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.

9/10

I stand here naked before you. Judge me, you bitch.

I can see how John Krasinski’s debut feature can come across as shallow and pretentious to some. It’s ambitious and slightly uneven but it’s also one of the most honest interpretations of the male psyche I’ve seen in a long time. The thing about cinema is that while it can convey emotions, it’s also severely limited by the director’s aesthetic. And that’s why this film works; because technically, it’s a lot like Before Sunset or even, Tape. Frames are sparse and apart from the characters, little else fills the screen.

Julianne Nicholson’s character, reeling from a breakup, decides to study the effect of the feminist movement on men, or so she says. She sets up interviews with various men and they open up about relationships, women and sex. Do men really know what today’s women want? The film is funny, repulsive and mostly, insightful. A friend of mine referred to it as ‘Vagina Monologues for Men – Penis Monologues’, which when you think about it, is quite accurate. One scene that really stood out was that of a college professor reflecting on 21 years of being married. After an awkward pause, he muses, “Is it shallow? Does it sound shallow? Or do you think the truth behind this kind of thing will always sound kind of shallow? Everybody’s real reasons?”

Granted, the film is an exercise in vanity and it does have an inherently convoluted logic but I loved it and intend on seeking out and reading more of David Wallace Foster’s works.

PS: Ben Gibbard, from Death Cab for Cutie appears in the film.

Ad ignorantiam: The argument from ignorance basically states that a specific belief is true because we don’t know that it isn’t true. Defenders of extrasensory perception, for example, will often overemphasize how much we do not know about the human brain. UFO proponents will often argue that an object sighted in the sky is unknown, and therefore it is an alien spacecraft.

Argument from Personal Incredulity: I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true. Creationists are fond of arguing that they cannot imagine the complexity of life resulting from blind evolution, but that does not mean life did not evolve.

Confusing association with causation: This is similar to the post-hoc fallacy in that it assumes cause and effect for two variables simply because they are correlated, although the relationship here is not strictly that of one variable following the other in time. This fallacy is often used to give a statistical correlation a causal interpretation.

False dichotomy: Arbitrarily reducing a set of many possibilities to only two. For example, evolution is not possible, therefore we must have been created (assumes these are the only two possibilities). This fallacy can also be used to oversimplify a continuum of variation to two black and white choices. For example, science and pseudoscience are not two discrete entities, but rather the methods and claims of all those who attempt to explain reality fall along a continuum from one extreme to the other.

Straw man: Arguing against a position which you create specifically to be easy to argue against, rather than the position actually held by those who oppose your point of view.

The moving goalpost: A method of denial arbitrarily moving the criteria for “proof” or acceptance out of range of whatever evidence currently exists.

Check out the entire list. It’ll probably come in handy the next time you’re matching wits with someone as logically dissonant as Bill Maher.

You joked about how Zarathushtra may have been just a mad man suffering from some variation of cabin fever. In hindsight, I doubt it. The overman, we concluded, was a farce. We laughed at our seeming cleverness.  And I cannot help but wonder if that night had anything to do with what happened after. Did it?

No, don’t answer that.

I concede that a year is a long time. I do not wish to bring up the unpleasantness but I want to tell you that I’ll take you up on the offer. I’d rather spend a year away from this noise with you. In isolation. We can still prove that the overman is a collective.

I’ll hang up now.

I occasionally have fantasies of Julie Delpy involving sticky summer afternoons, Sartre’s writings, 400 Blows, apple juice and berets. Don’t ask. Face it, the woman is brilliant and beautiful; brilliant enough to be associated with the likes of Kieslowski and Linklater and beautiful enough to make any man weak in the knees. So there – that’s out of the way.

Her directorial venture, 2 Days in Paris is an outstanding film; an achievement in black comedy that I’d go so far as to compare with the best of Woody Allen. Remember that scene in Annie Hall where Allen’s Alvy Singer makes awkward conversation with Annie’s new found friends in showbiz? 2 Days in Paris is a lot like that except the awkward conversation lasts 2 days and includes borderline psychotic parents, mentally unstable siblings and flat out disturbing exes.

Jack, a left wing American (‘A blow job is actually a big political event in the grand scheme of things. After all it was a blow job that destroyed any chance at a healthy democracy.’) who laments the anti-intellectualism rampant in his country accompanies his French girlfriend of two years, Marion to Paris where he meets her parents and a bevy of ex boyfriends, some of whom I feel could very well be just exaggerated caricatures. As people around him converse animatedly in French, he is forced to make up his own meanings from Marion’s body language and revelations of her rather colorful sex life prior to their relationship.

His suspicions slowly give way to hostility and the film ends with a beautifully cathartic moment that never feels too forced. The film is not so much about culture clashes as it is about the false pretense of honesty in relationships; about the little half-truths and ideas that people carry to and from every relationship.

The writing is sharp and crisp and there are some genuine laugh out loud moments especially the one where Jack says he’s more of Val Kilmer fan than a Doors fan while visiting Jim Morrison’s grave. It’s those little pieces of pop culture strewn about, genuine male angst and the presence of the lovely Ms Delpy that made this one of those films I just had to rant about.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/

Ten minutes into the film and you’re certain you’ve chanced upon something rare; a film that is truly an auteur’s labor of love. The Fall is not so much about imagination as it is about childhood innocence.

In a hospital in early 20th century Los Angeles, Roy Parker (Lee Pace), a depressed and suicidal stunt man paralyzed from the waist down befriends a free spirited young girl, Alexandria (played brilliantly by Catinca Untaru, who at the time was only 6 years old) secretly hoping he can charm her enough to get a bottle of morphine. He proceeds to tell her a story that he makes up along the way and the audience is privy to a sumptuously visual tale calling into action colorful characters ranging from an angry slave to Charles Darwin and his pet monkey.

As Roy becomes progressively more depressed in the real world, his story gets darker and immerses an innocent young girl into the recesses of the mind a man on the brink of suicide. As Alexandria starts getting emotionally involved, she goes to great lengths to keep the story going, to keep Roy going, all the while hoping for a happy ending. The third act was so emotionally engaging that I have to confess, I think I may have shed a tear or two.

Shot in some 25 countries, the film is an eye-popping travelogue and the compositions of a few frames are so ridiculously brilliant that you can’t help but marvel at what goes on inside the head of the director.

The characterizations and the plot itself are deeply flawed mostly because the director pays too much attention to visual detail but you’ll be hardpressed not to overlook that. You have to hand it to Tarsem for his audacity; he shot the film over four years with his own money and never allowed studios to touch a single frame. This is evidenced by the lack of a truly uplifting ending.

For me, the film was an immensely personal experience taking me back to my childhood when bedtime stories played an integral part; perhaps the reason why I tend to go off on tangents so often. Escapism, you see, is a beautiful thing.

9.5/10

(Cross-posted on Couch Critics)

So yes, I spend happy hours after work with this rather colorful group – a group I’ve grown particularly fond of over the past few months; the Indian couple who after 3 years of marriage still seem to be all over each other, the proselytizing right wing American who cannot stop blathering about the USPs of being ‘born again’, the pretty Chinese girl who for some strange reason finds it imperative that she photograph every waking moment of her life, the computer whiz who downs more energy drinks than anyone else I know and the jolly chain smoking (militant) atheist who would have made a brilliant Santa Claus if he weren’t, well, such an avowed atheist. (Note how I consider myself above all generalizations.)

A couple of nights back, during one of our inebriated sessions, religion comes up. Pretty Chinese girl starts raving about how Buddhism is the one religion/philosophy that in the last 2500 years hasn’t instigated a single conflict. Not to be outdone, Santa Claus reiterates how secularists have done more good for humanity than followers of all religions combined. Mr Yankee, piss drunk and understandably offended starts mouthing verses from the bible much to the consternation of Young Married Couple.

Things take a turn for the worse when insults are exchanged between Santa Claus and Mr Yankee (“Let’s see you turn the other cheek when I…”). Emotions flare and I try my best to break the tension with lame attempts at humor. For a moment they seem to work and Yankee calms down visibly.

“You bastards can say whatever you want but Jesus saves.”

An awkward pause follows and then Computer Whiz, “Well then he should bloody well invest in real estate, shouldn’t he?”

• Pick up the nearest book.

• Open to page 123.

• Find the fifth sentence.

• Post the next three sentences.

• Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you

Page 123 of Atomised has some pretty explicit stuff and since I desperately need the readership of my prepubescent fanbase, I’ve decided to post something a bit more PG13.

Thus Spake Zarathushtra by Friedrich Nietzsche. Yes, I usually am this pretentious.

Here hangs its web: touch it and make it tremble. Here it comes docilely: Welcome tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sit black upon your back; and I know too what sits within your soul.

The profundity got lost somewhere but anyway, there it is.

Most of the people I know have already been tagged so, I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge Rads. Rads is one of those people who never ceases to amaze me. She’s smart, nay brilliant, creative, articulate and probably the coolest mom I know. This is how you acknowledge somebody right?

The recent passing of Arthur C Clarke drove me to revisit the film yet again, that too two weeks after I watched Soderbergh’s 2002 interpretation of Stanislav Lem’s novel featuring George Clooney’s buttocks. This time around, both the films blew me away. The films while being (long) meditations on grief, are also explorations of existentialism and love; themes that feature in the two films to varying extent. For the uninitiated, Solaris was a novel written by Polish sci fi author, Stanislav Lem about a planet (Solaris) being observed by humans aboard a space station. But it soon turn out that it’s merely the humans who are under observation. *cue ominous music*

Tarkovsky’s Solaris is unabashedly more philosophical; it flits across consciousness, guilt, memories and (drumroll) love. The protagonist Kris Kelvin finds that his deceased wife keeps reappearing aboard the spacehip. We are soon privy to the fact that she may be a manifestation of his idea of her; she posseses memories and characteristics only Kelvin is aware of. Kelvin cannot seem to come to terms with her and at one point tries to get rid of the apparition by shooting her/it off into space. Dr. Snaut, another human aboard the ship decides to broadcast Kelvin’s brainwave patterns to Solaris in an attempt to communicate with the planet. The ending is one I consider far superior to Soderbergh’s version. The brainwave patterns (brainwave. heh.) cause islands to appear on the planet surface; the islands are occupied by manifestations of Kelvin’s childhood home.

Soderbergh’s Solaris is exponentially more artistic with exquisite set design and photography, heavily inspired by Kubrick’s 2001 and like 2001 is a film that is slightly ahead of it’s times; a film that will be fully appreciated only 10-15 years from now by 20 something art aficionados and intellectually impotent folk like yours truly. The science is updated too; Higgs Bosons replace Neutrinos as explanations for the spooky occurences.

I would reccomend both films but then again, what do I know? Stanislav Lem hated both.

Links:

• Philosophy in the stars: CSM
• Solaris and the philosophy of consciousness: Mind Hacks