Only novels rival TV shows in terms of the depth and breadth of the worlds they can create. That’s what makes the classic luddite sneer “I don’t even own a TV” so profoundly stupid: It betrays the fact that the sneering luddites are just as blind to the medium’s potential as the TV hacks at which they direct their derision. Because sure, most TV is disposable (just as most books and music and movies are ultimately disposable), but the shows that understand the possibilities in literally hours of story time can become epics, not necessarily in style (I’m thinking of shows like Arrested Development in addition to such obvious examples as The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but in scope.

Time will tell whether Caprica can ascend to that echelon—it’s still early, and it’s walking a staggeringly high tightrope—but it has the potential because it has the ambition, with an enormous cast of complex characters, intricate plotting, and truly intriguing ideas about technology and religion and terrorism and the nature of humanity and a host of other weighty themes. The tone is a bit uneven, wobbling from humor to melodrama to genuine tragedy, and then there’s the fact that as a prequel to the revamped Battlestar Galactica (which ended its four-season run last spring), it is, by definition, heading toward apocalypse: the vast majority of the characters (not to mention their entire civilization) are doomed, which is, you know, kind of depressing. And yet Caprica is too interesting and immersive to be a downer. I haven’t gotten over my fears that it’s going to collapse into an incoherent mess (always a danger when you aim high), and I don’t have much idea where it’s going with the many narrative threads, but my bewilderment isn’t a strike against it. That, in fact, is what make it so fascinating.

Of all musical genres, jazz is perhaps the farthest out of my comfort zone, the one that leaves me feeling most adrift—which is why it’s great that Sean and I have friends who expand my horizons, getting me to attend concerts I wouldn’t otherwise. Friday night’s performance at Birdland was particularly good for me because it motivated me to drag my winter-weary butt out of the apartment this past weekend, something that otherwise might not have happened. (Please, o weather gods, enough with the goddamn snow! The novelty has worn off. I am done.)

Anyway, now I’m stuck writing about jazz—always a daunting challenge. The problem, I think, is that jazz is near enough to musical styles that I do know well to make it easy for me to listen to it and understand it through that prism, yet far enough away to make that prism a problematic one. I definitely have my opinion, but I’m uncharacteristically insecure about it, which is a lousy position to write from. But this is my blog, and no one cares, so enough hedging: I didn’t like the use of the organ in Lou Donaldson’s Organ Quartet. So there.

Bright Star is beautifully romantic—isn’t that what I’m supposed to say? Certainly I have no reservations about saying that writer-director Jane Campion’s portrait of the relationship between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne is exquisitely filmed, with restrained, finely shaded performances from Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish. But romantic … I don’t know. I feel like there must have been more to John and Fanny’s relationship than Bright Star provides, and watching the movie, I kept sympathizing with the lovers’ friends and family who try to get the couple to be practical. That makes me feel like a hard-hearted clod, by the way, but even setting my android tendencies aside, something about Bright Star doesn’t sit right with me. Something is missing, no matter how elegant and delicate the film is.

If you were introduced to director Akira Kurosawa through his acclaimed films from the 1950s (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, among others)—all of which are feature shadowy, evocative black-and-white cinematography—the bold color of Ran, released in 1985, is disconcerting at first. Seeing the familiar figures of feudal Japan in vivid reds and blues and greens rather than the familiar dreamy grays is a jolt—but a welcome one. Kurosawa makes great use of his color palette, showcasing intricate costumes and breathtaking locations and even color-coding the three warring sons and their armies. The color, along with Kurosawa’s familiar panoramic direction, helps make Ran a gorgeous film to behold.

It’s also an affecting one—which I don’t take for granted, considering that the story is based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, a play that has always eluded me, to some extent. But besides relocating the familiar tale of an aging, misguided warlord from ancient Britain to feudal Japan, Kurosawa and his fellow screenwriters have tweaked the details, alluding to backstory and character motivations that don’t exist in the play. The result is exceedingly bleak—perhaps even more so than the tragic Lear. With Lear, one could argue that the king steps wrong in choosing who to trust; Cordelia might have been a fine heir. But Ran seems to argue that conflict and betrayal are all but inescapable. The youngest child is still the most affectionate and loyal, but he, too, is caught up in the heirs’ power-plays, which arrive early because of the warlord’s abdication but which were inevitable. (The movie’s title means chaos.) Frankly, if Kurosawa weren’t such a great director, Ran might have been unbearably grim.

First, I feel the need to acknowledge the absurdity of my writing about a fashion show. I go to absurd lengths to avoid shopping, I don’t read women’s magazines, and I consciously dress not to stand out but to blend in. When left to my own devices, I wear nothing but camisoles and yoga pants at home; V-necks, knee-length A-line skirts, tights, and boots to work; and long-sleeve Ts and jeans on the weekend. I am the anti–fashion plate.

But for the record, that’s not because I’m anti-fashion. I consider it way too extroverted a pursuit for a shy introvert like me, but especially since I moved to New York, working in a building just off Fifth Avenue, I’ve found the fashion industry hard to avoid, and I’ve developed an interest in it despite myself. So when Sean was offered two tickets to a New York Fashion Week runway show, I leaped at the opportunity to go. I mean, really: the tents at Bryant Park! How cool is that?

“Signature pieces” are crowd-pleasers, almost by definition: if it’s not the kind of thing that absolutely everyone loves, you probably won’t be performing it often enough for it to become a signature. I don’t begrudge Voices of Ascension putting together a program of such favorites—this is the choir’s twentieth anniversary, after all—but it did result in striking homogeneity. People love the Romantic period, and that’s what the program comprised: some early, some late, some French, such Russian, some Protestant, some Orthodox, but all Romantic, lushly expressive, sweetly melodic, chromatics yielding ultimately to tonality.

I don’t mean that as criticism, exactly—I love Mendelssohn and Bruckner and Rachmaninoff as much as anyone—but I would have enjoyed some Bach and Palestrina, too, or maybe Pärt or Britten or Chen. Under Dennis Keene’s baton, the choir has recorded works from the medieval period well into the twentieth century, so I’m puzzled why they limited themselves to just over a century of repertory here.

The first half of the program breezed through ten short works by assorted composers, and after an intermission, the choir performed Fauré’s heavenly Requiem—a cornerstore of Western choral literature for a reason. And even if I wearied a bit of all the pretty, pretty Romanticism, I never tired of the choir’s warmth. The voices blended together exquisitely, filling the sanctuary with glorious sound.

Looking back at what I wrote about Dollhouse after its first few episodes, I’m stunned by how far the show came in its two brief seasons. Maybe it just took a while for creator Joss Whedon’s team of writers to figure out how to make their high concept work. Maybe the meddling Fox executives finally backed off enough to let them tell the story the way they had always wanted. Maybe it just took me a while to get past the problematic elements and appreciate how brilliantly the show was handling them. I suspect, in fact, that it might be a little of all three. But now that the show has ended with a taut, thrilling, poignant finale, it’s worth reassessing. Back then, with my first post, I considered Dollhouse worth appreciating more for its ambitions than its achievements, but now, having seen the whole thing, I think the series ended up realizing those high ambitions and even expanding upon them in ways I hadn’t expected or thought possible.

I missed the showing of Throne of Blood, the movie I most wanted to see at Film Forum’s ongoing Kurosawa festival, which ticked me off royally until Sean pointed out that it wasn’t as though I had lost my one and only opportunity to see it. It is, after all, available on DVD and has been for years. Oh yeah. So I rented Throne from Netflix and watched it at home. Happy ending!

Throne of Blood interested me most because it’s a reworking of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, and I love watching different people tell the same story. It could be any story—a fairy tale, a classic novel, a mythologized historical event—but Shakespeare’s plays are particularly rich for nuanced repetition. People from different generations and cultures and philosophies have returned to the plays again and again, creating countless Hamlets and Richards, countless Juliets and Portias, and the contrasts among them never stop intriguing me. (Kurosawa also adapted King Lear into the samurai epic Ran, which I hope to catch during its two-week Film Forum run in February.)

Kurosawa’s Macbeth is more fatalistic than most, and his protagonist, by extension, is marginally more sympathetic. That’s compelling on its own, but what really makes the movie work is how gloriously cinematic it is, with one perfectly orchestrated, evocative sequence after another—all the more impressive when you consider that the movie’s narrative roots are in seventeenth-century Elizabethan theater and its visual roots in fourteenth-century Japanese Noh theater. Yet there’s nothing stagy about the dynamic middle-distance shots of frantic horseback riding or the eerily fluid special effects of the witch’s entrance and exit or the agonizingly still, taut framing of Lady Asaji (Lady Macbeth) as she waits for her husband to return from his regicidal mission. Throne of Blood works as a retelling of Macbeth because it works first and foremost as a movie.

But if I am to be perfectly honest (and where better than on a public blog?), it’s been difficult for me too. Maybe it’s because I no longer live on the family compound (well, five houses within a quarter-mile radius—whatever), and maybe it’s because I’m an immature twit, but since learning that Jamie and Kristen were going to become parents, I never really got past the abstraction of the idea. In my head, it felt like another marker of the scary reality that we’re all getting older at a much faster pace than I can handle—apiece with Kenny, the baby of the family (no, the former baby of the family), heading off to college and with the fact that my parents will soon be the parents of a thirty-year-old (which somehow upsets me more than the fact that I will be that thirty-year-old) and even, in a sick way, with my dad’s heart attack a couple years ago. It all ran together in my head, and deep down, underneath my sincere happiness for people whom I love so much, I was freaked out and kind of upset. I knew it wasn’t about me, but even so, I didn’t feel ready.

It took seeing pictures of Jamie and Kristen, exhausted but so happy, holding their beautiful son, for me to get it through my thick skull that this is not, in fact, about all of us moving ever closer to death. (Yes, I’m a freak show.) It’s about life, a blossoming branch on my beloved family tree. I know what great parents Jamie and Kristen are going to be, what great parents they already are, and I’m so happy for them—and for the rest of us, too, who have a new family member to love and support and cherish and drive crazy, each in our own special way.

So congratulations, Jamie and Kristen, and welcome, little baby Jay bird. I look forward to meeting you.