It is interesting how the English language approximates these two particular words, “God” and “Dog”. Actually, “approximate” might not be the ideal term, as one word effectively mirrors the other, but the matter of fact is that I keep referring to Kornél Mundruczó’s movie as “White Dog”. I can either believe that I am inherently dyslexic, or that, in this particular case, this is no coincidence. After seeing this brilliant movie, I am more inclined to believe in the latter.
The concept of a cosmos as vast as the imagination can stretch is often hard to capture and even harder to project into words. Theoretical physics is still our best, though flawed, approximation to the principles that drive the dynamics of matter. But even with this approximation, certain concepts are difficult to grasp outside their realm of mathematical equations and conjectural hypotheses. The history of the universe, our universe, is so rich in events (much more than we are able to identify) and yet so unfulfilled of explanations that the temptation to fill in the blanks with these hypotheses is not only very strong but also commendable, and the only way to envision our existence as a complete picture. I’m sorry, did I just wrote “the only way”? I must apologise for the dogmatic scientist within me, sometime he (it?) gets carried away… Romanticism has, once again, something to say regarding this subject, and its voice this time comes from Italo Calvino and the collection of his short stories which was aptly named “The Complete Cosmicomics”.
Actors turning into film directors is nothing new, nor particularly remarkable. However, something seemed peculiar about Ryan Gosling taking control of the camera (and the pen since he also wrote the screenplay). Gosling is a bit of a wild-card as an actor. He definitely has a presence on screen, but one that gains actual substance when channeling an inner, speechless anger. Refn’s Drive might be the most obvious example (along with the misstep that was his Only God Forgives), as well as Derek Cianfrance The Place Beyond the Pines. But even in the fantastically underrated Blue Valentine, from the same director, a powerful, angry, frustration seems to emanate from his physical presence. And yet, somehow when the guy speaks, that effect seems to be lost, his voice unnecessarily languid or gritty, unsubtly ruining what his eyes and body posture had been setting up all along. Hence my curiosity: upon finding his “voice” as a director, which side of Gosling would we be seeing?
Antibiotic treatments are a major advancement in human healthcare. As we are upon the season of taking care of our winter ailments, sometimes we tend to forget that. Or, at the very least, we lack some perspective, on how it was before and what it took to get us to where we are now in terms of modern medicine. This could be the opening statement to any paper that I would currently be trying to grasp. Instead, it is the underlying feeling that rests with us upon seeing Cinemax’s series The Knick.
Storytelling comes in many forms. From songs, paintings, cinema, literature, each of these mediums allows the creative exploration of our senses to convey moods, values and experiences. In its purest form, the creator of these stories imprints a part of him or herself on the artefact created, consciously or not. It is not uncommon, however, that we face certain artefacts that deviate into a more technical approach. I am not referring to purely aesthetic exercises, since these also possess the ethics underlying their creation. Instead, I mean approaches relying on certain “building blocks” that define standard experiences. In cinema, for instance, it is quite easy to identify infinite variations on the same formula, with similar scripts, scenarios and character types. At a certain point, it seems to become a combination of existing materials. Even aesthetics depart from its artistic (and I promise this is the only and last reference to this vague term here today) goal and fall into matters of decorating the assembled piece.
Videogames seem to be a medium born out of such an engineering process. Starting with minimal tools (from ASCII and pure text) and subject to vertiginous technical advancements in past few decades, many, or most, games are strictly exercises on using the right templates, adequate colour palettes, familiar interactive mechanics, and the bare levels of something resembling a script, stitching interactive sections together. They often feel like assemblies more than coherent artefacts originating from a authorial intent. And yet, they possess an ability to explore and enhance the interactive dimension of storytelling that, while not completely absent from other mediums, has the potential to engage an audience through different means. Maybe one day I can write more comprehensively regarding this subject (much to the cringing, I suspect, of some friends of mine). But today I want to talk about a particular piece that, flawed as it may be, managed to distinguish itself from my usual experience with videogames.
Human relationships seem to be governed by specific and unknown laws of entropy, which dictate the rhythms of bodies coming together and drifting apart, very much like the physical particles assembled in their bodies and minds. November 19th of the current year marks the departure of one these macro particles. This is not an obituary (dear lord, far from that) for Mike Nichols, but a brief reflection about the work of someone that seemed to me to be interested in exploring some of the aforementioned laws.
“What is the point?”
This question, as old as human nature, ties up the movie in a colorful damp bow. Posed so many times, answered in so many different ways, Boyhood is Richard Linklater’s attempt of both interpreting the question and provide for a non-answer to it. The setup is rather trivial: Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) is the central character of a dispersed and nomad family, with a father (Mason Sr, played by an ever childishly charming Ethan Hawke) infrequently present (and his “replacements” come and go), always jumping from place to place, home to home, with his mother (Olivia, Patricia Arquette) and sister (Samantha, Lorelei Linklater). We follow the childhood and teenage years of Mason Jr. as he deals with the pains of growing up and figuring out… let’s say, “stuff”. Continue reading
What is this? What year is this?… Who the hell starts a blog in 2014?
Apparently I do. A lot of people do it too, to be honest. It is, however, something that was neither on my immediate plans, nor on long ones. There is an itch, however, that has been afflicting me lately. This itch is the need to write something more structured, less restrained and, definitely, less work-related.
I miss writing.
So I decided to try this medium. I’ve always disdained it a bit, even though there are several blogs that I follow with avid interest. These, however, belong to characters or entities whose voice (in tone and/or content) I find quite important to hear. Voices that make sense of these blogging shenanigans. Usually thematic, or close to it, these voices are what I think it makes sense in the format of a blog: medium to long essays on a focused theme. This is not what is going to happen here. Not exactly.
What is happening here, then?
The Friction Factor 