Waking Life

I gotta rent this and see why people threw hissy-fits when it didn't get nominated for Best Animated Film.

I'm doing a review for this shortly, Tony, but I don't think you'll be pleased with my rating of the film.

What the hell is this about?

Great to look at... kinda.

Pretentious otherwise.

Watched 30 minutes in the theater, had to run out and not go back in because of seasickness.

What I saw made me not want to go back.

HATE

Gawd... it seems that peoples' opinions here at chud are soooooo based around what Nick thinks. If he gives praise to a normally un-praised film, all of the chewers love it too... and if he blasts a critically loved film, many of the chewers seem to hate it too... coincidence? Doubt it... *waits to be screamed at*

Anyway.... for me..
LIKE
was a little pretentious at times and presented some beliefs that were barely beliefs at all, a few of the conversations didn't say much at all...

but, there were many encounters that had interesting dialogue that presented some thought provoking ideas, and the eye candy alone was enough for me to reccomend it. The film was visually wonderful, with enough interesting dialogue to keep me entertained.

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I can't speak for other Chewers, but if you've been at this board for more than a couple of months, you'd know that Nick and I disagree on things ALL of the time.

LOTR.

Resident Evil.

15 Minutes.

Blow.

LOTR.

LOTR. ( I say it three times, because there's three of them, and we'll be diametrically opposed on each and every one)

Jeepers Creepers.

The Others.

Stick around, and you'll see us do it again, too.

loved it

I was expecting an animated sequel to "Slackers" but what I got was a far more entertaining & thought-provoking film brimming with hypnotic visuals.

The whole film actually has a plot. Though it seems like philosophical ideas were strewn in haphazardly, the plot centers around the idea of "lucid dreaming."

Before I continue, recently, I've had some healthy discourse with a fellow co-worker who's been very interested in lucid dreaming. Later on, he had described to me his experiences with his lucid dreams. He said that he managed to look at his watch and noticed that there were no hands in it.

To make a long story short, I had a serious question about lucid dreaming: "Could lucid dreaming have 'negative' repercussions because you are 'interfering' with something natural?"

SPOILERS
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And when the dreamer of the film started to think that his dreams were nightmarish, I thought about my question to my co-worker.
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END SPOILERS

Anyway, that personal info probably enhanced my viewing pleasure for the film. But even without such foreknowledge, this film was utter poetry brought to visual life. I loved every minute of it (except for that "amoeba" character with an annoying squeaky voice). I can see why some would view this film pretentious, but the ideas were presented in such an original manner that it sucks you in this "dreamlike" state. As the dreamer is dreaming, I felt like I was dreaming as well.

There were also some funny and creepy bits. It's not all discourse as I thought it would be. Still, I'm glad that I purchased this DVD as it's quickly become one of my favorite DVDs.

Yes Micah, I've been reading the boards religiously since around september 2001, and I realise how outspoken you are... I totally agreed with your take on LOTR... I personally did not like the film at all.

Anyways.. I just find that many of the chewers seem to be greatly influenced by Nick's opinions, which is understanable... it is to be expected that when one goes into a movie with certain expectations courtesy of a figure that they respect very highly, their opinion of the film will be changed.

anyway, we're getting off topic... I dont think we need to really discuss it anymore

Things that might help a viewer like this film:

-You're from Austin. This is a very "Austiny" film in tone, as are both "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused", though the latter is really more about Richard Linklater's experiences in a small town in Texas during the 70's.

-You enjoyed Linklater's other films, especially "Slacker."

-You have some interest in/experience with lucid dreaming. It's really the core of the film. Having some background in the material was a definite enhancement.

-You're a Phillip K. Dick fan. The discussion of Dick's work at the end highlights another thematic thread that runs through the entire movie.

-You saw, and enjoyed, "The Cruise" with Timothy "Speed" Levitch, who makes a brief appearance here.

I hit all of the above, and I loved it. If none of this fits you, it's harder to predict how you might react to to the film. You still might love it, or you may find it to be pretentious pablum. Also, If Blair Witch's camerawork made you ill, you probably won't make it through this either.

Anyway, while surfing reviews at Amazon, I came across a guy who summed it up much better than I can at the moment:

Micah's review of the DVD as well as Steve, his, and My unofficial audio "sequel".

tomorrow

I have only watched it once; it's definitely interesting and ambitious, as well as unique in MY experience.

Those are all meant to be compliments, by the way. Still, it didn't fully engage me - some of the monologues grew tiresome, although I DID remain interested in where Wiggins' character would end up next.

Interesting in its own merits, and I think it was successful, as far as acheiving what Linklater set out to do with it; still, not sure if/when I'll check it out again.

You know, I watched it, thought that I liked it, gave it some time, thought about it some more, then realized that I'd spent way too much time thinking about this pretentious piece of something...

Being apathetic towards the film now, and seeing there is only two categories to lump them into, I guess that I'm in the "hate" category as well...

Though it does make a useful primer for hallucinogens - I recall pointing out to my gf a couple times "THAT'S what an acid trip is like!"

Micah's review here: <a href="http://www.chud.com/chudvd/reviews/waking.php3" target="_blank">http://www.chud.com/chudvd/reviews/waking.php3</a>

Some good captions in there too. At the very bottom is our WAKING LIFE 2.

"I went to college, and I attended more than one party where some graduate student nursing a spliff went on ad infinitum about such scholarly things."

No offense, but that is where I stopped listening. It is possible to talk about big ideas without being stoned. Anti-intellectualism is boring.

And phony intellectualism is worse.

The problem is, who is to judge what is phony intellectualism? Why is acceptable to love utter garbage movies for being a "ride," but loving a movie that reaches and thinks is "pretentious?"

I'll take 100 pretentious movies over 1 Scorpion King.

Devin, people are defined by what they DO not by what they talk about. This film basically celebrates sitting around and talking about shit instead of experiencing it. I'd like to think most of us would outgrow this goatee twisting stuff once we finished our philosophy classes. This is Linklater trying to make use of his college degree, and little more.

The great thing is, we aren't forced into that choice. We can avoid BOTH.

But if you want to make a movie about dreams and thought, how else do you do it? If you want to bring up complex ideas, you have to have people talking.

And sitting around and bullshitting about big ideas is fun, however far from your first philosophy class you may be. Ideas are thrilling, and sharing them more so. It's the same thing as sitting around bullshitting about movies or sports or whatever, just different subject matter.

Regurgitating other people's opinions is CRAP. If it was just these people having natural, REAL conversations instead of copying and pasting text from existing works... I'd agree with you.

But this just reminds me of that person in high school, or at the coffee house, or at some job I had who tried too damn hard to be deep and instead just turned out being a piece of plastic.

Maybe that's why a lot of us don't get along so well. If CHUD's MB was a high school, the cliques would be apparent as Hell.

If someone's smart and educated, they really don't need to latch onto a film like this because it's required of them.

If the movie was something along the lines of Slacker, I would totally agree with you. But in the format as presented, being a lucid dream, and being animated the way it is, I think that the monologue, regurgitating format works.
This would be a movie I would hate if presented as a straight forward live action film, but here presentation is half the point.

I think Devin makes a good point about presentation, but for me, it did not make up for the rest of the movie.

But Devin thinks I'm an idiot, so he will be happy that I agree with Micah on this one.

"I also realize that my opinion on this film isn’t shared by everyone, or even a majority of the people who’ve seen it. Great. You guys float on off and decide whether the now of then is today’s yesterday, and I’ll be over here actually ENJOYING life instead of questioning every nuance of it."

I didn't realize that if you contemplated life, you weren't enjoying it.

It's why Buddha was so miserable.

I watched this yesterday, having had only a couple hours' worth of sleep the night before, and a lot of things on my mind.

So I was distracted a lot, my mind went on a lot of tangents after hearing some of the ideas discussed, and, yes, I even fell asleep a couple times, and had to start at the beginning of the last chapter.

The movie worked surprisingly well in this context, where the ideas (simplistic as some of them were) and visuals were very relatable.

Nick, I see your point about regurgitating other people's opinions, but I think one of the pluses of this movie is that you could read the excitement of some of the people presenting their (or other people's) theories. It was philosophy with feeling behind it. The movie is as much about the passion for expressing these ideas as it is for the ideas themselves.

I got the feeling that Linklater was partially poking fun at himself with the four young guys and the old man on the telephone pole. The old man is all action and no thought. They're all thought and no action. It shows an awareness about the function of this movie.

I caught a few minutes of Before Sunrise again last night on Sundance and I must admit I prefer it, as far as talky Linklater movies go, but Waking Life was, by no means, a bust for me, either.

I would also like to reitterate something Mikah missed, which is that this film made me seasick. Seasick. Never happened to me before in a movie.

Actually, I hated Before Sunrise. For me, the addition of the lucid dreaming and animation made everything much more palatable.

No offense as well, but did you feed my review into the Windows XP Speech Synthesizer? I'm not sure exactly how you listened to it.

BTW, if you did...can you send me an MP3 of it?

As for the anti-intellectualism point, yes it's possible to talk about "big" ideas without being stoned. But I found the presentation of these ideas to be far from "big."

I acknowledge that the concepts of the movie are powerful and intellectual, and made it a point to say so in my review. That stuff is great. Simply having people ramble on pointlessly about is NOT intellectual, not "big" and NOT great.

Hence my utter disdain for the film, Dev. Linklater took some choice cerebral filet mignon and half-cooked it. Then he threw the meat everywhere randomly and expected viewers to go...."Mmmmmm....yummy."

I think not.

Not so fast, lad.

Under my comments about "THE LOOK," I mention that Dramamine is a requisite for viewing this tripe.

So is a cast iron stomach.

Now, now....I didn't say contemplating life and enjoying life were mutually exclusive. They aren't.

THAT is my point.

This movie, by example, almost asserts that they are. To reach this hallowed level of questioning consciousness, Wiggins had to mostly just sit there and listen to parts of his subconscious lecture him for hours on end. There was no action on these theorums. No progression of his character. Nothing of consequence that came as a result of his ordeal.

And all of that aside, how about some love for the captions, people?

Curious also, why review this film? Nick has such a stable of reviewers, one of whom really liked the flick. It's seems almost vindictive. I for one would like to see a counterpoint review.

I disagree STRONGLY with that. Look at the end of that movie again.

Also, I think there's a very Buddhist strain of passivity to the film. Sidharta Guatma didn't acheive nirvana by running around doing a lot of stuff - he did it sitting under a tree, contemplating life.

Because I'm the boss, and Micah actually gets the reviews done in a timely manner. Plus, I don't want my site used as a propaganda machine for this movie.

I can answer that easily.

Nick and I saw the film together, and we felt identically about the film. Rather than suffer through it again, he asked me to do the DVD review so that his view -i.e. The CHUD (seeing as how he is head cheese) view - would be well-represented.

He also entrusted me with the review because he knew that rather than just slander the film endlessly for a number of paragraphs, I'd present a good amount of perspective and objectivity as well. I make it clear that my opinion on the film is a minority one, and I give a great deal of time to objectively evaluating the aesthetics of the film as well.

But it's not fair to only give films to reviewers who love the film in question. That's not what reviewing/being a critic is about. It's about stating how we feel and then explaining specifically WHY we feel that way, which I feel I did quite well.

Besides, the counterpoint can be found in this thread. You have the oppportunity sound off long and loud on why you disagree and why I'm an anti-intellectual doofus. It's your world, and I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut.

Hell, I wish I could provide a counterpoint review to a number of official CHUD reviews, and then I always remember that I can....

IN THE DISCUSSION THREAD FOR THE FILM.

That's what makes the boards great.

Kirby, you will not be seeing a counterpoint review on this site. I'm very wary about having as many guest reviewers as I do.

Yes, he did. Wiley, on the other hand, floats away, and I assume that on his way up, a falcon will whizz by and start peppering him on the post-modern legacy of Dadaism on the human psyche.

Somebody is getting the short end of the stick here.

I hope that I'm wrong at reading that as a dig at my reviewing schedule. I mean, I would hardly call reviewing a movie that came out a week or two ago "timely."

I think Wiley dies at the end.

Devin, I don't have the ability to take screencaps on my computer (I don't have a DVD-ROM drive), and so I am dependent on Nick for that function.

As soon as he gets them up for me to do my captions, I get him my review and captions almost always within 24 hours. I'm going as fast I can, man.

He wins, then.

Mikah, no dig at you - I only JUST got the ability to do caps back, and i can only do them on my laptop, so i understand.