The Comfort of Chaos
Conditions: Just About Perfect
Not Reading The Fine Print.
It never ceases to amaze me how easily people can allow themselves to be wound up over the bloody obvious. Come out with a scientific paper that proves cigarettes are bad for you and the people are in shock! Release a story about a politician cheating on his wife and the people are scandalized!! Put photos of dead civilians killed during warfare, and the people are outraged!! And always the overriding thought is "how dare they confront me with this truth?" Because of course the outrage and surprise is pure uncut bullshit. We were never surprised, the outcomes were logical. And so it is with some humor we uncover the latest "scandal" about mobile phones. Turns out they can be used to keep track of your movements! The hell you say?!
It's kind of sad, but in another way amusing, to see everyone climbing up onto their high horses yet again. "What do you mean this mobile digital communication device can be used to track me? The nerve of you corporations!" I mean for pete's sake. It's the twenty first century, can we at least try to act a little more grown up about these things?
Film Review: Sucker Punch
This Snyder is a stylish guy, I bet he even brushes his teeth in slow motion with a heavy rock beat. After bringing us the large-scale epics of 300 and Watchmen, director Zach Snyder has turned inward for his latest film, Sucker Punch, which is essentially about a girl who finds freedom by escaping into her own mind, unleashing her imagination as a last chance to escape reality. Set in an insane asylum, our young heroine transforms it into a 30's style burlesque house. Confronted with a therapist who uses a stage to help patients act out their fears, she transforms it into wild missions where she and her friends must fight their way through great armies and monsters to reach their goals. Confronted with a warden who pimps out the patients, she comes up with an escape plan.
See, our heroine has five days to escape before she is lobotomized/sold to a high-roller, and is determined to escape before her time is up. Sucker Punch is a wildly, wildly imaginative movie about imagination. It's highly metaphorical, where the story is being told more visually than through dialog. The escape plan relies on our hero to distract people with her dancing, while her partners are able to grab the items they need. But the dancing is interpreted by the director as wild action sequences where the five of them go on outrageous missions that require the slaying of a vast amount of bad guys and monsters in order to collect the necessary items.
While visually stunning, what's interesting about this film is that you have to decide just how much is real and what your interpretation of it is. Does our main protagonist find a form of freedom from the asylum she was consigned to? Whose story is it, anyway? And is this a female-empowering film, despite our heroes being scantily-clad babes who are essentially slaves? Well I believe this is an empowering film. The characters take control of their destinies and fight (a lot) to escape their predicament. You know on a purely surface level this would seem a shallow nonsensical film, full of mad action and cute girls. But actually look at what's going on, and seriously understand the motives at play and you can see that this is a meaningful movie about imagination and sacrifice, and camaraderie. Add to that a director who is at the top of his game in terms of visual style, and you have a very interesting and exciting film. The only possible detraction is that it the overall story becomes a little incoherent the more we escape into the fantasy. Though is that criticism or preference? Four steam powered Nazis out of Five.
- Peace out
Not Reading The Fine Print.
It never ceases to amaze me how easily people can allow themselves to be wound up over the bloody obvious. Come out with a scientific paper that proves cigarettes are bad for you and the people are in shock! Release a story about a politician cheating on his wife and the people are scandalized!! Put photos of dead civilians killed during warfare, and the people are outraged!! And always the overriding thought is "how dare they confront me with this truth?" Because of course the outrage and surprise is pure uncut bullshit. We were never surprised, the outcomes were logical. And so it is with some humor we uncover the latest "scandal" about mobile phones. Turns out they can be used to keep track of your movements! The hell you say?!
Amid rising scrutiny of their practices, Google Inc. defended the way it collects location data from Android phones, while Apple Inc. remained silent for a third day.And of course in the time-honored tradition of software application options, it's set a certain way by default and it's likely damn difficult to turn it off, or fully understand all it does. Hence perhaps the suspicion of skullduggery, but honestly. In this day and age being surprised that your cellphone can track your movements is equivalent to being surprised that there really isn't some kind of magical bunny that shits out chocolate eggs.
The companies' smartphones regularly transmit locations back to Google and Apple servers, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal.
Research by a security analyst this week found that an Android phone collected location data every few seconds and sent it to Google several times an hour. Apple disclosed in a letter to Congress last year that its phones "intermittently" collect location data, and the company receives it twice a day.
Both companies have said users can prevent the data collection by turning off location-based services, although doing so limits functions such as maps.
- wsj.com/
It's kind of sad, but in another way amusing, to see everyone climbing up onto their high horses yet again. "What do you mean this mobile digital communication device can be used to track me? The nerve of you corporations!" I mean for pete's sake. It's the twenty first century, can we at least try to act a little more grown up about these things?
Film Review: Sucker Punch
This Snyder is a stylish guy, I bet he even brushes his teeth in slow motion with a heavy rock beat. After bringing us the large-scale epics of 300 and Watchmen, director Zach Snyder has turned inward for his latest film, Sucker Punch, which is essentially about a girl who finds freedom by escaping into her own mind, unleashing her imagination as a last chance to escape reality. Set in an insane asylum, our young heroine transforms it into a 30's style burlesque house. Confronted with a therapist who uses a stage to help patients act out their fears, she transforms it into wild missions where she and her friends must fight their way through great armies and monsters to reach their goals. Confronted with a warden who pimps out the patients, she comes up with an escape plan.
See, our heroine has five days to escape before she is lobotomized/sold to a high-roller, and is determined to escape before her time is up. Sucker Punch is a wildly, wildly imaginative movie about imagination. It's highly metaphorical, where the story is being told more visually than through dialog. The escape plan relies on our hero to distract people with her dancing, while her partners are able to grab the items they need. But the dancing is interpreted by the director as wild action sequences where the five of them go on outrageous missions that require the slaying of a vast amount of bad guys and monsters in order to collect the necessary items.
While visually stunning, what's interesting about this film is that you have to decide just how much is real and what your interpretation of it is. Does our main protagonist find a form of freedom from the asylum she was consigned to? Whose story is it, anyway? And is this a female-empowering film, despite our heroes being scantily-clad babes who are essentially slaves? Well I believe this is an empowering film. The characters take control of their destinies and fight (a lot) to escape their predicament. You know on a purely surface level this would seem a shallow nonsensical film, full of mad action and cute girls. But actually look at what's going on, and seriously understand the motives at play and you can see that this is a meaningful movie about imagination and sacrifice, and camaraderie. Add to that a director who is at the top of his game in terms of visual style, and you have a very interesting and exciting film. The only possible detraction is that it the overall story becomes a little incoherent the more we escape into the fantasy. Though is that criticism or preference? Four steam powered Nazis out of Five.
- Peace out
posted by Jones @ 14:21
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home