My 500th film on IMDB

As a result of boredom, too much time on my hands and the bad influence of a particular person, I have created and been updating a list of all the films I’ve ever seen on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB). Naturally of course, there are plenty of films I don’t remember for various reasons. These reasons of course range from ‘I was too young’ to ‘they weren’t memorable films’ to various other things not worth mentioning. Anyway, as it turns out, my 500th film added is ‘The Italian Job’ (2003) (i.e., the remake)*.

The original ‘Italian Job’ entertained me to some extent. The extent of that entertainment of course should be understood as ‘it sent me to sleep before then end more than once.’ But you know – it could have been worse right? And at least I’ve seen that clichéd entirely grating line ‘you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off’ (I wonder if slipping that in will improve my google rank?). As I remember that was pretty much the only memorable thing (tautology/truism). This poses a question – is it better to watch a film which is ‘good’ but not memorable (original), or one so bad that you’re frustrated, arguing solipsistically against the [alleged] ‘plot’ (remake)?

Personally, I think I’d probably go for the latter in its Ocean’s 11 like format, over the original somewhat slapstick heist film. I can certainly see why people said they were nothing alike, to the extent that to call it a 'remake' is really quite misleading - a 'title thief' might be more appropriate a label to apply...

* And as an indicator of how arbitrary the ‘film number added’ is – I just added ‘The Italian Job’ (original) as my 501st film…seems I’d forgotten I’d seen it. What film would I have been blogging on otherwise…?

The list can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=40423196

Paradoxes

I have recently been reading 2 books by Bertrand Russell – his autobiography, and his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. The former is fairly interesting; I find it nice to be reminded that even fantastic academics/thinkers are human and have ‘issues’ [innit].

Having said that, these are not always so usual…I’m also reading “Phantoms in the brain” by V.S. Ramachandran [alternative title “The Man who Mistook His Foot for a Penis”] and there’s a great quote in which Crick (of DNA fame) asks Ramachandran for advice on making his book more accessible to the lay person:
“I say, Rama,” Crick said with exasperation, “the trouble is, I don’t know any lay people. Do you know any lay people I could show the book to?”

What a long aside. So the latter is quite interesting but largely stuff I know but in a wordier format which doesn’t really suit me anymore but might be useful when I forget these things. The autobiography has just passed Russell’s first mention of his struggle with paradoxes, specifically a version of the ‘liar paradox’.

By coincidence I happened to pick out a book (Vagueness & Contradiction by Roy Sorensen; less coincidental) and a particular page in this book (more coincidental) pointing out Russell had originally made an error in his transcription of this paradox, one which was later corrected (by a guy who noticed the error quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers…the trail of books gets ever longer :D). The error was as follows:

1a) The 2nd statement is false
2a) The 1st statement is false

In the version I have the paradox is:

1b) The 2nd statement is true
2b) The 1st statement is false

If 1a is true then 2a is false. If 2a is false then 1a is true. [no paradox]
If 1a is false then 2a is true. If 2a is true then 1a is false. [no paradox]

If 1b is true then 2b is true. If 2b is true 1b is false. [paradox]
If 1b is false then 2b is false. If 2b is false 1b is true. (if 1b is true then…) [paradox]

1a and 1b are interesting because it seems perverse to arbitrarily assign different truth values (i.e. truth or falsehood) to two tokens (instances) of the same sentence in the absence of a good reason. But 1b and 2b are a proper paradox (propa innit…doing this makes it more accessible right?) in that, it is absolutely not clear how one might solve the problem. Now, I’d love to offer up a succinct thesis as to the solution to this problem…but although I do have ideas (evolutionary epistemology to name drop, oh hohoho how we chortle :p) I have neither succinct ideas nor a proof so I can’t…but err, well I haven’t blogged in a while and this is one of a few things that I’ve thought about and which coexists with the things one might put on a blog. I might put up some paradoxes with solutions (so not real paradoxes) at some point because they also interest me :).

Unfortunately my reading is interrupted by that whole work thing I’m doing, so I actually wrote most of this blog last week I just didn’t get around to finishing it until now…hohum. At some point I'm sure I'll get to Russell's whole issue about books containing all the books (but what book {insert shock face} may contain that book, and that book and that book...)...I dunno if you call it philosophy or maths (or 'dull shit that no one cares about')...I quite like it sometimes :).