As the documentary No End in Sight (2007) explained very clearly (as have countless books and articles), one of the major mistakes the Bush administration made in Iraq was to dismantle the Iraq army, thereby turning thousands and thousands of influential and useful officers and soldiers into angry and unemployed people. Many experts today believe that, had the Bush administration not made this reckless decision, the situation in Iraq would have been stabilized much more quickly and effectively.

Paul Greengrass’ Green Zone is a fictional account of the events that unfolded in Bagdad around the time of this major decision. And while it has a strong political message, the film feels more like one of Greengrass’ previous Bourne films than a proper social treatise. Although i was initially put off by this blurring of the lines between the real and the fictional and by the use of the thriller genre as a means to convey a political message (something that Ridley Scott has tried to do a few times - unsuccessfully), Green Zone grew on me as i watched it and as i began to think that at least Greengrass and Damon’s reach and notoriety can help spread the message to audiences that normally would not be inclined to watch left-wing documentaries on this subject.

Green Zone is entertaining, the way the Bourne films are entertaining. But it doesn’t really go much further than this, and this feeling was reinforced two nights later when i had the pleasure of watching Kathryn Bigelow’s oscar winning The Hurt Locker (2008). The Hurt Locker is riveting and flows like a thriller although it isn’t meant to be one. Unlike in Green Zone where the social message is almost shoved down your throat, in The Hurt Locker, the harsh reality of life in Iraq for soldiers is enough to convey all kinds of messages and to leave the viewer with plenty to chew on. The two films can not really be compared, but if you are going to watch a recent film about Iraq and you have to chose between these 2, make it The Hurt Locker.

Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are The Yes Men. They impersonate key members of various corporations which they have identified as being particularly representative of the worst of capitalism, and they make statements and announcements on these companies’ behalf. These statements, while ‘false’, would however be called the truth in an ideal world, a world in which corporations were more socially and environmentally responsible and accountable. The strategy of The Yes Men is called tactical media, and more specifically, identity correction. The idea is to raise awareness about specific problems by creating situations that embarrass (and sometimes, financially damage) companies that have a history of caring only for shareholder value at the expense of the planet and its people.

And the result is explosive. Andy and Mike are putting their safety on the line and risking innumerable jail sentences for some of their actions. It takes a lot of courage and determination to go on TV as the representative of a major corporation and to make an announcement that sends this company’s stock valuation tumbling down by 2 billion dollars in a few hours. I have worked on and off with an organization that uses media, sometimes in a slightly disruptive way, to raise awareness for social and environmental issues, but our work pales in comparison to what The Yes Men are willing to take on. But i suppose we all do what we can in the best way that we can.

At some point in the film, the two protagonists ask the very valid question: is this making any difference? And some of their critics point out that their actions usually also have a negative impact, not only on the people who believe in the fake announcements but also on many others who are unknowingly involved in the scam. The film makes it very clear, and i fully agree, that the benefits are very much worth the costs. And as to whether this is making any difference, the answer for me is a resounding yes. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are using their skills and ideas to raise awareness and to bring attention to issues that deserve much more of our attention. They try to make us aware that unimaginable crimes on our planet and people are going on in the name of money and are going unpunished because they have become acceptable collateral damage in a society where greed and traditional capitalism (as opposed to natural or social capitalism) prevail.

The Yes Men try to wake us up from our collective stupor and they do it in a way that is pertinent, courageous, effective and entertaining

It has been a long time coming but now, it’s official: i have lost what little respect i had left for Ridley Scott.

Much has been said about the historical distortion around which this story of Robin Hood was written. I don’t necessarily approve of such inaccuracies - after all, cinema, as with most visual media today, is a powerful tool with much reach and impact that can influence minds and values - but i can live with them if the movie holds solidly on all other cinematic foundations. Unfortunately, in the case of Robin Hood, it doesn’t.

As i mentioned in my review of Body of Lies, the films of Ridley Scott are usually well-crafted. It is clear upon viewing that one is watching the work of an experienced filmmaker who knows his trade. Yet, in his drive towards the false epic and the commercial saga, Scott has let plenty of weaknesses creep in. Superficial, predictable, stereotypical and clichés characters who can not possibly surprise us with their actions and emotions (except when ridiculous things happen such as Cate Blanchett appearing out of nowhere to fight with the others on the beach, or when we are confronted several times with the face of a screaming Russell Crowe rising out of the water in slow motion - didn’t someone poke fun of this cinematic cheesy faux-pas? Perhaps it was Ben Still in Tropic Thunder or Mike Myers in Austin Powers. I can’t quite remember - ), a carelessness towards making sure that the actors speak with proper accents, an over reliance on what is now starting to seem like a ‘passé’ camera and editing style for his battle scenes and last but not least, a dependence on the limited Crowe as lead actor.

I think Scott has squeezed the last drop of moaning and groaning and growling out of Russel Crowe and there is only one thing left to do, as suggested wisely by The Onion, and that is for Scott to trade Crowe for Johnny Depp. And also to abandon his delusions of grandeur and go back to simpler, more artsy and intelligent films where his craft as a director can shine.

Donnie Darko was an ambitious film that successfully managed to live up to its ambition. Richard Kelly’s latest, The Box, is even more ambitious than DK, but unfortunately, only partly lives up to its grand aspirations.
The premise is simple and original: one day, someone comes to your house with a box that has a big red button on it. A man tells you that you have 24 hours to push the button. If you do, somewhere, someone whom you do not know will die. And you will receive one million dollars. If you don’t push the button, the box will go to someone else. What would you do?
This disturbing concept holds the movie very well for 30 to 45 minutes. But there has to be a greater explanation for the idea and this is where Kelly starts to lose us. Although never completely off the mark, the film feels stretched and tries hard to overachieve. We are never fully convinced by the connections to NASA, Aliens, the afterlife and by the film’s attempts to enter into philosophical discussions about good and evil. Too many angles and too many stories to tell. The Astronaut’s Wife meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Arrival. So despite good intentions and obvious signs of an intelligent director who wants to challenge us, here are a few questionable things i learned from The Box:

- it is usually women who push the button
- visiting the afterlife is akin to taking a cold shower
- highly evolved alien civilizations can’t decide whether to exterminate us so they first make us play a little game, the results of which could make them change their mind (a bit like that super intelligent alien dressed as Keanu Reeves in the awful remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still, who suddenly changes his mind after seeing a sign of human empathy - don’t these aliens do their homework before they get here?)
- these same aliens have mastered highly complex technologies, such as the ability to travel across the universe, to control minds, to give us a glimpse of life after death, and to give eternal life to their ‘human’ emissary, but somehow, they can’t fix the huge hole in his face
- if you keep asking people, especially teenagers, to constantly tilt their head forward and stare at you with their eyes rolled upward into their skull, at some point, they are bound to become spooky (a fact already established in Donnie Darko)
- NASA seems to be a pretty laid back place where everyone does whatever they want

So here i am in mythical Delphi Greece, minding my own business - as i usually do -, taking in the sights and hoping to get a glimpse of my future when, out of the sea of tourists that surrounds me emerges the silhouette of Louis Leterrier. He rushes towards me, screaming like a maniac, his hands reaching out towards my neck. Ever since my scathing review of his Hulk, a review that thanks to the thousands of loyal followers that my blog attracts, was brought to the attention of his agent, Leterrier is out to get me. Years of Jujitsu practice allow me to swiftly dodge his attack, and in a slow-mo Spiderman moment, i brush Leterrier to the side, his momentum carrying him headfirst into the magnificent remains of a temple wall behind me. I hear the impact, see the blood, but i have no time to dwell on his fate. A boat to Corfu awaits me, and as i leave Delphi behind, the ghostly form of a strangely dressed and bearded Liam Neeson appears on the side of the road and says ‘thank you’.

Oscar Wilde’s only published novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was first turned into a film in 1913. There have been several other attempts since, mostly failures or cheap TV productions, with the exception of Albert Lewin’s 1945 adaptation, a masterful and chilling version of this Faustian tale about a young man who barters his soul in exchange for eternal youth and a hedonistic lifestyle.

It is an ageless (no pun intended) story about our quest for immortality and the question of whether life is better and more pleasurable because it does not last. It also raises issues about the impact of our actions on our soul.

This modern version has its flaws. The scenario is broken down in various parts that sometimes advance from one to the next in strange fashion, the erotic scenes are cheaply shot and there is not enough insight into Dorian’s mind when he begins to turn into a monster.  On the other hand, the film has fairly decent acting (Colin Firth is particularly interesting to watch in this role) and enough suspense to keep one interested for the duration.

It may seem unfortunate that one can only describe a film by referencing previous ones. But in the case of 9, while every scene and visual element reminded me of something i had seen before, the craft and vision that brought all these influences together is powerful enough to make this film an interesting work of its own.

As i watched 9, a post-apocalyptic animated film about a group of puppet creatures left behind by the scientist whose work into AI and robots was responsible for the end of the human race, a myriad of cinematic works and influences came to mind: some of the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Tim Burton, WALL-E, Les triplettes de Belleville, Terminator, Casshern…

9 does not invent very much but provides nonetheless for an intense and entertaining experience, assuming of course that one is entertained by post-apocalyptic tales…

It is likely that the people who took issue with my review of Planet Terror are probably not going to enjoy what i am about to say about Kick-Ass, a film that currently enjoys a very generous rating of 8.5 on IMDB.

I recently watched Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust and found it to be an extremely entertaining piece of fantasy storytelling. And i read somewhere that Kick-Ass, the story of a teenager who decides that it’s time to stop being a coward and instead decides to help his fellow citizens by becoming a superhero with no superpowers, draws on Vaughn’s ability to build films around a solid storyline with nicely developed characters. Well, that may be partially true but i certainly don’t understand how Kick-Ass is worthy of such praise, or of an 8.5 on IMDB.

And it’s not the amount of gratuitous violence that i found the most disappointing. After all, we shouldn’t give it more credit than it deserves. There is nothing original or interesting about the violence in Kick-Ass. Tarantino precursors, lovers and followers have made sure that we have become numb and desensitized to heads being blown off and people exploding in giant microwave ovens. This type of superficial violence no longer has a meaning and is instead a purely stylistic exercise, and even this statement might be a bit of a stretch. The sad reality is that violence in films today doesn’t even have to enhance or detract or signify. It is just there. The only slight originality with the violence of Kick-ass is that is perpetrated by and on an 11 year-old girl, which, really, contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, isn’t very cool.

No, the biggest disappointment for me is that Kick-Ass doesn’t have a soul. The pace moves unevenly from one scene to the next, with one of the most annoying narration i can remember, and the characters are sometimes interesting but for the most part cliche and detached. There are some good moments but even these seem to be overplayed and they drown under a score that tries too hard to carry these scenes. After watching Kick-Ass, i was left with very little, most of these mini-episodes having disappeared from my memory shortly after. Watchmen this isn’t.

Wes Anderson continues to show why his quirky and unique style makes him one of the most original filmmakers today.

Using stop-motion animation to bring to life Roald Dahl’s novel about a sly fox that angers the local farmers in an attempt to bring prosperity to his family, Anderson creates a world that is incredibly funny, emotional and real.

The voices of Clooney, Streep, Schwartzman and Murray are perfect and bring just the right amount of anthropomorphism to the animal characters, but without ever creating any type of disconnect. These are animals whose adventures we truly want to follow.

In true Terrence Malick fashion, it took nine years for the Hughes Brothers to give us a follow up to From Hell (2001). But while these long periods in between films are used by Malick (as they were by Kubrick) to plan and strategize and perfect all aspects of his next film, i am not sure that is exactly what happened in the case of The Book of Eli. A post-apocalyptic tale of a lone man crossing a Mad Max-like United States (although A Boy and his Dog came to mind as often as Mad Max did) in search of a place or group of people who will once again embrace the word of God (which is apparently what destroyed the world in the first place), The Book of Eli plays like a western with a light dose of spirituality and lots of sword and martial art fighting. But Denzel Washington is no Ghost Dog (or Blade for that matter), and while he carries the film acceptably, he does not manage to turn it into much more than what it is: an honest but fairly weak attempt at meaningful Sci-Fi. That being said, from a purely action standpoint, the film is entertaining enough and there is little room for boredom.

It would be naive to assume that Avatar only works because of the technology. There is little doubt that, in this case, the 3D aspect enhances the filmic experience. However, as Michael Bay and George Lucas, and countless others, remind us too often, placing most of the focus of a film on CGI and visual effects while neglecting everything else, can have disastrous consequences.
James Cameron, while not king of the world, is probably one of Hollywood’s princes of perfection. His reputation as a very hard man to please make him a respected, yet also apparently often disliked director who is not afraid to ask for expensive sets to be completely redone in a very short amount of time and for staff members to be dismissed right away if they fail to comply. It is somewhat unfortunate that these types, whether in Hollywood or not, are often rewarded for being unpleasant but the positive side is that it is exactly what makes them difficult that also allows them to create interesting works.

Avatar provides a fairly average story with extremely cliche characters. The acting is nothing special, the soundtrack is over the top, even a bit annoying, and some of the dialogues are ‘cheesy’. So what works? As mentioned earlier, despite the fact that the CGI and visual effects are of the highest caliber, this in itself is usually not enough to carry a film. Cameron has succeeded in creating an overall experience that is so enthralling that the mediocre aspect of some of its parts is forgiven. A bit like Star Wars in 1977, a film which after all was fairly amateurish at times, Avatar immerses us in a very believable world of fantasy, legends and myths. The acting may not make much sense but the details of the world do. It is this meticulously crafted visual and non-visual environment that succeeds in transporting us to a very interesting place for 160 minutes or so.

While i like intelligent, cerebral and artsy cinema, i also love when cinema just entertains and when it does it well. Avatar has sucked all that it could from the little book of entertaining cinema and offers perhaps the best visual effects ever created on film. But more importantly, it works thanks to the clarity of an artistic vision and thanks to the perfectionism of James Cameron.

I hereby nominate Viggo Mortensen for Best Actor at this year’s Academy Awards.

Not being a real writer, i feel reluctant to blame my lack of blogging for the past month on writer’s block. I was hesitating and desperately trying to find an angle, something to latch on to, in the various films i have watched during this period, but nothing came. The sweet but bland The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), the original but ephemeral Where the Wild Things Are (2009), the annoying and commercial Twilight New Moon (2009), and even the cult and cerebral Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), all left me with no inspiration to write.

But The Road….well, The Road just completely threw me off my chair. I am still reeling from the experience of watching this film. Amazing acting, beautiful beautiful cinematography, gorgeous soundtrack and poignant and sparse dialogue. And sad. So sad.

I never read Cormac McCarthy’s Pullitzer Prize winning novel, so i am not constrained by the usual novel-to-film adaptation discussions. I can not evaluate how good of an adaptation this film is, or whether it is too literal to the novel or not. But i can judge, as far as your humble blogger can judge, that John Hillcoat, the director of The Road, has done a magnificent job at telling this desolate and somber post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son trying to survive in a world that pretty much no longer exists.

I wanted to incorporate one of the two trailers for the film with this post but as i watched them again, i felt that they both dumb the film down considerably and that they do not do justice to the essence of the story. This film is not about action, survival, cannibalism or about the end of the world. Instead, it is about what makes us human and about the beauty of life, and i dare say, the beauty of parenthood. As the father of a 2.5 years old son, this movie touched me on a level deeper than most of the films i have watched in my life. The usual post-apocalyptic and horror movies aside, which should not be compared to The Road, the film reminded me of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s eerie The Return (2003) and of Maggie Gee’s The Ice People, both great and surreal works in their own ways.

There are stories about the world around us that we carry with us since our childhood. The origins of these stories are sometimes so distant that it is no longer possible, or needed, to determine whether they are based on fact or fiction.

One of the stories i seem to have believed in for as long as i can remember is that of an otherwise gentle dolphin that one day hit its trainer hard in the upper body and broke a few of her ribs. Not only injured, the trainer was sad and surprised by the unusual behavior of her dolphin. That is, until she went to the hospital and the doctors found a tumor next to the area that had been injured by the dolphin. The story goes that the dolphin noticed something and that without the dolphin’s intervention, the tumor may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Dolphins are amazing and wonderful animals. They remind us that animals that are capable of self-awareness deserve better rights than the ones they have today. How are human beings capable of murdering such intelligent creatures? How is this justified?

I recently reviewed The Age of Stupid, and deemed it to be fairly average in quality from a cinematic standpoint (message aside). The Cove reminds me of Man on Wire and shows us what a quality documentary feels like. It is enthralling, riveting and emotionally, incredibly powerful. It also makes its point well and leaves a clear message for action.

After watching The Cove, there is no reason for you to not:
- donate to your favorite animal or whale and dolphin NGO
- become more aware of the efforts of the IWC, regardless of how ineffective it can be sometimes
- refuse to visit marine centers such as Seaworld that encourage the trade of dolphins and place human selfish amusement before the well-being of these sensitive creatures
- watch your fish consumption
- and of course, refuse to eat whale and dolphin meat

A great film.

It is the year 2050, and we seem to have turned Earth into Mercury. One man remains, isolated in an indestructible tower that has been built to preserve humanity’s legacy: famous works of art, DNA samples of animals, plants and fauna, and naturally, a large digital media archive…This man proceeds to tell us about the many ways in which we screwed up the planet, calling us stupid in the process. I recently came across a solar modules manufacturer whose slogan reads: don’t leave the planet to the stupid. So, is humanity stupid? Are we indeed not realizing the extent of the damage that we are inflicting on our Earth due to our consumption habits?

My field of work these days is directly related to social and environmental issues. As such, i keep abreast of the latest when it comes to global warming, habitat loss, and our fossil fuel addiction. While i leave a bit of room in my beliefs for the skeptics, i am nonetheless very convinced by the fact that we are headed in the wrong direction and that we must quickly turn to renewables and change our consumption patterns. Yet, despite these beliefs, i find these references to the stupidity of the ‘non-believers’ or of those who do not care, banal and not particularly useful. Moreover, i found this documentary to be somewhat devoid of interesting facts and compelling stories (and full of bad CGI and low-quality infographics). It is perhaps because i watch documentaries on similar subjects relatively often, documentaries that explore a particular subject in much more depth, that The Age of Stupid felt too general and broad. I was not convinced or moved by the stories (Iraq and Africa being the exception) and learned very little. The man from the future felt very gimmicky and did not help tie it all together effectively. I certainly do not think that anyone stupid would watch this and become less stupid.

The Age of Stupid made the headlines thanks to the astuteness of its marketing campaign and Indie release system. The endorsement of many celebrities and politicians helped bring this low budget documentary to a record number of screens across the globe, getting a Guiness record in the process for biggest film premiere ever. Local groups of activists here in Berlin, some of whom i know, helped organize the premiere and ensured that as much publicity as possible was generated via the blogosphere and social media platforms. And most of these bloggers rated the film highly, only too happy to find a common outlet for their beliefs and message, which they have not been able to do on such a scale since The Inconvenient Truth.

I share these beliefs for the most part but, as someone who watches lots of documentaries, from a purely cinematic standpoint, i found The Age of Stupid slightly underwhelming.

The Age of Stupid: Trailers: Global Premiere from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Surrogates raises some very interesting issues but unfortunately, does not do it in a very effective way. There is very little differentiating this film from the the average Sci-Fi/Action blockbuster. A bit less action and a few more thought-provoking moments perhaps, but still too much bad acting, poor casting and awfully written scenes that make you gasp in astonishment at such lack of respect for plausibility and consistency.

Nonetheless, for anyone interested in transhumanism, Surrogates will be somewhat stimulating. Human enhancement and the rise of artificial intelligence, along with the explosion of Genetics, Information Systems and Nanotechnology (the so-called GRIN technologies), will lead in the near future to some of the most complicated and important ethical questions that mankind has ever faced.

Surrogates describes a future where people’s only way of interacting with others and with their surroundings is through the use of Surrogates, robotic or cybernetic entities that look like younger versions of their human owners. All one needs to do is to lay at home on a comfy sofa, put on a not-very-fancy headpiece and one is immediately connected to their avatar and thus, to their ‘immortal’ younger, better looking and stronger selves. The difference with today’s virtual reality or simply net-based avatars is that these surrogates ‘live’ in the ‘real’ world, although once again, we start getting into all kinds of speculations about what real is. Surrogates is about the future but it is a critique of the present. Our increasing dependence on social media and virtual worlds is turning our conception of the word reality upside down. More and more people are choosing web and virtual-based reality over traditional reality. Some people are scared, while the younger generation plunges head fist into this new way of socializing and of experiencing life. We can not stop this pattern but we can discuss its ethics and fight for ways to make it better. Ultimately, virtual reality will become a natural part of existence, perhaps the only one and we will learn to upload our minds and to exist outside the confines of our fragile and limited bodies. After all, humankind, on the whole, has always wished for immortality and this is one way to do it.
But Surrogates does not discuss the possibility of mind uploading and presents us with a world that seems content to rot away at home while their Surrogates live on their behalf. I find that there is a logic flaw here, unless, of course, one can ultimately leave their dying body behind and just continue to live on by going from one new Surrogate model to the next. The film does not go into this level of detail - this is after all a big budget action film - which is a shame as the concept of Surrogates is fascinating.

Attention: Spoilers right from the start!

Let’s get one thing straight: there is no need to further reinforce the naive belief that so many people have that clones are exact visual/physical copies of a person and that they can just be produced to be born adults. The technology to make this happen will exist sooner or later, but Moon plays on these cliches with too much ease. Let’s leave that for mediocre films such as The 6th Day (2000).

Now that i have gotten this out of the way, i can focus on why Moon is one of the best Sci-Fi films i have watched in quite some time. The comparisons with classics such as Solaris (1972), 2001 (1968) and Silent Running (1972) are inevitable. When was the last time you saw a Sci-Fi film that required you to think? A Sci-Fi film with no action, no crazy camera movements, no overbearing and loud soundtrack? A Sci-Fi film that was courageous enough to dispense with most of the requirements that seem to be de rigueur in 21st century cinema? A couple of exceptions aside, probably not in the past 20 years or so.

Adroitly directed by first time director Duncan Jones, the son of David Bowie, and sublimely acted by Sam Rockwell, Moon is a superb moody piece about a man working a three-year solitary shift on the moon, on behalf of an earth-based corporation. As he is about to reach the end of his shift, and eagerly awaiting to return to his family on earth, a series of bizarre events begin to unfold. I was prepared for a lot of potential scenarios around the subject of loneliness and madness, but i was not prepared for the twist that Moon offers. With the exception of that small issue i mentioned earlier, the explanation for this man working on the moon alone and starting to suffer from hallucinations is quite satisfying. Although, one might think that the corporation would probably terminate the shift earlier than three years if they knew that there were a potential for problems to start occurring before the end of the shift. Nonetheless, the screenplay is quite clever and keeps one riveted until the end.

Sam Rockwell is as good as he usually is, and probably even better (twice as good?). I can’t imagine what it must feel like to play in a movie on your own. Only a certain type of actor can probably handle it, and turn in a spectacular performance in the process. The production design reminds us of 2001, and of a time when the future looked clean. While a bit disconcerting a first, there is something soothing about letting one’s self be engulfed in this hygienic, white and clean vision of a lunar base. It feels like surrendering to the dreams we had and were forced to abandon after the 80s made us realize that the future is dirty, wasteful and gray. But the production design of Moon also makes sense in the context of the story, and becomes even more so appropriate once the truth is revealed. And then there is the soundtrack by Clint Mansell, who has previously composed beautiful tracks for the films of Darren Aronofsky, which is haunting and ideal and enhances the sense of unease that permeates the film.

A great film.

Small budget films have the advantage of needing to attract smaller audiences to recoup their costs. As such, i would imagine, it must release some pressure to conform and compromise while at the same time enabling the type of creativity that often comes only with severe budgetary constraints. The majority of good Sci-Fi films these days appear to be associated with lower budgets, as directors and writers attempt to tell real stories around serious and contemporary issues. Science Fiction was not always the stuff of explosions and superficial entertainment, but the past 20 years or so have certainly given the genre a terrible reputation. We have Hollywood to thank for this, although we must not forget that once in a while the machinery can still produce quality films.

But if Hollywood continues to mainly spit out one brainless action and explosion-driven film after the next, other countries, such as Japan, Korea, Spain and France, unable (or unwilling) to compete on budget terms, sometimes produce very interesting, more character-driven Sci-Fi pieces. And recently, District 9, a South African production, showed us that a USD 30 million budget can go a long way if the film is built on a good base of intelligent screenplay and solid acting.

Now, from Mexico, a country that has in the past few years produced some pretty remarkable films, directors and actors, comes Sleep Dealer, another low budget film that is filled with good intents and is more entertaining than 99% of what comes out these days and pretends to be Sci-Fi. Like District 9, Sleep Dealer attempts to tackle lots of contemporary issues on a background of social criticism.

Sleep Dealer tells the story of a young restless Mexican who, wanting to be connected to the world rather than to continue living the life of his elders, heads to Tijuana to work in a Sleep Dealer. Sleep Dealers are factories where workers are hooked up to virtual reality networks that allow them to provide work remotely for many US-based companies. In this not-too-distant future, the Mexican labor workers, still driven by the dream of a better life, are once again exploited but they never cross the border to the US, thereby ’solving’ one of North America’s most pressing social issue today, at least from a US point of view. Our protagonist realizes soon enough that the traditional land-based life that his family has been living for generations is perhaps not so bad after all, and that the capitalistic and technology-driven dreams that he and other people of his age harbor are based on deceit and empty values.

So immigration, capitalism, social movement and technology are the overarching themes of Sleep Dealer. Within these, smaller thematic issues are depicted, such as mind uploading, water scarcity, DNA fingerprinting, memory ownership, death as a spectacle and the rise of shock-based entertainment, threat of bacterial infections, and more…

Too much for one film probably, but Sleep Dealer manages to pull it off reasonably well. Like with most films, we are reminded of many previous Sci-Fi efforts such as eXistenZ (1999) -virtual reality nodes as an extension of body and the experience as a drug-, Minorty Report (2002) -the visualization and interaction for memory viewing-, Code 46 (2003)-social mobility/division-, Strange Days (1995) and Total Recall (1990)-memories for sale, and even Blade Runner (1982)-Tijuana in Sleep Dealer is reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s Los Angeles- and Babel (2006)-are we getting closer to one another or further away?-. But whereas some films tend to just rehash or steal bits and pieces from previous works, others use the influence intelligently and create something new and fresh out of it. This is the case for Sleep Dealer.

Although i may not agree with its seemingly very black and white critic of technology, and although the film feels a bit amateurish at times, i still very much enjoyed what Sleep Dealer is trying to tell us and how it does it.

Watching Pandorum has made me realize how anxiously i await Duncan Jones’ Moon (2009). How long has it been since we have had an interesting, grown-up and cerebral film about the emptiness and scariness of space without the film resorting to superfluous tricks and cheap thrills? Around 30 years since Outland (1981) and Alien (1979), 37 since Silent Running (1972) and Solaris (1972) and more than 40 since 2001 (1968), every effort since feels hesitant, disjointed and happy to compromise for the sake of reaching out to a wider audience. Event Horizon (1997) is perhaps one of the scariest films ever made but i remember the gore much more than i remember the psychological. Sunshine (2007) had a lot of potential but eventually disappointed by turning into ‘just another horror film’. And then there is Pitch Black, Red Planet, Dante 01, Mission to Farce, and countless others, films that range from the decent to the terribly bad and that use space as an excuse for superficial entertainment.

ATTENTION SPOILERS AHEAD
Pandorum reminds us of many such past efforts. On the positive side, its production design owes much to Alien with its sweaty, smoky, dark and claustrophobic corridors where what one does not see is more terrifying than what one does see. There is also, on a couple of occasions, a reasonable depiction of the madness that can ensue after too much time spent in cold-sleep (Pandorum is the name given to such a condition). Yet, we are very far from what Solaris showed us about madness in space and much closer to Event Horizon’s extrapolations. On a more negative side, the camera movements are obscenely fast and disorientating and i continue to wonder why an increasing number of directors and cinematographers endorse this type of film making. It always feels a bit like a cope-out to me, a method to avoid thinking harder about how to create tension or confusion or even rhythm. The result of combining such camera movements with lots of darkness, smoke and selected light sources is that one spends a large part of Pandorum seeing pretty much nothing. But the most disappointing aspect of the film for me were the mutants who looked straight out of I am Legend (2007) and The Descent (2005). First, for them to have evolved in such a manner in a few decades (at least i think it is a few decades - someone correct me if i am wrong as the time frame was not made exactly clear; i am assuming this is the time for Cam to age into Dennis plus a few additional years in cold sleep) makes absolutely no sense, especially not when you consider that they all seem to have a penchant for Mad Max fashion. And second, couldn’t the creators just come up with something a bit more original and plausible?

Pandorum feels to me a bit like Sunshine did. Lots of potential, a good premise that becomes weaker towards the end, and too much energy and focus spent on the wrong parts of the screenplay. If only there had been a bit less of a ‘i am going to eat your flesh’ angle and more time spent (with less crazy camera movements) on the symptoms and consequences of Pandorum in the humans, i would have liked this film a lot more.

I had the pleasure of watching the German premiere of District 9 as part of the Berlin Fantasy Film Festival. It is not often that a Sci-Fi film rises above the ocean of mediocrity that plagues the genre so when it does happen, it is worth praising it.

District 9 is the debut film of Neill Blomkamp, Peter Jackson’s 29 years old protege. An action flick with a heart and a bit of social critic, the film revolves around issues of intergration between the residents of Johannesburg and a community of weakened Alien creatures that landed on Earth 20 years earlier and were forced to live in the slums of the South African city.

Made on what is today a fairly modest budget of $30 million, District 9 feels much bigger and better than most sci-fi films that cost two or three times that amount. The 600 visual effect shots are for the most part splendid and the level of detail impressive. Add to this some quality acting (Sharlto Copley is a lot of fun to watch), solid directing on the part of a young and ‘in’experienced director and a cinema verite documentary style of filming that is effective in building a sense of the real in the film while covering up nicely for potential errors, and you have a cult favorite in the making.

Yet, it is not the masterpiece that many have talked about. A few inconsistencies and one major (in my opinion) gap in the storyline prevent it from becoming already one of the best Sci-Fi films ever. Attention Spoilers Ahead. I am referring to the liquid that allows for the shuttle to return to the ship. I found it a bit of a stretch that this liquid also happens to turn a human into an alien through inhalation. Perhaps there was a good explanation for it in the film and i missed it. In which case i would need to edit this blog entry at a later date. In the meantime, i was a bit disappointed that they could not find a better way to handle the transition between the two ‘halves’ of the film. I also picked up a few other things, albeit small, which made me realize that the film still felt a tad amateurish at times. For this reason, it certaintly should not be discussed in the same vein as 2001 or Blade Runner or Alien…

But perhaps time will prove me wrong. In the meantime, District 9 is a very good film and a breath of fresh air in the otherwise usually boring and unsurprising Sci-Fi film landscape.

I hear Will Smith was offered the part of Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation but decided to turn it down due to the softness of the ’spirit of giving’ angle. Instead, Smith went for the soapy Seven Pounds (08). Too bad as i can imagine very well Will Smith playing an existentially troubled machine that thinks it is human and that decides to donate its heart to the main protagonist, John Connor.

If i just made up the part about Will Smith, it is only to illustrate how silly of a film Terminator Salvation is. While i respect Will Smith, i found Seven Pounds to be way over the top in terms of cheese factor and this latest Terminator is not far behind, although, after just a bit of reflection, i might have to say that Seven Pounds is a better film. So way to go Will, you have once again chosen wisely. The same can not be said for Christian Bale whose performance in this film certainly did not warrant his much publicized verbal assault on a crew member during the shoot. Ever since The Machinist (04), Bale has built a reputation for strongly getting ‘in-role’ and for his Method Acting intensity, but lately that does not seem to translate into a whole lot. His Bruce Wayne is uneventful and dull, as is his John Connor. But Bale is not a bad actor. He just needs to start choosing better roles.

Terminator Salvation is a poorly written film with lasily developed characters and some of the worst editing i have seen recently. Scenes jump from one to the next without much logic and with very little smoothness. Much of the script is driven by the action without much regard for plausibility and common sense. For example, the resistance penetrates Skynet with such ease, it makes you wonder what the whole fuss with the machines has been about. Then there is the sexy female character who so conveniently meets the machine and falls so madly in love with it that she makes a fairly ridiculous decision that has no other purpose than to drive the action forward. My list of complaints goes on.

McG, the director, recently had a feud with Michael Bay, my old nemesis. I suggest that instead of fighting over who has the biggest robot, they should go have a beer and exchange ideas on how to make crappy films. Bay still has the most knowledge in this area, but it looks like McG is catching up fast.

This two hour pilot for the new series Caprica surprised me. I certainly was not expecting Battlestar Galactica all over again, but i also was not prepared for such a ‘character-driven’ experience. I use the term loosely here, and mainly to highlight the move away from space as the main narrative background. Intended to gain a wider audience, Caprica may also end up leaving some BSG fans behind…

Caprica takes place on a planet that, aside from a couple of minute differences, looks exactly like our earth. Its main city, Caprica, is any 1950s North American city with a few futuristic skyscrapers added here and there for good measure. I read that the idea of using the 1950s as an influence was to emphasize the fact that all this is taking place in our distant past but to nonetheless convey a sense of excitement towards the future. Personally, i found the production design of Caprica to be one of its weakest points. There is an underwhelming sense of lack of imagination as we stroll through streets and alleys that look like the types we would see in any other TV show. I understand that Caprica takes place in our past, but that knowledge is not enough to overcome the disconnect that one experiences when seeing our present when one is in fact thinking about either the distant future or the distant past. The fact that Caprica and BSG take place millions of years ago is already quite a challenge from a production design standpoint, one that i have discussed already in a couple of BSG posts. But in Caprica, it has become worse. The creators did not even see it fit to show us a game of Pyramid. Instead, we just see a few foamy pads laying around while around 70 extras jump up and down in what looked to be an ice-hockey arena. This is of course intentional, the producers and writers either held up by budgetary constraints or intent on ‘keeping it real’ in an effort to cater to a larger audience than the usual Sci-Fi fare traditionally does. In the end, i see no reason for Caprica to look like 1950s New York or Chicago, as i saw no reason for pens, paper, cancer, cigarettes and many other things to exist in the universe of BSG. One can not have invented interstellar and faster-than-light travel and still be bogged down by so many 20th century human weaknesses and memes. And this applies to design and architecture as well. I also felt uneasy by some of the casting choices, including Eric Stoltz as Daniel Graystone, the driven and selfish scientist who brings about the beginning of the end. Stoltz failed to convince me as a technical genius and as a father, even as a bad one.

A week after having watched Virtuality, it was interesting to see again virtual reality being depicted on TV. Ron Moore has been recycling some of his ideas since in both pilots, a character dies but continues to exist in virtual reality. And in both cases, VR is used pretty much as a recreational tool where a simple headset is enough to transport the ‘user’ into an exact replica of the real world, whatever that real world may be, all five senses included. But Caprica goes much further and attempts to explore some potential societal and moral implications of not only virtual reality but also of immortality, transhumanism, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. The theme of religion is emphasized from the very start and Dr Graystone’s experiments provide the required foundation for the standard science vs religion debate. Where the debate becomes more interesting than usual is in Dr Graystone’s ideas about merging (mind uploading?) the encoded data of his daughter (drawing on current lifelogging trends - blogs, social networks, data capture…) with an AI-enabled robotic shell. The potential result is immortality for a new a type of being. These concepts are not too far-fetched and many people today in transhumanist circles are working on such ideas. So credit to Ron Moore for keeping it believable. I suppose Mary Shelley did not come up with the idea for Frankenstein. She must have found some old book somewhere telling tales of immortality based on Caprican rather than Summerian or Egyptian mythology.

In spite of what i consider to be weaknesses in the production values and in the casting, the pilot for Caprica had plenty of interesting moments and clearly warrants further viewing. It is hard to imagine that the Cylons were created only 60 years before the fall of Caprica, but i am sure the creators will find a satisfactory way to put it all together.

“There’s more humor probably in the first 10 minutes of Virtuality than there was in the entire run of Battlestar Galactica.” This comment made by Ron Moore in an interview with Wired Magazine illustrates exactly why i feel that Virtuality, had it been picked up as a series by Fox, would have ended up being 10 times less interesting than BG.

Virtuality is a series pilot about a group of astronauts on a 10 year journey to a nearby star system. Increasingly difficult conditions on board as well as a strange and dangerous behavior from an AI in the virtual reality systems slowly lead to an atmosphere of instability, suspicion and aggression. To make matters more interesting, or so Ron Moore thought, the group is also the subject of a reality TV show transmitted ‘live’ back to Earth.

For about 60 minutes, Virtuality feels amateurish, boring and filled with cliches and stolen ideas. The acting is very average, the casting often inappropriate (all these doctors and scientists who look straight out of the pages of Seventeen or Vogue - the selected Elite of Earth?), the characters are poorly developed and feel like we have seen them a hundred times before in films and TV shows, the dialogues are uninspiring and the camera movements are such that one wonders if the DOP was drunk or on speed.

But the film picks up a bit in the last 30 minutes, as the writers felt understandingly that they had to take us towards some kind of climax to increase their chances of the pilot being turned into a series. However, one can easily imagine that the first 60 minutes would be a more accurate reflection of the quality of the entire series, and as such, i unbelievably find myself agreeing with the Fox network, or at least with the executive who pulled the plug on Virtuality.

I just had a flashback to 1982. I am coming out of the movie theater having just watched Blade Runner with some friends. My head is spinning, my imagination flowing. Blade Runner has just taken me to another world, a world richer than that created by any other movie before, and very few since. And all i can think about is that Ridley Scott is perhaps my favorite director. Or maybe third, after Kubrick and Coppola.

Forward to 2009. I just finished watching Body of Lies, Scott’s take on terrorism, intelligence services and the US’s involvement in the Middle East. And all i can think about is that Ridley Scott has become one of my least favorite directors. I still like him more than Michael Bay though.

Scott has become the expert in, and has perhaps invented, a new genre in cinema. The false epic. The shallow political deepness. The smoke and mirrors saga. Whatever. Films such as 1492, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, Gladiator, and Body of Lies are nothing but big commercial vehicles shrouded in a pretension of intelligence and resting on a fairly unstable historical base. That is not to say that they are bad films. Scott is an extremely talented filmmaker, and his films are always perfectly crafted. But they have lost so much of their uniqueness and artistic inclinations since Scott started as a film maker. Where is the envelope pushing and non-conformity of The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner, and even of Legend? Well, it is long gone, perhaps when Scott found fame with Thelma and Louise. Scott may have pulled a Nicolas Cage on us, succumbing to the dark forces of fame and commercial appeal. In this he resisted only a little bit longer than his brother Tony who has been making blatantly commercial films for the past 30 years (True Romance and The Hunger aside).

Body of Lies tells the story of an American intelligence agent in the Middle East, played by DiCaprio, who sets up a fake terrorist organization in an attempt to capture the mastermind behind several bombings in the West. DiCaprio does a fairly good job, as he usually does, although he unfortunately rarely seems to rise anymore above the level of fairly good. But i admire his on-screen professionalism and his off-screen political activism. Russell Crowe plays DiCaprio’s boss, a cultural stereotype who almost by himself is supposed to tell us everything that is wrong with the US’s policy in the Middle East. But the role is poorly written and Crowe’s performance ends up being for the most part boring and uninteresting.

Body of Lies is what i would call a ‘Tom Clancy’ political film, meaning that it is not a political film at all. It is an action-driven yarn with big explosions, car chases, fast editing, good cinematography, big name actors and, with regrettably, only a semblance of political depth.

One of my favorite Sci-Fi books as a teenager was Barjavel’s La Nuit des Temps, translated in English as The Ice People, a reference to the two human beings, millions of years old and yet technologically advanced, found cryogenically preserved deep in the Antarctic ice. It is a simple and somewhat superficial, yet also beautiful, tale of love lost, idealism and global consciousness…..and it flows like a blockbuster, which always gave me the feeling that i would one day see it on the silver screen.

Maggie Gee’s Ice People, the story of a man fighting to keep his family together while the world is falling apart, is a deeper and richer novel than Barjavel’s. And while La Nuit des Temps does have a slight underlying dystopic feel to it, Gee’s novel on the other hand is bleak to the core. It is a slow downward spiral towards a near future without sun, warmth and hope, a future filled with savagery, mistrust between the sexes, chaos and technology gone wrong. But Gee’s prose and wit ensure that the bleakness never feels cheap or forced and that the storyline flows easily and rivetingly to the bitter end.

The Ice People has been compared to Orwell’s 1984 and to Huxley’s Brave New World due to the intensity and realism of its dystopic element and to the strength of Gee’s writing. And Gee, who was the first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, is certainly worthy of such comparisons. But her work also brings to mind the style and social concerns of another great contemporary female writer of dystopias: Margaret Atwood. Both have a predilection for speculative fiction based on current societal and technological trends and concerns and both go about it in an unrepentant manner. And both are fantastic writers.

Despite some technological naivety, the Ice People is a sad and beautiful novel whose message will linger in your mind long after the last page has been turned.

There once were fairly cute and entertaining (albeit one-dimensional) films such as Cocoon, Parenthood, Night Shift and Willow. Then came more ambitious undertakings, attempts at more grown-up and deeper film making. But with films such as Backdraft, Apollo 13, Ransom, The Paper, EdTV and Far and Away, also came inconsistency and a strong penchant for cheap and superficial handling of emotions and relationships. A clear commercial angle, which had already started to emerge in the 80s, came blossoming in the 90s, a full-force proclamation of cinema as first and foremost a tool of entertainment with profit-making capabilities. And although i have yet to watch Frost/Nixon, it is probably safe to say that for the past nine years Ron Howard has been continuing on his path of mediocre but commercially successful film making, with Angels & Demons being the culmination of everything that is wrong with this type of cinema.

If The Da Vinci Code failed to inspire, Angels & Demons tries so hard to bring movement, excitement and action that it forgoes any attempt at plausibility in the process. This film is simply two hours filled with a couple of people chasing other people while solving riddles about the Illuminati in the process. Now you may be thinking that this sounds pretty good, except that it isn’t. As i watched Tom Hanks playing the hotshot academic Robert Langdon, i found myself longing for the early Indiana Jones, or for Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, and even for Jacques Clouseau. Anything but this cheap and non-believable caricature of a detective chasing after villains who seem more keen on playing riddles than on doing the job.

I did enjoy one thing however, and it is not the absurd sight of a skydiving pope wanna-be or the loose connections with a Bush administration that could have resorted to unspeakable evil to force its values upon the vulnerable masses. Nor was it the fairly obvious mean characterization of the sometimes stereotypical Stellan Skarsgård to provide for an (un)expected twist at the end. No, the thing that i enjoyed was…hmm…i can’t remember. Maybe it was that the film ended.

Some films continue to be made as they were meant to, that is, within an artistic and philosophical framework and mindset. Some others are developed as products, with profit and entertainment as the main objective. Clearly some artistic films can be entertaining but rarely is a ‘product’ film very artistic or philosophical.

When Robert Wise directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, the blockbuster was only a few years old and auteur films were still prominent. Wise’s effort remains today one of the most serious undertakings at meaningful, earnest and reputable Sci-Fi. 30 years later, one of Hollywood’s hottest properties, J.J. Abrams, has tried to bring his magic touch to your parents’ favourite space saga. Undoubtebly inspired by the success of rejuvenated James Bond and Batman, the producers of Star Trek felt that it was time for the franchise to become more ‘modern’ and to draw on current cinematic trends and on overall changes in cinematic tastes

As I discussed this latest instalment of Star Trek with a colleague who had really enjoyed the film, I struggled to articulate why a movie filled with quality action, decent acting, top-notch visual effects and with an overall obvious respect for the franchise and what it represents, could have left me so disappointed. But it became clear to me after a while that the reason was simple: this film was developed as a product, and not as a piece of art. As such, it felt convenient, easy, and at times superficial and fluffy. It was made of pre-existing parts that one can assemble together to shape the product. Now, it must be said, Hollywood can produce both good and bad products and this Star Trek happens to be a good product, a well-crafted one built by experts. But it is a product nonetheless. A product for entertainment purposes, for immediate consumption and limited cognitive depth. The creativity goes into the action sequences and the special effects but is barely present in the script and in the overall storyline. There is nothing fresh about time travel and parallel universes, at least not in the way it was presented to us in this film. And as a friend of mine pointed out, there was little creativity in coming up with an interesting enemy or nemesis. Let’s just put a bit of make up on Bana’s face and have him snarl at the camera.

A few sequences made me whinge, as when Spock saves the members of his family who looked like they were having tea and cookies nonchalentely while their planet crumbled around them. Thank god Spock showed them how to exit their own cave or else it appears that they would have gone on with whatever it is they were doing before Spock barged in. And then there is the whole sequence about old Spock meeting Kirk miraculously in some cave. Somehow Spock happens to have a torch to repel the monster that had been chasing Kirk through the snow (Empire Strikes Back anyone?). Spock also knows about the outpost next door where they find, you guessed it, beam me up Scotty. So that’s how it all happened. Just like that. People who liked the film will say that it had to be all explained and that Abrams did just that. But i will say that it should not have been all explained, not if it means having to stich sequences together in a way that feels forced and artificial. Indeed, Abrams explained it all and he still managed to provide 120 minutes of jokes and action. I say, something had to give.

Star Trek is far from being a bad film, and i might even watch it again some day. It is definitively better than many films i have reviewed on this blog. Yet, it is also quite inferior to recent Sci-Fi efforts such as Watchmen or The Dark Knight or even to the Battlestar Galactica series

I can’t claim to have the pulse of the younger generation but i sincerely hope that Push has not been received too warmly by teenage girls in awe of Chris Evans or by teenage boys who may find the thought of watching Dakota Fanning walking for 90 mins around Hong Kong with a very short skirt on appealing. I am actually wondering if reaching for the teenage market was in fact the intention of the director, Paul McGuigan, or if it just seems this way due to the mediocrity of this film.

Push is one of those movies that is so bad that one can’t help but to wonder how it was even greenlighted in the first place. One can also legitimately ask how a director who, although far from being considered good, has managed to make a couple of not-too-terrible films, can so easily spiral out of control into an abyss of cliches, predictability and, well, stupidity…It is as if his entire carreer had just been erased and he was back in film school, trying to make the cool film that everyone will be impressed with. Except that, because he is a mediocre student, his film is the last thing from cool and instead is filled with atrocious acting, silly and amateurish editing and obvious and poorly chosen music.

Because the subject matter of paranormal abilities is burried so deep below several layers of trash, there is no opportunity to even discuss it in the context of this film.

As a critic, i know my limitations. That is, i must remain aware that directors create something and that critics do little other than praise or bash what has been created already. I respect the act of creation (and of creativity) and i keep it in mind at all times when i appraise a film. However, there are times when even this awareness is not enough to keep me from thinking that with the same resources and with a short training, i could have done better.

Benjamin Button is a weak entry in the otherwise very impressive resume of David Fincher. The man who built his well-deserved reputation with edgy, post-modern and existential thrillers decided to go the epic love story direction and ended up suffocating us in a bath of sucrose for almost three hours.

Every year, the Academy Awards surprise us by nominating and even awarding mediocre films for reasons that have more to do with politics than with quality. While i have yet to see Frost/Nixon and The Reader, i can already say that Benjamin Button had no place being nominated this year for best film.

The Curious Case tells the story of a man who ages in reverse. A beautiful and interesting concept (the film is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald), which Fincher unfortunately fails to turn into a consistent and solid experience. Some moments are touching, mainly when BB is either very old or very young, but everything in between (when Brad Pitt is being Brad Pitt) is filled with cliches, strange editing, poor acting and just feels amateurish and predictable. Fincher tried something new but stretched himself too far. In addition, the film’s length could have been cut by at least one hour and no substance would have been missed. On the contrary, it would have made the film stronger. Directors should only go for epic length if they are 100% sure they can fill it with quality, and not with cliches and cheap sentimental rubbish. For example, skip all that Forest Gump stuff with the mad captain as well as most of the scenes between Blanchett and Ormond. These scenes were excruciatinlgy bad and tiresome: how many times have we seen this set up before, the old woman telling her story to her mystified daughter and who miraculously manages to hang on until the last sentence has been read?

As i have stated before, i enjoy Brad Pitt when he plays a certain kind of role. But BB is not one of these. Here, he is back to his stoic worse, the type of performance we have seen from him in Meet Joe Black and Seven Years in Tibet. Cate Blanchett looks a bit confused throughout the film and her voice as an old woman was so grueling to listen to that i knew from the start i was going to have problems with this film. Tilda Swinton and Faune Chambers, on the other hand, provide welcomed moments of relief.

Perhaps The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not as bad as i make it sound. It is afterall somewhat entertaining, the cinematography deserves a nod, as do the Make-Up and Costumes. And perhaps i am letting my disappoinment with Fincher get in the way of a fair appraisal of the fillm. But when even my wife, who is much more of a sucker for these types of films than i am, finds faults with it, then at least one thing is clear: this is not the Oscar-worthy film that some have talked about.

I picked up Altered Carbon with the expectation of reading another Neuromancer or Snow Crash but felt somehow a bit blasé while reading it, as i did when i read The Demolished Man. Perhaps William Gibson is right and the future has become such an integral part of our present that there is little left to explore in terms of near-future Sci-Fi or Cyberpunk. Actually, no, I don’t agree with Gibson and I believe that there are still plenty of opportunities for Sci-Fi writers to mesmerize us with speculations about the future of the human race.

Altered Carbon is a Cyber-Noir that takes place 500 years from now. Takeshi Kovacs is a reluctant private eye, a mercenerary of sorts who gets downloaded left and right to do the types of jobs that others can not do.  In this case, he is downloaded in somone else’s body in San Francisco, and is hired by a rich man who wants Kovacs to investigate why this man has no recollection of his own recent suicide, and why he would have done such a thing in the first place.

A few planets have been colonized, people wear neurachems (jacked up nervous systems), AIs hold various jobs in society such as running hotels, the rich have become more or less immortal thanks to the ability to upload themselves into new sleeves (bodies) as they see fit and much of the communication takes place virtually (as does torture and imprisonment when combined with mind uploading). But the rest is pretty much 20th century: people still need their coffee to get going, they lament their nicotine addiction, they shoot people with fairly old-fashion guns and society as a whole seems to function very much according to our values today. Which, in my opinion, makes Altered Carbon a bit of a disjointed experience.

Richard Morgan does a good job at bringing the noir element into Kovacs’ investigation, although there is a bit of a gratuitous penchant for sadism and hardcore violence. The plot is tightly weaved and so elaborate that it becomes slightly confusing at times. In the end, Altered Carbon is a solid novel, especially for a first novel, but there was not enough in it to keep me very interested. Since the rights to the book have been bought by Hollywood, i can imagine very well this being turned into a near-future noir flick. It has all the right ingredients: the tough guy with a soft spot, the mysterious rich man who hires him, the two femmes fatales with their own agendas, the non-stop and sometimes convenient flow of scenes that allow our private eye to move forward with his investigation, lots of action and just the right amount of technological gimmicry to entertain the audience without breaking the budget. Unfortunately, i have a feeling it won’t be another Blade Runner.

For your viewing pleasure, a fun short from the masters at Pixar …

Attention tons of spoilers ahead.

Well, BSG is over and i feel a sense of loss that i will no longer be able to immerse myself regularly into this well-crafted, intelligent, challenging and believable world of lost humans, Cylons and hybrids. But after four years of raising salient questions about politics, religion, racism, terrorism, war, technology, good and evil and almost everything else that is pertinent in a post 9/11 world, the conclusion of this much revered show has left me somewhat dissatisfied. It has also made me wonder about the writing process for a TV show, a subject I know little about.

I think the majority of viewers will agree that BSG is an incredibly well-written show. Dialogues, character development, plot movement, the flow of the scenes, all have been admirably handled and are the main reason why BSG is considered to be one of the best shows ever written for TV. Yet, I can not help but ask myself if, in spite of all this, a lot of the plot points were not just thrown together at the end, the writers having sacrificed long term coherence for short term impact, viewers and season renewal. There are simply too many loose ends at the end and too many resolutions that feel forced. That being said, the overall idea of having them land on our Earth to become our ancestors is actually powerful and interesting. But after years of building the suspense and raising our expectations about Hera, the Opera House, Kara, Baltar and 6, the resolutions from this last episode have a bit of an anti-climatic feel to them. So it was all about chasing Hera through the ship and the CIC? These fantastic and grand visions were about the CIC? Disappointing. And the religious and spiritual undertones which were effective until now because they were just that, undertones, and perhaps because they suggested something more, ended up being in fact an end in itself. Unlike some viewers, I am not criticising the idea of bringing religion more concretely into the series, I am simply stating that as with other elements in the last episode, the way the religious angle was brought to a close did not feel properly thought-through and smelled of last minute resolution. It had worked until now because we weren’t quite sure what it was all about. We might have suspected, but the mystery kept it interesting. By turning these religious possibilities into a concrete reality, the mystery has been removed (assuming you don’t associate mystery with lack of answers) and with it, the only thread by which many viewers were still hanging to the religious angle.

I won’t even go into the idea of abandoning all technology so quickly, without any apparent discussion or rebellion by anyone, these space farers suddenly in love with the idea of farming and living in tents for the rest of their lives, assuming they don’t get killed first by the multitude of dangers that populated the African Savannah 150,000 years ago. One of these days, I will watch the entire show again and it will be interesting to see how much does and does not make sense. I suspect there are a lot of inconsistencies.

Yet, and this is where my criticism ends, this shaky ending far from cancels out all the marvellous aspects of the show. BSG has taken us on a wonderful journey over the past four years and it has helped restore Sci-Fi’s good name. It has proven that Sci-Fi does not have to be shallow and mainly visual effect-based, that it can challenge us intellectually and affect us emotionally as good and as deeply as any non Sci-Fi drama. So goodbye BSG and thanks for all the fish!

Georges Melies is considered the father of visual effects, and quite understandably so. Le Voyage a Travers L’Impossible, like Melies’ more famous Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), is a fascinating use of a medium that was only a few years old at the time.

I can only marvel at Melies’ creativity and courage for taking the moving image out of what must have been a pretty conservative context and for turning it so quickly into a canvas for storytelling, visual experimentation and imaginative ideas. Based on a Jules Verne story, this film may not make much sense by today’s standards and can feel a bit hurried (Melies directed over 500 ‘films’ in his short career) but it deserves our admiration nonetheless.

I suppose it is only natural to dismiss documentaries such as Zeitgeist for being overly sensensionalistic, deceitful and for making the viewer feel powerless in the face of such potential truths. Most ‘official’ critiques that I have read regarding Zeitgeist speak only of fear-mongering and distortion of truth, but very few, if any at all, speak about the implications that are raised were any of what Zeitgeist discusses to be true. These implications are so far-reaching and mind boggling that it is indeed far easier and much more ‘rational’ to just dismiss them as conspiracy theory nonsense and to move on with one’s life.

Like the hamsters on a wheel portrayed in the documentary, we live our lives based on a set of assumptions that we accept as facts. These help us keep a certain stability and they allow us to make sense of the world. We are permitted some level of questioning and we can move the boundaries of these assumptions in various degrees, depending on one’s inclinations towards rebellion, anarchism and non-conformism. But questioning the foundations themselves upon which our definition of truth and reality is based, that is the stuff that most ‘normal’ people will usually associate with the delusional and less intelligent other.

Through my work and interests over the past 3 years, I have begun a process of questioning the reality in which I have been living most of my life. What if most of what I knew about health, agriculture, politics and finance was a lie, a mirage placed upon me to serve the purpose of a few with delusions of world domination and whose main interest it is to profit and to control?

With such thoughts regularly on my mind, it is no wonder that I found Zeitgeist fascinating and powerful enough to make me think: why not? Why isn’t it possible for example, that, for the past 100 years or so, a few very powerful people (Illuminati anyone?) have been trying to control world financial markets and foreign regimes and have even started wars and engaged in terrorist attacks on their own people, in order to obtain more power, control and money? Could it be that the financial system that regulates our planet is based on lies and fraud, a master plan to enslave and impoverish the large majority of the people of this world? Was Christianity created by the Emperor Constantin for the sole purpose of keeping social order, turning in the process what had been so far only recycled myths and traditions into the divisive doctrine that it is today? Are wars started with financial gain in mind? Is what we were led to believe about 9/11 really the truth?

Most of the content in Zeitgeist is not new. Bits and pieces can be found on the net and in various documentaries such as Loose Change, Why We Fight (2005), The War Profiteers (2006), The Corporation (2003), and America: From Freedom to Fascism (2006). What Zeitgeist does is bring all this content together in a way that is compelling and clear. I am not knowledgeable enough about these issues to determine how much the truth has been distorted and how one-sided some of the arguments in the documentary are. It is clear that Peter Jospeh, the filmmaker, is presenting us with his views of things and that in the process he is omitting a lot of valuable counter points. Yet, what is most important here i believe is to keep an open mind and to ask one’s self: what if? What if all of this or much of this content is true? What does it mean for the human race and what does it mean for you as a person? Will you just ignore these possibilities and continue as is or will you start to question and, for some, to act?

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2007 Montreal film festival, this directorial debut by Nic Balthazar deserves credit for creating an interesting experience for about 80% of the duration of the movie. Unfortunately, he throws it all away at the end with a cheesy feel-good ending that feels very poorly handled.

BenX is the story of a young man who suffers from Asperger Syndrome, a milder form of autism. Bullied at school, unable to ‘blend in’ and to socially relate to his peers, his principal means of interacting, and really, of existing, is by immersing himself into the game Archlord (Overlord) where he becomes the character BenX and where he has the freedom to do what he can not do in ‘traditional’ reality. Although he has a good friend in the world of Overlord (Scarlite), his increasing inability to deal with life prompts him to contemplate ways of commiting suicide.

BenX is not a small challenge for a first time director. Taking on autism, school bullying, teenage angst, and the influence of the internet and of video games on our lives and on how we interact with each other, is indeed a tall ordeal. Balthazar manages pretty well on the whole, although his sometimes hectic cuts and camera movements can feel overly eager and ambitious. The acting is solid enough but nothing more. And the script holds together decently until the last part of the film, at which point it falls apart in ambuiguity and clumsiness. Overall, a respectable film that nonetheless still feels too often like a first time effort.

I recently read about Luc Besson’s growing empire and felt a bit disheartened about the rise of French-sponsored trash and brainless cinema. So what do i do? I go and watch Taken, the latest film from Besson’s Europacorp, hoping perhaps to confirm my worst fears, but also curious about Liam Neeson, an actor i respect, playing the tough guy who stops at nothing to find his kidnapped daughter.

And the result was not overly disappointing. Less fluffly than Ransom (1996) but not as decent as Frantic (1988). Neeson makes for a credible ex-secret service (or something like that) guy who is well-versed into the art of finding foreign baddies and killing them swiftly. Taken has a violent and direct intensity that brings the last two James Bond films to mind, and it could be said that Liam Neeson would make a good older version of Bond. He ends up carrying the film and allows it to become a somewhat enjoyable experience.

Taken doesn’t fly very high but it is not made to. It is cheap cinema (literally, since one of the ways Europacorp is making a profit by keeping budgets low) aimed at a specific audience. If this sounds like Business Class 101, it’s because it is. Increase profits, keep costs low, go after a target market, spend heavily on marketing…cinema has always been a business for studios in countries where the government offers little or no subsidies. This state of affairs only becomes a serious problem when the art component of cinema is completely left out of the equation and when films become synonymous with commodity and production. Which is clearly what Europacorp is doing and that is indeed regrettable.