Movies- art or only a habit?

Many smart people have discussed a thousand times how social media and the new technologies reshape our world. While there are some definite advantages, some are indeed negative and I wish they'd  never existed.

Watching a movie today is nothing special. We know we gotta do it cause if we miss it we won't be able to talk with our friends and we'd feel embarrassed if we won't have an opinion. I clearly remember my teen years: we didn't have internet at home so watching a movie was a rare thing. We only did it on weekends if none of us was tired. It happened maybe twice in a month. As my uni started, things just turned upside down. I suddenly had the chance to watch basically anything ever made in the past 100 years without an effort. That was the moment when I lost the respect towards movies.

Whose idea was the Ben Hur remake? I'm gonna
beat the crap out of the guy (C. Heston)

Now it takes us maybe 10 clicks at most to download a movie. With a mediocre internet connection we can start watching a movie in 60 minutes. What's worse, we watch them in the same disrespectful way. My colleague Salih watches movies (LotR atm) with his finger sticked to the 'fast forward' button: if a scene is not interesting, he just skips. Or more like, he watches a long trailer of the movie. Before I judge I gotta tell I'm nothing better. Watching a movie alone at home, I catch myself over and over alt-tabbing to gmail, twitter and facebook. I even check all the bios of the actors meanwhile, the plot, and every little detail about the movie. I feel so ashamed while I'm typing these sentences, but it has been some time since I've last watched a movie without pausing it.

Who is to blame then?

I'd say it's both us and modern technology that turns watching a movie into a pathetic attempt on having fun. The days when I watched movies in the cinema or home, from video recorder- yes, those were the days. If I wanted to skip a part or go for a drink, I knew I was destroying the atmosphere not just for myself but for the others. I had the patience to sit and wait until the end. That's how Tarkovsky sucked me in during my uni years: watching S.T.A.L.K.E.R. made me realize how far the audience drifted from the art of cinema.
It's a long way back to the point where movies were still considered to be a piece of art and not another must-to-do on our Daily Schedule of Doing Nothing.

Rihanna in Battleship. The future?

Meanwhile, movie industry is choking in it's own feces. Over the decades, pop movies got lighter and lighter. Rihanna and Hasbro forge an unholy alliance (Battleship), Adam Sandler and other funny guys infest the screen with jokes comprehensible for a poodle, the original crew of Ben Hur will definetely turn away watching the coming remake, and the list goes on. 'Hollywood can't make anything but remakes' cries out the 'movie junkie' of our generation (which is another joke, as if watching tons of movies was such a great effort...). But they forget it's the audience whose needs are considered before making a new movie. Before making another crap we can skip on our laptops.

Now others may say there is a thick line between artistic and popular movies, which is fine by me. It's like Coldplay vs. Pat Metheny. Both play music but only the latter is seriously considered as a form of art. So why the fuss? Art movies should target smaller and more sophisticated audiences while pop movies should keep on producing the shit we all enjoy. Here I have just one small footnote.

Machete. One of the few entertaining action
movies of our decade

Take action movies. They have never been among the most meaningful of movies. But watch Rambo from 1982 and then watch any other action movie from this decade (The Expendables 2 for eg). You'll feel the difference. What's more is that the only fun popular movies (let's stick with action as a genre) are the ones that make a fun of themselves (Machete for instance). Movie production for the masses has never been about the artistic effort, but today's level has reached an all-time low.

Meanwhile the Oscar ceremony also tries to transform with the changing needs of the audience. While until the 80's the best picture award went to the truly meaningful and artistic movies, nowadays it's enough to take the Recipe That Pleases The Academy and your job is done. 2013's probable winner Lincoln just tells everything about this. An ever-green topic (American history), an experienced and well-known actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), a director whose name is known by anyone who sat at least once in front of the TV (Spielberg) and the genre... well, it's just always the same (drama).

Lincoln. The prototype of the 'Oscar-movie'

I'll be old fashioned now. I think the only solution is to spend less time in front of the laptop watching movies and more with sitting in the cinema. We do owe the filmmakers with the minimal respect, eventually they worked with it for months to entertain us. And once its provided, maybe we can start enjoying movies again.

Notes on İrfan Yılmaz’s Evolution- Science or ideology?

I have a speaking class with doctors. Few weeks ago only one of them came, so we didn't study much, just spoke a bit about various topics. We had a decent argument on God and evolutionary theory- me, as the rather atheist and pro-evolutionist, and Abdulkadir, the moslim and creationist. It was a pleasure to argue with someone who believes in something completely different and still manages to keep his cool head- we promised each other to buy one-one book which expresses our viewpoint the best. My choice was the God Delusion, I still owe him but he handed me Evolution- Science of Ideology? yesterday after our class. I started immediately, and decided to take some notes about the arguable points. Here is my first take on it:

The title asks a question which the author dismantles in the first 20 pages by saying ‘a theory which does not provide the opportunity to disprove it, and thus is not falsifiable, does not have the qualities required to be accepted as scientific’. Let’s ignore the practical fact that answering our own book’s question in the first pages makes the rest of the book look less interesting, and now linger on a bit on the citation. Yılmaz states that theories can only be scientific if they can be proven/ disproved with various experiments. He follows the same logic while nullifying the scientific origin of evolutionary theory, stating a said-to-be billion year process cannot be tracked down nor observed because of the length of time. 

However he somehow forgets to mention plenty of inventions and eventually proven theories that appeared to be impossible to prove, for instance, a hundred years ago. I’m not a scientist and truth be told my grades never been satisfactory in those subjects but it doesn't need an expert to disprove Prof. Yılmaz. The modern physics, such as quantum physics (which my father’s main field of research) is utterly based on theories. Proving them seemed to be impossible 50 years ago, nay 30, only a small circle of the scientific world was busy creating theories. There was just no way to prove them. These riddles, however,  appear to be closer to a solution nowadays. Take the Higgs particle, which was probably detected in July 2012 (hasn't been proven as a certainty though). Discovering it seemed a mere and daring dream fifty years ago. Today, it’s reality.

Yılmaz apparently doesn't have the trust in science, the trust that has been moving it through the centuries. The fact that evolutionary theory can’t be proved at the moment, doesn't automatically imply that it can never be proved, it just means we don’t  have sufficient knowledge- yet. He also reiterates numerous times that evolutionary theory is the commonly accepted theory for the origin of life and humankind however it’s unproven. Yılmaz definitely makes a point in the dispute with stating that the theory is almost handled as a fact and has become so sacred since it’s creation that questioning it appears to be almost stupid as questioning whether 2+2 equals 4. However, the book is a hard read especially if you read Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion beforehand… take this line for instance ‘However, the weakness of [Darwin’s] religious understanding, namely his lack of knowledge of God’s names and attributes- knowledge that is particularly exclusive to Islam’. Not that I’m a crusader of Christianity but this sentence just convinces me even more why religions can’t dwell within the walls of objectivity. What Dawkins expresses with shining humor and decent objectivity, Yılmaz substitutes with offensive dogmatism.

That’s it so far, the book is enjoyable despite of what I wrote; the sole fact that it stretches my vision on the topic is satisfactory enough. I’ll make this post a series of writings and will update it any given time I have some thoughts to share. Take care people… in Ourselves we trust.

Rosetta numero quattro

Shameful enough but the first activity in the new year on my blog is another attempt on making a Rosetta video. This time, even worse quality, no screen capture etc... Fans will be rewarded around 7.30. 'Enjoy'!

Second half

So I passed the milestone. Half time here in Trabzon, the referee blows his whistle. Shaken and tired I want to withdraw. But ain't no break for the broken.

I lost my everything in a month. It wasn't easy. I could have suffered less but I made it more unbearable. It's like a perverted hobby of mine. Deep inside, that's how I like myself maybe.

There is no bitter taste. No lingering on the moments I screwed up, the memories I demolished. Just fear, plain fear. The fear of not finding her again. Anymore. Because eventually, finding the right person is the goal. To hell with arts! With politics, with job and everything else. To hell with my life...

She is my only aim. My only desire. And if found, never leaving.. never hurting her. Never letting my child see us separating. May I die under the veil of animosity; the cover of mediocrity; but I'd be buried as a happy man. The man who saw his son and daughter grow up and find their own ways. The man whose hand is held until the last moment.

Loneliness is the thing this man fights against the most but he doesn't have the tools. He blows himself in the wrong direction.

Now is forever...

So where am I now?

Trabzon. Surrounded by love and care taking but blinded by the lens of self-loathing and pity.

 Second half: the referee blows his whistle...

god.

Which was going to be a short intermezzo has become a lenghty break in the blog's history: not counting the Rosetta videos, I haven't written a word since... well, since a long time.

Reason (a): I broke my laptop. Literally. It's in pieces.

Reason (b): Besides working, the only things filling up my free time: drawing, taking photos (ordered a new lens, ridiculously cheap), and -sigh- sleeping.

Reason (c): No clue what to write about. Two great persons in my life taught me the following lines:

The amateur's motivation is inspiration, the professional's is the deadline.

AND

If you don't have anything to write about, don't force it. Don't publish every shitty thought you have, or the real treasure will be lost. (ok, I modified it a bit)

Keeping these in mind, now it seems plausible enough that I hadn't been writing anything recently. Until now.

I'm just quarter way through the book 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins but my brain is already crowded with all the ideas about the topic. The matter of God has always been a supreme issue in my life (special thanks to New Acropolis, the philosophy school I attended when I was 18), though since August I kinda dropped the topic. Now the book just resurrected the enthusiasm: little summary of what I've read.

First of all, the hardest thing is to be a scientist. As long as you are a believer (creationist, moslim, christian etc.), all you do is following without questioning. When you hit the brick wall, when logic just can't describe the world and your experiences, the ultimate answer solving your riddle: it's God.
Now, the believer can easily question the evolution theory, Darwin, Newton and all the guys who revolutionized our world.

For instance, the believer may say, the evolution theory is nonsense, how can you believe that we are coming from little unicellular entities? The main issue is that while asking these questions are really easy, answering them -if we are taking them serious- needs time and well-supported reasoning. The difference between the believer and the non-believer (I'm not using the term 'atheist' on purpose) is explained brilliantly by Dawkins, as follows (modified, again a bit).

Our knowledge of world is a huge blanket, let's say. It has tons of holes on it: the questions we can't answer. Now, the believer has an infinite resource of patches called 'God'. He covers and fills the holes with this mighty God-stuffing. Meanwhile, the non-believer finds himself in a real mess at each hole. But he stops and examines, and after a lengthy process he chooses the most appropriate filling for the hole.

Christianity calls this stuff as (otherwise utter nonsense) Bible, Jesus, Holy Trinity etc, moslims identify this with Allah, and so on.

So what is my opinion? The stuff I fill the holes with?

I call it god. Without capitals.

I do believe that all the great accomplishments and discoveries, feats in arts etc. humankind has done are due to one sole thing: the god who dwells in all of us. This intangible thing is the voice in your head that never lets you down. It can leave you for weeks and months, but as long as your faith in yourself stays alive, this god will be there. It will help you, push you to your very limits, when you realize that nothing is really beyond your grasp.

So, even scientists can't fill in those gaps with science without the very base of motivation, of trusting themselves. That's the god I mean, the god I'm always talking about. For me, I find this inner god while I'm walking in the nature, when I look out the window and the sun illuminates a dirty sidewall, highlighting a woman cleaning the carpet... and so on. All these small thing, around me are crying to be noticed. And then, it's up to me whether I make an attempt on immortalizing it somehow.

Luckily, the number of these tiny phenomenons is infinite or at least, vast enough that all of us can enjoy them. Well, as long as we are walking eyes wide open.

Why force god in the temple or the mosque? Why pretend it's a privilege for the followers of the religion? It's like selling oxygen. It's all around us but some act as if god and faith were special things, that doesn't really entitle to all of us.

God!

I already wrote a lot and I'm far from finished. What's worse, I don't feel that I'm even halfway through... Anyways, take care people, try to survive without the far-from-amazing Rosetta videos until the next time!

Rosetta Stone, chapter 3.

I'm really sorry for not updating the blog more often. No inspiration, no nothing... But here is episode three! Yeah!

Rosetta, chapter 2.

Episode two. The screen capture thingy and the camera aren't in the same resolution so sometimes the screen is cut. Sorry for that.

Mu!