Odds & Odysseys

So there's a movie, The Odyssey.

Did you all manage to see it?

I did.

I didn't get the same experience as I'm sure you did, but I have seen it.

Yeah, I watched it on a screen that is 10 times larger than the footprint of my apartment.

So I think that's how you're supposed to watch it.

That's what I did.

You mean not on a bootleg on your phone? Huh.

I wonder.

Yeah, I leave that to you, Ashley.

I have to say I was not taken with the film, but I need to follow up that with a confession.

I have never been a Nolan head.

I may have my millennial mail card taken away, but I've never been a big fan.

One of my problems with the film just has to do with the way that Nolan shoots and presents action, and I thought there was too much kind of close-up shaky cam, dark blur, and not enough kind of clear depiction of bodies in space, which is how I think it ought to be done.

But I guess Degustibus and obviously the controversies swirled much more broadly about diversity in casting, all these things.

My own feeling was that Nolan could have made the wokest movie he wanted if it had, as far as I was concerned, if it delivered on the head of basic action movie, epic film things, you know, like the chariot race scene in Ben-Hur, you know, great fight scenes.

If you had that, you could otherwise kind of call for whatever, fully automated luxury communism with DEI characteristics and it wouldn't really matter.

But I

think I'm probably, I'm in a very small minority in faulting Nolan on this point, and most people probably think it was brilliantly realized precisely on the places where I'm attacking it.

Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to tell a story like that in a coherent narrative.

And it was quite impressive the way that he actually did manage to include all of these touchstone kind of cultural reference points of the story and still have a story that cohered very well, which must have been extraordinarily difficult.

It was really amazing to watch it because...

i have to say i've never read the source material uh maybe that's a bit uh embarrassing to admit or maybe maybe it's common not to have read the odyssey but being married to a greek for 20 years i knew all these stories because it's so much a part not just of western culture but still a part of greek culture that every time that i would have a conversation over the years a conversation my husband like talking about like the loyalty of dogs he'd be like oh yes Odysseus, when he came home, the only one that recognized him was his dog on a garbage heap.

And at that moment, he was like, aha, there's that moment.

But it's interesting because it is still so much part of Greek culture and the big controversy in Greece at the moment.

So there's a movie, The Odyssey.

Did you all manage to see it?

I did.

I didn't get the same experience as I'm sure you did, but I have seen it.

Yeah, I watched it on a screen that is 10 times larger than the footprint of my apartment.

So I think that's how you're supposed to watch it.

That's what I did.

You mean not on a bootleg on your phone? Huh.

I wonder.

Yeah, I leave that to you, Ashley.

I have to say I was not taken with the film, but I need to follow up that with a confession.

I have never been a Nolan head.

I may have my millennial mail card taken away, but I've never been a big fan.

One of my problems with the film just has to do with the way that Nolan shoots and presents action, and I thought there was too much kind of close-up shaky cam, dark blur, and not enough kind of clear depiction of bodies in space, which is how I think it ought to be done.

But I guess Degustibus and obviously the controversies swirled much more broadly about diversity in casting, all these things.

My own feeling was that Nolan could have made the wokest movie he wanted if it had, as far as I was concerned, if it delivered on the head of basic action movie, epic film things, you know, like the chariot race scene in Ben-Hur, you know, great fight scenes.

If you had that, you could otherwise kind of call for whatever, fully automated luxury communism with DEI characteristics and it wouldn't really matter.

But I

think I'm probably, I'm in a very small minority in faulting Nolan on this point, and most people probably think it was brilliantly realized precisely on the places where I'm attacking it.

Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to tell a story like that in a coherent narrative.

And it was quite impressive the way that he actually did manage to include all of these touchstone kind of cultural reference points of the story and still have a story that cohered very well, which must have been extraordinarily difficult.

It was really amazing to watch it because...

i have to say i've never read the source material uh maybe that's a bit uh embarrassing to admit or maybe maybe it's common not to have read the odyssey but being married to a greek for 20 years i knew all these stories because it's so much a part not just of western culture but still a part of greek culture that every time that i would have a conversation over the years a conversation my husband like talking about like the loyalty of dogs he'd be like oh yes Odysseus, when he came home, the only one that recognized him was his dog on a garbage heap.

And at that moment, he was like, aha, there's that moment.

But it's interesting because it is still so much part of Greek culture and the big controversy in Greece at the moment.