RENT- Video Clips and Blog

Just in case any of you RENTheads out there don't know about this, you've got to go here. So far up (besides blog entries by all the cast) are clips of Maureen's "Take Me or Leave Me" and Collins' "Santa Fe". Oh. My. Gosh. This is going to be such a freaking amazing film.

Now, for the quick synopsis I've promised for those who don't know about RENT (but should still go see the movie)-
It's a story about eight friends (if you can call Benny, the once good friend who gets married to a rich girl and ditches his pals, a friend) who are all in some way struggling with life. Roger, Mimi, Collins and Angel all have AIDS. Roger is an ex-junkie and Mimi still is one. Mark is lonely and has just lost his girlfriend Maureen to the young lesbian lawyer Joanne, and Maureen and Joanne just can't seem to make things work.

Basically it's the story of "a year in the life of friends". They struggle to learn how to love and how to live each day as if it were their last - and as several of them are dying of AIDS or drug addiction, their last could come at any time.

For more info, visit IMDB or the RENT the Movie or RENT the Broadway Musical.

Now- Reader Participation Question:
Who is your favourite RENT character and why?

(Choices - Mark, Roger, Collins, Angel, Mimi, Maureen, Joanne, Benny.)

I don't know if I can answer that question myself...
I love Roger because he is the most dynamic character in the story. In 525,600 minutes, he makes the biggest turn-around. After finding out that he has contracted AIDS and his girlfriend commits suicide, he more or less locks himself up in his apartment with his guitar and waits to die. He struggles to write just one song that will "redeem this empty life". It isn't until precocious Mimi interrupts his solitude and self-deprication that things start to change. He starts out depressed, refusing to love again, waiting for his inevitable death inside a cold and bare apartment, to a man with a will to live and a heart that can love.

But then, who couldn't love Mark, his antithesis who at the end of the story has changed very little except that he has become more true to himself and has faced the position he is in and embraced it? He, though he isn't dying of AIDS, has decided to quit dying in his loneliness and make the best of what life has given him. Life has given him amazing friends, which he realises only after they are gone.

Perhaps I'll talk about what I love about the other characters in another post (which few people will bother to read).