Reviews

I hate to admit it. My patience for Disney Plus tv show projects are at an all time low. I will never stop supporting Disney Plus because, let's face it, it would cost a fortune to own every single Marvel movie and Star Wars film and Disney Classic. In fact, over the years, I've spent so much on physical media that I have not played on any device for at least 5 years now.

Even before streaming, I was using personal library apps like Plex to access my own media transferred to a digital format. So yeah, I don't think I will go back to physical media or purchasing more and more films. Having streamers with a library of films and tv shows I know I'll be watching or rewatching is very good value.

But back to Star Wars: Ahsoka.

I get no joy from trashing a world I grew up with.

I was there in the theatres as a kid when A New Hope was showing. I was maybe 5 years old. Didn't really always understand what the hell was going on, but the world of Star Wars felt dynamic, alive and imaginative. The plot line was confusing, I probably only understood that last bit of the film where the fighting and the bad guys were getting demolished.

And I understood that this whole Jedi thing was about having a mystic connection to the universe while fighting with bizarre light samurai swords.

Fast forward to someone in his fifties, and my view on Star Wars has changed dramatically.

There is a lot wrong with even the original trilogy. Plot holes. Underdeveloped characters. The lack of a diverse cast. All those aspects dilute my enjoyment of the original films, if I'm totally honest. The stuff that doesn't change for me? The whole feeling of Star Wars. I think John Williams should be given some kind of Sainthood Award; because he has been the single-most winningest part of many a project/film/series.

Just look at the worlds he has created through the genius of film soundtrack? Star Wars. Indiana Jones. E. T. Superman.

Then you combine it with the special effects, character, costume and set designs of films like Star Wars; voila, a mythological universe is born!

Again - I digress.

Back of the Horrible news at hand.

Ahsoka sucks.

It really is as bad as A New Hope (in terms of plot hole stupidity).

Let's take A New Hope's dumb writing; (which I didn't/couldn't realise at the time since I was only 5 years old at the time).

Princess Leia gives R2D2 a secret mission and sends him off to a desert planet to look for Obi Wan Kenobi.

Do you know how unlikely and impossible that would be?

Imagine if someone dropped you off in China, or Russia, or India and asked you to look for Gary Woo. Or Lu Wei Chen. Or Anna Yeo. Or Peter Kominski. Or Prasad Ranganathan.

No picture, no coordinates, no telephone number, no email, no work or residential address, no fingerprints, no DNA, nothing. Zip.

Somehow, this robot who doesn't speak English, actually stumbles into Obi Wan Kenobi. And this somehow turns the course of the rebellion, fighting against incredible odds to defeat the Empire.

And fast forward to Ahsoka - Not to break the formula for dumb plots, this new show, with all the resources and writers and hindsight to fall back on, this all original Ahsoka, needs to be as idiotic as A New Hope.

Here's the gist of the original sin, visited upon by its descendent:

Ahsoka, a wise and experienced Jedi goes to great lengths to find a star map. She almost gets herself killed retrieving this McGuffin.

This invaluable star map will point her in the right direction to thwart a great evil said to be coming.

Yet, when she returns to her home base, Ahsoka simply hands this very precious star map over to young apprentice Sabine so she can "check it out".

The jeopardy that came from retrieving such a much coveted prize is simply ignored. It's like someone gave you a priceless diamond and then when you got into possession of it, you gave it to your puppy to play with resulting in the diamond going missing since she drops it down into a basin drain hole.

Now I realise that people often do stupid things like this.

However, we are NOT watching America's stupidest home videos. We are NOT watching a compilation of morons who put their children into laundry dryers because they can't be bothered to towel them off after a shower. We are NOT watching truck drivers overload their vehicles and skidding all over icy highways causing mayhem and destruction due to their negligence and lack of concern.

We are supposed to be in the presence of a jedi with years of training and mistakes transmogrified into pearls of wisdom after decades of self examination. We are meant to be seeing what it's like to have a jedi work out the complicated mysteries of a warring galaxy.

Instead, we get a master jedi unable to crack the code for a star map, we get a wilfully careless apprentice jedi lose that star map faster than you can lose a quarter into a jackpot machine. You get a host of star witches, star whales, robots who have archives that go back thousands of years. And yet, for all of that, you get master jedi who risks her life for a star map; only to go chasing for this star map for the rest of the series.

Irony? Sure.

Clever? Give me a break!

Ahsoka and the rest of the new Disney Plus shows reveal their lack of insight to the human condition and even to simple common sense. When heroes are nincompoops, what chance to the rest of us humans have?

In my own subjective opinion, the only show that had ever had an ounce of quality was The Mandalorian. Even that show, had its logic flaws that were real head-scratchers too., However, it was wildly successful due to the inclusion of a cute alien baby who beguiled and enchanted us.

The other shows unfortunately remained academic at best.

Wanting a Star Wars universe may be all fine and good in theory. It's been proving difficult to achieve. Especially when the source material itself was peppered with a lot nonsense plot lines and character inconsistencies.

Darth Vader for all his powerful persona, seemed to have endless bouts of petty infighting with his own generals. Did they not work together successfully to reach such a stage of strategic and firepower dominance?

How did they even get this far with all the bickering between high ranking people in the Empire?

Ahsoka, could have easily stopped all these inconsistencies. The team could be privately taken stock of their weaknesses. Developed a character who could honour her origins on an animated show scripted with a lot of exposition in order to cut down on the action shots that costs more money and time to animate.

I would like to have hope but right now, the only properties I am still interested in are The Mandalorian and the MCU. I don't even like the MCU tv shows either. They seem to lack the same direction and logic and emotional connection I have with the films.

Thank you for doing your best. I'm afraid all I have are my childhood memories. A promise for something epic and rewarding.

It's too bad that the Star Wars line is, May the Force be with You.

I fear the truth is closer to this. You've all been lazy and joined the Dark Side. And it's been this way for years.

Non-spoiler summary:

No dancing. No neat easy convenient answers. There is a glint of promise. Sometimes life is good enough if we have a little light when all was darkness.

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Spoilers below:

Rafi is frustrated poor struggling bachelor in busy buzzing Mumbai. Meloni has a family who has enough money to keep them from poverty but they're not super rich. Both are struggling in their own way to be successful.

For Rafi, it means being a good grandson to his grandmother who's been his heart. His life's centre. Every decision he makes, he thinks about her.

For Meloni, it means studying hard and perhaps one day having a life beyond her parents middle class expectation.

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Ritesh Batra is an exquisite director for these actors. He makes these characters feel real. They don't have charismatic scene chewing one liner zingers. They don't have catchphrases. And most of all they don't win each other over by dancing suggestively soaked in rain.

They court each other the old fashioned way; through the language of listening and wanting to offer empathy to each other.

The characters engage in the dance of trying to understand one another.

This pantomine we all participate in, is the hardship of courtship. We don't know what the future will bring. We try our best to be good for one another.

We see that in Indian culture, people have tried to overcome the hardships by creating a parachute by way of arranged marriages. Why open yourself up to the possibility that a long courtship goes nowhere? Why not simply have something assured. A guarantee of sorts.

Meloni doesn't accept that road as a source of comfort. She doesn't know much about the world but she knows herself. She can't just be arranged into something like a jigsaw is arranged into a puzzle. She doesn't even know what the picture looks like, so where does she fit in?

Rafi is man who wants to repay his grandmother for all her love and kindness over the years. And he doesn't allow himself any joy until he can pay off her debts. He feels guilty about her money problems. He can't live his life. He can't be happy until he has saved his grandmother.

Denying himself pleasure results in his slow death. His angry frustration that he is saving up for some enormous debt repayment 30 rupees at a time. He doesn't look like he'll ever get to solve their debt. He isn't the smartest guy. He's just someone who is doing his best.

The film also gets us to ask the question, do you need to be smart to be loved?

Love and friendship and the permanence of our vows are expressed through family gatherings, friends poking fun at each other, grandmothers seeing through your soul and two people who have much love to give but don't know how to say it.

We see ourselves in the lead characters. The self we carry when we feel lost in big wide world. Set adrift, we have only our fragile human hearts to guide us like a compass towards some destiny or dream.

Ritesh Batra's characters are alive with legible subtexts, telegraphing their fears, hopes, shame, frustrations and humanness in all this chaotic mess of living on planet earth.

Rafi's grandmother tells her devoted but frustrated grandson to let go of all his guilt. All his sense of duty. All his hardships. And embrace some of the now.

Photograph is amazingly rich with nuance and funny characters and quiet connection. If you loved the unexpected warmth of Lunchbox, you should appreciate this modest masterpiece.

Who and why? Even the most formulaic films must do something to help us understand our protagonists. Crazy Rich Asians is a great marketing sell. A film that could sell itself even with mediocre execution - and unfortunately this film goes down that road. The film doesn't do enough to establish the key characters. Who is Rachel Chu? What is her temperament? What is she passionate about? Why does she love who she loves?

The audience is supposed to simply fall for the lead actor because he's good looking and the fact that he's rich should seal the deal. I know this formula has been done in other films too .. And I don't buy it for those stories either.

Example: in When Harry met Sally they annoy one another but spend time to make each other laugh. They actually listen to one another and reveal their innermost thoughts.

In this film... The lead actor has nothing to reveal about himself. And the lead actress is also just a girl who is reacting to the world around her by smiling and weeping. We don't know why she even needs to be with this guy.

When the time comes for the 2 protagonists to have conflict and spend time apart, (as is custom for most films), the protagonists spend time in their emotional turmoil without much incident.

If this film were to have a sequel I'd hope they would learn from this oversight or be relegated to film writing at its laziest.

As it stands Crazy Rich Asians relied too heavily on a kind of music video aesthetic with picturesque backdrops and party people on golden glitz display. None of these elements are terrible if they served a greater purpose of creating a place for their characters could reveal their truths.

The story felt complacent to remain a showcase of caricatures... Never moving forward to reveal how each person no matter how bejeweled hides a human being complex and self contradicting.

In Bridget Jones Diary we learn about her want to be smart enough only to reveal she was always funny and charming enough. In Enchanted we learn how she needs to be brave enough to stop needing to be saved. In When Harry Met Sally we learn how friends can be lovers with the most truest connection.

The course of true love leads us towards inner discovery.

While there were attempts at this kind of revelation, we knew too little about the 2 leads.

Some reviewers have made absurd comments about the cast being too Asian. So let me be clear... It's not the Asian cast that I have problems with... It's the lazy writing and the lack of focus on the main ingredients to a great romance...the 2 lead characters. It should have always been their story. Not the fragments of the other 5 people in the background including a friend getting married, a billionaire friend in an unhappy marriage, a very funny but not really helpful female sidekick. All these distractions could not make up for Rachel Chu and Nick Young being half developed.

That said,there were a few scenes where I shed a tear. Meaning they obviously knew how to edit some good formulaic heart tugging moments. It wasn't enough to save the whole mess of caricatures and wasted opportunities.

Part 1 - Spending Time with a Bunch of Aliens -------------------------------------

Movies, plays or songs take us into someone else's reality.

We are brought into someone's idea of family.

It isn't something sweet or warm, but it is part of someone's perception of family.

I think the trailers should have warned the audience about how draining this family interactions can be. But I urge anyone who even wants to watch this to consider that you're visiting a planet that you may or may not be familiar with.

A planet you may or may not enjoy visiting.

However... as someone who has family orbiting this cruel side of the human heart I can assure you that very little of how the characters interact are a fiction. For that, I admire the way the director and editor and screenwriter and actors were able to take away away from our own cozy existence and plunge us headlong into this melodramatic horrific place.

Is it watchable? Not really. It's tragic and heart breaking.

Is it Worth Watching?

By all accounts, if you come from this kind of family, it helps you realize you're not the only one who lived like this once upon a time.

If you're married to someone who has problems speaking about their past, this film might open your eyes and heart to getting a glimpse of the ravaged human heart and the fodder it leaves behind.

I find it sad that we can invest our hearts into war films that tell us how futile war is, but when it comes to seeing real people at war with no end in sight, no victories worth celebrating, we tell audiences that it's a waste of time.

If war is a waste of time... then perhaps we should say so and act like it and stop watching the whole damned ordeals altogether.

It's an A grade film about F grade human souls. It's a horror story. A cautionary tale. A story about what happens when love fails us. A story that remind us how good we have it. A story to show us we deserve to be loved.

Part 2 - What the movie made me feel ----------------------------------------------------

Meryl Streep brings out the best and the worst in her fellow actors.

By this, I mean, she brings out the utter brilliance from others around her.

In August: Osage County, the world you visit is not the one you are likely to want to revisit. It orbits around pain and hurt and betrayals so deep that people who live there resort to drinking and pills in order to stay away from their most murderous instinct. If they didn't listen to music, dance till their bones ached, fought with strangers or curse out their own family... the people who live in this universe would find a gun with so many bullets they would bleed the skulls of every single human being on the planet.

Make no mistake, this is not a happy film. It will not make you feel great about the planet we live in. It might even make you consider a long jump off a very short pier and never resurface again.

So with all that I'm saying that's so horribly dark about this film, why watch it?

One word: Love.

The film is ultimately about Love.

You've read other synopsis-es here saying that it's a film about a dysfunctional emotional bully of a Matriarch who breaks down her daughters and relatives. And to an extent yes, that's the surface of the story. However, what makes this story move is how everyone in the movie want to go from a place of loss to a place of peace. They make really strange decisions to get there but each person in this very draining film do their best to achieve love they best way they know how.

Even the Matriarch who is ultimately a selfish person, so self involved that she knows nothing about what love really is, has to settle for a store-bought version of love. And this "love" comes in the form of delusion, yearning and the unwillingness to be the change she wants in the world. In short, she doesn't give love, so she doesn't get love.

The rest of the family fight for their version of this raw and all too real need. In the end as the credits roll, everyone in the audience were stunned to quiet unseated drained despair that life can be so hard for some of us on planet earth. It's not a pretty world we live in at times. We should be grateful if our lives are distanced by time and miles and opportunities to escape our toxic pasts.

August: Osage County may be foreign for some people who come from loving parents and grand parents. This film is also for you. To remind you that our world isn't yet perfect and there's still room for a better way forward for us all. Love is still needed. It's still a commodity we haven't outstripped demand by an overabundant supply. This film still invites us towards our better days to come as a human race.

For all the tumult and terrifying moments of angry backlash and unbearable cruelty, I myself appreciated that I am not the only one who grew up in a family I never asked for. It reminded me there were others out there dealing with far worse. A note to myself that we're all in this together, like it or not. To me, this film played like an ode to the end of wars, at home.

Especially at home... so that perhaps they do not have to leak and seep out like raging poison to the unsuspecting world outside.

On paper it seemed like an interesting fit. Guillermo del Toro and an unusual premise of giant monsters attacking planet earth.

For people who appreciate his work, Guillermo del Toro is artistic, enthusiastic about film and enjoys getting great performances from his actors.

He was able to make Hellboy into something worthy of its own universe. It wasn't mainstream because it dealt with the darker themes of suicidal thoughts and feeling emotionally stunted. It was a film about feeling like midgets in a world of giants.

Then he followed that up with Pan's Labyrinth, yet another film that deals with the scary world of adults. Where monsters are real and pain is part of life. It ends sadly. Without easy answers. And he shows us even more fantastical creatures of our dark imagination.

In Pacific Rim, I did not feel the same sense of exploration. The same sense of being in a world created by a deep artist in search of human truth.

Pacific Rim invited the same themes he has explored in his most well-received works.

• Dark Imagination - Escaping reality through adventure - A dangerous world

Notably missing are the same awesome artworks I've seen all the way in earlier films like Chronos, Mimic, Hellboy, Hellboy 2 and of course Pan's Labyrinth.

Largely gone are quirky designs from artist collaborators who seem to work from a deep well of twisted inspiration. Drawing on alien organic shapes merged with fairy tales and H.P. Lovecraft-esque sensibility.

Sure, it can be argued that employing his previous art styles may not have fit with this Japanese-inspired genre but for me its complete absence in this film made me miss the glee of design detail present in his previous art direction inspirations.

Before you dismiss this review as simply from someone who doesn't "get it"... let me be clear that: I Love Japanese Monster/Godzilla/Ultraman films.

Growing up, these were fun to watch and I loved pretending to be a monster or Ultraman fighting them and smashing buildings and terrorizing ant-sized humans in the process. I also love the Gundam series as well as classics like Tetsujin 28 (where a young boy controls a robot). In short, I have watched Japanese cartoons (anime) and have enjoyed the usual story structure of giant monsters needing to be defeated by giant defenses.

That said, this was not a movie that reminded me of the B-grade rubber suit world of make- believe I grew up watching. In those old TV shows, I was too young to care about the cardboard buildings or the cheesy explosions. But then again, I was less than 10 years old.

I cannot imagine a young audience getting the same amount of joy from Pacific Rim. In fact, the day I watched it, I didn't feel a sense of shared joy with the audience. They didn't feel transported back to a child-like state of imagining this amazingly epic world.

All I sensed was an audience watching an action movie with fast cuts and a blur of heavily edited images.

It's a shame for me. Since there have been movies with big scale action that still considers having memorable character trans-formative moments. The films that comes to mind include The Incredibles, Batman Begins, How to Train Your Dragon and the best moments of his own great movies like Hellboy.

What I do hope for is that Guillermo del Toro navigates his way back to making movies that remind you artistic vision is not a lost cause. And that keeping a human emotional center isn't boring.

It was a great looking film.

Aliens were tall and regal.

Alien plants exotic and luminescent. Alien wild life, a strange mutation of creatures we have on earth, except much more dangerous and spectacularly primal.

Thus ends the good review portion of this write up.

The rest of the film however... was less than stunning.

We have a hero without much personality - wheelchair bound - unemotional, and demonstrates this when he doesn't even mourn the death of his twin brother for one second. Yes. This is literal not metaphorical. Try counting the moments where this hero actually has real emotions for his own flesh and blood.

And yet later in the film, he is supposed to be in touch with the planet he now inhabits.

As a cheat, the film suggests his rivers run deep. Telling us he is some kind of deeply spiritual being. All this is well and good, however he has very little empathy for others around him. He is wide eyed and naive at best and at his worst is simply unintelligent and reactive. Not exactly the picture of enlightenment he is purported to being.

What is insulting to the intelligence is how our human hero goes on to being the savior of the native aliens towards the end of the film. Somehow, he is the one chosen to deliver these already intuitive and spiritual beings from their own naivety and lack of combat strategy skills. On top of which, he gets the biggest dragon too. So all in all, the film shows us he becomes the best alien, when only half an hour ago he was a lumbering clumsy buffoon. Miraculously he masters their language in record time, is more agile than his other human colleagues who have been training for years. In other words, he was born to be an alien.

So, let's say we the audience buy into this. Other contradictions appear to destroy the illusion of a perfect transformation from human soul to alien spirit. This comes in the form of connection.

When the chief of the alien tribe is killed... he continues his insensitive ways and does not shed a single tear. This, coming from the most connected alien in the whole bunch.

The final insult of course comes in the form of his superiority over them all when he single handedly tames the biggest dragon in the sky. This preadolescent fantasy of bigger is better, and that "I'm more enlightened than everyone and I don't even know how I did it" is not an act of profundity, it's an act of suspending disbelief to the extent that we must be numb in the brain to not see this person is a callous immature person who does not deserve such high praises. A young unwise boy trapped in the body of an adult, trapped in a machine sending neural impulses to a electro-chemically remote controlled alien body trapped in a plot line involving mineral mining espionage which included a cigar chomping mercenary commanding officer and greedy corporate middle management stereotype.

At its centre, the story is the imaginings of a child, stumbling around thinking he's a man, having sex with exotic beings and fighting and having fun with violence and explosions and crazy visually stunning landscapes. A perfect film for anyone with a mental age of 12 or below.

Emotionally hollow, I can understand the fascination with this much hyped visual feast. Essentially it shows, we are superficial as a collective, unable to go past the eye's delight and can be manipulated into feeling something that isn't there if the images are able to tap into our subconscious yearnings.

(We yearn to be thin, tall and agile; good looking and strong; we want to have sex with the alpha male or female and ride flying dragons; we want to be deeply connected to our environment without having to do any studying, reading and personal observation; and most of all we want to be loved by everyone, including creatures great and small who respect and even obey us.

I remember having some of these very same fantasies at age 8. And before anyone thinks I have something against staying youthful, I don't.

Being 8 is great, but at some stage, other people's feelings become important too. And if this film suffers from any one dilemma of a child's perspective, it is the flaw of being ultimately self centred and self serving.

There is only one winner and it is that naive, good looking human who wanted to be respected and loved by everyone.)

That said, I commend all the artists who worked on this film. They did an outstanding job at creating some of the most eye catching big screen images in recent years.

I write as someone who not only loves this film, but as someone who understands how much a pair of shoes is worth.

As I write this, I have about $25 in the bank. I have no other money. I struggle each day to find meaning... and stable work. I have worked all my life... until recently. And now my pair of shoes is at least 2 years old... and I make sure I don't wear them out.

Watching this film again, I can appreciate this story as being more than allegorical. There is symbolism in the film but its literal meaning is as potent as its often poetic images.

So, to anyone who believes this film to simply be a modern analogy... it isn't. There are definitely people living in our world today living under weighty consequences of losing their protective sole. I am one of them.

What I hope this film does for me... and for anyone else who loves this movie... is to help keep our spirits buoyant when life hands us over-sized hand me downs. I know it has reminded me that my shoes look a darn sight better than the ones in this story and yet the characters managed to still keep striving in life. The one thing they never did, was give up.

I hope this ode to love of family, devotion to hope and having a forgiving heart will be one of my beacons, giving me direction towards light when the dark bleak nights of the soul smother me.

This work of motion picture art seems dedicated to all of us who don't have much left in the world except our human hearts. Our need to live for better things. Our desire to hold on to love and the people most dearest to our souls. This is a film about being brave in a world that can easily run us over. If these 2 small children can hold on to hope, perhaps all of us can too.

There are already a lot of well written criticisms about this wonderfully artistic film.

My write-up here is basically about the film's ending and how it contributed to the overall structural weakness of the entire movie.

So let me start at the end by saying this: I didn't feel a thing when the end credits started materializing from a talisman for quite a few reasons.

My thoughts kept returning to these questions:

• Why did a scientist create these 9 little potato sack creatures from his soul?

• And what did the sacks do as they live on in a world decimated by war? They hid in fear. They found a leader who is closed minded and authoritative.

• So how were these soul-ful creatures supposed to help the world? They seemed incapable of helping each other... and this is great irony since they were all from one single soul. The question that arises is how can a world of souls co-exist if one single soul finds turmoil in getting along with itself?

Suppose I play God's Advocate as opposed to Devil's Advocate... by suggesting that these little sack creatures were supposed to do for the planet what the huge war-like machines did not; i.e. to invent things that create positive changes rather than destroy the earth and all living things.

And suppose they would do this because they were like machines with one key improvement... they had a soul.

This ending, to some, would have been enough.

However... it is overly simplistic since it blames all our planet's problems on the evil actions of machines.

If machines were the sole problem, why do 3rd world countries suffer at all?

The darker and less comforting truth is that our problems lie in ourselves.

We humans are the problem. Not machines.

We are the ones who hoard food. We are the ones who invent spears and clubs and knives and canons and missiles and rifles. We are the ones who steal from other humans using these weapons of destruction. Taking away someone's gun doesn't take away their ability to hurt other humans.

Just look at life in prison. There are people there who can still kill and inflict damage on others with their hands, feet and teeth.

Are we naive to believe that if we simply removed their hands and feet and teeth, prison life will suddenly turn into a human utopia.

It isn't their weapons we must disarm. It is their hearts. Their selfsame human hearts that contain human souls. The same very souls that are supposed to help save humanity.

So... If humans have a soul, and if souls have the ability to save the world... why isn't the world saved by humans today? We have over 3 billion humans with souls living right now. Don't we all have souls? Don't we all have the same souls (described in this movie '9') that are supposedly able to create positivity on our planet?

These same souls are shown in the movie as being unable to agree on anything. If anything... this one single soul is responsible for killing parts of itself.

Basically... the whole meaning for this movie sucked.

The burlap sack creatures perhaps should have all killed themselves... gone to the sky and be done with it.

Instead the scientist in the movie had said "life must go on"... but why?

Why should life go on when humans are incapable of peaceful co-existence? Even the burlap sack creatures were unable to live in harmony. The contradictions in this film probably stem from the fact that we humans really don't have the answer to saving the human race from ourselves.

And any attempt to simplify it only ends in confusion and schism-centric behaviour.

We appear to be a creature doomed to cycles of war and "peace"... escalating our differences to violent bloodshed. Destined to repeat this kind of behaviour until we are all finally capable of peace within ourselves.

9 is a movie that wanted to offer us the answer... instead it shows us how naive we still are towards reaching that greater end.

How can we achieve peace when we blame something outside of us for the inherent disharmony we create all on our very own?

"The fault dear Brutus is not in the stars (or machines with no souls) but in ourselves..."