Jake

Important If True 17: What Dreams Are Dumb

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Important If True 17:

Important If True 17


What Dreams Are Dumb
What stuff, exactly, are dreams made of? Can a robot priest interpret them and, if necessary, absolve you? And, if you didn't believe our embarrassing story about poop, maybe you'll believe this other guy's? All of your questions, your problems, your fears will be individually discussed and assessed by us personally (or handed off to an automated Gmail feature we just learned about).

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Discussed: A Landis update, the meaning of dreams, a new truer poo story, Dishonored Hoistmas, Google psychotherapy, ELIZA, Dr. Sbaitso, Reformation-celebrating robot priest

Chris' Endorsement: Lost in La Mancha, the making of Terry Gilliam's "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote"

Jake's Endorsement: Art of the Title

Nick's Endorsement: Stand-up comic Tig Notaro (meeting Taylor Dayne, Conan guest appearance, "Boyish Girl Interrupted" HBO special: Amazon, iTunes)

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes

 

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Guys, the New Poo story... is a joke by British comedian Jack Whitehall. I'm so sorry. 

 

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I guess you shouldn't believe that other guy's either after all.

Edited by Jake
hoisted

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Honestly I could see this is just being a shared experience by a lot of people. It's not quite as elaborate as the other hoisting. 

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I want to second Nick's endorsement, Tig Notaro is incredible. She's especially good at dragging comedy out of situations that shouldn't be funny, like pretending a band is coming onstage next or shuffling a stool around the stage for several minutes. 

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Jake, if you sent the robot far back enough in time that deviation from Catholic Church doctrine wouldn't be cause for immediate destruction, it would be too far back to be remotely intelligible to any possible listener (and, also, possibly too far back for the concept of a sacral Christian priesthood with specific powers derogated to it by the divine to be intelligible, either). There is probably a period of time in the seventeenth century where the robot would be doctrinally nonthreatening, linguistically comprehensible, and technologically impressive to the average European, but it'd be hard to hit.

 

Even then, by the fifteenth century, there were decades of stories about brazen heads, prototypical robots built by medieval luminaries like Albertus Magnus or Roger Bacon and powered by "natural" (as opposed to supernatural, either holy or hellish) magic, so it's possible that even your average European of any era might roll their eyes at the robot and proclaim it an interesting but not particularly impressive manifestation of magic.

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I have to say I was really hoping for a dive into Bonzi Buddy when you guys were talking about making your computer assistance say curse words.

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Sorry if this has already been posted earlier, but I suddenly remembered actually having seen the poop story. This is a "commercial" sketch for Sure Lock ("No Sh#t, Sure Lock!"), going back to 2007

 

 

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Oh man I was all getting ready to write a post about when the time traveling robot priest's batteries ran out and spawned a new religion about its eventual resurrection when Chris went down that exact same discussion path. Well played, thumbs.

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How you managed to avoid calling the time travelling reverend robot 'The Sermonator", I'll never know. 

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I first became aware of Tig Notaro from her small recurring role in The Sarah Silverman Program (in which she was understated but very likeable). I also enjoyed the pilot for her Amazon Prime show "One Mississippi" (which is at least semi-autobiographical and I now discover has since had 5 more episodes released) , and I've just found out there's a documentary type thing about her on Netflix.

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It's been a week, and I haven't been able to calm down. I went back to get the quote from Jake's endorsement, (54:20)

 

"I have mixed feelings about the movie Scott Pilgrim vs The World ... but I loved the opening title sequence..."

 

What are these "Mixed Feelings" he's talking about? Not to go all Scott Pilgrim fanboy, but check Rotten Tomatoes: It's 81% Fresh by critics standards and 83% by viewers! These kind of numbers don't invalidate Jake's feelings, but I for one would like an explanation. 

 

Some background: I am from Toronto and we Canadians really do get excited about seeing our cities and landmarks in movies. Thankfully RT was able to confirm my bias is not necessarily regional.

Screen Shot 2017-06-21 at 9.42.47 PM.png

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46 minutes ago, NateVan said:

It's been a week, and I haven't been able to calm down. I went back to get the quote from Jake's endorsement, (54:20)

 

"I have mixed feelings about the movie Scott Pilgrim vs The World ... but I loved the opening title sequence..."

 

What are these "Mixed Feelings" he's talking about? Not to go all Scott Pilgrim fanboy, but check Rotten Tomatoes: It's 81% Fresh by critics standards and 83% by viewers! These kind of numbers don't invalidate Jake's feelings, but I for one would like an explanation. 

 

Some background: I am from Toronto and we Canadians really do get excited about seeing our cities and landmarks in movies. Thankfully RT was able to confirm my bias is not necessarily regional.

Screen Shot 2017-06-21 at 9.42.47 PM.png

 

I like it but it doesn't seem genuine to me (in ways it seems to think it is). It feels to me like Edgar Wright making a movie about people about a generation younger than him but maybe he thinks he's on the inside more than he is? It feels emotionally less genuine and invested in than his other movies that are about people his age and written by him. I like watching it and love how immaculately staged it is, but it feels like it's full of millennial nerd culture signifiers that don't really feel earned but are loved just because they're there on screen in a major movie. I doubt I'm in the majority on this (and I like the movie very much!!) but those are why my feelings are mixed. 

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11 hours ago, Jake said:

I like it but it doesn't seem genuine to me (in ways it seems to think it is). It feels to me like Edgar Wright making a movie about people about a generation younger than him but maybe he thinks he's on the inside more than he is? It feels emotionally less genuine and invested in than his other movies that are about people his age and written by him. I like watching it and love how immaculately staged it is, but it feels like it's full of millennial nerd culture signifiers that don't really feel earned but are loved just because they're there on screen in a major movie. I doubt I'm in the majority on this (and I like the movie very much!!) but those are why my feelings are mixed. 

 

To build on those criticisms, I also think that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is either a misunderstanding or betrayal of the themes of the comics. In those, Scott's refusal to own his past, especially mistakes, is contrasted and complicated by the way that he is steeped in nostalgia and references about the pop-culture media of his childhood. Honestly, I think it's impossible for a two-hour film not to fall short when adapting a six-volume comic, although the final fight with Gideon could probably have been cut down from its twenty-five minute slog, but the way that this specific movie sidelines the development of its characters and themes to more thoroughly recreate the nerd culture aesthetics of its source comics makes anyone's dislike of it understandable to me.

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To throw my own hat into the elaboration ring, something about Michael Cera's acting in the movie (and in general) makes it kind of intolerable to me. Nothing against him personally, but everything's just engulfed in this feeling of second-hand embarrassment for me, and that's a feeling I've never been able to enjoy as much as some people do.

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Also the comics feel like a natural metaphor for the arc of being in a relationship and getting to know someone deeper through it, and they take place over several months of time. The film's contracted time-frame ends up muddying the metaphor and making the entire premise feel more arbitrary.

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(The things I don't like about the movie have next to nothing to do with fielty to the source material fwiw, just to be clear, since that's the angle most seemed to jump off of my original post. I don't think the movie needed to more literally adapt the comic to improve itself; though it could have as one possibility there are plenty of other means to that end.)

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7 minutes ago, Jake said:

(The things I don't like about the movie have next to nothing to do with fielty to the source material fwiw, just to be clear, since that's the angle most seemed to jump off of my original post. I don't think the movie needed to more literally adapt the comic to improve itself; though it could have as one possibility there are plenty of other means to that end.)

 

I guess why I built on your comment is because, in my opinion, the movie is over-faithful to the comics in terms of aesthetics, while changing or de-emphasizing the comics' reasons behind those aesthetics, and that makes the movie as a whole feel superficial, whether considered on its own or as an adaptation.

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14 hours ago, Jake said:

 

I like it but it doesn't seem genuine to me (in ways it seems to think it is). It feels to me like Edgar Wright making a movie about people about a generation younger than him but maybe he thinks he's on the inside more than he is? It feels emotionally less genuine and invested in than his other movies that are about people his age and written by him. I like watching it and love how immaculately staged it is, but it feels like it's full of millennial nerd culture signifiers that don't really feel earned but are loved just because they're there on screen in a major movie. I doubt I'm in the majority on this (and I like the movie very much!!) but those are why my feelings are mixed. 

 

I liked but didn't love Scott Pilgrim either and have been unable to put my finger on why, and I never thought about it this way, but I think the unearned/over reliance on 'see this thing you recognize' is part of why!

ty Jake for articulating this, because I'd never thought about this before.

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I haven't watched the film but it sounds like a slightly better version of Ready Player One then.

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