If it broke, fix it!

I don't really like having this place known as Corpus Intorqueo anymore. It just doesn't fit with what I want this place to be and thus, I'm aching to manipulate this blog to reflect my desires. So, I've decided to renovate this place.

The changes are forthcoming, perhaps within a few days. Lots of things, I think, will be cleaned up. I may have to go with a placeholder layout at first until I can generate a competent, rather clean one on my own. I don't want things stretching out all over the place like they are now. Expect a black (mostly) background, a new banner, and if it's possible, a new URL as well.

Inception Review

Foreword: This review is admittedly long overdue, since the film came out nearly three years ago to the day (in a few months, anyway). However, I just felt the need to write it after seeing continued praise permeating the corners of the internet.

By the way, spoilers are present. This review is only meant for those who have viewed the film themselves.

Dreams are fantastical, surreal canvasses for nigh-incomprehensible yet appreciable wonder. Thus, there's much ambition and potential in any media, especially films, to rest their premises on dreams. It's also a daunting task that is difficult to capture. One could posit that it is a requirement of dream-based films to have surreal qualities to them. While dreams may, but certainly not always, have an overlying "plot" of sorts to them, the presentation should not be overtly mechanical, planned, detailed. With all of this in mind, basing a film's premise around dreams is understandably intimidating.

Inception, the Nolan brothers' so-called (post-Memento & The Dark Knight) magnum opus, doesn't quite manage to capture the wonderment of dreams. The film doesn't suffer too much from not achieving their surreal quality, but it's the near complete lack of humanity of any of its characters that is unbecoming.

Oh, but the rabid, froth-at-the-mouth fanboys of this film are probably already foaming at the corners of their lips over my criticizing this film! So let me back up my assertions, you impassioned, self-annointed Knight Templars of the Christopher Nolan order. I'm sure you jest, but I'm going to try and convince you on why this film does not deserve its overwhelming praise.

First of all, it's the dreadful, obnoxious, ad-nauseum delivery of expository dialogue that serves to, perhaps non-deliberately on Nolan's part, insult the viewer. I'm not sure about you, reader, but I don't want a film to explain to me the concepts of the film's premise over, and over, and over again whilst not allowing me to care about the characters involved. I'm sorry, but if characters can't display humanity by talking like flesh & blood people actually do then I can't fathom a hint of empathy (let alone sympathy) for them. And when they speak dialogue that doesn't allow for character development at all, there's no intensity to be had. Exposition in itself is not detrimental to a film, for sure, but too much of it makes the film a chore to watch. 

Why was it so difficult to write some actual dialogue for Inception? 

As a slight merit for the film, it is redeemed a bit by the rare, rather prized incidence of humanity in the form of real dialogue and character growth. One (of few) examples comes from a revelation into what happened to Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio)'s late wife Mal; in a flashback to the incident that claimed her life (and sets up why he's carrying out the "heist" in the first place), he pleads to a delirious, fatally dubious wife to come to grips with reality. Since one of the over-explained concepts involves people being trapped within dreams (which are scrutinized by the function of a personally-chosen totem, serving to help them snap back to reality if they function correctly), she didn't have the saving grace of a proving factor to prevent her death. She sought to kill herself in a dream (as she felt she was) in order to wake up. The problem is, she was already awake. That's great and all, but there's one problem with it: it's far too brief and thus doesn't save the film from mediocrity.

Whereas the rest of the film is a convoluted excuse to throw in slightly surreal encounters with "projections", which are really armed goons described as being similar to white blood-cells reacting to pathogens, only in the subconscious instead. The Matrix had a more fleshed-out excuse to justify non-stop shooting of passerby and armed combatants, whereas this film indulges in half-assed neuroscience mumbo-jumbo to do essentially the same thing. Whereas The Matrix upped the ante with Herculean feats of physics-defying leaping & dodging, this film plays safe with your suspension of disbelief. Inception actually suffers because of this since it lowers the film into a simple action flick, which it actually is. Oh and, how does all of this resemble dreams so far?

Instead of what we got here, we could have had a stunning, actually human look into the emotionally conflicted characters at stake (well, at least that of Cobb, who is the only character we should care about and who is granted any semblance of character at all). The struggles could have been exacerbated on with quite a bit of emotional appeal while mesmerizing the audience with their personally distinct, equally invigorating dreams. However, that would not make for a good thriller film, as Deirdre Barrett of Harvard University attested when discussing the merits of the film's principle theme. Oh but the film would be far more interesting had it gone the actually creative route instead. Would have been riskier, sure, but would have made for a vastly superior payoff if done right.

Ellen Paige is a somewhat fledgling but truly capable actress, who, so far at least, has not succumbed to the condescending machinations that Hollywood typically burdens female celebrities with. In spite of her latent talents, no progress was made with this film. Instead, Adriadne (Paige) serves as the foil (for the audience) to the expository vessels in virtually all characters surrounding her. Such as when she asks if they're in reality or in a dream, or when she tries to make sense of the plans carried out by the likes of Arthur (Joseph Gordonn-Levitt) or Cobb. She is the character meant to reassure the reasonably confused audience that "this ain't so confusin'!" Oh and, since I mentioned him just previously, Arthur is the most manipulative and mechanical character of the merry band that we, the audience should care about. Like Adriadne, he doesn't do his actor any justice, either. Just what is at stake for him? Sure, he's a member of Cobb's team, but surely you could provide him ample back-story as well since he's regarded as a main character. His struggles mean next to nothing if he doesn't have any humanity to begin with. He's stoic when he should be concerned, and no tension can be felt in his action scenes.

What about the aspects of the film that actually resemble the alien nature of dreamscapes? Well, sure, there are some neat special effects involved, such as the folding street effect during the demonstration of Adriadne's ability as an architect (one who constructs the dreamscapes to implant into the mind of a mark, the target of an inception operation). The slow-motion freeze-frame antics of the following effects are kind of cool, too, but they are not exactly redeeming qualities. The more intriguing effects are not computer-generated at all, such as the iconic zero-gravity hallway scenes which feature Arthur battling a couple of, err, projections. And then there's a set of Penrose stairs featured in another scene involving Adriadne and Arthur going over final details prior to the heist. A ruined, claustrophobic city-scape of Cobb's imagination makes an appearance and it certainly is a meritorious set, but it's too little too late. And then the dry, calculated, machine-like feel of the scenery kicks in.

The thing that marvelled me most is just how mechanical, how planned, how rule-bound Nolan's vision here turned out to be. It bothered me after my cinema viewing right after its release and it bothers me even more now. I sometimes remember my own dreams just enough to recognize margins of their overall narratives, but this film didn't do much justice at all. It felt like false-advertising on the part of the film, because had they been honest about its presentation (like describing it as an action thriller along the likes of The Matrix), then it wouldn't have been so insulting to me. All of the dream within a dream (rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat) jargon are of only moderate consequence at best and are simply excuses for what amounts to a tale of corporate espionage, with tension-free gunfights and fisticuffs (because of the hollow shells that are the characters) thrown in for good measure.

And then there's the squandering of the talents cast into this epic (I find it difficult to call it such, but it technically is one), namely in particulars as Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Caine (who serves the role of his father-in-law, also his mentor), Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Nobody except for Cobb and Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) are granted a hint of humanity, and again, it all happens too late and they are few & far between (indeed, Fischer isn't as important as he was intended to be, yet in two very brief scenes we are provided some backstory for him). I've already mentioned Ellen Paige's talents having been wasted through her character, but I'd just be repeating myself to bring it up again.

The so-called “projections” are just an excuse for this film to be yet another action romp. Unfortunately for the film, the action pretty much falls flat because the film doesn't allow us to care about the consequences. At face value as well, these projections are no different from generic mooks you find in virtually every other action film anyway. If they’re projections of the sub-conscious, then why can’t they perform strange feats to get at their adversaries? They die just like everybody else you ever see on film, so the whole thing about them being akin to white blood cells of the mind is fluff that never amounts to more than that. Ah, excuses are in full supply when trying to justify what should have been an otherwise insightful film that turned out to be a shooting gallery on film, with dreams and all that thrown in for good measure! Oh and because the film is set in dreams, our heroes can simply will any weapon of choice into their possession with which to blast away these otherwise generic grunts! No, this ain't no stinkin' rip-off of The Matrix at play, folks.

I hope your sarcasm detector was, or is turned on, because I may have had you there.

I'm just wondering whether the fanboys will come with their threats, seeing as I've committed what amounts to blasphemy for criticizing the work of their god, Christopher Nolan. If the film weren't so mechanical, dry, hollow, and unimaginative, I’d have given it ample praise. However, since the film barely allows us to give a hoot about anyone, the “dreams” are so literal and so far from being surreal that they’re not particularly fascinating, and the so-called “intellectual” prowess of the film really is just an insult to the viewers in the form of non-stop expository dialogue, I just can’t give it that good a score. This film was written with too much pragmatism at work, with little of anything else, and it shows in spades.

There’s a reason I left the theatre perplexed as to just what was so special about the film. It seems to be an intriguing puzzle of sorts upon the first one or two viewings, but after that you’re bound to piece together an over-ambitious, inhuman, sterile piece of overrated mediocrity. Why not put a real visionary like David Lynch up to task! Hell, put Adrian Lynne up to it if Lynch isn't available. They'd have conceived of a masterpiece in comparison to this tripe.

In closing: It isn't terrible, but it isn't particularly good either.

 C

The Good:

+ An all-star ensemble cast

+ Good special effects, especially when Cobb is demonstrating the powers of Adriadne's role as an "Architect"

+ Some actual, and rather decent character development towards the end

The Bad:

- Way, way, way too much exposition. It's so bad it encompasses perhaps 90% or more of the dialogue. Bad move, Nolan! That doesn't do anything for the audience except to confuse and annoy.

- Are these supposed to be dreams? Or are they just set pieces periodically accentuated by "oddities" like water flowing from out of nowhere, trains rumbling down streets, and sudden (but slight) changes to the scenery? Where's the imagination?

- The approach to the subject matter is far too literal. This isn't art that rocks your senses, it's just an excuse to make a "brainier" action film.

- Character development is severely lacking.

- A couple of plotholes are present, for example the beginning sequence where Saito (or whatever his name is, played by Ken Wattanabe) somehow brandishes a gun to threaten our main gang when you'd think they'd be careful and thorough before performing "inception" on him.

- It's all fluff, especially the "dream within a dream within a dream" nonsense. This is technical garbage, not surreal wizardry.

- The ending isn't quite as ambiguous as you would think. Subtle hints point to it taking place in reality after all because of 1) Cobb's father-in-law being present, 2) His seeing their faces again after not being able to for a year, and 3) Cobb doesn't stick around his totem for long after spinning it to test his state of mind, he just loses interest. Oh, so ambiguous, so stunning an ending!

This Planet. This God of War. This Mars.

It lives.

It thinks. It breathes. It sheds its skin.

It watches. It consumes.

It craves...

Us, for her.

Then its slumber will wrack onward.

We are not the first; we are not the last.

We are but an express course.

It frothes at the mouth.

To take us in.

To make us one.

This planet.

This God of War.

This Mars.

One into all, Queen Mab's will.

The sand shifts. The water runs.

Phantoms of yore beckon the curious.

Hands of the past reach to us.

Voices of memories, and of yearning.

A scale tips and we're on the brink.

To take us in.

To make us one.

This planet.

This God of War.

This Mars.

One into all, Queen Mab's dream.

Opportunity Looms

My goodness has it been a while, and it's been a long, tedious, inactive road travelled for the past several months. Since my last post, not much has happened, which is rather unfortunate given that inactivity doesn't allow for anything much to occur. That is obvious and I don't need to flesh it out further.

However, I've recently took advantage of an opportunity to finally break free from my enslavement to inactivity (namely unemployment). I'm leaving this dump at the end of April this year to greener pastures, where jobs are aplenty and independence, confidence, and most of all inspiration will surely follow. Suffice to say, I'm rather anxious about it because my circumstances had taken their toll to a degree. I think it's been so bad for me because I was unsure of what options I had, since there's very few left where I am right now.

I've had no luck since in getting my personal terminal in operating condition again, which aggravates me quite a bit since my work is just sitting there collecting dust. But when things pick up, so too will my terminal and things will happen again. I'm just glad I've been given the chance to really get things back on track. Much thanks are due for my father who allowed me this chance. I prefer this in every way to being enslaved to these conditions of the Canadian Maritimes. After all, I wrote a piece about it over at Superbious.

A Self-Annointed Intellectual and the Bread Recipe

TheAmazingAtheist, whom I've critiqued before on this blog, is the target of this post. This will be pretty concise and it might garner a few laughs. For clarification purposes, this man romances himself as an intellectual above the typical man, which is his form of misanthropy (which is arguably the most recurrent type of misanthropy out there; so much for being distinct on his part). Yet his own stupidity is particularly hilarious because he displays 1) the inability to learn from and recognize his mistakes and 2) the unfamiliarity with age-old & very common practices, such as what I'm going to talk about in brief next.

He doesn't know how bread is made. Un-fucking-believable...

TJ, as he's usually called in his social circles, once said in a video, "You mix wheat & water..." Is this guy serious or just fucking stupid? I'm not angry with this, I'm just frustrated. How can someone who so brazenly and repeatedly claims intellectual superiority over most of his fellow men & women be completely unaware of one of the oldest recipes of man's creation? And since he's admitted more than once that he spends a lot of time on the internet, in which there are literally countless recipes for countless types of bread to be found, how is he, at 27 years, still ignorant of even the most basic bread recipe? When he admitted this I began contemplating that the man is an irredeemable retard in denial. No offense to those who are retarded through no will of their own. Such people are above this cretin.

Here's a brief history for you, TJ: the oldest known bread was a flat-bread, made by collecting plants and pounding the grains, forming a shape, and cooking it over a fire. This specimen was dated to be as old as 30,000 years. Yeah, you read it right. It was a flat-bread that was not even complex whatsoever. It makes you think why anyone who makes any kind of living today even bother to buy bread from supermarkets, given how simple and cheap it is to make your own loaf of fabulous and fresh bread.

This idiot is known to have dropped out of high-school because he "was sick of all the bullshit." That's just a cop-out from a coward who prefers things to be handed to him on a silver platter; an excuse to avoid the responsibilities that life always demands of Earth's denizens. You see, if you stayed in high school, you could have taken culinary class. In that class you learn how to cook mostly basic recipes, usually some kind of baked food. You get accustomed to the entire process; preparation, cooking, serving, and clean-up. It's one of few classes in high school that is mostly devoid of bullshit that most educational institutions put you through, like when they discourage creativity and going above & beyond the process.

Anyway, you don't simply mix wheat and water, idiot. Wheat is a plant that you find in fields, farmed or otherwise. You can't make bread with wheat, you have to extract ingredients from wheat instead. And for many bread recipes, you need yeast. It's your choice if you want gluten for consistency, but most avoid it entirely because of the unnecessary added fat from that ingredient. If you care about your body even a little bit, you won't use the bleached, nutritionally-void white flour, either. Use the real stuff and work with whole-wheat flour. Add oats and whole grains as well for added nutritional value as well as flavour, because it's fucking easy to do so. Mix, knead, let it sit for the bread to rise (air pockets form after all, and it helps give the bread form & shape), and then bake. You have, as mentioned, countless sources of information available with just a few clicks and key presses. So TJ, you have no excuse to be this blatantly ignorant.

I guess you're just too stupid and hopelessly lazy to care.

Playing with Politically Incorrect Fire

I'm one of the authors over at the fledgling opinion site Superbious. Feel free to check the place out. To be honest without coming across as an arse, some of the writers could use a bit more work on perfecting their craft (myself included, but not quite for the same reasons). A couple of them have, so far, demonstrated mistakes with:

- The "their" & "they're" conundrum.
- The "then" & "than" puzzle.
- The dreaded proper demonstration of the oft-misused apostrophe (knowing when to use it makes all the difference, folks!).
- And common, often overlooked spelling and/or grammar mistakes.

Also on my first article, the editor of the site didn't take care to remove the final paragraph where I mentioned to the reader to view a video. That same video is featured in my second most-recent post in this blog (the one before this post you are reading). In fact, they're the same article.

Another note is that, by request of the webmaster or editor of Superbious, any of the articles I write for them won't appear anywhere else, including Corpus Intorqueo.

In the end, this should be an interesting ride. Someone took notice of me and has accepted my tutelage as a content contributor. Thanks, Superbious.

Bill "Sore Loser" O'Reilly: I Won the Rumble!

At least, in his mind he did.

Bill O'Reilly is, as expected, not owning up to how much devastation he incurred by the likes of Jon Stewart, especially when he called him 'The Mayor of Bullshit Mountain'. As you watch the video (provided below), you almost wonder what was going through the old man's mind at that point. You could tell that he wanted to retort, but he just couldn't. Yet it wasn't at the debate where he'd attack Stewart with any measure of effectiveness.

Later, nestled in his safe zone in the 'no spin zone', O'Reilly post-humously claimed victory over Stewart by, shocker alert, taking him out of context. Here's the piece where O'Reilly performs his usual tactic on his merciless opponent:

If you saw Jon Stewart and me Saturday night, you may have noticed there was a very important theme among all the chaos. Stewart, an honest and smart liberal, supports a 'nanny state' where everyone is provided basic life necessities and economic outcomes are guaranteed.

I disagree, not because of the intent, but simply because it's impossible. The Constitution provides Americans protection so they can pursue happiness, but the Founding Fathers did not guarantee happiness or material well-being, and if you try to do that you will bankrupt the nation.

Stewart and I previewed what we'll all be voting on - do you want a nanny state or do you want a self-reliant nation? That's what's at stake in this election. The left-wing press is not going to tell you that; it portrays President Obama as a moderate. And the right-wing media says he's a socialist, maybe even a communist, bent on destroying traditional America. But Stewart and I pinpointed the real situation: nanny state vs. self-reliance.

Polls show the country is deadlocked, but I find it very hard to believe that 50% of us want to be Western Europe. What do you think Europeans are rioting about? They're angry that governments are cutting back on entitlements. This is what the nanny state mentality leads to - give me free stuff or I will hurt you. Jon Stewart doesn't believe that, but it is absolutely true. So I hope you will watch our debate, which is available at TheRumble2012.com.
 

Thanks Steve of oreilly-sucks.com for the quote above.

See how pathetic he has to be to claim victory over Stewart? Of course, he didn't bring his opponent on to discuss the results, or talk about their respective talking points. O'Reilly also assumes of his audience that no one actually bothered to watch The Rumble. One couldn't blame potential audience members from not actually watching the event, because it required paying a fee to do so. Exploitative as he always is, O'Reilly took advantage of this obscure tidbit, and of his audience, and spun the debate as ending in his favor. After all, no one likes 'the nanny state'.
 
Watch the embedded video below and you can judge for yourself as to whether O'Reilly ideologically "beat" Stewart in The Rumble, or whether Stewart argued for a nanny state government that wants its citizens to be dependent on The Man.