Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

I just got back from seeing Harry Potter 4 with Christina and Ricky. Without spoiling it too much, I’d like to commend the most recent cinematic installment for its consistency and accuracy. The third movie deviated so much from the other two—for example, completely redesigning Hogwarts—and it showed little regard for the plot of the book. As a film alone, it was pleasant enough; but the third book, my favorite in the series, is infinitely better. The fourth movie did not quarrel with the directorial changes made in the third; it maintained stability for the viewers.

The fourth book is over three hundred pages longer than the third, and yet the new director managed to follow the written order (one of my biggest dislikes of the third movie concerns the placement of Harry’s receiving the Firebolt). Surprisingly, even the jokes thrown in were amusing. The only problem with it is that it is too rushed. What prevents Return of the King from being my favorite LotR film is the abundance of action without much story and character development. Battle scenes are connected by brief romantic and contemplative moments. HP4 bore much resemblance.

[Spoiler warning!]
The fourth movie moves from one event of the Triwizard Tournament to the next with almost nothing else in between. Unfortunately, the accuracy of the story suffered a bit at times in order to make all of the events believable and concise enough to fit into two hours and thirty minutes, but all of the modifications were tolerable and plausible. The kids are hardly ever seen in class; it seems the whole purpose of the year was for them to watch (or participate in) the tournament. The book takes a while to wade through because it is not one exciting scene of action following another. There are long, drawn-out parts about the house elves, and longer moments spent in the pensieve, and so many “boring” parts that make the really interesting stuff even better. That’s what this film needed. The audience would readily have watched the somewhat background plot—almost entirely cut from the film—in order to understand the characters and the school year better, not to mention (although I am mentioning it) the amount of drama that emerges in the fourth book that is only perhaps half present in the film.

These are very nitpicky criticisms. Usually I get extremely hung up on accuracy, so it’s really a big thing for me to think that a movie based on a book is good. This movie restored my faith in Harry Potter films. I recommend it to anyone who has read the book, or who will never read the book, without my usual “The book is much better” warning.

Spring registration: complete. I designed a perfect schedule about a week ago, and since then I’d worried that my courses would fill up. I didn’t have a very good alternative schedule, either. I could play around with the lab and the recitation, but if the actual class happened to be closed, my alternatives were the introduction education course from 4 till 6:35 Tuesdays and Thursdays (not very good for going home Thursday nights) and creative writing, which I don’t actually need. It turns out that the all the worry was for nothing; when Albert (NYU’s online registration system, among other things) finally let me on today, I inputted my classes’ numbers and got them all within a minute. That’s certainly a change from fall registration, when I was still dropping and registering courses two weeks into the semester.

Anyway, my courses: Literary Interpretation (the very first course for English majors); Natural Science II: Brain and Behavior and lab; World Cultures: Chinese and Japanese Traditions; and Calculus I (it’s bound to interest me more than QR, and perhaps I’ll learn it this time). Those last three fulfill my MAP requirements except for one course, which I won’t have to take if I minor in history; and the first lets me take real English classes (although, I’m already taking one) next fall. With this schedule, I can continue working 12 hours per week and have the ability to go to nine Seido classes, all between Monday and Thursday. Wonderful. But perhaps the best part is that I have World Cultures (hereafter WC: J&C) and Natural Science (hereafter NatSciII) with Ricky! So we get to be lab partners again. If only Steve and Dave could transfer for the semester….

The lines for the elevators in the Silver Center usually stretch all the way across the entrance floor of the building during the major breaks between classes. Once the lines came out the doors and circled around the corner. Yesterday I walked right in my usual door and all the way across the hall; no more than ten people were in line. Only about half of the usual thirty or so students in my Amfic class showed up. Could this have anything to do with the graduate students marching in a circle chanting “No contracts, no work, no peace*” to the beat of (practically) plastic pickle tubs outside of the entrances?

A number of TAs went on strike Wednesday morning at 8 to protest NYU’s refusal to renew their contracts that expired in August. Since the National Labor Relations Board reversed the ruling that private universities must recognize graduate student unions, NYU has decided that graduates are students first, and then workers, and as such have no right to unionize. The graduate students want contracts to ensure their health benefits and salaries; NYU refuses to negotiate with the union because it wants a say in academic matters as well.

Although I support my TAs and their strike, I still went to class. I’m not going to the classes that they usually teach if someone is hired to take their place (right now, my Amfic and ConWest TAs are striking; I believe my NatSci TA will continue to hold lab, though), but I fully intend to continue going to the classes taught by the professors. It is, after all, their responsibility to teach the students, and it is our responsibility to attend class and learn from them.

My mother seemed upset yesterday morning when I said I wasn’t going to to the two recitations. It is true that my scholarship is contingent upon my maintaining a certain GPA, which certainly won’t happen if I fail two of my classes for refusing to turn in papers to the scabs. Luckily, I don’t think NYU has had time to hire any replacement TAs yet. My Amfic professor had looked in to moving the class off campus, so she definitely supports the strike, and she said that she would not count absences from recitation during the strike against us. She also said she’d grade our next papers, which means we may actually complete the course. My ConWest professor also seemed in favor of the strike, so I hope she won’t expect us to go to recitations not taught by our TAs. I planned, after hearing my mother’s disapproving tone yesterday morning, to at least go to the classes for a few minutes to see if anyone had been hired and what we students were expected to do about it, but after seeing the TAs marching around like that in the cold, I decided that I could not. It would be against my moral standards to go, and I refuse to violate them. NYU has no right to put students in such a position that they have to jeopardize their personal morals for financial reasons. They’re just buying support based on the fact that so many kids need to attend classes in order to maintain sufficient GPAs.

Czech this out for a complete explanation of the strike.

*Not necessarily exact quotation—it’s difficult to distinguish words shouted en masse.
[Title for this post taken from Dreiser.]

[Note: Those opposed to knowing anything about a game before playing it probably should not read on unless already familiar with FFX-2.]

This past weekend I started a game of Final Fantasy X-2 with my little brother. Stephen wanted me to do the Luca mission so he could see how the city was doing since X, so I obliged him and went to discover “the truth behind the music.” Most of the mission is a flashback, but, as usual, the player has to actually complete the memory. Yuna is dressed as a moogle, and at one point in the mission someone hands her balloons and says she needs to hand out ten of them to the people in the plaza in order to promote the concert.

Without Stephen there (he had already gone to bed) to point out the painfully obvious tenth person seated right next to one of the kind people who had accepted a balloon, I spent twenty minutes talking to people repeatedly in the hopes that their response would change on the fourth or maybe seventh try. No luck. The little child running around in a circle wouldn’t take two, and the grouchy engineer only said, “Do I look like someone who wants a balloon?”* So I gave up for the night, and in the morning it took Stephen about ten seconds to find the other person. He’s got younger eyes.

Anyway, one of the people who accepted a balloon did so with a comment about having to fill quotas. Yesterday, as I hurried past a Quiznos Sub sign and a man thrusting a coupon at me, I realized that I should have taken the paper from him. It wouldn’t have mattered to him if I ever looked at it; he only needed to hand out a given number of them and probably shouldn’t have gone home until he did. I don’t imagine that most solicitors on the street really care whether the coupons and ads they hand out do anything. They were just given the job of standing on the street corner in the increasingly cool New York fall handing out papers. So I’ve decided, thanks to FFX-2 that I should take whatever people eagerly present on the streets, not necessarily because I’ll actually use the coupon later, but because they just need to get rid of a certain quantity of papers.

*Not necessarily exact quotation.