Sunday Roundup - 11/28/10
“Me know that many of you think of me as cookie eating fanatic, bordering on glutton.”
This Thanksgiving has been a great experience, family and all. As per usual my immediate and extended family has a habit of mixing American and Vietnamese food all onto the same table (fried rice and pumpkin pie? bomb!) and otherwise, I had a fantastic time – so let’s hope another TSA body scan experience won’t ruin that.
So, here are some recommended readings and videos of the week:
Reading/Thought-Inducing/General Kindness
• Brand Name Drugs and Generic Prescriptions – from the blog “A Country Doctor Writes.” This is a nice little article about unregulated pharmaceutical companies advertising like hell on wheels, and the effect it has on doctors as their patients come in requesting specific prescriptions or diagnostic procedures without knowing the full spectrum of their condition.
• What Food Says about Class in America – an incredibly extensive and insightful look into SES discrepancies in America, focusing in on a economic component many middle and upper class Americans take for granted – food. Courtesy of my friend Devesh for finding this Newsweek article!
• Dumb and Getting Dumber – Remember the days when ignorance wasn’t bliss, and stupid people knew better just to shut up? Well apparently those days are gone, and now we’ve got screaming monkeys throwing their poop at the TV screen for attention every day of the year.
• Nothing is real(ism), and nothing to get hung about – a insightful look into the “realistic” movement of many modern filmmakers, written by the prolific Jim Emerson.
• Siskel and Ebert on Film Criticism – “Political correctness is the fascism of the ’90s” – Roger Ebert
• “It Gets Better,” Love Pixar – a lovely LGBT message from Pixar Studios. This is especially pertinent in light of many gay suicides these past few months.
Videos/Just for Fun-Awesome-Time
• Cookie Monster auditions for SNL – this is actually real, and you can help him get on SNL by going to this Facebook page and liking it (because seriously, what’s better than watching a almost self-admitted glucose addict flail around on national television making cookie jokes?)
• TRON: Legacy “Rerezzed” featuring the Glitch Mob – a fan-made trailer for the upcoming Tron: Legacy movie. You can have some additional fun and compare it to the official Daft Punk TRON: Legacy “Derezzed” movie-music trailer.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – With British Accents – favorite YouTube comment: “E for Effort, Cera.”
• What Was That?! – an SNL digital short featuring Andy Sandberg at a MUN student conference (my friend Kat, who was awesome enough to link this to me, says “now rip your shirt wide open and dance.”)
… now, to Q&A! …
Subject: On Inception
I’ve finally watched Inception. I haven’t read your article on it (if there’s any) or other reviews but I want to share with you the ideas that popped out of my head while there still fresh
First, Inception and The Prestige has a lot of parallelism. Aside from the stop motion and other audio Nolanisms, I find that both films follows the Pledge, the Turn, the Prestige presentation. Both films also heavily foreshadows the Prestige part, Michael Cain in The Prestige hinting about the trick and DiCaprio in Inception saying he’s the one who killed Cotillard. Since the Prestige parts in both films are foreshadowed both films left me unsurprised, unamazed in the ending.
Second, if dreams can be felt as real, why would anyone go back to reality? If the current dream is turning to a disaster why not go down to a deeper level or to another’s dream or to a projection’s dream and thus fooling oneself but still gratifying oneself. I suddenly remembered Coraline’s other mother, that even though he can change her world she still want a moist doll over a dry one.
– Allan Estrella
Interesting observation about the three parts of a trick in The Prestige; it does link into the idea of multiple layers within most of Nolan’s films, which has lent itself to a lot of criticism that he takes simple ideas and rearranges them into something more complex (Jim Emerson is perhaps the biggest critical writer on Nolan).
The idea of dream addiction was hinted during the part where they go into the Chemist’s lab and see people hyper drugged up because they can no longer dream. I’ve always found this part fascinating since relatively, it wasn’t emphasized as much as other scenes; the implications, of course, is that induced dreaming becomes a drug-like state, and thus lends itself to addiction like any other drug. You’ll notice, too, that the way they put the electrodes on their arms is not dissimilar an IV in an arm, or someone injecting themselves with some substance.
Alas, I have not written anything complete on Inception yet, but you need not worry – it’ll soon be finished sooner than you think (it’ll probably be a two part analysis as well).
