Waking Life While Falling Asleep, Airplane Disappearance

Hola!!! Happy Tuesday!!
Well, let's see.....
Last night I had dinner with Team Steans, and then just hung out at mi casa with Cassidy. We watched Sunday's episode of The Mighty Boosh together (not for everyone, but fast becoming one of my favorite shows), and I watched most of Waking Life, which I had never previously seen, before I fell asleep in my chair.
Waking Life was interesting. I need to watch the end of it. It sort of reminded me of an animated version of Slacker (both in style, substance, and location- it was kind of fun to see so many animated scenes that clearly take place in Austin). I've heard people have some strong, but varied opinions about this meandering, animated film over the years, and it was interesting to see what all the hubbub was about. There were parts of it that reminded me of my undergraduate years studying philosophy at Trinity. Some of the monologues in the movie, in fact, directly referenced some of the things that we talked about in some of my classes (e.g., conversations about the nature of free will in the era of Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics, questions about the metaphysics behind reincarnation, examinations of personal identity in the context of a world where our bodies are constantly changing and are even beginning to incorporate artificial, mechanical components, etc.). Other conversations in the movie sounded more like touchy-feelie new-agey pseudo philosophy (meaning they sound sort of interesting, but don't really hold up well when subjected to moderate levels of logical scrutiny), but those sorts of conversations also reminded me of some of the conversations that I used to have with other students during my undergraduate years. I kinda miss those days.
Anyway, like I said, I haven't watched the end of Waking Life, so maybe it's not fair to make a judgment about it yet, but my inital feeling is that I sort of enjoy the dialogue, but I'm not really sure that I enjoy the whole work as a movie. There's lots of stuff in there that's interesting to think about and fun to digest, although there are quite a few very complicated, complex subjects in the movie that pretty much just get a drive-by, scattershot treatment, with Linklater seeming to employ them just for a "gee whiz" effect, as opposed to giving them the time, depth, and discussion that they actually deserve.
Also, a lot of this film involves animated, rotoscoped scenes which are primarily used to simply depict people who are just sitting around and talking. There's some cool, sort of stylized stuff going on (the artists sort of use the animation to help convey the "essence" of various characters and scenes), but it just seems like the animation was used in this movie to distract from the fact that there's not really a lot taking place, visually, in many of the scenes in this movie. If this movie were filmed in live action, the first thing most people would probably say is that there are a lot of people just sitting around talking throughout large parts of this movie. The rotoscoping helps to distract the audience from that fact.
Anyway, there were a few other scenes where the animation actually is put to better use (to convey metaphor, and the blending of people's inner lives with the external reality of the "real world"), so I don't want to be too hard on it. But there's also a whole lot of people just sitting around talking. Which is cool, but it might be just as interesting in a book. Or on a podcast or NPR program.
Anyway, the movie was interesting. I need to see the end. I was just really tired by the time I got around to watching it last night. I can see how people could have some pretty strong feelings about Waking Life one way or the other, but I guess that in the end, it seems like the kind of flick that makes people think and gets them talking, and in that sense, it definitely has some artistic merit.
Not a lot else to report on. That whole Air France flight disappearance is still troubling. I guess it stands to reason that planes on intercontinental flights can go down in the middle of the ocean, and that it would be hard to investigate such disappearances. On the other hand, in this era of GPS systems, transponders, black boxes, and nearly continuous communication with air traffic control systems, it seems kind of strange that a large commercial plane could just go down somewhere and no one would really know where it is. Creepy.

Well, I gotta run. Ya'll take care!