By the same director: The Lovely Bones is about exactly that

Yes, but I also have the feeling that somehow he is still fighting for us and will never really rest until we succeed in his stead. Dumb feeling, but I can't escape it.

There is now a huge gap in our world. What a brave and wonderful life. So very sad it is gone. I hope we all can live up to his example and carry on his work.

Yup. He was one lone lib voice who supported Sarah Palin when she called the press's handling of the Gifford shooting "blood libel."

I don't think it glorified evil at all. What it did was illustrate human frailty and seemed more a cautionary tale about the dangers encountered when one loses oneself to (or gains one's only sense of self from) another person and chooses to escape into fantasy rather than confront the real vissitudes of life. It travels some of the same ground traveled by Dostoyevsky, but is more frightening and repulsive to us because it happens in a time and culture that seems more familiar. If anything it presents an indictment of the adolescent tendency (shared by many adults) of blurring art and life or of following a narrative rather than living in the world. It reminds me of my mother's oft repeated accusation when encountering what we would commonly call a drama queen: "she watches too many soap operas."

Hmmm.. .how do you feel about mythology? Tolkien was trying to create mythology. Whether Jackson's films hit that mark or not is a question, but before you dismiss LOTR as fantasy, you probably should understand its particular (peculiar?) genre. What would a purely English mythology look like if it was unsullied by the French or Roman influences? That was one of the (many) questions he was trying to answer.

Does it sicken you to know that the protagonist's novels (murder mysteries) are best sellers?

Actually, it is a better exploration of adolescent descent into stupidity than any other I can think of. As a psychological study I do think it did so much more than other movies of that genre.

I'm sorry, but I watched a dear dear sister die while on life support. Her blood pressure couldn't be stabilized. There was too much damage to her organs to continue. It drives me crazy when people seem to think that life support would keep a cadaver alive. It doesn't. So if people can die while on life support, why shouldn't that support be continued in case something beyond our understanding (and believe me, medicine is an art, not a science-- there is plenty that we don't understand without recourse to religion) decides for us that there might be a different outcome.

Your opinion here can't be stated logically. If you were to be in a "permanent vegetative state" (and there is no clear way of knowing whether you are or aren't right now unless you are already dead in which case you wouldn't be) you would have, by what limited definition we have of such a thing, no knowledge that you were in one. However, since no one has returned from such a state (if someone had, then it wouldn't have been permanent), there's no saying how someone could or might feel in that condition. The other argument I hear goes something like, "I don't want to be a burden." I find that usually when people say they don't want to be a "burden," when I poke and probe what they usually end up admitting is that they don't want someone to end up being a burden to them.

I look at my father who is admittedly in the last days of senility, and I see a being who (though he only has a few cursory memories that exist more as recitations than as true, felt memories) enjoys each moment as if it is his first. The birds on the deck need to be announced every other minute as though they only just entered into creation and needed recognition as the wonders of creation they are.

Where is the "burden" in his continuance? Though many have tried to convince me otherwise, It isn't on he who celebrates each moment as though no other moment like it ever existed (and maybe we all need to do that more). The "burden" is not and should not be not on the state. The "burden" when it can be said to be one is and should be on his family and his closest community who should rejoice in his joy in life even if that joy is not one we can share in the same way. My father is not a burden he is a joy. Are our lives as we originally planned them, interrupted? Oh yes! Does the day to day care wear on my sister the caregiver? Oh yes! Would she miss a moment of his time with us. Oh my, NO!

Actually, I have read the whole thing. It only gets worse, not better.