’s climax.

What’s probably most remarkable about this film is its unified vision. It is very clear, immediately, that writer/director/editor Ti West managed the film very closely to ensure every aspect was aesthetically uniform. The film is an homage to tropes of horror films from the 70s and 80s, but it updates the stakes so the images are more shocking or intense than they would have been during that time. Likewise, every aspect of the film feels lifted from decades past: similar framing, similar acting, very similar writing, and similar set dressing. It’s startlingly easy to forget this film was made in 2009, which is very cool.

Still though, like I said, the stakes are very much raised. The film may borrow from an earlier age, but it’s scary today. As a satanic horror of the occult, a sub-genre made rich by works like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness (1987), The House of the Devil fits right in (Casper). It gets under your skin.

See it, if you get the chance. Horror films like this one, with this much love and attention to detail, don’t come around that often. The House of the Devil is only playing in three theaters in the nation (the Sunset 5, for fellow Angelenos). But despite its limited release, it is a stellar, stellar film. If you care about the horror genre, particularly the future of the horror genre, at all, please go out and see this film.

Los Angeles is a scary city. Angelenos and visitors have a smorgasbord of neighborhoods to choose from in which stereotypes and reality collectively instill the fear of physical endangerment. Finding a place that plays on the mind’s more irrational fears, however, seems much less doable. Of course, there are the annual Halloween iterations of local theme parks, but less contrived and expensive experiences exist few and far between. Being the cheapskate I am, though, I said to hell with paying for actors and décor to spook me, did a little research, and embarked on a mini-tour of creepy LA locales that require no entry fee.

Murphy Ranch, Rustic Canyon

Last Sunday, my roommate Jason and I hiked away from civilization to hunt for Nazis. Well-kempt lawns faded into wild brush and tree-strewn hillsides. The sprinklers' pulses and the growls of cars yielded to buzzing insects, the whir of bikes, and sometimes, actual silence.

The trailhead begins at the back of a neighborhood in affluent Brentwood, leading to an allegedly haunted Nazi commune in Rustic Canyon. According to a Los Angeles Times article and personal accounts, a German-American Nazi spy named Schmidt convinced a wealthy American couple to establish an isolated community in the 1930s to ride out the predicted anarchy in America following the Third Reich's victory in Europe. After 1945, it apparently became an artists colony before burning down in the 60s to become the ruins that it is today.

Following a 30-minute climb up Sullivan Fire Road, we approached the grand entrance to the abandoned compound-a pair of black cast-iron gates ironically not unlike the entrance to a concentration camp. Descending into the canyon, the former water reservoir comes into view on the right amidst a tangle of brush. As is the case for most of the camp's remaining structures, graffiti blanketed its walls.

Courtesy of Gary Yao

As Jason and I walked farther down the dirt path, we encountered more clues of human settlement: fallen window mullions, a deformed fireplace, and rusting household appliances intertwining with vegetation. The Nazis lost to the world at large. Their legacy here lost to shrubs.

On the way down to more residential ruins and an overturned Volkswagen van, what we presumed to be another hiker, seated on one of the steps, asked for some water and engaged us in conversation. This eventually devolved into a one-sided speech like the ceaseless nagging of mothers during a never-ending telephone call. Except, imagine your mother as a mustachioed and balding middle-aged man spewing only sporadically comprehensible sentences.

Jason attempted in vain to make sense of the conversation, but I was having none of it. Jason asked the man how he knew so much about the place. "I grew up here 30 years ago," he said. "My girlfriend, Rose, lived over that way...When they said, ‘hoy,' they came out of the woods. They did her in first."

Courtesy of Gary Yao

Jason and I walked away as nonchalantly as possible and, thankfully, the man stayed put. We explored the area briefly before finding another way back up to the main road, lest we cross paths with the man again. Finding only one other set of stairs, Jason and I made it about 5 feet before being forced to crawl on hands and knees by the overgrowth of vegetation. Near the top, the stairs disappeared completely into the hillside. At this point, the drama queen inside me couldn't shake a sense of impending doom. Jason and I correctly agreed that moving up would be sounder than moving horizontally, and made it back onto the Murphy Ranch's main road. We laughed nervously about our awesome adventure.

"Thank God I didn't end up coming alone," I told him as I exhaled a sigh of relief.

Lower Arroyo Seco Park and
Colorado Street Bridge, Pasadena

I did, however, end up tackling the next photo shoot alone. At night.

Courtesy of Gary Yao

Nicknamed the “Suicide Bridge,” the Colorado Street Bridge is the site where dozens of people plummeted to their deaths in the early 20th century. Having already photographed night shots from the bridge deck previously and not encountering any of the rumored paranormal activity, I swithced gears and decided to shoot a set from the completely unlit Lower Arroyo Seco Park below.

I arrived at sundown, and the park still hosted a lively mix of strollers, joggers, and dog-walkers. Two other photographers had set up their equipment below the bridge as well. As the sun set, with my sense of sight almost out of commission, my ears perked up at every noise—every rustle and every voice made me a little less motivated to stay.

Once finished, I hummed my way back to the car, trying to convince myself that what I’d heard came from small animals and local kids, and that nothing would step out of the closed Port-A-Potty as I rushed past it. Mine was the last car to leave the lot.

Courtesy of Gary Yao

It took a little mental pep talk to convince myself that heading over to the Old L.A. Zoo at that point would be a wise decision. Once notorious for its mistreatment of its animals, the zoo has since moved to a new site in Griffith Park. The old zoo is now home only to abandoned cages and storage sheds. Despite being claimed as one of the safest abandoned sites in Los Angeles, I hoisted white flag to doing anything in a pitch-black unfamiliar environment besides photographing a sign marking the old zoo’s location.

For People More Daring:
Linda Vista Hospital, Boyle Heights

Linda Vista Hospital embodies all the trappings of a classic haunted place. Judging by pictures by others, the random noises, the flickering lights, and cold spots, among other things make the setting a terrifying visit.

Unfortunately, the hospital has been officially closed to all except for production companies renting out the place for filming. Yet, this will surely not stop the most enthused aficionados of haunted locations. Not that I condone trespassing or anything...

The Scene

The fragrance of rising bread and delicate pastries does not emanate from Hygge Bakery as it does from other establishments of this sort. Hygge (that’s hoo-geh) has no need to resort to such aromatic pretexts.

The clean, modern lines and high ceiling inside Hygge may assimilate it inconspicuously with the sleek residential towers in South Park. But the juxtaposition between the contemporary angles of the building and the sensuous curves of the pastries in the display case lends the space visual pizzazz.

The Savored

While Hygge looks like textbook modern Scandinavian interior design, its pastries are all decidedly traditional Danish. Owner Rasmus Lee, a Denmark native, would not have it any other way. Noticing the void in Danish bakeries in ethnic food-inundated Los Angeles and craving a taste of home, he took matters into his own hands and opened Hygge, with assistance from Henrik, Hygge’s baker and fellow Denmark native with a longer experience in Danish bakeries than I have been alive. From Henrik’s talented hands come a variety of authentic breads, pastries, and cakes gorgeous enough to make anyone’s mouth (well, mine at the very least…) water.

The kamme ($2.25) pastry, which resembles its namesake in Danish—“comb”—captured my heart on my initial visit. Almonds sprinkled across its surface lent the kamme a more substantial texture that played a satisfying counterpoint to the airy flakiness of the pastry. Continuing the theme of lightness, the pastry does not overwhelm with its sweetness.

If a richer texture and flavor are both desired, then the spandauer ($2.25) will not disappoint. Though closely related in form to the Danishes that Costco sells, it clearly plays in a different league. The golden-brown flakes and the smooth richness (but still light by American standards) of the vanilla-custard filling refresh the palate, rather than bombard it with an overly sweet, gooey mess from a commercial kitchen. Have I mentioned that Hygge does the lightness thing very well?

The kringle ($2.25/slice), the Danes’ sweet take on the pretzel, does a 180 with that motif though. Entirely indigenous to Denmark in this form, the kringle features a more subdued and substantial dough absent of aforementioned pastries’ signature flakiness. I don’t remember exactly what the filling consisted of, but notes of cinnamon come to mind.

The Drive

1106 S. Hope St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015

via hyggebakery.com

Head north (towards Downtown) on Fig. Take a right onto Pico and left onto Hope. There will be street parking along Hope and the vicinity. For those who cannot find any street parking (or drivers who are parallel parking-challenged), a garage sits directly across the street from Hygge.

To not deal with parking at all, catch the F Dash ($0.25) along USC’s perimeter on Fig and the 81 ($1.25) on Fig at Expo, Jefferson, Chano’s, and Adams and get off at 12th. Walk 2 blocks away from L.A. Live on 12th and take a left onto Hope, walking towards Downtown. Hygge will be on your right before 11th. Return on the F Dash or the 81 at Fig and 12th. The trip will take around 15-20 minutes each way. For more specific times, check out www.metro.net.

The Deal

Hygge Bakery already makes it affordable for Danish pastries to be a daily indulgence. Look for the pastry of the day for $1-2 and the “any pastry and brewed coffee” pairing for around $3. There’s even more for USC students! Just flash them a USC ID and they will happily apply a 10% discount.
Why Dash Over?: Let’s face it, you’re probably not going to Denmark anytime soon and you only have so much time left at USC. Better start eating those pastries now if you want to get to them all!

by Jeremy Allen

The dust has settled. The swarms of stiletto-clad individuals have vacated Paris as quickly as they came. It’s back to ballet flats and quotidian black-and-white reserve on the Parisian metro. And yet, the Carrousel du Louvre seemed just a tad too empty last week without the recent mass of fashionistas in perpetual mid-Tweet. Their frenzy and undeniable ferocity seemed so out of context in Parisian two-hour café society.

Needless to say, I was inspired: why not imagine a completely different way to relive the collections, sans Style.com (as comprehensive as it is)? The ticket, if I may, comes courtesy of the RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens): an 8.80 euro metro day pass. Consider the spring-summer 2010 shows as your unexpected, impeccably packaged program for rediscovering Paris in all its glory; with rust-colored leaves sprinkled on the streets and a festive nip in the air (plus a panoply of not-to-be-missed exhibitions), there’s no better time to fall in love with the City of L’Amour.

By now, your eyes are surely starved for more of Alexander McQueen’s kaleidoscopic, zoological prints; a prodigious parallel can be found at the Musée du Luxembourg, where Louis Comfort Tiffany’s eponymous art nouveau lamps and glass mosaics are sure to enchant a new generation of admirers.

Continue your nature kick with a late morning promenade around the Parc de Bagatelle; the profusion of roses will certainly conjure Valentino’s petal-soft cocktail dresses that practically bloomed on the runway. Continue to tickle your romantic fancy with a visit to Pierre Hermé’s legendary patisserie: their delicate macarons in a profusion of rosy reds, champagne pinks, and butter yellows bring to mind Peter Copping’s irresistible pastels at Nina Ricci.

Change gears with a visit to the sprawling Centre Georges Pompidou: its infamous inside-out architecture – a tangle of color-coded pipes and wiring – begs Balenciaga’s urban futurism this season. The Pompidou’s current showing of Surrealist photography and film is the perfect anecdote for those experiencing Galliano withdrawal (the designer’s feverish mélange of influences and fabrics smacked of Man Ray’s photographic collages).

If it was Celine’s brand of razor-sharp chic that most enchanted you, however, your best bet is the Musée d’Orsay, a museum that perfectly mirrors Pheobe Philo’s first collection for the house with its crisp lines and two-toned palette of khaki and lacquered black (be sure to grab tickets for d’Orsay’s upcoming James Ensor retrospective).

Finally, for a quintessential Parisian panorama, head to the top of the Eiffel Tower and relive the vertiginous, graphic drama of Givenchy. And just when you think you’ve paid appropriate homage to the best of the défiles, your eyes will catch the glint of the gilded dome of Les Invalides, home of the Musée d’Armée. Military severity topped with immoderate glitz? Nothing screams “Balmain” more.

A perfect proposition for printemps, non?

Paranormal Activity (2009) is like a 1 1/2 hour YouTube video. Not to say there will be sneezing pandas or overtly intrigued chipmunks, but rather that you can’t expect high production values. The exposure sucks, the acting is nonexistent (to the film’s credit), and there seems to be little, if any, editorial hand at work here. But instead of being to the film’s detriment, these YouTube-esque qualities create quite a set up. The audience’s guard is down. They’re completely open to the utter worst of scares. If director Oren Peli had just pushed a little harder, this could have been the most frightening film of all time.

Paranormal Activity is about a young couple—“engaged to be engaged” as Micah (Micah Sloat) puts it—that moves in together only to find that their house has a third resident: a demon that pines after Katie (Katie Featherston). According to her, this demon has been following her for years. Periodically, over the course of her life, this monster has manifested in spectral shadows, or whispers in the wind. But only now has she had a boyfriend stupid enough to want to catch the hauntings on camera.
Every night, Micah sets his camera on a tripod in their bedroom, and we the audience watch minor disturbances—a door creaks slightly, a shadow passes, the sheets move. As one can imagine, these events build like a crescendo over the course of the film until the presence of a demon is almost irrefutable. There is also this very evident commitment to realism. You may have noticed that Katie and Micah use their real names. The visual effects are so well executed, if you didn’t know this was staged going in, you might actually think Paranormal Activity is a documentary. Well, to a point.

This is also a problem for the film. It becomes so committed to realism, that it never gets truly scary. It uses its low production values to lure an audience into letting their guard down, and ultimately doesn’t rattle them as much as it has the potential to. I’ll admit, certain moments got under my skin. But when the film ended, and the lights went up, a man in the row in front of me said, “That’s it? I want my money back.” My sentiments exactly. You feel cheated.

I mean, really, Paranormal Activity isn’t a bad movie. It’s risky, and daring, and very cool for accomplishing what it has. But I simply can’t recommend you go out of your way to see a film that will make you feel that cheated by the end. Not only is it not scary, but this cheesy bass sound cues in every time the demon is nearby, thus bracing you for its various attacks. And for a film that is as dedicated to realism as this, it certainly had a cop-out ending. Simply put, Paranormal Activity is one of those films you’ll either love or hate.

However, it is worth noting that the film, which cost $15,000 to make and only $300,000 for Paramount to buy according to the Los Angeles Times, has grossed $61M domestically, Box Office Mojo reports. In fact, despite having been in theaters since September, the film still beat out Saw VI (2009) which just opened, thus winning the weekend by a $7M margin. Hell, the brass at Paramount are already talking sequel. So if what I said is true, and this is a love-it-or-hate-it film, the nation seems to be loving it.

Step aside, sex slave trafficking. There’s a new breed of for-profit youth exploitation to hit the scene and it’s perfectly legal!

That’s right: child-driven publicity stunts! Traditionally, when people think of publicity stunts, they think of celebrities—Britney Spears’ infamous one-day marriage or Paris Hilton’s sex tape, for example.

Only today, however, are non-celebrities rocketing their way to stardom via the technique. You need only watch one episode of Toddlers in Tiaras to know what I mean. Enter the Exploitation of Offspring and their Parental Pimps.

The Horrible Heenes

Because it wasn’t dangerous enough to strap their three kids into the back seat while mom and dad went storm chasing, Richard and Mayumi Heene recently put one son directly in the line of fire to help them attain the American dream: having a reality show!

For the few, if any, who don’t know, on Thursday, Oct. 15, the Heenes contacted a local news affiliate (note: not the police) to say that they had strong reason to believe their 6-year-old son Falcon was aboard a homemade balloon drifting along the Colorado skyline. The balloon soon landed, empty, and a few hours later, Falcon was “found” hiding in the garage attic safe and sound.

Richard and Mayumi weren’t exposed for being the liars they are until that night, on Larry King Live, when Falcon confessed he thought his actions were “for a show.” And they were—the world quickly learned that the Heenes had crafted a publicity stunt to groom themselves for a reality TV show, and may have received some outside monetary help.

“Falcon seemed to struggle under the media glare,” the Los Angeles Times said in a recent article—“vomiting during live interviews Friday morning with Diane Sawyer and Meredith Vieira.”

For growing children, particularly those at the ripe young age of six, parents are supposed to be a moral compass, instructing their offspring the differences between right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable.

Instead of following through on this obligation, however, Richard and Mayumi taught their children how to lie to a nation (which Falcon didn’t seem to stomach very well), and taught the nation that, with enough money and a good enough scheme, even you can grab international media attention and waste time, energy, tax dollars…on non-news.

The Krazy Katey Eights

When asked about his opinion of Richard Heene, Jon Gosselin of TLC hit "Jon & Kate Plus 8" (since turned "Kate Plus 8") told Entertainment Tonight, “People shouldn’t be able to get away with stuff like that.” True. Also, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

On June 22, Jon and Kate Gosselin announced to the world—on their show, of course—that legal procedures had been set in motion for their divorce. Their reasons were unclear at the time, but the gossip machine quickly began to speculate that Jon was cheating on his wife, making their marriage “irretrievably broken” as Kate put it in their divorce papers.

But what about the kids? That is, the Gosselins’ 9-year-old twin daughters and 5-year-old sextuplets. Well, apparently, they haven’t been taking it well. Kate told Vanity Fair that her children have been acting out, and that they miss their father, but she’s “trying to give them the grace to see…[that] it’s all interconnected,” whatever the hell that means.

Ultimately, here’s the thing: when Sally and Harry Smith from down the street get divorced, they’re toddler James goes through a peculiar psychological trajectory; he wants to know, “What did I do to make my parents split?” Now imagine that same scenario on television and multiplied by eight.

What’s worse (and I don’t purport to be the biggest fan—I’ve only been able to stomach one episode, an entire hour devoted to a single plane ride that was borderline unwatchable) is every fight Jon and Kate have on their show stems from their children. The kids don’t need to speculate whether or not they drove their parents apart, they have televised evidence.

As former US Weekly editor Janice Min put it, we can all look forward to their psychological unraveling in “10, 15 years down the road [during] the E! True Hollywood Story: The Gosselin Kids.”

The Octomom
(nothing clever - her given name is scary enough)

In somewhat related news, Nadya “Octomom” Suleman told RadarOnline.com, “I kind of have a crush on Jon Gosselin.” Within seconds, TV executives began foaming at the mouth at the thought of some sick, reality show Brady Bunch variant.

On Jan. 26, 2009 Suleman, a former Los Angeles psychiatric (haha) technician, gave birth to eight children, two girls and six boys, in Bellflower, Calif. This little medical miracle was made possible by in-vitro fertilization. As the story goes, Suleman had six embryos left over from prior in-vitro treatments (which resulted in her six older children) and figured, “What the hell?, why not throw the rest of ‘em in? Lest they go to waste, of course.”

And the rest is history. Albeit, recent history.

So for those of you keeping count, that’s one mom (Suleman’s a divorcee), 14 kids, and zero jobs. With no source of income, the public became concerned that Suleman would become a burden on taxpayers. So what was the public response? Death threats!

That’s right, in the months between the Suleman octuplets’ births and now, three different public relations advisors have dropped Suleman as a client because of threats against agents’ lives. Great environment to raise a family in, eh?

But there is a happy ending to this story after all. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Suleman has landed a reality show in the UK. Which invites an important question: Did she get the TV show because of the kids, or did she have the kids to get the TV show? ‘Kind of like the chicken or the egg. Except twisted. Very twisted.

In Conclusion…

There’s a lesson to be learned here, fellow USC student. Aspiring to be the next John Carpenter or William Friedkin? Look no further than the news for inspiration! The most horrific things men and women do are done in the real world, not in fiction—to one another and to their own young alike. The plot for the next big slasher spec is sitting in the pages of today’s paper. It’s just on you to find it.

Don’t let the title of this article alarm you. I am not talking about the newest “Team Jacob” hoodie from Hot Topic. No, I am referring to a new book coming out next Tuesday entitled Nightlight, the newest parody from Harvard Lampoon, the university’s undergraduate spoof publishers. The book revolves around characters Bella Goose and Edwart Mullen (loosely based on Bella Swan and Edward Cullen).

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself by saying that this book is awesome. I really don’t even need to read it to know that this is true. I certainly plan on reading it, but nonetheless, the mere thought of something making fun of Twilight in book form leaves this bookworm giddy.

Here is an excerpt from the book, which like the series it parodies, is written from Bella's point of view:

“About three things I was absolutely certain, First, Edwart was most likely my soul mate, maybe. Second, there was a vampire part of him—which I assumed was wildly out of his control—that wanted me dead. And third, I unconditionally, irrevocably, impenetrably, heterogeneously, gynecologically, and disreputably wished he had kissed me.”

To be contrasted with its twin passage from Twilight:

“About three things I was certain. First, Edward Cullen was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him, and I don't know how dominant that part might be, that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.”

Devoted readers of The Seesaw already know my sincere dislike for the Twilight series. I have yet to understand why anyone can seriously, with a brain in their head, defend it as a piece of literature. Entertaining? Sure! I laughed my face off. A timeless love story? Dear God in heaven, I hope not!

However, I was surprised to find that there were students, who attend Harvard no less, that have some qualms about this parody. Freshman Pamela M. Rosario Perez was quoted in The Harvard Crimson saying, “I hope the Lampoon does it in good taste, or else they will offend a lot of Twilight fans.”

Good point, Pamela. We can only hope that the distinguished, classy comedic writers at the Lampoon don’t offend anyone. Heaven forbid! Because, that’s really what the Lampoon is all about.

As if they would care about offending people with a sad, sad obsession with probably the most ridiculous series to ever print. And, perhaps this is rude, but I think die-hard fans of the Twilight series could use some offending.

The fact of the matter is this: the Twilight series is a piece of comedy gold on its own, but with a little tweaking courtesy of one of the most renowned comedic writing groups in the country, it’s a comedic goldmine. And that’s certainly worth tapping into.

Before you read this review, I want you to watch this trailer. I've been pretty hard on a lot of film ad campaigns this year, because a lot of them have misrepresented their films so poorly, it's been impossible to ignore. So, for the first time, I'd like to applaud one for getting it right. This trailer is a symphony of sounds and feelings, frustrations and cacophonies that echo the frustrations and cacophonies of the film. A Serious Man (2009) is an utter symphony of tragedy, and this ad got it just right.

The film follows serious man Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg) as his once peaceful suburban life accumulates a collection of minor inconveniences that compound one another to suffocate this modern-day Job. At work, as a physics professor, Larry's bid for tenure is threatened by a disgruntled Korean student who tries to bribe him for an "A." At home, Larry's wife asks for a divorce so she can be with the widower Sy Ableman (an absolutely outstanding performance by Fred Melamed). His son's quickly approaching bar mitzvah has him strapped for cash, and car repairs and his brother's legal troubles aren't exactly helping. All the while, Larry makes periodic visits to local rabbis, hoping to glean pearls of wisdom from their experience and religious learning.

As my opening paragraph likely suggests, this film has excellent sound design. And I'm not even saying it had any spectacularly great effects or a particularly stunning soundtrack (though the Jefferson Airplane motif was very much appreciated). I mean the way sight and sound engage in this dance-like, complementary give and take is stunning. The Coen brothers have often been applauded for their meticulous sound mixing, but I have never seen it more evident and superb than in this film.

Literarily, A Serious Man is what we've come to expect from Coen comedies. It hinges on subtleties and repetitions--repeated phrases, repeated shots, repeated situations. They've been making films for 25 years now, and they've gotten their techniques down to a fine art. A Serious Man runs like a well oiled machine, or at least as much as a stunning, original piece of art can run like a well oiled machine. Be aware that, while the Coen brothers are very highly respected by myself and other critics alike, they are an acquired taste. If you think their films are slow, and are often frustrated by their signature anti-climaxes (it happens three times in this one), you'll find this film slow and anticlimactic. But if you've liked even a single one of their previous films, I'm confident you'll love this one.

Stop whatever you're doing and go see this movie now! It's a sharp film. Certainly among their best. There is no better excuse to leave your house than this.

For many residents of Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes, those 1,461 days have made a world of difference. While it is true that some FEMA trailers still dot small parts of Orleans Parish, many have been removed. Residents have been steadily moving back into storm-ravaged homes after continual repairs.

As someone who lived through the storm and as someone who has witnessed the aftermath, I can safely say that the city has rebounded tremendously. People are incredibly happy to be home again, happy to see the Saints play at the Superdome, happy to revel in the festivities of Mardi Gras and Jazzfest. The rebirth isn't something that needs to start now--it's already happening, and still is.

- Joshua Woo