Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

3 October 2003

Dopamine

2003, U.S.

director: Mark Decena

He's an artificial intelligence programmer in a San Francisco start-up. She's a kindergarten teacher and a painter. He has a flaw. She has a secret. If you're wondering whether the flaw will be overcome or whether the secret will be revealed with an outpouring of emotion, you're giving Dopamine too much credit. Of course they will. I'm glad that director Mark Decena chooses some of San Francisco's dingier locations rather than shooting only the city's beautiful vistas, and his story does develop a nice but unexplored parallel between the worlds that its two main characters create, but the movie is so flat and familiar that it's hard to draw much from these minor achievements. From its opening moments, the movie bathes itself in science, but two observations reveal that it's skin deep: 1) a Big Scientific Idea does not make up for one-note characters, a string of clichés, or graceless exposition, and 2) characters need not choose between loving science and living real life. Dopamine believes the chestnut that says in order to get the girl, the scientific guy needs to stop thinking so much and learn to feel.

Posted by davis | Link

Other Recent Posts

Other Recent Episodes

Favorite Films