TV: BBC's new series, "Human Planet"

After the immense success of Planet Earth and Blue Planet, the BBC network has turned its focus towards human beings and how incredible we truly are as a species. It is true that we are capable of much evil and destruction, but we are also capable of truly amazing things. We should not lose sight of that. The clip below gives a tantalizing glimpse of the upcoming series. Sidenote: I love how the logo looks like a human eye!

It is currently airing on BBC One and BBC HD. Not sure when we will see it on an American network.

"In Praise of Reading and Fiction"

All of you know already how important reading is to me. It's such a huge part of me and my life that it is hard to imagine what it would be like without it. Especially, without the genre of fiction. In 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa (a major Latin American writer) won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa gave a moving Nobel Prize lecture entitled "In Praise of Reading & Fiction", which discussed the importance of fiction in his life and to humanity itself. He was able to say about reading fiction what I don't have the eloquence to say. I swear, it's like talking to myself when I read this. Here are a few excerpts I found that especially resonated with me: 

"But thanks to literature, to the consciousness it shapes, the desires and longings it inspires, and our disenchantment with reality when we return from the journey to a beautiful fantasy, civilization is now less cruel than when storytellers began to humanize life with their fables. We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal." 

Vargas also had a troublesome childhood, and how reading and writing became his comfort. Is it any real surprise that I also found an escape in science fiction and fantasy?

"I lost my innocence and discovered loneliness, authority, adult life, and fear. My salvation was reading, reading good books, taking refuge in those worlds where life was glorious, intense, one adventure after another, where I could feel free and be happy again. And it was writing, in secret, like someone giving himself up to an unspeakable vice, a forbidden passion. Literature stopped being a game. It became a way of resisting adversity, protesting, rebelling, escaping the intolerable, my reason for living. From then until now, in every circumstance when I have felt disheartened or beaten down, on the edge of despair, giving myself body and soul to my work as a storyteller has been the light at the end of the tunnel, the plank that carries the shipwrecked man to shore. "

Here, he talks about how fiction can transform us:

"From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing us from succumbing to lethargy, self-absorption, resignation. Nothing has sown so much disquiet, so disturbed our imagination and our desires as the life of lies we add, thanks to literature, to the one we have, so we can be protagonists in the great adventures, the great passions real life will never give us. The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality. Sorcery, when literature offers us the hope of having what we do not have, being what we are not, acceding to that impossible existence where like pagan gods we feel mortal and eternal at the same time, that introduces into our spirits non-conformity and rebellion, which are behind all the heroic deeds that have contributed to the reduction of violence in human relationships. Reducing violence, not ending it. Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility."

The entire lecture can be read here. It is well worth the time.

Review: Tron Legacy

Synopsis:  After defeating Master Control and restoring freedom to the digital realm, gaming software genius Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) suddenly disappears, leaving his young son Sam to grown up alone in the real world. But everything changes when Sam turns 27, and his father's friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) receives a message on his old pager from the long-abandoned Flynn's Arcade. While investigating Kevin's disappearance, Sam finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 25 years. Together, father and son race through a cyber universe threatened by the elder Flynn's upgraded program, C.L.U 2, whose hunger for power has gotten out of control. - taken from imdb.com

Careful, there are some spoilers ahead.

Tron: Legacy is a movie that has audiences very divided. The biggest complain seems to be that the movie is all effects, with an overly simple storyline. I have to disagree with them. Keep in mind, that my perspective is that of someone who has not seen the original Tron. That movie has its own crazy following even though it is generally regarded as a BAD movie. And yet, it has fan as intense as any Trekkie or Star Wars fanatic. It reached an audience and it changed them forever. This was before there was a computer in every home and the internet wasn't around yet. The brilliance of the original Tron didn't lie in the effects, it was this idea that this laser could digitize a user, and imprint their soul onto the programs that they had created, and that computers could be CONNECTED to each other and "speak" to one another. I believe the same thing happens in Tron: Legacy, it's not about the effects. It's a lot more cerebral than people might initially believe.

Yes, the movie is gorgeous. Once Sam Flynn crosses over into the Grid, I dare you to not let your jaw drop. It's beautiful. And not in a lush, verdant way, such as with Avatar. That doesn't make it any less stunning. Its this awesome, tech sexy aesthetic that just makes sense.When Sam gets involved with the games when he initially gets on the Grid, there's an amazing shot of a program getting "killed" by a disc in slow motion, and its beautiful. The shot is in the trailer as well. And let me tell you, the lightcycles? Oh, the lightcycles. Freaking. Sweet. I think I missed about half the lightcycle battle because I was so busy watching the living techno ribbon candy light trail flowing out of the damn things. 

Also worthy of note is the music. The score done by Wendy Carlos is well done but holy crap, do Daft Punk steal the show. They rock this movie, and take the soundtrack from cool to totally badass. Whoever had the idea to let them do the soundtrack needs a raise. Immediately. Disney, get on that shit. 

I was really impressed with Olivia Wilde's turn as Quorra. Her character had the most "spark" to her, and her social naivete was fun to watch. My favorite moment is when she and Sam are discussing books in his father's home, she mentions her favorite is Jules Verne and asks him, "Do you know Jules Verne?" Sam replies that he does. She looks at him with wonder and asks in an awestruck, breathless tone, "What's he like?!" Adorable! Kevin Bridges, as always, is a delight. You can see him channeling a bit of "The Dude" with Flynn's Zen philosophy. You can't help but smile at some of his dialogue. I can't compare Flynn to how he was in the original unfortunately, so I'm not sure if he stayed true to the character. As for Sam Flynn, I'm really glad that they picked a relative unknown to play him. It was refreshing. Sam doesn't really have a lot of range in terms of emotions for the film, but Garrett Hedlund works with what he has and I believed in him. I was right there with him the whole time, and that's really important.When Sam finally has the ability to get his father back, something he had given up on, he becomes a man possessed.

Of course this isn't to say that there aren't any negatives about the film. There are. There are some plot holes big enough to drive a lightcycle through. Such as, why is it so dangerous that an army of programs goes through the portal? Don't they just become people? That's what happens to Quorra after all. it's not like they can infiltrate our global network as human beings or anything. And now that Quorra is an organic being, does she know she has to pee? I also really wanted to see more of a redemption arc for Tron/Rinzler. Obviously he had been reprogrammed by C.L.U to serve as his enforcer since Flynn last saw him. Once Kevin Flynn is able to make eye contact with him, call him "Tron" and ask what he has become, he starts having flashbacks of when he saved Kevin. During the Light Jet chase, Tron/Rinzler is about to take the killing shot when he is finally able to overcome his programming and says, "I fight for the users", crashes into C.L.U's light jet to allow the heroes to escape. But as they fall, C.L.U is able to obtain Tron's baton and fly away while Tron falls into the Sea of Simulation. The whole turnover just happened a bit too quickly for me, you would think as a program it would be difficult to overcome programming. I guess maybe since Flynn directly created him, that would create a stronger bond with the two.

I want to confront this idea that Tron is too simple a story & that there isn't a lot going in the movie. First of all, I'd like to remind these people that Avatar was criticized for having too simple a story. It ended up winning the Oscar for Best Film. At least Tron doesn't slap you in the face with its message (don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed Avatar). This isn't to say that the story structure isn't simple. They did get that right. But calling the whole movie simple means they are overlooking a lot. It is not overtly complex with intertwining plotlines. It can be easily overlooked and seen as hollow by those who are looking for more obvious complexities.

This movie is visually representing things that are seen as ones and zeroes in our world, its a physical representation of an abstract concept all while struggling with one of the greatest ethical quandaries in the modern day world. So, yes, you're going to have to simplify it a bit to sell it to the general public and kids. Like Avatar, the hero gets dumped into an unknown world and is swept up into events larger than himself. The narrative structure is built on the abandonment issues of a kid whose father disappeared over twenty years ago. If that's all you're looking for, that's all you're going to get out of it.

This movie is two things: it is a mad scientist story (the scientist being Flynn), but primarily it is an allegory for the dawn of the digital age. I don't mean that in a rhetorical sense but in a literal sense. It's about whether or not information should be free, and what the nature of information is. The idea of digital freedom pervades the entire movie. We also come to realize our digital naivete in the film through the character of Flynn, who had the chance to play God and messed up very, very badly.

This is one of those movies that when exiting the theater, I thought was just good. However once I started thinking about it again, teased it apart a little more, the more I liked it. If I can, I definitely want to see it again in theatres because what can I say? This movie is hella fun.