Now you see it... Now you don't

Are you watching closely?

Christopherl nolan's mind-boggling methods of storytelling
(read: art) become apparent when he applies the central
theme of the story to the style in which it is told. The
only two nolan films that i have seen (memento and the
prestige) have experimented in directorial styles that
trancend conventional movie making methods, and add to the
story in ingenious ways.

The prestige, presents a story that is simply about two
magicians and the rivalry between them, but is told non-
linearly, and in the format of a three part magic trick.
The entire movie is presented as a magic trick is.. a lot
of showmanship, a lot of distraction...and then the ending
leaves you stunned, and wondering how exactly the trick
was done. The movie left me feeling cheated, and the
ending was something that didn't make sense, and i felt like
there was something i was missing, cuz what was shown was
surely one big trick, and the way the entire thing was
done had to be simple, logical and possible. Thats when it
hit me... Nolan was making the audience feel like they had
witnessed a really good magic trick, where you dont really
accept it because you know there is no such thing as
magic, and yet you dont have a logical explanation for
what you've just witnessed. Really good magicians awe
audiences when they witnesses something they believe to be
impossible... Exactly what the film did for me. The movies
punchline "are you watching closely?" really hints at a
much deeper layer as is the case with all of nolan's
films. Any film that leaves me thinking for days after i'd
seen it and makes me think about the various possible
solutions to the ending i've witnessed, each one as
incredible as the next has to be classified as a brilliant
movie.

The fact that both these films (memento and the prestige)
have so much beyond the obvious ensures that a second
viewing puts an entirely different perspective on the
entire film. This is one that might leave you a bit

dissapointed at first, but then again, you can't always believe

what you see

M E M E N T O

If you haven't seen memento yet, stop reading this article right now, and go see it.What are you doing online when you could be seeing uber cool movies anyway?Memento is a story about a person (Leonard, played by Guy Pearce) with anterograde amnesia. He remembers stuff, he just cant make new memories after the point of time in his life where he was hit on the head by the man who murdered his wife. So the last memory, fresh in his mind, every morning when he wakes up is the sight of his wife dying. Waking up with that thought leaves him with a vengance and a hunger to find his wife's killer that he cant erase ("how can i heal if i cant feel time?"). So in spite of his disablility, he decides to hunt down the killer, with the aid of the facts of his case tatooed all over his body, and pictures of people and places so he doesnt forget them.

The brilliant part about memento is the fact that the story is told backwards... The first scene is the one where he kills the man he was looking for (a man named John G.) and then proceeds to show how he tracked him down (which is the only scene that is actually in reverse, as in a photograph of a dead man undevelops, Leonard takes the picture, the bullet flies out of the dead man's head and back into the gun, and he springs back to life briefly before the first black and white sequence kicks in). In effect, that leaves the viewer with the same span of memory as Leonard, as every time he wakes up, we dont know what has happened before that day/moment, and have as much prior knowledge to the situation as Leonard does, which sometimes leads to funny twists and turns which do well to take us away from the films darker motifs.

Each segment that is in color is actually in reverse chronological order, interspersed with a black and white sequence that is chronological and presents the beginning of the film. The films color sequences eventually work their way backwards and at the end of the film meet the final black and white sequence that blends beautifully into color as a polaroid photograph taken by Leonard develops.

Memento has probably the best style and treatment a film has recieved to put the audience in the shoes of someone with anterograde amnesia, by being as nonplussed throught the entire movie, until the end when all the pieces come together. And when the pieces do start to fit, they unearth a puzzle much deeper and unsettling than is first apparent. Nolan uses a layer of deeper meaning in the form of clues for the audience to see (but mostly tend to miss) in the form of certain dialogues that dont seem to fit "my wife called me lenny.. i hated it" and in micro second flashes of certain things that dont seem to fit in with the rest of the scene. There are so many subtle touches that this film is so full of, that this is one movie that will really be... hard to forget.

Wanted: Schrödinger's cat... Dead or Alive

Schrödinger was onto something when he thought up the famous thought experiment. It was almost as if the solution to his problem wasn't in experimental physics but jumped out of that frame of reference entirely and ventured into philosophy

Did curiosity kill the cat?

of course here, i mean Schrödinger's curiosity when he opened the box to check on his kitty the first place. Could the simple act of opening the box interfere with the experiment and actually send whiskers to the giant kitty litter in the sky? Quantum mechanics says your actions are a lot louder (and in this case, deadlier) than you think they are. So the next time you get curious and want to open a box with a cat, a geiger counter and a little vial of hydrocyanic acid (jeez...where did Schrödinger come up with this?) , think about it a bit.

essentially, the very act of investigating the state of the system actually contributes to the state you view as the result finally. Its like saying the cat was either dead or alive before, (or both,
but we'll get to that in a bit) but you don't know until you open the box ,the act of which MIGHT kill the cat. So there you are, interfering in the one thing you're trying to observe, the state
of the system before you interfered, And you cant tell that until you open the box! Turns out, what is initially an undeterministic system (the dead or alive cat prior to opening the box) is turned into a deterministic one in the act of opening the box, thereby provided a stable, observable outcome. what actually takes place is a collapse of the Schrödinger wave equation

but somehow nobody thought of asking the kitty what happened while he was there all alone inside that dark box. Well, actually wigner did, and he even decided to allow his friend to open the box to evade all feelings of guilt. what wigner did differently was declare his cat "conscious" as an entity capable of observing the state of the system (which meant the cat knew when it was alive), and his friend (jeez imagine being remembered as wigner's friend all your life) was also another conscious being capable of observing the outcome of the experiment(unless he was intoxicated, but for the sake of thought experiments lets keep out the drunk guys)

by declaring a set of conscious observers, wigner asks the inevitable question "who killed the cat?" did it die when the box was opened by my friend? was it dead before? strangely enough, these exact same questions underly the principle of quantum mechanics and philosophy at the same time. Doesn't something exist only once it is Observed by another? otherwise what is an
existence? And whats to say the observer's interpretation of what he see's affects what is the reality of the unobserved object? to say for sure, the cat was dead before the box was opened is like trying to say you know the state of an object, even though no information has been received by you to conclude the same.


Randall Munroe of Xkcd adds a nice dimension to the problem:










Information is the key that binds it all together. Heisenberg was the first guy to say "i think maybe there's an electron there..." and when he was sure that he was uncertain, and even proved that he wasn't really looking at
the electron he wanted to observe he still couldn't tell you more than one aspect of its state accurately. for being so insightful, and telling the scientific world that he dint have a darn clue, he was of course, awarded the Nobel prize

DISCLAIMER: No imaginary Cats were hurt in the making of this experiment

Out of the frying pan

And into the fire...

Mind Trap

A while back, Time Magazine published an article on a new revelation in brain mapping. Their test subject was a woman who was in a "vegatative" state. it was initially thought that her concious mind was inactive, and that she was in a permanent subconcious state. They conducted an experiment with electrodes connected to monitor neural flux to map the brain...the results were terrifying. It turns out, when she was told to imagine playing tennis, parts of her brain related to motion were active, and certain other memories made the brain respond differently. This woman was Concious. But she was a vegetable. She was living in a Mind-Trap. The worst imaginable condition. Imagine being alive, but being trapped in the depths of your own mind. You can hear people, you can think. But you cannot move or respond in any way. Like a Prison for the concious mind. A science fiction story "The Jaunt" by stephen king explores the possibility of the concious mind being trapped for an eternity without the body.
http://dwalin.ru/books/King,%20Stephen/The%20Jaunt.doc
would the mind be able to live alone, without any sensonary output, while being able to have all kinds of sensonary input? An absolutely terrify though.

Rage

Blacksburg, va, April 16, 2007, 7.15 am

Cho Seung-hui,23, walks out of West Ambler Johnston Hall after killing two students Emily J Hilscher and Ryan C. "Stack" Clark. A few minutes later, 911 recieves a call about the shooting. Cho walks back to his room, and re-arms his Glock-19. He doesnt stop there. He then proceeds to Mail his manifesto to NBC

at 9.15 that morning, he proceeds to Norris Hall and kills 30 more people, slowly, methodically, with two handguns in a classroom building, 2 hours after the first 911 call

“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today,But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.” Says Cho “I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. It’s not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters that you f---, I did it for them... When the time came, I did it. I had to”

he even refers to gunmen in previous school shootings (Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenagers who killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., eight years ago) as "martyrs"

Cho himself believes this to be a act of greatness and compares himself to jesus saying "Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."

Stephen King's novel titled "Rage" about a school shootout had been found in the locker room of a former shooter. In another incident, a school shooter actually quoted lines from the book in reference to the book's shooter, charlie saying "this sure beats algebra, doesn't it?"

"Rage" was taken out of print after these incidents.

Cho's life as a student at Virginia Tech is a real eye-opener. He was a Taciturn kid who was visibly disturbed. The plays he wrote as a student were disturbing to say the least:

http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays/

The mind of a psychopath. Makes Kevin Spacey in "se7en" look like he was a nice guy...

XKCD

www.xkcd.com ... Randall Munroe is sheer genius...

Chaos isn't just a theory

One of my greatest loves is Science. The kind that makes you really wonder. Most of what i dont understand is what fascinates me. Like Chaos Theory for instance. Here is this wonderful world we think we understand and there actually is a theory that says all the approximating you've ever done will come back one day to smack you in the head... cuz thats the way the world is, its just chaotic. Sooner or later its all gonna fall to pieces and you're going to die a very confused death. Bet you dint need chaos theory to figure that one out.
even the innocent sounding Butterfly Effect states that something as small as a buttefly flapping its wings in tahiti can cause a tornado in Mexico. And no, all mexican's are not going to be exterminated by killer butterflies, its just the way the world is, Unpredictable.

To think you know you understand it would be graver mistake then admitting things are messed up whether you understand em or not. Thats a bit like life actually. And relationships. And C# programmers who work overtime. Cuz the universe conspires to kick you in the ass if you think you've got it all figured out. At least being lost means you know for sure where you are.

We're all neck deep in it. Chaos. Look around you... what if gravity suddenly stopped leaking in from that other dimension you're so used to. Maybe then you'd start believing in centrifugal force. When i read Jurassic Park i thought the book was so much cooler than the movie, not just cuz Chaos theorist Ian Malcom was a pessimist and told the old dude "Nature will find a way" (what he really meant was "Run NOW Before the mommy dinosaur changes sex to a daddy dinosaur and starts making copies of himself and uses your park as his playpen") But also because it was so much more about nature being unpredictable and the know-it-all being the one running away from the velociraptors. So whoever thought up chaos was just figuring a way to tell the nerds "the worlds gonna end and i've done the math to prove it". I like that. Someone who says we dont know enough about the system to calculate an end result, because the inital conditions we started off with were incomplete in the first place. Every tiny Change we make has Drastic consequences on the end result. The time you made your first bonfire as a kid. The first time you ever spoke to a girl. Everything you do early on, affects your life in major ways later. The little things early on are what really matter. By the time its later on in life, the big things are totally out of control. Similarly, every minor change in a mathematical calculation has the potential of giving you immensly different end reults. Never felt bad about rounding Pi off to two decimal places before this huh? Well, you shouldn't have, cuz now you're totally screwed.
There's only one hope for you, catch all of them damn butterflies before its too late!

Top 10 Signs You're a Townie

I live in South Mumbai or town side as its more commonly known. People here are Different from the rest of Bombay. They're like a totally different species from the usual bunch you find in the other parts of the city. Live here for a while and you Become the city. A few signs to let you know you're turning into a Townie:

1) You actually think "Sophia" college is pronounced "So-fa-ya" and not "So-fee-ya"
2) You go to Cafe Royale and know every item on the menu with 6% alcohol or more
3) You Have a really nice car, but everyone's looking at the chick in the passenger seat with you
4) You have a really nice chick
5) You have an accent, even if you're 13 and have never been outside the country
6) You know all streets by their Anglicized names, and a Cabbie wouldn't know where to go if you used any other variant
7) as far as you're concerned, Mumbai City is what's south of VT station
8) Whenever you travel by a local train, you're in an empty compartment by the window seat, and people moving in the opposite direction are either squashed into a giant sardine can on wheels or are above the train dodging electrical cables
9) If you want to take a trip to the sea-side all you have to do is walk for a couple of minutes as opposed to planning an outing and driving there
10) You're biggest worry is which pub/disc/club to go to on a Saturday night

Life needs a rewind button

EDIT : George to Jerry Seinfeld in "Seinfeld" :

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What is that, a bonus? I think the cycle is all backwards. You should die first. Get it out of the way. Then live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch and you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs and alcohol. You party. You get ready for High School. You go to grade school and become a kid. You play. You have no responsibilities. You become a baby. You go into the womb. You spend your last nine months floating...you finish off as an orgasm.

Now THAT sounds like a way better way to life. get the ugly parts out first :)

Chasing Cars

"You're like a dog chasing a car. You'll never catch it and you wouldn't know what to do with it if you did."

thats what Gary Lightbody's (lead singer, Snow Patrol) father told him in reference to a girl Lightbody was infatuated with. Gary dint feel too bad about it... nope, he went on to make a really sucessful band and showed his dad who'd be chasing whom ;)

We'll do it all

Everything

On our own

We don't need

Anything

Or anyone

If I lay here

If I just lay here

Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know

How to say

How I feel

Those three words

Are said too much

They're not enough

If I lay here

If I just lay here

Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told

Before we get too old

Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time

Chasing cars

Around our heads

I need your grace

To remind me

To find my own

If I lay here

If I just lay here

Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told

Before we get too old

Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am

All that I ever was

Is here in your perfect eyes

They're all I can see

I don't know where

Confused about how as well

Just know that these things Will never change for us at all

If I lay here

If I just lay here

Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

a tribute to a really amazing song, and an ironic source of inspiration :-)

Breaking Benjamin - The Diary of Jane

I love music. Rephrase. I love my music. Once in a while a song comes along that i really like. I love digging deep, finding the kinda music that really gets me.

i came across Breaking Benjamin a while back, mostly cuz i came across the songs "Follow Me" and "Blow me away" During my Counter-strike Crazy days, while i was into making videos and stuff. They're a really brilliant and virtually unknown band (at least amongst my peers) and i totally love their style. This one song in particular "The Diary Of Jane" is really a class apart cuz it tells the story that gets deeper every time i listen to it. Boy Loves Girl, Girl Dies, Boy Reads Girls Diary. Thats all clear from the video, the actual song is what really Hits me:

If I had to

I would put myself right beside you

So let me askWould you like that?

Would you like that?

And I don't mind

If you say this love is the last time

So now I'll ask

Do you like that?

Do you like that?

NO!!

Something's getting in the way

Something's just about to break

I will try to find my place

in the diary of Jane

So tell me how it should be

Try to find out

what makes you tick as I lie down

Sore and sick, do you like that?

Do you like that?

There's a fine line

between love and hate

And I don't mind

Just let me say that I like that

I like that

Something's getting in the way

Something's just about to break

I will try to find my place

in the diary of Jane

As I burn another page

As I look the other way

I still try to find my place

in the diary of Jane

So tell me

how it should be

Desperate, I will crawl

Waiting for so long

No love

there is no love

Die for anyone

What have I become?

Something's getting in the way

Something's just about to break

I will try to find my place

in the diary of Jane

As I burn another page

As I look the other way

I still try to find my place

In the diary of Jane

its not everyday that you figure out that you've never been loved. Its nice to live in that illusion sometimes, that people really Do care.