Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Caryl It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

joyjohnnickname This movie is basically about 5 people arguing about what happens AFTER proving that P=NP. In my opinion it becomes a tad ridiculous after a point. Even though they are "some of the smartest people on earth" and they have been working on this problem for years, they keep trying to convince and astonish each other by yelling fundamentals of theory of computation in an overdramatized tone. I also found really disappointing the fact that they showed nothing about the problem and how one would work to solve this. Of course I wouldn't expect to get into details about the proof since such thing doesn't exist ( :P ), but I would expect them to describe the problem in a better, more detailed way than comparing it to a card trick or to searching a coin buried in the desert. I guess it was a decent effort though and I like the fact that I watched a movie which is even remotely connected to this fascinating problem.

rlhibdon What a surprise. An actual intelligent movie. Lately it seems the bigger the movie's budget, the lesser the quality. CGI, and FX have pretty much taken over the sci fi movie biz. Every now and then, a "good" movie comes along. And this is one of them. I had it book marked on Amazon for months, but it just didn't sound interesting. Then late last night, I turned it on. It took me a while to get the feel of it. And I was hooked. I won't go into all the technical stuff; others have done that here.Some of the best dialogue ever. Smartly written and superbly acted. If you're looking for action, adventure, and excitement, move along. On the other hand, if you enjoyed films like Primer, Moon, Astronaut ((the last push) Give it a watch.

patrick-and-thompson Far from being a "smart" movie like many reviewers here praise it, this movie is written by people playing make believe with characters who are suppose to be far more intelligent than the writers can claim to be. As a result, the dialogue is laughable. I've literally never seen a movie try SO HARD to be edgy and smart and yet be so vague and shallow. The characters in this movie are don't resemble real people, especially not top mathematicians and computer scientists. They're a fantasy of the creators who pretend that they know what it's like to be really super duper smart and work on something really super duper important. So we get a collection of vague, generic, shallow musings of the type that non-geniuses apparently think geniuses spend their time thinking about. And the characters always talk as if the audience is in the room but can't be let in on the secret. Just speak directly about what you're talking about instead of making indirect references to everything. But okay, that's not nearly as edgy and smart so we can't have that right guys? The pretentiousness is overbearing. Not to mention the occasional blatantly incorrect reference or analogy (demonstrating that the writers don't really understand the problem well enough, which makes me wonder why they're so caught up trying to make super smart and deep dialogue about a problem they don't understand?). Stop trying so hard, people. And let's stop making absurd caricatures of math genius.

poetellect The University of Pennsylvania's International House hosted the premiere of Timothy Lanzone's exceptional, dynamic, propulsive, timely, genuinely exciting and morally intrepid independent film entitled "Traveling Salesman." Also screened more recently at the NYC International Film Festival, the film is remarkable and evolves along several levels, and with several modalities, all while remaining strictly dialogue-based- no explosions, no graphic sex or (despite one somewhat intense dream-type sequence) violence, no titillating CGI- just strong, compelling, forceful, thought-provoking dialogue. Lanzone both directed and co-wrote the screenplay, a work that can claim direct lineage from the "12 Angry Men" of Reginald Rose and Sidney Lumet, as well as (to a greater or lesser extent) from Darren Aronofsky's groundbreaking "π." Not to mention the subtle homage to Stanley Kubrick.Lanzone has produced a cogent work of cognitive argument, a script of postulation and instruction, all meandering within and around the concepts of foreign policy, physics, mathematics, and the tangible governing laws of our universe. This is a thinking person's movie, and I believe Lanzone to be one of the most intelligent and gifted young filmmakers working in the television/film industries right now. He is surely amongst the best of his generation. It will be interesting to see what future films he concocts, what festivals into which they achieve entry, and what awards they most surely will win. Like Lanzone's mind, this script is expansive- yet very specifically focused, simultaneously.How much of our modern capitalist world is not only completely dependent on, but created by, science and technology? How much of that science and technology is predicated on understanding mathematical laws, i.e. the fundamental governing and thus-far-codified algorithms of physics and space? How much will future hot or cold warfare- and is current cold and hot warfare- between nations based solely on the competitive acquisition of mathematical and physical knowledge? The age-old adage being, of course, that knowledge IS power.The disturbing exploration and answer to these questions, which Lanzone deftly embraces in "Travelling Salesman", is that the entirety, indeed ALL of our world depends upon minds that are able to continually sort through data, see patterns, and form ways of predicting and calculating meaning. Lanzone's script is impressive, perhaps flawless- he references mathematical luminaries such as John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, and G.H. Hardy as if every person in the general population knows exactly what he is talking about- which I loved.The main import of Lanzone's work is this: how can the United States walk the razor's edge of science in an increasingly cut-throat, competitive world? Where does the line demarking points of no return exist, and how can we be true to what is right, or even know what is right, when knowledge discovered has the power to extrapolate beyond what our imaginations can comprehend?Dr. Tim Horton- played with subtle and raw mastery by Danny Barclay- is the protagonist of the film, the quintessential genius and best-mathematician-of-his-generation, employed (with others) by the United States government to solve a centuries-old question, to develop an algorithm that I can best describe as a mystic's dream- something that can break all codes, predict, quantify and answer any question- a veritable philosopher's stone of physics. Once we obtain this knowledge, we unleash the equivalent of an atomic bomb in potentialities for future conflict- or unity.This character gives an award-accepting speech, spliced throughout the film's progression, in which he explicates how science is becoming more and more divisive than unifying- mathematics was once universal, but now it threatens to unlock and unleash powers that have potentials worse than an atomic bomb. This is such an important topic to be explored, not only in this film, but for the general public as well- we are reaching a point in our history as a species where points of no return become more and more depressingly present.I recently read a journal article detailing Bell's Theorem, a law of quantum physics asserting how objects, once connected, affect each other forever, no matter where they are. It was the Irish physicist John Bell's argument against Bohm's and de Broglie's postulation that "hidden variables" accounted for electrons' non-local, faster-than-the-standard-speed-of-light criterion for entities to be able to affect each other in two separate places. Essentially, inequalities found in laboratory data (this theorem is also referred to as "Bell's Inequality") showed how hidden variables definitely could not fully account for non-local, quantum affectations. There are no "hidden variables." In other words, local realism is false, or at best an outdated explanation mutually exclusive to a transcendent, quantum and always-mysterious reality. Non-localized reversal of effect and cause, Bell's theorem is beautifully counter-intuitive against much of what we learn of western science. This idea that consciousness- an implicate order- transcends our material world is essentially what Lanzone explicates in his fictional mathematician solving the "P = NP" age-old conundrum- the idea that there is a mathematical equation, able to be discovered, that can non-locally act as an oracle, breaking security codes and overwhelming others' ability to cope with or repel such knowledge.How can we quantify and put a price on such knowledge? How can one nation or entity "own" a universal principal? A mathematical algorithm? A genetic cell line? A genetic sequence? "Travelling Salesman" is a film that one can watch repetitively, each time brainstorming more questions, more conundrums, more fractalizations of the eternal mysteries of life and existence and the evolution of human reasoning. This is the realm of the Best Art Has to Offer. Lanzone is a filmmaker- and artist- to surely watch, and follow. Simply unbelievably excellent filmmaking. This is a film to seek out- and it has earned its well-deserved place in the famous New York International Film Festival. Kudos!