Conceiving Ada

List of Reasons Why Ada Should Be No One's Role Model:
-she's a hypochondriac, always complaining something's wrong with her
-she's addicted to opium
-she has a gambling problem, losing lots of people's money at the track
-she's a know it all
-she was killed by math...something that i'm pretty sure is impossible
-she can't do simple math: 2000 - 1852 does not equal 166.

"All these mathemathics are too much on your body". That had to be the best quote of the entire movie. Unfortunately I have to put this film in my Top 5 worst movies of all time list. I simply can't see it in my heart to include a film in which time travel was acheived through a still photograph from 1832. Let's take a brief look into the history of photography. The first permanent photograph was taken in 1826 and required an 8 hour exposure. The daguerreotype wasn't even invented until 1839, and those looked horrible. I'll always wonder how Ada's picture represented such amazing picture clarity and how it was snapped in a matter of a second.

But basic lapses in history and plot weren't the biggest problems for this film. Well, maybe they were, but the production values and acting were lacking too. The plot just doesn't make sense...even for a science fiction film. At least in Back to the Future a flux capacitor explained the impossibilities of time travel. Suddenly colonizing Mars, storing information on brain implants, and cyborgs make a lot more sense.

I don't mean to completely bash this film, but having a script supervisor on hand might have worked wonders. It's just that a poorly made film makes it hard for me to take it seriously and see the good points in it. The film does bring up some interesting ideas on technology, like the idea that information waves never die, but the film poorly executes them.

Johnny Mnemonic

I found it funny that Johnny gave up his personal memories to get more storage in his head so that he would be able to earn more money. Now he's just trying to earn enough money doing this "one last job" in order to get his memories back. Funny how things can change and how we can quickly regret greedy decisions we make in the heat of the moment.

I also think there is some discrepancy as to what the name of the film is referring to. "Mnemonic" refers more to the access codes Johnny has to access the information later, rather than the whole process of information storing. Flash Gordon (was it him?) is a great 1/3 of a mnemonic device that helps unlock 320 gb of information. that's a lotta info!

Overall Johnny Mnemonic is on my list of awesomely bad movies. Sure the acting is pretty bad, but that's half the entertainment. I half-expected Jones to be in Ice-T's chest when we're introduced to the best and last hope for Johnny. It's crazy twists and turns like this, plus a psycho jesus, that makes Johnny Mnemonic shine.

The story and the film may be a little out there at times, but I don't think the premise is such a bad idea. Sure the technology used to get the information in and out of Johnny's head may seem like a bit overkill, but the idea of using the human brain to transport information makes increasingly more realistic sense. Exactly how the brain will be used to do this may take a few years to figure out, but it's just another example of how the body is becoming a commodity and how people are willing to sell themselves to make money. What's so different between renting out space in your head to carry information and a woman carrying another couple's child for 9 months (or even selling sperm)? Sure the latter example may have more noble causes, but the point remains. We're letting technology take over our bodies, and much of the time purely for money.

Let's just be careful and not let our society become Newark.

Total Recall

You know it's a great year when October comes around and the Toyko Samurais have made the World Series once again. I relish the moment every year. Those damn Samurais remind me of the Yankees, another baseball dynasty relying solely on talent bought by money.

One of the most fascinating things about Total Recall wasn't that the Samurais made the World Series, but that the movie, set in 2084, didn't have flying cars. I don't think you can leap so many decades into the future without seeing some flying cars pop up. Arnold + Flying Car = Oscar Win. I'm still amazed that the movie got two nominations.

There's been a lot of speculation/debate over whether Arnold is dreaming the entire time, or whether his experiences are happening in real time. I maintain my view that what happens to Arnold is not a dream. His botched "trip" to Mars resurfaces actual erased memories of his real experiences on Mars, and sets him off on his whole crazy adventure. If it was really a dream, I don't get the ending. Don't we usually wake up from dreams in the end? Shouldn't the audience be kept a little more in the picture?

The politics of Total Recall are another interesting aspect of the film. I like how they are interwoven throughout the entire movie, popping up here and there, always an underlying, foreboding, aspect of the movie. Mars politics remind me very much of the colonization problems the colonials had when they tried to break free of England. The rebels of Mars really only want freedom from Cohaagen, and Cohaagen only wants to control them, and their air, much like Britain wanted to control and tax the Americas. This might be pushing it, but I see many similarities between each colonization.