Comments | trinityvixen: Oh COME ON, MTA (Oh, and the 30 Day Movie Challenge)

trinityvixen

Oh COME ON, MTA (Oh, and the 30 Day Movie Challenge)

Feb 09, 2011 10:22

It doesn't fucking matter when I leave, I cannot seem to get to work before 9:30. I left fully half an hour before I usually do, with my usual departure usually getting me to work at 9:40. I got here between 9:25-9:30. I had fully intended to be here early to clean more of the lab before I had to leave for class. But the buses were stuffed and some ( Read more... )

the matrix, memes, movies

Comments 19

six_demon_bag February 9 2011, 15:34:35 UTC

I HATE traveling by bus. Hate it. My babysitter used to drag me around town with her by bus when I was a little kid and it would take two hours to get to the movie theater on the other side of town while it was normally about a ten to fifteen minute drive by car. Oh and to get from the local shopping mall back home -- a five minute drive by dar? 45 minutes by bus. Just because of all the stops along the way and whatnot. For a little kid with no patience, that was the most brutal of tortures.

Ah, I love The Matrix (the first one, anyway) and 13th Floor but I'm not sure if I've ever been familiar with eXistenZ. I'm intrigued. Have you seen Dark City?

trinityvixen February 9 2011, 18:51:25 UTC

It's no joke to say that I can bike the same distance in less time that the bus and subway combo I have to take to get to work takes me. It's all the bus, too. The subway takes me forty blocks in five-seven minutes, max. The bus takes the other twenty. (Plus walking to and from.) And it's a miserable, time, too, as lately they're crowded, it's cold, and there's construction that funnels down one of the busiest cross-town routes to one lane.

The Thirteenth Floor is a fun little thriller. eXistenZ is more a commentary on the morality of virtual reality. It's bizarre and a little gross. Worth seeing, in my opinion, which is more than I can for just about any other Cronenberg movie to which I've subjected myself. (Maybe The Fly.)

Dark City was something I was dying to see in theaters when it came out, and it lasted precisely six seconds in that venue and only in places that teenage me couldn't get to easily. I rented it later and loved it. The ending isn't as strong as it could have been, but it's another great story of who is ( ... )

six_demon_bag February 9 2011, 19:39:47 UTC

Meanwhile, the L in Chicago is fantastic, taking no more than ten minutes to get you anywhere in the city. And you never have to wait more than ten minutes for one to come around to any given loading dock or station. A good friend of mine in Chicago takes uses it to get to work every day and it only takes ten minutes, counting the walk to and from the train. I don't envy you.

Sold. I'll add eXistenZ to my Netflix queue and move it to the top. Thanks for the info.

I haven't seen Dark City or The Thirteenth Floor in years and my friend has both on blu-ray -- I think it's time for a movie night. : )

P.S. How did you get that pic on the side of the entry like that?

trinityvixen February 9 2011, 20:38:51 UTC

Holy God, I know nothing about this LJ posting pictures stuff. Yesterday, I hotlinked something and it called me a content thief. Here's what I know: when you use the LJ website to form your post, you can click on an image to paste in a URL for a picture. There's a drop-down box that lets you pick how to align the picture. You can align it center or left or right. If you do nothing, your text will just be above and below.

Thread 5

jethrien February 9 2011, 15:57:02 UTC

I think eXistenZ and 13th Floor are all jumbled up in my head.

trinityvixen February 9 2011, 18:52:16 UTC

eXistenZ is the one that's really gross at times. (Remember the gun made of chicken bones that shot teeth?) The Thirteenth Floor is the one that's literally dark all the time.

jethrien February 9 2011, 19:22:07 UTC

Yeah, that didn't help much. Sorry. (Apparently I've managed to block out the teeth gun entirely.)

trinityvixen February 9 2011, 19:23:47 UTC

One of them has Jude Law in it. The other...doesn't?

saturn_shumba February 9 2011, 16:30:11 UTC

LOVE The 13th Floor.

I think the other movie that gets talked about as Matrix-y like movie is Dark City--which I've never seen. I feel like that movie, The 13th Floor and eXistenZ (which I also haven't seen) also get a lot of "They did it before The Matrix did it!" praise and nerd appreciation.

trinityvixen February 9 2011, 18:55:57 UTC

Dark City and The Thirteenth Floor have a lot in common (see my above comment). There's a lot of question about how to respond to manipulation and how best to be manipulative, and whether any of that can be done without its being completely unethical. Both movies seem to suggest that uprisings by the manipulated are unavoidable and necessary to lash back against the manipulators, they just have different views about whether manipulation itself is inherently evil (versus the manipulators being individually evil). Dark City is fantastic in design, so it's a definite recommended watch, especially if you like The Thirteenth Floor.

eXistenZ I go back and forth on. Sometimes, I think it's cleverer than the other movies in the pack with it; sometimes it's trying too hard at being edgy and making a statement. It's definitely weird and definitely deals with the squishy biology of the cyborg-like lives people plugged into virtual reality experience.

ivy03 February 9 2011, 16:43:22 UTC

I got stuck in the tunnel due to "car equipment failure" this morning. That was fun. Only not. Each time this happens I remind myself that it's still better than a traffic jam. I can't read in a traffic jam.

trinityvixen February 9 2011, 18:56:40 UTC

I can't hard read on the bus, or it wouldn't be as much of a problem. (Still annoying, yes, but I would have more of a distraction.) It's just too crowded, and people begrudge you every inch of space you have that they don't.

ecmyers February 9 2011, 19:10:36 UTC

I keep meaning to buy The Thirteenth Floor. I actually saw that one in theaters, and it seemed like the poor man's Dark City/Matrix, but interesting in its own right. Either way, I'm long overdue to re-watch it.

trinityvixen February 9 2011, 19:15:41 UTC

Personally, I like it about as well as I do Dark City, in that I like them both perhaps more than they deserve, but that I can see how they do enough things right to be objectively good. Dark City has more style, The Thirteenth Floor has a better, less Deus ex machina ending. I wouldn't ever fight with anyone over which is better. I enjoy them for different reasons despite the fact--which I'm just now realizing--they deal with a lot of the same subtextual (and textual) subjects.