‘Free Guy’ movie review: Ready Player Ryan Reynolds
The Hindu
With a wildly inventive concept and fantastic action, this video game comedy-thriller is a lot of fun
What makes Free Guy so wonderful apart from the clever concept, dizzying action and bright pop of colours, is the delightful lightness of being. The idea of characters becoming self-aware is not new. Nor is the idea of us being tiny cogs in some big, fat, hectic wheel turned by unfeeling, unthinking gods who will most definitely kill us for sport. The Matrix put Neo and gang in a simulation (steak and all), The Truman Show was reality TV while Ready Player One saw people voluntarily choose to live in a simulation to escape the horrors of the post-apocalyptic real world. . The Matrix was rather serious about the rabbit hole, the red and blue pill and Kansas going bye-bye. Free Guy, on the other hand, has a bunch of fun with its very serious concept, which like The Matrix uses Plato’s (no less) Allegory of the Cave as its central conceit.Hampi, the UNESCO-recognised historical site, was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire from 1336 to 1565. Foreign travellers from Persia, Europe and other parts of the world have chronicled the wealth of the place and the unique cultural mores of this kingdom built on the banks of the Tungabhadra river. There are fine descriptions to be found of its temples, farms, markets and trading links, remnants of which one can see in the ruins now. The Literature, architecture of this era continue inspire awe.
Unfurling the zine handed to us at the start of the walk, we use brightly-coloured markers to draw squiggly cables across the page, starting from a sepia-toned vintage photograph of the telegraph office. Iz, who goes by the pronouns they/them, explains, “This building is still standing, though it shut down in 2013,” they say, pointing out that telegraphy, which started in Bengaluru in 1854, was an instrument of colonial power and control. “The British colonised lands via telegraph cables, something known as the All Red Line.”
The festival in Bengaluru is happening at various locations, including ATREE in Jakkur, Bangalore Creative Circus in Yeshwantpur, Courtyard Koota in Kengeri, and Medai the Stage in Koramangala. The festival will also take place in various cities across Karnataka including Tumakuru, Ramanagara, Mandya, Kolar, Chikkaballapura, Hassan, Chitradurga, Davangere, Chamarajanagar and Mysuru.