Well. I am a bit disappointed in the lack of response to the serendipity post. I guess my readership is down and my advertising is nil, so that is to be expected. Anyway, onwards and upwards, me thinks.
Today, I would like to steal a bit of my fellow eLarceny blogger, Dr. Bone. I recently had the opportunity to see "Children of Men." Of all the visions of the future movie audiences have been treated to over the past few years, the world of Children of Men may be the most frightening and effective.
Directed by Alfonso Cauron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), and set in 2027 London, the film takes place at a time when the planet is in the grip of an infertility crisis. Societies worldwide have collapsed after no children have been born in almost two decades, and the survivors of the ensuing wars, atrocities and civil breakdowns flee to Britain, which still functions under a harsh regime.
Clive Owen (Closer, Sin City) plays Theo, a former activist now working as a paper-pusher in the Ministry of Energy and downing a large amount of Scotch to get him through the day. Amen.
He walks to work past terrorist bombings, cages filled with illegal immigrants rounded up by riot police, and piles of garbage littering the London streets. When an old flame and revolutionary, played by Julianne Moore, appears with a request that he use his governmental connections to help her move a refugee girl across the country, he agrees on the basis he be compensated. When he discovers that the girl (Kee, played by Claire-Hope Ashitey) is pregnant, his mission takes on new dimensions.
As a thriller, the film is blisteringly intense and incredibly effective. From the bomb blast that caps off the opening credits to the frenzied urban warfare sequences that dominate the film's closing thirty minutes, the film does lag in spots, but its commentary on current events is poignant and worthwhile.
How about some more breakbeats? Here's "Bra" by Cymande and "Get Out My Life Woman" by Lee Dorsey.
Get Out Of My Life Woman
I recently saw this film as well. It is pretty intense, but I was left a bit unfullfilled story-wise. The apocalyptic view of the future was great, and I like all the parallels drawn to our current society and where we may be heading. Maybe I missed something, but Chick had a baby...but who will the baby grow up and have sex with? Will the baby be able to spawn? Are there other women that will be able to get pregnant? Does it matter in a world that is killing itself? Why did they have to kill Michael Cain's character (or John Lennon if he was still alive as I liked to believe).
I have been reading a book named, "Story; Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting." So far it is an excellent book that is making me appreciate films much more than I aleady do. I would like to share this excerpt from the book with you. It speaks about "Antiplot" as opposed to "Archplot" (a.k.a. classical storytelling).
"The desire to turn the Archplot on its head began early in this century. Writers such as August Strindberg, Ernst Toller, Virginia Woolf, ames Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and William S. Burroughs felt the need to sever the links between the artist and external reality. and with it, between the artist and the greater part of the audience. Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Stream of Consciousness, Theatre of the Absurd, the antinovel, and cinematic antistructure may differ in technique but share the same result: a retreat inside the artist's private world to which the audience is admitted at the artist's discretion. These are worlds in which not only are events atemporal, coincidental, fragmented, and chaotic, but characters do not operate within a recognizable psychology. Neither sane nor insane, they are either deliberately inconsistent or overtly symbolic.
Films in this mode are not metaphors for 'life as lived,' but for 'life as thought about.' They reflect not reality, but the solipsism of the filmmaker, and in doing so, stretch the limits of story design toward didactic and ideational structures. However, the inconsistent reality of an Antiplot such as WEEKEND has a unity of sorts. When done well, it's felt to be an expression of the subjective state of mind of the filmmaker. This sense of single perception, no matter how incoherrent, holds the work together for audiences willing to venture into its distortions." - Robert McKee
Phew. So, I belive Children of Men fits this structure and that if it is indeed antiplot as opposed to archplot there is an ending to the movie but it's very design is to leave the viewer with multiple questions letting them decide the course of the character's lives after the film. In that case the film was very successful as a story. But even with all that being said, I think it was the cinematography that took the cake! Well I'm verclempt. Talk amonst yourselves.
Me oh my, K-Diddy. First, let me congratulate you on the longest comment ever left in the history of c101. Second, thank you for expounding on all things movie. I, for one, am smarter because of it. Look out world.
After something semi-intellegent I must say something to remove all doubt:
In regaurds to your thanks, and in the immortal words of Alf, "No Problem!" I just felt like generating critical conversation.
I think I want to get a tattoo of the Thundercats insignia. How badass would that be?
[4] Where would you have the tatoo. Would it be hidden? I think that would be badass. Let's say you put it on your shoulder. Would the thundercats come running everytime you took your shirt off & the insignia was displayed? Or would the misses just yell out "Thundercats, thundercats, thundercats hooooooo!" everytime you took your shirt off?
I know I would.
I would rather have a Snorks tattoo. Or better yet, a Popple.