Tag Archives: Looper

Hollywood Sci-Fi’s Triteness of Time

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Arrival has some moments, many deep loud sounds and a cool circular alphabet, but is burdened with yet another trite spin on our perception of time. The fact is that we human are constrained to a linear understanding of time due to gravity – not only the rotation of the earth but that of the moon and sun as well.

Our feet are firmly planted to this ground. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughter House Five: Transfalmadorians saw time like they were looking across a desert at a mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear. They could look at a peak or a bird or a cloud, at a stone in front of them, or even down into a canyon behind them. But among them was this poor Earthling, and his head was encased in steel sphere which he could never take off. There was only one eye-hole through which he could look, and welded to that eye-hole were six feet of pipe.

Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, humans not limited by that six feet of pipe, have made us aware that time is relative, not a constant, but a variable. This idea of time being a dimension is gold for science fiction – including my own Anori Trilogy – because the author is only limited by perceptions, able to contract and pause, even reverse what we thought could only be one way. And yet the startling concept is regularly fumbled, beginning with H.G. Wells rudimentary application in The Time Machine.The incipient pattern has continued. Inception created a childish world where the rate of time slows by halves in the subconscious, while a vast array of movies – such as the Terminator franchise – send messengers from the future to wreak havoc on today. Interstellar offers the tritest concept of all: a physical space where moments may be checked out of a galactic library. Arrival doesn’t do much better than this. (Spoiler alert unless you’re reading this in the future.) The opening presents itself as a flashback, only to be revealed at the end as the future –  not a sleight of hand but a lie.

It, like Passengers, was doomed from the get-go, as Hollywood knows nothing about time, except that it’s money and that the first box office weekend better not be a black hole.

The most provocative film on time would have to be Primer; everything it lacks in budget ($7,000) is made up for in concept, the kind of thing even Einstein might enjoy.

Writing Process: My Awkweird Self

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I pull the album from the shelf. I open it to a random page. An odd figure is there. The elbows are crooked, the posture awkward, everything unsure. It’s me.IMAG2185I’m a teenager. I think I know better than I do. I know I do. I say and do things because nobody stops me. I just want to grow up. I want out of this childish world. IMAG2186I call myself Dr. Shades as I play basketball in the backyard; I bounce in a chair when I listen to The Partridge Family. partridge-familyI remember running out the door and yelling something stupid. I was referring to a crazy idea in my head; my mother thought it was aimed at her. These memories aren’t treasured. As much as I might decry the lack of a sanctuary in Manhattan’s public spaces, the danger of the cranes overhead, this is the most unsettling aspect of writing, the reflecting, what I find inside, remembering what I wanted to forget so long ago. To quote Jodie Foster from her 2013 Golden Globes speech: “It’s like a home-movie nightmare that just won’t end.” jodiefosterIt might appear cute to others, but it is utterly stupid, half-baked and wretched, so much so that I’m even willing to consider the notion presented in the film Looper, that of killing off this version of myself…just to get rid of it, the cringing, the inadvertent shivers, the denial. It’s almost a thought and then it isn’t. The truth is that I hate guns, and that, in the end, like Alvy Singer, “I have to keep going through it because I need the eggs.”IMAG2188

Serial Sexism

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The word misogyny has recently been redefined in Australia as “entrenched prejudice against women”. This switch from the more commonly accepted definition of “hatred of women” is partially thanks to the now-famous speech delivered by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in October 2012.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Her angry words against Opposition Leader Tony Abbott have been commended by many, supporting Gillard’s fury against the representation of women as inferior to men, homemakers and bitches. And yet, this support comes across as sadly superficial. (Add Like or Smiley here.) The rampant sexism in our world is insidiously real and, on the whole, completely accepted. The female faces of Fox News say it all. Young and blond would appear to be the only requirement to deliver the categorical truths at Fox. And it’s not just the weird world of Fox; it’s ingrained in today’s stories and entertainment. I recently noted this in two films last week. Flight opens with Nadine Velazquez  walking naked back and forth past the camera.

Nadine Velazquez plays Katerina Marquez

Her nudity is aimed to establish a night of debauchery, even though Denzel Washington isn’t measured by the same standard, staying in bed, unexposed. Later in the film, Washington also meets a lovely addict (Kelly Reilly) who the viewer previously saw begging for heroin on a porn set. While the atmosphere of a self-indulged and self-medicated world is the point of these characters and scenes, the manner in which they are portrayed is baldly gratuitous. The same can be said of Looper, a science fiction film in which women are either sex workers

Piper Perabo

or sexy and fiercely independent.

Emily Blunt

It’s not that either Looper or Flight – or for that matter Fox News – are the epitome of art or expression. Actually it’s more the fact that they aren’t that make it all the more insidious. This is what is accepted in our culture. Women equals sex. It’s not equality. It’s an equation.

Hurricane Sandy VIII – Escape

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This has all been quite mentally wearing, more so than I would have thought. I mean, it really hasn’t been that bad for us. It’s true that we didn’t have power or running water, and climbing the stairs has been exhausting – especially with old Biba! But we really did have everything we needed – food, shelter and each other. (It’s true.) One of the best aspects of these past days has been planning our journeys of escape – uptown and to Battery Park City. The films have been a definite highlight. It’s a wonder what a couple of hours in the dark of a theater can do for your mindset – taken away to a different reality. That said, whatever you do, don’t see Looper. It’s not only stupidly violent; it’s also completely stupid. (And he kills himself in the end, so I’ve just ruined it for you.) Flight, on the other hand, is something to consider. It wasn’t what I expected. Interestingly enough, it has much in common with Zemickis’ previous hit, Castaway. There were some good moments and others not so much, but this film -and the others – have been about getting away from the dark…in the dark. Is that irony? I don’t know.

Extension cord coming across World Trade Center passageway from Battery Park

Being without electricity has been all right. Actually it’s been more than that. It’s been something; it’s been important and quiet – generators withstanding; it’s been still and dramatic. As the oft-quoted Chinese curse says, “May you live in interesting times.” And we do. And it’s hard to process…because storms aren’t this: They are nothing more than this… and this… and this…

Statue of Liberty Island Ferry Terminal

I have felt like a tourist – an intruder – through it all. I have gone to look. I have gone to take pictures of the most dramatic (worst) things I could find. I have recorded the little things I have seen.

Flares as traffic lights at Broadway and Vesey Street

One day I might know what they mean to me. In the meantime, Con Edison has called to confirm the story in The New York Times: we are supposed to get our power back at midnight tonight. And we are going to celebrate. We’ve opened the freezer. We’re going to have salmon and shrimp. We’ll play Scrabble and toast the return of the Electronic Age with Double Cross vodka and Moroccan Mint herbal tea…but we will miss the dark, as weird as that sounds. I’m just happy that it is now (almost) in the past.