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.
I’m probably inviting ridicule by comparing Lost, a mainstay of the popular zeitgeist for over 6 years now, to something as revered as Paradise Lost. Beneath all that sheen and soap-opera style drama involving mostly beautiful people with perfect bodies, there were allusions to weighty philosophical dilemmas and age-old conundrums. I’ll admit that it took me a while to fully appreciate the epic scale of the show, and once I did, I was completely invested in its characters and mysteries despite the experience being far from perfect. But I’ve been hurt before, and it was with some amount of trepidation that I sat down to watch the final two hours of what was probably the most genre-bending show on television.
And yeah, it was a letdown (but nowhere near the fiasco that was Battelstar Galactica’s ridiculous ‘god did it’ conclusion). I fail to understand why otherwise brilliant writers resort to pulling deus ex machinas out of their asses when shows like these deserve far more fitting farewells. What exactly is the appeal in introducing overtly spiritual elements to a show that has had outstanding episodes like ‘Man of Science, Man of Faith’ and ‘The Constant’? Why tie up all loose ends with an explanation that renders it near impossible to question anything and everything that preceded it? Granted, Lost has jumped the shark a few times since season one and while the time-travel plot line was cleverly executed, drawing out an alternate reality without thinking things through was, to quote a friend, just plain shoddy and cowardly writing. Turns out, the alternate reality was (*spoiler*), purgatory. Really?
Don’t get me wrong; I loved the first 80 minutes of the episode. There was plenty of great acting (Terry O’Quinn and even Matthew Fox), a few answers, some great emotional resolutions and a pretty intense fight sequence. But the last 20 minutes took away from an otherwise great finale. I’m yet to fully grasp the impact that the finale had on me, and perhaps after the dust has settled, I’ll love it. Or maybe I’ll come to terms with how it’s been a disappointment—but a beautiful disappointment nonetheless.
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.
“The loss of religious faith is a slow and fragile process, like the raising of continents,” writes Darwin to his wife. That one line from the film resonates greatly with my personal philosophy and is perhaps one of the few reasons I enjoyed this rather ponderous study of Darwin’s struggle with faith and evidence.
The more I think about the film, the more glaring the flaws seem. The film seems conflicted about what caused Darwin’s inability to complete his treatise, On the Origin of Species – the death of his daughter or his accommodationist views on Christianity.
Creationists have long argued, albeit with no documented evidence that Darwin recanted on his death bed. Creation, based on the book, Annie’s Box by Randal Keynes dispels the myth and portrays Darwin as a man with strong convictions even if he occasionally questioned them.
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.
Trust Woody Allen to make you sit through a film about an insufferable intellectual who calls children, “submental cretins”. Diminutive middle-aged man constantly ranting about death, sex and existential angst – never gets old. And always funny.
I’ve been drawn to Woody Allen’s shtick since college (there’s a dirty joke somewhere in there); I’m one of those very few people (going by the huge backlash from critics) who think that Allenesque male angst and pathos are as socially and culturally relevant today as they were back in the 70s. And if you look a little closer, you’ll realize that Allen’s philosophy has somewhat evolved over the last 40 years.
Towards the end of Manhattan, Issac Davis speaks into a tape recorder and asks himself why life is worth living. There’s Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, Flaubert’s Sentimental Education and then, Tracy’s face. That scene has always appealed to the romantic in me.
Exactly 30 years later, an older and perhaps wiser Boris Yellnikoff seems to have gotten a little less materialistic.
My story is, whatever works as long as you don’t hurt anybody. Any way you can filtch a little joy in this cruel and pointless life, that’s my story.
I’m willing to overlook the cinematic flaws for the simple reason that at the end of the day, his films tend to remind you that there’s always clever humor to be mined from meaninglessness and paranoia.
Contrary to what Wheeler and Feynman may have postulated, to us lesser mortals, time travel have and will always seem inherently paradoxical. The Terminator films completely ignored the paradoxes involved while the more recent Star Trek sidestepped them by calling on a plot device that could either have been brilliant or just plain lazy screenwriting. But the best time travel films have always been the ones that completely embraced the absurdities involved; case in point being the ultra low budget yet supremely brilliant 2004 indie, Primer.
Los Cronocrimenes (Timecrimes) is a lot like Primer even though it descends into slasher territory mid way through. Like Primer, it employs a single timeline albeit one populated by multiple copies of the protagonist. Apart from the usual problems involved with time travel, the fun also lies in figuring out whether to root for the original Hector (Hector 1) or the ones that follow him.
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?
