white snails

Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones is in one word beautiful. Beautiful like a Salvador Dali painting: surreal and fantastical. The film taps into our childhood visions and ideas of heaven and plays out every families worst nightmare scenario, the murder of a young child. 

Susie Salmon tells the story of her brief life and subsequent murder from the beyond. Susie can only look on from the "in-between" at her family and her murderer.  These "in-between" moments take your breath away and even though it borders on the super-sappy, you cannot help but smile. 

These moments are powerful, yet sadly they are not so strong that they can carry the entire film. When the film swings back away from this "in-between" back into reality, this is where the film begins to suffer. I found myself kind of bored. While there were some moments where this film seemed to shine, particularly Mark Wahlberg's performance as a grieving father, the film loses its momentum. The pacing seemed off and towards the end of the film I was getting a bit tired of the constant narration that continues throughout the film. Jackson seems to have some difficulty making up his mind about how the family should grieve. At times the focus is on her father, or her mother, or her sister. I have a feeling that this issue is something that is better dealt with in the novel.  Jackson, being unable to properly stitch together these different issues seems to direct all of his attention into the "in-between", and as a result the rest of the film is pushed to the side. The film thrives in these surreal and heavenly "in-between" moments and so it is worth suffering through the drab reality that follows for the majority of the film.

I would still urge you to go out and see this film though. Enjoy. 

When the trailer for Pandorum was first released, I was not impressed or thrilled. It seemed to be another run of the mill science fiction thriller set in space, one that leaned more towards horror than science fiction. I was mistaken. 

How would I best describe this film to those who have not seen it before? Imagine if Ridley Scott's Alien film had sex with the horror/science fiction film CUBE, this film would be its progeny. 

The premise for the film is that we as a collective society have slowly depleted the earth's natural resources and we're not sure what the future will bring us. Seem familiar, well the premise is fairly generic. We have put all of our hopes and dreams into a floating 'ark' in which 16,000 individuals have been placed, along with all the expected necessities: food, water, samples of dna, animals, etc. 

Now imagine waking up from extended deep sleep and finding the ship only half working and other crewman dead. The film picks up at this point. 

The idea and concept seem fairly generic, but I found myself at the edge of my seat for the entire film. It is difficult to describe but following the crew as they attempt to figure out what has happened to them during extended sleep is intriguing and I found myself jumping at various points in the film. The film's strongest points rest in the set design and art. The design of the entire film and the way it is presented is beautiful in a harsh and ugly type of way. You find yourself being impressed by how vulgar and cold this ship is. 

So if you can find a copy anyplace, rent it, rip it, whatever. It is definitely worth viewing. 

The first big alien feature that I ever viewed was Star Wars, full of fun-loving Chewbacca and the deplorable ewoks. This was followed up shortly by Ridley Scott's Alien, and then James Cameron's sequel Aliens. I eventually viewed Spielberg's super-saturated gooeyness that is E.T. The Extraterrestrial shortly followed by another Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So at this point in my filmic experience of aliens I was exposed to a mixed bag of aliens that either sought the destruction of various worlds through some form of violence or aliens that simply wanted to partake of a more extra-global cultural exchange. Apparently this interaction involves multi-coloured lights and the touching of fingers. 

I enjoy science fiction for a number of reasons. First, it forces us to confront ideas and technologies (some which at the time may not exist or are just on the cusp of realization) and in this process we are forced to think of the ramifications and impact of these technologies. I think it's safe to say that humanity has a long history of accepting and adapting to technologies that seem wonderful at first but soon become burdensome and problematic [i.e. atomic bomb, etc.]. 

District 9 is very obvious in what it wants to address, displacement and xenophobia are at the heart of this film. And using "bug-like" aliens as substitutes to address this problem is a brilliant comparison. There has been a lot of buzz around this film. Lisa, our head-house keeper here at the hotel has commented that she finds the film trying too hard and that its obviously a "festival" film. She also remarked to me that she finds "the whole bug thing to have been overdone and tiresome." Ok, that's a fair critique of alien films in general, they do tend to visualize aliens in two primary forms: bug-like/cockroach creatures with lots of antenna, feelers, arms, legs, etc & the thin smooth, beautiful, angel-like forms who are often seen as delicate and fragile.

The premise of District 9 is as follows:

 In 1982, an alien ship stops directly above Johannesburg, South Africa. Reports suggest that the ship became stranded after a command module separated from the ship and dropped to Earth, nowhere to be found. After cutting their way inside, the exploratory team discovers a large group of malnourished and leaderless arthropod-like aliens. The creatures, derogatorily referred to as prawns, are taken from the ship and housed in a government camp inside Johannesburg called District 9, which eventually turns into a slum. In the first decade of the 21st century, Multinational United (MNU), a private military contractor, is placed in charge of policing and relocating the 1.8 million aliens to District 10, a new camp 240 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg. - District 9 Wikipedia

What I find fascinating about this film is how sympathetic it is towards the treatment of the "prawns". This is something that I have noticed recently in the cultural conceptions of the "foreign" or the "other". BSG [ Battle Star Galactica ] is notorious for this sympathy. Towards the mid-point of the series, viewers commonly agree that the Cylons [mechanical sentient constructs] are not that different from the humans that helped build them. But I digress. 

I enjoyed this film quite a bit and if you are looking for a thinking-person's science fiction film, then this is the film for you. Placing the film in South Africa is almost so obvious that its painful but I believe its necessary. The film asks you as a viewer to consider the way we have displaced and treated our own brothers and sisters in similar situations across the globe. The bureaucracy, politics, and governing of this institution of displacement is what this film is about and the fact that it happens to contain alien creatures is not the focus. In fact the more I reflect on this film, the more I realize that science fiction takes a back seat to politics in this film. The local economy, the government, the policies and laws that are put in place, these are all issues that draw focus on the film, the fact that the impact just happens to reflect on aliens is happen-stance, because plug in any race, or ethnicities and the displacement, inequality, and inequity works just as well. 

Find it on-line, go to the theatre, or wait a few months, either way you should watch this film. 

I just finished viewing Pixar's UP. Viewing Pixar's UP is akin to revisiting one's childhood and taking a trip around a merry-go-round. You anticipate the ride with utter glee and while on the ride you're enraptured, only to feel a mild form of disappointment at the end, and this only as a result of the ride passing by too quickly. 

 The film has a number of delightful characters, a rare bird named Kevin and a host of talking dogs (you have to watch to understand why and how they talk). The film should be seen if only for the first twelve minutes. There is a montage of Carl, the protagonist of the film, and his entire life is shown aided by one of the most wonderful symphonic scores I've ever listened to. If you're not teary eyed at the end of this montage, well, you lack a soul because it is staggeringly heartwarming. The rest of the film continues to improve and I eagerly anticipate the next Pixar delight that awaits us. If you're needing a pick me up, this is the perfect film.