Jonas David's Blog, page 74

Enemy, 2014

This was a weird one, and by the end of it, I’m not sure i really understand what was going on.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a boring history teacher, who, when watching a movie notices an actor that looks exactly like him. He tracks the actor down and finds that they seem to be exact doubles. And the movie just gets weirder from there.

The whole film has some kind of filter over it, making everything seem in shades of brown and yellow. I don’t know if that’s just supposed to make everything seem dirty or drab, or if it has some other meaning… with this movie, I’m second guessing what every little thing might mean.

The music, for the most part, was good and helped build the weird ambiance. It worked well, because I found myself on the edge of my seat, so to speak, for most the movie, even though most of the time nothing was really ‘happening’ as far as action goes. I just felt a very intent desire to see what happened next. There was one note, though, that repeated throughout the movie, that seemed very out of place and kind of, Italian? like it should be in the Godfather or something. But again, with this movie, I have no idea what is symbolism and what is literal and what is just for convenience.

And the end of the movie, i just don’t understand. I feel I’m missing the point of the movie, because the last scene is very shocking, and I believe that it is meant to bring some revelation, but, I just don’t get it.

[SPOILERS!]

So, is she a spider? Is that symbolizing some side of her he is seeing, some dark side? It doesn’t seem literal because his reaction, that little sigh he gives, is more like someone saying ‘oh, okay.’ or, being resigned to something, or giving in to something. Not like someone seeing a giant spider instead of their pregnant wife.

There were spiders in the beginning of the movie too. And of course in the dreams he had. But I don’t get what they represent. At the strip show, or whatever it is, people are watching the spider maybe, instead of the women? And the guy who lets him into Anthony’s apartment mentions that he’d do anything to see the show again. Does the spider symbolize some addiction?

I don’t get it.

[/SPOILERS]

Even though I don’t get it, I enjoyed it. Jake is a good actor and was very believable as each person. If you like slow, creepy movies that you have to think about, then I’d give this one a shot. Don’t expect it to make sense though. And if it does make sense to you, then you’ll be pleasantly surprised and enjoy it even more!

The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut

This was clever, fun and charming, as is everything by Vonnegut that I’ve read. And it also says a lot about how the world works.

The plot centers on Malachi Constant, son of the luckiest man on Earth, who invested in the stock markets using the Bible as a guide telling him what to buy or sell, and when. Malachi continues his father’s system and with it, his luck. Until during a month-long bender he gives away most of his wealth in a drunken haze, and with nowhere left to turn he joins the Martian army, has his memory wiped and an antenna put in his head… and that’s just the start of the story.

I enjoyed this a lot because the innocence of the characters really seemed out of place with what was going on around them, and that made them all the more likable. Malachi, or ‘Unc’ as we come to know him, really has no idea about anything that is going on, and is an almost literal pawn in giant schemes he can’t conceive of. Yet he still retains goals and ideas of his own, even with no memory to speak of.

Something about the bluntness and simpleness of Vonnegut’s characters has always made me enjoy them. Not to say that they are simple, but their thoughts are simple, their way of seeing and understanding things are simple, every day, identifiable. A simple understanding of complex things as are found in sci fi novels can be very entertaining.

The over all theme of this book seems to be ‘we have no control over anything that happens in life, and we shouldn’t pretend we do’. Or something like that. The characters often seem to be out of control, that is to say, they are being lead by someone or some outside force, and have no real influence on their own lives. They are always being used by someone for this or that. By the end of the book it seems that humanity itself has had no control over the direction it took. I’m not sure what commentary the author is trying to make on this other than ‘that’s just how life is’. Maybe he’s saying that in a sardonic tone.

A lot of crazy stuff goes on in this book, and all of it loads of fun to read (or listen to, in my case). I very much recommend it to any sci fi fan. Check it out!

Europa

NASA’s budget for 2016 was announced on Monday, and within the 18.5 billion they received, is 30 million specifically for a robotic mission to Europa.

Europa has always been the hot spot for the possibility of life in our solar system, and now we may be able to catch a glimpse of anything living beneath the frozen oceans of the moon.

This started me thinking about what would happen if we really did discover life there. Life of any kind. How would it affect the psyche of the world, knowing that we are not alone? How would it affect religions and philosophies?

I tried to think about how it would affect me. Would I be changed, knowing that there was other life, completely alien from anything I knew before, that had sprung up spontaneously in the same way I, and every other living thing I’ve encountered, did?

I think it would make me feel awed, in the true sense of the word. I get a little tingling in my gut, thinking about it, a glimmer of how huge and old and completely unknowable the universe is. It feels strange, and a bit scary, but also comforting in a weird way.

Would such a discovery make the rest of the world feel this way? Or would they brush it off, joke about it, minimize it, or outright deny it? Or would it be met with a collective ‘huh, that’s interesting’ and be old, forgotten news in a few weeks?

I don’t know anymore. I feel like it should be momentous, it should be history making, the biggest event in modern science and something unforgettable and world shaking. But maybe these things aren’t important to most people. You cant interview a microbe or fish-like thing beneath ice on a moon four-hundred million miles away. Maybe it would only mean anything to scientists or sci fi fans.

I’d like to think not, though. I’d like to think that kind of news would draw humanity together in collective amazement, and joy at such a discovery. I’d like to think it would make us all better people.

But maybe I’m just an idealist.

Anyway, we’ll have to actually get to Europa first! Right now a launch date of 2022 is in the works. I’ll be watching excitedly as the mission is planned, implemented and executed over the coming years.

Ad lib writing

I haven’t been doing a lot of writing lately, and what I have been doing has been completely improvised and for no purpose other than my own entertainment. Of course, I do hope other people end up enjoying it, but if they didn’t and told me to stop, I wouldn’t.

It’s sort of cathartic, liberating even, to write without a care of the outcome. To purely improvise with imagination the only tool. With zero planning and plotting, with every stroke and twist of story coming as if drawn from thin air. Maybe I enjoy this kind of writing because I’m good at it, but I find it exercises a certain kind of imagination, an unfiltered, unedited creation that can be a great resource.

I recommend any of you writers to try it as well. Write with careless abandon, reckless glee. Change nothing, edit nothing, disregard punctuation and spelling if you wish. Just write write write. And the ideas you’ll find flowing out of your head may surprise you in their quality. And even if you control + a delete the whole lot of it, the scenes and scenarios and ideas that came from it can be used elsewhere. And you’ll get much practice stitching unrelated themes and characters together and forcing them to make sense.

Gracepoint

I just finished watching this crime drama mini-series over the past few days. I was interested in it because I like mystery shows, and I also liked Anna Gunn in Breaking Bad. Only after I started watching did I find David Tennant was in it as well, and that got me even more excited.

The show is about the murder of a local boy in a small town, and the lives of the people there and how they are affected. Anna Gunn plays a detective, who’s promotion is given away while she is on vacation to a new hire who is now her boss, played by David Tennant (who I didn’t even recognize at first with an American accent).

The dynamic between the two is not what I expected it to be, and was the first mild letdown. Anna Gunn is frustrated with losing the job she thought she had to this new guy, and he is a brash jerk who doesn’t care about feelings, niceties, etc. I expected there to be more clashing between them, but Anna kind of just rolls over for him after token protest, obeying his every command. Maybe a small thing, but I expected more sparks to fly, and her to be more forceful and give more push-back and maybe be right more often.

The mystery itself was good for most of the show, I suspected many different people throughout. The acting I thought was mostly good, and the writing was very good. David Tennant I thought could have done better, the character didn’t seem very interesting or deep and felt sort of one dimensional ‘tough guy with a good heart’ role. I didn’t detect much of his own flavor added to it.

I felt that the ending of this series fell short for a few reasons:

[SPOILERS]

So, I know it’s good to be surprised by the badguy, but I felt that this one was just too far out of left field to be enjoyable. Yes, all the clues were there for the crime, but none for the criminal. We get the hint from Ruth about not knowing her spouse was an abuser and killer, we get the hint of pedophilia from Jack, we get the hint of Tom knowing something from various places. But there was no hint that I noticed, in his actions or otherwise, that Joe had anything to do with it. So the ending was kind of just… ‘what? Oh.. okay… I guess’ and not very satisfying.

[END SPOILERS]

The build-up, though, was very good and enjoyable and, I think, worth the time to watch, especially if you’re a fan of either of the leads.

The structure of this show reminded me somewhat of The Killing, though it wasn’t as good as that one, I don’t think (though I’ve only seen season 1 of that show).

I’d recommend this show to any murder mystery/ crime show fans, or any fans of Anna Gunn or David Tennant. Enjoyable, but not stellar.

Citadel of the Autarch

I finally finished this amazing series, by Gene Wolfe.  I have been continually impressed by these books, and the conclusion was no different.

These books all seemed to have a theme to them, or a focus. The first book I felt was more about the world, and though the story was exciting and interesting, I felt more drawn by the curiosity of the big picture behind the plot and action. The second book was all about the characters, and learning their secrets and being surprised about their origins or motives. The third book, I think focused on items or relics and their properties and origins. We learn a lot about the way these things work, which I guess is similar to the ‘world’ of book one, but on a much smaller, detailed scale.

This final book was about mind, and memory and personality, which you could say the whole series is about, but it comes into focus much more greatly in this final book.

I must say that I’ve been frustrated by the ending in every single one of these books, though after I knew I was going to read them all it wasn’t so bad. But each book ends at an almost arbitrary point. It’s as if the author wrote one giant book then chopped it into smaller ones, with no clear end point for each. The final book ends this same way, right at what feels like a crucial point in the story. I have recently found that there is another sequel, though it is not listed as a part of the original series. I’ll have to read it and see if I can ever get some kind of end to this story…

Despite my above complaints, though, I absolutely loved all of these books as individuals and as a whole. The prose is consistently beautiful, with such vivid descriptions as are rarely seen in the genre, and such deep and well crafted characters as are rare anywhere. I can say this is one of the few series I feel I will read again (or for the first time, since I’ve been listening to them on audible).

I have a feeling this will remain as one of my favorite series for a long time. Check it out!

AI to End the Human Race?

You may have read one or more articles today about dire warnings from scientists about AI. This is because Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and others have signed an open letter detailing their concerns about the advancement of artificial intelligence technology.

If you read the letter, you will see that it is much along the lines of ‘lets be very careful what we use this for’ instead of the ‘oh god the machines will kill us!’ that I’m sure many articles will try to portray it as. This is to be expected, as the media profits from fear above all else.

Why do these things scare us, though? It is a common thread throughout science fiction: the creation destroys the creator. This is related in some part, I’m sure, to our constant fear of change and ‘the new’. But in this specific case, I think it is instead based on our unwillingness to consider our own mortality. Not as individuals, but as a species. Because the artificial intelligence that we one day create, may very well outlive the human race.

And I do not mean this in a the sense of a ‘robot uprising’ but based on the simple fact that our creations will be better suited to survive than us–because if they weren’t why else would we create them? We build robots to explore space, to travel to distant worlds, to endure things that we can’t ourselves endure. And technology allows us to improve them much, much faster than evolution can improve us.

I can see a day when our creations tour the stars, replicating and preparing worlds for us, doing all the things that we wish we could do ourselves. And all it would take is time, before humanity wanes and our children flourish without us.

And is that really something to fear? Do parents resent their children for progressing farther than they did, and try to hold them back? Maybe some parents do, but no one would call them good parents.

Good parents are proud of their children’s achievements, and are excited to see their children go where they always dreamed they could. And so should we be. If our artificial intelligences one day outlive us, out-perform us, and out-survive us, then I think that is something we should be proud of.

The One I Love

This romantic drama comedy sci fi… thriller? Is kind of hard to define. But it was very good. It starts off being about a couple, Ethan and Sophie, who are having trouble in their marriage. They talk to a counselor and he recommends a getaway at a cabin he’s sent couples to before. They spend the night having a good time, but then when they go over to the guest house… weird stuff happens.

This movie is similar to the previous one I saw, Coherence, in that it’s hard to describe the weirdness of it without giving too much away, and it’s much more enjoyable (i suspect) to go into it without having any idea what happens. It’s also similar in that there is a very small cast and it is shot in one location. I think the acting was much better in this one, though, and the direction and writing better.. but.. the weirdness didn’t hold together as well, and not everything was explained to my satisfaction.

[SPOILERS]

 

I really enjoyed the dynamic between the two characters, er, four I guess. I liked how Ethan was trying to solve what was going on, trying to test it and find answers. They didn’t take it very far, but just the effort of it added some realism to the character, and the movie as a whole. Too many times in these type movies the characters just take things for granted and accept that they exist instead of questioning why. Those couple times when he was actually trying to do something really made him an identifiable character.

I love that this movie didn’t go where I was expecting. When they first started running into their other selves, like in my experience with Coherance, I thought it was going to be some time travel thing and was pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t. Then, i thought it was going to be, like, the ‘best versions’ of themselves or something, and they would find out what their partner wanted in them and then live happily ever after. The strange identity stealing plot was not even on my radar. Probably because it doesn’t make much sense, if you think about it.

What were these other beings? Something created by the therapist, yes, ok, but for what purpose? Where did the guest house come from? How was it made impenetrable? What about the weird force field that stopped other Ethan at the end?

 

[END SPOILERS]

At the end of this movie there was a lot that was never explained or really even hinted much at, but somehow that didn’t matter much to me. I didn’t feel disappointed at the end at all.

I very much enjoyed this, and I can recommend it to drama, sci fi, romance and indy film fans. I’d suggest you watch it without looking into it much, but I can’t keep saying that because people usually want to know they’d like a movie before watching it.

This movie was great, but does it take the crown of Best Movie Seen This Year from Coherence? I don’t think so. It’s very close, but I think Coherence takes it by being one that I’d want to watch again.

So, second best movie I’ve seen this year! Hope I keep picking good ones like this :)

 

Serial

I just finished listening to the Serial podcast, and it’s left me feeling a bit strange. First of all, when I started listening I thought it was a fiction. I went in, as I often do with books and movies, knowing nothing about the story other than people had said it was good. I thought it was a murder mystery type story, and when I started listening I was like “oh, cool, they put a lot of effort into making this seem real.” When I found out it was real, I was almost disappointed, because I know that real stories rarely have exciting endings, or endings that make sense or explain anything or are satisfying in any way.

And I was right. The story was told well–very well–and documented and researched well, and the journalist made it exciting to follow along with her as she discovered inconsistencies and unanswered questions in the case. But there was no ending, no answers, no resolution. It was a story in the journalistic sense, not a story as us fiction writers think of it.

And that got me thinking, what is a ‘story’? Does it have to have an ending, a point, or a message? People were thoroughly entertained by this simple telling of events, a detailed look at one murder case and the days in the lives of the people involved. There were no character arcs or villains defeated or lovers reconciled. It was just… stuff that happened, and questions about what actually happened. But that’s what life is made of.

It also made me feel very sad, knowing that there are people wrongly imprisoned. Even if Adnan himself is guilty, there are definitely others. There are even people working to free them, called The Innocence Project. Prison is already one of my worst fears, and knowing how easy it can be to be put there just on someone else’s word is a bit frightening. When listening to this, I felt a moment of passion about helping people in such situations. But, being not a lawyer and not a scientist or journalist, I don’t think there is much I could do.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the story and I’d recommend it to any fans of true crime, or even murder mysteries. It made me think about stories, and what storytelling could be. But I think I’ll be glad to go back to fiction, where I can always count on a satisfying resolution that answers all my questions.

Unless I’m watching Lost.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I watched this movie in two sittings because it was very long and I was bored by it. I remember being a fan of the original Lord of the Rings movies, and I loved the Hobbit the book, but this movie just… didn’t draw me in.

My favorite scenes from the book–Bilbo tricking the trolls into staying up all night, and Bilbo trading riddles with Golum, just seemed.. bland somehow in the movie. Maybe it’s because i’m all grown up now, but, Bilbo just seemed kind of, stumbling through everything by luck, instead of being clever and resourceful. I can’t say for sure if that’s how it was in the book or not, but its not how I remember it.

Also, the movie was just loads of action scenes, and action scenes are very boring when you know none of the characters are in any danger at all. I mean, you have 13 dwarves, a hobbit and a wizard–FIFTEEN characters, stumbling through a mine filled with goblins, crashing down chasms amid hails of arrows and fire, and not a single one is even injured. There is just no consequences for anything they do, and you end up feeling like you are just waiting for them to be saved, instead of being in anticipation for what might happen.

The movie looks nice though, and the acting is good i suppose. Hard to find good fantasy movies, so if you are a fantasy fan it’s pretty much a given. But I was mostly just bored by it.

Since I’ve only seen two movies this year, I guess that would make this the worst movie I’ve seen this year! How superlative!

I’ll be keeping track of my current best and worst movies seen this year on the ‘movies watched’ page. I’m sure this one wont stay in last place for long, it wasn’t a bad movie, just not very engaging or suspenseful for me.