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Sleep stuff and a belated review of 9.
Dec. 5th, 2009 10:26 amI've had some luck treating my insomnia with melatonin, but the problem with it is that the brain builds up tolerance to it... the more I need it, the less it works. So I've been experimenting with valerian extract, after known Englishwoman ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
himynameishelen mentioned her experiences with it a few times.
It doesn't seem to have the same "lightswitch" quality as melatonin does, so I doubt it will be as effective when my insomnia is acting up, but in general I like it. It seems to provide a more natural, gradual transition from waking to sleeping and back again than I am accustomed to. My first night using it I still woke up after only two hours, but I woke up feeling incredibly rested... too rested, actually. I had a hard time getting back to sleep and then passed out again seven hours later, around when I'd meant to be getting up. But I didn't expect it to work optimally the first time.
I've made some changes in my sleep environment and also cut way back on caffeine... I've detoxed from caffeine several times in the past few years in an attempt to quit or reduce it, but when my insomnia cycle hits its worst points I've always ended up getting hooked again to try to function during the day. I'd been weaning myself down by drinking more non-caffeinated beverages and then my stomach illness gave me an unplanned 48 hour "cold turkey". I'm still drinking Dr. Pepper, but not at night. It helps that Cherry 7-Up with a bit of raspberry flavoring and lime juice is awesome.
I saw 9... a while back. I'm not sure when exactly. I've been meaning to post a review of it, even though at this point I think everybody who's interested in it has probably seen it. I think I saw it in a second run theater.
It was... goodish. Disappointing. I felt the production lacked courage. It needed to be longer and it needed to either have way less dialogue, or more of it. The original short film on which it was in pantomime and it worked very well. I was hoping that the feature length version would stick to a minimalist approach at least... the movie's dialogue was sparse, but I wouldn't call it "minimalist". That implies a measure of thoughtfulness. Minimalism is using little to large effect. It requires a grasp of subtlety even when being blatant. The dialogue in 9 was cheesy cliche after cheesy cliche. Most scenes had dialogue that sounded like it came from a "In 30 Seconds"-style parody of an action movie.
When the rebellious and optimistic young upstart meets the stuffy and fearful leader who keeps everybody safe at the cost of hope and freedom, their interaction goes like this: "People need a leader." - "But what if the leader is wrong?" I wouldn't swear that those are the exact quotes, but they're not paraphrases of a whole conversation. They are the whole conversation. Lines like that could be made to work as the summation of a conflict between two characters. Here, they are the establishment (indeed, the entirety) of that conflict.
And the whole movie is like that. Other elements of the story have a similar "shorthand" approach.
Two characters resolve to set off on what is supposed to be a long and hazardous journey. The movie immediately cuts to them almost at their destination. A windstorm kicks up. "We should go back!" the fretful one says. "We can't." the bold one says. Then they lose their map and find the secret tunnel it was supposed to lead to, all at the same time. The whole thing is too quick and too cheap, and the dialogue adds nothing that the visual characterizations haven't already given us. It's a weak scene, but it would have been stronger without words.
I rarely see a movie that I don't think "I wish it had been longer because there are all these other things they could have explored or fleshed out more." With 9, I thought that about the whole movie. The visual style has got some seriously epic sprawl to it, but the movie's never allowed to indulge it.
I wonder how it might have been different if WALL-E had come out earlier than it did, before 9's production. It would have been harder for studio executive types to say something like "It's going to be hard enough getting people to shell out money to watch a junked-up robot thing picking over a world of garbage without giving them any dialogue." after WALL-E's critical and commercial success. The title character begins the film mute and two of the other characters communicate primarily through clicks and flashes... it would have been a better movie if the makers had been challenged to tell the whole story like that, especially with so much of the dialogue being redundant to what we can already see on screen.
As the movie neared its climax, I had a guess about the ending that resulted in a bit of disappointment when it turned out not to be true.
( Plot and ending details beneath the cut. )
All in all, I give the movie about a C+ or a B-. It feels like a worse movie than it is, because it will always be measured against the movie it could have been. I think its strengths would be most appreciated by someone who didn't see the original short film, but unfortunately the original short film was its best marketing draw.
himynameishelen mentioned her experiences with it a few times. It doesn't seem to have the same "lightswitch" quality as melatonin does, so I doubt it will be as effective when my insomnia is acting up, but in general I like it. It seems to provide a more natural, gradual transition from waking to sleeping and back again than I am accustomed to. My first night using it I still woke up after only two hours, but I woke up feeling incredibly rested... too rested, actually. I had a hard time getting back to sleep and then passed out again seven hours later, around when I'd meant to be getting up. But I didn't expect it to work optimally the first time.
I've made some changes in my sleep environment and also cut way back on caffeine... I've detoxed from caffeine several times in the past few years in an attempt to quit or reduce it, but when my insomnia cycle hits its worst points I've always ended up getting hooked again to try to function during the day. I'd been weaning myself down by drinking more non-caffeinated beverages and then my stomach illness gave me an unplanned 48 hour "cold turkey". I'm still drinking Dr. Pepper, but not at night. It helps that Cherry 7-Up with a bit of raspberry flavoring and lime juice is awesome.
I saw 9... a while back. I'm not sure when exactly. I've been meaning to post a review of it, even though at this point I think everybody who's interested in it has probably seen it. I think I saw it in a second run theater.
It was... goodish. Disappointing. I felt the production lacked courage. It needed to be longer and it needed to either have way less dialogue, or more of it. The original short film on which it was in pantomime and it worked very well. I was hoping that the feature length version would stick to a minimalist approach at least... the movie's dialogue was sparse, but I wouldn't call it "minimalist". That implies a measure of thoughtfulness. Minimalism is using little to large effect. It requires a grasp of subtlety even when being blatant. The dialogue in 9 was cheesy cliche after cheesy cliche. Most scenes had dialogue that sounded like it came from a "In 30 Seconds"-style parody of an action movie.
When the rebellious and optimistic young upstart meets the stuffy and fearful leader who keeps everybody safe at the cost of hope and freedom, their interaction goes like this: "People need a leader." - "But what if the leader is wrong?" I wouldn't swear that those are the exact quotes, but they're not paraphrases of a whole conversation. They are the whole conversation. Lines like that could be made to work as the summation of a conflict between two characters. Here, they are the establishment (indeed, the entirety) of that conflict.
And the whole movie is like that. Other elements of the story have a similar "shorthand" approach.
Two characters resolve to set off on what is supposed to be a long and hazardous journey. The movie immediately cuts to them almost at their destination. A windstorm kicks up. "We should go back!" the fretful one says. "We can't." the bold one says. Then they lose their map and find the secret tunnel it was supposed to lead to, all at the same time. The whole thing is too quick and too cheap, and the dialogue adds nothing that the visual characterizations haven't already given us. It's a weak scene, but it would have been stronger without words.
I rarely see a movie that I don't think "I wish it had been longer because there are all these other things they could have explored or fleshed out more." With 9, I thought that about the whole movie. The visual style has got some seriously epic sprawl to it, but the movie's never allowed to indulge it.
I wonder how it might have been different if WALL-E had come out earlier than it did, before 9's production. It would have been harder for studio executive types to say something like "It's going to be hard enough getting people to shell out money to watch a junked-up robot thing picking over a world of garbage without giving them any dialogue." after WALL-E's critical and commercial success. The title character begins the film mute and two of the other characters communicate primarily through clicks and flashes... it would have been a better movie if the makers had been challenged to tell the whole story like that, especially with so much of the dialogue being redundant to what we can already see on screen.
As the movie neared its climax, I had a guess about the ending that resulted in a bit of disappointment when it turned out not to be true.
( Plot and ending details beneath the cut. )
All in all, I give the movie about a C+ or a B-. It feels like a worse movie than it is, because it will always be measured against the movie it could have been. I think its strengths would be most appreciated by someone who didn't see the original short film, but unfortunately the original short film was its best marketing draw.