Sunday, 25 July 2010
I don't spend a lot of time writing about pop culture related items like movies and TV shows, but I feel like I'm going to need to be a little more intentional if I'm going to write about anything other than The Captain over the next several months. Last weekend I had the pleasure of watching a movie -- Inception -- that I had been looking forward to for a while, and it seemed like a good opportunity to stretch my writing chops. If you haven't seen the movie yet and plan to, I'll give you a minireview right now: If you enjoy complex storylines a la Memento or Primer and fantastic cinematography a la The Matrix go out and watch this movie tonight. Or this afternoon, if you can sneak out of the office a little early. But regardless, stop reading now if you don't want any spoilers.
The plot of Inception revolves around Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Dom Cobb, who is a dream thief. He, along with his team, break into the minds of their targets with the goal of finding sensetive secrets that someone else wants. The mission that Cobb and his team face in this movie, however, revolves around an assignment in which they are required to do the reverse: break into the mind of a man and plant an idea. The execution of this plan involves the construction of multiple dreams-within-dreams that Cobb and his team must penetrate, all the while keeping track of how deep they are into matryoshka doll that is their subject's dream state.
While the plot is certainly very well crafted, it's the visual elements of the film that are really impressive. Since the bulk of the film takes place in the dream world, Nolan was free to do some fantastic graphic manipulation such as shifting the landscape around the characters, manipulating the gravity, and altering the time scale based on the depth in which the characters are within the dream world. During one of my favorite parts of the film, Cobb's team was inside a moving van that had fallen off a bridge and was hurtling downward toward the water. During this state of freefall, the gravity in the dreamworld was affected equally and the team began to float around the hotel room that they were in. Similarly, time in the real world relates to time in the dream world at a roughly 1:12 ratio. As the team entered this freefall, the approximately 5 seconds it took to reach the water translated to about a minute in the dream they were having. That same minute then translated into 12 minutes in the dream-within-a-dream the team was in. As the van approached the water, the team knew they basically had about 12 minutes before the jolt of hitting the water would bring them out of the dream, setting up a strong sense of urgency.
On the subject of dream-within-a-dream, a script like this in this particular age of cinema could have easily gone cliche; The Matrix, The Sixth Sense and Fight Club were all released eleven short years ago, and The Usual Suspects was released four years before that. We're a generation of film viewers who have been conditioned to expect the twist and almost invariably -- I'd say 9 times out of 10 -- we can see it coming a mile away. M Night Shyamalan is the worst offenders here, as every film since Unbreakable has lead up to a pretty obvious "twist" ending, but there are plenty of "psychological thrillers" that have come in the past decade that fell flat with formulaic attempts to trick the audience. So when I heard all the reports of how "mind blowing" Inception was, I was a little afraid that Nolan had taken the easy way out with the ending.
But he didn't. The entire two and a half hours of the movie, once it is established that it will take place partially in the dream world, Nolan respects his audience enough to recognize that they will immediately wonder if the entire movie doesn't take place in someone's dream. The payoff for this suspicion comes in the final shot in which Cobb spins a top to see if it ever stops spinning, which would confirm that they are not in a dream. As the top spins, it begins to wobble slightly as the scene is cut short just moments before it appears that it may fall out of rotation. Instead of assuming a situation like this would be unanticipated by the audience, Nolan leaves the ending open to interpretation, acknolwedging that this question has been there the whole time.
It's very rare that I look forward to a film as much as I did with Inception, and even more rare that the payoff equals my anticipation. Inception yet another fantastic film by Christopher Nolan that lives up to the hype it has received.
Friday, 16 July 2010
You might think I've been derelict in my blogging duties over the past several weeks, and you'd be largely mistaken. I know that the last public posts was from our vacation in early May, but I've actually been busy writing super-top-secret posts in the week since. Posts that were marked as super-top-secret for a very good reason. The fact of the matter is that we here at Team Soell have been working on a special project that required a little patience before we were comfortable discussing it with everyone. I'm sure by now all my vague talk of super secrets has spoken loud and clear, but if you're still not sure about what's going on, I'll spell it out for you: Team Soell is having a baby!
Captain Bojangles, as we've come to refer to him as, made himself known while we were on vacation with my family and we've spent the last several weeks freaking out, reading about babies and wondering where we're actually going to put the little guy. We're only at about ten weeks right now, so we do have a little time to figure all that out. We've also spent the time trying to think of funny/clever ways to announce The Captain's presence to everyone. In fact, you may have actually come across this post via one of these methods. Here, in no particular order, are our top five ideas:
Craigslist
While she's never been the caffeine junkie that I am, January has definitely been lamenting the caffeine embargo that has been placed on her. Just the other day, we came across this gigantic can of Monster Energy drink that she was saving up for her next wedding photography shoot. Guess she can't use that anymore... better just sell it on Craigslist.Flickr
Expecting a child for the first time, we're not really sure how to interpret everything going on in January's body. We both got a little freaked out around week six and asked if we could do an early ultrasound to make sure everything was ok, and our doctor was super awesome about it. We were able to get a look at the little guy that afternoon, and even heard the heartbeat for the first time. Here's a picture of the ultrasound strip we got after that first appointment.
I actually don't think I could do this one better than my friends Liz and Ben "Chalupa" Boltz did. I was one of the lucky few that was told in advance of the general announcement, but I remember being very impressed at the cleverness of Liz's Facebook announce. This was back in the height of the "How well do you know me" meme that was taking over the Internet and Liz put together one that at first glance looked pretty standard, but smack in the middle was this gem:
When do I want to have kids?
a) Sometime after grad school
b) Never
c) In a couple of years
d) I'm pregnant and due in January
I'm really curious to know how many people guessed correctly.
Foursquare + Twitter
I'm a complete Foursquare addict, and I even "checked in" to the OBGYN's office the first time we went. I was careful not to check in the second time, as it would have proudly announced to all my Foursquare and Twitter friends that I was now the mayor of Professionals for Women's Health. And although we didn't actually have an appointment today, I thought it appropriate to go ahead and retroactively get that mayorship locked down.
So there's the big news! We're having a baby! As I said, I've got several older posts written up and I'll be publishing them over the next couple weeks, along with ongoing updates, so keep an eye here. We're about 40% freaked out, 40% excited, and 20% confused... but either way it should be entertaining for anyone following along.
Wednesday, 07 July 2010
This morning we had our second visit to the doctor, and our second ultrasound. Soas not to bury the lead, I'll say up front that we got the comforting news all nervous first time parents want to hear: Captain Bojangles is looking really good. 2.6 centimeters, two tiny arms, and giant head. We've been told that we're past the point where we should be cautious about telling people, so we're putting together our announcement plan.
The doctor that saw us this time, a man we've come to affectionately refer to as Doctor Uncle, was a real card. As he walked in the room to get started, I wasn't even really sure we were talking with an Actual Real Doctor, or if maybe some guy had wandered in off the street and just wanted to tell a few jokes. As it turns out, though, he was a really nice guy. He showed us our little peanut on the ultrasound screen, asked us how long we had been trying to have a kid (ha!) and just generally put us at ease. Here's a quick shot for you:
So at ten weeks, the Captain is doing quite well and we seem to have a good team at the doctor's office to help guide us through this new adventure. We're excited to get ready to share the news with you all!
Wednesday, 07 July 2010
Every couple deals with the tug-of-war that is meal planning. In the Team Soell household, this usually looks something like this:
Me: What do you want for dinner?
January: You know what sounds good? Ethiopian.
Me: Yeah, I don't know if I'm feeling Ethiopian tonight. What if we cook up some peppers and onions and made fajitas or something?
January: Fine, but if you're cooking, you're cleaning.
Of course, sometimes it's a little more involved and with one or both of us having a stronger stubbornness toward what they're craving, but in general it's at least a debate. Figuring out what to eat when one of the participants is a nauseous pregnant woman operates under an entirely different set of rules. Take tonight for example:
January: I'm getting nauseous again, i think i need to eat something.
Me: We have those turkey burgers, how about that.
January: *gets up, runs out of the room to throw up*
Me: OK, guess not. Maybe something lighter, like a salad?
January: Are you TRYING to make me throw up?? No!
Me: I don't know, what sounds ok to you?
January: I don't know, suggest something.
Adding to the complexity of the decision making process is the fact that, with some exceptions, the foods that sound good to her are often a one-time thing. While at one time or another in the past month she absolutely *had* to have vegetarian corn dogs, sushi, spaghetti, potato chips, and cream of broccoli soup -- not all in the same meal, of course -- these are all items that now the mere mention of disgusts her. By my estimates, we I'll have actually cycled through every combination of food available by the third trimester.
Fortunately, we have found a few cornerstone items that she seems to always be able to eat, and it's mostly pretty easy to put together. So in the meantime, we're stocking up on watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers, and rice krispy treats and I'm learning to bat cleanup on the foods that she can't eat. Hopefully the second trimester will bring her appetite back to normal before the third trimester cravings kick in.