Tilda Swinton Archives | Otaku No Culture

After Three Thousand Years of Longing, Should That Be, “I’d Do Anything For Love?”

Perhaps Miller is planning on a sequel to answer a rather unusual plot hole in Three Thousand Years of Longing..

I’m no stranger to the djinni narrative when considering my love for One Thousand and One Nights, but as for being as well versed as Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) in Three Thousand Years of Longing, she has me beat. As a narratologist (an individual who studies tales which impact our perception of culture in the world around us), she knows something that mythologists don’t. This tale is as compelling as Bill Moyers’ interview with Joseph Campbell (Power of Myth), and what’s explored considers why this trope persists to this day. The last work I read was Three Little Wishes, which is a British take on the concept.

In what George Miller deconstructs may well be a Australian verion. He examines the rules for living a fulfilling life over being confined to the mundane. That’s the problem Binnie faces, and when she awakens the Djinni (Idris Elba) in the bottle, what he offers condemns her world view–she knows his kind from literature. And when he tries to rebuff the stereotype, the fun tête-à-tête they have reveals a look of his life and those he’s attempted to make better–if it can be called that. But sadly, he’s been forced to return to the glass container every time.

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A Look at the Sneak Peak of Doctor Strange on IMAX 3D

doctor-strange-poster By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

I’m sure the numbers of how many people who attended the short preview to Doctor Strange (on a long weekend in North America) is as varied as the response to this film. While I’m excited to catch the end-product come November 4th (the 3D sequences when he’s flying through the multiverse look great), just how many die-hards can accept the movie’s obvious changes will determine its success. I’m okay with the gender-swapping of the Ancient One, and Tilda Swinton is a very respectable actress. With no successor to Mako Iwamatsu’s amazing presence, I’m guessing the producers had make changes lest they do a casting call throughout China / Tibet to find someone just as promising to fill the role.

When the introduction reveals nearly an hours’ worth of scenes are shot with IMAX cameras, the need to tease fans with what is to come is obvious — to spotlight the special effects on a box screen. I will certainly plan to see it again at the National Geographic IMAX Theatre. Sadly this operation plays these movies as a second-run product. Not every cinema has a proper screen to show off this format right.

In what is more in front and centre is Stephen Strange’s ego (Benedict Cumberbatch) which can easily rival Tony Stark’s. When he’s a famous neurosurgeon with some pent up frustrations over who he is required to operate on, the first few minutes works very well to show how conceited he is. That’s until he looks away from where he is driving to a cell phone (showing x-ray scans of his next patient instead of playing Pokémon GO) and winds up over a cliff. The slow-motion scene shows his hands getting crushed.

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Deciphering Dreams Rewired, A Documentary Review

With Dreams Rewired, mass communications is explored through a collection of vintage reels dating from the days of the Lumière brothers (at least) to Thomas Edison’s experiments to pre-war propaganda.

Could this beauty be activating a Bluetooth device in this turn of a century photo?

Please check local listings for showtimes near you.

Wannabe futurists and technophiles ought to go see Dreams Rewired, a documentary exploring humanity’s interconnectivity with media. In the changing world of communications, new technical innovations annually appear, but to keep up requires understanding where it has come from — which is what this film excels at showing. One part history lesson and three parts montage, the discoveries of the past (in how the radio, phone and television was developed) is brilliantly explored in contrast to today’s obsession with cell phone culture. Today’s reliance on social media to stay connected with the news around the world can be put into contrast here, but viewers are left to decide on how that affects them instead of this movie making a statement.

This film really wants to explore the role the Internet played through hypermedia, but it stops short of going into detail on the role the military and academic institutions played to bring mass communication to the public. Quite often, our need for exacting data is met with trepidation, and this detail is gently explored through Tilda Swinton’s guiding and lilting narrative. The way she reads the script provided to her by the writing team of Manu Luksch, Mukul Patel, Martin Reinhart, and Thomas Tode brings the charm of Gloria Swanson to life. The way the dialogue moves only affirms the issues people had with technology back in that time, and it carries through to today with the coming innovations. The rhetoric she’s trying to convey can be tough to interpret but it can understood after spending time in deep thought.

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