Inception: Thoughts and Questions

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen "Inception" and want to, stop reading now. 

I saw Inception yesterday. It was a decent movie, but I didn't find it as amazing as people are claiming it to be.

Of course, it's a crime if you don't like a movie which is extremely popular and which everyone else around you likes. The movie's faithful army will try to defend it ferociously. Questioning your intelligence or giving arguments why you must be wrong. I have experienced this, when I said I didn't like "The Dark Knight" and "3 Idiots."

But I'm not saying I don't like "Inception." In fact I'm saying it's all right. Though that apparently is not sufficient -- I should love the movie!

That aside (and this is where the spoiler warning kicks in), I do have some questions from the movie:

1. Why should a dream end because you die in the dream? What stops you from being a part of the dream, but not be alive? I mean, after all, it's a dream.
2. Why does Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio) trust Ariadne (Ellen Page) with so many of his secrets so quickly?
3. When Cobb's wife, Mal, kills Fischer Jr, why does he (Fischer Jr) end up in the next level of the dream and not go into "limbo"? Same for Saito.
4. During the final sequence, what's the kick for the 1st level of the dream? How do they wake up at end of the flight journey to LA? As the ending is a bit fuzzy and you are forced to question if everyone even does wake up, this might be hard to answer. 

Update: Certain theories which answer the questions above and a few more can be found here. 

3 Idiots

People are raving about 3 Idiots everywhere. People like it so much, that talking anything negative about the movie is a crime. The movie-hall where I went to watch it had it on for something like 12 shows -- 12 EFFING SHOWS!! I remember a time where there were only 4 shows in a movie hall and the tickets cost 40 bucks -- given my age, I also remember Keo-Karpin, Rasna, and two rabbits from Lijjat Pappad. Coming back ... yes the movie ... and here is where I put the SPOILER ALERT!

With that out of the way, 3 Idiots is a movie with the message that students should study what interests them rather than what will land them a lucrative job. If I were to describe the general theme of the movie in one word, it's: "Independent-Thinking" (yes, those were two words, but look how smartly I hyphenated them)

While watching the movie, I felt that there were two forces pulling the movie apart. One being the good part (for lack of words in my vocabulary) which showed the real deal in engineering colleges and which made me laugh. The other part being the cringe-worthy part which showed Bollywood illogic in all its charms. The good part reigned the first half of the movie. The cringe-worthy part unfortunately took us to the end.

There are jokes in the movie which have been lifted off the net. A certain part even seemed to have come from the book "The Kite Runner". So if we think about it, although the makers of the movie wanted the message of independent and original thinking to get to the audience, they themselves didn't get it completely.

Final word: watch it once. Or if you can wait, just download it off the web (legally) after 12 weeks and don't spend money on those expensive tickets.

Questions from Avatar

I saw James Cameron's Avatar yesterday. I liked the movie, but have some questions (questions may contain spoilers ... ALERT!):

• Why does the Pandora wildlife allow "bonding" (the connection they make via those worm-like things at the end of their hair)? What is in it for them -- there doesn't look to be an evolutionary advantage? Who would want to be controlled by someone else just to (sometimes) serve and die (did I just define soldiers)?
  

Figure 1: Thanators are the meanest in the Pandora wildlife. Not many people like them.

• Where are the f*cking robots? Come on, I mean. If we have rubbished earth, mastered space-travel and found life on another planet, we would (should? (must?)) have honed our present-day robots. And if so, why not send them to battle instead of humans?
  
• More of a philosophical question: how do you determine, which is the most intelligent life-form on a planet? Do we just assume that whoever looks closest to human beings, is the most intelligent? The Na'vi happened to be the most human like. Apart from the fact that they have hair which bonded, every other aspect is human: looks and body structure, red blood, hunter gatherer, bipeds, sleep, their own language, rituals, etc. In fact Na'vi's are just the regular folks who live in jungles in planet earth. And we have our sympathies towards them just because they look like us?! I mean, who was rooting for good old Thanator (Figure 1), except me, when he was trying to kill Jake Sully. I ask: is it OK to kill Thanators, but not the Na'vi?
• Why were the main ship's glass walls not vulnerable to the Na'vi arrows, but those of the choppers were?

  Answered (source):

  However, it is rumored that a Na’vi firing in a vertical attack dive can generate enough combined velocity (between the 40-meter-per-second release-velocity of the arrow from the bow, and the 120 knot dive speed) that the two-meter long arrow can hit with sufficient kinetic energy to penetrate the Scorpion canopy if fired at close range.

  
  
• What would happen if two Na'vi hair-bonded? Who would control whom?

Figure 2: The Na'vi are blue and angry. Bonus question: what would happen if someone cut off a Na'vi's hair? Who is their barber?

• During the final bombing, in all their wisdom, why do the humans choose to literally throw explosives out of the main ship? And such explosives which explode, without a detonator, on just contact? The attack on the home-tree was impressive, with all those rocket like missiles. But no, for the Tree of Souls, we will just dump some explosives labeled ... "explosives" (duh!).
• And continuing on the attack on the Tree of Souls ... did the humans leave their entire base unguarded and take each and every soldier for the attack? If not, then how did the Na'vi conquer Hell's Gate (the base) so easily?
• Who amongst us believes that there will be a sequel? I for one do and am hoping that it does. I mean come on, if I were the CEO of RDA (the evil corporation exploiting Pandora), apart from being extremely handsome, I would also be quite pissed-off that a bunch of indigenous folks have stopped my mining operation because a trigger-happy general cut down a tree. And I would want to send in more forces, and get my base back.

  And if I were Jake Sully, I would know that this is going to happen and would be busy training the Na'vi in the art of explosives and gun warfare. Maybe I will fix couple of Gun Turrets on a Thanator, maybe people will start liking Thanators because of this, maybe the Thanator population will become happier, maybe more people will start hair-bonding with Thanators ... Ah! What a pretty Pandora!
  

Without Fear -- Glaring Mistake?

On my flight from Bangalore to Delhi I finished reading the auto-biography of Gandhi and immediately picked up "Without Fear" -- a biography of Bhagat Singh by Kuldip Nayar. Apart from recounting the life stories of Bhagat Singh and his companions, the author tends to glorify the revolutionaries' role and importance, rather than let the readers form their own opinion.

One part of the book just seems plain wrong.

In page 64, when the author is recounting the details of the plans being set by the revolutionaries to bomb the legislative assembly, showcasing Bhagat Singh's frustrations, he writes:

... Bhagat Singh too was tired of violence being associated with them. Gandhi's description of them as 'irresponsible young men' irritated him.

Had Gandhi ever tried to sit around an evening fire with a peasant and tried to gauge what he thought? Had he spent a single evening in the company of a factory labourer and shared his views with him? The revolutionaries knew what the masses thought.

The two questions above, related to Gandhi, are posed rhetorically and are intended to make the reader believe that Gandhi didn't know the problems of peasants or the factory worker. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Gandhi led successful Satyagrahs in Champaran and Kheda (for the rights of peasants), and the mill workers' strike in Ahmedabad (for the rights of factory laborers). In all these three places Gandhi was amongst the people, trying to understand them, helping them. The author also doesn't substantiate his statement that "The revolutionaries knew what the masses thought."

Deeply disappointed.

Update: I stand corrected. The two questions posed are actually derived from Bhagat Singh's article "The Philosophy of the Bomb" under the section "DO THE MASSES BELIEVE IN NON-VIOLENCE". Reproduced below to give the complete context.

Gandhi has extended his tour limit to where a motorcar can take him, the practice of staying only with the richest people in the places visited, of spending most of his time on being complimented by his devotees in private and public, and of granting Darshan now and then to the illiterate masses whom he claims to understand so well, disqualifies him from claiming to know the mind of the masses.

No man can claim to know a people's mind by seeing them from the public platform and giving them Darshan and Updesh. He can at the most claim to have told the masses what he thinks about things. Has Gandhi, during recent years, mixed in the social life of the masses? Has he sat with the peasant round the evening fire and tried to know what he thinks? Has he passed a single evening in the company of a factory labourer and shared with him his vows? We have, and therefore we claim to know what the masses think.

We assure Gandhi that the average Indian, like the average human being, understands little of the fine theological niceties about Ahimsa and Loving one's enemy. The way of the world is like this. You have a friend: you love him, sometimes so much that you even die for him. You have an enemy: you shun him, you fight against him and, if possible, kill him.

As the section heading says, Bhagat Singh is trying to emphasize that the masses understand the means taken by the revolutionaries better than non-violence.

So yes, the questions related to Gandhi were thoughts of Bhagat Singh, but better context could have been provided by the author. I absolve the author of trying to mislead the reader, but still am skeptical of the charges made against Gandhi by Bhagat Singh.

Sansa Clip Saga -- Part 3 (Finale)

As promised by the Sandisk customer support, my new Sansa Clip arrived a few days back. It has got a capacity of 8 GB, wherein the one which went bad was only 4 GB (they didn't have 4 GB stock)! I have taken it out for a couple of runs and its working perfectly fine.

Sansa Clip Saga -- Part 2

Following my post about the poor experience I had with Sandisk support regarding my malfunctioning Sansa Clip player, I was contacted by Kevin from Sandisk. In the email which I got him, he apologized for the support I received and said that he would readily ship a new Sansa Clip player to me.

I have sent in my contact details and eagerly awaiting the shipment.

I'm happy that the Sandisk support didn't turn out to be as bad as I first assumed. It's also good to know that there are people at Sandisk who care about the consumers and the quality of support they receieve. I hope that mine was an isolated incident and not the norm.

Sansa Clip Saga

In November 2008 I wanted to buy a portable music player to keep me company on my runs. At that time I was undecided between the Sansa Clip and the iPod Shuffle. I finally decided to go for the Sansa Clip: it gave me double the space as compared to the Shuffle (4 GB vs 2GB) for the same price; it could play more audio formats; it had a built-in radio; it had an OLED user interface; it had an audio recorder. The player was purchased from Amazon and yours truly proceeded to happily use it on runs.

I didn't face any problems until January this year. I was running on the treadmill, with the clip attached to my t-shirt, when suddenly one side of the clip broke off. The music player was still working, just that I couldn't attach it properly to any part of my clothing. As the product was still in the 1 year warranty period I decided to mail Sandisk's support desk and see if I could get it repaired.

So I took photos of the broken clip. Dug up my purchase order from Amazon and compiled an email asking the Sandisk support people how they could help me.

And then, I waited ... and waited ... and waited ... and waited. Just to get an auto-response email, giving me a support request number, took them 3 weeks. A week after that I got a response saying that the clip is not covered in the warranty. I was disappointed, but at least I could still use the player.

Then at the beginning of this month, while I was listening to music on the clip, the player suddenly shut off. At first I thought that the battery had drained. But to my surprise, when I plugged the clip to charge, it just wouldn't and neither would it turn on.

So once again, I dug up my purchase order and typed out an email to the Sandisk customer service. And again I waited for a response.

Today when I checked back on their customer support site, I saw that my request had been closed and their justification for closing it was left out blank!!


To put it lightly -- this is truly unprofessional and I feel cheated as a consumer. Needless to say that I'm not going to recommend any music players from Sandisk. Maybe I should have gone and bought an iPod. Maybe I will.

Update (20/3/2009): I stand corrected. Continue reading on what happened next.

Shootout at Lokhandwala

The movie is so immature that I could figure out that I'm going to regret watching it within the first 2 minutes. The direction is amateurish. The editing haphazard. The actors are not good either. I wonder why so many famous actors would have done such a shitty movie; maybe for the money. In fact I would rate this lower than Spiderman-3.
Don't go and watch it!

Spiderman 3 sucks

The movie reminded me a typical 80's Bollywood movie. Its 3 hours long. Has plenty of emotional sequences. Confused parallel unconnected story lines. And at the end someone else takes the bullet for the hero and refuses to go to the hospital while he is dying a la "मुझे hospital ले जाने से कुछ नही होगा। मै यही ठीक हूँ।" Add around 8-10 Anu Malik songs and you would have a Bollywood masala movie.
My suggestion? Go watch Bheja Fry instead.

Bheja Fry

Excellent movie, had me all rolling over with laughter.