The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus - I mean it's tight - By KDJ

It sucks so much that Heath Ledger isn't going to be making anymore movies. There are probably other things in the world that suck more, but he is just so freaking good at acting.

This movie did not change my life. I was kind of hoping that it would. I don't even know what that means. But it probably means that I won't buy the DVD but I'm sure I'll see it 15-20 more times in my life because this movie is just going to be 'around', make no bones about it. I compare it to writing an undergraduate thesis or dissertation. You spend an entire semester meeting with a professor, pretending to read all the books he/she tells you to read, you write like five drafts and finally hand in a 35 page paper with a three page bibliography. Most likely, your paper isn't that awesome or life changing but you spent tons of time on it so the professor has to give you at least a B+. This theory isn't true for all movies; Land of the Lost spent tons of money and had a huge cast but we, the professors, the audience, gave this movie crap marks. At any rate, I believe my theory applies to Parnassus. The script is really detailed and really deep and if it had citations it would probably cite Kant, Obama, Genesis, the Koran, and Niebuhr. Which is cool and all, but it's not a life changing dissertation. What is more (my chinese friends taught me to use this phrase; it is really fun to use in casual conversation {i.e. "Kyle, I burnt my dumplings, and what is more, I dumped my girlfriend."}), if you put Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrel, Jude Law, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits and a bunch of other cool actors in a film, you at least are going to get big crowds in the theatres. SO, don't get too jacked about this movie but do get kind of jacked cause it is still pretty tight.

The dualism of imagination and narrative vs. naturalism/humanism/agnosticism etc. is at the core of this movie. This is a cool premise on which to make a movie. Dualisms make life easy and they give one an opportunity to do tons of cool stuff on crazy tangents but it is always easy to come back to your thesis (for instance, in this movie, the issue of institutionalizing charities - not being able to tell Greenpeace apart from Shell because they both wear suits now but relaying this back to dualism of stories vs. prescription). While reality isn't always dualistic in nature, Dr. Parnassus' imaginarium is, and thus, you get lots of CGI coolness. Along this thought line, I am really interested in cubism right now. The idea of painting an object as it appears in reality - that being from every single (infinite) vantage point. What would a movie look like that tried to do this? Could be really far out. I think someone should make a cubism musical. I would want Joel Davis to write the score and Joey Profitt to be artistic director and this super annoying pedant in my graduate college program to direct it and all my friends from home to think of the most annoying, lame things in society and have this be the subject of the script which would be written by sixth graders.

You should see this movie because Heath Ledger proves that he is better than all the other all stars that are also in this film. It is inpirational. It is not entirely predictable. Terry Gilliam has been given permission to be as creative and crazy as he wants--which is a good thing. The physical depiction of London vs. the social London is cool and interesting to social science geographers. The CGI in this movie is just stupid awesome. It's ultimately just kind of a fun movie. The trailer made me think it was going to change my life, it did not, but it is still really cool.