The Nightmare- A documentary film review

Disclaimer: I shall not be held responsible if this post gives you nightmares. I doubt that it would but still I'd like to be on the safer side, hence the disclaimer.

Origin of the word ‘Nightmare’- Middle English (denoting a female evil spirit thought to lie upon and suffocate sleepers): from night + Old English mære ‘incubus’

Have you ever woken up from sleep suddenly feeling out of breath and realised you cannot move no matter how much you tried? If yes, then you have experienced a ‘nightmare’ in the true sense. It feels like someone is sitting on top of you pinning you down rendering you motionless. This picture best describes what it feels like to have one-

My sister used to have them back in school when for a few months we moved to a small cottage next to a huge well. Her place in bed was right next to a small window which opened up to a view of the mouth of the well. It is considered that wells are usually haunted and so when my sister complained of experiencing breathlessness and the feeling that someone is choking her, dad did some chanting next to the window and hung some sacred thread there. The nightmares were gone!

I’m not a very religious person so when this happened I decided that it has to be psychological. Dad’s chanting must have given my sister a subconscious assurance that everything will be fine and so it did. The placebo effect! Then I read about the sleep paralysis. Basically, there’s a chemical that our brain secretes during REM periods of our sleep (when the dreams occur) which paralyses our muscles so that we don’t act out our dreams in sleep. The lack of this chemical is what is thought to cause sleep walking (or worse scenarios where people hit anyone nearby while sleeping). But it so happens that sometimes the brain wakes up from the dream while the chemical is still in effect, making the individual feel completely incapacitated because their body is frozen and doesn’t respond to their will to move. So if it’s a biological disorder how did the prayer work for my sister? Did the demon really run away from the window? Or maybe further inside the house? If so where? I was the only one sleeping next to sister *jerks as a chill takes over*

That was ten years ago. Some six months back, one day as I lay sleeping on my bed in my room -past morning and pretty much into the noon as I usually do on holidays- my eyes opened partially and I saw a huge shadowy figure near the wall opposite to me. Still in half sleepy state I couldn’t understand what was happening. Why is there a man made of shadow standing against the wall looking at me? Is it even a man? Looks way bigger than a normal man. The figure was HUGE, covering most of the wall by himself with no facial features (except maybe what I imagined to be the menacing eyes) and wearing something like what a member of Klu Klux Klan would wear but in black. I remember feeling terrified and powerless, but couldn’t stop looking at the thing with my half open eyes because I couldn’t do anything else about it. I don’t remember if I tried to move but I remember that I didn’t move. I tried to reason that this must be a dream, but realised that I’m a lucid dreamer and that mere thought would’ve made everything clearer as they do in my dreams (which means I can do anything in my dream from hereon), but there I was still lying motionless and still having hazy vision of a shadow creature by my bed.This has to be real!

I don’t know how long it took for me to regain full consciousness but when I did, I was in for a surprise. I was lying face up on my bed with the blanket pulled up till my chin. The blanket had formed a small irregular but pointy ‘tent’ shape on my chest. That tent when projected against the wall appeared huge as I looked down with my droopy eyes, and my partially-conscious-but-still-genius mind had back-flip-jumped to the most logical conclusion for having such a vision: A creepy shadow man!

Don’t grin!

A couple months later my roomie from Pune texted our WhatsApp group and asked me if I know anything about his condition. He is someone who frequently suffers from insomnia. The current condition? He wasn’t able to move if he woke up from sleep in the middle of the night, and that really freaked him out. What a coincidence I thought, and explained to him this phenomena and told him not to worry about it as worrying makes it worse. After that he didn’t report such incidents. Phew! Neither did I, if you’re wondering.

So, when I heard about a documentary about nightmares I simply had to watch it. And I did. And man, what a film it is! We see some people narrating their experiences, from the first experience to the most recent one, each getting “curiouser and curiouser”. As their mind tries to ignore them, the nightmares find new ways around the fences to attack even more fiercely, sometimes getting physically painful. Some go through the ordeal almost daily. The nightmares they describe have been re-enacted for the documentary and wonderfully filmed. It feels like we are experiencing the whole deal, the way they woke up from sleep and found themselves paralysed, with anything from a shadow person to aliens to the Devil himself standing next to them or worse right behind them where they can’t turn and see! They are in fact so creepy to look at that you’ll thank your heavens that you don’t have them.

The shadow people are the most recurring theme of their nightmares (what coincidence!), but unlike my shadow man who was simply a creep watching me sleep (that’s not at all romantic Twilight fans!!) their shadow people (yes plural) walk around the room and even talk to each other. How about that? I can’t explain that in terms of blanket tents!

If you still can’t get the clear picture of what a standard shadow person looks like, imagine waking up in the middle of the night to see this-

And that’s just the initial experiences. Thank goodness I never had such experience after that one time event. You’ll feel pity for these people in the documentary as they narrate their nightmares. Something that’s very strange about them is that some people seem to contract these nightmares when it is brought to their notice for the first time (like yawning). A subject in the documentary states that his girlfriend once confided in him that she gets these scary nightmares in sleep and it sounded strange to him because he had never heard of anything like it. That very night he had his first experience! Later when it got worse he told his close friend about his condition and he did get the mental support he needed, but the next day he also got curses from the friend who also had had a nightmare the night before. Ahem.

It’s a well-made documentary, with nice production value and good acting for the re-enactment scenes. Good acting added with simple sets, sound effects and perfect lighting kind of hits the right nail. Towards the end the dreams and reality start to blur into each other we wonder which is which. For someone who enjoys horror movies a lot, even I came out a little disturbed. There’s not much medical explanation given in the film which shows how little we know about something that’s plaguing possibly millions of people worldwide.

I would strongly suggest watching this documentary if you like spooky stuff, but beware, for some people who saw this documentary claim to have experienced nightmare afterwards. Even the director Rodney Ascher said he had nightmares during the production of the film. So, if you’re a highly suggestible person, I’d say don’t watch it but then it’s already too late because you have read this long post about nightmares and you’re probably going to have one tonight.

Sorry! 

Excerpt from The Winds of Winter

The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book Winds of Winter, a much awaited instalment in ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series, due release next year. If you don’t know what this series is please read the review of the first book here, before you continue. Trust me it’ll be helpful.

~Sansa Stark~

Sansa found herself standing beyond the Wall, her feet softly depressing the snow beneath. “Is this a dream?” she wondered, “How did I come here?”

“Anybody there?” she called out. There was none to answer her leave the snow. “Snow” she whispered recalling her half-brother John Snow. “John!” she screamed into the distant woods. Something inside her told her that her brother was in the woods and not the seven hundred foot ice Wall behind her where he had taken the black and vowed to protect the Realm from whatever lies beyond the Wall. There were legends that there lurked the white walkers or the Others beyond the Wall, but nobody that Sansa knew had claimed to have seen one. The old Nan used to tell tales about them. Sansa recalled the times when she had first heard those stories, with her brothers and Arya, inside their warm walls of Winterfell when they were innocent children, all of whom she had not seen since long. All these thoughts clouded her mind and her eyes turned misty. She blinked to keep her eyes clear of tears. As her sight improved she noticed someone walking towards her from the woods.

“John!” she shouted excitedly, her brother was finally here. After a moment, from her still teary eyes she saw that the figure was not wearing black, but thickly clad in white. Sansa wiped her eyes once more with her sleeves and looked up to see who it was. Her heart froze when she realized that the figure was not as close as it had appeared at first. It was simply so huge that her eyes had interpreted it as being close.

“Giant!” she gasped. Giants were only a part of the legends as long as Sansa had known, but here was one in front of her, walking towards her. The face of the giant was icy white, thick white beard covered most of his face and his eyes had a blue shine to it. It was a white walker, a giant come back from the dead; dead but twice as deadly. Sansa turned on her heels and ran towards the Wall, the gate appearing like a tiny wooden window at the bottom of tons of ice. She ran as fast as her feet could carry all the while feeling the giant closing in on her, his every step sending tiny tremors in the icy ground beneath her. She looked ahead and saw that the gate was closing down. Perhaps the guards on the Wall had noticed the giant but not her tiny frame from above. She plunged into the floor slipping under the gate just as it closed loudly behind her.

The narrow tunnel turned dark from the gate being closed. Sansa pulled herself on her feet, still confused as to how she arrived here. She cupped her face with her hands, in a desperate attempt to wake up from the nightmare. “It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream”,she told herself.

“Are you alright?” called out a figure from the open end of the tunnel. In the faint light from outside Sansa saw a silhouette of a battle armour. She followed the voice to find a handsome man wearing an armour that was glittering shinier than the ice around them in sunlight. From the armour he appeared to be most certainly a knight. Sansa wondered how he moved in that armour at all. The armour covered the man entirely save his face where the helm had been pulled up, and it was coloured with symmetrical swathes of gold and crimson. The knight looked magnificent, even more so than the famous ‘Knight of the flowers’.

“I am alright, bruised and shaken but unhurt”, replied Sansa curtsying still marvelling at the beautiful armour, “Thank you Ser, for saving my life.”

“Oh I’m hardly a Ser” said the man.

“Is it so? You certainly look like an anointed knight” Sansa looked at him admiringly.

“Well, I look like a lot of things” said the man sheepishly, “By the way, what was that thing chasing after you? I’ve fought lot of monsters but never seen one like that.”

“I think it was a giant white walker.”

“Now isn’t that a little racist? Just because he’s pale we can’t call him names”

“What’s a racist?”

“Never mind. I apologize I believe we haven’t been introduced yet”, said the man and bowed down “I’m Anthony.”

Sansa bowed her head in reply, “And I, Sansa Stark.”

“Stark? I’m a Stark too!” said the man cheerfully.

“You are? That’s wonderful. I have never heard of an Anthony from our house.”

“I come from a very distant place. Say, do you know what place I’m at? I think I’m lost”

“You mean to say you don’t know?” asked Sansa in disbelief.

“Eh yes I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Why of course you are at the Wall. How could you miss it? Everybody knows about The Wall”, Sansa told him gesticulating at the seven hundred feet Ice in front of them, “You are a Stark and you don’t know? Our ancestors built this Wall thousands of years ago.”

“I… Apologies lady Sansa. I don’t think this is my world. I was travelling far and wide places when I got lost. I was looking for some… precious stones.”

“What sort of stones are you looking for, Ser Anthony?” asked Sansa suspiciously.

“They are sort of gems. There are six of them in total, each with special powers like the ability to control the minds of people and so on. In the hands of evil they can be catastrophic.”

“Indeed. But how did you come this far inside the Realm?” asked Sansa wondering if she should trust this man, “I don’t see a horse with you. You could not have walked this far.”

“I don’t need a horse to be honest. How far in am I? Let me see the map” said Anthony tapping on his metal glove and seeing something in it.

“Do you have a map in a compartment of your glove? That’s fascinating!”

Anthony smiled at Sansa and looked at his glove again. His expression changed as he looked back at her perplexed, “What is the name of this place again?”

“It’s the Wall. Why do you ask?”

“No, no the Wall. What’s the name of this country?”

“Country? It’s Westeros. Oh, are you from the free cities to the east of Westeros beyond the sea?”

“No my dear, I’m afraid I’m out of this universe. Friday! Scan for any open wormholes nearby. This isn’t our universe.”

“Scan for what?” asked Sansa, and then she heard another woman’s voice coming from Anthony’s armour- “On it sir”

“You can speak to spirits?” asked a flabbergasted Sansa.

“Umm, yes that’s what she is. My spirit guide. Her name’s Friday”, said Anthony and Friday responded “Sir, I can confirm that we are in a parallel universe”

“That’s why this country looks so much like the UK”, nodded Anthony.

“UK? What’s UK? Why is she calling you ‘Ser’? You said you weren’t one. And what’s a parallel…” began Sansa but she was cut short by the sharp loud knocks on the closed gate of the Wall. Sansa screamed, “The giant white walker is back!”

There were two more knocks and then a raspy voice from the other side, “Sansa… Do you wanna build a snowman?”

Sansa stood there taking deep breaths trying to hold her heart inside her chest which was trying to break out. Then the thick voice spoke again, “It doesn’t have to be a snowman.”

“That’s it! This place is weird. I’m getting outta here” said Anthony turning to leave.

“Wait! You can’t leave me! Take me with you. That giant will kill me”, pleaded Sansa as the knocking turned into loud bangs.

“Ok fine! I’ll leave you somewhere safe.”

“But where’s your horse? How do we leave?” asked Sansa exasperated.

“Friday, we have to look for the Infinity stones somewhere else. Let’s find a nice place for this young lady first” said Anthony and came closer to her, grabbed her with one arm, “Like I said dear, I don’t need a horse. In my place they call me Iron-man… and I can fly.”

Before Sansa could say anything they were off the ground and flying so fast that she had to hold on tight. Sansa couldn’t believe herself. This dream had turned too weird to be true. Before she woke up she dared herself to look down. The Wall looked like a fence and the giant was still visible. Not afraid of it anymore, she shouted at it- “Go to hell white walker!”

The giant looked up in dismay and murmured “Okay bye….”

P.S- I haven’t watched the latest season or read all the books, but I’m unfortunately aware of a few spoilers but mostly trying to avoid them. So, if this excerpt defies some of the recent unfolding, please don’t mention any spoilers in the comments (let’s keep it clean for the new readers). If it’s not obvious, the references made here are to the “Do you wanna build a snowman” song from Frozen, Tony Stark (Iron man) and the Infinity Stones that are the central items for the next instalment of Avengers movie. Why G.R.R. Martin decided to use them in his next most awaited novel is beyond me.

A Game of Thrones- Book Review

Finally, after months of brief reading bouts and long breaks I finally finished this book. This is the first instalment by the way, to those who are only familiar with the TV series thinking that the whole series is called Game of Thrones. To the uninitiated, the novel series is called “A song of Ice and Fire” and Game of Thrones is just the first book in the series. But who am I kidding? Everyone has heard about Game of Thrones thanks to HBO. It even mentions the series on the book! The age we are in where the source material has to be sold citing the screen adaptation.

“Original Series”… pfft, yeah right. But that also tells us about the quality and success of the TV series. You don’t see Harry Potter books saying- “Now has a super hit movie adaptation”

I first read about this book some 5 years back when I randomly Googled “Best fiction books” and landed on a page and among the list was this one, right after some religious scriptures (Just kidding.. Jeez). Me being me I simply tucked it away in the To-Read list and forgot about it. Then came the TV series and took the world by storm. To be honest I only heard about the TV series around the end of 3rd season and by the time I downloaded it the 4th season had also started broadcasting. I decided I won’t watch the TV series and would read the books first, and now I laugh at my own confidence back then. One of my FB friends said “Watch only the first season. There are so many characters that it’s hard to keep track. Watching a season will help you understand the characters and you can recall their faces while reading the books.” I thought that was a good idea since that’s how I enjoyed Harry Potter series so much. So I sat down one day and played the first episode. Remember how you think you’ll have just one more shot of liquor and then you wake up next day in someone’s bathroom?… No?.. Hehe neither do I.. No really!!! But I imagine that this must be how frustrating it would feel because I realized a few days later that I had finished watching all 4 seasons.

Having no more episodes to watch I decided to pick up the book and read it. Because of work, because of other commitments, and simply because of my laziness, by the time I finished the book the 5th season had also concluded (and my sister had finished reading all five books), but I’d now known how awesome the book really is. So now I have the will to not watch the latest season. I’ve heard of some spoilers from season 5 but I try to ignore them simply because I wish to be astounded when I read the full account in the books. Yes, the book is so much better than the TV series, duh, and mind you the TV series is also one of the best adaptations of a book on screen. I could actually imagine the faces while reading and they didn’t sound much off from their on-screen avatars. So I guess this review is also a promotion of the TV series (something that it doesn’t even need) and somewhat a comparison between the two.

The Story:

The story revolves around Westeros, a fictional continent looking suspiciously like the UK. Viewers of the series please tell me you’ve noticed this too. The continent is probably UK of an alternate universe since we notice that seasons are not annual here. Summers last for years and from what we hear winters last even longer. But something is wrong. In the timeline that this story happens the summer has been ‘summering’ for over a decade which scares the people that the winter is going to be longer and harsher. Winter is coming they say but it’s still nowhere to be seen. This winter is supposedly going to bring with it the White Walkers. Who are the White Walkers? Well if you’ve had the guts to watch or read the “Walking Dead” you’d know that they call the zombies ‘Walkers’, and since its UK we’re talking about they’ll only spawn “White Walkers” right? But the White Walkers are the least of our concern right now because it seems the unrest that the untimely death of the King’s ‘Hand’ in the early pages of the book has set off a domino effect that would rip the Realm apart even before the Walkers arrive.

If you got a penny for every time you read “winter is coming” in this book you can probably buy the next book in the series and so on, but winter would still not be there. “Winter is Coming” is literally the house words of the Stark house, one of the dozen extremely detailed royal houses/families in UK… I mean Westeros. After twenty years since the publication of the first book the slightest glint of hope we have is that the upcoming book is titled “Winds of Winter”, but it’s still just winds so who knows?

I think Westeros must be an alternate universe also because even after more than ten thousand years of history “The Realm” is still ruled by Kings in palaces, guarded by knights, with people predominantly doing manual labour, the country still with no scientific advancement whatsoever. It’s a country you don’t want to live in, to say the least, where people can slit your throat just out of spite.

Writing:

Coming to the writing style, the narration is incredibly detailed. The author George R.R. Martin has woven a fantasy tale so intricate that you’d have to go check the map frequently to understand where the characters currently are, and maybe even check the glossary to understand who in the world the character is. There are hundreds or even thousands of fine elements to the story that could easily be overlooked, but they all fit together in our subconscious mind to produce this amazing world. That’s why it seems so real, because everything fits naturally (even the unnatural).

“The Devil is in the detail” someone said and this devil is so inconspicuous. One such instance I can think of is when a character says about another inconsequential character that he must be depressed as he has no heir and only an ugly daughter. Having seen the TV series I understood instantly that this passing mention about this daughter might be taken as random dialog by the author to fill the page but the said inconsequential character will emerge as a major threat to them in the subsequent books and the daughter also plays an important role. The character’s having no heir also proves to be the driving factor for him to stoop to desperate actions. I was blown away at this single passing statement which had nothing to do with the current book, but goes on to prove that Martin had the whole story laid out in his mind, not just brick by brick but grain by grain. It’s just mind blowing when you think that it’s been 20 years since the first book’s release and there’s still 2 books yet to be published until conclusion.

A great story is something in which the setting has a history, because without history the characters would seem one-dimensional. Everyone we meet in our life has a history. They behave the way they do because of their history. So it only befits that the characters and the entire Westeros have a past, and boy do they have some past. Each character has a painful past making them choose the right or the wrong way, and Westeros itself has centuries if not millennia of history to be told, and we get an oversimplified version once and numerous tidbits now and then that fit perfectly into the big jigsaw puzzle.

Narrative Style:

The narrative in the book is from the perspective of different characters. Each chapter is named after a character. Don’t mistake it to be a story written in first perspective of the characters though. It just means that things are narrated with that character as the focus. Something that happened in a chapter that was from character A’s perspective would take time to reach the character B’s chapter (because there’s no telephone) and there would be no mention of it until the raven arrives with news.

This makes the story so much better because it removes the narrator’s voice from the narration itself by not making it compulsory for the narrator to surprise us with information that was previously withheld. In Dan Brown novels you’d have noticed how some information is hidden from the reader intentionally and when the time is right the narrator says “this is so-and-so because of so-and-so reason. I misdirected you earlier. Haha!” The problem with the ‘narrator voice’ is that it pulls us out of the immersive story to hear things in the author’s voice making us realize that this is a story after-all. It really upset me while reading 1Q84 when, more than halfway through the book, the author suddenly said something like “…to me or to you readers….”; coming out of the trance I looked behind my shoulders, then back at the book and thought “Are you talking  to me?”.

So, this perspective story telling helps us see the incidents through the eyes of the character currently in focus and experience the events (sometimes hearing a summary of something that we’ve read in detail from another character’s perspective which helps a great deal to jog our memory) and, since it’s not a Harry Potter book with a defined hero, we have quite some character perspectives to read in (from what I’ve heard the number of perspectives increase with each book). Perspective narrative also shows us deeper sides of the character making us empathize with them, and since the books has a whole gamut of characters you are bound to find someone you’ll fall in love with. And when that happens… well… consider yourself warned.

Like I said earlier, there’s no hero and there’s no villain here. Even though there are typical black and white characters like Eddard who holds honour before everything else and Joffrey who is the standard-issue sociopath, there are plenty of characters in the ‘Grey’ area who we just can’t put in a category. There’s no Good versus Bad but plain matter of family, honour and power. Some choose the right path and some choose the less honourable way to protect their family and/or to win power. All’s fair in love and war right? A war for justice, a battle for power, a game of thrones (that ‘ah’ moment when the title shows up in the book, and there are a few such moments).

Women and the S-word:

Some people criticize the book for its portrayal of women as objects of desire, excessive description of sex and its frivolous references to rape. What can I say? This story is about a medieval period type of country and, believe it or not, women were actually treated like that back then. But despite all the simple minded brothel women making appearances there are dozens of strong female characters in the book, characters that define and influence the progress of the story much much better than the heroines in majority of  movies today do. So what are they even complaining about?

And as for the objection about frequent love-making passages- someone has to be hopelessly lonely and a desperate-wannabe-critic to say that women find it repulsive. Are we in the 1950s and James Bond novels have just been released? Hello? Ever heard of Fifty Shades of Grey? The inexplicably most sold book of the decade? THAT weird thing was written by a woman (which even I had problem going through, and I’ve even seen the Hostel duology). I have to say that this is where the TV series messed up, with all the gratuitous nudity that add no value to the story, except maybe lure some watchers. Whether it helps or not, it still is the number one most watched TV Series today, and you won’t complain about it when you watch the show. It’s THAT good. But read the books first. If you still do complain this Quora answer should make you reconsider it-

It’s that simple… taste. Just because your guy likes the book/show doesn’t mean he’s sexist, just like how playing action video games doesn’t make your kid violent. No, really. There are studies showing no relation whatsoever mom!!

Conclusion:

Though it took me months to finish the book I’m sure in the hands of a proper reader the book won’t last more than a week even though it is a huge tome. The book will get you immersed, make you demand more and ultimately leave you heartbroken. So read with caution. And after reading this if you intend to (and I bet you would) get lost in this fantastic world with the subsequent books, bring a sweater, because…

Winter is Coming!

Ant-man: movie Review

I love Marvel Cinematic Universe. I prefer the comics though for all the minute detail, drama and personality the coloured panels carry in about 30 pages. After several issues of reading over a period of time we get so invested in the characters that anything bad happening to them hurts somewhere deep inside. When it comes to movies though, we cannot care about the character enough in two hours. Some exceptional movies do that successfully. Now don’t expect me to say that this is one such movie because I’m still conflicted on how I feel about the movie. Let me elaborate-

Marvel studios did something really good. They made movies dedicatedly chronicling important characters and then brought them together in a super-huge delicious cocktail that was Avengers (something DC is trying to achieve through shortcut bringing everyone in with a single movie). This made the character loveable because we knew their backstory. Then Ant-man decided to show up suddenly and say- “Hey guys! Can I play with you?”

“Wait! Who’re you?”

“I’m Ant-man.”

“Ok… so… who’re you?”

“Come one guys! I’ve been a superhero for a long time.”

“Really? We’ve never seen you before.”

“Duh! That’s because I was the size of an ant.”

For some reason I don’t like this logic. If they really wanted to make an Ant-man movie they should’ve made an Ant-man movie. With the real Ant-man! Instead, we see the guy ‘Hank Pym’ who invented the shrinking technology as an old guy too scared to wear his own suit. I really like Hank Pym from the comics. He is super smart, someone who can easily beat Ironman in intellect. Hank developed the technology to shrink a human and became Ant-man. He then reversed the effect and became Giant-man. I don’t know if it cost him much to change his trademark seeing that he only needed to add ‘Gi’ before his old name. Did I mention he is also a founding member of the Avengers and actually created Ultron?

I can go on about his importance, and if you want to know how vital he is read the Marvel comics event “Age of Ultron” where his absence from the timeline completely alters the present and Avengers are instead founded as The Defenders. But since he was not present in the Cinematic Universe earlier we just see an old man who used to do undercover operations but is tired of being Ant-man anymore. His whole past life is a big secret, unknown to the public and Ant-man is just an urban legend. That is until the need arises and Hank has to find a suitable guy who can don the suit again.

Here’s a life-size picture of Ant-man wearing the suit.

Of course ‘life-size’ is relative here 

Paul Rudd has done a really great job playing the role of Scott Lang, a robber, I mean a burglar who is called in for this special task by Hank Pym. My anger about not getting to see the original Ant-man in action was mollified a great deal by Paul’s acting which showed a humbled man who knows that he is not the best fit for this super-hero costume. The first time he shrinks to the size of rice and the way he stumbles around the place is joyful to watch. The story is good, the special effects are gorgeous and the CGI ants are cute, and in a lot of scenes reminded me of “Honey I shrunk the kids”. It even tries to make you care about the ants like the aforementioned movie. Can ants really be friendly?

All in all, the movie was a fun watch despite my prejudices, and if you’re not a comic book fan but you like Marvel movies you will enjoy it even more. It has lot of humour (since Paul Rudd is also a comedian his comedic timing is great) which I found similar to the Guardians of the Galaxy. But although being light years away from earth the Guardians of the Galaxy had a feeling of being in the same Marvel universe, while this movie has a stand-off-ish feeling to it even though it tries really hard to show that it is in the same timeline as the Avengers in a lot of ways. You even get to see Avengers building and the Avengers theme music (which I’m pretty sure Captain America plays in the headquarters for motivation) can be heard.

Coming back to the first question- Did this movie make me like the character? I think so. I’m not sure if it’s because of the story-writing that purposely add dialogs to show their struggle, the protagonist’s endearing helplessness throughout the movie or the fact that they repeatedly tell you why he’s doing it. Hank literally says the same line twice in the movie- “Are you going to stay a criminal or are you going to be a hero that your daughter already thinks you are?” (or something like that)

Despite all the good stuff I still can’t believe the real Ant-man is retired. I really hope we get separate origin movie showing us the Ant-man and his wife, the Wasp. I won’t be surprised to know that Ant-man fought with the Avengers’ in the battle against the Chitauri army in the first movie. We just couldn’t see him.

Avengers 2- Movie Review

A marvel movie comes out and I don’t review it? Not likely. Especially the supersized sequel to the highest grossing superhero movie ever. I’d been waiting for this movie for over a year, ever since the official page on IMDB was created and the image of Ultron from the comics was used as a poster. So I positively had to watch the first morning show of the Saturday and I did. Even when the earthquake shook Kolkata at over 6 Richter and even when people were exiting the movie hall to save themselves, I and my friend just raised our 3D glasses for a second to look at them, whispered “Amateurs” and resumed watching the movie. I know it’s the dumbest thing to do during earthquake, but I didn’t feel anything shaking and didn’t know the severity of it until I went back to my apartment and saw the news. 

Getting back to the movie, it is everything that you expected from the trailers and even more. If you had a Loki wielding a magic sceptre in the first movie, here you have a huge metallic “A.I” wielding the magic sceptre. If you had an army of aliens in the first movie, here you have an army of robots. If you had six superheroes there, you have many more here. If you had two very good fight sequences there, you have four here. If you had a flying SHIELD control base there, here you have a whole darn flying… umm, watch the movie and you’ll know.

Marvel Studios learned from their past mistakes, and they’ve given equal importance to all members of the Avengers. In the previous movie Ironman stole all the limelight with his wits and ultimately by saving the city from the nuclear warhead (something he never stopped to boast about), and the Hulk by saving him. Hawkeye and Scarlet Johansson… Uh, I mean Black Widow… didn’t get much focus. Maybe I felt more so because they didn’t get their own movies to let us know about their past. This movie did very good job of showing their private, emotional and vulnerable selves, and that goes for the other characters too. It felt for the first time that these superheroes are humans after all... well, except Thor who’s practically a god, but gods also have their woes.

I liked the two new additions to the cast, a boy and a girl who are ‘twins’. The girl has magical abilities (Telekinesis and psyche manipulation) and the boy can run really really fast. Fans of X-men would know that the boy is actually ‘Quicksilver’ and the girl is ‘Scarlet Witch’, and are in fact children of Magneto. This fact was not revealed in the movie because the film right to X-men franchise is currently with 20^th Century Fox Studios, and Avengers was made by Marvel Studios. This is also the reason why Spiderman is not in the Avengers, although he is one of the coolest members in comics but sadly owned by Sony. This issue is so ridiculous that they call the twins ‘Enhanced’ in Avengers 2, which is just a nice way of saying ‘Mutants’. One thing that’s weird about the cast for the twins, although they look awesome together, is that they played as husband and wife in Godzilla last year. It was weird information for me because in one of the comic book arcs that I read, the twins were actually engaged in a... umm… romantic relationship. I hope that was a coincidence and wasn’t a reference to the Lannisters.

Ultron is of course the pivotal character in the story. He may seem like the usual Artificial Intelligence gone rogue, but he’s not.  He has a nice dark humour, much like the A.I system ‘Glados’ from the Portal games. He has feelings, evident from the way he speaks to the ‘Twins’ and feels the existential crisis. He gets angry when provoked, gets upset when told that he cannot reproduce, and even knows better than to engage the Hulk. James Spader has given a chilling voice to Ultron. It gave me shivers when the self-convinced Ultron mutters- “They’ll understand. When they see it they’ll understand. I just need some… time.”

What’s scary about Ultron is that he can very well be real in the near future. With the advances in the computer technology you can never know when the computers will ‘evolve’ to an extent as to surpass capabilities of the human brain. Currently they don’t, because human brain is the most complex processing unit known to man and its workings are still very much in the darkness. We can build CPUs that can process at lightning speed, but without proper directions, proper instructions, the CPU would not know what to do with all that power. But the brain is after all just a bunch of neurons firing signals at each other, and a computer is just a bunch of logic gates firing electric signals at each other. Once we understand the brain, it will not be impossible to decode it and make a computer that mimics it. It will just take two such average computers, coupled with each other, to outdo the highest IQ ever recorded. Now imagine several such computers connected via network. Now just for the sake of thought exercise imagine that such a super intelligent computer decides that the humans are a threat to each other and the entire life on earth. Tony Stark makes that mistake by trying to create an A.I whose task is peace-keeping, and what else can result in a long lasting peace that the extermination of these petty nuisance called humans. What Tony didn’t know was that this will make for an awesome movie.

The movie is not without some negative points. Though I cannot point it out, it did feel that the movie was lacking some of the flashy charm of the first movie, maybe because of so many superhero movies coming out these days. Some dialogues were left incomplete and several actions seemed too scripted instead of looking natural. I saw the movie in both 3D and 2D. The 2D version is naturally much clearer, but surprisingly Marvel knows how to make good 3D also. The post credit scene was awesome. Even though it was only about 10 seconds long, it has made me restless until the next movie “Infinity Wars”.

If you haven’t already watched the movie, what’re you doing? Go watch it now!

The Visitor- Part 5 (Conclusion)

“Men in Black?” I asked to see if I heard him right.

“Yup. I have to get going. Open the door”

I went to the door and opened it. There stood a man- tall, dark and handsome. Like a guy straight out of a Hollywood movie. He wore a black suit and matching goggles.

‘Who wears goggles at night?’

Paul who came behind me laughed, obviously listening to my thoughts.

“Hello sir” said the man in black, “I’m Officer Jay. I’ve come to retrieve your guest, if that’s fine with you.”

“Guest?” I looked back at Paul, “Oh yeah, sure.”

“Wassup Jay!” Paul waved his hands and the man replied in a changed amiable tone, “Hi Paul. Seems like you’re gonna be stuck here for a while longer.”

“Yeah yeah. I don’t mind.”

“You don’t mind?” the man pulled down his goggle and peered from the top to check if Paul was joking, “You mean the whole send-off party I threw for you this night was for nothin’?”

“Yeah well, thanks for the party. But guess I’m gonna be stuck here for a while longer” Paul grinned.

“Fine. But I’m not givin’ you anymore parties the next time your ship is fixed. And looks like it’s bumped up pretty good” said the man-in-black, “Kay is loading it in a truck over there.”

“I must ask, Sir” continued the man now looking at me, “Did you feel any discomfort in his presence?”

Paul was offended, “Hey look at me and then look at him. Do I look like someone who can hurt him? Evolution may have made my head bigger but left my body weak because we don’t use it much. The only discomfort to him is the tall scary guy on his doorstep in the middle of the night.”

The man smiled and pressed me, “Well, did he Sir?”

“Uh, no no not at all” I said earnestly hoping my statement would extend Paul’s stay in my house.

“Good, we’ll be off then” said the man-in-black and signalled Paul, “Get on the car Paul.”

“Hey don’t order me! And one more thing, I’m going on a vacation right after I return to office.” Paul said with his hands folded across his chest.

“Vacation? Where are you going? To the second floor of our office?”, Joked the man who called himself Jay.

“Very funny. I’m going to roam the world.”

“But we can’t let people see aliens.”

“I’m not alien. You’re alien!” Paul raised his voice.

“Okay okay, talk to Zed. Let’s see what he thinks. Now get on the car, please! We’re late and I’m sleepy.” Jay pleaded with Paul.

I didn’t know what to say to Paul. A minute ago we were talking our hearts out and now it all seemed awkward. Paul came to me and gave me a hug, his bony limbs feebly wrapping around me. He was tiny. His huge head pressing against my chest, I felt like I’m hugging one of those personal post boxes we see in Hollywood movies, or a huge lollipop.

Paul let go of me and smiled “E.T go home”.

‘Another movie reference’, incorrect reference though since the actual quote is ‘E.T phone home’ and it is often misunderstood. But I let it pass. He had just called a place on Earth his home.

Paul walked away from me and past Jay but stopped at the door, then turned towards Jay, “Jay, can you do me a favour and bypass the next step?”

“Next step?”

Paul squinted at Jay for a couple of seconds, perhaps willing him to do something, and then sighed, “It’s no use trying to convey something to you via thoughts. I meant the elimination of witness step.”

“Elimination?” I gasped.

“Are you serious? That’s a violation of protocol” Jay objected.

“Come on just this time, for me” Paul sounded pleading.

“But… You know that I’ll be in trouble.” Jay seemed conflicted.

“He won’t say anything to anyone.” Paul told him and then looked at me.

I understood nothing, “Uh what’s going on?”

“I’m just asking him to spare you.”

“Spare me?” my heart was pounding now, “You can’t kill me. That’s illegal. I didn’t commit any felony. You.. you fell in my balcony! It was your fault! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!”

Jay and Paul exchanged confused looks and howled with laughter together.

“See I told you… He’s harmless… Let him be, please” Paul spoke between chuckles.

“Okay fine”, said Jay “You owe me one.”

“Hey you guys want me to recommend humans to my community right? That’s why you’re helping me go back home. I owe you nothing” Paul said sticking his tongue out “Come on, let’s go”

They had just spared my life. Meeting him didn’t sound like everyone’s privilege, almost illegal. I was an outlaw in that manner. And yet, I didn’t want him to leave. I raised my hand forward to stop him from leaving and then dropped it without saying anything. Paul saw me raise my hand and thought I was waving him goodbye. He waved back.

“I’ll miss you” I blurted out. My mistake.

He stopped on his track.

“What?” jay asked him.

Paul turned towards me. His eyes even bigger now, “You’ll… miss me?”

“Yeah” I shrugged. Why are you over-reacting?

“Nobody has said that to me.” He said.

“Well, that’s maybe because people in your office see you every day. So they have nothing to miss. And the outsiders who see you are removed from existence.”

“Even when I was about to leave earth nobody said they’ll miss me” Paul eyed Jay who raised his hands in surrender, “Hey, we neva’ thought it a farewell. We assumed once you’re back to yo’ home you’d get a new ride and keep visiting us.”

Paul got to thinking and then looked at me, “How can you miss me? You just met me. Instant connection is not something humans can do. I thought only our kind felt it because of our mental connections. I even started liking your mind-voice.”

I gave a grim grin, “well, I sometimes get attached to people pretty soon too. It’s rare but it happens.”

“My gosh, you humans are better than I thought” he looked at me and Jay in turn and then at me, “Then you’ll find it hard to let go of this new friendship.”

“Sadly yes” I replied softly, “It’s not every day that I meet a super smart telepathic E.T. You’ll keep in touch right?”

“I can’t. I’ll miss you but Jay’s reputation is at stake here.”

“Oh!”

“You were right Jay” he tapped on Jay’s shoulder, “carry out the next step. I don’t want this burden on me.”

“Wait what?” I jumped back, “You mean the elimination step? You can’t do that. I’m your friend.”

Paul smiled, “Nobody’s going to hurt you buddy. Remember when I said you won’t remember anything? That’s what is going to happen. We’ll remove the evidence that I was here. Then you won’t be a witness anymore. That is the elimination.”

“Please look here Sir.” Jay adjusted his goggles in place and took out a sleek looking metal cylinder of some sort. It was rounded at both ends and had a black strip near one end. He held it vertically like an artist measuring his model with a pencil.

“Please look at this black strip” he told me.

“Wait what is this?” I asked, scared now.

“It’s Neuralyzer. It’s used to wipe the memory clean of a witness. Its flash of light goes deep in your brain and erases the most recent experiences from your short term memory before it could commit to your long term memory. You won’t remember meeting Paul.” Jay replied casually.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t want you to remember me and long to meet me buddy. I know that kind of longing- to go meet my friends -and I don’t want to be the cause of it to someone else. Hence, this cruel treatment. But it’s lesser of the two evils. I’d rather that you forget me than have you remember me as a friend who abandoned you.”

“No!” I protested. I realised that Jay’s sunglasses must be protecting him from the Neuralyzer. Why else would he be wearing a sunglass in the middle of the night? If only I had one right now. ‘And you thought you could beat Cyclops by covering yourself with sunglasses’ my mind-voice found the most inappropriate time to mock me. Paul chuckled. I looked at him and saw that he had closed his eyes and was smiling at my thoughts.

“Say cheese” said Jay and I instinctively looked at him. A blinding flash of light.

I stood stunned for a second and shook my head.

“Goodbye kid! And Thanks for the yummy Murukku.” Paul said and started walking towards his car. I was too dazed to react.

“Did you just call’im a kid?” Jay raised his eyebrows, “This guy looks like he’s in’is mid-20s.”

“Of course” I said blinking rapidly, “for someone as old as Paul everyone on earth must be like kids.”

“What the?” Jay looked at me shocked.

“He must’ve blinked” Paul called out from near the car, “and you forgot to say the commands. Try again!”

Another bright flash of light before I could protest. Everything was pure white. Like a clean white board. Like everything written on it had been just cleaned. Spotless.

As my eyes adjusted to the surroundings I heard the man-in-black talking to me, “You don’t remember anything that happened in the last hour. Nobody visited you. You just fell asleep and had strange dreams which you can’t recall. Go inside and lock the door. Go to your bed and sleep.”

“Okay” I said in a monotone. He nodded and walked away from the door. I locked the door, went to my bed room, turned off the lights, lay down on my bed and pulled up the blanket to my face. As I closed my eyes the last memory of a white board still fresh in my mind, a kind of memory that lights up the back of your eyelids.

On my table near the bed, my laptop was in ‘Sleep’ mode, with a new document open also with white screen in it. I went to ‘sleep’ mode as well.

–The End–

• This story is inspired from the movies ‘Paul’ and ‘Men-in-Black’. Also my personal interest in sci-fi and philosophy. 
• UFOs are real. Yes, they are ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’. Whether they are weather balloon, military surveillance aircraft, a prank or actually alien spaceship is up for debate. If we knew, they won’t be called UFOs anymore would they? 
• Roswell Incident of 1947 refers to the crash of a military surveillance balloon in Roswell, New Mexico. When the crash was reported, the military quickly collected all the debris and concealed the military purpose of it, passing it off as a weather balloon. This caused people to believe that something was indeed fishy about the way the military covered up everything and several theories of alien spacecraft crash were born. Some witnesses of the Roswell incident claim seeing alien dead bodies being recovered by the military. Spooky isn’t it?
• Many people who have witnessed UFOs also claim to have been visited by strange men in black suits who threatened them into keeping silence about their UFO sighting. If we can believe someone’s account of an alien space ship hovering above them then we might as well believe in the MIB phenomena.
• Apart from these there are several account of people who claim to have seen live aliens and some believe they were abducted by the aliens to their ships where they were experimented on and then were returned back to earth, all this while they either have lost track of a lot of actual time or no time at all.
• Even with all the so called video ‘proof’ and crop circles, there is no substantial irrefutable proof of life elsewhere in the universe. I believe, and so do many others, that this is because of the close minded short sightedness of religion and scientific limitation in venturing deeper into space. We cannot even claim to know all the species right here on earth, and the universe is infinitely vast. We must be really conceited to believe that we’re the only ones.

-Post Credit Scene-

I got up after about an hour of sleep because of the faint burning sensation in my eyes. I switched on the light and looked at the sleep deprived self in the mirror. My eyes were red and eyelids were drooping. There was a thin filament coming out of the corner of my right eye.

“Oh crap!” I reached to it and pulled it out. It came out without resistance. I dropped it in an open cup on the drawer below the mirror. I carefully took out the other one from my right eye.

The vendor who supplied these contact lenses, though proudly advertised its AR coating and the UV protection capabilities, had strongly advised me against sleeping with the lens on. “These babies may protect your eyes from harmful rays but the eyes also need oxygen which is hard to get with the eyelids closed.” He had said.

I dropped the second lens in the disinfectant liquid to soak all night. I drew heavy breath and went back to my bed. I had to pretend like I had forgotten everything in front of Jay. I then looked at my laptop.

‘You wanted inspiration for a blog post. Now you have enough for atleast five.’Whispered my mind-voice.

–The End (for real this time)–