X-Message-Number: 18207
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 11:52:54 -0800
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: With enemies like these, who needs friends?
References: <>

I'll put all my "Vanilla Sky" commentary in one message,
the better to allow those who so desire to skip it.

CryoNet wrote:
> From: "John Grigg" <>
> Subject: Mike Darwin at the movies!
> 
> Mike Darwin wrote:
> I didn't recommend the movie...
> John Grigg responded:

> Oh, I thought you were recommending the film! lol  The review I read in the 
paper 

> said it was an inferior and frustratingly structured remake of an excellent 
European film.

You expect movie reviewers to find the same things in an SF movie,
especially one about cryonics, that you do?!?  Remember:  same 
planet, different worlds.

From John again:
> I wish instead of getting Cruise in Vanilla Sky, we had seen him 
> as the lead in The First Immortal!

Some people are never satisfied. :-) .

> From: "S.J. Van Sickle" <>
> Subject: Re: that rather annoying movie
> 
> I agree that people will easily get this interpretation, but in the scene
> at the L.E. office, they clearly state that the Lucid Dreaming option
> starts on *revival*.  Easy to miss, though.

I missed it consciously, but it may be why I thought "What if...?"  
It did seem strange to me that Tech Support looked exactly the 
same at two very different points in the movie.  And somehow I 
find it less jangling for his dream to contain flashbacks than
his real life. 
> 
> > 3. How does the initial sequence relate to anything? Supposedly at this
> > point he has not entered his Lucid Dreaming cycle. So why is this initial
> > dream relevant? Why does he drive a Ferrari in the dream? Because Ferrari
> > paid for product placement?
> 
> The big question is, if it is a normal, everyday dream (nightmare) from
> before the Lucid Dreaming starts, why does the alarm have Penelope Cruz's
> voice on it, whom he has not even met yet?

That plays into my theory that the *entire* movie is a lucid
dream, which starts when he is revived enough to start dreaming,
and ends when he opens his eyes.
> 
> I'm willing to grant them a normal dream sequence just to set the tone of
> the movie.  And yes, Ferrari probably did buy a placement, but even if
> not, what better way to establish at the start of the movie that he is a
> rich bastard?

Did anybody else notice that the Ferrari was gorgeous and shiny
and black at the beginning, and got dirty and beat-up later?

> From: Natasha Vita-More <>

Thanks to Natasha for providing some of the artistic 
perspective that I lack, as in:
> 
> This might be a better association: Impressionism  - "A literary style
> characterized by the use of details and mental associations to evoke
> subjective and sensory impressions rather than the re-creation of objective
> reality."  I think this is spot on, don't you?

Quite so.
> 
> From: "Mark Plus" <>
> Subject: the Scientology connection
> 
> Because Tom Cruise is well known as a Scientologist, did he take this movie
> role as a subtle way of discrediting Keith Henson?

Say what?  Discredit away -- please!  If he did, it backfired
in a big way!  Looks more like an olive branch to me -- 
maybe Cruise recanted and this is a subtle way of discrediting
Scientology :-) .

> From: david pizer <>
> Subject: Pizer replies to Platt's movie criticism
> 
> There seemed to be references to real people in the movie.  When we saw the
> movie, my wife thought the guy on tv with the frozen dog might be a
> reference to me. Like that character, I have a dog that I used to go on tv
> with in Arizona. And, I have several dogs that are frozen.  The guy on tv
> with the frozen dog was said "to own half of Arizona."  I own several
> pieces of property in Arizona.  I told my wife that is was a just a fluke.
> Almost any long time cryonicist can find some references to cryonicists
> they know in this movie.

Cut the humility, Dave -- it was you.  They did homework.
I didn't know just how many details of that guy fit with you.
You may even take partial credit for the film being made at
all -- without interesting characters, the studio might not have
bought it.
>
> The cryonics scenes reminded me of Alcor.  The

> things they got very wrong, they must have known were wrong, but did not care.

Beyond not caring, they may have changed them deliberately.
Remember, the filmmakers are first and foremost entertainers.
> 
> Most of you probably know that Tom Cruise belongs to the Scientologists.
> That is the religion that Keith Henson locked horns with recently and
> caused them a lot of grief.  I wondered if trying to make cryonics look so
> bad was done on purpose, as a way of trying to get even - a cryoncists
> tries to make their philosophy look silly, so they try to make cryonics
> look evil of scary to those who do not understand cryonics fully.
> 
> But not scary to us.  It would not bother many of us on this forum to have
> to endure a 150 year nightmare if at the end you woke up and cryonics
> worked and you came back, perhaps, to immortality.  But to the
> non-cryonicst it is just a way of showing how to have a bad trip on the way
> to what they think is a bad destination - biological immortality.

<end zone dance> But it wasn't 150 years -- it lasted from when he
started being revived till he decided he wanted to finish!  And 
have you asked any non-cryonicists what they thought of the movie?  
I don't think they would think so badly of the destination as 
described in the film.  I also think (hope) that most of them 
would figure out that Cruise's character was just unlucky.  Most 
people have a pleasant dream and don't require tech support.
assuming they buy the dreaming option at all -- those who don't
want to take the risk or pay the money just go to sleep and wake up.

It's great how the more people complain about a film, the more I 
like it.  Didn't we go through the same thing with A.I.? :-) .
-- 
May you live long and prosper,
Kennita
--
Kennita Watson          | Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
     |   None but ourselves can free our minds.
http://www.kennita.com  |           -- Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"

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