The Re-establishment of Cynicism and a glimpse into the future.

2011 is starting off with a bit of a midrange feel to it (high being the best possible feel you can get and low being the worst). This feeling is slowly decreasing as the days go by it seems. It could be post new years jitters, if there is such a thing, or perhaps it's a sign that 2011 will in fact be one of the lowest years to come around since 2004 (which was possibly the worst year in my life personally, I cannot account for anyone else's experience during that year). I try to remain hopeful in the face of it all because even with the midrange feel it isn't all bad. My schedule isn't so hectic anymore and I'm starting to get back to writing more often.
However the quality of the year is clearly diminishing in the realm of entertainment, mostly films. How good can a year be when it starts off with Season of The Witch starring Nicholas Cage? Sure January has carried the stigma of being the place where the crooked cousins of movies are let out of the pen to play but really now? And then there's the whole awards fiasco going on that's been making my head spin faster and more infinite than Leonardo DiCaprio's spinning top in Inception. If the Inception related joke didn't make it clear to any of you, I pretty much think Inception was the best movie to come out in decades and yet every awards show imaginable has yet to acknowlege how right I am in believing that.
This was compounded when Twilight: "Do We Really Care Which One Anymore?" beat Inception at the people's choice awards for best film (I believe). While I can honestly say I wasn't really surprised, I was hopeful that people weren't this mind meltingly stupid. Turns out I was wrong, and my faith in humanity has forever been pulverized into a fine pinkish paste and buried in a shallow grave, the tombstone of which you can now see on my twitter page...
Is it a gross overeaction to such a trivial awards ceremony? Possibly, but think about it, the masses voted Twilight over Inception. It's like the world is inhabited by clones of my brother's girlfriend, and one was bad enough...
I seriously think that if I were Doctor Who right now, I'd abandon earth and start protecting Raxacoricofallapatorius from now on.
This was just phase one of the process that would inevitably re-establish my once thought cured cynicism. The next came in the form of the Golden Globes where not even Hans Zimmer's fantastic score for Inception could beat the tunes of The Social Network??? I never saw the film, nor do I ever plan to, history films never were my thing (and come on this movie will be the movie they show on aged blu-ray powered projectors in dusty history classes to show the history of how the internet changed the way we experience the world, we all know it...) but I seriously doubt The Social Network's main theme wasn't a clever play on a popular French song, nor could it cause your teeth to resonate for hours after watching the movie.
Why is it Inception is being left out in the cold? Is it because everyone still doesn't get it? Are people that thick? Do the masses really think Battleship: The Movie is a good idea? If so I'm renouncing my own humanity!
I never thought I'd be agreeing with the king of egos himself, James "I'm The King of The World, and your wallets!" Cameron, films are really reaching a new low. If Hollywood (or as my favorite good movie lover The Movie Preview Critic calls it: "Story Corp.") is so unimaginative that they have to begin making Uno: The Movie to make a quick buck then it's obvious that movies in general are moving into a very dark and grim future.
It's bad enough I have to pay twenty-three bucks to watch The Green Hornet in 3D with a friend (I would've gone with 2D but time constraints forced us to go see it in 3D.) but when the audience in the theater cheers when they see Transormers: The Dark Of My Ass it's clear that I am part of a group that is slowly dying out as more and more horrible movies get made and endorsed by the brain-dead masses who pay to see it in the most expensive way possible.
We're even remaking Spiderman now, wasn't it only a couple years ago that Spiderman 3 came out? Sure the movie practically killed the franchise but they're not even waiting until after the funeral to dig up the corpse and start raping it for what it has left. Yes, I painted that picture in your mind, now sit there and think about it. Imagine Spiderman's corpse being assaulted by an overpaid moron who wouldn't know a good story if it tied him to a rock and bashed his head in... now you just try and tell me that what is going on there is perfectly fine!

However, it's not all bad news. I do, in fact, have a fantastic story to tell you all about one movie that has so far surprised me. The movie is called Real Steel starring Hugh Jackman and the story is this:

My friend and I were asking ourselves the day after New Years a question any good movie lover will ask themselves: "Is there anything good coming this year?" It's a question we find rarely has a good answer anymore. In fact, when we looked up the list of films it looks like 2011 will end up being known as one of the worst years for movies ever. Remakes, chick-flicks, remakes, bad movie, Nicholas Cage movie, Twilight related (or influenced) movie, the list smelt more of dookie than a sewer.


Then we find a movie titled "Real Steel."

We click on the link to learn more about it. My friend reads me the synopsis. Here is my recollection of the scene:
FRIEND: Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman as an out-of-luck boxer trying to make a comback...
ME: Really? Come on. That sounds like every other boxer/wrestler movie that has ever come out...
FRIEND: He steps into the ring...
ME: Rocky, The Fighter, The Wrestler... HEARD IT!
FRIEND: and finds himself staring down a twenty foot tall robot!
ME: WTF?!?!?! EPIC AWESOME!!!!

This moment reminded me of why I like movies. The spins on a pre-set genre that can get you geeked up to go see a film, the surprise of finding something that surprises you. This is a movie I will be keeping my eye on as more news comes out, because so far, it's got me hooked...


2011 hasn't started out as strong as I hoped, and it looks like it isn't getting any better any time soon. I doubt it will get better, but we can only see. For now, expect a review for The Green Hornet pretty soon.

"The Power Of An Idea" a review of Christopher Nolan's "Inception"

Dreams are very illusive and confusing for me. I rarely have dreams, and whenever I do it's always something warped and wrong (never helpful or inspirational like James Cameron's dreams or his mother's...). In fact, if dreams could be interpreted, most would interpret my dreams as my subconscious hates me. There are only a handful of dreams I actually remember. The first when I was about eight years old where I dreamt that Spider-Man (dressed in yellow armor that made him look like a robot ninja), the mad hatter and his rabbit friend (like in the Disney cartoon?), and a guy resembling Solid Snake fight off a Predator. The Mad Hatter and his friend freeze to death, Solid Snake and Spider-Man fight the Predator, and I wake up very confused.

The second dream holds stronger evidence that my subconscious hates me. The second dream was about an orgy in a pool, and no one would go within fifty feet of me... (...I've gotta go cry for a minute...)

The Third dream is the most recent (in fact the night after I saw Inception). Where I dreamt that me and some buddies were at some pool/beach and a shark (which I think I conjured into existence) ate a kid. And I haven't seen shark week.

Never-the-less, these are the only truly memorable dreams I've ever had. However, my near complete lack of dreams has sparked an interest in "dream planting" and "lucid dreaming." I figure if my subconscious couldn't give me a decent dream I might as well make one myself (it is the only way you can get a job done right, right?). So when I learned about Inception's premise I was quite intrigued.

Inception is one of the most thought provoking films I've ever seen. Sure, Avatar made me think... about what James Cameron was smoking when he came up and filmed the movie! But Inception kept me engaged with a good story with entertaining characters and a brilliant cast to portray said characters. Christopher Nolan once again proves he can make a totally awesome movie and it doesn't have to have 3-D or a target demographic to provide it with life. Instead he uses the most powerful and virulent thing out there... an idea... and a great one at that.
WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!



Apparently, Nolan has been working on this idea since he was a teenager, and the final result shows the hard work and though put into every scene. The idea seems simple. A heist film but instead of a bank vault full of cash, it's the human mind and ideas. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb, an "extractor" who goes into people's minds and literally steals secret information that would otherwise be unreachable. The movie barely touches on the science behind the sharing of dreams, going for a simple explanation that "the military was working on it back in the Cold War" and that "now it's only practical use is theft of information." I would've liked to see a more solid explanation as to how these people go into other people's dreams, but by the time the basic idea that these guys can go into dreams is established in the beginning an explanation isn't actually needed. You get it right away, these dudes do it and there's no point fussing over the technobable.
However, "extraction" (the theft of information and ideas stored in the mind) isn't a one man job. Leo isn't alone. He works with a team who all have their part. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Tommy from 3rd Rock From The Sun) plays Arthur, Leo's partner and point-man who gathers information for "architects" to use in the creation of the dream world. Architects make the dream world, they build it, every building, every carpet, that the victims fill their subconscious with. Juno's Ellen Page plays the newly recruited architect to the team, who begins to delve into Leo's dark past.
You see there's this woman that seems to follow Leo everywhere he goes in the dream world. Her name is Mal (Public Enemies' Marion Cotillard), and she's always willing to throw a monkey wrench into the team's plans. The twist here is that she's Leo's dead wife. She's a subconscious representation of guilt that affects their missions. However, Leo refuses to stay out of the missions even though she could ruin everything, which I find very silly. Sure he's the go-to guy for this line of work, but when an evil manifestation of your guilt in the form of your wife intends on potentially ruining a very dangerous mission I'd honestly stay out no matter how badly I want to see my kids. Let the mentally balanced people do the dangerous work, you know?
Anyways the story is about these characters doing something that's very different from their regular line of work. It's called "inception." Instead of stealing an idea, they need to plant an idea. Their client is a rich businessman who wants the son of a rival to dissolve the rival company, the problem is that inception hasn't been successfully done before (except Leo claims to have done it before, more on that later). The idea can't be planted unless the mind thinks it came from its own inspiration, but that's when things start to get tricky.

Leo's team is tasked with planting the idea, and in return the boss will ensure Leo can go back to America to be with his family again. With his very freedom on the line, Leo and co. board the plane that the son is flying on in order to dose him up with powerful sedatives and plant the idea in ten hours. But there's a catch... well a lot of catches actually.
Due to the use of powerful sedatives, death in the dream (which normally wakes people up) results in being sent into "limbo" where the mind can experience years. You see dreams have a longer time than in reality (basically sixty seconds real time is an hour in dream time). And the fact that they are going into three different "levels" of dreaming (a dream within a dream within a dream basically) they could experience a year in just a few minutes.
Then there's the fact that their employer (the only dude who can wipe Leo's criminal record clean) wants to make sure they succeed and goes in with him, which means he could be lost in limbo forever.
Then there's Leo's inner demons, Mal will try to foil their plans and Leo can't stop her. She friggin conjures a freight train in the middle of a busy intersection for f*cks sake! You see, Leo managed to perform a successful inception, on his wife, and it turned her in a suicidal crazy she-bitch who couldn't distinguish dreams from reality. Leo's guilty because of this but knows it's possible.
There's also a time limit. In order to wake from all three dreams timed "kicks" have been set up so that everyone wakes from the dream.
Then there's the fact that the idea has to stick. The son (Cillian Murphy) has to basically convince himself that dissolving his father's empire was his idea.
Of course, like in any film, everything doesn't go according to plan, but they manage to get everything in order before time is up.

This movie is excellent. I loved everything about it, even Ellen Page who I never liked until now. It was about the story, not about the technology or the cgi (like SOME films). I never felt lost in the whole dream thing, until the end. The end will have you spinning like Leo's totem. All in all, I loved this movie, and I really really really want to go see it in IMAX... maybe it's time I took a road trip to Portland again...

I give Inception five plot twists out of five. (I think there are more plot twists in this movie, if you count the whole dream within a dream thing at the beginning a plot twist, than in an M. Night Shyamalan film that doesn't suck.)

"Somewhere In Another Universe..." Ep. 4

The universe is what encompasses every part of our existence. It's your pet dog, cat, rabbit, or alligator. It's your wife and all the nagging words that come out of her. It's the room you find yourself trapped in... with your wife. It is strange, mysterious, and everyone wants to know why it's there. However, somewhere in another universe, we are more curious about how a woman like Stephanie Meyer became a popular published author. Oh wait that's this universe...

This is another episode of "Somewhere In Another Universe..."

Somewhere in another universe:
David Hasselhoff is still running on the beach in bright red shorts.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas is a brilliant example of The Observer Effect in Quantum Physics: a physical being cannot actually steal a made up holiday unless he is observed doing it.

When you order a cheeseburger with no mustard at McDonalds you always get a cheeseburger without mustard, and if by some inexplicable reason that you do get mustard you are given the keys to the restaurant that served you the burger.

Everyone knows the first half of the joke that ends with "rectum damn near killed em!"

Matt Damon...

Hugh Jackman is kicked in the balls for every X-Men film after X-2 for every plot hole.

The Doom movie had actual demons.

Everyone knows that the lady depicted in Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa was a lovely hooker he met on the street formerly known as Rick.

The Land Before Time is more historically accurate (i.e. the t-rex kills them all in the end).

They didn't kill hiks and noot!

on December 21, 2012 the world will turn into a silly Roland Emmerich film.

Video games still have cheat codes.

Brodyquest is a realistic depiction of Adrien Brody's actual day, every day of every year.

Talking to yourself isn't a sign of madness but genius!

The picture on the milk carton is of a person you might want to steer clear of.

Being someones bitch in prison automatically grants you 50% of said prisoner's estate.

It's been scientifically proven that the first second you see of Shia LaBeouf's face in a movie trailer results in an 40% drop in possible profit and declines 5% every second thereafter.

Chewing tobacco does make you a sexual tyrannosaurus.

This has been an episode of "Somewhere In Another Universe..."