Went and saw Persepolis on saturday and was completely blown away by the experience, so much so that I definitely put this in the top 10 new movies I’ve seen this year (not that I’ve seen 10 movies this year, but I will by year’s end). The movie expertly depicts the dichotomy of someone from one place trying to find their place in the world. Unfortunately the story is one that people from the Middle East can relate to instantly. I say unfortunately because the situation of people leaving their countries for the haven of somewhere safe is all to much a reality for people in the Middle East. For many of us this is the world. War, civil or otherwise, narrow-mindedness and general stupidity are all part of every day life.

The film is directed by the graphic novelist, Marjane Satrapi and is effectively her story that she wrote and drew about in two books of the same title, Persepolis. The story deals with her life during the Iranian revolution, how it effected her family and the war that came afterwards with Iraq before it starts dealing with life for a woman in Iran.

Visually the movie is one that grabs you. It works so grandly as an animated movie because it doesn’t shoehorn any one actor or actress to the role. It also can do things in a humorous way without making it look slapstick. I suppose that is one of the most perfectly executed elements of the story. It allows humour within a terribly serious topic. Inbetween messages of hardship the story still allows elements of joy to come through.

After the end of the movie, I told Yiota that my mum would love to watch this movie. I think it’s definitely something that all feminists should watch mainly because the women shown in this movie, Marjane Satrapi her mother and grandmother are true representation of modern clever Arab/Persian women. Women that actually struggle and fight within the boundaries that have been set around them.

In story doesn’t show the lead character always in a complete shining light as it does take her through her journey and I’m sure showing things that she’s definitely not proud of but had to show the differences in culture, the difference in why she would go back to Iran, knowing the life that would await her.

I really want to see this movie again because of how it was structured, and it’s been a while since I’ve said that about a movie. For my money this movie gets my recommendation as something you owe it to yourself to watch.

Not to be harsh on the writers and creators of BSG, whom I have a great deal of admiration and respect for, but seriously guys, you’re coming into the final stretch of what is one of the best Sci-fi shows ever produced and instead of going out on a bang, you’re going out on a bloody whimper. I’ve not read anyone else’s thoughts about this particular episode but I was definitely not impressed by the over long exposition that this particular episode and the previous couple have held. We’re getting no where pretty quickly and instead we’re flitting around the topics at hand.

I guess part of me wanted to see and hear and find out more about what’s happening rather than this slow burn with Baltar as Jesus storyline. I’ve got to be honest that the sidebar politics by Lee and Rosaline are not all that exciting. We’ve been there several times and honestly I’m not buying all of this garbage. Rosaline should be HAMMERING Adama and winning. She should have a hell of a lot more goodwill from those around her, than the motley crew that Lee is pulling around him.

And that the fuck is going on with Tirrell? I mean seriously, the guy was always a bit of a dick, but he’s taken it to the next level in this episode. What used to be a pretty bruised but interesting character is now little more than a bit of a crazy in general. Hell even the Starbuck thread was not really explored any further in this episode at all.

All in all I thought this episode was definitely NOT one of their better ones. Nothing memorable or of any note to really take home as far as i’m concerned…or am I being really harsh here and is there something I’m missing out on? Have I missed some really great story threads?

Actually I take that back, I did enjoy the Baltar line where he goes:

‘I liked it better when you cried’

The honest reason for this approach is that my life doesn’t allow me the luxury to come in every single night and just hack away and try and sort the code out test it make sure it’s all pucker both locally and online before I unleash it in one big fell swoop. I’ll average 3 nights a week (usually less) when I’m actually at home at a reasonable time and I guess in part I was also suffering from a bit of design fatigue.

Trying to get to that final result seemed pretty daunting at first. Soo many pages that I want to sort out, so many elements that need to be designed for and implemented that when I’ve tried in the past year to deal with them, I just get overwhelmed and often they just live in an electronic graveyard on my computer.

So my tip for all you hobbiest blog designers that do have a bit of redesign fatigue, I would definitely recommend this approach of breaking the pie into smaller slices. Don’t get too upset if things are not there. Start on a solid foundation (I started from my favourite coding base from a previous design) and add to the design in a slow but controlled and consistent fashion. It might not get there as fast, but you’ll definitely enjoy the process more, at least I can claim that I am enjoying this tweaking a lot more than I’ve ever enjoyed sorting out my site.

Maybe it’s because you’ll have moved the design forward, maybe it’s because there’s something fresh to look at every day, maybe it’s both.