Butter Me Up and Call Me Toast!

Listening: The Power Hour Live
Mood: Blissed Out

It's been a good week. Saturday night we had a gorgeous lazy dinner party, Sunday night we were at The Comedy Festival, seeing the always-funny Rich Hall, Tuesday night we began learning our first exercises in preparation for astral traveling voyages, my Wednesday yoga class was unreal and last night was the opening night screening of What the Bleep. Yay. And as usual, crazy me saw it twice in a row. Somebody get me a vodka.

Blissed out yet slightly shell-shocked. That's me. God help all you poor buggers who are new to the quantum world. I saw what seeing it did to Polly and well, it made me feel for you.

We all loved it though. I ended up seeing it with 4 others over the two sessions and for me, it was everything I'd hoped it would be and more. Be prepared to watch it at least twice on the big screen and hopefully you'll like it enough to want to get it on DVD later. It should be mandatory in any home DVD collection, and kids would absolutely dig it.

It's rare to come across a big-screen release that satisfies one on multiple levels, but What the Bleep does it effortlessly, and it certainly doesn't lack impact. Don't you just love it when a film can stay with you for days or even weeks after you've seen it? I think it's a hallmark of what makes a film great.
This is one of those.

I was so pleased that it was showing at the Dendy Kino Cinema too as I've had the pleasure of watching so many great movies there over the years. Practically everything by Jim Jarmusch - I adored Mystery Train and Down By Law - What Have I Done To Deserve This? by Almodovar, Delicatessen, Six Degrees of Separation, most of Spike Lee's, some Woody Allen, the list goes on. It felt good to be back there after becoming a regular to some cinemas closer to home for the last couple of years.

About ten minutes into it I broke out into an uncontrollable grin which stayed plastered to my face for most of the film. It was sort of weird because I was in a cinema for a start but I was watching a film/doco-thingy about quantum physics and consciousness! It just made me so happy to be finally sitting there, able to watch a movie like that in a mainstream cinema, watching the story unfold beautifully. These are subjects so close to my heart that it could have been a complete disaster if they hadn't treated it with the expertise and finesse that they did, so the grin was one of relief as well as from some pretty funny remarks by some incredibly humourous commentators. It was easy to see that it was going to be a real ride.

I know, I am already biased, this is very familiar ground for me, and other people may find it too heavy going, as each scene is jam-packed with stuff to take in, which is why many people are seeing it more than once.. Visually you are never bored. There are 17 different talking heads throughout it, providing a running narrative while Marlee Matlin's character's journey towards breaking out of her own worldview echoes and intersects with it at every corner.

If you're put off in any way by the thought of watching a whole bunch of people being interviewed for an hour, don't worry, these are no ordinary talking heads. You do get a couple of obligatory shots of really really smart guys sitting in front of blackboards covered in equations, but for the most part you usually see these people's heads surrounded by a bluish white plasma floating around atop an ever-changing background saying things like, "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?".

It plays with your neurological processes, makes you laugh often, shatters worldviews, and tugs at your heart all at once. The casting, photography, special effects and performances are all stellar. The purpose of this movie is to open people's minds to perceiving things differently. There's no doubt in my mind that you will after this.

category: Film