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As salt sets its seal on your silky skin
I have just been informed that Christopher Nolan, not content to have performed the same indispensable service for the concept of nuclear physics, is now generating discourse about the Odyssey, which I am sure will go over in a respectful and informed fashion on our current internet where every other bright spark has some expert opinion unsullied by such petty considerations as reasonably accurate data that wasn't sicked back up to them by unexamined reception or extractive AI. My contribution to this charybditic scrum is that the Odyssey has too many female characters for me to trust him with it, even before we get to more general reservations about the alienness of the ancient world and its gods who are not reducible to one-stop abstractions or human psychologies writ sky-size. I return to lying on a couch, this time with strange tales of the sea.
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I haven't even finished ignoring the Oppenheimer discourse! It's still crackling its way around the internet! A thinkpiece I did not read just tried to persuade me to reconsider my position on Interstellar!
Alas, the discourse will have to sail forth sans my contribution.
Over the horizon, far away from us.
Should you write Odyssey-type things, I would love to read them.
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I should reread Homer. It's been a decade, at least. Not that I've written anything at all in a year.
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It came out in 2014. I did not see it in theaters, but I remain unconvinced the visual effect could have been so transporting as to keep me from hating the story.
(My track record with Christopher Nolan is mixed, incomplete, and frustrating: he wrote and directed two films which I saw multiple times in theaters and in recent years I just seem to have gone off him.)
I should reread Homer. It's been a decade, at least. Not that I've written anything at all in a year.
The tradition's been around since the end of the Bronze Age. There's no rush.
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Following (1998): Didn't see.
Memento (2000): Really liked! Carrie-Ann Moss! But that was also before I knew the dead wives were going to be a through-line. And it was 2000. Cute when I didn't know you?
Insomnia (2002): I'm going to be a hipster and say the Scandinavian original was better, but it was filmed locally, which was pretty funny. I always forget this is his. Also, that it exists.
Batman Begins (2005): It was fine? Peak Christian Bale being the hot thing, I guess. Not much to say about Batman origin stories, and the plot was hilariously clunky.
The Prestige (2006): Never did see. I hear there were dead wives, but people seemed to like it?
The Dark Knight (2008): FUCKING LOATHED!
Inception (2010): Wanted to set on fire!
Everything Else (2012-2023): Did not see, do not care to see.
Every time I go back to the classics, I get so many more references. It's a very deep rabbit hole.
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Ditto. I didn't even learn of its existence until decades after the fact. It is apparently a no-budget, minimalist neo-noir which I might want to check out if it were not by Christopher Nolan.
Memento (2000): Really liked! Carrie-Ann Moss! But that was also before I knew the dead wives were going to be a through-line. And it was 2000. Cute when I didn't know you?
Carrie-Anne Moss! Actually I remember her more vividly than any other character in the film. It was my introduction to Nolan as a filmmaker and I remember both enjoying it and being way less mindblown by its structure than I felt I was supposed to be, which seems also to have become a theme.
Insomnia (2002): I'm going to be a hipster and say the Scandinavian original was better, but it was filmed locally, which was pretty funny. I always forget this is his. Also, that it exists.
I have acres of feelings about the differences between the two Insomnias. Had no idea the American one was filmed near you. That is neat.
Batman Begins (2005): It was fine? Peak Christian Bale being the hot thing, I guess. Not much to say about Batman origin stories, and the plot was hilariously clunky.
I have not seen more than the occasional TV glimmer of this one. My mother liked it at the time.
The Prestige (2006): Never did see. I hear there were dead wives, but people seemed to like it?
I saw it three times in theaters and still love it despite it being one of the key reasons I do not trust Nolan with the female characters of the Odyssey. David Bowie made a wonderful Nikola Tesla.
The Dark Knight (2008): FUCKING LOATHED!
Have not seen, although I had a secondhand, irrationally negative reaction to a friend telling me I should on the grounds that Heath Ledger's Joker was a perfect archetype of the Trickster, which, look, no.
Inception (2010): Wanted to set on fire!
I saw this movie under physically awful conditions which in hindsight pointed to something incredibly wrong with my relationship with the person with whom I saw it and therefore while I remember enjoying the story on a level of puzzle-box inventiveness, I have never felt like rewatching it and did not agree even at the time that it was trepanningly profound.
Everything Else (2012-2023): Did not see, do not care to see.
Skipped The Dark Knight Rises (2012), partly because I had not seen the preceding installments, partly because
Every time I go back to the classics, I get so many more references. It's a very deep rabbit hole.
And it gets deeper every time someone gets the words out of a new papyrus, which makes me very happy.
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I see why you keep forgetting it's Nolan's, then, since he didn't make a press release about the whole shoot staying sleepless above the Arctic Circle.
(I recognize at this point I am just replicating the discourse.)
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*shudders in Graduate School, bitter as arsenic and slow-acting as lead*
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You also neither compose nor process narrative in a linear fashion, so there has to be some other emotional or intellectual element in the story to engage you, or, anyone who has ever been exposed to Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along has already been punched in the heart by time.
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At least, my dear friend, no one can say we chased the money at the expense of our fondest interpersonal and creative ties.
(If anyone would like to save me chasing it now I've got the game leg, they are welcome to apply.)
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That counts as cool!
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Though Helen DeWitt is very cool.
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NBD, but I have a small mechanical problem with Bluesky. I only use the laptop for both of them, not apps on the phone. If I repost something on Bluesky, it gives me grief about scrolling farther down the page without refreshing.
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Still hoping for Uberto Pasolini's The Return (2024) to show up somewhere I can see it.
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I did not bring you this news
I thought
You see
You might make pained sounds
But if things are going to be charybditic
Can I have a turn being Scylla
You see
I didn't get a lot of dinner
And sailors at the time were mostly cis men
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Can I have a turn being Scylla
Seals can have little a swift ship, as a treat.
(I suspect the ratios of sailors were not, in fact, all that different in the ancient world.)
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cackles
delights in this discussion A kind person made sure I knew about this and I am still gathering strength to thank her rather than telling her what I actually think.
Maybe a giant wave will disrupt the first and only day's filming.
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Come on, Amphitrite.
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--gorgeous phrase that I will treasure forever
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I sincerely like the two movies mentioned, with the caveats mentioned. (I like them enough that I have both of their screenplays, thanks to used book stores.) It is very weird to me to have a major filmmaker out in the world where I have such a miss-to-hit ratio with their generally acclaimed work. If I just bounced off all of his movies, it would make more sense. Instead it's like every ten years or so we're in synch and the rest of the time I would prefer him not to.
And I have enjoyed the commenters you draw to the yard
They're all that cool on their own time!