Bernie Gourley is a writer living in Bangalore, India. His poetry collection, Poems of the Introverted Yogi is now available on Amazon.
He teaches yoga, with a specialization in pranayama, and holds a RYT500 certification. For most of his adult life, he practiced martial arts, including: Kobudo, Muay Thai, Kalaripayattu, and Taiji.
He is a world traveler, having visited more than 40 countries around the globe.
Last week I made a confession about 25 books that I haven’t read that everyone else seems to have. This week, I thought I do the same for movies. These all feature prominently in pop culture, and one can’t go through life without hearing references to them.
1.) Apocalypse Now: I caught a part of the 2001 Redux, but I’ve never seen the original 1979 movie. I know the general plot, but otherwise all I know is that Lt.Col. Kilgore says, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like… victory.”
2.) Citizen Kane: This is at the top of many a list for the best movie ever.
3.) The Crying Game: I, like everyone not living under a rock, know its surprising twist ending.
4.) Gone with the Wind:: As someone who has lived much of his adult life in Atlanta, this is a particular disgrace.
5.) The Killing Fields: I’ve been to Cambodia. I’ve read about the Khmer Rouge, but…
6.) Poltergeist: “They’re here.” That’s all I know.
7.) Psycho: Norman Bates and his mother, hwew, right?
8.) Raging Bull: The name Jake LaMotta rings a bell.
9.) Scarface: “Say hello to my little friend. [delivered in thick, Cuban accent]” Yeah, I know that part.
10.) Taxi Driver: “You talkin’ to me?” That’s all I know.
This is the fifth and final installment in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (not including Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing, which I don’t.) Fans of the series will recognize “Mostly Harmless” as the sum total of the Earth’s entry in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The story focuses on a trio of characters from the original book’s cast: Arthur Dent (of course), Tricia McMillan (a.k.a. Trillian), and Ford Prefect–with the Random addition a new fourth feature character. As the series had already begun trending, this story is more human-centric than the earliest installments. The central story could be divorced from the sci-fi genre with relatively minor modifications. However, as Restaurant at the End of the Universe uses time travel as a sci-fi plot device, this book uses the concept of a parallel universe.
The story begins with our main characters separated from one another. Arthur Dent is making sandwiches of Perfectly Normal Beast (an Orwellian turn-of-phrase as one might expect) on the planet where he crash landed. Trillian, or one of them, is reduced to doing an interview with an astrologer. Ford Prefect is breaking into his place of employment to avoid the accountants in his usual manner of hijinks.
Adams throws each of these characters a monkey wrench. Dent finds out he has a daughter, Random Dent, and that her mother–Trillian–is dropping her on his doorstep. Ford discovers that the Guide is under new and nefarious management, and that they have created an edition with dire ramifications. Trillian, or one of them, gets her big break being picked up by a Grebulon ship only to discover they want her to advise them on astrology.
The notion that no one escapes the feeling of being without a home is a central theme in the book.
This isn’t Adams’ best work. The story has grown stale. It lacks the creative brilliance derived from plot devices like the Infinite Improbability Drive, and–while there may be something to be said for a story with more humanity– it leaves one missing idiosyncratic characters like Zaphod and Marvin. That being said, even at his worst Adams is amusing and thought-provoking. If you enjoyed his earlier books, you could certainly do worse than to finish the series. In the unlikely event that Adams isn’t your cup of tea, this final installment probably won’t revise your assessment.
This is a temporary building that was built in a park for the 2011 summer season of the NO99 Theater Group in Tallinn, Estonia. I don’t know if it has been disassembled as planned or not. It was quite a popular hangout with youths. They had a lending library and there were many skateboarders.
Just like everyone else, when I first watched The Avengers, I was awed. As I digested the experience, however, I realized how appallingly flawed the story was. Can a film that is visually impressive enough dance over the hard parts of story?
Alright, it’s not just being visually impressive. If it were, then the Transformers movies (I’m thinking particularly of the second one) wouldn’t be so sucktacular. No. Filmmakers also need clever quips. This feeds an inexplicable urge of young people to repeat the witty remarks of movie characters ad infinitum. (Confession: I’ve always longed for an excuse to say, “I’m your Huckleberry,” as per Doc Holliday’s words to Johnny Ringo in Tombstone.) It’s not just that the Hulk bashes a marble floor to dust using Loki’s lanky frame, but that he delivers that witty, two-word rejoinder. Together the CGI and the quip seal the scene in one’s mind.
[Spoilers ahead] If one looks up deus ex machina in the dictionary, one learns that it means: “someone or something that solves a situation that seemed impossible to solve in a sudden and unlikely way, especially in a book, play, movie, etc.” If one’s dictionary is online, one would then probably be treated to a video clip of the scene in which Professor Selvig is knocked on the head, becomes unenslaved, and consciously realizes that his subconscious built a backdoor that will allow him to shut down the portal that were previously told can’t be shut. The clip could then continue through the end of the movie (minus the post-credit shawarma scene.) The following are key incidents of deus ex machina in this film:
-a bump on the noggin releases one from the mind-control of a god (A “puny god,” indeed.)
-a conscious mind (in a waking and non-meditative state) knows in great detail what happened in the subconscious
-an attack on the mothership disables all troops on the ground, Independence Day style (worst command and control ever.)
One may be thinking that I’m just one of those douches who picks nits, but I’m really not. These flaws are fundamental to how the story is resolved. They are cheats that make everything that happened leading up to the climax irrelevant. Think about it; if the Professor had gotten knocked on the head 20 minutes earlier, the massive Avengers battle through Manhattan would never have been necessary. They could have called the movie “Professor Selvig’s Magical Mind” and left the Avengers out of it all together.
I’m willing to sustain disbelief about the small things. There are plenty of critics who get into the minutiae of continuity gaffes and the like. A couple of my favorites are below.
Lest one think that I’m picking on The Avengers, that’s only because it’s the third highest grossing film ever and first in the superhero genre. If you’re spending hundreds of millions on a film, you’d think you could throw some chump change into good story-building. I realize that filmmakers have a jaded audience to contend with, and that they have to ramp up the peril to impossible heights to impress. Maybe they are forced to then throw away the resolution of story. Those who read my recent review of The Wolverine, will know that my criticism isn’t restricted to The Avengers.
