(no subject)
I am limping slightly as I have hurt my leg falling over a bucket.
It fell over in the corridor and I tripped over it. Now my leg hurts. I believe it is not serious and I have been walking around and such.
THe next day it hurts less, probably tomorrow I will easily forget I had fallen over at all.
I went and saw Inception on Sunday.
What I knew about Inception before I went: it was a new film and it had had good reviews. It got 95% good reviews on Rottentomatoes.com and apparently there had been a backlash at the first film-critic who didn't like it. I had read a post in defense of that critic - and the freedom not to like stuff that everyone else did like, in general - but the post did not talk about the film itself. Listen: I didn't even know it starred Leonardo Dicaprio. (Playing a grown-up, and that is weird to me to see).
Del told me that Warren Ellis (the writer, not the musician) had called it a 'Borgesian action-film' which made me want to see it.
The film was a lot of fun. It treated the audience as intelligent! It told and interesting and complex tale.
With a heist and international travel, with a ticking clock and nested russian dolls, with a mystery.
It had an idea that was a bit like the Matrix, but it was done better and in a more interesting way and without shouting 'look how clever I am!'
For an action-film - and it did have a lot of action, running and shooting and explosions - and actually, even for a not-action film - it had brain. It did not require turning off the brain before watching.
Also, the thing which is still true, I like watching films that I come to with very little fore-knowledge. Maybe only some films.
SPOILERS for Inception
Mombasa in 'Inception' looked wrong to me. partly because there was no shot of the Indian Ocean at all - it is a city by the ocean, a port! There was an overhead shot of buildings, tightly packed, but no hotels, shoreline, beach, ocean. That was weird.
I mean: okay, water and beach and sea-or-ocean had a specific symbolic meanings in the film and those symbols would have been out of place at that point in the film, but it made the Mombasa in the film very weird. Just a crowded old town with narrow streets and lots of black people. the other thing was that the black people were treated as background to the white people, with one chase scene including our white protagonist running and beating black people to get them out of his way - just casualy tossing them aside, like they were furniture or something. Also, the thing where they don't address the thing where a white man among lots of black people STANDS OUT - he looks different and cannot very well just sit in a cafe and blend in.
But he tries, he tries to just go into a cafe and sit down and go unnoticed. the cafe owner or manager comes and starts shouting at him, and he stays sitting there and doesn't go away. grmble.
I did not like those features of that bit. the casual violence to people, the treating of black people as background, the cafe-owner not speaking English at our protagonist ... for one thing, it made me perceive the whole Mombasa bit of story as 'not real', where the film seemed to intend it as a real thing - protag really does meet people, they do join him and go on with him to do other things of plot. He doesn't talk to black people, though.
... Actually, it made me sure it was a dream, because in dreams symbols matter - thus, no ocean in Mombasa - and treatment of people is less important, as it is established that people in the background are figments of the dreamers' imagination, and not real and cannot be hurt.
And that was why at the end I was expecting Moll to pick him up at the airport and take him home. The actual ending was even better, but I liked my idea.
It fell over in the corridor and I tripped over it. Now my leg hurts. I believe it is not serious and I have been walking around and such.
THe next day it hurts less, probably tomorrow I will easily forget I had fallen over at all.
I went and saw Inception on Sunday.
What I knew about Inception before I went: it was a new film and it had had good reviews. It got 95% good reviews on Rottentomatoes.com and apparently there had been a backlash at the first film-critic who didn't like it. I had read a post in defense of that critic - and the freedom not to like stuff that everyone else did like, in general - but the post did not talk about the film itself. Listen: I didn't even know it starred Leonardo Dicaprio. (Playing a grown-up, and that is weird to me to see).
Del told me that Warren Ellis (the writer, not the musician) had called it a 'Borgesian action-film' which made me want to see it.
The film was a lot of fun. It treated the audience as intelligent! It told and interesting and complex tale.
With a heist and international travel, with a ticking clock and nested russian dolls, with a mystery.
It had an idea that was a bit like the Matrix, but it was done better and in a more interesting way and without shouting 'look how clever I am!'
For an action-film - and it did have a lot of action, running and shooting and explosions - and actually, even for a not-action film - it had brain. It did not require turning off the brain before watching.
Also, the thing which is still true, I like watching films that I come to with very little fore-knowledge. Maybe only some films.
SPOILERS for Inception
Mombasa in 'Inception' looked wrong to me. partly because there was no shot of the Indian Ocean at all - it is a city by the ocean, a port! There was an overhead shot of buildings, tightly packed, but no hotels, shoreline, beach, ocean. That was weird.
I mean: okay, water and beach and sea-or-ocean had a specific symbolic meanings in the film and those symbols would have been out of place at that point in the film, but it made the Mombasa in the film very weird. Just a crowded old town with narrow streets and lots of black people. the other thing was that the black people were treated as background to the white people, with one chase scene including our white protagonist running and beating black people to get them out of his way - just casualy tossing them aside, like they were furniture or something. Also, the thing where they don't address the thing where a white man among lots of black people STANDS OUT - he looks different and cannot very well just sit in a cafe and blend in.
But he tries, he tries to just go into a cafe and sit down and go unnoticed. the cafe owner or manager comes and starts shouting at him, and he stays sitting there and doesn't go away. grmble.
I did not like those features of that bit. the casual violence to people, the treating of black people as background, the cafe-owner not speaking English at our protagonist ... for one thing, it made me perceive the whole Mombasa bit of story as 'not real', where the film seemed to intend it as a real thing - protag really does meet people, they do join him and go on with him to do other things of plot. He doesn't talk to black people, though.
... Actually, it made me sure it was a dream, because in dreams symbols matter - thus, no ocean in Mombasa - and treatment of people is less important, as it is established that people in the background are figments of the dreamers' imagination, and not real and cannot be hurt.
And that was why at the end I was expecting Moll to pick him up at the airport and take him home. The actual ending was even better, but I liked my idea.