Trap

This past weekend, I went to the last possible showing (locally) of this M. Night Shyamalan movie starring Josh Hartnett in a leading role that, in my opinion, solidifies his comeback as a movie star started in last year's Oppenheimer. Here he plays Cooper, a man with a double life: a Dad of the Year who rewards his teenage daughter for a good report card by taking her to a big concert featuring her favorite pop star, and a psychopathic serial killer who realizes he's been caught in a trap. The feds and the local police are all over the concert venue, looking for him, because somehow they know he's going to be there – and now he has to sneak around, looking for a way out, without raising his daughter's suspicions. It's a thriller worthy of Hitchcock, with a legit pop concert embedded in it and some gruesome shocks, hold-your-breath moments of suspense and twists, twists and counter-twists galore.

The cast features Hayley Mills, most recognized for her role as identical twins in the 1961 version of Parent Trap, as a veteran FBI profiler; Allison Pill, whom I recognized for her role as Agnes Jurati on Star Trek: Picard, as the killer's (ahem) oblivious wife, Rachel; singer-songwriter Saleka Night Shyamalan (the director's daugther) as pop star Lady Raven, who not only wrote and performed a whole concert worth of material for the first act of the movie but also takes on a surprisingly important role in the second act; and real-life musical artists Russ and Kid Cudi as fictional musical artists similar to themselves.

I thought it was an effective thriller. It did what it says on the label. Rather than give away too many plot points, I'm going to restrict my synopsis to what I've already stated, plus the following Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The whole second act, in which Cooper strong-arms Lady Raven into helping him but she turns the tables and retakes control. (2) The third-act battle of wits between Cooper and Rachel, who maybe isn't as oblivious as she seemed. (3) The bit where Cooper and Lady Raven find themselves, and their limo, surrounded by a crowd.

Of course, it would hardly be an M. Night Shyamalan movie without a macabre twist at the end, a cameo appearance by the director and a bonus scene a little way into the end credits. He doesn't take it over the top or transgress the bounds of good taste. Without being overly flashy, Trap might score up there with his earliest and best films, like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs.

But what you really want to know is whether Josh Hartnett can command the screen in this creepy role, and the answer is: He absolutely can and does. You can buy into the way he fools people around him into thinking he's one of the good guys, without taking anything away from the evil that you see in him when nobody is looking. Plot twist-wise, he has a chilling knack for blending in, for remaining in control even while walking into a crowd of cops who are looking for him, for escaping what seems to be an inescapable trap. But when he loses it, he's just terrifying. And the final gleam in his eyes, before the credits roll, are worthy of Anthony – Perkins or Hopkins, you pick. Also, when his shirt comes off, you'll notice that the passage of years hasn't destroyed his hunkiness. It has to be said.

5-Cube, Revisited

Here's the current state of my Rubik's cube-type puzzle collection, most of which are in the rotation of puzzles that I regularly solve. Some, however, I only touch once in a while, and a couple of them still intimidate me enough that I'm going to let them hang for a bit before I attempt to learn my way around them. But with only a couple of exceptions, which I shall note in a moment, I only have one of each kind of puzzle and I mean to keep it that way. I'm not in this to have a huge collection of all the different 3x3s ever mass-produced, or what have you.

In the foreground, in starring position if you will, is the 5-cube, the main subject of today's update. However, joing us on the patio for just a little sunlight are all its friends. There are five octahedral puzzles at the left. From front to back, they include two Face Turning Octahedra (FTOs), one of which is stickerless and moves very smoothly, the other a stickered model whose movement is very stiff and apt to lock up, and whose stickers started peeling off; I actually peeled off all the stickers on the blue side and tried painting those pieces, with somewhat unsatisfactory results. Third from the front is the 3x3 Edge Turning Octahedron (ETO), which I haven't learned to solve. Don't look at me like that. I just got it last week, and the minute I laid hands on it, some of the tiniest stickers started peeling off. Also, it's even harder to turn than the stickered FTO. In fourth position is the Diamond Skewb, sort of a 2x2 FTO but super-easy to solve, once you have the knack of it. Like the other skewb products on this table, it's designed so that each turn rotates half of the puzzle at a time. Finally, in the back left corner, is the 4-layer Corner Turning Octahedron (CTO), which is also a bastard to turn and, at times, a bitch to solve, but I've learned a way to do it and I'm working on improving my technique. It's actually not so much that it's hard to figure out how to solve it as the three very simple algorithms require a certain amount of strategic thinking that, in one particular case, catches me in a vicious cycle that I can only escape by scrambling it and starting over. I intend to explain my strategies for solving the FTO and CTO in the near future, but not today; it's hot on that patio and I don't fancy shooting more pictures out there.

In the third row in from the left are three dodecahedra: from front to back, the Megaminx, the Skewb Ultimate and the Gigaminx. The Megaminx is a gloriously fun puzzle to do, with 12 pentagonal faces that ... well, I've already covered it on this blog, haven't I? It was the first direction in which I branched out from cube-shaped puzzles, and I still find it most diverting. The Skewb Ultimate, whose moves (once again) rotate half of the puzzle at a time, is one that I've learned how to solve but haven't kept in practice, and now I'm afraid I'll have to learn it all over again if I'm to make any progress on it. The Gigaminx is literally just the Megaminx with an extra layer of moving pieces added all the way around. I haven't started learning to solve it yet but I'm aware that there is also a Kilominx (scaling the concept down to a single layer of corner pieces with no center), with scaled-up versions called a Master Kilominx (with one additional layer all the way around), an Elite Kilominx (with two such added layers) and an "8x8" Kilominx (with three), while the Megaminx-Gigaminx pattern holds with additional layers producing the Teraminx, Petaminx, Examinx, Zettaminx, Yottaminx, Quettaminx and Minx of Madness, which corresponds to a 21x21x21 cube. I'm in no hurry to size up. I still haven't learned my way around the Gigaminx, after all.

The cluster of cube-shaped puzzles at the center of the collection include (at front) the 2-cube, with a smooth-moving 3-cube behind it and a Skewb on top of that, whose funky diagonal turns I'm still learning. I mean, I can solve it, but I still need to build confidence with it. Next to that stack is the stiffer-moving Rubik's-brand 3-cube that started it all, for me, on top of my beloved 4-cube. Behind them are the 6-cube on top of the 7-cube, with which I've become pretty comfortable. The big honker next to them is Evgeniy's Icosahedron, a cheap-ass 20-sided puzzle that I'm pretty much going to display on a shelf from here on. I really wanted an icosahedral puzzle, at least to complete my collection of Platonic solids, but when it arrived last week (in the same shipment as the ETO) I discovered that it's the worst turning piece of junk I own. Dreadful movement, with flimsy plastic pieces and stickers that I'm afraid to manhandle too much. Ere I learn how to solve a corner-turning icosahedron, I'm going to need a better model.

Next to that, in front, is the three-layer pentahedron, with the 2x2x4 Rubik's Tower behind it. They're the only non-Platonic solid puzzles in my collection so far. I've just gotten my hands on the Tower, so I'll start learning it soon. The 3x5 dealie is perhaps the most comfortable puzzle in this collection to hold in the hand; I haven't played with it very much, but I should. At the far right are my three tetrahedral puzzles. At front is the Pyramorphix, a.k.a. Rubik's Pyramid, with the 3-layer Pyraminx behind it and the 4-layer Master Pyraminx, a.k.a. Tetraminx, behind it. I've had lots of fun with, and become pretty good at, the latter two. I was reluctant to get the Pyramorphix because I thought it would only twist at the tips, making it not much of a puzzle, but it turns out to be a shape-changing gadget that turns completely differently from the two pyraminxes. I still have a lot of work to do on it, but I've solved it a few times.

And so, as promised way back here, I have an update about solving the Last Two Edges (L2E) on the 5-cube. I had mentioned that the L2E algorithm for the 4-cube – put problem edges on the front at left and right, then do Uw' R U R' F R' F' R Uw – isn't worth a damn on the 5-cube. I even posted a link to a two-page guide to 5-cube L2E algorithms tailored to every conceivable case. But I really hoped and prayed that I could come up with a solution that I'd be able to carry in my brain without having to memorize all those ridiculous algorithms. You may remember there was also a two-page guide to Last Two Centers algorithms, which my 6- and 7-cube tutorials showed you actually don't need because there's an easy-to-learn, intuitive procedure for solving every possible L2C case, and that also applies to the 5-cube. This gave me hope that I could finally put this L2E problem to rest. That and the fact that I learned that the 4-cube's L2E algorithm actually does work on the 6- and 7-cubes, if you set up the move correctly. So, as I demonstrate how this works on the 5-cube, bear in mind that this procedure can be extended to 6-, 7- and higher cubes.

First, to minimize distraction, I'll show this process on a minimally scrambled cube. Basically, I did the L2E algorithm on the solved cube, and the extent to which it messed up the cube (beyond the edges we're concerned with) will show you that this move does more than just swap a few pieces between the last two edges. There's a reason you do this before you start solving the cube like a 3x3x3; it shuffles a few other things around as well. But it also rotates three crucial pieces between the two edges in question. So, here's the left edge of the two, at front:

And here's the right one:

You'll see that the green and red edge at the top of the stack on the left needs to move over to somewhere on the right edge, where there's a green-and-orange edge piece that needs to move to the left. Well, a very carefully applied version of the 4-cube's L2E algorithm will actually rotate three of these edge pieces clockwise: The top left, top right and bottom right pieces. Which will put all three exactly where you want them, correctly oriented too (so you won't have to repair the edge-parity case that seems to be developing at the right). Here's how.

First, be sure to position the two edges so that the three pieces needing to be rotated are in the correct places, with two matching pieces opposite each other in one of the top layers. This is super-important. If the top left and top right edge pieces don't both belong on the right, you're not going to end up with the desired result. You may have to flip one of the edges to set this up. There's actually an edge-flip algorithm for the right-front edge that's the same as the L2E only without the Uw' and Uw moves that bookend it, but I'm so over that algorithm. All you have to do is dial one of the edges onto the top layer, twist it around 180 degrees and bring it back down on the other side of the other edge. Think, McFly! I mean, "work smarter, not harder." Second, do that initial Uw' move OR just a slice move (u') on the layer where those two matching edge pieces are facing each other. On the 5-cube that'll simply be the U-slice layer, but on the 6- and 7-cubes it could be one or both of two different layers above the equator of the cube; so, twist advisedly.

Then, complete the L2E algorithm with the usual R U R' F R' F' R, and reverse the initial U wide or slice move. The result, if you've done it right:

The other algorithm, and I think (fingers crossed) maybe the only other one you'll need from that two-page guide to 5-cube L2E cases, is where the piece in question is right in the center, which can happen on either the 5- or the 7-cube or, I suppose, any cube with an odd number of layers going up to infinity. Here's what the case looks like with the two problem edges to the left and right of front:

Well, the algorithm I memorized for this calls for those two edges to be at the front and back of the top layer. I suppose this can be adapted to the orientation used for the previous algorithm, but I don't feel like doing it so, pfbt. I mean, rotate the cube to put the two edges on top at front and back.

Then do an Rw2 move (for 7-cubes and up, that means turning all the layers to the right of center), then F2 U2 Rw2 (with the same caveat), then U2 F2 Rw2 (ditto). Result:

For my final update, I'd like to acquaint you with a new (to me) puzzle scrambler that I've bookmarked on my phone, and that I find much more helpful than the one to which I previously linked. Look at this beautiful graphic interface:

It's even more helpful than it looks. For one thing, not only does it show an animation of all the steps to achieve the randomly-generated scramble, but it also shows you what the state of the puzzle should look like at every step, if you click or tap on it. Also, it provides scrambles for some puzzles that my previous scrambler of choice didn't. Here's the menu, which you get to by touching the silhouette of the puzzle above the steps.

One caveat: the Megaminx scramble squeezes that icon off the screen, so you have to reload the site to get another scramble. So, top row from left, you have scramblers for the 3-cube, 2-cube, 4-cube, 5-cube and 6-cube; second row, 7-cube, a 3-cube blindfolded competition, 3-cube fewest moves competition, 3-cube one-handed competition, and the Rubik's Clock puzzle; third row, Megaminx, Pyraminx, Skewb, Square One (a shape-changer I haven't adopted yet), and 4-cube blindfolded; fourth row, 5-cube blindfolded, FTO (the reason I bookmarked this scrambler), Master Pyraminx, Kilominx and something called the Redi Cube, a corner-turning cube I knew nothing about until I reached this sentence. I can already see where my next few shopping trips to the Speed Cube Shop are going to take me. (Another toy I'm drooling over is the Master FTO, which – you guessed it – adds a layer all the way around 3-layer FTO.) Yeah, they saw me coming. And to think this all started when a YouTube video about how to solve a Rubik's Cube caught my eye. Hoo doggy!

Fangtastic!

Fangtastic!
by Sienna Mercer
Recommended Ages: 11+

Ivy and Olivia aren't just classmates at Franklin Grove Middle School; they're also identical twins. The trouble is, they have to keep this amazing discovery to themselves. Their adoptive parents don't know. Also, one of them happens to be a vampire, and the "bunny" (non-vampire) sister isn't supposed to know this. Vampires, who make up a significant portion of the town's population, are very strict about secrecy. Which is why a prank by a gang of middle school vamps called the Beasts could lead to serious stuff. Like a crusading reporter rolling into town, determined to get to the bottom of why a pimply kid jumped out of a coffin in the middle of a funeral.

I know, it's so annoying when that happens!

It's going to take the combined efforts of both girls – Olivia, a cheerful cheerleader who likes wearing pink and sparkles, and Ivy, a Goth who writes for the school newspaper and rarely cracks a smile – to steer Serena Star off the track of vampires and whatever else wants to stay hidden in Franklin Grove. Each person they let in on their secret (and I just mean that they're twins) could potentially blow the lid off the existence of vampires. But they can't stop Serena alone.

This is a fun, wish-fulfillment-fantasy romp through middle school relationship issues, with some kiddie romance, the power of sisterhood and friendship, and the whole range of character types you can find in a school community from bossy cheerleaders to buttoned-up cub reporters, from bookworms to bullies and beyond. The Goth/vamp subculture at Ivy and Olivia's school has its own slang that's also fun to explore, with "that sucks" meaning something is good, for just one example. It's smoothly and cleverly written, with plenty of laughs and probably some jokes that'll slip by you if you're not on your toes. And after all, Serena Star's comeuppance is glorious to behold.

This is the second "My Sister the Vampire" book by Canadian author Sienna Mercer, coming between Switched and Re-Vamped!. The series has 18 titles, several of them with exclamation points in them, such as Vampalicious!, Stake Out!, Flipping Out! and Spooktacular!, as well as a companion quartet of middle-grades chapter books called "My Brother the Werewolf" including Cry Wolf, Puppy Love!, Howl-oween! and Tail Spin.

Switched

Switched
by Sienna Mercer
Recommended Ages: 11+

Olivia didn't know she had a twin sister until she moves to a new town, starts attending a new middle school and notices that her science lab partner, Ivy, looks an awful lot like her. Other than Olivia being a perky cheerleader type and Ivy being a pale-skinned, raccoon-eyed Goth, that is. They have the same birthdate and birthplace. They were both adopted. Whoever anonymously dropped them off also left behind anonymous, emerald rings with both of them. Clearly, they're twins. There's just one big difference between them. Ivy is, ahem, a vampire.

No biggie. Lots of people in Franklin Grove are vampires, including a lot of the Goth kids in middle school. Only, the "bunnies" (regular humans) aren't supposed to know. Once Olivia is in on the secret, she and Ivy start switching places to better use their differing skill sets. For example, Olivia is totally on board with helping plan and decorate the vamps-only, secret school dance – something Ivy wouldn't be caught undead doing. Also, she helps break the ice with the Goth boy Ivy has been crushing on forever. Meanwhile, Ivy fills in for Olivia during cheerleading practices, helping take mean, popular girl Charlotte down a peg. Spray-on tanning and skin-whitening and the deft application of makeup can do a lot for a couple of enterprising girls, if only they can fool their friends ... and frenemies. But of course, there are complications. No one can know they are secretly identical twins. No one can know Olivia is in on the vampire secret. How long do you suppose they can keep that secret?

This is the first of something like 18 thin, middle-grades chapter books in the "My Sister the Vampire" series, whose author also put out a quartet of "My Brother the Werewolf" books. I picked up a bunch of them at a secondhand store, which might suggest a strategy for picking up on them. Or you can always shop online, haunt the school media center or public library, do interlibrary loan, etc. Just sayin'. Further titles in this series include Fangtastic! (that's book 2), Love Bites, Stake Out!, Fashion Frightmare! and, most recently, Fangs for the Memories. What I've seen so far is charming, upbeat, and funny, sometimes in a way that tries to sneak by you (like, for example, sneaking the words "Charlotte's web" into the middle of a sentence not overtly referring to the E.B. White book). I have a feeling that when my supply runs out, I might have to go searching for additional installments.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

The latest movie in my cinematic year was a trip to see Harold and the Purple Crayon on Sunday night. Based on a children's picture book by Crockett Johnson, it starts out in the animated world of the book character, a boy whose magic crayon gives him the power to bring anything he draws to life. At first, he's happy with his adventures, his loyal friends – a moose and a porcupine that he created himself – and the disembodied narrator he calls "old man" (voiced by Alfred Molina). But then the narrator goes silent, and Harold decides to travel to the Real World to look for him and find out what's wrong. Which, naturally, he does by drawing a door with a sign on it saying "Real World."

Fish-out-of-water hijinks ensue. Harold turns into Zachary Levi, clad in all-purple overalls that give real-world people the wrong idea. Worse, running at anyone who looks like an old man with open arms gets him poked with a couple of canes. Moose, transformed into a human (Lil Rel Howery) adds to the weirdness, while Porcupine (British actress Tanya Reynolds) falls behind and finds herself in trouble with the law. Harold and Moose have a literal run-in with a mom (Zooey Deschanel) and her young son, who already suffers socially because of his wild imagination, and obviously, she doesn't believe him when he starts enthusing about Harold's magic crayon. The penny doesn't even drop when Harold repaints her house (purple, of course) and fills the kitchen with blueberry pies. Adults are so oblivious!

But things really start to go crazy when the kid offers to skip school to help Harold and Moose find the old man. The movie becomes resistant to synopsis from about here forward, but it's very eventful and raucously funny. Stuff happens at the boy's school, the mom's workplace and, most fatefully, under the nasty eye of the head librarian, who fancies Terri (the mom) and is frustrated in his ambition as a fantasy novelist. Gary, as this creep is called, played by New Zealander Jemaine Clement, seems to have a complete collection of recessive genes, but that doesn't stop him from trying to win Terri's heart and/or absolute world domination, whichever he can achieve first by stealing Harold's crayon.

Harold's journey is sometimes scary, sometimes sad, and definitely a lot heavier than you would expect based on the source material, but the magic is impressive and the adventure comes full circle in an effective story shape. And also, it's magically hilarious. It has drawn-by-a-kid-at-heart machines that really go, from a helicopter to an airplane, a hot air balloon to a motorcycle; to say nothing of creatures, like the alternately cute and terrifying spider-fly and the boy's imaginary friend, which becomes real by what magic I'm sure you know. The cast all does a fine job, and as a boy in the shape of a man, Zachary Levi is in his element (see also Shazam). And if you hang out for a bit of the end credits, you'll be rewarded by a cute bonus scene. Overall, I just want to say this was exactly the movie I hoped it would be, and I really enjoyed it – a nice change after the fiasco of IF.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) All hell breaks loose at the store where Terri works, thanks to Harold and his crayon. (2) Harold loses faith in himself, so that the magic he has created starts to disappear. (3) Faith restored, Harold fights back against the nefarious Gary.