Proud to be a Geek: Inside Out review

In another life, I was a film reviewer. I started when I was at university, writing for the Anglia Ruskin student newspaper. That was fun and helped me find my voice. Then I worked for the Cambridge Film Festival; I did some reviews and interviewed the most important film director in Albania (at the time, maybe still) for the festival daily: Kujtim Çashku. That's a story in itself as the venue changed right at the last minute and I ended up interviewing him, along with his wife, his protégé and his wife in the Arts Picturehouse bar! I also got to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 all by myself in one of the screens, which was brilliant but weird. I wrote reviews for an independent film reviewer's website, for Local Secrets and via my Flixster account. You can still read my Local Secrets reviews as they're still on the website. I have gathered them together via MultiURL. Finally I reviewed on a radio show: 209radio which became Cambridge 105; the Bums on Seats team is still going strong, headed up by Toby Miller who occasionally hosts the film quiz at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse; it's on every first Monday of the month.

Miss Potter review

As much as I love films, reviewing them made me lose the enjoyment of watching them and having to go to the cinema to see films I didn't necessarily want to see started to grate. Plus I always took it personally when people didn't like my reviews and reviewers have more power than they know: the power to influence whether someone goes to see a film or not. People can forget that film critics are people with opinions and that's all a review is, one person's opinion. That's why I try to include facts in my reviews, to make my writing less subjective, like with the Miss Potter one above. I think the final straw was Superhero Movie. I no longer go to the cinema unless it's for a film I really want to see, which is only a few times each year, rather than at least 3 times a month. I still blame Bums on Seats for getting me into Twilight, though reading the books, practically devouring them in one sitting, made me disgusted with it. But I learned a lot reviewing, especially on the radio show, and my life is more insular now as I'm not seeing films I might otherwise have passed by; the films I watch are much less broad now. The reviewing did wonders for my confidence, my writing and for my world view.

My fictional library website

My film geekery lead me to take film studies modules at university; I wrote a piece on the trend for making sequels that is as true today as it was when I wrote it. I created a website for my Librarianship degree for a fictional geeky library. It's still up and running! I called it the Abrams' Library after the creator of my favourite TV series Alias, who's done rather well for himself since and proved his geek credentials by directing both the new Star Trek films and the new Star Wars. And my Pinterest page is pretty much taken up by my love of films, TV and books.

My Pinterest page

So it takes a special film to make me want to review it, a film that really means something to me. Jersey Boys was the first in many years and Inside Out is the next film and surely won't be the last.

I must admit, I'm an out and out Disney fan and by extension a Pixar fan. I grew up with Disney; I have only just finished converting my Disney VHS collection to DVD, having received a Disney film each Christmas as a kid from one of my aunties. However this is going to be an objective review, not biased by sentiment. However Disney and Pixar have always been at the top of the animation game, really only rivalled by Studio Ghibli in terms of quality and quantity. Their output has relatively recently veered away from the princesses and fairytales, Brave being a notable exception but Merida is not your typical Disney princess. Toy Story may have started it all, through talking animals, monsters, superheroes and cars. However it was with the space saga Wall-E, a tale of two robots and with an environmental lesson as its theme, that the animation studio started to do something different. It continued with the left of field Up with an old man as its central character. But even by these standards, Inside Out is different.

The Numskulls. Credit: The Beano

When I first heard about it, I was intrigued. I loved the idea of a film which personified emotions and showed the workings of the mind. The premise of human-like creatures controlling us inside our bodies reminded me of The Numskulls, comic characters that feature in The Beano. But where The Numskulls control us physically, Inside Out concentrates on how emotions control us and how the mind works. So even if they did take The Numskulls as inspiration, though The Numskulls writers have said it bares a mere passing resemblance and suggested so in a special cartoon (shown above), they have done something completely different with the idea.

Inside Out may be a kid's film and a Disney Pixar one at that, but there is so much going on, so many references and you can take it on so many levels, I could write an essay on this film. I expect university students will write theses on it in years to come. But I won't, I just want to say why it made such an impression on me. And now it's out on DVD and I've seen it for a second time, I thought it was the right moment.

Inside Out

As with all Disney and Pixar films, Inside Out is for people of all ages, from the youngest, to the eldest. Everyone will see something different in it. But a child could watch it year on year and get something new out of it as they get older; it shows how we change as we grow up. I hope they don't do a sequel with Riley as a teenager, though the short that's on the DVD is great.

The film has a very slight plot and is essentially about how moving house affects a young girl: Riley. Inside Out shows how the five main emotions that rule her head determine her actions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. When Joy and Sadness are accidentally ejected from Riley's control room along with the core memories that define her personality, they go on a journey through her mind to return to save Riley from being overtaken by her fear, anger and disgust.

Imagination Land

For children, a lot of the film will go over their heads, but they'll love the vibrant colours, Bing Bong and the other characters. For older kids though, it will help them understand how emotions work, control you and how they act together. It helped me and I've done a lot of self-analysis over the years! Inside Out has been adopted by mental health experts, sufferers and charities as a way to explain mental illness. It has helped children to understand their mental problems and parents to explain to their children theirs. This is a brilliant thing. The film was created as a way for the writers to explore the changes their children were going through to become teenagers. I think it was such a hit because Americans loved it as they're used to therapy, for our less self-analytical nation it has impact, but in a more subtle way.

Inside Out is really inventive and detailed, showing you the train of thought, imagination, long-term memory and even abstract thought, excelling at showing you how memories can change, how by remembering things later in life it can colour the memory, particularly with sadness; nostalgia literally means homecoming pain or ache. Memories are really what this film is all about. What happens to our memories as we get older. The story of Bing Bong, the childhood imaginary friend is heartbreaking.

Bing Bong

I think it hit me hard thanks to my years of anxiety and I wish they had showed less of Joy and Sadness and more of the others, especially Fear. The only other way they could have improved it is by doing more of what they showed during the credits and during the stand-out scene at the dinner table, inside others' heads and not just Riley's. But the bittersweet ending is wonderful.

Basically, I urge everyone to see it and you'll probably get something different out of it to me!

Bittersweet victory

This blog post has been 15 years in the making, almost half my lifetime. If you're thinking we didn't really have the internet and blogs back then, you'd be right. It's not that I've been writing this post since then, but the events detailed here have taken this long.

Trust me I'm a doctor

If you take two things from this post, morals if you will, they are these: never taken a doctor's word as gospel and the things you thought you knew change on you. This post will be of interest to anyone who feels disappointed, short-changed or unsure after an appointment with a doctor. I too often accepted a diagnosis from a doctor, even when it didn't feel right. I have a problem with authority figures, underneath I see them as humans, just as fallible as the rest of us, but I always quail before them. Carefully rehearsed speeches go out the window when I enter their office. So I quietly defy them in that I do my research afterwards and thank goodness for that or I wouldn't be where I am today. The registrar wrote me off yesterday; it was my last appointment with him and I'm now in the hands of the physios. In the nicest possible way, he hopes to never see me again and I couldn't agree more. My Mum got a bit teary as this has been years in coming and she praised me for sticking with it, holding my ground and forcing the doctors' hands. I just see it as coming down to a mixture of desperation and stubbornness, but there must have been some self-belief in there too. The victory is bittersweet for me because of the time it's taken, the toll it's taken and the things I've missed out on because of it. But finally, it's at an end. I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down.

One word of warning: I've always been open and honest about things, so here's me being open and honest about my health and if it helps one person either understand me or themselves better, then this post has done its job. So if you ever wondered about me, my clumsiness, vagueness and my anxiety, or your own clumsiness and dizziness, then read on.

Have you ever felt dizzy with no apparent cause? Does vertigo plague your life that can't be put down to anything else? Do you get anxious for no particular reason? That's been my life ever since I was 16, when I started to have attacks of vertigo that came out of the blue, that incapacitated me so I can't lie down without making it worse, I can't walk in a straight line and I can only find one position when the room isn't spinning: half sitting and half lying down in a weird position. These attacks steadily got worse and more frequent. They lasted one or two days and knocked my energy for longer. A common misconception is that vertigo is the fear of heights, but that's acrophobia. Vertigo is one of the symptoms of acrophobia, like when you look down at the world far below and everything starts spinning, that's vertigo. It feels like a combination of being drunk without the good bits and the worst hangover of your life. Some car journeys, especially those along winding country roads, can feel like a rollercoaster. General day to day life is made harder, particularly with concentration levels and my energy is sapped quicker.

Vertigo

Over the years, I've been diagnosed with many different things, as the symptoms got worse. First a GP diagnosed me with labyrinthitis and was given tablets, but when I went to see a specialist, they told me it couldn't be labyrinthitis because the vertigo didn't last long enough. Then I got diagnosed with migraines, but the next specialist palmed me off with tablets which gave me distressing side effects. So I stopped taking them, plus I didn't think it was migraines as I didn't get headaches or any other symptoms apart from the vertigo. Then after a particularly bad bout, I was told it was Menieres and that there was nothing that could be done. I couldn't accept that and researched it. I'm stubborn and curious, a bad combination most of the time but not with this and it was just as well I am. One of the firm symptoms is hearing loss, so I went and got a hearing test. You can get a test done for free from Boots, but you have to pay for a copy of the results. So I went back to the doctor, again being referred by my GP and was told it couldn't be Menieres as I would have hearing loss if I was experiencing vertigo. My hearing is actually better than average and one good thing that has come out of this protracted diagnosis is I've discovered why I am so acutely sensitive to high pitched sounds like cutlery, because I hear it louder! The amount of doctors I've seen, pills I've taken and shouldn't have and diagnoses I've been given is depressing. Anyway, after a few simple balance tests last November, I received the diagnosis I had been waiting for: a correct diagnosis at last. I have vestibular damage to my right balance organ.

No one knows why it happened; it could've been a blow to the head, lack of blood flow or a virus, which is the most probable. But suddenly my life made sense, why I'm clumsy and am always bumping into things, why I can't walk in a straight line in the dark, why I have difficulty travelling and always get car sick. The attacks of vertigo over the years were the organ gradually degrading. It was a confusing but enlightening time for me. I was a gymnast, I've even got a certificate to prove I could do a cartwheel across a beam, so why did I suddenly have no balance? As the attacks of vertigo only happened once in a blue moon, I never connected the two until much later.

Blue moon

However after this epiphany moment, I received no more help; I just had to live with it. The only suggestion was to exercise, maybe do some martial arts. I exercise every day and I tried to do some martial arts, but it was impossible, because I couldn't balance. But like the passive, non-confrontational and introverted person I am, I let it slide and just carried on regardless. Until a heavy head cold knocked me sideways and I had to go on heavy duty motion sickness medication to even function. I wasn't going to take medication if I could help it, so I forced an appointment with a specialist and finally found a doctor who not only listened to me, but gave me time. He was as determined as I was to get to the bottom of it. From this point on, I couldn't fault Addenbrooke's Hospital or the NHS; they have been brilliant. After years of suffering, just living with it and getting on with things, I've finally been told the definitive cause, well, two causes: BPPV and a damaged balance organ on the right-hand side. The BPPV is easily fixed though.

BPPV stands for Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. It's basically where calcium deposits in the brain are dislodged and float around where they shouldn't be. The fix is a series of nauseating and mildly painful head manoeuvres to move them back. BPPV causes positional vertigo, which means vertigo if you look up or down, or hold your head in a certain way and if you roll over, or if you do anything with your head too quickly. It blighted my sleep as I toss and turn a lot in bed. So whenever I rolled over from left to right, I'd wake up or sleep more shallowly because of the vertigo. to be fair to the doctors, mine was very subtle and it's not surprising that they missed the eye movements that they look for by hanging my head over the edge of a bed.

They did quite a few tests, including an MRI of my head to rule out anything sinister, pumping my ears with water which was horrible, tracking my eye movements with funky knightrider glasses and balance tests. As for the damaged balance organ, it is very weak and may yet get worse, nothing is certain with this. I've lost 77% and it means I'm permanently off kilter and unbalanced. This may seem very very bad, but apparently like you can live with just one kidney or just one lung, you can live with just one balance organ. You just have to retrain your brain and reset your balance. So I'm seeing a physio and hopefully I will have my equilibrium back. My body grounding itself and my sight, they are as much balance organs as the balance organ. I know everyone gets motion sickness to some degree, anyone who has tried to navigate around their own house in the dark or rides rollercoasters for instance, knows what I'm talking about. My body gets royally confused and takes ages to reset itself. The symptoms may wear off for you after 10 minutes or so, but for me, it could be days. After long car journeys, I've lost a day before due to not being able to sleep because even with the light on, the room starts spinning the second I close my eyes and with no sleep, the next day is shot. Your balance comes from three things: your eyes and brain, your body and your balance organs. With one of them out of action, I only have my eyes and body. When either of those are compromised, I'm screwed. So if it's dark, if there's a disconnect between my body and eyes like when I'm travelling or even in crowds and everything is moving so fast around me, that's why I get the vertigo.

Here's a rollercoaster I can't believe I went on: the Dragon Khan at Portaventura, Barcelona

Lastly, I've written about this before, written about it on this blog before, but for the same amount of time as I've been living with vertigo, I've been living with anxiety and panic attacks. I always thought that the vertigo was a symptom of my anxiety and it can be. But it turns out, while it doesn't help as hyperventilation and irregular breathing can make your head swim, tense your body up and cause dizziness, the anxiety can also easily simply be a symptom of my balance problems. If the world feels off kilter, if you're permanently off balance, if you have no equilibrium, then of course you're going to feel anxious. And anything that exacerbates the symptoms would make you feel anxious, like public speaking when you have stand up for a while, often higher up than everyone else, like travelling and like socialising. I always thought that the anxiety caused my physical symptoms, racing heart rate, sweating and yes dizziness, but it seems too much of a coincidence as the anxiety and vertigo attacks started around the same time, that they are completely connected. My anxiety has a physical cause and if I can get my equilibrium back, maybe I can live anxiety-free. But that's a false hope as it's been too long and my body has got used to being anxious. If I get stressed or excited, by going on a rollercoaster for instance, which I wouldn't do anymore anyway because of my balance problems, but I would get the same symptoms as anxiety and it would bring on a panic attack as the increased adrenaline is now a signal that my body takes to induce a panic attack. So there are certain things I have to be careful of doing now. I even had to leave Centre Court at Wimbledon when I was there for the London 2012 Olympics because the excitement at just being at a place I had longed to go to ever since I was a kid became too much and it induced a panic attack. Stupid, right?

Me at Wimbledon Centre Court

My body has been doing a good job over the years of compensating, of living with the low grade nausea, of the world whirling around me. It never ceases to amaze me how adaptable the body is. But it also means I have many habits to break that I have built up over the years to cope with it all, some may be too ingrained to change, but we'll see. The physio has already identified a few bodily and posture problems. She has given me the exercises to reorientate myself, to allow my brain to get used to having only one balance organ. It's the only treatment. But she's also given me exercises to help realign my knees. I felt like a fraud in the gym at the hospital as there was a guy in there with an obvious brain injury just trying to get his limbs moving again, so I have him in mind the next time I feel too tired and want to shirk doing my exercises. I have a long body and short legs and I hunch over, not from being lazy, but because I'm trying to lower my centre of gravity to help me balance, or at least that's what I tell my Mum now after her years of nagging me to sit up straight! I also can't stand up for too long and when I do, I put my knees together for support, I even cycle like that. This has weakened my knees and I could start having problems in 10-15 years and even with my hips if I keep cycling the way I do. The impact that this has had on my body and mind is incredible. It will be interesting to see which things are genuine causes of anxiety and which are generated by the vertigo. It will be a journey of discovery, but one I'm more than happy to embark on. I'm determined to get over the anxiety if I can, to sit up straighter and to live my life more. Battling the balance problems took a lot of energy, so here's hoping I have more to play with! Most importantly, I have an answer, a reason and explanation for something that blighted my life for far too long and this bittersweet victory is all mine. I can change.

If any of this seems vaguely familiar to you, any of the symptoms, then read on.

BPPV symptoms

Does your Mum always tell you off for not sitting up straight? It may not be laziness, but because it isn't comfortable dizziness-wise. Having your head at a weird angle may help and you may be doing it unconsciously like I have.

Have you always thought you have low blood pressure, even though you've had it checked and it was fine? Do you find it difficult to stand up for too long, feel dizzy after standing or sitting up too quickly and get head rushes? This may be BPPV because sudden head movements or prolonged time with your head at a certain angle can cause dizziness. You can imagine what it was like working at a computer for me. My concentration was shot!

Did you used to be a heavy sleeper, turned into a shallow sleeper and then a very light sleeper? It could be down to rolling around, tossing and turning in bed at night. This might be due to stress sure, but it could also be rolling from right to left or left to right, depending on what side these damn crystals are at. I used to wake up with vertigo, with my covers off the bed or tangled up because of it.

Vestibular damage symptoms

Do you dislike travelling, not seeing new places or holidays, just because of the travelling part? Not for the usual reasons of the time it takes, airport angst, fear of flying, traffic jams, motorways and sea sickness? When the plane banks, does it feel like you're going to pass out? Can you not look out of the side windows of a car without feeling dizzy, even on the shortest of journeys? Do busy places make you feel anxious? Anything going at speed around you, whether it's when you're on a train or in a car or people walking fast around you, anything that confuses what speed you're actually moving at can bring it on.

Have you never particularly liked theme parks or rollercoasters? Going upside down is the worst thing you can do for balance and to disrupt BPPV as well, for obvious reasons.

Have you never liked, not enclosed places or due to claustrophobia, just places you can't get out of easily like planes, lifts and caves? Banking in planes makes me feel like I'm going to pass out. Lifts make me anxious. Caves are usually dark so see below.

Are you scared of the dark, or did you not get over your childhood fear of the dark until later in life? For me it was my 20s, was this why? No light means I have no means to orientate myself. The balance organ is the only thing you can rely on in the dark and mine is compromised.

Are you clumsy, always bumping into things, falling off curbs, up stairs...? Do you have to look straight ahead when walking, can you not look down or up or side to side? I can't count how many times I've injured myself or sprained my ankle because I haven't kept my head on an even keel, I've been looking at something up in the sky, behind or around me. Of course, again, bad things happen when you're not concentrating or concentrating on something other than walking, but you don't get dizzy generally.

Are you teetotal or near enough? I never really got into alcohol, apart from a brief misguided time as a 16-17 year old. Was it because the vertigo attacks were like being drunk, but without the nice bits? Why would I induce that, make it worse?

Question these symptoms and see what you come back with. You'd be surprised how many of us are wandering around with damaged vestibular organs and/or BPPV.

All shall fade: A Christmas holiday of farewells

Me and my nephews

Most things are ephemeral, everyone knows that. However it doesn't mean we're any the less sad when things come to an end. The knowledge that almost nothing ever lasts forever doesn't make saying goodbye any easier. Recently there have been several significant goodbyes for me. I really wished it could be Christmas every day this new year.

There are always goodbyes at Christmas. When family and friends get together, people that haven't seen each other for a while, especially in my case when some of the family live abroad, there will be hard goodbyes. Even though we had been on holiday together earlier in the year and the goodbye then was difficult and emotional, the goodbye at Christmas, actually on New Year's Eve, was worse. It should have been easier as they were back and forth visiting people and we didn't seen them as much as before. But you never get used to saying goodbye. It should never be a casual thing.

Christmas meal

Christmas always makes things seem more significant: it's the traditions, presents, decorations, family meals, but mostly the time off from everyday life. It may only be a few days in actual time, but in quality time, nothing beats Christmas; it makes everything seem deeper, more profound, loaded: heavy.

Back to the Future, good Christmas film and good use of the word "heavy"

As if saying goodbye to all that wasn't bad enough, what made it worse was seeing my nephews together, with two nieces on the way, two big meals with all 10 of us and a couple of evenings when it really felt like we were one big happy family again. It all made me look back in a nostalgic way. I can still remember being a little kid at big family gatherings, playing with my cousins, my aunts and uncles around. Now I'm one of those aunts. I never thought it would happen. I love being an Auntie, don't get me wrong, but I feel more like a kid than an auntie. I kept thinking of a song lyric: "If you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all. And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you've been here before." Yes, but in a different role, or torn between two roles: a child and a grown-up.

I guess I just don't want anything to change. Yet it does anyway. Time marches on. Living is easy with eyes closed. So now, after sitting in the cinema last night, listening to Billy Boyd singing as the credits rolled, an era of my life came to an end. I know now how the Star Wars generation felt after Return of the Jedi, how they must have felt after Revenge of the Sith, except The Hobbit films were infinitely better and not a major disappointment. They also came nine years on and not 16 years on.

The moment that caused the panic attack

I know I lay greater significance on Lord of the Rings than it really deserves due to my emotional connection to it; it symbolises my progression after coming through mental illness as I had my worst panic attack while watching the Fellowship of the Ring in the cinema. The films came out during an impressionable time for me. I was seventeen, school had ended and my life was transforming around me, giving me independence, independence I couldn't handle; life was being forced upon me. It was all a great big scary adventure and I empathised with Frodo leaving his safe and comfortable existence and going out into the big dark world. Now the film series has come to an end, when I'm more secure. My life has changed radically from the first Lord of the Rings to the last Hobbit film. I believe I'm quite valid in mourning the end.

Boromir dies

It wasn't like after the last Lord of the Rings film; I was film savvy enough then to realise they would be making The Hobbit. But because of various rights battles, including between the movie studios New Line and MGM, Guillermo Del Toro bowing out and the time it takes to make a Tolkien/Peter Jackson masterpiece, it took longer than expected. But there was always the possibility.

Sitting in the cinema yesterday, it came upon me that this would almost definitely be the last time I would see a new Tolkien film in the cinema. Billy Boyd singing didn't help matters, bringing to mind THAT moment when he sang before, which inspired the title of this blog post and the soundtrack to Faramir's sacrificial charge. I cried in the cinema after Return of the King for Frodo when he sailed from the Grey Havens. I cried for the characters then. This time I cried for me. I cried for the end of an era. I cried for the film series I grew up alongside. I cried for the person I used to be and for the person I am today. I cried for the past. I cried for the future. I didn't weep. Tears were not even shed; I held them back, just. I wish I could have cried instead of crying inside. But I was in a public place and we had to get home. I just had a moment to myself, to mourn. The quality of the film itself ultimately didn't matter, though it was excellent, but like The Lord of the Rings, I preferred the more innocent first of the series; it was what it signified.

Lastly and least importantly, I lost a friend over Christmas: Miranda. Much has been said in criticism about this TV series and I would be the first to admit that the last ever episode wasn't the best. But I have stuck by her from the first hello, through the highs of the therapist episode right until her inevitable wedding. I empathised with all her social faux-pas, potent awkwardness and lack of confidence. In short, as with all Miranda's fans, I saw a lot of myself in her, especially in the struggle to be herself which it ultimately came down to. And despite the silliness, the unreality and flaws of the episode, it was seeing Miranda finally grow up a little, become more independent and gain some self-esteem that moved me. It was a lovely and lovingly crafted goodbye, with a nod to the viewers. So so long to Customer, Clive, Mike, Chris, Alison, the therapist, Charlie, Tilly, Penny, Stevie, Gary and Miranda. I for one will miss you.

Finally, to sum up, I'm turning to Doctor Who, which has been all shades of wrong recently, right from when Steven Moffat took over, especially in the way the latest Doctor is treating humanity; he used to see us as equals, sacrificing himself for Wilfred in the end; now he sees us as something to look down on, patronising and superior. Anyway, the Christmas episode got one thing right. Christmas should be treated like it's your last; a silent goodbye runs through the holiday, never spoken, until the last day of course. Christmas is special like that. Appreciate and spend time with your loved ones as you don't know what next Christmas will bring.

Well, all these goodbyes are in the spirit of Auld Lang Syne and it's an appropriate way to begin a new year. Here's to 2015 and to last goodbyes.