80 - I liked Soul đź‘»
Hey there, !
Last chance to submit your questions to Vince’s adVice here! Use it as an Ask Me Anything if you can’t think of a question :D
1.
So over the break I finally got Disney+, and I watched the new movie by Disney/Pixar, Soul. It’s written and directed by Pete Docter, who also did Inside Out as well as Monsters Inc - two excellent Disney/Pixar films. I’ll do a Pixar movie tier list soon, but suffice to say that Soul is at least an A tier film.
I often marvel at the way that Pixar can give graphic representation to abstract ideas in a way that is instantly recognisable. I remember watching Ratatouille (S Tier) and finding the first scene where Remy learns how to pair cheese and strawberry together just the most delightful synaesthesia.
Remy: Whoa you’ve gotta taste this! It’s-it’s got this kind of, burny, melty, it’s not really a smoky taste, it’s-it’s a certain, oh, it’s kindof like a “Whoosh! Kaboom! Zap!” kind of taste, don’t you think? What would you call that flavor?
Emile: [hesitantly] Lightning-y?
Remy: Yeah! It’s lightning-y!
In Inside Out, Pixar is able to depict memory in a fascinating way - with colours taking place of emotions, a storage house for memories, and the place where memories go to be forgotten forever.
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2.
It could be the media I’m consuming, but I feel there’s been a trend of trying to find out ‘what’s the meaning of life?’. With a lot more time to sit at home and reflect / introspect, it seems like a lot more people are having these moments. I had it already with my bout of Death Anxiety, and I think a lot of (much more) creative people are grappling with this as well.
It’s a well-debated topic, obviously, and there’s no final, real answer. The Good Place did a great bit on it in their final season - life is like a wave, and we experience it as a different shift of energy through the universe, so make the most of it. I’m reading a manga Attack on Titan at the moment, and it happened there too - a chapter about what it means to be alive. Why we exist, and what the purpose of our lives is.
3.
Soul is the newest Disney/Pixar film that has followed the excellent path of finding concepts that are difficult to conceptualise, and creating an elegant visual metaphor for what that is, tackling the extraordinarily complicated concept of death, and the purpose of being.
[SPOILER ALERT] If you haven’t watched Soul yet, and you want to watch it, skip to IV. for more general thoughts about the movie!
I’m not going to go into the details of the plot, but some of the visual metaphors I loved:
- The concept of being ‘in the zone’ - it’s a beautiful mix of colours, swirling, dancing movements…it captures the serene mood that you sink into when you’re in that zone
- The concept of The Great Beyond - where your soul goes, after death. A formless, massive, non-entity, that makes a noise like a fly zapping on one of those blue light things.
- The concept of obsession, and ‘dark’ thoughts that become the shell around the soul, making them lost.
- The concept of a soul, itself! Ready to imprint into a human body somewhere, but requiring a spark to get the joy for life flowing.
It’s a fantastic exploration into what it means to be alive. Having 22 take over Joe’s body to illustrate the absolute joy of experience was simply beautiful. Eating some greasy pizza, feeling the air flowing around the street, the sounds, the smells, the utter experience of what it’s like to be alive.
There were some times in the film where I thought ‘uh this is kinda slow - why are you just showing me a picture of the sky?’ - but it lands really well. Each of those small, little moments are what we should be enjoying and experiencing in our world. When Joe realises that it’s all those small pleasures in life he’s missed, it’s a great epiphany - culminating in him jazzing to a leaf, a spindle, a crust - playing out his feelings about the world and the joy of his past.
4.
After I watched Soul, I remember walking out to the local park and sitting there for an hour or so, just watching people. There were people playing basketball, some kids skateboarding (I never got into it), and a family trying to play badminton on a windy day. The trees were green, the sky was blue, and the cliches were out in full force as I try to wrap up this piece in a nice, coherent way.
I thought about all the little moments that we have with ourselves. How collectively, we all have this kaleidoscopic view of the world, and we’ll never really be able to do it again, run the simulation over, explore different places at the same moment in time. Every single thing I do, or see, or experience, or remember, is a speck of dust. It’ll be forgotten so quickly from a universal timescale, so the best thing to do is enjoy the experience while you have it.
I give the movie a 9/10.
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✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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Dohtonbori - a specialty okonomiyaki place in Doncaster Shoppingtown (and it looks like they have one in Docklands) - it sells the Tokyo, Osaka and Hiroshima style of okonomiyaki’s, and makes it right on a hot plate in front of you! I will say that service was not great (they were REALLY good at not meeting our eyelines when we wanted to SIT DOWN AT A TABLE) but otherwise the food was good. Check it out!
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Logitech MX Anywhere - it’s just a mouse, sure, but it’s compact, wireless, long-lasting and very value for money. I think I have 2 or 3 of them because they’re so useful to use for work, and have recently purchased the Master version of it. The smoooooth scrolling is just incredible, and you can program the buttons on it simply and easily. Highly recommended - I’ve used mine for 5+ years and love it :D
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Cab Ride - a free itch.io game where all you do is drive a train through winding landscapes, picking up and dropping off passengers whenever you want. Incredibly chill and the music ain’t too bad either!
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Morioka Shoten - a bookstore in Tokyo called ‘Single Room, Single Book’. The store sells only one book, that changes weekly. What a fun, fascinating idea: minimalism in a world of maximalism.
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How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70% - a bit more of a niche article (it’s very technical) but the parts I understood were interesting. Essentially someone had popped in a 10MB JSON file that the program was struggling to read quickly; and thus bottlenecking the loading time. The patch is now being rolled out by Rockstar!