All I Do Is Love And Grieve And Grieve And Love An

-despite everything, there is still love

"Without a tub of wax for my ears – which Himesh Patel’s ever anxious Eurylochus, Odysseus’s doomed right-hand man, uses to sail safely past the Sirens – I was exposed to the full din of thumping sticks, staffs, swords and clashing armour, thunderbolts, crashing waves, grunts, screams, toppling palaces and burning temples. But unlike Matt Damon, the wax-free Odysseus who is tied to the mast as he is conveyed past the Sirens (naked ladies reclining on some uncomfortable-looking rocks), I gazed at the shipwrecks and bloodbaths without any agony of emotion."

and

"There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem."

Well, that tracks for a Nolan film -

"The couple have no chemistry and nothing in common. Throughout his wanderings, the uxorious Odysseus clings to a little doll figure, intended to represent his wife (like the spinning top clutched by Leonardo di Caprio in Inception); the real woman is barely more interesting."

Yikes -

"If you’re not going to compose a script in Homeric Greek, or even in metrical English verse, you might as well use something like conversational American English. But writing dialogue is not one of Nolan’s talents. The language is relentlessly expository, humourless and flat."

The lines she calls out in this section will probably make a least a couple of my friends laugh incredulously -

"I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey into iambic pentameter. In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script."

....oh my GOD, EMILY -

"The most troubling ethical problem with Nolan’s Odyssey concerns the decision to film part of the movie in the occupied territory of Western Sahara, thus normalising the ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi people. It is particularly galling that Nolan used this land simply as a visually striking backdrop for a film that centres, aggrandises and redeems the hero of a territorial war on account of his belated and partial acknowledgment of his own guilt."

if you are in a public building and you see a fire start, leave. that's it.

do not wait to see if someone puts it out with an extinguisher. do not spend time gathering your things.

the very second you see flames, move quickly and calmly to the nearest exit. you don't have time to do anything else.

i see comments on articles about mass casualty/fatality fires, and people are confused about how so many people died despite having available exits and the fire starting small. many people don't understand what a 'flashover' is. when objects burn in a room, they emit toxic gases, which can themselves ignite.

at a point (even within minutes of the fire starting), the entire room reaches such a high temperature that everything (and everyone) simultaneously and spontaneously ignites. even things that are not near to/directly in contact with the flames.

this is an extremely unlikely scenario to survive. even before/without a flashover, the heat and toxic smoke are already lethal (this is what killed my father. the room he was in never even caught fire. he suffered no burns). it is not like in movies where there's fire in door frames and on ceilings that you can maneuver around on-foot.

You can watch demonstrations of flashover events to truly understand the urgency of evacuating when you see an indoor fire.

This is a fire when it starts in a small waste bin in the corner of the room:

this is Three Minutes later:

How long is three minutes, really? How long will it take you to get to the exit? You don't have time to grab your things, to take a video.

You don't have time to look around and wait to see what everyone else is going to do. Exit. Quickly. Calmly. If you see someone near you who may need assistance that you can offer, bring them with you. Move.

If the fire is brought under control, you can easily go back inside once the situation is safe. You're not overreacting. People do and have died because they underestimate small indoor fires. They wait to see what will happen, whether it can be put out, what other people will do. Then it's too late.

When you go somewhere new, take a moment to locate the nearest exits. (in older buildings, if the emergency exit doors aren't alarmed, I sometimes even check to make sure they actually open, if I have the chance. sometimes they're locked.) If you or someone with you is disabled in a way which requires extra time moving and exiting (I sometime use a wheelchair), consider this in your exit route as best as you can.

Above all: Know your way out. Have a plan. Both help you stay calm and escape.