Such stuff as dreams are made of

Sorry for the terribly obvious use of The Tempest, but what with my recent viewing of the trailer, my own experience as sound designer for my school's production, and the fact that I'm blogging about Inception, I felt it was okay.

After all, "terribly obvious" is my problem with the film.

(Oh, and yes, this post is spoilered out the wazoo.  Just to let you know.  If you don't want to know, do not read the blog.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  Just stop reading here if you don't want to be spoiled, because that's exactly what I'm going to do.)

Before I get to this point, I'd like to air my irritation at the air of "realism" which Nolan often wears (or perhaps is cast upon him - I don't necessarily want to blame him for something for which his fanboys are responsible).  To me, there is realism of presentation and realism of content.  The former is that, given the rules of the story's world (which may or may not be consistent with reality as we know it), the people and objects within the story behave consistently with what we know about reality.  The latter is that the events and people all could conceivably occur in the world as we know it.  The two are not related in any necessary way.  For instance, I could tell a story about talking fish which portrayed them as psychologically complex and interesting, "realistic" characters, despite the fact that fish don't talk or have personalities.  I could also tell a story about a boy and girl who meet and fall in love which contained no semblance of psychological, moral, or physical truth, despite their world resembling on a superficial level the one in which we all reside.  (Er, that is, Finding Nemo is more realistic than How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days).

Inception (and The Dark Knight/Batman Begins, and most of Nolan's work in general) is hailed by critics and the cast (I'm referring particularly to DiCaprio) as being "realistic" science fiction.  Except no one ever explains how a dream can be shared.  A dream isn't a virtual reality existing outside of heads.  Nor is it a fantasy dimension.  It's electrons in the brain.  And none of the chemical/wire-thingy briefcase handwaving Nolan pulls makes his dream sharing any more realistic than hyperspace, telekinesis, or artificial gravity.  There is no good reason for it other than "It lets me do cool things."

Now that that's out of the way, let me get to my point: the film's obviousness.

1) Hans Zimmer: I don't know if I've complained about him on this blog before, but I find his scores to be a combination of hideously stupid and moronically effective.  I do frequently listen to his score for Batman Begins, and enjoy occasionally listening to the Pirates of the Carribean scores, but generally feel kind of disgusted afterwards.  His limp melodies (unless helped by his everpresent ghostwriters or co-scorers), blaringly obvious harmonic progressions, ugly over-testosteroned electronic orchestration, and infuriatingly lazy repeated tricks combine to make his creative output generally feel like the same score, over and over and over again (though, to be fair, often his assigned movies are a similar lazy blend of messiness).  In Inception, he disappoints me not one whit - I hear no melodies, no interesting harmonies, no new tricks, nothing of any originality whatsoever.  It was like The Dark Knight, only with less sweetness from James Newton Howard.

2) Dialogue: One of the things which really angered me about The Prestige was the pretentious dialogue, comparing life and storytelling to magic tricks in a repeated and hamfisted Michael Caine speech.  Here, Leonardo DiCaprio gets his version of the speech, this time comparing life and storytelling to dreams.  I'm getting a pattern - Nolan love to talk in metafictional ways about what he's doing, and he's very bad at it.

3) Which leads me to my next subpoint in obviousness: dreams do not equal story.  For me, a dream is completely unconscious, while a story must be primarily consciously created, though our unconscious aids us in both creating and interpreting it.  Neil Gaiman makes a similar comparison in his otherwise strong comic series The Sandman, and having seen and wrestled with Inception finally gave me my epiphany why I react so negatively to this concept. (This idea is discussed well here: http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2010/07/inception.html, and http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2010/07/inception-further-thoughts.html)

4) Emotional manipulations: many have complained about the ending, but I feel Nolan tends to play this kind of game even in the beginnings of his films - where he throws in a bit of a climax of the movie at the front end, and then jumps about.  It's like the Twilight books (and much as I enjoy those, I would never claim they are well written, so it's not a compliment) or J. J. Abrams (who I dislike more and more every time I watch something he's done).  This works in Memento (which I still believe is Nolan's best film) because that's the whole point of the film, but it feels lazy and out of place when done in this and other films Nolan's done.

5) Characters used for exposition rather than character: what it says on the tin.  I know the world is Deep and Complex, man, but seriously, do you have to make the dialogue explaining it so lifeless and personality-free?  And so boringly obvious?

6) Plot happens because it happens: which is also my biggest artistic (as opposed to moral) complaint against The Dark Knight (which is another post altogether).  Why don't they all wake up when the van rolls?  Why does a kick have two components, which is only stated when it's convenient?  How are dreams shared?  What is this mysterious sedative unknown to science which knocks you out all the way for years, but leaves your balance intact?  Why is there so much handwaving?  Answer: because it looks cool and/or sets up later plot/structural events.  My response: yes, but not cool enough to justify the holes you're leaving.

I will say, as a major point in the film's favor, that the acting (even Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, both of whom I'm strongly predisposed to really dislike) was quite good, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was particularly fine as the straightlaced security expert.  Just imagine him as Neo, and you understand a bit of what The Matrix might have been with someone who was a bit less, um, wooden.  Though honestly, The Matrix's dialogue makes Nolan's sledgehammers feel like tiny elfy hammers.  So it might not have made a difference.

Also, for all my complaining about the characters above, Arthur, Cobb, and Ariadne are quite likeable - loyal, smart, and caring.  I just wish they didn't act so stupid most of the time.

Nolan does seem to have an obsession with storytelling, particularly in Inception and The Prestige.  Unfortunately, his hamhandedness (particularly in dialogue) tends to really ruin any kind of profundity, and the movies come off as incredibly pretentious to me.  All in all, Inception was better than I expected, but still confirms me in my opinion that the third Batman film, and all future Nolan projects, will be approached with very low expectations indeed.

Now, I'm fairly sure that many people, if they ever read this blog (and I'm also aware that very very few people will read it) will consider Inception an amazing, awesome movie (as Orson Scott Card did here: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2010-07-18.shtml, to my disappointment - but then, he also loved Star Trek, so I should really not be too surprised - I just remember that he also pointed me to/shares my love of some of my favorite films, including getting me to watch both Peter Pan and Serenity, and loving A Man For All Seasons and Jane Austen).  And they will see this blog as thinking way too hard about a story that's just awesome.  But I must say - a story is important to us because it shapes the way we look at the world (which is one thing I think Nolan was right in attempting to grasp the concept of Inception), and therefore we should respect the filmmaker who tries to challenge us to think about what he's saying.  I've attempted to give Mr. Nolan that respect while strongly disagreeing with his conclusions and methods.  His (and all stories, really) deserves better than a simple "way cool, made me think" response, whether we agree or not.

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A Parcel of reviewlets and news

So, here are several short reviews and bits of news from my weekend.

1) I finally finished The House on Durrow Street by Galen Beckett (pseudonym).  Two years ago, after reading Orson Scott Card's glowing review of The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, I was mildly excited about this sequel.  As the years passed, however, my enthusiasm cooled a bit, and I think that when the next book comes out in the series, I will be torn as to whether it's worth the time and energy to slog through it (it took me about two weeks to finish it, when I finished two other books in two days the week I started it).  Three things of note:

a) The writing is competent, but still nothing like Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.  Beckett's attempt to play with the styles, tropes, figures, and references of classic English literature and history are cute, such as the nice touch about the old king trying to get his young princess secured as his heir in a clear reference to the Victoria succession in 1820s England (though here the country is called "Altania," clearly a Regency/Victorian England clone).

b) While the first book owed its plot to a fairly naked rip of elements from Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, The Turn of the Screw, Jane Eyre, and Oliver Twist, this book turns to the pulpy gothic type novels of the end of the Victorian era - the Cthulu mythos seems to be a big inspiration.  At least, I assume it is, as I've not read them, but the plot is basically a carbon copy of the Mass Effect franchise, which from everything I've read is a carbon copy of the Cthulu stories.

c) Hints of political themes, such as character sexuality and anti-religious sentiments, which appeared in the first novel become rather annoying central to this volume.

All in all, it's a series I will probably continue to follow, but with considerably less enthusiasm.

2) Film Noirs: The Third Man is a real disappointment.  A grim and taut story, with amazing camerawork and a tour-de-force of a performance by Orson Welles (for all of 10 minutes - and he owns the film with that amount of time) - and the soundtrack sounds like a luau.  Though I'm told it's not a ukulele, but a zither.  A film major friend says it's an aesthetic choice, an exercise in contrast.  All I can say is that contrast should be like a spice - used to season a story, not deliberately thumb your nose at your audiences' emotional reactions.  Because I hated it.  Though Welles, the camerawork, and the ending (talk about romatic burn - so classic for film noir) are very, very nice, the music is horrific.

3) Screwball Noirs: The Thin Man - delightful, if a bit silly.  What happens when you combine the energy and romantic interaction of Adam's Rib or Bringing Up Baby with the dark and sinister world of The Third Man or The Big Sleep.  And throw in some rather bad secondary acting, first-rate performances by the two leads, a dog I could have done without, and a whole lot of drinking (made me go out and make juice cocktails) (yes, I'm suggestible.  Sue me ;-), and you have a very fun film.

4) Risk party - this Saturday, a friend of mine and I finally threw the party we'd been planning all semester (and had been percolating in my mind when we had a similar party last semester, playing Lord of the Rings Risk).  Normally, I don't like Risk, being very bad at it.  But I very much enjoy the role-playing elements offered by the variant editions, such as Risk 2210 (a truly delightful hard science fiction game with incredibly well thought through rules), Star Wars: The Clone Wars Risk, Lord of the Rings Risk, and the brand new Risk Reinvention from 2009.  All of them tend to be more strategic than slugging matches of troop buildups (which is what most games of Risk seem to end in when I watch or play, and bores/horrifies me from a military perspective).  So, we got together about 12-15 people, got together around 10 am, and played Risk until 6.  Well, the Lord of the Rings game was still going at that time, but I assume they cut it off sometime soon after.  I hope.  We managed to play one round of Risk Reinvention, one round of Clone Wars Risk (which I won through a series of very lucky die rolls during the pivotal execution of Order 66 - sorry Joseph and Bruce - you had me dead to rights), and two rounds of Risk 2210.  My buddy's mom hosted the party, and allowed me to help make one of three delicious soup/stews I feasted upon this weekend (Friday - another friend's sister's pork stew; Saturday - my Risk party friend's mom's delicious sausage/beef broth/tortellini soup; Sunday - yet another friend's mom's heartbreakingly lovely beer-beef stew - sweet and savory and rich - to make your heart melt from your tongue's bliss - wow, talk about purple prose - but it was just sooo tasty).  I brought four loaves of bread, there was pop, and much food and drink was consumed by all.  Perhaps a bit more people than I'm fully comfortable with, but tis my own fault, and I am glad to have the problem of more friends than I know what to do with than not enough.

Oh, and I also had the nerdy pleasure of making up a soundtrack for the games: Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, The Clone Wars, and Republic Commando scores for the Clone Wars Risk, the three Lord of the Rings and Dragon Age: Origins scores for Lord of the Rings Risk, and Mass Effect 1 and 2 and Firefly and Serenity scores for Risk 2210.  I thought it was awesome, especially as the Lord of the Rings music kept getting epic during intense battles, and when I called Order 66, Revenge of the Sith started up the dark defeat battle music.  Providentially appropriate - even the trivial things. :-)

5) Renaissance Festival, part deux (because I went with a girl of French descent): my first experience at the Maryland RennFest was a large disappointment, despite the valiant efforts of the friend who invited me.  The truncated time, rather impolite behavior of our ride, and my own high expectations combined with ignorance of what to do at the Festival resulted in a rather sad day (though my buddy did take me home, feed me, and let me win at Catan Cities and Knights afterwards - so the evening ended in joy for me - oh, and I bought Beauty and the Beast for 15 bucks that night too).  This time, though, I woke up at 7:30 today, got gas, and drove down to Maryland, joining a party of five lovely young ladies (I'm not sure, but I think most of them are younger than I), who all had been to the Festival before.  After bedecking me with a nice fluffy shirt, vest, and cavalier hat, we set off.  One of the ladies let me swish about her cloak for the day, making me even happier.  Starting the day off by spending several seconds in the stocks for Heresy (oh, yiss, I deny that Transubstantiation alright :-), and quickly moving on to knife throwing (freaking two young ladies out by flipping the very dull knives about in my hands and catching them by their blades before I threw them - oh, and I got two to stick, which is better than I thought I'd do) and axe throwing (which I didn't get any to stick, but it was okay because it was all very exciting, wearing a stupid hat and throwing a five pound stick), the day began extremely well.  We then wandered about the grounds, seeing elephants, jousting, juggling, whilst munching on the loaf of bread and sticks of cheese and three water bottles I'd brought (I have foresight, I say - plus, I didn't want to spend another seven bucks on the turkey leg that was tasty but waaaay overpriced - not to mention the two bucks for a medium fountain drink).  And, of course, speaking most wretchedly forsoothly - I fear we muchly murdered the Queen's good English.  After much anticking, great conversation, and being generally tired out, we capped the day off with two very funny parodies of Shakespeare by the Shakespeare Scum players.  Quite a good show.  All in all, a wonderful time.  And now, instead of being rather saddened about the whole RennFest, I'm looking forward to going again, perhaps next time to the one in Minnesota with friends and family!

Well, that's my weekend.  Disparate, social, and silly silly silly.  But oh so much fun.  And full of delicious soup.

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Vampires, Wulfs, and Catholic Jews...yeah, not sure about that last myself

Review of "Insatiable," by Meg Cabot (author of "The Princess Diaries" and buddy of Tamora Pierce - the latter is the reason I gave her a chance, not the former)

So, I like things to come in threes.  And so this is the second of three planned reviews of new books I'm writing this week (or, at least, I'm hoping to write a third this week, if I can finish the book - "The House on Durrow Street" by "Galen Becket" (pseud.) - the first of which was "I Shall Wear Midnight" by Terry Pratchett (not pseud.)).  So far, Meg Cabot's first-to-be-read-by-me novel (definitely for adults, given the rather hard-PG-13/soft-R rating it should carry for sexuality and violence, though not language) is my favorite of the three.  Where "I Shall Wear Midnight" was over-preachy, tiredly repetetive of the author's favorite "evil religion" cliches, and not very funny, and "The House on Durrow Street" is proving to be unfortunately political and rather unpromising (read "I'm trying to find another word that's reminiscent of dull but isn't because it's actually interesting in a way that makes me think it will disappoint me") (goodness I'm in a paranthetical mood), "Insatiable" is a funny, competently-written, well-structured, nicely characterized, sadly politically predictable, and brilliantly satirical take on the modern craze for romanticized vampires.  It's also very, very appropriate for me particularly given that:

1) today I finished "Dracula" for the first time, and also read "Insatiable" from cover to cover;

2) Hate vampires, but love "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (the tv series, NOT the comics that are coming out for the past two years) and enjoy the "Twilight" series (books and films);

3) really love the writing of Cabot's good buddy Tamora Pierce, who writes feminist fantasy lit which allows me to understand the workings behind both the critique of "Twilight" and "True Blood" exposited by Cabot and the positioning and construction of the heroine.

The first is appropriate since "Insatiable" features as it's "hero" (vampire lover dude prince of darkness dragon transmorpher thing) is Dracula's son  He is also a really, really funny, subtle, and well-done satire on Edward Cullen - neither completely idiotic and contempt-driven, as too many "Twilight" parodies lazily present, nor merely silly, but someone who has the guilt complex of an Angel (from Buffy, not the Victorian female icon, silly) and yet is incredibly possessive, jealous, protective, etc - and still isn't whlly evil, as he hates the killing and parasitism his kind inflicts, and orders all vampires to cease when he rules them.  I was very impressed at Cabot's complex presentation, while still convulsed with laughter at her so-accurate skewering.  This, my Twi-hater friends, is how it really should be done.

The second allows me to appreciate not only that very skewering (vampires are indeed misogynist monsters), but also the interesting parody of the vampire slayer idea and the book's very clear take on Bella Swan.  The former are mostly non-Catholics hired by the Pope (there are, so far, one gay guy, one Jewish agnostic, and one atheistic hedonist) to kill vampires.  And the last of those three is named Alaric Wulf.  Yup.  And I'm ashamed that I only caught the implications (by which I mean Jacob Black-plications) of the last ten pages from the end.  I have much shame at this fact.  Anyway, back to the book's Bella (here called Meena Harper, with a brother named Jon(athan) - both take-offs on the husband and wife of Bram Stoker's novel) has the same type of selfless hero-complex that Bella does, but without the radical insecurity.  Additionally, she has Sookie Stackhouse's psychic gifts (though they're rather more limited, only allowing her to see how a person will die if they don't heed her advice) (or maybe those are stolen from Alice Cullen?).  All of this (plus the portrayal of the vampire hero, as mentioned above) is done affectionately but firmly, rather than the mean-spirited, shallow, and ephemeral parodies and spoofs which I've read and seen so far of the current obsession with vampires.

About the third I think I've basically summed up everything already.  So I'll only add this: My professor, in our class discussion today, called "Dracula" (and I quote): "a cheesy piece of literature."  Which statement I agree with exactly.  It's the Dan Brown or Michael Crichton airport bestseller of 1897 - with it's nerdy technology (telegraphs! phonograph journals!) and wacky technology (blood transfusions from anyone to anyone!) and crazy ideas about how the world works (indulgences for future sin! non-Catholics using holy water and the Host!) - not to mention the rather mediocre prose style.  Ugh.  I don't want to hear how the Texan dude said something laconically ever again.  Makes me glad he died.  Now he's seriously laconic.  I mean, if someone's laconic, don't tell me that when he's babbling on at the mouth.  Just have him, you know, not say stuff.

So there you have it folks - this is a Twilight satire I can recommend to both my Twilight-loving and hating friends.  And that is no mean feat.

And I type all this while listening to my complete score collection from the Twilight films.  Oh, yes.  I have no shame about this whatsoever.

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Midnight falls

A review of "I Shall Wear Midnight," a YA Fantasy/humor book by Terry Pratchett.

After three fairly major conversations, a long day of work and then socializing (in which I was sleepy in a meeting, trounced at Risk, and fed tasty noodle dishes), I don't have the energy to really do a step-by-step, prepared blog post (starting with the research/brainstorming phase, moving to the drafting phase, then rereading and recasting and rewriting, and finally getting to the blog).  So instead, I'm going to limit myself to three bullet points (which I shall, just because, represent with numbers).

1) Pratchett's moral philosophy is a curious combination of exciting and infuriating to me.  On the one hand, I adore his Tiffany Aching series (of which this is the fourth, and possibly the final book) for presenting the witch/magician as a public servant - someone who has special powers which not only do not make her special, but actually one who serves others without much reward.  Unlike Star Wars or Harry Potter (the former I like, the latter I don't), Tiffany Aching is not an elite Jedi or wizard who looks down on the Muggles of the world who can't become invisible or hear what people are thinking.  Instead, she tirelessly (but realistically - often feeling quite grumpy or complaining or making mistakes) tries to make peoples' lives just a little better.  And here we get to a niggling moral problem I have with the book.  Because Tiffany does not merely make peoples' lives minutely better, she also makes their deaths minutely less worse.  Which I am all for - I am incredibly grateful for the grace of anesthetic.  However (and here I may be reading into the series based on outside knowledge), I feel like Pratchett is here using a YA book to lay emotional groundwork for the legitimacy of euthenasia, which is a cause he has celebrated in the past two years since being diagnosed with Alzheimers.  My own complicated feelings on his personal position leading to moral positions I cannot sympathize with lead me to a complicated feeling on the book.  He paints real pictures, yes, but is he being fair?  My own reaction is that no, he is not, but how much can I blame him?  This lack of condoning or condemning does not lead to my appreciating the book as appropriate for recommendation, however.

2) Tiffany's series, being about a witch, naturally deals with Pratchett's own take on witchcraft in history.  Being a staunch atheistic humanist, he a) does not believe that witches ever really existed as people who used demonic power; b) thinks that anyone who did so was evil; c) nonetheless likes using ancient tropes and figures to construct his fantasy/science fiction satires.  As a result, he presents witches as scientists - people of extraordinary common sense who see what others cannot because they are too busy living.  But since he believes that witches never existed, he uses the witches of his series (who really do use magic, though not evil) to lambast people who represent religion, without seeming to realize that he is being contradictory by presenting a the figure of a witch as a critique to their persecutors, gifting the witch with the very powers which would be the ultimate proof of those persecutors' beliefs, and assuming that such powers never exist in our own "real" world all simultaneously.

3) As Abigail Nussanbaum noted in her review of the last book in the series, "Wintersmith" (http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2006/11/wintersmith-by-terry-pratchett.html), the plots of Pratchett's novels have been growing steadily more and more recycled.  While I was not nearly as critical of "Winstersmith" as she was, I do think the critique is fairly aimed at "I Shall Wear Midnight," who features a villain being a historical story/person being animated by collective belief into a force of pure evil (naturally connected to religion) which tries to possess people and make them hurt each other.  Which is exactly the same as not only "Thud!" (one of my very favorite Discworld novels ever), "Men At Arms," "Moving Pictures," "Soul Music," and a few other books in the 30-plus series, but also the second book in the Tiffany Aching sub-series.  When you start recycling plots from books in the very same-subseries (which is only four books long), I think that even my tolerance for non-originality is starting to fray.

Overall rating: decent but disappointing.  Combines the annoying thinness and arbitrariness of the early books with the philosophical/political moral hammers of the later books without the freshness of the former or the depth of the latter.

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