Ian On The Red Dot

Wax On, Wax Off

Sand The Floor

Paint The Fence

Show Me

Faithfulness to doing the right thing is the key to learning.

Additional Thoughts:

The games we make, the games we play, can be like this. Now repeat after me, wax on, wax off.

A former scholar shares:

Amidst the annual scholarship fever and the flurry of applications, what the newspaper ads don’t mention, and what people don’t talk about enough in a meaningful way, is that the three or four years spent in university can change a person quite profoundly, all the more so if that university education is conducted abroad. I don’t mean having a British- or American-sounding accent, or having visited half of Europe in one summer backpacking jaunt, or learning how to cook the food you get homesick for. I’m talking about the kind of deep-seated change that can leave a person wondering how to reconcile what her old self agreed to do, with what her new self now believes.

In my case, I got bored with English literature – once the love of my life – and picked up a second major in history. I found extra-curricular activities more interesting than my classes. I discovered that, more than anything, I wanted to work in book publishing in New York. And politically, philosophically, I found myself inhabiting a very different position, one that made it hard to stomach certain principles on which our government operates.

The sweet irony …

Reminds me of the movie ‘Annie Hall‘. Alvy Singer is the catalyst for Annie’s growth. It is this growth that eventually leads to the end of their relationship.

Sometimes the gf can make you unbearably mad. You get angry and you keep pushing against the gf, assaulting her with words and gestures. The scene devolves.

The five stages of a fight with the girlfriend:

1. The girlfriend is shocked.

2. The girlfriend is sad.

3. The girlfriend is frustrated.

4. The girlfriend is angry.

5. The girlfriend is indifferent.

The smart guy, usually sprinkled with a generous dose of callousness, knows how to keep the girl at stage 3, with the occasional shift in emotion to 2 or 4.

If you are a guy, never, ever push your girlfriend to stage 5. If not, you will be like Dan (i.e. Jude Law’s character in Closer) who returns to the room to find that Alice (i.e. Natalie Portman’s character) has stopped loving him.

Further notes:

Closer has, for some time, been my favorite movie about love. Excellent commentary about the movie over at IMDB.

An excerpt:

Marber seems to be preoccupied with the way a slighted lover will beg or even demand to know every excruciating detail about their lover’s infidelity. This inexplicable and seemingly masochistic phenomenon pervades Closer on both a literal and thematic level, because Marber has a very simple and universal idea to present. This need to hear these painful truths is the thesis of Closer. What we’re soon able to see through the weaving of the characters’ relationships is that this desire is a manifestation of any lover’s need to possess his or her beloved. The victim of an infidelity grapples not just with the pain of betrayal but also with the inescapable knowledge of a most intimate element of their lover that will never, ever be theirs. In the same way that a man might find himself unable to live with the knowledge of his girlfriend’s past sexual encounters (a la Chasing Amy), the cheated-on man or woman has to confront their pain, however irrational, for being unable to think of every element of their partner as their own.

Closer revolves around this theme. On the one hand, it does this through the literal story of a man wanting to know the details of how and where and with whom his wife cheated on him, vainly trying to take back those intimate moments and claim them as his own. On the other hand, however, Closer uses this theme in a much more general way. A man may grasp at the lustful experiences of his wife, trying to reverse his exclusion from them, but the way that grasping is employed in Closer shows us that even if it weren’t for the infidelity, he would be grasping anyway. We all would. Our need to feel we have complete possession of our lover is what drives us to desperately dig deeper and deeper, trying to gain some secret knowledge of who and what they are at their most pure and uncompromised level.

In the end, however, this level doesn’t exist. The digging, the struggling and the grasping is futile as no person can be reduced to a singular truth. We are an entirely different thing, practically a different animal, from moment to moment. As Natalie Portman’s character so perfectly illustrates by the end, even the most mundane details about who we are can turn out to be transitory or meaningless.

Topless Robot on why Transformers 2 is not a Transformers movie:

So… yeah. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is not a Transformers film. A Transformers film would have featured robots with personalities, robots that we cared about. It wouldn’t have contained robots that piss and fart and have testicles and and vomit (seriously, both Megatron and Jetfire vomit every fucking time they speak, and god only knows why). It wouldn’t have featured 15 minutes of nonsense about some doofus going to college, nor 15 minutes of footage of military stock footage. And most of all, it wouldn’t have featured a massive close-up of John Turturro’s bare ass.

I grew up with Transformers and love the franchise especially with what they did when the universe was reinvented with Beast Wars and Beast Machines.

I should hate Michael Bay and what he did with the franchise, basically he spat on the geeks’ faces and trampled on our memories for blockbuster dollars. And even though I think Megan Fox is the awesomeness, I would admit that there were too many gratuitous shots of her.

Yet…

I’m ashamed to admit that I actually enjoyed the movie despite the glaring holes in plot, total lack of respect to continuity and lack of character development for the robots.

Why?

Because I never thought I would see big giant robots fighting each other in a live-action movie. And I have.

However, I think more could have been done and I’m hoping for a reboot ten years down the line so that we can chuck the second movie together with Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.

And for people who said you can’t make a movie where the fans care about the robot, I introduce you to Wall-E.

It is pretty sad that the best Transformers movie is still the cartoon version released in 1986 (which I vaguely remembered watching in the cinema).

Topless Robot’s Transformers 2 FAQ:

The Autobots have joined the military to hunt down the Decepticons. We’re told the Decepticons are “doing things,” but they appear to be hiding peacefully when the Autobots show up and brutally murder them.

No. No it is not. If they wanted to protect Earth, why did they leave the Matrix on the planet? They’re a space-faring race, they could have hid it anywhere in galaxy! Second of all, what the fuck does making a tomb of their own bodies do? Shouldn’t they have stayed alive to protect the Matrix? Or finish off the Fallen? Or just not die and leave Earth and the entire Transformer race in jeopardy?

For those who want to save money, this is Transformers 2 in 1 minute:

Just to refresh your memory, Transformer 2 is awesome not only because of giant robots fighting, but also because of Megan Fox:

From super game-master Jane McGonigal, a new game Cryptozoo – the funnest way to explore a city.

you’ll follow mysterious tracks through the city on 1-mile chase through city streets and gardens.

It’s very possible that we’ll actually encounter 1 or 2 real, giant cryptids in the wild. So be prepared to interact with creatures unlike any you’ve seen before… we’ll take your photograph with them if you don’t startle them off!

I’m pretty sure it isn’t a coincidence that I just finished watching the movie The Spiderwick Chronicles when I learned of this game. The material on the main site reminds me of ‘Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You’.

I was never much of a Star Trek fan. The only two series I ever followed faithfully were Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise; and I only followed them because Hallmark was showing daily reruns for the former and for the latter, I am, unabashedly, a sucker for anything done by Scott Bakula (too much Quantum Leap when growing up does that to you).

Star Trek had always seemed to me like a contemplative universe – the movies and TV episodes lens to view the world, with its characters personification of all the myriad values and principles that exist in our world. Every story from Star trek felt like a parable, a moral exposition – too weighty for my liking.

I’ve always been more of a soap opera kind of guy – like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. Star Wars with its my-dad-is-dead-but-not-dead-however-is-my-mortal-enemy and that-hot-chick-is-actually-my-sister-so-now-I-cannot-bang-her and the-cocksure-smuggler-can-bang-the-princess storyline was more of my cup of tea.

But I digress.

There has always been a tacit agreement between fans of any universe and those who would weave the stories in which bind everything together – you may tell the stories only if you respect what is canon.

However, fans (alright, I) appreciate the commercial potential of rebooting a universe. But if you really must break from canon, create your own universe where things are different but still recognizable.

What Abrams did with the latest Star Trek movie was to totally break continuity. Whatever we knew happened will never happen. In the great scheme of things, the tape was rewound, time was reset and things that are to come will be different from that which we know has happened. It is like the last 10 movies and countless episodes of the 5 TV series were erased as the time stream was irrevocably damaged.

From a storyteller’s POV, the reboot could have been done without the introduction of the old Spock. If that had been the case, it could have been argued that this new Star Trek exists in a new parallel universe and that which had happened, happened in Earth 616 (to borrow from Marvel).

But even then, from what we know of the Star Trek universe, that argument could not be strongly made. The Star Trek universe has always existed as a fixed time universe as evidenced from Star Trek: First Contact when the crew on the Enterprise saw Earth change to a Borg colony after the Borg sphere had traveled back in time albeit one where changes in 1 point in time ripples forward along the time stream and not manifest instantly.

And so in a fixed time universe, time travel is a messy messy plot device. Even excusing the fact that those responsible for the new Star Trek cared little about the bleeding heart of the guardians of continuity, what they did with the whole time travel plot device was to initiate the possible total destruction of time in the Star Trek universe.

With the arrival of the old Spock and the Romulan vessel, a paradox was created. At some point in time in the future, the new Spock who would have aged would have to travel back in time with a Romulan ship.

Now I can only imagine what the folks on Romulus would think. The events in this Star Trek were pretty apocalyptic and attention grabbing that I am sure someone would be aware that Romulus is doomed in the future. If steps were taken to save Romulus, then there is no angry captain. If the star going supernova and its effects were contained, no wormhole to the past will be created.

Even if memory implants could be given to a bunch of Romulans so that they think their planet was destroyed, creating a wormhole to two exact points in the past is going to take a whole lot of effort.

It could almost be said to be impossible. So if this current time-line does not resolve the issue of sending Spock and a Romulan ship back, then USS Kelvin and the Vulcan home planet were never destroyed and thus the original continuity exists which means the original Spock and the ship will get sent back which means..

Do you see the loop the Star Trek universe could now be stuck in?

Further thoughts:

The old Spock is unable to teach the people in this timeline any of the technology he knows from the previous one. His knowledge is an accumulation of a whole generation of research and technological advancements. If he imparts his knowledge, then this new timeline will be able to improve on that over this generation which means when this new Spock goes back as the new old Spock, the next timeline created will have two generations of accumulated knowledge. Eventually, what might happen is that the Romulan ship going back will be so powerful that it cannot be overcome and then all kinds of shit will hit the fan with regards to continuity. Of course if the good folks from the United Federation of Planets are the ones sending back the Romulan ship then they can deliberately cripple its technology.

I don’t understand the Romulan captain. You go back in time. Instead of trying to warn your planet which has not been destroyed that they are in danger, you decide to take revenge for something which technically hasn’t happened yet. Dumb shit.

And Spock… he has a ship carrying something with the capability of generating a black hole which basically can destroy anything in space and he meekly surrenders over the ship? He should have gone all kamikaze on the Romulan ship. That would have been the logical thing to do.

And yes, I’m taking this too seriously.

Slumdog Millionaire is a really simple movie. No twists, no special effects. It is a simple, but not simplistic, love story told with solid pacing, great acting and some fine cinematography.

Boy meets girl, boy and girl go through shit, boy and girl fall in love, boy loses girl, boy tries to find girl, boy finds girl, boy loses girl again, boy and girl go through more shit, boy finally reunites with girl.

The beautiful thing about this film about love is that while it was in a way made for ‘western’ audiences, it still managed to stay faithful to one of the core principles that traditionally defined Hindi movies – no kissing and sex scenes between the romantic leads.

I thoroughly enjoyed the way the director teased us at the end of the movie when Jamal leaned in and kissed Latika on the cheeks. It would seem that the film would have ended with that shot and stayed true to convention, but the director allowed the film to go on, finally ending it with a shot of the romantic leads’ lips touching.

That was supposed to be the KISS. Yet it wasn’t the kind of kiss ‘western’ audiences are used to. It wasn’t some wet, slobbering kiss with tongues sword-fighting. In fact, it was really just the beginning of a kiss. The rest is left to our imagination.

Yet, not really.

Here is where simple brilliance was shown. The director combined the Hollywood and Bollywood way of expressing love on screen by interspersing a dance scene with the ending credits. So while the film had kind of ended with the shot of lips touching, the love story actually continued.

The dancing was love being expressed, love being made.

Some notes:
Richard Gere’s public kissing of a Bollywood actress sparked protests.

In truth, some Hindi movies do feature kissing, but there are very good commercial reasons not to do so.From here:

As you can see in the still from Raja Hindustani, sometimes the characters do. But it’s rare. The censor board is notoriously unpredictable; no one wants to risk getting Karisma and Aamir get personala rating that would scare away families. Also, Bollywood plays to a diverse range of people, from the illiterate and provincial to the worldly and urban. Ideas of morality differ widely from group to group. Why include a kiss when you can easily leave it out and avoid the risk of offending customers? Also, actresses don’t want to lose their conservative fans, nor do they want to endure salacious flak from journalists. So they’re not too keen on kissing on-screen, and many proudly trumpet their refusal to do it.

A friend on Facebook shared about this movie:

Haven’t watched a movie for a long time (relatively speaking). I’ll reserve my next movie-watching-dollars for this one.

Fucking A.