Some sort of insomniac response to Benedict C. as Alan T. ...

The beginnings of a review of The Imitation Game (2014)

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28 December

* Contains some spoilers *

This has the beginnings of a review of The Imitation Game (2014)

Section 1 of Alan Turing's paper is headed 'The imitation game', but its title is 'Computing machinery and intelligence', @ImitationGame...

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 31, 2014

It was not the first visit to Bletchley Park (@BParkPodcast), but a friend who had not already been and who came to an excellent amateur production (at The ADC Theatre (@adctheatre)) of Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code was then taken there that same weekend : we easily agreed, seeing The Imitation Game (2014) together (@ImitationGame), that it could have given no such impetus, because it is best watched by someone knowing little about BP or Alan Turing (and unprepared to know more) :

One wishes to be wrong, but The @ImitationGame (2014) seems no more likely than Enigma (2001) to cause people to visit @BParkPodcast ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

It is fanciful in the extreme to show people trying to crack a code who not only have no notion what would / should happen, if they did so, but who are also – in consequence, and as if such decisions could would be left to them – left squabbling about what to do.

Not only that, but it is presented as if, finding out in the middle of the night on the edge of what is now Milton Keynes in the early 1940s, that someone’s mother is about to be eaten by a shark on a remote beach, one can simply summon up a passing shark-hunter (via the offices of the beneficent Steven Spielberg, no doubt)…

-> Falsifying facts in The @ImitationGame about Turing's war, the bombe machine, Hugh Alexander, etc. does not even serve a good story ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

-> Justified by the 'twisted genius' slant (e.g. of A Beautiful Mind (2001)), to hell with how, with whom and when Enigma was broken ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

-> Just to make out that Turing - alongside Mark Strong (as a creepier Jeremy Northamthan Enigma's (2001)) - decided who lived or died...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

Some film-posters make more fanciful claims than others :

Only by oddly defining 'British' (or 'film') is @ImitationGame 'The best British film of the year' (poster), @dimensionsmovie - Mr.Turner ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2014

The worst thing about the film (because there were not just half-a-dozen codebreakers, and only one woman amongst them) was also a source of the best : Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) reaching out to what he found kindred in Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), and the sense of their valuing and encouraging (the best in) each other.

Though, that said, it did feel as if one had been there before, with the premiere of Dimensions : A Line, A Loop, A Tangle of Threads, at Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) in 2011… :

Not uniquely, @dimensionsmovie, but more than a little reminded of Stephen and Annie by @imitationgame (2014)...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2014

Period touches in Graham Moore's script for The @ImitationGame - such as KeiraKnightley (as Joan Clarke) three times exclaiming O My God ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

Of course, depressing a key on an Enigma machine, and seeing the correlate light up, beats The @ImitationGame, too : http://t.co/7gOTiDec2v
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

Of course, the film has a number of good things about it, from Alexandre Desplat's score settling down nicely, after seeming too prominently like the tappings of Morse Code (even if he is made to over-egg the sentiment at the end ?), to evoking in miniatures the horrors and hypocrisy of Sherborne, but they feel in the significant minority.

Quite a fun, knowing review, from Michael Phillips at @chicagotribune, of The @ImitationGame... : http://t.co/C1t1WrovKh
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

Geoff Pevere, in The @globeandmail, is also quite interesting about The @ImitationGame : http://t.co/y7GCR57CBt
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

So the friend (a former animator) had the same reservations about the doom-laden flights / convoys in impossibly tight formations - that they were designed to have an instant content for those who know nothing about The Second World War, and sought thereby to make a virtue of their alien look and qualities* :

Oh, and the CGI in The @ImitationGame and what, despite achieving period costume / scenes (as people flee The Blitz), it inaptly connotes !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2014

End-notes

* Almost as if machines themselves were waging war, whilst, quite clearly in the editing, we have counterpointed the quiet, calm Turing (supposedly infuriating everyone's patience by being unnecessarily fastidious), but biding his time to rob such machines of their brutal power with a different sort and class of machine...

Yawn ! (Facile sub-Matrix juxtaposition to enliven any in the audience who are uninformed about Turing (and who he was for our times) with a subliminal notion of those things, i.e. that he is Neo to Agent Smith's machine-world...)


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The latest on Dimensions

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24 February

New Empress Magazine's on-line content has beaten me to posting the news that Dimensions (2011) has won a prestigious award, which I had first by e-mail from Ant Neely (with the following image).



NEM's coverage is available at:

http://newempressmagazine.com/2012/02/23/dimensions-has-gort-it-say-boston-sci-fi-judges/#more-2393


Helen Cox, who wrote the item, has - understandably - a soft spot for the film, and may even have seen it as many times as I, since, at NEM's third quiz night - as ever in Bermondsey - there was a screening laid on for the first fifty to sign up as participants (because Shortwave Cinema only seats fifty-two).

She mentions two festivals, but Ant told me a while back that there is a third - looking back, I see that, then, he asked me not to mention it, so I'm not doing so...


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Dimensions - a love that outlasts the years?

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23 November

Oh, don't get me wrong - the love and the longing do, and, on this third opportunity for me to see the film, at a special educational event about, broadly, getting into and developing film-making (held at the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge), I could really sense what Stephen finds so special in Victoria, and the days with her, that he wants to recapture it all, and I realize that I had not properly valued this young actress's (Hannah Carson's) performance, as it is radiant: before, I was standing back and not quite going with Stephen's trying to regain her.

I watched the film from the back of Screen 1, sitting with Ant and Sloane. When asked, I hadn't noticed what they had trimmed to take off 3 or 4 minutes, but I did feel the mood set by Ant's scoring for the opening titles, and I did find some scenes even more evocative than before, particularly various scenes at the well-head, starting with that of grief - the well-head is, in fact, literally that, a well-spring of all that happens, a source.

I've been trying to come up with a catchy tag since being in the bar afterwards with Trish Sheil (who was stage-managing the event, and interviewed come contributors), Ant and Sloane, the impetus being that I do not think that the emphasis is right in calling this a sci-fi love story (as it is a love story with sci-fi elements), and this is probably the best so far (a love that outlasts the years), better than:

* conquering time for love

* a love that outstrips the years - in either version, 'the years' could be 'time', e.g. A Love that Outlasts Time (or have I stolen that from somewhere? - nothing very specific in the two pages of results from Google, anyway)

* love beyond hope

* longing beyond all reason

* longing conquers all

* a search to regain special summer days

* longing for youth's tranquillity, etc., etc. - point probably made


There is a special evening on Thursday for possible distribution, and I hope that it generates the interest that is deserved amongst those who see this lovely and nicely put together piece of work...


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Dimensions - another screening (in Cambridge) (1)

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20 October

Some will know that, on 4 November, Dimensions hits (hit?!) Wallingford, in Oxfordshire, which I believe that I read about on the film's web-site...

But, and I really should check the date, on 22 November the film (through the Arts Picturehouse, or at least the mention is in its latest booklet of what's on) is being screened for the fourth time in Cambridge, its home city, and I shall provide details here, just as soon as I can (possibly or otherwise - six impossible things before breakfast, etc.)!

As I recall, Sloane and Ant will also be talking about how to make such a film (or any full-length film) without (the usual) funding - if their names are not already familiar to you, then you have been caught napping on the job of jeeping (?) abreast of this blog, and need to remedy that omission, whilst you can, by reading some earlier postings (if you can find them amongst the plethora of dross).


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Dimensions: Through the looking-glass of time? (2)

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25 September

Here, now (wherever 'here' and 'now' actually are), are the 500 words that have been submitted to the Festival web-page for Dimensions and, as a comment on a piece about the film in Cambridge News, to that newspaper / web-site:


Although it is received wisdom that ‘I can’t be in two places at once [or at the same time, in a variant]’, not only is that usually just an excuse, but it also might not stand up to examination in the light of developments in cloning.

All that apart, more or less, the immense popularity of Dimensions, which has seen it (after having screenings in Screens 2 and then 1) shown again this afternoon meant that I could go through the wormhole of watching again: I know that the phrase does not sound favourable, but this is my review, and I am in a whimsical mood, in no way intended to detract from viewing twice to see what happened to something that I thought fine the first time.

Why did I think it fine? It is an extremely intelligent film that uses the concept and theory of time-travel to say something about what I described in my Festival blog as longing. I still think that it is longing, not just obsession – I think that one can be obsessed about something (e.g. my head being cut off by Jackie Chan) that (unless we are being psychoanalytical), on the face (pun intended!) of it, one does not long for, and long for something that does not obsess one.

I said that it is longing for something that one cannot have or that may not do me any good. In this film, that turns out not to be true on either count, and also to involve a paradox. The events are separated by a period of fifteen years, but, in some respects, the characters seem unchanged, seem stuck in some childish ways (as we all probably are – now who wants to play the psychology card, after all!), seem full of what I want to call longing. (I call it longing not only because I can’t use the German word Sehnsucht, and, because of the connotations, I don’t want to use yearning.)

I asked a question about that at the premiere – the younger actors had had a chance to speak to their counterparts (and vice versa). What I find myself thinking, this time around, is that there is a generational as well as a dimensional character to all that we see, a temporal distortion that, as much as Alice’s worlds reinterpret the present from which she enters Wonderland or the other Looking-Glass House, ripples (a key word in the script) as water, particles or time do with their differing wave-fronts. Which is why Ant Neely’s brother’s house on the river at Cambridge is such a benefit to and feature of this film.

This Cambridge-driven film – Ernest Rutherford split the atom here in 1917, which was then done under both his direction and controlled conditions in 1932 - buzzes with that innovation, but buzzes in the direction of feelings, and Olivia Llewellyn’s acting beautifully embodies the spirit of a bright and clear academic mind, seeking to help Henry-Lloyd-Hughes (as Stephen) achieve his brilliant aims.


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Unlimited dimensions

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22 September

What a brilliantly entertaining evening!

I had deliberately not decided between getting a ticket for Wild Side at 11.00 (in the 'Tartan' strand) or The Disposable Film Festival at 10.45 (in the 'Shorts' (short films) strand), because I might not be able to go to either - and I couldn't, because of compelling matters elsewhere (and ineptly lacking the capacity to bi-locate).

In Screen 2, B8 (more to the front and the centre than I would normally have chosen, because of the sheer popularity evident when I came to buy a ticket for Cambridge film Dimensions) was my seat, where, when waiting for the show to start (which turned out to be director Sloane U'Ren and writer / composer Ant Neely plus almost all of the cast briefly at the front) I got into an interesting conversation with my neighbour about the film and what science might be the basis of what happened.


The film itself was well worth waiting for, and unlike anything else so far in the Festival - picking things out as they occur to me, it had humour (my neighbour and I turned out to have the same sense of humour), stunning visual effects with the titles, a brilliant riverside setting, a script that really kept you guessing about a number of important matters, a type of Faustian pact, a multi-dimensional love interest, boffins and their marvellously whimsical contraptions, and a water-feature that drew all the main characters into its domain.

Oh, I could go on, and mention a splendid tree (not sure what kind) that was another focus, the recreation of the gentility of the twentieth century after the Great War, and a glimpse of Cambridge academic life. However, not only don't I want to give anything away, but those things really say nothing that addresses what the film is about.

Forget the science (wonderfully presented though it is), forget what may already have been public about this film or its budget or how it was made (though those things are facts): this is a film about longing, many people's longing, and for different things, and how that longing affects this brief span that (however long we do live) we are allotted - whether we are longing what we can't have, or doesn't belong to us, or won't do us any good.

It is very well done indeed, and it will have you choked and affected by seeing unfold what holds us back or spurs us on, what makes us who we are or gives us the scope to be something else. If you can guess where the title's 'tangle of threads' will take you, then well sleuthed, and perhaps you were hunting clues!


Later, events took me to the bar with important cast and crew, and I had a chance beforehand to speak to Olivia Llewellyn in a little detail concerning what made this shoot different and the type of thing that she would want to repeat: it was not, as I thought, that what is conventional in the big studios seemed impersonal as such, but that this was different and that there had been a luxury, say, of being with the other protagonists and to build up more of a bond with them off the set. Before that was questions and answers, led by someone not known to me.

Talking to Ant afterwards, neither of us was sure why this person had wanted to talk about the science so much, as if anyone would expect, say, Matt Smith, as Doctor Who, to be questioned about the physics of the TARDIS (but the Doctor always offers people a jelly baby instead or reveses the polarity with the sonic screwdriver), but he did. When things were opened up to the floor, I had my hand straight up, and jumped in with a question about the children whom we see become adults and whether we can see the former in the latter, and it was nice afterwards to have some appreciation for it from those with Ant, Sloane and me in the bar.

I'm not even sure whether it was bizarre, although I have mentioned the notion of longing and what it entails, but, after other audience-led questions, not only was the question put to Ant and Sloane asked whether there was anything that they would have done diferently, but everyone at the front was asked what question they had expected to be asked and what their answer would have been. Perhaps an answer might have combined those two approaches: we would have had a different person leading the session, and can we have a time-machine to go back and put that right?

What I want to do, though, is to take a trip into the future, and see this film get the coverage and exposure that all those who have worked so hard on it deserve. Maybe, in the meantime, I'll see whether I can look at my schedule to establish the possibilities for revisiting this enchanting world, given that (the screening on Thursday 22nd has also sold out), there is now a third on Saturday 24th at 5.00...




(And, of course, getting back late, after staying around carousing until Festival central's ability to let us stay longer finally disappeared, and then making these jottings, was all made possible, consistent with an early bed-time, just by learning the lessons of this film!)



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Dimensions to-night

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21 September

If I can remember my question (please see below), which I have been formulating (a) unusually in advance of the screening, and (b) so necessarily without knowing what I might really want to ask, once I have seen Dimensions, it might be (because I might ask someone other than Ant Neely and something else):

For all that we know - or think that we know - about life and the world, they can prove (or seem to prove) counter-intuitive, so I ask, given that Ant wrote the film, whether that made writing the music harder, easier - or just different.

As some say, Watch this space!

Time enough for travel

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9 September

After Ant Neely kindly alerted me to one of them, I have made time to view some of the dimensions of Dimensions on youtube: so far (and I may stop here - see below), I've seen the trailer, an interview with Ant, and also with Olivia Llewellyn - not, I gather, that one should wish one's life away (or maybe ask to be back where things were different), but it's all making me wish that 21 September were closer, as this whole project looks really inventive and enthused by a small group of people working hard to making it happen.

There are going to be so many good things at the Festival in-between, so that, although finding time for blogging seems pressed now, it will seem com-pressed then, I'm sure that I'll make it. Do I, though, have to brush up on Everett, the 'many universes' theory, and quantum mechanics whilst I still have the chance, or can I rely on my sketchy memory of such things...? (I'm guessing not!)

New dimensions on Dimensions

8 September


I've just found that one of the films mentioned in the last posting has its own web-site, which might prove interesting to explore:

http://dimensionsthemovie.com/2011/08/23/cambridge-film-festival-dates/