
2005.09.15 • 13:57 • 4 com
It seems that Lama Tsering and Ani Zamba are showing this movie to their students. I can understand why, since it seems to be dealing with the virtual nature of reality, and even a bit of mind training. Well, anyway, I have a lot of reservations about it.
I used to think this was a good movie for some people, that is, those with less academic pride. This was not implying that it was for dumb people, or people with bad sense of aesthetics, or for illiterates. It just that it took a peculiar kind of not caring about what scientists and academia in general think about those subjects, and a somewhat 70's view of physics, for one to like it. I used to think it was good in that niche. I don't think this anymore.
I'm a student of Lama Samten, a former physicist, and I know some of the true connections between the epistemology of quantum mechanics and some aspects of the understanding of consciousness and mind — and maybe because I care about this connections, I don't like to see them exploited in the way the movie does. It gives them a bad image exactly for those who would benefit from this understanding in detail, that is, men of science1.
The many gibberishes about quantum mechanics made it aesthetically impossible to mention its name in connection with anything without sounding a new age freak. And this movie is the best example of this gibberish, although I don't deny its main statement (that mind and reality are interconnected, and that one isn't passive of the other2). I dislike its aesthetics and its means, but not its goals.
But this is not the worse. If it was just that, it was ok for simpletons. But it encourages magical thinking, and thus is one of the lowest kinds of new age, the bad kind to put it mildly.
And that's why I think that to make a connection with this movie not only creates obstacles within the academia, but it is plain misleading even for those simpletons who wish to indulge in two hours of mumbo jumbo.
I used to think this was a good movie for some people, that is, those with less academic pride. This was not implying that it was for dumb people, or people with bad sense of aesthetics, or for illiterates. It just that it took a peculiar kind of not caring about what scientists and academia in general think about those subjects, and a somewhat 70's view of physics, for one to like it. I used to think it was good in that niche. I don't think this anymore.
I'm a student of Lama Samten, a former physicist, and I know some of the true connections between the epistemology of quantum mechanics and some aspects of the understanding of consciousness and mind — and maybe because I care about this connections, I don't like to see them exploited in the way the movie does. It gives them a bad image exactly for those who would benefit from this understanding in detail, that is, men of science1.
The many gibberishes about quantum mechanics made it aesthetically impossible to mention its name in connection with anything without sounding a new age freak. And this movie is the best example of this gibberish, although I don't deny its main statement (that mind and reality are interconnected, and that one isn't passive of the other2). I dislike its aesthetics and its means, but not its goals.
But this is not the worse. If it was just that, it was ok for simpletons. But it encourages magical thinking, and thus is one of the lowest kinds of new age, the bad kind to put it mildly.
And that's why I think that to make a connection with this movie not only creates obstacles within the academia, but it is plain misleading even for those simpletons who wish to indulge in two hours of mumbo jumbo.
Also in movies: Superbad • Das Boot • O Cheiro do Ralo • The Lathe of Heaven • Skammen • Sakura no mori no mankai no shita • O Ano em que meus Pais Saíram de Férias • The Fountain • Goh-hime • 10 Items or Less • Half Nelson • Hoffman • Silver Streak • F for Fake • Stranger than Fiction • Mulholland Dr • A Scanner Darkly • Scoop • Brazil • Stay • Film Geek • The Trial • Rikyu • Kuroi Ame • Tanin no kao • Don't Come Knocking • Jinruigaku nyumon: Erogotshi yori • Where the Truth Lies • Stalker • Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion • Jesus Christ Superstar • Lila dit Ça • How to Get Ahead in Advertising • Equus • My Sassy Girl • Mysterious Skin • Bewitched • Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid • They Live • La Joven • Peeping Tom • Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il • Glen or Glenda • Casa de Areia • Melinda and Melinda • bad movies: Bewitched
Shares tags with: Irrelevancies (consciousness, reality); Bill Maher (consciousness); Stay • Lama John's Videogallery (Lama Tsering); The Embodied Mind (mind); Dharma, Ice Cold (new age); Colour and Realism (reality); Talking to Plants (magical thinking);
1. ^ Lama Samten jokes about this kind of stuff. He told he once spoke with Gilberto Gil in an airport, and that he said Mãe Menininha do Gantuá was asked how did she made so many cures and helped so many people through miracles, and she said "quantum physicis, bichinho" — but I would agree with many physicists that what Mãe Menininha did is much more than what they do, she was being far too generous with scientists! We know she meant it was something "non-causal", but this is an anecdote exactly because of the huge amount of gibberish already said about quantum mechanics, to the point where is completely unfashionable even to mention it. The main issue is a philosophycal one, about which most of the physicists work mathematically and don't think or care about, and philosophers don't even consider, even though it works for physicists.
2. ^ That is, the extremes of realism and idealism.

Funniest mindless movie of the last few years. McLovin is the best, and the other guys grew on me.
In his job he needs to undervalue the suffering of others in order to make more money. Then there’s the smell, the ass and the eye. The degree of objectification of desire is in direct proportion to the self-debasement of the indulger. By degrading the other, he nullifies himself. The very indifference to the overjealous ones, the suppressed recalcitrant losers of the world, is what causes their victims to exist. Great disturbing movie.
A lost science fiction PBS movie with Taoist undertones is a real find, right? A guy discovers his dreams change reality—when he wakes up he finds himself in a world where the content of his dreams have actually happened. He of course gets scared after a couple of nightmares, seeks relief in drugs, and then, because of them, is lead to a psychiatrist. 
Here's for all the sissy Apple lovers out there... This is the ultimate design for my old Duron, which faithfully downloaded well over one terabyte (mostly movies, 1300+) always on 24/7/365 over the last four years. It also runs Apache and is a file and printer server, as well as a router for my home network (with four, also damn old and beautiful computers). Sometimes I dust it off with a vacuum cleaner.
I really enjoyed 
I have read the article on
In imdb a user commented: "Annoying little transition into some sort of regurgitated independent film values finds this shallow project from Brad Silberling offering little and providing less in this embarrassingly exploitive work." I agree, yet it is still watchable — even more so if you understand how clichê is the fabricated spontaneity in it. It is as if independent movie has aquired its own hollywood-like formulaicism. So it kind of becomes an interestingly consumated aesthetic portrail of so many cult-status fabricated stylishness examples we see around. Many people liked 






E outra: falar de física assim e fazer um link direto com Deus é de um reducionismo assombroso! A Física explica a parcela mais ínfima do mundo vivenciado humano. A biologia é muito mais tangível, nesse sentido. Por isso acho que o trabalho de Francisco Varela sobre cognição é muito mais palpável (para fazermos correlações com ensinamentos budistas, por exemplo) do que teorias físicas dos domínios subatômicos, que são mais distantes de nossa observação cotidiana. Em resumo, nós somos muito mais animais do que um conjunto de átomos — no entanto, isso ainda permanece reducionista!
Waking Life is a better movie, but is somewhat annoying also, if you see the dialogs as not satirical — and I think Linklater didn't thought it that way (from his other movies). But sometimes I have a dream he was making fun of ALL those grandiloquences, then the movie gets so much better.
>"But sometimes I have a dream he was making fun of ALL those grandiloquences, then the movie gets so much better."<
OK, but the movie is about bardos, right? If you take out the conversations, you get a story about dream, death and, mainly, about bardos. Or I've just missed the point?
The point is: I think, from what I know of Linklater, that he meant some of the conversations to be profound, and say stuff. Then the movie loses much of its fun to me, it becomes too heavy handed.