Compensation

I've been such a slacker lately as far as the blog has been concerned. There has been so much buzz for the last couple of weeks that I found out that there is not enough hours in a day. Because of this INSOLENCE, I felt that I have to compensate at least a little bit. So, I made this TV spot from one of my favorite films. Hope you like it.

P.S. Next blog post will come up soon.

April 21. 2011. Limitless and movie theater paranoia.

So it happened. I’m going to be 18 in a couple of weeks and I still couldn’t prepare for it. I am talking about moving. I have lived in my current home with my family for six years, so it’s no wonder that you grow attached to the place, talking about real estate love. I found out about the selling four hours after, so I thought that the protest would be futile.

Shock death was fortunately avoided with humanity’s greatest vice, vanity…or maybe it was gluttony..well at least it was self-indulgent.  Thank God for freebies. As a bonus for selling our house, we got several goodies, for example cucumbers and……movie tickets.  Oh nice, everything is  okay now. I should move more often. I am not personally cheap in any form, so I felt that I had to take the benefit of these tickets as soon as possible.

The local movie theatre in the small town of Kajaani, located in Finland, is just a snot spit away, so the possibilities of arriving in time were on my side.

BTW the theatre is named BioRex. Okay now they owe me some form of check….Im serious…WHO’S PAYING!!!

 I decided which movie I was going to see 15 minutes before the beginning and I left to see the movie 8 minutes before the beginning. I have seen dozens and dozens of films in that theatre and I still can’t figure out that I won’t make it in that time!!  Well, I didn’t and…I didn’t learn anything afterwards, because..I made it to the movie…..or I didn’t…..this blog is confused.

I made it to ticket counter two minutes before the beginning and they said that I still have time. Well, I was naturally relieved and after I bought the ticket I stumbled through stairs, so I could get to second store. I fell once (That was literal. I suck at stairs L).  I sat down to sofa waiting for the checker and I was surprised how there were no more than dozen people there with me. I mean, come on! The movie I was going to see, I thought, deserved more recognition. After this surge of surprise and frustration, the confusion kicked in. I realized that I had been sitting there for four minutes and I wondered that should the movie start. Then I realized (I’m a genius) that the movie has already started. I missed the start, because I was failing on the stairs. I have NEVER missed a film that I really paid for (actually I didn’t for this either. I guess nothing has changed)!! I stormed  into the hall where the movie was already three minutes in and….there were only six people. Fuck…this. After the confusion wore off, paranoia kicked in. I was sure that the guys in the projector room noticed me and started to plan something against me. I really wants to seem like a good guy and I went to my place, but the place was right below the projector room. Throughout the film I was thinking that some kind of theatre Gestapo would show up and take me to small room where I would be held for three weeks, because I would be accused of being an anarchist that is trying to steal profit from a humble and sincere Hollywood system. After a while, I calmed town and started focusing on the film, which BTW, the movie was named Limitless.

The plot is about Eddie Morra (Bradley cooper) who is a writer with the dreaded writer’s block. After having another lousy morning when his girlfriend leaves him, his former brother-in law Vernon (From just ludicrous marriage I might add.) stumbles across him and after some awkwardly friendish (?) chatting, Vernon (Who is by the way played by Johnny Whitworth), gives Eddie a mysterious, eye contact looking pill, which will solve all his creative problems. Who? Well, scientifically people only access 20 % of their brain, but with this pill, you can access the full 100 %.

(Yeah! Because you can trust someone named Vernon! I know this is a bit name racist (?), but that’s one of my issues. For example, I have problems to root anyone in Harry Potter, because the names are so suspicious. I wouldn’t have been surprised if at the end of Potter, everyone would have turned out to be the bad guy. WHAT A TWIST!)

Well, Eddie does take the pill and it works. For a couple of hours he becomes a prodigy of God. He finishes his book in a day and manages to get laid just by being a hyper active coke monkey. Then the drug wears off and like every other just-about-to-be-junkie guys think, he stops liking his normal self. So, he wants more. However, when he meets Vernon again, he gets a hint that these pills have fairly questionable origin and throw some macabre situations, Vernon ends up killed violently in his living room. Eddie, while in shock, decides to find the pills and he does find them. Eddie the goes to a success streak, he writes another book and decides to take on stock market and becomes the industry prodigy, which draws attention from the business legend Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro). While everything is going great, the side-effects start to show up, everybody wants a cut and faces the fact that drug will, some way or another, kill him eventually, but does he want to stop the winning streak and does he want to return to life where he went nowhere. In short, does he want to feel his limits.

Throughout the film, I was feeling very mixed emotions about the film and the characters and looking back at it now, I think it is better now than it was when I saw it. The thing that I found a bit anti-climactic was that the film sets up this sense of paranoia and you feel that there is a bigger thing behind all this and, while the film does tease you with this idea, it never truly uses it. There aren’t really characters to be revealed, or  ridiculous dangers to overcome. First I thought that that was frustrating, but after a while, I realized that this is not the point of the film.

This is the story of power and how it dictates the person that consumes it. Every time, when Eddie takes the pill, he becomes the unstoppable wrecking ball of intelligence and confidence, but it’s all in expense of your safety and well being. I feel that the character of Eddie Morra is a villain of the modern film. He belongs on the list with Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver, Jack from Fight Club and especially Craig Schwartz from Being John Malkovich. He isn’t a villain in a traditional sense. These characters, while do things that are questionable in an ideal sense, are from the viewers point of view very rational and relatable. For example, Travis wants to be breath, Jack wants substance in his life and Craig wants to be loved.

Therefore, Eddie is a relatable person whom somewhat bodies humanities primal longing for success and prestige, but the success leads into problems like, double crossing, usage of criminal sources, covering of a horrible crime, which he might be guilty at and it all culminates into fact that he ultimately doesn’t deserve the powers he has. The audience knows the fact that the character doesn’t really deserve anything, but we can’t really blame him, because we would have done the same and all these feelings that this movie provokes gives us a new and enhanced view of this world dog is going to eat another dog and where success is a new kind of vice and the comedic tragedy of it is that most of us would take that vice completely aware of its dangers.

If you think about the film in a distant manner, there are some problems. You see, I have never taken a bathroom break and while I was watching the film, I was always considering it, but I always felt that the slow parts are just about over and every time I was going to go, the film did something interesting. However, it was always so sporadic that I was stuck.

I really liked the visual style of the film and while it is not unique or original, it gives a very solid idea of great intelligence and it fuels the urge to root for the character, because you know how great it is.

The acting was very solid and I was pleased to see Robert DeNiro doing actual work with a GOOD script for once. Bradley Cooper is great, because he has energy and excitement burned in his face.

(Possibly, when he was born, his mother said “I wanna HAPPY BABBEE!!”!!! So, the doctors just made some surgical adjustments and bandages stayed on for 10 years for a full effect.)

You just love the guy and want to be him (Only inferior for Travis Bickle of course J.)

After the film, I just had to have a bathroom break, but I still watched the end credits, because that is a good time to sum up the film in your mind. I felt that this was a perfect film for the point in time I am in right now. Age of 18 means a lot in Finland and in that age, you are legally an adult. You feel the opportunities and the energy to take on all of them. You feel that you have just started living, you see the world differently, you feel independent, you feel important, you feel unstoppable, you feel…………..Limitless.