Inception was everything I hoped it’d be. It was sufficiently complex (though nowhere near as complicated as Primer or even, Memento) and despite the 148 minute running time, very very engaging.
(Spoilers)
Then again, like all great films, Inception has its flaws and it’s not just the false narrative or the plot holes. Christopher Nolan has a set of rules for his world – rules that are essential in moving the plot forward; call it cinematic license, but it does feel like Nolan gets away with a little too much. I might be nitpicking but that’s what happens when you go in with great expectations.
Critics who’ve compared it to 2001: ASO or Blade Runner are only kidding themselves. Inception is more than just another great science fiction film – it’s about mathematics and engineering. The narrative is so tightly constructed that when scenes flit across the three (or four) ‘dream levels’, you cannot help but marvel at the genius behind it especially since time is supposed to be relative in all levels. A couple of years ago, the brother suggested I read Douglas R. Hofstadter’s wonderful book, Godel, Escher, Bach and after Inception, I find myself comparing the two. The film’s production design is certainly inspired by M.C. Escher’s art and some of the themes have been explored in other films. In fact, for a much more accurate interpretation of lucid dreams and more specifically, the concept of limbo, I’d recommend Richard Linklater’s underrated Waking Life.
Despite my reservations, I loved Inception. I find it oddly comforting that amidst all the crap that finds its way into cinemas, we can still count on someone to deliver a truly original blockbuster that you don’t have to switch your brain off for. And yes, I’ll be watching it again.
Design obsolescence has always puzzled me. How does something that’s aesthetically appealing one day become an eyesore the next? Remember back in 1998, when the translucent candy-like iMac came out and everyone and their grandmother soiled their pants over it? It really hasn’t stood the test of time. Now compare that with the set-design for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; 41 years and it still gives off that futuristic vibe.
Gary Hustwit’s Objectified tries to tackle this dissonance but never quite succeeds. Despite that, Objectified is a very engaging documentary on industrial design. There are some very insightful interviews with leading designers including the reclusive Jonathan Ive and the brilliant Mark Newson. Contrary to what you might expect from a documentary on design, Objectified is never boring.
If there’s one thing you learn from the film, it’s that most designers share a singular albeit abstract design philosophy – “I want things I can’t have yet”.
This BSG video set to the Beastie Boys track, Sabotage has already gone viral. But to really appreciate its brilliance, you need to compare the original Spike Jonze video and the mashup.
Face it, Avatar was never really going to live up to the hype.
Granted, James Cameron’s return to screen is every bit a visual spectacle as they say; Pandora is unlike anything we’ve ever been subjected to especially in 3D. The environments are lush and Pandora’s inhabitants are stunningly rendered. Visually, the film is brilliant and deserves every bit of praise it gets.
Sadly, the script is overwrought with cliches bordering on heavy handedness. It would’ve been enough if it were simply an allegory for civilizations and their misplaced sense of entitlement. Turns out, it’s also about the environment. Thankfully, the last 40 minutes made up for all the preachiness.
It’s interesting that Cameron never strays from the basics – there’s the three-act narrative, James Horner’s pounding orchestral score and a voice-over. For all the technical wizardry involved, Avatar is a very conventional film and a very good one at that.
Going through back issues at the local comic book store, I chanced upon this cover.
Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt Issue #7. Circa 1992.
I love it when something so seemingly unimportant unleashes all these associated memories ranging from food smells to parental admonishments. It’s been happening a lot lately.
Something this profound deserves a nostalgic albeit narcissistic rant. Damn my inarticulacy.
Brilliant article by Salman Rushide on what makes a good literary adaptation.
What are the things we think of as essential in our lives? The answers could be: our children, a daily walk in the park, a good stiff drink, the reading of books, a job, a vacation, a baseball team, a cigarette, or love. And yet life has a way of making us rethink. Our children move away from home, we move away from our favourite park, the doctor forbids us to drink or smoke, we lose our eyesight, we get fired, there’s no time or money to take a vacation, our baseball team sucks, our heart is broken. At such times our picture of the world hangs crookedly on the wall. Then, if we can manage it, we adapt. And what this shows us is that essence is something deeper than any of that, it’s the thing that gets us through.
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But those who do not know who they are, are doomed too: individuals who sacrifice themselves for the sake of pleasing others, comedians who stop telling jokes because they find themselves in a humourless world, serious people who start trying to tell jokes because they fear being thought humourless, people in a new situation, a new relationship, a new university, who act against their natures because they think that’s the way to make things easy for themselves.
Whole societies can lose their way through a process of bad adaptation. Striving to save themselves, they can oppress others. Hoping to defend themselves, they can damage the very liberties they believed to be under attack. Claiming to defend freedom, they can make themselves and others less free. Or, seeking to calm the violent hotheads in their midst, societies can try to appease them, and so give the violent hotheads the notion that their violence and hotheadedness is effective.
I stand by what I said – Watchmen is an unnecessary adaptation of the graphic novel. As a piece of visual pulp art, the film succeeds. But as an adaptation of Alan Moore’s ideas, Watchmen is a failure albeit an interesting one.
The opening credit sequence is a brilliant slow motion montage set to Bob Dylan’s Times They Are A-Changin’. This establishes the Watchmen universe – an alternate reality where Nixon is in his fifth term, superheroes are real, a giant blue man wins the Vietnam conflict for America and the Cold War has escalated to a nuclear stand-off. The plot follows a masked anti-hero, Rorschach as he tries to uncover clues to the murder of a former masked vigilante, The Comedian.
Visually, Dave Gibbons‘ frames are perfectly translated on celluloid and despite what I feared, the slow motion shots and fight sequences are quite nicely staged when compared to lazy quick cuts prevelant in action films today. The colour palette suits the dark tone of the film. Dave Gibbon’s choice of colour in the book was unlike those of most comics at the time (case in point, Frank Miller’s revival of Batman) and was an attempt at highlighting the absurdity of masked men running around in tights; that doesn’t seem to have been lost on Snyder.
The plot and narrative lean heavily on Alan Moore’s writing and for most part, doesn’t stray away from the brilliant source material. Where the film fails (and disastrously s0) is when it tries to come up with an original alternative for the ending. There is a huge tonal shift in the third act and character motivations are never obvious to a viewer unfamiliar with the book. Honestly, it was downright silly. However, my favourite bit from the book – Doctor Manhattan’s self imposed exile to Mars – was perfectly done. Doc Manhattan is a naked blue godlike being who has since his freak accident (physics lab accident, of course) become detached from humanity. He teleports himself to Mars after learning he may have been the reason his old friends and lovers seem to have developed cancer. This is perhaps the most outrageous and fantastic arc in the book but it fits right in with the rest of the film.
The soundtrack unfortunately is grating and very out of place. Apart from the opening and closing credits, the songs feel like they were picked out of a Greatest Hits collection from the 80s (Cindy Lauper, Simon and Garfunkel etc). Audiences laughed at what was supposed to be a disturbing sex scene only because Leonard Cohen and a church choir crooned ‘Hallelujah’ in the background. Alan Moore would roll in his grave if he were dead.
I walked out with pretty much the same feeling I had after 300. The film is beautiful to look at but is a muddled mess with flashes of brilliance here and there. Zack Snyder may be a devout fanboy but he may have missed out on what Moore really tried to say – there is no civility in civilization.
Right now, the upcoming Watchmen film ought to be the least of my worries; but I’ve seriously considered not watching Zack Snyder’s apparently faithful adaptation of the seminal graphic novel. You see, a comic geek scorned is a force to be reckoned with.
The first comic book I remember falling in love with was an issue of Batman (a Man Bat story arc) sometime around 1993. Frequent trips to India allowed me to source comics from airport stalls. Ever read the now discontinued and forgotten Thunderbolt? I have. And I remember specific frames from the book. Perhaps it was an escape from my relatively drama free childhood or maybe it was a rite of passage every young boy went through; whatever it was, I never got over the medium.
Third year of college. Holed up in that room, Watchmen convinced me that the comic book was far more than just colourful frames with conversation bubbles. The Comic Book had become The Graphic Novel. Characters had become morally ambiguous all of a sudden, heroes had become fallible and lofty ideals seemed suspicious. The Superhero concept had been deconstructed. Alan Moore joined the ranks of Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Dave Gibbons that of Rembrandt and Picasso. (Oh yes, comic book nerds are known to make wild exaggerations.)
I’ve been reading the book again; taking in every frame, digesting every line and assimilating concepts, some of which still strain my primitive frontal lobe. The book is an assault on the senses like no other; a work that perhaps was best left untouched.
However, I am mildly curious to see how Snyder translates something this complicated. 300 wasn’t exactly a brilliant film. If he does pull it off, will audiences be able to sit through 3 hours of an uncaring superman, an impotent vigilante and a masked anti hero who goes by the name Rorschach?
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow.
I remember reading Philip Roth’s Everyman a couple of years ago and then Garcia Marquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores more recently; both of which tell rather morbidly, the stories of old men who after living lives of regret and philandering are faced with their imminent mortality and unfulfilled desires. Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino draws strong parallels to these stories. Walt Kowalski, however, shuts his emotions in and redeems himself in the strangest and, for a film with so much profanity and tongue-in-cheek political incorrectness, most gut wrenching of ways.
Eastwood plays a tired and lonely version of Dirty Harry or even, Blondie, who finds himself as an antique from a bygone era in drastically different times. Like most scowling old people, Walt Kowalski is an irate old man who feels the world truly went under after the 60s. He invariably ends up helping a young Hmong immigrant find his bearings in a gang infested neighbourhood. Unlike the terrible Seven Pounds, Gran Torino lets us empathize with a character who learns how to finally let go of life. I do realize suicide is an ethically sketchy subject, but rarely has a film tackled it with such grace.
And that final scene where Tao drives off in the Grand Torino – such catharsis.
