dhruvs blog

Movie Review : Kill Bill

This is a movie that I saw over the spring break, but neglected to post a blog on it then. Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill made for an excellent and extravagant viewing.
It has been criticized by some as being overly violent, a literal blood bath, which the movie was. However, behind the artful violence there was an artful elegance. The swordplay and the music combined to pump the viewer with excitement.
Apart from the violence and frenetic pace of the movie, the other thing that et this movie apart was the organization of it. The film was divided into various chapters, each with their own small part of the story. There were a lot of flashbacks regarding the past of the Uma Thurman’s character, the Bride. One of the most memorable segments was the chapter describing the past of O Ren Ishii, the character played by Lucy Liu.
Being a fan of Japanese anime, the very fact that part of a mainstream movie was partly anime was a great pleasure to me. Not only that, the piece was very well done. It contained some of the most emotional scenes of the film, relating to O Ren’s tragic past.
This is the strength of Tarantino’s filmmaking, in that he brings into his movies ideas from all the other movies that have inspired him. Kill Bill is a lasting tribute to the martial and Kung-fu movies that inspired Tarantino.

iMovie

Recently, I participated in a project, in which I and a group of students created a movie for the iMovie competition held by Delta. This project gave me many insights into what goes into making a good movie.
The first thing to do was to come up with a good story, and it was here that we met with our first problem. We had initially decided to do an action flick, taking elements from various movies such as the Matrix, and do a parody of them. However time and lack of technical skill stunted this plan.
We cycled through an entire set of ideas, and eventually settled on a short film on a day in the life of a Hobo. This was an interesting choice, as many of the pitfalls that the hobo faced were similar to the ones many tech students face, eg. The lack of food, lack of sleep, and lack of girls.
I was mainly involved in the shooting and editing of the movie. I came to realize how difficult the entire process was, right from filtering out the excess noise, to holding the camera steady in the shooting process. The editing process was equally tricky, because we had to choose the scenes correctly, and avoid any rapid transitions between scenes.

25th Hour

Like many of the film Edward Norton chooses to act in, the movie the 25th hour is unconventional and insightful. There were some particularly striking parts of the film that I will discuss.
The first is the opening scene, where Norton’s character, Monty, and his partner Kostya, find an injured and abandoned dog in the middle of the road. Despite Kostya objections, and despite nearly half his face getting bitten off, Monty insists on helping the animal out. Later throughout the film, we see the dog accompanying Monty. This scene is very effective in showing Monty’s more caring side.
Another important scene is the mirror scene in Monty’s fathers bar. While talking to his father ( with whom Monty has a very close relationship) about his arrest and jail sentence, things seem to overwhelm Monty for a while, and he heads to the bathroom for a breather. When he sees his reflection in the mirror, and the words “fuck you” written on them, Monty goes into a vocal diatribe, insulting and hating all the different groups who live in America and New York City in particular. The impact of this scene is quite shocking, and the language is explicit. Later on in the film we see that Monty doesn’t really hate all these people, he only hated himself for ruining his own life
The end of the movie is also open ended. While Monty’s father is drives him to jail, he suddenly strikes on the inspiration to go and escape out to the west. The movie then goes on the show how the rest of Monty’s life unfolds, with him hiding away in some small town, later to be joined by Naturel, and then him starting a family. However , the last scene switches back to Monty and his father in the car, leaving the viewer to wonder what path Monty took.
My feeling is that Monty didn’t escape. Firstly, consider the odds of someone completely losing the law enforcement, especially in today’s information era. Secondly, when scenes about Monty’s family are shown, they are all too perfect, being dressed in shining white.

The 25th Hour – Plot Line

Recently we watched the film the twenty-fifth hour in our 1102 course. It is an interesting film, with an unconventional ending. Edward Norton plays the role of Montgomery, or Monty as his friends and family calls him.
He used to be a drug dealer, and though he seems to be reformed, we still can’t be sure that he has completely stopped dealing in drugs. This is of course due to the fact that he still has a large stash of cocaine hidden in his house. In fact the police are informed of this, and Monty’s arrest and harsh prison sentence drives the plot from there on.
After being sentenced to seven years in prison, Monty faces the end of his life as he knows it. Both he and his friends such as Frank ( his old buddy from way back when) and Jacob Elinsky ( the high school teacher) know that after the abuse and punishment he will take in prison, he will be a changed man.
The question that then arises is of who informed the police about the drugs. For a long time, Monty and Frank suspect Naturel, Monty’s wife. While Frank does confront Naturel about this in the club, on Monty’s last night before jail, Monty himself slumps into a depression, and continually questions himself on why and how he managed to mess up his life so much. It is the kind of soul searching that usually occurs in ones life before a big change. Although in Monty’s situation, the horror of jail that lies before him gives this soul-searching a desperate edge.
Eventually it turns out that it was Monty’s partner, Kostya Novotny, who had betrayed him to the police. After refusing to take up Uncle Nikolai’s ( the man Monty worked for) offer to kill Kostya immediately, Monty heads home to make peace with Naturel, and prepare himself for prison. He does so by making Frank beat him so badly in the head that his face becomes disfigured. Monty hopes that that would make people stay away from him in Jail.
The ending of the movie, and certain other scenes deserve special consideration, and will be talked of in the next blog.

White Noise - Response to Q5

The passage that I shall be commenting on is one page 198, from " How Strange it is..." to " I try to talk to it.'Not now, Death.' " The reason that this passage was chosen is that it lays bare fully and clearlyfor the first time Jack and Babettes haunting of Death.
Before this passage, there were abundant references to death. In this passage, we can see the root of those references. Jack talks of the deep fear of death that haunts him and Babette, and which he assumes haunt everyone. He finds the fear of death paralysing at times, and yet he is confounded by t he fact that we humans can manage to function despite these fears. People walk, talk to others and seeminlgly function normally, However, as Jack says about this fear, " Is it something we hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise."
Another interseting thing about this passage is that it is over here that we first hear a reference for the term "White Noise." Since both babette and Jack find the fear of death so pervasive, that Jack thinks of it as an electical noise, similar to the microwaves ansd radiowaves that pervade the atmosphere. He also describes it as Uniform and White, and hence the term "White Noise."

White Noise - Response to Question #4


According to Babette, all human feelings and thoughts can be explained by chemical interactions in our brains. In other words, it is the interaction of various molecules in the brain that decides everything we do, say and feel.
Jack finds it unbearable to think about. Why? Because, it eliminates all the mystique and romantic aspects of human nature. As Jack says on page 200 – “What happens to good and evil in this system? Passion, envy and hate? Do they become a tangle of neurons?”
It is interesting to note that to further elaborate his argument Jack uses the example of a murderer and his crime of murder. This is another instance of Jack’s seeming obsession with death.
From Jack’s argument, we can see that for him, a murder and the act of murder have a certain fearsomeness to them. He is indeed fascinated by murder. Reducing the motive and act of murder to the level of chemical reaction strips it of all its dreadful grandness.
This passage can also serve to explain an aspect of Jack’s fascination with Hitler. Since Hitler was the greatest murderer the world has ever seen, it is no wonder Jack has an unhealthy fascination for the man.
The discussion of Dylar in this section of the novel finally explains Jack and Babette’s great fear of death, and how they are haunted by it. Death is referred to as an electrical noise, present everywhere, just as radio-waves and microwaves are present everywhere. Jack also adds that death is uniform and white, and this is the source of the title of the novel White Noise.

Pesearch Project, Part III

When discussing the validity of Genetics to decide ones potential, as is the case in Gattaca, we must first decide what potential is.
According to Aristotle, reality is a set of potentialities. In fact, the potential determines the reality. Reality is the realization of potential.
However, from Nietzsche’s point of view, your actions and the events that one has experienced determine who you are, and potential is only a retrospective realization.
The question that then arises in Gattaca is firstly how Vincent comes to realize that his so called genetic ‘potential’ is not what determines the path of his life. Secondly, we must analyze how Vincent exceeds this genetic potential.
Vincent first comes to this realization after one of his swimming contests with his brother Anton. After being rejected by Gattaca for a job, he decides to go all out in his swim against Anton, not caring about the consequences. He wins, and even has to save Anton from drowning. He comes to realize that he was not as weak as he was supposed to be, and Anton was not as strong as he thought . He also comes to realize that his earlier losses against Anton were in part due to the fact that he had an excuse to fail, and Anton did not.
Having come to this realization, Vincent decides to go and follow his dream. As shown in the film, he had ups and downs, but it was his willingness to continue on regardless that saw him through. As he tells Anton during their final contest, he never left any fuel for the way back.
In this sense, Vincent epitomizes Nietzsche’s idea of potential, in that he plays his hand with all his might. He sometimes wins, and loses at other times. However, unlike Jerome and Irene, Vincent doesn’t measure himself against his predetermined genetic ‘potential’. He does what he has to, and realizes his true potential only in retrospect.

Research Project, Part II

In the film Gattaca, The mission director says: “No one exceeds their Potential.” This is exactly the type of thinking that Vincent, the protagonist, turns on its head as he goes and achieves his goal of becoming an Astronaut.
Characters such as Irene, Jerome and Anton have their lives mapped out before them. Their potential was determined from their genetic make-up, which was designed to near perfection. They lead pre-determined lives, where this genetic potential is the determinant of their fortunes.
Vincent on the other hand, is a very different creature. He was born without genetic tampering, a ‘faith birth’ as they are called in the film. His prospects in life are limited. As his father put it, the only way he’d see the inside of a spaceship was if he were cleaning it.
Jerome on the other hand has an excellent genetic make-up. He has the potential to be a champion, but he fails to fulfill his potential. He gets a second place in a swimming championship. He has thus failed to live up to his potential. He suffers from the burden of not being the perfect human being he was supposed to be, of not being able to live up to his potential.
Irene is another person who has been engineered to perfection, but her gene composition has one flaw – a chance of one in ten thousand for premature heart failure. As Vincent tells her later on in the film, she is obsessed with her shortcomings to such an extent that they are all that she sees in herself. Why the obsession? Well, because her potential is lowered due to the heart condition. And from Irene’s worldview, potential is everything.
Anton is Vincent’s younger, genetically enhanced brother. His father considered him worthy enough to inherit the family name. Vincent considers himself to be superior to his brother Anton, and can thus be considered to be like Irene and Jerome, in that he believes his life is predetermined.
His relationship with Vincent is very important to the story. As children, he and Vincent used to have competitions to see how far they could swim, with the knowledge that they would have to swim back. Anton would invariably win these contests. However, Vincent did mange to win their last two contests.
However the one crucial difference between Vincent and the rest was that he had a dream, and he never stopped believing that he could accomplish it. Thus Vincent rejects the life writing done by geneticists. He doesn’t believe that genetic potential determines his reality. It is ironic that had Vincent not been an ‘Invalid’, he probably wouldn’t be able to exceed his genetic potential as he does in the film.

Research Project, Part I

Can gene technology write out our lives? Can our lives be predetermined by our genes?
Can our potential be precisely determined by our genes alone? The society portrayed in the movie Gattaca certainly thinks so.
Gattaca is a very thought provoking film, and it raises many interesting questions.
Complex behaviors such as addictive susceptibility, propensity for violence, alcoholism, and criminality are explained by genetics, and genetic manipulation is used to eliminate these complex derogatory behaviors.
Of course, it is highly debatable if genetics can be used to accurately gauge ones potential, and map out ones life. As G. Thomas Couser quips in his essay “Genome and Genre: DNA and Life Writing” there may soon be a gene for autobiography. Of course this is a satirical viewpoint, but it is one worth understanding.
The focus of my research paper into this area of technology, Genetics, is on analyzing how and to what extent Genetics can predict and determine human behavioral characteristics. The primary text that I will rely upon will be the film Gattaca. As of now, my final argument would be that Genetics is not a very good determinant of complex behaviors, although it may serve to determine physical characteristics such as health and fitness in general.

Commentary on Postmodern horror
The author of this essay, Andrew Tudor, describes the trends occurring in horror movies of the late twentieth century.
The Author justifies the labeling of modern horror films as Postmodern on the basis of their appealing to a "knowing audiences familiarity with the genre conventions." Films like Scream for instance, rely on drawing upon common themes and ideas from previous films. This has the effect of not only adding a bit of reflexive humor, but also of adding tension to the scene, for the audience in a way knows what they should expect, and yet cannot be entirely sure of what is to come.
The Author also labels the modern horror film as "Paranoid horror" as opposed to the "secure" horror of earlier days. The author clearly summarizes some of the clear differences between "paranoid horror" and "secure horror." In secure horror, eventually human intervention is successful, the authorities and the experts can be relied upon to combat the threat, and the threat itself is very external. In contrast, in "paranoid horror" by contrast, the main threat in the movie is internalized, i.e. the threat stems from the human psyche. This trend can be said to have begun from the early 60's with films such as 'Psycho' and 'Peeping Tom,' and evolved into psycho-killer films such as the 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' In "paranoid film," human intervention is often unsuccessful, and traditional authorities cannot be relied upon.
The movie 'The Ring' falls fairly well into the category of paranoid horror. Again, the root of the threat is the girl in the film, which the protagonist of the movie, Rachel, sees. However, the actual method of killing is through fear, and this psychological aspect of the film lends itself well to the theme of 'paranoid horror.'
Like scream, the ring does contain some references to other popular themes of the Horror Genre, such as the high schools being alone at home, and the ominous phone call. How there is none of the reflexive humor that so characterizes films such as Scream and Scary Movie.
There are other aspects of the "paranoid horror" in the ring. Human intervention is not completely successful, as evident from the death of Noah. Also, there isn’t a sense of complete resolution at the end, with the tapes being copied .

Response to Question#2

As Giroux and Szeman argue, it is true that Fight Club has little to say about the underlying causes behind the discontent with society, and their own lives, that most of the characters in the story feel.
Tyler is a character that, through his charisma, is able to rally these discontented people to his cause. He begins by inventing Fight Club, for the purposes of testing his/the narrator's limits, and to feel real pain. In a way it seems that he and Jack (the narrator) are trying to destroy themselves. As the narrator says on page 49, “maybe self-improvement isn't the answer. Tyler never knew his father. Maybe self-destruction is the Answer." The Fight Clubs gradually evolve into Project Mayhem. Tyler and Project Mayhem, as the name suggests, continue to embrace destruction, concentrating on tearing down the society they so rage against. Project mayhem does not even try to provide any long term solutions for those involved in it. It provides them a channel to pour out their frustrations.
The Satirical aspects of the novel become evident with the evolution of Project mayhem. Tyler exhorts the men to fight back against the society that dehumanizes and emasculates them. However, Project Mayhem also robs the men of their individuality. The men spend all day performing the same repetitive tasks, and spouting Tyler Durden-speak. They themselves become automatons.
So, I would say that that Giroux and Szeman are justified in claiming that Fight Club "has nothing substantive to say about the structural violence of unemployment, job insecurity, cuts in public spending, and the destruction of institutions capable of defending social provisions and the public good." However, I believe that it was not the author's intention to write about the underlying causes of the problems in society. i found Fight Club to be an engaging novel, bringing something new for the reader to ponder.
As to why Giroux and Szeman are so critical towards the novel, it seems that they are trying to debunk the overly positive reviews that fight club received elsewhere. That may be a reason they got their article published in the "New Art Examiner", and not an academic journal.

Chuck Palahnuik's Fight Club has several themes running through it, which are interconnected in complex fashions.
A chief driving force behind the narrator’s actions is his desire to escape from society's normative consumerist values. He finds his existence devoid of any genuine quality. His alter ego Tyler Durden has rather grander plans, to overturn society as a whole, and start anew.
The narrator’s rejection of his past life, of a so called "Corporate Drone" as described by Giroux and Szeman, forms the core of the story. Fight Club allowed the narrator to feel real pain, which he embraces over the numbness of his normal life. The narrator/Tyler sees the current generation of men as being disenfranchised and as frivolous consumers. They do not know what it is to be a 'real' man, and thus suffer from a serious identity crisis. The narrator sees them as "a generation of men raised by women" (page 50).
This idea ties in with the often leveled accusation against Fight Club, that it is misogynist. This accusation is not entirely without substance. Mainly because the narrator and Tyler see prevailing identity crisis as a problem prevailing amongst only men, and this points to the implicit identification of women with the prevailing culture which the men of fight club rebel against. However, it is also true that the identity crisis is not prevalent amongst all men, but only amongst those who have confining and stultifying lives and jobs ; i.e predominantly working class, and lower middle class men. This ties in with the extremely strong relationship between work and social life in Fight Club.
Another aspect of the story is the element of Satire. The narrator and the other men in Fight Club rage against the dehumanizing jobs they held, and the stultifying lives they lead. However, in Project Mayhem, they continue to lead such lives. The narrator calls them 'Space Monkeys' on many occasions. This irony is important. It makes it plain that Fight Club is not a story of men trying to make serious social reform.
Rather, it mainly chronicles one mans rejection and rebellion against society, and the self destructive turn his efforts take.