I engage with the Snark---every night after dark---in a dreamy delirious fight

[freckles_and_doubt]

Today was my first seminar meeting, one of the Victorian literature ones I used to teach, which I've resurrected by way of keeping me sane. Just before I headed off to the venue I realised that the pile of class handouts I'd carefully had copied last week each had an extra page. This turned out to be because I'd accidentally included a faculty agenda in the pile of masters when I took it to the copiers, and no-one actually looked at it during the copying process to realise that the one page was an error. I looked for that agenda everywhere, too. 25 extra, useless copies. This sad little tale tells you absolutely everything you need to know about the dual or triple professional existence I try to lead at the moment, its inherent antagonisms and its occasionally heart-stopping failures. (It could easily have been a deeply confidential document, and I might easily not have noticed until I'd handed it out to the class). We won't get onto the unhappy need to activate Paper-Writing Brain in the presence of Curriculum Advice Lack Of Brain. It's just sad. No-one wins.

On the upside, talking about having your mind thoroughly bent, we saw Inception yesterday. Oo, er. And possibly Cor! or Lawks! Damned good film: intelligently scripted, conceptually interesting, beautifully cast. I am a complete and total sucker for anything about dreams, given not only my own frenetic dream life but my literary adherence to Lewis Carroll, Lord Dunsany et al, but this is particularly well done. The basic heist-movie framework, and the teamwork that entails, provides a solid frame for all the weird dreamy stuff, which is in the event convincing and pleasingly unreal. I could have done with less of the noisy masonry collapses, but I suppose everyone's version of dream-dissolution differs. I also loved the not-quite-openendedness of the last image. Clever. I may need to rewatch it to work out the finer details of the various kicks, but this is no hardship at all. Cool film. Great cast. Recommended.

Comments

The Kick

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

Inception was great. JGL in a suit is worth the price alone.

Re: The Kick

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

JGL in a suit, being efficient and a bit stick-in-the-mud, is almost heart-stoppingly cute. For some reason.

[rumint.livejournal.com]

We also enjoyed Inception a lot, best new concept sci-fi since Matrix, I'd say.

It does reward a second viewing, i picked up a lot of finer details that were very neat.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Inception was very good, but I think it stops short of greatness. Specifically, dreams don't usually have so many right angles and straight lines, so much coherent style and so little sexuality. See criticism here.