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I'm really rather impressed by the almost universal misunderstanding of " 9 ". 9 - Rotten Tomatoes Even the reviewers that liked the movie seem to find the plot uninspired, or the characters lacking in, well, character. Comparisons to Terminator 3 abound (apparently no one's able to find any other post-apocalyptic reference point), and there's more than a few references to the movie's inappropriateness for younger viewers. (A stunningly insightful remark, he said, with only the faintest whiff of ironic condescention.) As far as I'm concerned, nearly every one of them is missing the point here. 9 was never intended to be yet another kid-friendly CGI romp in the park. The themes are dark and the content arguably adult in nature (fascism, the end of the world, death and loss and destruction, etc.). The movie is allegorical… a fairy tale similar in nature to Watership Down (or, for the more eclectic amongst us, The Cockroaches of Stay More ). The ch...

I am an obsessive reader. I hate not having something to read when I'm standing around waiting, or when I'm doing something relatively mindless like eating. I always have a book or magazine in my backpack, and my PDAs and phones have been a godsend in recent years. But, in times of desperation, I've been known to read the backs of cereal boxes and other household paraphernalia. (This is how I discovered my favorite warning label EVER on Kellog's 100% Natural Cereal, a warning to the unsuspecting cereal lover to "chew carefully while enjoying this unique cereal." This, of course, is due to all the whole grains, fruit and nuts of which the cereal is comprised). Sometimes this leads to unexpected discoveries, as in this case with the disturbing notion that I could be an unwitting felon today. I cannot remember the context, nor what I could possibly have been doing which prompted me to read the side of a traveler's size pack of Kleenex Anti-Viral tissues t...