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.

Novels are notoriously difficult to adapt successfully to the screen. It is not so much a question of whether the visual language of cinema can tell more or less than the written word but rather that it does it in a different way, touching on different connection points to our emotions and intellect. Most people who have read a novel and watched a film based on that novel end up usually disappointed as there is little chance that a film will be able to entirely re-create the world that the written word can sometimes open to us. But great appreciators of cinema will know when the writer and director of a film have succeeded in utilizing the power of the moving image to best interpret and render the essence of a novel. Not necessarily to literraly and faithfully adapt it, but to transport the meaning, intention and atmosphere in the best possible way, based on the possiblities of the cinematic medium.

That is not to say that all novels can be turned into films, nor that it should always be attempted. Especially when the essence of a novel is closely dependent on a very particular style of prose (little punctuation and lack of quotation marks around dialogue) and when the author (a Nobel prize winner) specifically removes many traditional frames of references such as character names and cultural and geographical points of idendification to enhance the power of his message. In short, Fernando Meirelles should probably not have attempted to turn José Saramago’s influencial novel into a film.

Blindness tells the story of how humanity suddenly loses its sight. One by one, the nameless residents of an unnamed city become blind and must learn to live with one another under extreme conditions of chaos and lawlesness (and of course, of blindness). One woman, played with usual consistency and intensity by Julianne Moore, retains her sight and is confronted with the question of what it means to be the one who sees in the kingdom of the blind.

Watching as many movies as i do means that i get exposed to a lot of different styles and cinematic experiences. And through my emphasis on ‘Sci-Fi’, i get my fair share of the disturbing and the unnerving. But that did not prepare me for how tough of a film Blindness is. I found the film so disturbing, and unfortunately at times, so cheaply disturbing, that i had to stop halfway through it to take a break. Saramago and Meirelles illustrate our collective spiritual blindness and lack of empathy by using examples of the absolute worst evil that Man can do. For about one hour, we are subjected to scenes of human degradation that reach a level of such intensity that one can’t help but wonder if the point couldn’t have been made equally as well without resorting to such extremes. I personally found some of the scenes insulting and even perverted.

Yet, there is something haunting about Blindness, something that stayed with me long after the film was over. No longer anger but rather fascination and curiosity towards a message which, although cruel, offers a glimmer of hope and presents the possibility that we as humans have a choice, the choice to learn how to live with one another and to create a better world for all.

A regular topic on this blog is that of bad versus good trash. What makes, for example, Eagle Eye (2008) and The Day the Earth Stool Still (2008) bad trash and what makes Wanted good trash? Why are the cliches acceptable in the later but not in the first two? Even though there are many reasons why a film can be bad, there is however usually one overarching common reason: bad trash films tend to take themselves seriously and try to reach emotional and intellectual heights that are far beyond what they can achieve based on the resources available (such as skills and intelligence of the director and actors and quality of the screenplay). There is nothing more annoying than directors who have no understanding of their abilities and who end up inserting childish and immature emotional and philosophical nonsense in their action flicks.
Good trash, on the other hand, tends to know its limitations and has the intelligence to try not to pretend that it can be more than what it actually is.

Thus, Wanted does not attempt to tell us about emotions or human frailty or love or what makes the world go round or this or that. Wanted just wants to entertain through action, dark humour and visual effects. It makes no apology for what it is and it does not try to marry this action with any kind of depth; it is what i would call good and honest superficial entertainment.

One feels several influences in this film about an average young man (played perfectly by James McAvoy) who learns that he is the son of an assassin, himself a member of a secret guild that dates back hundreds of years. Part of the overall concept and many of the action scenes are reminiscent of The Matrix (1999), some of the gun-fighting sequences bring Equilibrium (2002) to mind and one can detect attempts here and there at a bit of a Flight Club (1999) pace and feel. Other action flicks will undoubtedly be mentioned in connection with Wanted, but in the end, Timur Bekmambetov who previously directed Night Watch (2004), manages to come up with enough visual candy, good acting, great action sequences and just the right amount of dark humour to make Wanted a fun experience.

Perhaps they should have added a disclaimer that no rats were harmed during the filming of this movie…

Utterly pointless and excruciatingly bad.

Along with Christopher Nolan, Sam Mendes must be the most talented English director to have emerged on the Hollywood scene in the past 10 years. When he is not directing for the stage, Mendes is busy coming up with thought-provoking and beautiful films such as American Beauty (1999), Road to Perdition (2002), Jarhead (2005) and now Revolutionary Road.

This latest one is perhaps Mendes’s most accomplished film to date, although its intensity and lack of warmer characters may prevent it from ending on many critics’ top ten lists. It has certainly not been that warmly received by the general public, probably due to its disconcerting tension and forcefulness. It is also likely that many people might have found a bit too much of themselves in the Wheelers, this couple that self destructs under the weight of unfulfilled dreams.

If American Beauty may have seemed a bit tame at times in its depiction of a conservative middle class mentality, placing accessibility before depth, Revolutionary Road tries its best to detach itself from any such notion by creating a bleak and uncompromising film that just keeps hitting you in the stomach until it really hurts. DiCaprio and Winslet (Winslet won several awards for this role) are terrific, a younger version of Burton and Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Although a very different couple from the one played by Burton and Taylor, DiCaprio and Winslet work so well of each other that their passion and agony become ours. The characters they play may not be the most likeable human beings but that certainly did not keep me from understanding them and from identifying with some of their desires and fears. I suspect many people of a certain age will find a little bit of themselves in what the Wheelers go through, and if that is not the case, then these people are either very lucky, uninterested or too afraid to look too deeply into their own life. Clearly, none of these three things is conducive to appreciating this great movie.

Revolutionary Road should have been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It is a tragic and depressing film, beautifully told and remarkably well-made. It is not for everyone’s taste but it is powerful cinema.

If you enjoy the format of Michael Moore’s documentaries, then you will certainly appreciate Religulous, Bill Maher and Larry Charles’ (who directed the incredibly funny Borat (2006)) take on the state of religion in today’s society.

If on the other hand, you tend to idolize documentary filmmakers such as Marcel Ophüls, Errol Morris, or Jean Rouch, it is then likely that the selective and superficial approach that Charles and Maher use to portray everyone they meet as dumb and confused will not leave you impressed.

While i am a little put off by Moore and Charles’ techniques, i find their documentaries nonetheless extremely entertaining. I can see clearly how they manipulate and edit out everything that does not serve their purpose, thereby providing a very black and white view of the topic, and a part of me condemns this as easy and one-dimensional filmmaking. I also think that this strategy is clearly not ideal if one wants to try to convince ‘the other side’ or simply to try to broaden their horizons a bit. In fact, it seems that these types of documentaries mainly preach to the choir. But another part of me also enjoys these cheap manipulations of these people who i so strongly disagree with. A low emotion perhaps, a shadenfreude-type pleasure at seeing bigots be put on the spot, which is perhaps the best we can get since in most cases we will not be able to change their perception of reality.

Bill Maher is not known for mincing his words and he certainly lets loose nicely in Religulous, bombarding incredulous believers with facts that that should make anyone think twice about everything they may have ever been thought or may have ever believed about religion. Religion may have some positives, but when one looks at history and at the state of our society today, it is difficult to see the benefits of a world being ruled by religion. Wherever one turns, there is the intolerance and the prejudice of religion being forced onto others. Whether after watching Gus Van Sant’s fabulous Milk (2008) and being reminded that so many people consider their fellow human beings abnormal because of their sexual preference, or after reading the story of how the Vatican and that clown Berlusconi tried to stop a mother and a father from letting their daughter die after she spent the last 17 years in a coma, it is so unfortunately clear that religion is not making the world a better place and it is not helping people love one another.

Would a world without religion be better? I can’t say that i know for sure, but we have tried religion already and it’s not working. So, why don’t we try something new?

Outlander is an expensive B-movie that tries to be more than that. It fails at it but does not feel overly arrogant while trying. That is not to say that it constantly deals with its subject matter in an effective way but it seems to be satisfied with targeting a certain audience and to provide this audience with as solid of an experience as possible. Of course, when it comes to a story about a man from the future crash landing in 8th century Norway, there is plenty of room for subjectivity in how one appraises the merits of such a film.

What makes Outlander better trash than for example Eagle Eye (2008) or The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) is that it does not pretend to know how to deal with big philosophical questions and it does not tie its story to the ‘real’. By releasing itself from the shackles of reality, that is, by taking place in a fantasy world, Outlander does not have to meet the stricter believability standards of films that relate to our modern society.

That being said, Outlander is still a very average film. Instead of aiming for the level of The Navigator (1988), or even better, for the level of Planet of the Apes (1968), the best time travel movie ever made, the movie turns into some kind of Predator-type monster flick with weak undertones of Excalibur (1981), a Beowulf (2007) that can not use animation as an excuse for its weaknesses. A strange but interesting mix that could have worked better had the director not decided that an avalanche of gore was in order. And that James Caviezel should play in the lead role…

Something happened about 10 years ago. Oliver Stone, who had been one of North America’s most interesting and provocative directors in the 80s and early 90s, suddenly started making boring and average movies. Any Given Sunday (99), Alexander (04) and World Trade Center (06), all felt like the work of a director who had run out of ideas, and out of rage. Perhaps wounded by the constant scorn of critics and by accusations of a lack of patriotism, Stone has turned to facile cinema to continue funneling his political ideas. Unfortunately, the result is a far cry from what he used to be capable of.

His latest film is something not often seen in this medium: the biography of someone who is still alive. This represents quite a challenge as the film must compete in the reader’s minds with the information and knowledge they already have about the person being portrayed, information which is current and much more relevant than if the subject had been dead for 30 years. And if in addition that person happens to be the most hated man in the world over the past eight years, the level of complexity rises even further for the filmmaker and his screenwriter. But that obviously did not stop Stone from wanting to try to tell the story of George W. Bush and how this little insecure man went from alcoholism and skirt-chasing to the highest post in the world.

Regular readers of this blog will know that i hold much contempt for George W. Bush and that i am always very much in favor of exposing his lies and deceit. I have posted several times before about excellent documentaries and filmmakers who have done their best to show the world the damage the Bush administration has done and the amount of corruption and illegal activities it has engaged in. But W. does little to expand on this great work. Instead of confronting the viewer with the brutal truth of Bush’s lies, idioticism and corruption, this fluffy romanticization attempts to be fair and to show Bush, as an idiot yes, but as an idiot who grew up in the shadow of his brother and who was constantly seeking the approval of a distant and critical father….

W. ends up being just like a nice Disneyland ride. Move over Pirates of the Caribbean, here comes W. the ride. Here is George getting pissed during his Yale fraternity induction. Over there is George working in an oil rig. And look over there, it’s George meeting with Rumsfeld, Condy, Powell and Cheney. Don’t they look like nice muppets, all these actors chosen because they resemble so closely the actual protagonists (with the exception of Rumsfeld who looks like the odd piece in the puzzle)? Whether they all act well or not becomes irrelevant, as their actions and manners are made to resemble exactly that of these politicians whom we have come to know so well because we have watched them so often on TV. How can these portrayals compete with the real thing, how can they not appear as wax puppets playing out a script when we have all already been bombarded by videos and cartoons and images of Bush and Cheney and of their every mannerisms? To make matters worse, too many fairly well-known actors have been chosen to play these politicians, creating an even further distinction between the reality of W. the film and the reality of W. as we have acquired it individually over the past 8 years of ‘living’ with him. It is no longer a question of Cheney playing Cheney but of Richard Dreyfuss playing Cheney playing Cheney. As i have commented on before regarding Bobby (06), i consider using too many well-known actors in one film a risky proposition that very few filmmakers can pull off. The effect is simply too distracting and it adds a clear level of superficiality to the experience.

Which brings me to my last point. The above could have worked, perhaps, if Stone had stuck with one direction in his film. Is W. a parody, is it a bit comic, is it serious, didactic, pedagogic, entertaining, a criticism, an apology, a fair portrayal…? W. is confusing because it seems to want to be all of this. But by the time the end credits start to roll, one has every right to feel confused and to wonder what that was all about.

One of the many wonderful aspects of Cinema is its ability to reflect a culture’s present tendencies and fears. When studied in the context of history, Cinema offers an evolutionary roadmap of the various social and economical trends of a society. Whether German cinema of the 1920s or American cinema of the 1950s or French cinema of the 1960s, they all have something extremely powerful to say about the societal changes that took place in those times in these particular countries.

If you ask an American today which themes define her society, it is likely that terrorism, war, paranoia and the increasing ubiquitousness of technology in our lives and its impact on our privacy will feature prominently. In a way, the nature of the paranoia has only slightly changed from what it was in the 60s and 70s when Frankenheimer and Pakula crafted remarkable films such as The Manchurian Candidate, 7 Days in May, Seconds, Klute, The Parallax View and All the President’s Men. But the means and methods have clearly evolved and we today live in a society that is greatly reliant on technology and where the rise of social networks and of global interconnectivity are making us vulnerable to Cyber crimes, the consequences of which have the potential to be more dangerous than what our most conservative estimates can predict. What the web knows about you today is already frightening enough to rightly justify concern for the future.

With Eagle Eye, Hollywood is showing its ability to capitalize on modern trends and on the public’s fears. Unfortunately, as is often the case, it does so in a superficial way that distorts and simplifies the issues being presented. In a film that Tony Scott would have been proud of but that would have made Stanley Kubrick vomit, an AI created by US Intelligence (a term which the film makes clear can be an oxymoron) looses its marbles and decides to take action against its own government. In doing so, it hijacks the lives of ordinary citizens and, in a series of completely preposterous and nonsensical events, assumes control of everything from airports and subway systems to cell phone networks. Only Shia LaBeouf (who seems to have a knack for playing in really bad movies) can save the world from doom. And also the ingenious idea to empty the cooling fluid that the AI depends on to survive…Even a bit of criticism at the Bush administration can’t save this film from its own mediocrity.

Despite my clear lack of knowledge regarding the inner workings of a film studio or of a production company, this is nonetheless how i envision the approval for City of Ember must have happened:

Pitch Guy: So picture this. The world has destroyed itself but a group of people survives and builds a new society underground…
Studio Exec: you mean like in Logan’s Run?
PG: Yes. Well, no, not exactly. Time passes of course, but the society is cut off from progress so it is more based on technology from the past and on old-fashioned values
SE: I see. So a bit like A Boy and His Dog?
PG: Hmm, i suppose so. But just a little bit. It is not a suburbian mentality like A Boy and His Dog. This takes place in a small, dystopic, claustrophobic and buzzing city with strange architecture and
SE: Sounds like Dark City to me…
PG: Hmfff, kind of, but it is not dark, well not really dark, it is more rusty and old and dusty and…
SE: Did you ever see The City of Lost Children? Amazing production values….
PG: Yes i did. Nice film. But you see, City of Ember is also a great adventure because two kids find out how to get out…
SE: Kids? Kids as in Jumanji, The Goonies, Narnia, The Golden Compass, Lemony Snicket, The…
PG: Yes, yes, but the angle here is slightly different because…

At this point, the Studio Exec chokes on his Latte Machiatto and gasps desperately for air. The Pitch Guy understands that this is his only chance, grabs a pillow and places it over the Studio Exec’s face who dies shortly thereafter. Before calling for help, the Pitch Guy manages to fake the Exec’s signature and places the pitch page in the Go Ahead tray.

Anyone got a better explanation?

Burning Man changed my life. I can’t really pinpoint exactly how it did that, but I know that the first time I went there in 1999, something happened and I was able to reach into a part of me which I either never knew was there or knew was there but was never able to reach. I believe this is not an uncommon outcome, and that most people who attend the yearly festival in the Nevada desert experience something that touches them profoundly.
I managed to go two more times, in 2001 and 2002, but it never really felt the same. The magic and awe were still present, but some of the novelty and beauty had started to wane.

There are many readings of this cyber post-modern hippie festival that started on the beaches of San Francisco in the late 1980’s. Some see it as a release from society, some as a purging of their inner demons, some as a Disneyland of experimentation, others as a place of artistic freedom and beauty, or as a convergence of consciousness, and finally, for some, it’s just the perfect place to get high and to get laid, while mixing it up with desert survival camping. In a word, this is an event that probably could only take place in the US.

The beauty of Burning Man lies in this diversity of possibilities. There is something there for everyone. It is like a beautiful tree covered with many different types of fruits, all easily accessible and all ripe for the picking. One only needs to choose what suits one’s taste the best.
But one of the most magical aspects of the festival, at least until about 10 years ago, and even then, the old timers were already talking about how the festival was slowly losing its identity to the ‘weekend tourists’, is how it reminds one of the pressures and constraints of our society by removing them. Unlike more traditional festivals, Burning Man allows one to contemplate an alternative society, one where people exist to be kind to each other (on the most part) and to share a common ideal and consciousness. Moreover, this is a society that does not judge and does not, directly or indirectly, tell its citizens how to behave, how to dress, or how to exist. In return, the people choose willingly to be free and to act accordingly but to never harm others in the process.

One of the most hideous obstacles to our freedom in today’s society is the absurdity of consensual crimes, those actions that do not impact anyone but the person engaging in this action, but yet are deemed criminal by society. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience to be free from the judgement of institutions and that of other people. I believe that one does not truly know what the impact is of such liberation on one’s psyche, personality and behaviour until one experiences it. And I believe that most people, if they allow such a freedom to wash over them, will surprise themselves and realize, if only a little bit, that our minds and bodies have become corrupted by the demands of our modern world. Burning Man allows for a temporary respite from the Matrix in which we live, a vacation for the senses and for the mind and a new way of looking at the world. Who doesn’t need this once in a while?

At the risk of losing whatever little credibility I have in the dark and obscure circles of amateur film critique, I am going to come out and say that Tom Cruise is an interesting actor to watch. I am not going to go as far as Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian who stated that he is a brilliant character actor and a great actor, but I think Tom Cruise deserves more credit than he usually gets. His off-screen antics have gotten in the way of people’s fair appraisal of his acting talents. And while these are still limited (I noticed years ago that one of his favourite methods for acting surprise and disbelief is to repeat his lines twice, a la Jimmy Two Times), he is nonetheless able to sometimes deliver some exciting performances as he did in Born on the 4th of July (1989), Magnolia (1999), and Lions for Lambs (2007).

In Vanilla Sky, based on the better Spanish film called Open your Eyes (1997), Cruise shows that he is not afraid to be a bit more edgy, although, in all fairness, we are still talking about a Cameron Crowe film. The first half of the film is artificial and annoying, depicting mostly an exasperating romance between a rich and vain playboy played by Cruise and a Euro artsy-fartsy girl played by the other Cruz, Penelope (whose acting charisma only seems to come out whenever she is not playing in an American film). This hollow yarn appears to have been taken over the top deliberately (I hope) to provide a starker contrast to the second half. Cameron Diaz’ scenes offer the only interesting moments until the film kicks into second gear, at which point Cruise starts to let loose and takes us into darker and edgier territory.

Attention Spoilers Ahead
The reason I enjoyed Vanilla Sky is not because I thought it would be interesting to be the only person in the world who does. Rather, it is because it deals with a subject matter rarely encountered in cinema, at least in mainstream cinema: using technology to defeat death. This is the story of a dead man who has used his wealth to be preserved cryogenically until, at some point in the future, technological progress will allow for his body to be brought back to life. Now, this would make for a pretty boring film if this man were not able to continue ‘living’ in a simulated world that feels exactly like reality. Is it not clear how exactly the technology to enable a dying person to upload his mind into a perfect virtual reality has come to exist so quickly before the technology to keep one alive after a particular car crash…but who cares, it still allows for some interesting speculations, provided that one enjoys thinking about such things.

Cryonics may still seem like the stuff of Science Fiction to most people, but several companies today offer such services, although without the mind uploading bit which I suspect will take a while longer to develop, and their mastery of the process is improving every year. For around 120,000 dollars one can get his body preserved with the hope that some future technology, probably nano-based, will be able to bring that body back to life, along, somehow and hopefully, with the consciousness that used to accompany it. This may not be as crazy as it sounds. Rapid and mind-boggling advances related to what are known as the GRIN technologies (Genetics, Robotic & Cognitive, Information Systems and Nanotechnology) are reshaping the health and socio-political landscape of our society on an exponential scale. What we have achieved technologically in the past is only a fraction of what we will achieve in the future. According to Ray Kurzweil, who believes in the coming of The Singularity, the exponential increase in technological advancement that our world is witnessing means that we will not experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century. Instead, we will experience ‘20,000 years of progress, or about 100 thousand times greater than what was achieved in the 20th century’ (Kurzweil. The Singularity is Near. 2005). At this rate, who knows what will be possible in 500 or 2000 years. Therefore, no one can say for sure today that reviving the frozen dead will not be possible in the future. Personally, I see no reason to doubt that it will happen. My concerns are more based around the difficulty of bringing back a person’s consciousness. What would be the point of coming back if one has no recollection of the past and of one’s self? Traditional reincarnation can already provide for this, so Cryonics, or a field working in association with it, need to go beyond and allow one to preserve his or her self throughout the ages. But memory implants, mind uploading or a yet-to-be-thought-about technology should overcome this obstacle, leaving only ethicists, sociologists and politicians to debate the pros and cons and the impact of such a massive revolution on society as a whole.

Vanilla Sky is not a great film. It is probably not even a good film. But I found it very entertaining nonetheless and the possibilities associated with keeping one’s mind and thoughts alive in a simulation of the real world until that person’s body can be brought back to life, left me thinking and wondering.

Alfonso Cuaron’s remarkable Children of Men (based on the novel by P.D. James) is an extremely bleak film about a dystopian and sterile near-future where no children have been born in 18 years. This results in extreme forms of lawlessness, inequality, poverty, violence, and illegal immigration and in an overall breakdown of society as a whole. But these problems are the very same ones that currently plague our society as the world tries to understand how to handle the continued rise of capitalism in light of the increasing economical and social instability that seems to accompany it.

A short documentary on the changes that are impacting our society, The Possibility of Hope provides interviews with some of the leading thinkers on globalization, human migration and social and environmental justice (John Gray, Naomi Klein, James Lovelock, Slavoj Zizek…), intercut with footage from various existing newsreels and documentaries and with footage from Children of Men. While offering an interesting montage of visuals on the themes mentioned earlier, The Possibility of Hope has little new information to present, and does not provide any ground-shattering insights on the costs of globalization. It also feels that it was done very quickly, almost as an after-thought.

Nevertheless, it is good to see a prominent (and talented) director who operates within the Hollywood establishment caring for such issues and trying to do something about it.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a pathetic film. As I much as I love Hollywood for its mystic, history, glamour and for the fact that it continues year after year to enable the creation of marvellous films, I also sometimes hate it for being able to not only green light such trash but also for purposefully creating in the first place such a non-sensical and emotionally deficient waste, tailored to please the common denominator, thus totally disregarding in the process good acting, scene plausibility, intelligent dialogues and well developed characters. I won’t even get into the dishonour a bad remake does to the original film upon which it is based, in this case, one of the best Science Fiction films of all time.

Stiff Keanu Reeves as the stoic Alien already tells us that we are embarking on a risky adventure. Some might see a certain logic in casting someone who does not know how to act (although once in a while Reeves is capable of raising his acting to the level of ‘enjoyable enough’ as in The Gift (2000)) for the part of an alien who supposedly does not initially understand emotions, but I would rather classify this as bad and naïve casting. Or more likely as marketing-based casting. After all, Brad Pitt, who has since shown that he is capable of good acting in such films as Kalifornia (1993), Fight Club (1999), Snatch (2000), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Assassination of Jesse James (2007) and Burn after Reading (2008), proved through his horrid performances in Interview with a Vampire (1994) and Meet Joe Black (1998) that playing blasé and stoic characters (as well as an Austrian character in Seven Years in Tibet (1997)) is not the stuff of average actors.

With the addition of the money-driven and inappropriate casting of Keanu Reeves, The Day the Earth Stood Still also boasts an impressive list of clichés, issued straight out the bad blockbuster manual: the racially mixed infuriating child who will do the most maddening things at the most inopportune moments but who, as even the average viewer will have guessed from the start, will finally overcome his emotional issues and become only slightly less annoying; the bright and single mother who has problems raising that irritating little…mentioned earlier and who seems to know all the right people since she will become the main point of contact for the alien (someone in this whole disaster of a production still had enough good sense to ensure that she does not end up falling in love with the alien); the know-it-all and closed minded politicians who will of course make all the wrong decisions; the beyond repair and impotent military establishment which, as usual, will find bigger and bigger rockets to throw at the problem; the good, tolerant and just scientists who, if it weren’t for the politicians and military, could make the world a much better place; and last but not least, the alien who is so intelligent that, after some small, uninteresting and morally infantile chats with a couple of people, discovers the meaning of emotions and realizes that humans are not such a bad lot after all. My son is 19 months old and has an EQ far superior to the level of this film.

In comparison to the relevance of this film to contemporary environmental issues (its superficial message that we are killing our earth and its ending that seems to lightly suggest – and this was not made very clear - that stopping all technology is the answer to these issues, are an affront to the problems we truly face), Emmerich’s The Day after Tomorrow (2004) seems like a scientific treatise, which of course does not say a whole lot about Hollywood’s ability to take these issues seriously.

I am a lover of great cinema but also of great cinematic trash. This, on the other hand, is bad trash and as such deserves every single bit of negative press it has so far received. In the meantime, I shall pull out the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still from my DVD shelf for a little trip down nostalgia lane…

An incredibly powerful documentary that explores the collapse of Enron.

As with most documentaries that deal with socially relevant issues, the greater theme of human nature and what makes people do the things they do is explored indirectly, through the depiction of a small group of people who thought they could exploit the system to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

Aside from being a very well made documentary, Enron is an intense experience that can only leave one shaking his head in disbelief at the greed, selfishness and lack of empathy that some people are capable of.

It also shows us once again that some corporations can easily get out of control, monstrous money making machines without a heart or a soul, only instructions for making a profit at any cost and without regard for the well-being of society as a whole. A priority for the 21st Century should be to work with the business establisment to ensure that a more socially responsible form of capitalism emerges.

Alan Weisman is a poet. The World Without Us is no mere environmental investigation into the destructive power human beings hold over nature and their environment. It is a provocative thought experiment about the fate of our planet if humans completely disappeared tomorrow and it is an ode to the strength and resilience with which nature could fight back, if given that chance.

For as long as we have been on this earth, we Humans have, through our actions, tilted the balance of power in our favour. Influencing the environment around us, altering it to suit our needs is something that we have been doing for millions of years. But it is only recently, with the advent of industrialization and with the ever-increasing growth of technology experienced in the last few decades, that we have begun to fully understand the implications of what it really means to exercise such a control over Nature.

Weisman, using words and prose more reminiscent of classic literature than of journalism, picks his examples carefully and makes his points adroitly, eloquently and beautifully. He never seems to judge, yet leaves us no choice but to feel the urge to do so, and to punish human stupidity for the aberrations that it is capable of. Example after example, we are taken on a journey across the consequences of Man’s never ending thirst for progress at the expense of the world around him.

What would become of our cities? Would they slowly become the kingdom of animals, reserves for new or for endangered species that we were once in the process of exterminating? And what would happen for example to the hundreds of thousands of gallons of water under New York city which every day are barely being held back by some giant machinery that threatens to fail at any moment?

Even if we stopped producing CO2 tomorrow, would it ever disappear from our air, soils and oceans? And if it did, how long would it take and what changes would continue to occur during this period? And what about trapping this CO2 underground, a proposal being made these days to reduce global warming? What would happen to it after thousands of years?

If humans disappeared suddenly, would human evolution start again in a similar fashion as before or have we made too many changes to our ecosystem to sustain such a creation again? Would animals cross back the continents and return to their ancestral habitats (and behaviours), the ones they had occupied before man intervened and started regulating their environment?

What about the myriad of chemicals and materials – PCB, PBD, DDT, EDC, among many others - used in even our smallest and more innocuous creations? Would they all slowly be absorbed back into nature, eaten away by plastic-hungry bacteria, or would they linger forever, a testament to Man’s folly and ingenuity? What fate would await the hundreds of millions of tons of various plastics that are already littering our lands, beaches and oceans, approximately three million of which already form the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a Texas-size area in the Pacific Ocean that is totally covered with plastic bags, Q-tips, sandwich wraps and other unfortunately too-disposable human inventions?

These are some of the questions that Weisman addresses in this wonderful book, a must read for anyone interested in the health of our planet. As with all of my posts on this subject, I will add my disclaimer that I do not interpret this as a call to renounce technology. The message to save and heal our planet is clear and it must be heard. But humans will not disappear tomorrow and they will not renounce, nor should they, their quest for progress. Awareness and action must be taken to ensure that this progress is fully democratic, equitable, fair, clean and responsible. This, I believe, is the right path, rather than to hope for progress to stop or to wish for a return to the past.

Another film to be filed under the ever-popular Snow & Disturbing category. But in the case of Let the Right One In, the constant dreary and eerie atmosphere is not just a stylistic exercise applied to an already troubling story, but rather a simple reflection of certain aspects of everyday life in Scandinavia or in any other northern region of our planet. An entire winter in such as country as Sweden is not for everyone’s taste: only a few hours of sunlight per day, constant cold temperatures and few possibilities for social activities outside…unless you are a cold-blooded vampire, in which case it might in fact be just the perfect place…

But Let the Right One In is not just another vampire film. This is a very serious vampire film, not necessarily interested in scaring us as much as in showing the realities of what it might entail to be a vampire, especially if you are a 12 year old.  The film is a coming of age story with a provocative insight into the fragility of 12 year olds, an age at which various influences will decide the course of the years to come.

Minimalist, slow, disturbing, nicely shot. well acted, Let the Right One In is a stimulating and enjoyable film that does the vampire genre much justice.

Watching a film by Werner Herzog is never an easy task. It is the antithesis of the traditional Hollywood entertainment-driven movie. Herzog’s films make you work and think, they force you to participate by investing your strength, your intelligence and your entire emotional being into the experience. Through his subject matters, his startling use of imagery and his haunting scores, Herzog demands constant involvement from his audience. An unfortunately too-rare form of cinema, his films continue to raise pertinent questions about some of the most interesting issues today.

Lessons of Darkness captures the devastation of Kuwait in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. More specifically, it is a portray of a wounded earth that is left shedding tears of fire due to the greed and savagery of Man. Not content to decimate and to ruin, Man also turns his bestiality towards other men and engages in horrible crimes which for any reasonably sane person are impossible to comprehend.

As i watched Herzog turning ugliness into beauty with his camera, music and editing, i could not help but weep at a world gone terribly wrong. 14 years before Edward Burtynsky made his Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Herzog used stunning visualization to show only one of the myriad of ways in which Man is impacting this Earth and is redefining the landscape and the entire ecosystem to his liking. Unfortunately for all of us, this redesigning comes without a plan and is driven by selfish motives rather than by a desire to develop a system where Man’s constant desire for progress can co-exist harmoniously with Nature.

While a Technogaianist myself, and thus a believer in technology as a means to achieve this harmony, Lessons of Darkness made me long at times for some of the scenarios that Alan Weisman so eloquently depicted in his seminal book The World Without Us (2007). It is comforting to know that Nature would eventually reclaim what is rightfully hers. But wishing it all away won’t make it go away and we must move forward and attempt to reconcile our innate propensity for greed and egoism with the need for ecological health and stability.

Spin, which won the Hugo Award in 2005, is a novel that often feels more like speculative fiction than science fiction. Like much of the work of Kim Stanley Robinson and of Margaret Atwood, Spin takes place in a hypothetical present, and uses current themes and concepts and a solid narrative with strongly developed characters as a backbone for more fictional and apocalyptic speculations.

These speculations revolve around the unexplained appearance of a membrane around the Earth, apparently placed by some extra terrestrial intelligence whose motives will only be revealed at the end of the book. Outside of the membrane, the universe expands at a rapidly accelerating rate, implying that without the membrane, the Earth will quickly fry under the rays of our exploding sun. However, the origin of the membrane remains unclear to the people of the Earth who are condemned to live without understanding why, how, and especially how long. How long until the membrane disappears, signifying the end of the human race?

It is within this existential end-of-the-world context that Wilson develops the story of three friends whose lives will evolve differently under the constant presence and threat of the membrane. Each will use the inescapable uncertainty and ambiguity that now permeates life on earth to make different decisions and to interact with the world according to their own motivations. Yet, their path will cross often, and the truth behind the appearance of the membrane will bring them together in their search for answers.

Despite the fact that Wilson brings additional themes to his story such as conscious self-replicating nanomachines, humanity’s depletion of Earth’s natural resources, the terraforming and colonization of Mars (the depiction of which is in my mind one of Spin’s few weak points), and the connection of various parts of the universe through wormhole-like gates, it is the tale of the three friends confronting the realities of a doomed world that dominates Spin. It is not often that a Science Fiction writer tries and succeeds in bringing such depth to his or her characters. Wilson has done just that with Spin and has done it on a canvas of interesting apocalyptic conjectures and ideas that are reminiscent of Greg Bear’s The Forge of God.

Trouble is a documentary about the events surrounding the G8 Summit that took place in Heiligendamm Germany in June 2007. It received the 2008 Cinema for Peace Award for Best Documentary and was entered into competition at the Milano, Zurich and Braunschweig Film Festivals.
I had the chance of being involved in the making of this film through the organization Mindpirates for which i have worked on and off for the past 3 years. I have a screenplay credit, which is quite flattering considering that the film was made by a large group of volunteer activists. Nonetheless, Trouble provides an interesting look at the various sides that come together during such political events: different opinions, motivations and sometimes, very different means of expressing these views.

It should soon be available online, in the copyleft spirit that underlines all of our work at Mindpirates.

‘The 2007 G8 Summit in Heiligendamm/Germany - A summer fairytale, a blooming corn poppy, a brilliant blue sky. An unbelievably large and menacing fence cuts through the picturesque landscape. Police caravans, journalists, and activists face off for days in these fields like medieval armies. Elsewhere, artists despair over a public tht confuses pop with protest. Bob Geldof, Bono and Herbert Groenemeyer preachon the “Your Voice Against Poverty” stage, while Rostock locals would obviously rather be eating a bratwurst. Left-wing anarchists try to set everything on fire, though they only manage to get to one car and a few trash bins. Interviews with the likes of Muhammad Yunus (winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize), filmmaker Wim Wenders, Susan George (former vice-president of ATTAC France), U2 frontman Bono, and Campino (singer of Die Toten Hosen) are mixed in with questions and commentary from police, activists, and locals. A regional documentary pop film that critically and playfully explores the egoism of a confused protest generation.’

http://trouble-der-film.de/

http://mindpirates.net/

http://www.cinemaforpeace.com/

http://www.milanofilmfestival.it/2008/catalogo/colpe/trouble.php

The name M. Night Shyamalan is starting to sound very pretentious.

Although the name is a bit difficult to remember, people usually still manage to mumble something about M and Night followed by some uncomprehensible nonsense. But this confusion adds to its mysterious and intriguing aspect, as it did for the people of Eastwick who tried hard to remember the name Daryl Van Horne. The mystic increased as the director gained international fame with The 6th Sense (1999) and then with Unbreakable (2000). After these two films, M. Night Shyamalan could fully live up this his name by having it displayed in large print above the title of his films, with studio marketing people proudly displaying ‘a film by M. Night Shyamalan’ or ‘M. Night Shyamalan presents’ as if the director, after only less than a handful of films to his credit, could be compared to a Hitchcock or to other Hollywood directing legends.

Unfortunately, Shyamalan has failed to live up to the mystic of his name and to the hype of his reputation. While The 6th Sense was a good, not great, movie, Unbreakable started to show a few weaknesses while Signs (2002) clearly demonstrated that the director was either going through a really bad spell, or that, and this is more likely, the 6th Sense had been a fluke. His films since have proved the later and his most recent, The Happening, is just one more nail in the coffin of this so called new master of horror.

The Happening, about an unknown and never explained suicide-inducing toxin spreading across the North East of the US, has some good moments, especially in the first 30 minutes, and offers an interesting take on man vs nature. However, Shyamalan can not keep it up and proceeds to ruin the next 55 minutes by instering silly comic scenes whose purpose is a total mystery to me and by using so many cliches that one can not help but to feel that the director is trying very hard to scare us. The desire to scare overcomes to need to remain realistic with the result being that the viewer questions rather than feels. In addition, Mark Wahlberg, whom we know is capable of pulling some interesting performances as he did in The Departed (2006), feels totally lost and confused as a romantic scientist and the chemistry between him and Zooey Deschanel is equivalent to mixing bleach with vinegar.

This family adventure is apparently much better in 3D. Supposedly, putting on a pair of the funny looking glasses has the effect of directly placing the bad acting and silly script in the background, emphasizing instead the action and visual effects. Now, I am all in favour of the democratization of 3D and of its increased use in modern cinema. However, let us hope that it does not lead to a overabundance of bad movies. After all, there are already too many of them.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is loosely based on Jules Verne’s novel of the same name, and feels more like a bad version of The Goonies (1985) than a serious attempt at honouring the memory of the father of Science Fiction. As I winced during several of the poorly written scenes, I could not help but to be reminded of the cheapness of At the Earth’s Core (1976) and of First Men in the Moon (1964), which is a real shame since Verne’s story, in the right hands, could be turned into a fascinating and highly entertaining film.

Still, there are a couple of good moments in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Brendan Frasier does his thing, and there is enough escapist entertainment to convince one to watch it until the end.

For reasons unknown to me, as I tried to recall the various Batman films and their progression over the past 19 years (excluding the 1943 and 1966 versions), I began to draw a very loose association with the James Bond franchise. Not in terms of content naturally, but rather in terms of tone and mood. First came the darkness of Sean Connery, then the silliness of Roger Moore, followed by the suaveness of Pierce Brosnan (I am conveniently omitting two more James Bond, I know) and today we once again have rawness and darkness with Daniel Craig. It feels to me that the Batman franchise has followed a similar path, with Christopher Nolan’s two Batman films picking up where Tim Burton’s left off, and possibly even going further. In between, we had the very forgettable and silly Batman films of Joel Schumacher, which I am sure Clooney and Kilmer are still to this day trying very hard to erase from their memory and filmography.

At my own peril, I will take the comparison between the latest James Bond film (I have not seen Quantum of Solace (2008) so I am referring to Casino Royale (2006)) and The Dark Knight further.
They both try to demark themselves from the legacy of the franchise and try to create something fresh. They both attempt very hard to emphasize human conflict and to marry emotional depth with raw and effective action. And last but not least, they are both extremely minimalist in their approach. While both running at 2 ½ hours, there is little fat in either of them, with the accent being on relentless pace and action. Only the bare minimum of information is given as scenes are trimmed for speed and progression.

Christopher Nolan’s relatively brief career has been remarkable so far. The brilliant and already cult classic Memento (2000), the moody and visually striking remake of Insomnia (2002), the decent but provoking The Prestige (2006) and the two Batman films, all are clearly the marks of someone with a high level of control, skill and understanding of the cinematic medium and of its techniques. Darkness also seems an underlying thread of these films, in visual terms and through their subject matters.

With The Dark Knight, Nolan delivers a very accomplished film that epitomizes the high quality entertainment film. Most aspects of the movie are solid and the result is a non-stop thrill ride. Unfortunately, this focus on pace means that occasionally, the scenes flow from one to the next in a somewhat abrupt and not always logical way, leaving the viewer with some unanswered questions. Like a comic book that has a limited capacity for background information, The Dark Knight jumps from major scene to major scene, leaving out many things in between.
As a closing note, it is worth mentioning the performance of Heath Ledger. His death prompted a wave of calls for an Oscar nomination, with people stating that his performance had been no less than magnificent. I initially took this with high dose of skepticism. However, having now watched the movie, I can say that Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker is indeed spectacular and when considered together with his performance in Brokeback Mountain (2005), hints at what could have become a very very fine actor.