Barely-there: Reflections on Life

There you have it. Life. 
That’s usually the way life is handed over to us. As a surprise. 
And it is also exactly the way it is taken from us. Maybe not as surprising, but suddenly, most of the times. You may have lived a 100 years, 47 or 10, in the end, we all share this one elusive moment, this long corridor we have to go towards the door. We’ll all end up towards the big red signs. E X I T, sooner or later.
                                      

First Light by Brian Devon

Have you ever made the bold statement, that you will never ever die? Maybe you did, as a child. We all do think this at one point in our lives, when we feel invincible, youthful and a bit spoiled by the richness of it all. It passes. It doesn’t mean one would necessarily want one's life to end either. The fragments of longevity, the pieces of a life, they are very precious to us mortals.

In the end, we all are un-eternal, passing states of existence, really, silly little selves, and most of us don't even make it in the News Reports once, for either good or bad reasons.

He or she went peacefully usually means there wasn’t offered much resistance, either for a lack of strength or determination. Maybe “body” sometimes is truly convincing in stating that there isn’t much to gain in resisting anymore. 

And that cursed clock is ticking forwards, as always.

At least we hope for something in the end, these last eye-opening thoughts, images, buried memories to surface and ultimately, crystal clear insights on how and why there is something rather than nothing. We imagine the mental floodgates opening, washing out the lived memories of one existence. When preconceptions crumble and all our judgement fails, we die as we are born. As spectators of one slightly naive slide show. One last trip down memory lane. That's what we expect.

Tunnel with person walking towards the light. Sounds familiar?

I am not sure if it’s good to think about death or the dying in a certain way with white lights, tunnels and so on, but on the other hand, if there is nothing that awaits us from the moment of death forth, besides darkness, it wouldn’t be much of a loss either. Hardly any grounds to file a complaint when our lifetime expires.

I sometimes feel like I am an old being, much older than I actually am, I don’t mean in a creepy I have lived in another lifetime sort of way, but in a rings-around-my-belly kind of way. I feel old, but not wise. Wise would be great. Wise is old with an attitude. I don’t have that luxury yet. At the moment, I just feel like a used car, but one without great mileage. 

Anyhow, when I sometimes think about the things I didn’t do, the opportunities I missed so far, the children I could already have had, I must admit, that pure wisdom is probably far down the list of the typical “been there - done that” mentality. In the end, all the things we do to gain something, let it be status, money, acceptance, our parents approval, or whatever it is that propels and motivates, they are purely ornamental, as are all things finite, lacking in proper substance to keep us warm.

When life itself won’t hold still for a moment, to put those achievements in a nice frame to let them be enjoyed and appreciated, they must be worthless, nothing but fleeting shapes, soulless containers, and a false promise of some kind of reward. The cake is a lie. Life's achievements won’t guarantee anyone a special seat or better treatment when the final lights are fading. On this train or the next.

It’s a rather grim outlook and a really depressing thought, I agree. But it doesn’t mean, we should stick our heads in the sand and sit tight until day x finally comes. As a living, breathing being we lack the capacity to grasp the concept of what it truly means to be dead anyhow. So why not do something about it while we can?

The good thing is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be like that forever. The inevitability of death shrinks with every research done to understand and cure disease, every new insight in regenerative medicine, and every new person reaching 100 years now proves that we are successfully pushing some boundaries in that direction, prolonging lifespans as we speak. 

And this gives me some much needed hope that we may be, after all, not a dying breed, but a prospering one and really, happy little selves, if silly ones, nonetheless.

The Medusa of Jellyfish. Turritopsis nutricula; lifespan: potentially infinite

Bridesmaids reviewed: Fantastic filthy fun

Another review on top of a review. I just had to do it! The bridal girl flick is back. It has been done a thousand times over. But the good thing is that this movie breaks with the conventional rules of the chick-flick/romantic comedy in such a fantastic way, that, girls, you may also bring your boyfriends or hubbies, I guarantee, they'll love it, too.

If you expect something praised to be "as good as the female version of Hangover",

prepare to be disappointed. It's ten times better! I'm not saying this because I am a girl, and I am not saying it, because I don't care for a good tiger-in-your-bathroom joke, really, who doesn't, 

but all in all, the movie Bridesmaids, in all regards, is just plain better than fun filled gag machine Hangover. We have television-comedy experienced director Paul Feig to thank for that.

The main character is mid 30s Annie (Kristen Wiig, also co-writer), who bears the same name as writer Annie Mumolo. Naturally Annie is not the one getting married, but her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is, and sad Annie slowly falls to pieces in light of the upcoming change. It's not only because of her best friend's marriage, but a sum of other things, going wrong with her own life.

Annie's mean narcissistic not-wannabe jerk of a boyfriend (Jon Hamm). 
Her failed bakery business (which caused her prior boyfriend to leave her).
Her age. 
Her living situation (a hilarious brother-sister "couple" who does gross things, Matt Lucas of Little Britain), to mention just a few. All the more reason to call her a "sad" character. It's insightfully portrayed by Annie getting out of a ticket by mentioning some of the things that happened to her as a casual side note. Her life is so miserable, she doesn't even need to come up with a sob story to arouse officer Rhodes' (Chris O'Dowd) pity. Now, if that's not desolation, I don't know what is!

Annie's best friend really is her last resort to happiness, and now it's all slipping away from her. On top of all that, Helen (Rose Byrne), the wife of Lillian's fiancé's boss is stealing her thunder, stepping in as a wedding planner. It results in a fierce competition over Lillian's friendship. All these things combined really are tragic and not unrealistic elements of drama even more than of comedy, but, what makes the movie great is turning its true colours upside down into an over-the-top meltdown of excessive fun.

The movie tricks you in the beginning, making you think you watch something completely different, more like Sex and the City but then it's tone changes until the comedic elements almost disappear at all.

But at the latest, when future sister-in-law Megan (Melissa McCarthy) makes an entrance, it is completely turned around again. I can't remember the last time a movie made me laugh so hard, the tears just fell down my cheeks in cascades, but every time Melissa McCarthy does something disgusting, after watching Annie lose another little piece of her sanity, it feels like such a relief (literally speaking) and makes you appreciate the honest tone, witty dialogue and altogether (hate the word, but there it is) multicoloured and real characters even more. Great performances by the cast.

Men, take a good look at Annie. That's how we are. And if you can stomach even more, take a good look at Megan (Melissa McCarthy), too. That's how we are when we are not pretending to be girls. Crazy, disgusting, obsessive but through and through loveable. 

 After being drugged by rival Helen, Annie feels much more relaxed...

Source Code reviewed: It's Quantum Mechanics, Stupid!

Wow this is a first for me! Reviewing a movie which - in this part of the world - has not even been released on DVDs and Blu-Rays yet. Thank you, amazon.co.uk!

Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal, whom my husband once shrugged off as just being that guy from Brokeback Mountain - in Jake's presence! - which is kind of a funny story, because hubby himself felt strangely responsible afterwards, imagining Jake having a major life and career crisis because of his remark.

Back to topic, the other players are Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monaghan, some other guy with a really strange accent, but most importantly a programme called Source Code, which is basically a device to utilize an alternate reality mechanism to access the last 8 minutes of a person killed by a train bomb.

Jake plays helicopter pilot Colter Stevens, who, while being on a mission in Afghanistan, wakes up in a train near Chicago. He soon finds out, that to other persons, including traveling companion Christina (Monaghan) he appears as Sean Fentress, yet he quickly comes to grip with the strangeness of the situation and the reason for him being there. I don't want to reveal too much, let's just say a military unit needs him to identify the train bomber in order to prevent further detonations in Chicago from happening, so he is ordered to check out the other passengers to find the bomb and the person who is responsible for its planting (by the way.. a huge letdown) in 8 minutes time. He is sent back there several times to complete his mission.

Colter Stevens: yet another 8 minutes to find the bomber

So far, so good.

Minor Spoiler alert coming up.

Naturally it doesn't end with Colter identifying the bomber and thereby preventing the other devices from going off. Rule of thumb: there apparently has to be some element of heroic altruism paired up with stupid delusions of grandeur to make a Hollywood storyline work these days. It's predictable, but it's not the thing that ruins the movie.

While the device (Source Code) itself has caused some speculation, even ridicule amongst sci-fi nerds, who find it to be an appalling excuse to make a Groundhog Day-ish movie with the aura and coolness of Matrix and no-it's-not! mystery elements, I think, writer Ben Ripley actually thought about its premise and kept at it as best as he saw fit. The scientific mambo-jambo refers to alternate parallel universes and certain ideas of quantum mechanics, put in a blender with the appeal of time travel and Déjà vu, accurately steering towards the pit holes of all those mentioned things, when nicely mashed up. Still, it wouldn't have mattered, because with a progressive and thought-provoking plot like this, at least I would have been willing to endure a lot of techie-gibberish.

Towards the end of the movie I didn't even know the difference between multiverse, time travel and multi-dimensionality, and I wondered if I ever knew them and then, if the writer knew them, and then, if it mattered, and then, how much I liked Moon, also directed by Duncan Jones! There was much going on, but I still felt engaged, still interested to find out more, until the worst and ultimate thing happened: The end!

Ironically, if it wasn't for the last 8 minutes I would have found Source Code to be a solid sci-fi thriller with some interesting, although shakily executed ideas. Sadly enough, the ending ruins the whole thing. I seriously don't know why they did it like they did, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the idea of the creators to let the hole construct and set of rules crash and burn to get some sort of corny happy ending that pretty much destroys the backbone of their concept. The last few minutes of this movie feel like a foreign body, some sort of alien-ish annex. Completely unnecessary!

And the real ethical kicker: Imagine a programme, being able to create an infinite number of alternate realities, creating that same event (bomb explosions) over and over again by trying to prevent it from happening in the first place! It's a head scratcher!

I have to admit, it is quite possible I just didn't understand the movie's premise. Science fiction is not my strong suit. I can safely say that I registered some interesting technological ideas, and the ambition to create a visionary sci-fi thriller. And even though it's not what I usually do, I'll give the writer/director team points for their ambitious efforts to make a smart movie. They almost succeeded.


Just a little word of advice for a better experience: If you watch the movie on DVD or Blu-Ray stop watching when the scene suddenly freezes up (you will know).

Bomb goes off, but it's not the end!