Movie Review - Swiss Army Man

(Song of the day: Nine Cats from One The Sunday of Life... by Porcupine Tree)

This wasn't intended to be a movie review. It's just a facebook post that ended up being longer than expected. I don't feel like writing about it anymore.

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Swiss Army Man, to me, was more beautiful than it was absurd. I didn't see that coming from the trailer.

The non-superficial aspects of the human experience are, in my opinion, not easy but easier to talk or write about than show in a movie; with just what people do and say - superficial things.* It requires more empathy from the viewer than good writing requires of the reader. And when movies do a good job of it, the experiences dealt with tend to be not very deep, and/or common and easy to empathize with.

The exceptions are movies with a good narrative voice (with an insight here and there), or conversational movies where people actually talk 'about' the experiences (like Before Sunrise).

This movie is kind of like that, with the characters actually conversing about (or experiencing together) stuff ranging from the comparatively weak 'why would you say no to something that makes you happy?' and 'we label the uncommon as weird' to loneliness, daydreams (not just the absurd or abnormal kind), stalking, associations we make in our heads between things (non-spoiler example: like say a location and the weather/mood you were in when you first visited the place)**, the potential emptiness of obligatory relationships, etc, etc. Things not all of us can empathize with, or have made notice of. All while being absurd and beautiful and, as and where intended, occasionally funny. And the a cappella soundtrack is on point too. Wow wowwow wowwow wowwow... ayy ayy ayy ayy ayy.... pra da do pra da do...

Not for everyone though, especially if you find the trailer gross instead of absurd.

PS: A24 has been making a good brand name with me. Check out their portfolio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A24_(company) The Spectacular Now, Room(!), Swiss Army Man, a few other movies that I wanted to watch but missed, a few movies I'm looking forward to.

*Movies are better than writing at showing, say, 'how happy or sad' someone is, not at showing 'happy or sad how'.
**The association thing has been coming up a lot in my writing notes recently. Maybe I'll actually do something with those.

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How do corrective lenses work?

(Song of the day: Remember Me Lover from The Incident by Porcupine Tree)

You probably don't understand this as well as you think you do. And this topic isn't as mundane as you probably imagine. Let's get the usual explanations, which aren't wrong only incomplete, out of the way. With an...

Introduction

Our eyes focus light coming from objects onto the retina to form (approximate) images on the retina. These images are communicated to the brain via electrical impulses, which sees the original objects. Objects appearing out of focus is directly correlated with the image formed on the retina being out of focus.

Focusing the light from objects onto the retina sharply requires an appropriate optical power of the eye-lens depending on the distance of the object from the eye. This is why sometimes we have to choose between focusing on one or another object in our field of view. We can focus on objects at different distances by varying the curvature of the lens, by contracting and relaxing the ciliary muscle in the eye.

Ideally the human eye can focus on objects placed between around 25 cm away from the eye (near point) to infinitely far away (far point). The two common defects of the eye, nearsightedness (myopia) and farsightedness (hypermetropia/hyperopia), result from the far-point of the eye reducing and the near-point of the eye increasing, respectively. In other words, the eye can only focus on objects in this reduced zone of comfortable viewing. There are many reasons for this to happen, including eye-ball defects and deterioration of the ciliary body.

In terms of bending light rays, a myopic eye bends light from objects beyond it's far-point too much (cannot not bend too much), that the image forms in front of the retina. A hypermetropic eye bends light from objects in front of its (abnormal) near-point too little, that the image forms behind the retina. A picture depicting this can be found here.

A small digression here, before we get to the non-trivial stuff. A fairly common mistake is the suggestion that a hypermetropic eye cannot bend parallel rays of light (from infinity) sufficiently to form a image on the retina - that is a rather extreme case of hypermetropia where the near-point itself is at infinity. Many people see the issue with this and phrase it with a catch as follows: In hypermetropia, parallel rays get focused onto a point behind the retina when there is no accommodation from the ciliary muscle ("when staring off into the distance, for example"). But they're only narrowing down the definition of the ideal eye, making (potentially completely wrong) claims they can't justify about the relaxed state of the eye, all while leaving open the possibility that a person who's hypermetropic by their definition could very well have a near point of under 25 cm.

Back to the shitty eyes not being able to bend light appropriately. If the eye cannot not converge light too much, we can help by putting a diverging corrective lens in front of it. And if the convergence isn't sufficient, we can help by putting a converging lens in front it. A sample image depicting this can be found here. This is a common explanation you find, even in some textbooks. Although not incorrect, it isn't the best way of looking at the functioning of corrective lenses - it doesn't automatically raise questions that the other (also common) way of looking at it does.

The other way of looking at it is as follows (we'll restrict our discussion to the nearsighted eye and it's correction, although the arguments extend to farsighted eyes as well): The eye can only see clearly up to a certain far-point. Any object beyond that cannot be seen clearly. When we place a corrective lens in front of the eye, the lens forms virtual images of all objects in front of it. These virtual images act as real objects for the eye. In other words, the eye doesn't see the world anymore, it sees the image of the world formed by the corrective lens. And if we choose the corrective lens appropriately, we can bring the entire world within the far-point of the eye, thereby letting the eye see everything clearly. Check out figure 19.12 here.

This way of looking at things is really neat - it divorces the working of corrective lenses from that of the eye.

1. Eye cannot see everywhere clearly.
2. Lens brings objects to where the eye can see clearly.

And it also raises some rather interesting questions.

The good stuff

 

The question 

 

To fully appreciate what follows, let's see what the far-points are like for typical myopic eyes. One of the lowest powers of corrective lenses you can buy, the one I started with as a 6th grader, is -0.25. That corresponds to a focal length of -4 m. What this means is that, the virtual image of the stars formed by a lens of power -0.25 will be at a distance of 4 m in front it. And since the eye is practically right behind the lens, the lens brings the stars to within 4 m of the eye!

A digression. It's not like the person cannot see clearly beyond 4 m, but chances are if the person can see clearly beyond, say, 10 m, they wouldn't have gotten the prescription in the first place. I don't have exact statistics, but I imagine most people in the world will have their far point not at infinity but at something more modest like under 15 m. Yes, the slightest deviation from perfect eyesight (you don't have it) reduces the far point that much - This has to do with the behavior of the function 1/x, for those familiar with the lens and/or lens maker's formulae. Not to worry, you can still see far, well enough without glasses!

Where were we? Power = -0.25, stars at 4 m. It gets better/worse really fast. If the power's -1, the stars are at 1 m, and if like me your (lenses') power is -4, your far-point is a depressing 25 cm. That's supposed to be the ideal eye's near-point! Nearsightedness? More like cantseeshitedness *smh* Anyway, onto the big question that usual explanations of corrective lenses neither raise, nor resolve.

Let's take the example of a person wearing corrective lenses with power of -1. The focal length is 1 m. This lens forms a virtual image of the stars at 1 m from the lens, and squishes the entire universe from right in-front of the lens all the way to infinity within that 1 m distance! The image of an object at infinity will be at 1 m, the image of an object 1 km away will be at 0.999 m. If the object's at 2 m, the image will be at 67 cm; and if the object's at 1 m, the image will be at 50 cm. Which raises the question: Why do those wearing glasses not freak out the first time, or need time to get adjusted to this trippy shit? More formally,

Why do people seeing through glasses, not perceive the objects to be located at the corresponding images formed by the glasses?

At this point you may be questioning the neat and divorced way of looking at corrective lenses. Maybe the whole 'image formed by lens acts as the object the person sees' is alright to do calculations with, but perception doesn't really work like that. Allow me to convince you.

If you have glasses of modest power say under (over, technically) -3, remove them and hold them at a distance of about 20 cm from you (doesn't have to be exact). Now look at a distant object, say a tree, through the spectacles. You'll see a much closer and smaller image of the object through the lens. This means that you do see the image formed by the lens, when you look through it. Try moving the glasses back and forth. Now, slowly bring the glasses up to your eyes and wear them. You'll find the distant object magically go to where it's supposed to be.

If you don't wear glasses, you can do this with a friend's pair of glasses. Make sure they are nearsighted. You're not supposed to have farsighted friends. And no, you will not 'catch' their power by looking through their glasses. But if you want to do the part wear you gradually bring it close to your eyes and wear the glasses, make sure the power is under -1.5, you may feel uncomfortable otherwise. Also, be wary of eye infections. You don't know where their eyes have been. And those with power over -3, you too may have to use a friend's pair all while wearing your own :^(

You may want to pause here for a bit and ponder about the mindfuck I just unleashed on you. No? Okay.

A possible explanation

When I was first playing with the whole moving my glasses back and forth thingy, I felt that the explanation had to do with the brain. When the glasses are held at a distance, the glasses and the images it forms occupy a small part of our visual field. But as we bring the glasses close to the eyes, the glasses occupy the (almost) entire field of vision. Maybe, at this point, the brain perceives the farthest thing visible to be infinity, and somehow places the rest of the objects at their right places from experience. Maybe it's all the training my brain's had from before my days with glasses, that helps my brain perceive the right positions of the objects - by guessing. I knew the explanation was bonkers, but I settled for it. Even marveled at it. In retrospect, it was my God excuse, in some sense - don't understand something, must be how the brain works.

The brain is capable of a great many things perception wise, but this simply can't be because of that. It's hard to imagine yourself walking into an empty room with just one tiny light bulb in the center and going 'Oh, what a beautiful star!' You're not going to place it at infinity in your head just because it's all you see.

The explanation

There's a closely related question, answering which will lead to the explanation for the original question.

Why do people seeing through glasses not see funhouse mirror/lens versions of the world?

Think about it. If you look though an arbitrary piece of glass, you half expect to see distorted images. So, why does it not happen with corrective lenses? What about corrective lenses makes sure that objects don't appear fatter/thinner/funnier? (Does it perhaps have to do with the fact that our eyes themselves have spherical lenses, so using spherical corrective lenses to compliment them works? To keep this short, no.)

To answer this question consider looking through one lens with one eye (taking out the whole depth perception issue). What does it mean for the eye to see the same with or without glasses? It means that the angular positions of different objects is the same with and without the lens.

Lets say looking through the lens, you point with your two hands towards the top and bottom of a tree. Now after removing the lens, if you find that you're still pointing towards the top and bottom of the tree, then it means that the image of the tree you saw wasn't distorted vertically. If it holds for any point in your field of view (the direction of the point is the same with and without the lens), then you see an undistorted image of the world. Note that the distances needn't be the same - one eye only sees a 2D photograph and doesn't perceive depth. You can bring a tree closer while simultaneously making it smaller, and have one eye not register it while the other is closed.

And what about spherical lenses ensures this? In locating the image formed the lens, one of the rays we use is the ray passing through the optic center. And the ray passing through the optic center is undeflected. So, if you put your eyes right next to the optic center (which is what you do when you bring the lens real close to the eyes), the angular positions of different objects and their corresponding images will be the same. Check out the second image on this page with five objects in red labeled from 1 to 5 and their images images in blue. When you place one eye right behind the lens, looking at the images in blue is equivalent to looking at the objects in red, because, again the angular positions of the images are the same as that of the corresponding objects.

So it doesn't matter what the shape of the lens in our eyes is (probably not spherical), the corrective lens can be spherical.

But how does this help us answer the original question of correct depth perception? We're already kind of there. As we stated just now, depth perception is a result of binocular vision. Our brain pieces together the two different images seen by our two eyes to perceive depth. And if each eye is seeing what it would've without the glasses, the depth perception will work itself out! But but...

But then why did it not work itself out when the glasses were held at a distance?

1. Your eyes weren't right behind the lens. And more importantly...
2. Both of your eyes were seeing the images formed by both the lenses in the glasses. 

So with both your eyes you could see that the image formed by the left lens was closer than the actual tree. And the same with the image formed by the right lens. But when you wear the glasses, your two eyes see two different images both within 1 m, the combination of which tells your brain that the star you see is far away. That right there is VR. The illusion of an infinite world, in a one meter radius. Yes, I am that cheesy. In fact, let's cheese it up more. The gift of corrective spherical lenses is something we neither appreciate nor deserve.

And that's how corrective lenses work. The end.

PS: Luckily for us, the brain doesn't use the information of how contracted or relaxed the ciliary muscle is in it's perception of depth. Or, at the very least, doesn't use it enough to get us all confused.

Movie Review - Room

*no spoilers ahead*

Room is that rare breed of movies that is way more than the sum of its parts, that it is hard to comprehend why or how it manages to be as deeply moving as it is.

It follows the lives of Jack (Jacob Tremblay), a five year old boy, and his mother Ma (Brie Larson). Ma a.k.a. Joy was kidnapped by Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) when she was 17 and has spent all of the last seven years in the 'room', a little garden shed. Five of those seven have been spent raising Jack, to whom the 'room' has been the entire world. The movie shows us their life in the room, escape from it and their life afterwards.

Despite the grim circumstances the movie is anything but gloomy. For the most part, the boy's life in the room is joyful. And it is portrayed in a heartwarming way, with the cameras doing great jobs of elevating the room to the boy's whole world, or reducing it to the tiny garden shed that it really is.

Both characters are brought to life by excellent performances by the actors, especially Brie Larson. Ma is a real human with complex emotions. Often she has two sets of thoughts and feelings - ones she wants to let on to her son, and her true ones she tries to hide. She does so with different degrees of convincingness. And Brie Larson has to get it just right, else Jack's belief or disbelief will not ring right. Or at least not as well as it does. That's just one aspect of how good their performances were.

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I'm reminded of my review of The Imitation Game. There's a scene in which one can easily get the impression that Benedict Cumberbatch is acting really well, except I thought it lacked a layer that would've made the scene actually challenging - instead of just giving off that impression.
</digression>

The screenplay is solid and should keep the plothole nazis fairly happy. It is also really smart in its portrayal of a child who's grown up with his own set of beliefs about the universe. Beliefs that get taken apart, slowly at first and then all together. I don't mean smart by being a self indulgent philosophy exercise, but by being emotional and believable. Not to forget the thrill and suspense of the escape from the room.

But all that's been said are in retrospect - it wasn't the usual wannabe connoisseur in me making mental notes of how good a particular line, scene or piece of acting was that was enjoying the movie. The movie, as I said, rises above and beyond that.

There's nothing in the movie I can think of that explains the effect it has on its viewers. There wasn't enough thrill and suspense to explain the racing of the heart. Not enough pain, suffering, sadness (or subsequent joy) to explain the tears. No otherworldly lines. And I've seen good acting before; good screenplays. It's not them either - I intend that to say a lot about the impact the movie had on me, not the other way around. The soundtrack wasn't memorable. Nor was the movie personally relatable.

At the risk of downplaying the cast and crew, the romantic in me wants to believe that this movie's success isn't just the result of screenplay tricks and techniques. That something truly magical happened to make me lose myself in the room, make me pray for the boy's escape from it as if it was real life, and shed happy tears when Ma hugs Jack. Something that cannot have been foreseen by its creators (at least, not before the shooting began), making the movie that much more unique and harder to recreate.

To wind up and to add a bit of substance to this melodrama of a review, the pacing was good throughout. And the second half, although good, doesn't come close to the first (Oh well!)

To summarize, backed by excellent performances, script and cinematography, Room is a heartwarming drama that will leave the audience with a lasting impact and, if you let it like I did, can make you cry. Easily one of the best movies of 2015, if not the best.

Rating: 9.5/10

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To clarify, I do not look down upon 'screenplay tricks and techniques'. I cannot, I'm a Tarantino fan. And to me it's never about the plot - just the screenplay and execution.

If you like Room, you'll probably like Gone Girl, Whiplash, It Follows, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl(?) and vice versa. They have similarly strong impact, though with them you can easily see why.

I should quote this opening line of a review I saw on rotten tomatoes before watching the movie: "Watching Room is essentially the act of barely breathing and nearly crying for two hours."

Self-indulgence

Oh, I want to learn such simple things
No politics, no history
Till what I want and what I need
Can finally be the same

                            - Conor Oberst

I woke up today wondering if my last words in the dream I'd just been shaken out of ('Oh my God!' if you're interested) had stayed completely inside my head or if I'd actually said them out loud. That's probably misleading, so just to clarify, last words not in the sense of dying or anything. It was an eerie dream, won't call it a nightmare, inspired by Gone Girl, the movie. I don't feel confident about getting into its details in a riveting fashion, so whatever. What's probably interesting though, is that the dream was mostly in Hindi-esque gibberish and the exclaim in English, neither of which is my mother tongue - says quite a bit about my life in the last five years or so.

Now, if I was you, I'd call bullshit. This does sound like something someone might makeup for the sake of an interesting read ('Today it seems'). But I'm not (you or making it up). And the words were so loud in my head, that I actually did wonder, before being fairly convinced that they stayed in my head. It would be impossible to walk you through how I was convinced 'cause for one, it was a series of feelings - not thoughts. And for another, I don't quite remember them anymore.

****

Speaking of my life in the last five years, have you ever noticed your contempt towards certain kinds of behaviour you've grown out of yourself. 'Fucking n00b' you think. Or 'amateur', or 'immature', etc. depending on the kind of person you are now. It's understandable towards people who're being twelve - even if they are twelve. But twenty years old you wasn't too bad. That person could've, without too much of a stretch, passed for a real adult behaviourally. The world's full of bat-shit crazy m'fuckers, after all. But those in phases you grew out of are discriminated against in your head, aren't they? Makes you wonder what the odds are of future you being kind towards present you. Of course, that number twenty is not quite the same for us all, but you get the idea.

If you don't get what I'm talking about, revisit your past, maybe. Diary entries, facebook posts, anything else you may have written up a few years ago. Try to remember things that used to make you feel good about yourself. Things that frustrated you. And the good one - how you planned to deal with them. The bullshit logic and rationalization.
 

 ****

I understand that not all of you will share this contempt I'm writing of. Speaking of, isn't it rather amazing that we can empathize with one another's feelings, though we can never be sure that feelings feel the same to different people. I'll try not to take this down the 'How do you explain the colour red in words?' drain - an exercise, I'm sure, generations and generations of wannabe deep thinkers, myself included, have indulged in and felt good about. But in some cases, it's more than just a philosophical exercise. With colours, I think it's fair to assume that most people experience them the same way. But with emotions... Not vague ones to begin with like 'like', but something seemingly solid like love. Emotions that people react to in different ways, that people go through in different degrees. You wonder if the difference is only in the degree.

****

Time for a confession. This post has kind of been written just for the sake of writing something. I've been meaning to write for a while now, but was finding it hard to start. The movie review was a forced start. Since then, I've made a list of forms, themes and overall moods I'm interested in employing. If it's unclear what I mean by overall mood, the list currently comprises absurd, lighthearted and serious. I really wanted to do a short story today, but couldn't come up with a plot. And it wasn't like I tried hard and failed. It felt weird to even start thinking of a plot. So, just to break my block, decided to put you through an essay on something that happened to me today and things that I've thought about recently - hence the title. And I don't think I've done too bad a job of it. To those who disagree (and that includes you, future me), in the words of Hugh Jackman, as I'm sure many others', "Fuck you".

But a lighthearted and slightly absurd boy-meets-girl short story is not far away. And to those who liked this one - similar stuff will follow, in hopefully a much better thought out and organized manner.

You hear me talkin' hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'mma get

pseudo-intellectual on yo ass.

****

P.S.: Just to round this up, Gone Girl is a really good watch. In the course of writing this, I resisted a bad pun involving warm feelings and degrees. And I may have inadvertently lied in the beginning.

"Do you know what time it is? It's tomorrow."

- A black, female hotel receptionist to Gabriel Eglesias (with a 'I')

Movie Review - The Imitation Game

This is my first movie review and The Imitation Game probably isn't the best place to start - Nightcrawler and Guardians of the Galaxy are both great opportunities missed. No, it definitely isn't the best place to start. I mean, what are the odds that any given movie is the best place to start. I'll try and curb this kind of drivel - that's not the style of writing I'm going for. Not with these movie reviews at least.

Anyway, this is my first review and so here're a few disclaimers. One. Popular opinion has an effect on how much I (dis)like a movie. With fun movies, positive feedback from the movie watching community biases me in their favour. The effect is opposite with serious movies. But it's only noticeable with them self-indulgent pieces of shit that're far less smart (many positive adjectives work here - smart's the one that ticks me off the most) than their makers make them out to be. I'm usually aware of this phenomenon (ooh, a phenomenon) when it's happening, and will try and acknowledge it at appropriate times. (Should probably make this a section in my reviews. The structure in this first one is going to be winged. I promise the reader more respect in the future)

Two. Opinions of mine, on certain aspects of a movie, can make me misremember its details to fit neatly into my reasoning scheme. Can't do much about that. That's all the disclaimers I can think of right now. As you may have noticed, so far I haven't made a great effort in curbing that kind of drivel. And frankly, I think this is getting too silly.

"Quite agree, quite agree. Silly, silly, silly. Right. Get on with it. Get on with it."

                                                           - Graham Chapman

One last thing before I begin the actual review. These reviews will be targeted primarily towards those who've seen the movies, not those deciding if they should.

Spoilers to follow

<review>

Foreword: Weighing the rave reviews against the hype factors (premise of the movie and the cast), I expected it to be a decent watch, going in. And it is. But this review will aim to balance out all the positive mojo surrounding the fairly uninspired The Imitation Game.

The movie is based on Alan Turing's life. An apparently reclusive, antisocial, homosexual genius played by Benedict Cumberbatch (the audition tapes are available for purchase at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018ttws/products). The movie follows three interweaving timelines. One from... Wait, you either already know this, or don't want to know from this review. Fuck it (Am new at this. Cut me some slack).

Unlike Sherlock, Turing, despite being super eccentric, was fairly believable (none of that "I didn't realize I'm your best friend despite being able to tell that your son is pregnant by sniffing your belly button" bullshit). And in the first half Cumberbatch sparkled lifelessly with the emotionless dialogue delivery he was typecast to do - an art form that I'm not convinced demands immense skill. But does the movie itself have to be lifeless just because it's hero is?

The acting in the high-school timeline lacked emotions. Warm emotions you would expect a young boy falling in love to have. Troubled ones you would expect a young boy falling in love with another boy to have, when homosexuality was illegal - and dangerously so. It felt more like a photoshoot with the director going 'Alright give me a blush. Now give me one with fear and doubt. Don't forget to face the ground and look timid. Bravo! And that's a wrap'. What I mean is everything felt so plasticky. Mind you, the idea was not that he doesn't have emotions. But in the quest to make him reclusive, they made the character a potato.

The plasticky feeling extends to most other characters (Christopher in particular) and to the movie itself on the whole. When they interweave scenes from the war with those of the cryptographers' unsuccess, and you're, I assume, supposed to feel the gravity of their work, the race against time and the associated stress, you feel nothing. When the German tank rolls over a helmet of the allies', you're feeling potatoes. And I don't mean in the way this guy here does.

It gets better, for the better (meaning no sarcasm), in the second half though. A few genuine smiles from Kiera Knightly (as Joan Clarke), a few moments of edginess from Cumberbatch. Peter Hilton's (played by Mathew Beard) plea for his brother's life. But you still feel nothing when Turing's comrades perform a touching act of comradery by threatening to quit if their comrading comrade is fired.

What is interesting is that somehow all this lifelessness, instead of making the movie god awful, feels alright and natural and even lends it an air of sophistication (not that I'm the type that falls for that shit). It's probably because its a period drama - it doesn't have to feel real anymore.

This is nitpicking, but a paragraph on the scene where Turing tries to send Joan away by confessing that he's gay and she wants to stay. When two people pretty much know what the other is thinking and is about to say, but desperately want to convince them of otherwise, there's a certain impatience in hearing them out, a certain 'Yeah yeah, but I don't care' attitude that Joan seemed to be lacking. And that conversation ended way to easily too (this isn't nitpicking), unless we are to believe that she was convinced by his 'I never cared for you' response. Also, the way Cumberbatch straightens up and delivers that line in a way that's fitting of a reclusive genius, might feel like awesometastic acting. But, I believe it is far easier than delivering the same line in a way that's believably convincing to Joan, while letting the audience know what's really going on. Not that his character is supposed to be any good at that. Just saying.

A word on the science before I wind up. When they have this realization at the bar that they can use predictable parts of the actual messages to restrict the set of keys to go through, I was like what the fuck has Christopher been doing all this time? Just avoiding keys (passwords) that map the same letter to itself, and some other such nonsense and slogging away at the rest? And how the fuck is it supposed to know when it's hit upon the right key - does it have a fucking dictionary on board? Not that this bothered me much. Besides it's good for the movie to have a eureka moment, I suppose. But the using statistics to decide which information to act on and which ones to ignore part was nice. And I loved it when Stewart Menzies (played by Mark Strong), the MI6 agent, goes 'I wish you were the Russian agent' and asks him to help him decide what's best to leak to the Russians through their not-so-bright spy.

Getting a tl;dr vibe from this post. So I'll wind up soon. The whole Turing test routine (can you judge me if I'm a man or machine) and the 'Don't assume that you're in control just because you're where you are and I am where I am. Make no mistake - I'm in control' line that connects the ending to the opening of the movie are similar to The Dark Knight's 'He's not a hero Gotham needs right now. He's the one Gotham deserves.' Make no sense, but understandable why people would be woah-ed by them. And the sad climax despite portraying slightly better acting, didn't do much to save the movie in my eyes.

To sum up, uninspired and lifeless - probably because I can't appreciate art. Yet it's popularity is understandable. Decent movie and worth a watch, at least for the hype, if for no other reason.

Rating: 7.0/10 (A peep into my head: 5 doesn't have sufficient range and 100 is too fine)

</review>

The Adventures of Peter Bigear

Peter woke up startled, as he has been for the past week or so. This time it was his second toe from bottom that had to be put down. Overcome by grief as they were saying their last goodbyes, he tried to give Isabel a tight hug, when his back broke waking him up. As usual he religiously recorded all that could remember before even what was left, left him. He also noted down how his back wasn't broken, and how Isabel never really existed. He tried harder to remember more. Then he reread the account for typos, hovered over the word 'really' in 'never really existed', and stroke it off. God! Did that word ever give him nightmares.

Sometimes he tries to recall when they all started, these unreal but realistic experiences during sleep. He's wanted to name the phenomenon, but couldn't settle on anything. They would all sound smart and cool in the beginning. A week later, stupid. At some point he gave up trying to derive a suitable name from existing words. After all, not every word originated from another. Since having this realisation, he's spent quite a few evenings making funny sounds and sometimes even moans - pained as well as kinky (never both simultaneously. But to be fair he never really tried). Pardon the digression but this part is funny: Pissed of with this behaviour, his neighbour laced his milk supply one day with superglue. Unfortunately Isabel (his (meaning Peter's) dog, not the toe)) drank it and has been unable to make a sound ever since on account of dying on the spot. And the culprit was never caught! Isn't that hilarious?! I still can't believe how lucky I am to have escaped Peter's wrath - the dude's got monstrous arms.

Ahem, where was I? Oh yes, he sometimes tries to recall when they all started. Never can. What he does remember vividly is the first time he described it to someone. His friends at the bar he frequented during middle school. He described to them how Andrea was about to kiss him on his left nose when he, much to his embarrassment, snorted loudly only to realise that he was actually lying on his bed! In his room where he had slept the previous night! No Andrea around! He was hoping that one of them could throw some light on what the hell happened. And maybe help him save face in front of Andrea, if that was even possible then. The buggers had just said "You were dreaming!". Dreaming? He wasn't a dreamer. He wasn't of that wishy-washy type. He wasn't a crazy person. Or gay. Neither did he have any intention of enlisting in the future. Over the years he's gotten used to this kind of response though and has learnt to keep to himself about his... dreams shall we call them for lack of a better (any) word.

****

Peter, tired, dragged along slowly up the stairs leading to his office. Ever since the amendment of the open vehicle container laws, he's had to ride his car to work. To make things worse, he can't wear his work clothes in the car. The entire fucking city has to get into uncomfortable suits, complete with bow-ties, just to make their car rides bearable. "Good morning, Mr Cuminmyear!", sniggered the receptionist Ms Piffin cheerfully. He gave her a weak smile and walked on. He's gotten used to the ridicule his name brings him as well. Peter Bigear the funny boys in school used to call him. Lacked creativity, but quite effectively exploited his rather large ear flaps.

"Coffee lounge, changing rooms and then some sleep", he told himself. He simply couldn't wait to get into his spandex.

(To be continued. Maybe.)