Archive for the ‘Cinema/Tele’ Category
Interstellar: Time Travel Climax explained
Saw Interstellar last night; another one of the notebook movies. I call them notebook movies as you have to sit with a notebook and pen to understand the mind-bending concepts.
I liked the movie overall which has a repeat value for me on the entertainment quotient alone. First half is a bit lazy as it unfolds, but second half is an edge of a seat journey.
This movie is based on scientific nuances of Time Travel, Wormholes, Black holes, which humans know in theory but are yet to corroborate by experiencing physically. It contains directors take on such concepts. In the process it fringes on the boundaries of present scientific knowledge. Hence explanation of entire movie within the layman notion of science might not be entirely possible. However I will relate what I make of it. This post deals with the Time Travel Climax of the movie and the confusion thereof.
Let me call Two Coopers as Cooper farmer (who lives with child Murph) and Cooper bookcase (who went into the blackhole and emerged into the bookcase). Cooper bookcase gave Cooper farmer the coordinates to the NASA facility. Cooper farmer could not have gone to NASA and eventually become Cooper bookcase without knowing these coordinates. How did Cooper (any one of the two) come to know the coordinates in the first place? Someone other than Cooper would have told them right? How does the knowledge of coordinates become self sustaining? Cooper told Cooper, but who told Cooper?
This deals with the concept beyond what humans have experienced physically. The 4th dimension of Time. Post Miller mishap, a desperate Cooper asks Amelia, “Can’t we go back to past, change something to save people?” And Amelia replies, “Time flows in one direction. We can’t change what has already happened”. Her reply was perfect as far as our 3D world goes. But when Time becomes a dimension, we can travel though time too.
Just like we travel in 1D (ants moving in a single line), 2D (cockroach crawling the floor), 3D (insect flying in the room), we can travel through time in 4D (where 4th dimension is Time). In 1D, we can move back and forth on the line; in 2D we can crawl in any direction on the floor and in 3D we can fly in any direction in space. Similarly we can move in any direction in time.
Here comes the catch. Since we have understanding of just 3D world, we start asking questions about, “What will happen if someone goes in the past and kills his grandfather, thereby erasing his own birth?”, Or in the movie’s case, “The Cooper farmer got the coordinates from Cooper bookcase and went to NASA and ultimately reached the bookcase from where he relayed back the coordinates. How?”
Various scientists have tried to explain the Grandfather paradox from the 3D understanding,
- “A new timeline will emerge when he kills his Grandfather, a parallel universe”, Or
- “We can’t change anything. What will happen, has already happened. The rules of dimension make sure of it”.
Since we have never experienced the 4th Dimension of time, whatever science of today tells are mere guesses. Researched Guesses to be exact. But still guesses.
As I see in 3D, we can move from one 2D plane to another 2D plane, which would be mind-bending to a person who lives in 2D. Similarly in 4D, we can move through time, front and back. In fact past-present-future all exist simultaneously (don’t think of them as existing at the same time. Time has become a dimension now, not just a measure of past-present-future). The concept of PPP is no more in 4D. Hence Cooper bookcase and Cooper farmer can come to know of coordinate from each other as they both exist simultaneously in 4D.
Since time is not uni-directional in 4D, to think that Cooper bookcase came to know of coordinates only coz he was Cooper farmer in the past is wrong. It’s not Past-Preset-Future but Future-Past-Preset, Present-Future-Past anything. The only fact is that both Coopers has to come to know of the coordinates somehow. Information in 4D does not flow from Father to Son, but can be Son to Father too. In either direction.
Bookcase Cooper does not depend on existence of Farmer Cooper as time is not longer linear (Amelia was hence wrong). Bookcase Cooper came to realize this in Tesseract where he saw the entire timeline of the Murphs room all at once. Initially he tries to stop Cooper farmer by asking Murph to make him STAY. But he realizes it’s futile as laws of 4th Dimension are not allowing it.
What Nolan has portrayed is a 4th Dimension with a closed loop explanation, which says nothing can change. Cooper bookcase can tell anything to Cooper farmer; still he will end up in the bookcase. When he says “Stay”, Cooper farmer ignores the message, whereas he easily believes in Gravitational anomaly message from Cooper bookcase. Rules of universe made sure of it.
Similar is the explanation as to how future humans survived in the first place to be able to put wormhole to attempt saving past humans.
If and When humans conquer the 4D, they may find this explanation to be entirely wrong. Something we have never thought of could be the reality in 4D. Till then we are free to throw off our own hunches and punches just like Nolan has done.
What Times are Now?
An unfortunate controversy erupted when a leading English Newsgroup published a not so subtle article about a leading actress. Without getting into the details of the write up, silence of the associated news channel amuses me. On all other issues, this TV channel is always here and Now.
Had it been a politician who would have made some unsavory speech; had it been a police head who would have issued a demeaning guideline; had it been some actor who would have made some politically incorrect observation, the channel would have raised hue and cry on primetime and rightly so. The primetime which it boasts have garnered highest TRP’s in the last 5 years.
But today all silence. It’s not an isolated incident. If you go to their website, you would see more of such obnoxious articles. Skimpy clad images of female models collated from across the globe. Explicit stuff posted at the very top, just to grab eyeballs.
Some of the headings with equally raunchy pics one finds there are, “Babes flaunt assets online”, “Bollywood babes unbuttoned”, “Hotties’ peek-a-boo moments”, “Celebs caught pantyless” and “Celebs’ oops moment!” I feel ashamed even typing them, but not the newsgroup which can do anything for money.
What I am afraid is that such acts leave the fourth pillar vulnerable to attack. In their lust for readership to plunder advertising revenue, they are ready to sell the very essence of news. I agree that these pics are collated from public domain but why plaster them on the news website?
I urge Press Council of India to take suo moto cognizance and issue appropriate guidelines. Now is the Time to put an end.
Lucy Movie Ending Explained
After a long time I saw a movie that made me sit down with a pen and paper. Although I have pondered over expanding brain usage in the past but never really went down the road of What if 100%? Lucy went that way and I must say I liked what I saw.
The ending kind of seems puzzled (deliberately so like other movies of this genre). What happens at 100% brain usage can’t anyways be fathomed by us mere 10% souls. 100% goes beyond dimensions and into the meta-physical. Let me try and explain the ending or what I could make of it.
1. Disappearance of Lucy
Lucy already was able to control her body and also matter by that time. Since body is also made of matter, disappearing/disintegrating sounds not that difficult. As she explained earlier maybe she went faster than speed of light which opens all dimensions but invisible to us. As to what happened to her post that is what we will explore ahead.
2. Why make the Super-Computer if all that was left was a pen-drive?
Seems silly on the face of it. Seems like director tried to simplify for the audience and hence the pen drive. Or maybe Lucy thought for current world pen-drive would seem easy to grasp.
What happened was Lucy started merging matter around her as she needed energy. Energy equals mass time speed of light squared. A lot of energy to upload all knowledge she could gather from the starting of time.
Energy was needed not just to create the processing unit for that knowledge but also to convert it into a format understood by normal humans. The pen-drive seems simplistic but it could not have been a simple pen drive. It would need to store huge amount of data maybe TB powers 100 for all we know. All knowledge gathered as she moved through time.
That computer was just for processing data to be able to store into pen drive. Hence computer destroyed itself at the end.
3. If she is so super human and could control time. Why did she die?
Here’s the catch. She did not die. She imbibed herself to all dimensions. She had no need for the body. She can’t feel pain. No happiness. More like a robot. Hence she gave up last piece of vulnerability. Her body. She became omnipresent. Across dimensions, across time, across worlds.
4. Everything she gained was due to her brain. How would she survive now without her brain?
Tricky! She would have what was required. Brain is also matter. She converted her brain along with her body into some other form, which we even don’t know. The meta-physical, omnipresent form. Can be equated to our understanding of God. Invisible to us.
Love and Rage: Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Yesterday night I was watching rerun of an episode of Alfred Hitchcock presents, a suspense TV series of the old. The story brought myriad of emotions in me. I felt compelled to narrate it in my own words to get some closure.
The story started with a woman of around thirty lying on a bed with a bandaged hand, too weak to get up, in a dimly lit room. She tried to remember where she was, but couldn’t. She then tried to account for what happened last. “Yes, I was waiting for Jack”, she got a bit of smile back thinking of him.
Jack came home and she fixed him a drink. She was feeling a bit tensed and anxious while holding the drink, Why? Oh yes, she was an alcoholic and have been off drink for some time. The Craving. But for his sake, she fought hard. “Darling lets go to a party tonight”, he said, taking her in his arms. “A party you said, but with all the people, all the drink around? I feel scared”. “I am sure you will be fine”, he assured her.
They entered the party. He had some urgent work with the hostess and went in to the study with her. She was feeling so scared and lonely in that room full of people, trying to resist the craving. But why was her hand bandaged? She still could not remember. A stranger offered her a drink but she declined. Where is Jack? What is he doing with her? Just then Jack came out arms in arms with the hostess. Something happened then, What was it? Yes, she threw a drink at the hostesses face, and then ran out crying.
Jack knocked at the door. He would be so angry. But he was not. “I am worried for you Martha, coz I love you”. “You love me after all what I have done today?” “Yes I love you dearly”. “Oh Jack, my Jack, I am sorry for everything. When I see you with other women, I can’t control it. And while resisting all that drink. I think I will go mad. What would all those people be thinking about you at the party? Let’s go back and undo the damage”. He smiled and they kissed. “Let’s get married”, he proposed. She was so happy.
How come she ended up in this dark room? “Nurse”, she called out. They went back to the party. He was having a conversation with the hostess and another woman. She went out to the balcony for some fresh air. The stranger came back. He turned out to be the brother of the hostess. “You see my sister over there with that man. She loves him like anything”. The rage came back. “She loves him, but they say, he is in love with another woman.” She blushed. “A woman, who they say is an alcoholic. The worst kind”, he went on. “They say it won’t be long before she goes back to her ways and he comes running to my sister”.
It was all true, isn’t it?. She needed a drink now. The craving was back. She gulped a double martini. After a couple of shots, she said, “Let’s go bar hopping”. Don’t know what took over her. They went from bar to bar, drinking like anything. She was in a mess. Jack came looking for her along with the hostess. She will take him away. She will take him away. Jack tried to hold her, but she was in a violent rage. “Leave me alone, I tell you, Leave me alone”, she threw herself around. Jack was not able to hold her. She fell down, broke the glass she was holding and hurt her hand. The reason for the bandage. There she was lying with a bloodied hand, pieces of glass and spilled drink. Jack bent down to pick her up.
A nurse entered the room. She felt less scared. “Nurse I am feeling better now. I want to leave the hospital”. Nurse looked amused, “You can’t leave lady. This isn’t exactly a hospital.” “What is this place then?” she asked confused. “Well this is the city jail”. “What???? Why am I here?” “You killed a man yesterday night, slit his throat with a piece of glass. A man named Jack Simmons”.
She felt like something ripped her from inside. She tried to cry but voice stopped in the tracks.
Shahrukh Frooti Ad: Meaning of Lyrics
I saw this latest Frooti advertisement featuring Sharukh and simply fell in love with the music, lyrics and concept. Lyrics, though hummable are not entirely clear in meaning.
Aamaletiya stavin crata pile pila,
Aamaletiya merlucchiya pile pila,
Inlorpotamanta tora tut tut tiya,
Less so less in nina amichiya strala,
Aamaletiya stavin crata pile pila – 4
Aameletiya merlucchiya…
I assumed these lyrics are not garbage and tried to de-cypher. What I saw is they are a mix of Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, Hindi, Italian words.
Beautiful and lovely mango, to us highly starving people, you will act as pile of batteries to recharge,
Beautiful and lovely mango, you are partly wicked, you will act as pile of batteries to recharge,
We are salivating greatly agreed, from unpleasant fighting people, we become happiest person in the world,
As it is getting over, like a little girl, it is emitting eternal love,
Beautiful and lovely mango, to us highly starving people, you will act as pile of batteries to recharge – 4
Beautiful and lovely mango, you are partly wicked…
Glossary:
Aam: Hindi, Mango
Letiya: Urban Lingo, Beautiful person, lovely heart
Stavin: Short for starving
Crata: French, might/strength
Pile: Spanish, batteries
Pila: Italian, Pile
Mer: An affix meaning “part”, used in chemistry
Lucchi: Hindi, wicked
Lor: Singapore Lingo, Agree
Pota: Uraban Lingo, Salivating
Manta: Spanish, Great Size
Tora: Japanese, Quarrel
Tut-tut: Urban Lingo, Disapproval
Tiya: Urban Lingo, Happiest person in the world.
Nina: Spanish, Little girl
Ami: Italian, Love
Chiya: Japanese, Eternal
Strala: Swedish, To radiate light
Disclaimer: This is just my view. Chances are, this might be entirey wrong.
Life of Richard Parker
Some are meant to make you laugh, some are meant to make you think, some are meant to make you fear, some are meant to make you thrill, but once a while there comes the one to inspire. I am talking about the movie Life of Pi.
The movie was about not losing hope, to hang in there, to labor through the rough. The movie is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist Pi Patel. What about the perspective of our very own Richard Parker?
It’s a story of hope for Richard Parker too. Stranded at ocean amidst the shipwreck, how he braved the circumstances and lived on. He had to swim to the safety of the boat. He had to compromise on his ethic and eat the dead (tigers don’t eat the dead, they eat their prey), to survive. Richard learned about the need to change. Against the instinct to attack and kill Pi, he eventually learnt to become subservient. Pi was keeping him alive by providing with fish and fresh rain water after all.
However he had been kept captive by humans. He knew given a chance, Pi and its species would not hesitate to enslave him again for its pleasure. Pi owed its life to Richard as much as Richard owed his life to Pi. It was a give and take. Richard learnt the importance of freedom at ocean. When the boat reached Mexico, Richard jumped off and escaped as soon as he could. There was a good chance that he would have been captured or killed by humans had he stayed.
It was just smart of him to leave. For him it was the process to gain his freedom. It was the process to gain his life back after captivation by humans and having faced death at sea. That he didn’t kill Pi was his gratitude enough to the race that reveled in capturing and enslaving him. It was more to ask to turn back to Pi and say a good bye.
His good bye lied in gifting Pi his life. I guess it was too much for us humans to understand.
Of Batman and Bollywood
With anxiety about the latest Batman flick running Everest high, Christian Bale is the name on everyone’s lips. This masked and caped vigilante has brought a sense of respect to comic books, missing till now. There have been many a actors who have donned the cowl over the years ranging from the heroic Val Kilmer to the forgettable George Clooney.
This led me to wonder how would the character have panned out had our own Bollywood stars played The Batman. Let see one by one.
| 1. Salman Khan | |
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The accented Khan would have suited best as when he speaks in accent he is hardly intelligible, much like Batman whisper. How awesome would it have sound.
Catwoman: “Tumne Gotham ke liye bahut kuch kiya. Ab bas karo”.
Batman: “Nahin, ek baar jo maine commitment kar di, toh main apne aap k bhi nahin sunta”.
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| 2. Shahrukh Khan | |
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He is no alien to wearing tight body suits and saving the town. Unlike Batman, his sign would be posing sideways with arms stretched out.
Whenever he would do that, Inspector Gordon would run into his arms with music in the background.His melodrama and his enemies would die weeping. Casting Robin for him would be a no brainer! |
| 3. Akshay Kumar | |
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A flirt Batman. A Kishen Kanhiyya. More like Bruce Wayne, partying with models on his yacht. His endless gags one after the another and his enemies would go insane laughing.
Dialogue: “Mein apne desh ka pehla launda hoon jo chimkadad ban ke ud riya hoon.”
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| 4. Ajay Devgn | |
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The Singham Batman would break the fingers when pointed at.
Aata majhi satakli, aali le aali Joker, teri baari aali. The superhero with tilted head would be famous for car chases, blowing and flying cars as he chases his enemies in Bat Car.
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| 5. Saif Ali Khan | |
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The cool urbane Batman with a sheepish smile.
“Ek baar mein samajh gaye ki main Batman hoon ya mein waapas ghoom ke aaoon”.
He has his readymade Batgirl in Kareena. He would roam around flirting with umpteen girls while his enemies would get eliminated. “Bade aaraam se”.
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| 6. Aamir Khan | |
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The perfectionist Batman. He would sleep hanging upside down at the ceiling, lest the character gets diluted. He would surgically get bat wings and paint his face black.
Instead of fighting crimes, would fly away and live with bats in their caves. His logic, Bat’s don’t fight crimes, they just hang upside down and terrorize people. |
| 7. Abhishek Bachchan | |
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This would be the first Batman of its kind. Liberation! Instead of the Cape, he would be donning a gown. Instead of all black, it would be all red and pink.
He would charm his enemies and live with him happily ever after. |
Ek Main Aur Ek Tu: Seriously!
Recently I saw Ek Main Aur Ek Tu (EMAET) featuring Imran (Rahul) and Kareena (Riana). It was tad slow but a good time pass. The movie was meandering towards an expected finale when the director decided to surprise us. Under the pretext of mature ending, Rahul and Riana decided to be Just Friends.
I couldn’t help but LOL literally. How do people let themselves be manipulated like this? Rahul was happy with his life at the end. He was fine with continuing his friendship in the hope of she agreeing to marriage someday. I have serious issues with people who use this Just Friends after egging the other person on. I have further issues with guys/girls who let themselves into this honey trap.
What I hate is Friendship being insulted, which for me is one of the most sacred relationships. If it’s Friendship, it should not be affected by gender. Right? A friend can be a guy or a girl; one should have similar dedication and feeling towards him/her if they are just friends. Agreed? However most of the people never stick to it. The least they can do is be honest about it.
“He took me out for dinner to Taj last night. He is just a friend of mine”. Huh! First of all there are no free lunches dear. Would he have taken a male friend of his to an equally lavish dinner at Taj? Everyone knows the answer. Stop justifying and just admit that you too were leading on.
In EMAET, Rahul is highly ignorant, or we can say he is too blind in love. He is happy at that very moment coz the girl he loves is there to give him company and he hopes that she will marry him someday. What he doesn’t understand is that Riana has specifically explained her position of being Just Friends. Hence she has no commitment and she needs to give no reason for the break-up. What would happen if one day Riana comes and says, “Hi Rahul meet my boyfriend James”. She would have committed no sin, after all she had already told him that they are nothing more than friends and that’s that.
What would happen to Rahul then? He will be devastated. During a breakup, at least you get to know a reason, you argue, fight and split. Here it’s simple plain stupidity. He won’t even be able to ask Why? This is what happens when a guy who has never been in a relationship gets smitten by a girl who has been in string of relationships and vice-versa. To top of it, throw in Just Friends and you being blind in love try to live in the moment and accept it.
It was one of the silliest ending I could have imagined. In real life, guys like Rahul deserve all the pain and agony they face, coz they are that stupid. He should have moved on when he had a fight. If he decided to be just friend, he should have quashed all hopes of the marriage, started afresh.
Anyways for me the ending turned out to be fun and I had a good days’ laugh. Also it gave me a topic to write about.
Inception: What is Limbo?
What is Limbo?
According to one of the Catholic theologies, Limbo is described as periphery to hell. People who are not assigned to hell and have died in original sin, have to bide their time in Limbo. In the movie it is explained as a state in the dream where dreamers end up while trying to go too deep into dream levels or by getting killed in the dream under heavy sedation. It’s an unconstructed dream space of raw infinite subconscious which seems more real than reality itself. Here time runs fast enough for one to lose his/her mind.
What happens when one dies in a dream?
If one dies in a dream, he wakes up to the level above (wakes up to reality if dies in a single level dream). In the opening sequence Cobb shoots Arthur while on an extraction mission and Arthur wakes up on the 1st level. This is true for any normal sedative induced dream. Since the Inception involved going to the 3rd level of dream, it required a special strong sedative, with possible side effects. One such side effect was, if a person dies in the dream, he would end up in Limbo.
Is Limbo like being in Comma?
No, limbo is not a state ad infinitum (comma). One gets out of limbo as soon as the sedation wears off. But since in limbo time runs very quickly, mind tends to burn out, even couple of hours of real time would seem like eternity and one might end up insane.
Is Limbo a shared state?
Limbo is indeed a shared state. As stated in the movie, Limbo would be empty except for the things left by someone who had already been there. Hence near the end of the movie, when Adrain and Cobb went to Limbo they found the world which Mal and Cobb had created there earlier. It does not mean that people in two different dreams altogether, will share the limbo. Only the people physically connected by the PASIV device, sharing a single dream will share the Limbo.
How to reach the Limbo?
1. By getting killed in the dream under strong sedative.
Saito and Fischer got killed and reached Limbo.
2. By trying to go deeper and deeper and states getting unstable
a) Cobb and Mal tried going deeper and deeper and reached Limbo where boundaries between reality and dream vanished.
b) On the snow fortress level, Cobb and Adrian tried going deeper from an already unstable state and reached Limbo. (rememeber, the sedative they took could just take them to Level 3, which too seemed unstable). Adrian explained to Cobb that they needed to go deeper to get Fischer back. They found Mal there (Cobb stated that he had created her projection in Limbo over the period of time from the memories he had of her) who was keeping Fischer captive. They also found the world created by Mal and Cob in Limbo as explained earlier.
How to get out of Limbo?
1. If you kill yourself, you wake up to the real world. (Mal and Cobb committed suicide on the railway track and woke up to reality).
2. Get your own kick in Limbo (free fall for Fischer and Adrian) with the kick on any level above (like using the defibrillator in snow fortress for Fischer). These two synchronized events will take you to the level from where the kick was engineered. Fischer and Adrain got out of it this way in the end.
Why didn’t they try to bring Saito back from Limbo just like Fischer?
Saito could have been brought back just like Fischer with synchronized kicks. But it would have been worthless to the mission. Fischer was important and time was running out. So Adrian and Cobb first found Fischer. He was easy to spot since Cobb knew that Mal’s projection would have captured Fischer to force Cobb to come after her. He went to the place in Limbo (their own apartment) where he could find Mal and thus found Fischer. Meanwhile the kicks started taking effect. There was not much time for them to find Saito. Adrian and Fischer went back and Cobb stayed behind to look for him.
How did Cobb end up again on sea shore and hadn’t aged a bit?
One wakes up on the sea shore when arrive in Limbo. Cobb and Adrian woke up there when they got to Limbo to rescue Fischer. Adrian and Fischer left, leaving Cobb behind to find Saito. Considerable time would have passed during his search for Saito. He should have aged in accordance that time runs pretty fast in Limbo. However he ended up again at the sea shore, un-aged. What happened was, Adrian left Cobb in Limbo and came back eventually to Level 1 where Saito and Cobb were left in the drowning car. Saito was already dead by then but Cobb was alive. He died again due to drowning and his new projection entered Limbo (re-entered). Hence he ended up again at the shore un-aged.
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