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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.