May

16



Oct

17

Paranormal Activity

October 17, 2009 by Brandon | 5 Comments

People would probably be surprised to know that scary movies involving religiously tainted or paranormal stories are among my most favorite movies, including, but not limited to, The Blair Witch Project and Stigmata. Just to give you an idea.

So obviously I was pretty excited that Paranormal Activity, an extremely low-budget film that had a viral ad campaign on the intertubes, received enough attention to be released in theatres nationwide. The film followed in the same vein as the above mentioned The Blair Witch Project, in that it was shot with a simple handheld camorder. The film follows a young couple who have recently moved in together. It’s explained at the start by the boyfriend, who bought the camorder, that his intent was to document some strange occurrences which have been keeping them awake at night.

The movie itself doesn’t rely on the usual tricks that will make you jump from surprise, but instead gradually makes you feel more and more uneasy as the recorded nights you’re viewing progress and stranger and stranger things occur.

What the idea that will perhaps scare most people is that the paranormal activity the couple are trying to endure in the film isn’t caused by a ghost, but by some demonic creature that has been attached to the girl nearly all her life. Why is this thought scary? Well let’s assume you live in a new house, with no reason to suspect that anyone died anywhere near the property. Why would you be scared of a ghost? Instead the film postulates that this sort of possession can afflict anyone at any time, no doubt causing movie-goers to second guess what that bump in the night just might be.

Truly the movie scared me, which is ironic because obviously I don’t believe in any of this. Still, I never really cared much for the dark; deep inside everyone is a lingering, primal fear of what can’t be seen in blackness of night. The dark can be a dangerous place, and it was even more dangerous for our ancestors who learned it’s best to keep out of it, lest you want to be some wild animal’s meal. But in times where one need not venture out into the woods and caverns, religion and superstition filled our imaginations with other terrible things to keep that part of the brain alive and well.

There are some emotions which, no matter how rational you want to be about it, still get the better of you.



Jul

8

Movie Review: Knowing

July 8, 2009 by Brandon | 2 Comments

I decided to watch this film not truly realizing what I was getting into; I had not foreseen that it would be the cause of a post to my site in any fashion. It was actually a choice between this and Push, and I opted for Knowing because I didn’t want to feel dirty about finding Dakota Fanning to be attractive, seeing as she is only 15. (Word on the street is that she has a hot makeout scene with Twilight’s Kristen Stewart in an upcoming film. But I digress.)

All I knew was that it starred Nicolas Cage and had something to do with a code he finds that predicts disasters like 9/11. So imagine my surprise when the movie took a very sharp turn toward the religious and metaphysical side of things, or more importantly, the movie became a typical Hollywood appeal to believers in the supernatural at the expense of the intelligent, skeptical hero who turns out to be wrong.

Warning, everything in the blockquote is a spoiler. I’m basically going to run through the whole movie. Consider yourself warned.

Cage plays an MIT professor who is an angry atheist whose estranged father is a pastor. Cage himself has a son and lost his wife in a hotel fire that claimed a number of other people while she was away on business. Cage states he always thought you were supposed to feel something when your loved ones were in trouble, but as his wife died in a fire across the country, he was on his lawn blowing leaves, completely oblivious to any feeling of impending doom. This leaves Cage full of angst and rage toward the idea of predetermination, or any sort of connection between events; everything is random and “shit happens,” as he states to his class.

As the plot progresses, Cage’s son is given a paper from his school that had been sealed away in a time capsule 50 years earlier by what appeared to be a deranged girl. The paper is covered, front to back, with seemingly random numbers, dictated to the girl by “whispering voices” in her head. Cage’s son finds it interesting and takes it home, and ultimately Cage takes a look at it after having a few drinks, because all angry atheists love booze and have to drown their self-pity in it every night.

A number on the page seems to pop out at him. 091101. You guessed it. 9/11/01.  091101 was followed by some more numbers, four digits to be exact, and Cage discovers that was the death toll for the 9/11 attacks. Stunned and in disbelief, he spends his night combing through the code and finds every major disaster’s date and death toll for the last 50 years, plus three dates which have yet to happen.

Cage takes his findings to his MIT buddy, who basically tells him he’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal and isn’t dealing with his wife’s death very well.  His friend points out that there are number between all the dates which Cage hasn’t found any meaning for, and says that it’s just some numerology trick and he’s putting meaning where there isn’t any.

Cage eventually realizes that these numbers are actually the latitude and longitude for exactly where the disaster will happen. Meanwhile, his son begins hearing the whispering voices and is being visited by ghostly pale men in trench coats who appear to be the source of the voices.

Cage seeks out the daughter of the girl who, 50 years ago, wrote the code. She has a daughter of her own, and she and Cage’s little boy hit it off pretty well.  With only a day away from the final date, they discover that the “ƎƎ” that it ends in, instead of a number predicting the death toll, stands for “Everyone Else,” meaning the world is coming to an end. A massive solar flare is set to engulf the entire Earth, burning it and every lifeform on it to a crisp. Cage races to find the latitude and longitude that the girl never was able to finish writing on the paper 50 years earlier, believing it to be the place where they must go to survive the ordeal. He isn’t wrong; but by this time the strange men have abducted the two children and have already taken them to this spot. Cage catches up, and demands his kid back from the group of men. His son tells him it’s going to be ok, and they’re here to take them away to start over again. Unfortunately for Cage, this only includes our new little Adam and Eve; daddy can’t go along. A massive starship, fitting the description of the so-called UFO described in the book of Ezekiel, descends through the clouds and the men reveal themselves to be angelic figures, complete with ethereal wings. They take the kiddles and leave Earth, but you also notice that a large number of other starships are also leaving Earth, leaving you to assume that other children are taken too.

Cage cries a little, then goes to visit his pastor father before they’re all consumed by the Emo sun’s awesome hate for Earth. The scene was actually quite spectacular as you watched a wall of fire erase the Earth.

The movie ends with Cage’s son and the girl being deposited on some Eden-esque alien planet, complete with a massive Tree of Life in the background. You also see a number of the other starships landing at various places on the planet.

So there’s the story in a nutshell.

All in all, I don’t think it was a bad movie. I just didn’t agree with the message it puts forward. It’s interesting that I decided to watch this movie after reading the recent response of Roger Ebert to criticism of his criticism of the new Transformers movie.

Ebert thought that Transformers sucked as a film. And it did. Well, I didn’t see it, but I can say for sure it did because the first one sucked as a film and I’m not interested in a movie that’s nothing but Baysplosions. But Ebert is taking criticism from the unwashed, idiot masses who loved Transformers. Ebert then lashes out at these people, telling them that yes, he does know more about movies than they do, and when it comes to opinion, your opinion only goes so far before you have to accept the facts.

It’s true that many Americans have an active suspicion and dislike of the “educated.” They ask, “what makes you an expert?” when they’re really asking, “what gives you the right to disagree with me?” The term “college graduate” has become in some circles a negative. Hostility is especially focused on the “Eastern Elite,” to the chagrin of we Midwestern Elitists. To describe someone as a “Harvard student” is to dismiss them as beneath consideration. You can often hear the words “so-called” in front of words like scientist, educator, philosopher. I don’t believe this is intended to imply that the person involved is not a scientist, etc., but to suggest that no one calling himself such a thing is to be trusted–because he is no doubt many other undesirable things.

[...]

So let’s focus on those who seriously believe “Transformers” is one of the year’s best films. Are these people wrong? Yes. They are wrong. I am fond of the story I tell about Gene Siskel. When a so-called film critic defended a questionable review by saying, “after all, it’s opinion,” Gene told him: “There is a point when a personal opinion shades off into an error of fact. When you say ‘The Valachi Papers’ is a better film than ‘The Godfather,’ you are wrong.” Quite true. We should respect differing opinions up to certain point, and then it’s time for the wise to blow the whistle.

The idea that people shouldn’t like or trust those who are skeptical is a theme championed by movies like Knowing. It tries to suggest that skepticism is wrong, and is a fault. Instead we should believe crazy things, like a paper written by a child 50 years ago contains dates that predict disasters. The skeptics in this movie were basically the villains, who turned a deaf ear on the skeptic-turned-believer, Nicolas Cage, calling him crazy. They paint a picture of the skeptic as being someone who simply refuses to see the “truth,” even when it’s so clearly right in front of their face.



May

16

Angels & Demons opened last night, and sure enough I was there to see it. Having been a fan of both books, especially Angels & Demons, and having enjoyed the film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, it is no surprise that I’d secure a showing of the new film.

I wrote an article chastizing the “controversy” surrounding the film; some Catholic clergyman stated how terribly wrong it is, concerned it painted the church in a bad light.

Sure, there was certainly some controversy with The Da Vinci Code, a film that was reported as being based on “facts,” which anyone with half a brain would know is utter nonsense. The film itself contained a message which suggested the very foundations of Christianity itself were lies.

This is not the case with Angels & Demons, and in fact makes some sort of effort to try to reconcile the divide between religion and science. Aside from a single mad man who happened to be part of the Church, the film in no way degrades religion itself, nor Christianity, nor Catholicism. In reality, it paints a very positive picture of the church; a church which actually recognizes its errors and understands that they are capable of making mistakes.

All in all, despite various changes from the book to film that I had some issues with, the movie as a whole was entertaining and, if you ask me, lacked any sort of controversial messages whatsoever.

If any Christian or Catholic claims to have a problem with this film, it’s just because they have a persecution complex. Get over it.



May

5

CNN published a story today suggesting that the Vatican, in fact, doesn’t care about the release of Angels & Demons… or at least, they aren’t going to stir up any trouble over it.

“To be honest, I don’t think that anyone at the Vatican is paying much attention to the premier of the ‘Angels & Demons,’ ” Father John Wauck said. “I was just talking with some people yesterday, I know friends of mine working in the Vatican, and they were surprised to learn that the movie was premiering in Rome. They had no idea.”

Oh, Father Wauck, you so crazy. Trust me, the Vatican knew about it. The Vatican blocked them from filming various locations for the film (not necessarily within Vatican City, mind you, which they obviously had every right to… but other locations within Rome). But I’ll take your word for it that they don’t really care about the movie… for now at least. I’m waiting to see what happens when the movie is actually released.



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What is Fractal Wrongness?

The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

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