The Institute

NOT !

I have no idea what I just saw exactly, but I was glued to the screen the whole time. Should there be some definitive resolution to art? This was a unique viewing experience. I give it a high score. Why? No idea, but that seems like the right thing to do for some reason. Maybe somebody else will get it and then explain what in heck just happened.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of stuff to wrack your brain on. Human psychology, belief, art, what kind of life are we living, would I participate in such a thing? Is modern society missing something like this? Should we ask for more? What kinds of "stone soup" have we created in the past, and is that a bad thing to do or a good thing...

Too many chefs... at least bring ingredients !

The documentary that inspired DISPATCHES FROM ELSEWHERE, is a bit of a trip itself where the lines of reality and fantasy blurred for the participants of an alternative reality game. I give this documentary a 7 (thought provoking) out of 10. {Documentary}

Imagine if the Darhma Initiative from the TV series LOST was real...

Aren't you hooked right there? Well, I think that's how I felt watching The Institute. Hard to believe that this actually happened.

Fascinating and thought provoking. Ultimately it does make you think that modern life has hollowed out existence to the point where creating an all-consuming "game" would be the thing that sparks people back to reality.

And like the other reviewer commented, what is reality these days?

Honestly I was pulled in by the deliciously beautiful artwork. But the trailer had me about 10 seconds in, when I knew I needed to watch this to find out what the heck this is all about.

I supposed it would be nice if the ultimate objective of all this was really to create a better world, but maybe just giving people a little inspiration to be adventurous is doing just that.

When I rented the movie this morning it had just become available on iTunes and now it's up to like the top 10 in the Documentaries section, which is pretty amazing.

Maybe the game is still afoot? Maybe the Jejune Institute really is still out there pushing people's buttons.

A mystery wrapped in an enigma shrouded in subterfuge.

Gamers out there might want to put down their joysticks for 90 minutes and snack on this absurdly fun real-life game. Although apparently the people in this experiment did not like to think of it as a "game."

And I guess they are right -- just as in LOST, if you experienced it, then I suppose to some degree it is "real."

Prepare to dive into an interactive new form of art. The creators describes it as an "urban playground movement" or "alternate reality game". It's essentially a mix of art, video, and elaborate clues that lead curious citizens of San Fransisco to explore their city all the while immersing themselves into a bizarre story.

It's all created by Jeff Hull who's main theme is on seeing things in a nonchalant way. By nonchalance, it's described as a cartoon where the unconscious character goes around a city and seemingly avoids dangerous situations through extraordinary luck; a way of exploring using your unconscious mind. The goal is to go elsewhere, to go somewhere between here and there. Basically a place you may or may not have gone before and enter a storybook world of imagination that exists hidden in the world around us.

It sounds crazy typing it out and reading it back to myself, so no doubt it must sound absurd to you the reader. Nevertheless, the movie gave me a sense of awe and joy as I followed each participant down the rabbit hole, all the while, surrounded by these all immersing elaborate clues that create this tension between reality and fiction. Watching how each participant was effected by these clues and how it changed them is what makes this a great film. This movie and the artist transformed the ordinary world into a place full of potential and mystery. And isn't that what makes art, isn't that what makes a movie a magical experience. And as such, I humbly recommend you watch this film and take a glimpse into the elsewhere.

Like a lot of people, I watched this after the terrific tv series dispatches from elsewhere.

This is presumably a documentary about the real-life alternate reality game that inspired the series. And at first, it's pretty interesting, as it interviews participants and creators.

When I read user reviews, they would complain it wasn't a real documentary, and at first I thought they were being too demanding. I thought, maybe it's fudging things a bit, since it's made by people involved in teh ARG, but it still seemed reasonable.

But as it goes along, this blurring of the real and the illusion, while true, I suppose, to the spirit of the ARG, means that this fails as a documentary because you don't feel you've really learned much. But it also fails as fiction, because much of it is incredibly boring.

Ultimately, this is just a really self-indulgent film that fails on multiple levels. Which is a shame, because I think something interesting could have been made out of the experience. But then, I guess that's what dispatches from elsewhere was - the interesting thing they finally got out of the event.