Incept the dream among shit squeaks …

Everybody is talking about Inception. I see that this one `s rating shot up in imdb from an astonishingly ridiculous 6.* to an expected 9.*  in two days flat. Hmm … Probably the people who rated the movie before are all Americans … lol … the yankees don`t understand anything do they ? 😀  (Its a joke me hearties!)

A collegue and friend of mine writes this whole scene to scene description on imdb. Talk about serious fanhood 🙂 More dope on the movie is to be found  here and here!

The defn

Anyway, the dictionary defines it in a simple way as below :The beginning of something, such as an undertaking; a commencement

So I guess the combo of the successful movie`s theme and the definition prove the fact that dreams are in most cases the primary genesis of ideas.

The movie

To put the plot short, its about the protagonist and his team trying to change the thinking of a person by altering the origin of his thinking ,i.e.,  his subconscious. The medium to tap that subconscious is his dream.

I would take the pains to mention the character of Mal because the actress is sexy 🙂 and of course also because she is the main antagonist. The hero`s dead wife who being such a strong surpassed part of his memory? keeps popping up in his dreamland missions.

Yup! I guess memories are painful sometimes.

Hero

Leonardo de caprio is soon becoming an immaculate actor both because of his acting and the stories he selects. I mean his recent movies , Shutter Island and Inception (not to mention older ones like Catch me if you can, the Departed, The Aviator) make Titanic look like  shit-squeak.

Back to the movie ….

What this movie is  …

1. Another feather in Leo`s cap
2. Another diamond in Nolan`s treasure chest
3. Good thought provoking movie leading to endless debates and interpretations
4. One with the keep-guessing ending where the audience are free to make their conclusions on the hero`s fate
5. The movie that shall make the totem famous  😉

What this movie is not …

1. Though a brilliant piece,  its not an epic ,  like The dark knight or The Matrix or LOTR …. its more like a dramatic documentation of events (of the mind,yes !  but just events none the less) . The complexity is in the novelty of the theme not in the plot.
2. It is like a lecture on the fictitious theme, but sans the ending, doesn`t leave much for the audience`s interpretation  ( audience`s imagination inducing … try the joker from dark knight for instance)

But still it is definitely a good movie, a messiah-like relief  compared to the shit-squeak  called knight and day which released at about the same time in India  (Of course! Wouldn`t deny that Cameron Diaz is still all woooooooh inducing)

Proud people

Boy ! The ones who would be so proud of the movie`s ideas are Freud (due to uncontrolled overwhelming projections which cross boundaries irrespective of the dream host …  the character Mal for instance) , Jung (due to the whole dream within a dream within a dream thing) and good ol`Lyn Chat (the technical reason why she likes it is something I don`t know.Just a hunch)

Emperor`s clothes analogy

Remember the  short kids` tale , The emperor`s new clothes ?

The amusing thing I observed about this movie is that some people , even if they might not  actually like it, end up saying that it was good.  Why ? Because they might possibly be scared that  denying its enjoyability is synonymous with shouting , *I am too stupid to understand!*

Awesome job by the makers for successfully inducing that kind of mass-thinking , even after the audience walks out the theatres … Not many movies do that these days!!  🙂

Time: Continuum Invictus

Rather than plunge into an ocean of knitty gritties on time travel focus would be on the  result of a hypothetical time traveling exercise.

Often, the author wonders what it would be if time travel is used to change the past and hence the present and hence the future at an individual level.

In other words, if I had gone back in time and changed certain initial conditions (read life changing events in the past), would my temporally responsive after- efffects (read consequences, future,result ) change. ..

Assuming they would, I see two schools of thought to that hypothetical phenomenon…

The first —-> Uncertainty Principle

Remember the movie , Butterfly Effect ? Simply put, there are n (with n tending to an infinity) number of different  possibilities depending on a very small change in the events that shape consequences.

Time is like this crazy random number generating machine that if run twice  back to back , with almost same inputs will still give two different outputs!!

So, you can change the present if you manage to go back to the past but you just cannot change it according to your fancy/will

and now ….

the second —-> Destiny

(Religious fellas will love this ) It is all already written! There is fate ..there is destiny already decided.

So if you change  some defining event of the past , the intermediate events following that will re-shape themselves in such a way that your present will still remain the same.

boleto …You cannot change anything even if you do try. Because it is fate.

Moral of the story: No point in trying to change time becasue you can’t get what you want by this method. Instead, learning to cook is a better option 😛

The attractive face of D

First things first, D here is Death. But do not get the author wrong. This is not a philosophical discourse. Just a light hearted wandering through the literary depictions of various personifications of death in fiction…

The above fig is an outline of how D is represented. Now this one is a hooded guy with a weapon who instills a sense of mystery ..hmm ..and somewhere down the lane I guess the literary/artistic stalwarts decided to make D appear more menacing than mysterious ….

So came the bad-ass skull features ,background and grandeur. An intimidation of the human psyche not by mystery but rather by the sheer romanticism of the dark side …

Of course there is the comical side from kids’ films and Indian folk tale based movies ….

And then …

… the author during one of his dilettantish random flights through the web , came aross this version of death…

Wabba wabba! Now thats the way to make the death personification actually popular 😛 ……

References : Search for the Sandman series by Vertigo for one scorching depiction of death

Of dogs and dowries

Good news! So I decided to buy a nice litle beagle

The bad news derives itself from the fact that I am somehow reminded of the zero sum game

…esp. in the solidly rooted Indian society

You see its like this  … if you have a female dog , a most economic and convenient way of adopting its baby (when your dog gets old and should be replaced) is to place an ad/ check classifieds for a domestic male dog of the same race who would  …help it breed … purely  (and in a rather safer way as compared to your dog pro creating with say  … a street dog) !! You would also be ready to pay for it ….

That sets the author wondering … about the dowry system in India .  It all sounds the  same actually.

Particularly in the south , in the author`s nice little state of A.P … dowries are big time. To ensure that their girl childs get pure-race (sorry! I mean … same community ) breeding partners ( sorry! I mean … loving husbands) . For the purpose of breeding safe ( sorry ! for having a good matrimonial life)§. They are willing  to fix a ransom (sorry ! I mean … the traditional and magnificent dowry package)

Voila! Its heartening to see both men and dogs get paid for sperm :p Its heartening to see that dogs and some Indian communities have evolved into a synchronized state of  buyers` market.

~Ghost Runner

ps: Sound the trumpets …. the ghost is back  !!

ps1 : The prophecy of the last post didnt kill me yet … 6 months into 2010 …as alive and kicking  as a beagle 😉