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Film:Children of Men

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:18:21 GMT

Title: Children of Men
Year: 2006
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Plot: Y Tu Mamá También and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban director Alfonso Cuarón returns to the helm to tell this futuristic tale in which society is without hope since humankind lost its ability to procreate. The year is 2027, and women can no longer give birth. The youngest inhabitant of the planet has just died at the age of 18, and all hope for humanity has been lost. As civilization descends into chaos, a dying world finds one last chance for survival in the form of a woman who has become inexplicably pregnant. Now, as warring nationalistic sects clash and British leaders try to maintain their totalitarian stronghold on the country, a disillusioned bureaucrat (Clive Owen) is brought back into the fold of activism by his guerrilla ex-wife (Julianne Moore). Reluctantly, he takes on the daunting task of escorting Kee (Claire Hope-Asitkey), the refugee who represents humankind's last hope for survival, out of harm's way and into the care of a mysterious organization known as The Human Project. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam, and Michael Caine co-star in this adaptation of author P.D. James' gripping 1992 novel. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Paul and Kevin (porcupine) discuss Children of Men (from FilmCouch #2)

Times Tagged: 230
Number of Lists: 153
Number of blog posts: 63
Number of discussion threads: 13
SpoutRating: 4

Spout Post: Re:Weekly Theme for June 22: The Plague

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:50:26 GMT

Post By: mercurial
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 6/24/2009 7:50:26 PM
Body: Well Riss took my favorite. I can't really think of too many at the moment. 12 Monkeys was a plague right? Interview with the Vampire had a plague (smallpox or something a rather) that led to Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise making Kirsten Dunst into a vampire. The only thing I remember about Outbreak was the cute little monkey that was the cause of the disease. Safe was kinda sorta about a plague in a sense. Children of Men had its plague of sterility. I was surprised by how much I actually liked Blindness considering it wasn't really anything shocking or new for the genre.

Spout Post: Wall-E vs The Academy: Seven Snubbed Movies About The Future

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:00:47 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/7/2009 5:00:47 PM
Body: It’s only a couple of short weeks before the 2008 Oscar nominees are announced, and the internet is abuzz with prognostications. One hotly debated topic is whether or not Wall-E can pull off a Best Picture nomination, or even a win. It would be the second animated film to be nominated in the category, after Beauty and the Beast, which got the honor before the Animated Feature prize existed. Will the stodgy old Academy seat Wall-E at the kid’s table, giving it an easy win in the animation category, or will it be allowed to play with the big boys? A best pic nomination for Wall-E would be a rare honor for animation in general, but it would also be a long over due rarity for another reason: Wall-E would only be the second best pic nominated film in the history of the Oscars to be set in the future. The only one to date is A Clockwork Orange. When you consider how many nominees are period pieces (I didn’t care to count), this represents a massive bias on the part of the Academy. It’s clear that they love the past, but they hate the future. What would the history of the Academy Awards look like if the Hollywood elite wasn’t terrified of speculative fiction? Below, seven movies about the future that should have been nominated for Best Picture: 1. Metropolis The first Academy Awards, held in 1929, gave honors to films produced in both 1928 and 1927, so this should have at least been nominated. Of course the nomination process was rather primitive back then, and American audiences probably wouldn’t have been familiar with German films such as this, but for the purpose of revisionist history, we’ll say it got snubbed. There’s something very 20th century about Art Deco skyscrapers and class conflict, but Metropolis‘ depiction of 2026 still feels relevant today. The film laid the ground work for countless sci-fi tropes, including sexy female androids (see #5). 2. On The Beach This 1959 post-apocalyptic drama stars Gregory Peck as the captain of a US submarine stationed in Melbourne. Set in the near future of 1964, nuclear war has wiped out the rest of the planet, and it’s only a matter of months before the wind brings the deadly radioactive fallout to Australia. The film is a beautiful meditation on the inevitability of death, featuring a solid performance by Ava Gardner, and the most melancholy work by Fred Astaire I’ve ever seen (he does not sing or dance). On the Beach was nominated for both Best Score and Best Editing Oscars, and director Stanley Kramer won a BAFTA. 3. 2001: A Space Odyssey Kubrick’s masterpiece wasn’t completely snubbed; it received four Oscar nominations, with a win for Visual Effects. But the fact that it didn’t get a Best Picture nomination is criminal. The film is consistently listed on top 100 movie lists, and breaks the top ten on plenty of them. It’s clear that something went very wrong that year. Perhaps the snub can be blamed on the fact that the film was so far ahead of its time, that many people just didn’t get it. Pauline Kael said it was “a monumentally unimaginative movie.” 4. Solaris This 1972 Russian science fiction film is just as cerebral as 2001, and perhaps an even deeper plumb of the human psyche. The Palme d’Or nominated film, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, follows the story of psychologist Chris Kelvin as he ventures to a distant space station, orbiting the water-covered planet Solaris. The station has fallen into disarray, and Kelvin soon figures out why. An apparition of his dead wife appears, apparently created by Solaris using Kelvin’s brain waves. The film is slow and introspective, and is one of those rare gems of science fiction that transcends the trappings of the genre. It should have at least been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film; instead, it wasn’t nominated for anything. 5. Blade Runner For some, saying that Blade Runner was one of the five best films of 1982 is stating the obvious. Perhaps the blending of sci-fi and noir seemed at the time to be nothing more than a cheap genre gimmick. But the enduring quality of Blade Runner makes it clear that it deserved more than the two nominations in received for Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects. The snub of Blade Runner is perhaps the best way to prove the Academy’s bias toward the past, when you consider that Ridley Scott’s 2000 film, Gladiator was not only nominated for Best Picture, but it won! I repeat, Gladiator won Best Picture, while Blade Runner was not even nominated. Which did you think was the better movie? 6. Brazil Terry Gilliam’s dystopian black comedy might have had a shot at few Academy awards if Gilliam hadn’t burned every bridge in Hollywood as he made it. The film operates in the dystopian mold cast by 1984, with a healthy dose of dark humor and fantasy. It’s one of the most egregious examples of a studio re-cutting a film and essentially destroying it in the process. Fortunately, Gilliam’s cut is readily available on DVD now, but the director’s trustworthiness in Hollywood is still highly suspect. Gilliam is one of those filmmakers who, no matter how good a movie he makes, will never be welcomed into the inner sanctum. Still, Brazil deserved a Best Picture nomination. 7. Children of Men When the 2006 Best Picture nominees were announced, you may have heard a faint stream of cursing on the wind. That was me. I know that people tend to win Oscars when they’re “due,” which easily explains why The Departed took home the top prize, but the fact that Children of Men wasn’t even nominated is just silly. It was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing, which is the Academy’s way of saying, “Wow, this movie is incredible, but it’s about the future, so let’s only honor that one really long take near the end.” Bullshit. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Spout Post: Alternative Nativity: Five Movies about Life, Death, and Babies

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:00:40 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 12/23/2008 4:00:40 PM
Body: Christmas is a time of peace and harmony, where we remember baby Jesus, born into a manger. There were shepherds, wise men, sweet hay and swaddling clothes. But we often forget how dark the Christmas story actually is. First of all you’ve got poor Joseph, convinced that his fiance has been knocked up by another man. Then she gives birth in a barn, which would not be sweet or pleasant in any way. If that weren’t bad enough, the wise men tip Herod off to the fact that a new king has been born, and he goes and kills all the first born sons in Judea, forcing the Holy Family into exile. Real smooth, wise men, did you miss the star that told you to keep your mouths shut? There are plenty of movies about Christmas, a few about the nativity and plenty more about Santa. But there aren’t any that capture the despair and desperation of the original tale. Placed within the larger narrative of the Christian gospel, the nativity is about a god being subjected to the vulnerability of an infancy, in order to enter a cruel world whose purpose it is to kill him. Sure, it all works out in the end, but it’s still a pretty dark story. This lack of grit in Christmas movies became clear to me two years ago. Around Christmas, 2006, both The Nativity Story and Children of Men were released. I saw them both within a few days of one another. I was struck by how boring The Nativity Story was, especially compared to Cuarón’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece. When I think of a baby bringing peace on Earth, I can think of no better image than Clive Owen stumbling out of a shattered building with a screaming infant, its cries literally silencing tanks. In that spirit, here are five gritty movies where everything rides on the tiny shoulders of a baby. Children of Men The sweet little child in this movie is the inspiration not only for this list, but for all of humanity (at least in the film). Cuarón creates a brutal world of the near future where women no longer get pregnant, and society crumbles. One reason I like thinking about this movie as an alternate nativity is that it illustrates what Jesus’ second foray into humanity could look like. According to the Bible, the baby in the manger was only part one, Christ is coming back. While I don’t think that Cuarón meant the child to be seen as the second coming, a miraculous birth giving hope to a world in the midst of the apocalypse serves as a nice illustration of God’s ultimate Christmas gift to humanity. Tsotsi This 2005 South African film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It tells the story of young Tsotsi and his gang of Johannesburg thugs. A car-jacking goes bad, and Tsotsi kills a woman. He then discovers her baby in the back seat of the car. As movies like Three Men and a Baby and Raising Arizona make clear, there’s nothing like a baby to inspire self-improvement. Confronted with the shame and guilt of his violent lifestyle, Tsotsi goes on a mission to make things right. Maybe this relates to why the image of baby Jesus is so popular, even though it’s such a small part of the Bible. No one wants to do wrong if they think they’ll hurt a baby. Pan’s Labyrinth This movie is full of pseudo-nativities (spoilers ahead). Young Ofelia and her pregnant mother go to live in the mountains with Ofelia’s new stepfather, a cruel fascist general in Franco’s Spain. While the baby’s birth is a turning point in the climax of the film, the more fitting parallel to the Christ child is actually Ofelia. The opening scene tells the story of Princess Moanna of the Underground Realm, a supernatural being who takes human form. Throughout the film, Ofelia has encounters with fantastic creatures and locations, including a faun. The faun gives her various missions, the last of which is to shed innocent blood of her baby brother in order to open the portal to the Underworld, so Ofelia (Princess Moanna) can go home. She refuses to let her brother be harmed, and is shot by her stepfather shortly after. The baby is saved, but as Ofelia dies, her innocent blood opens the portal and she rejoins her father, the king, in the supernatural Underworld. Granted, it’s not a Sunday school lesson, but it’s pretty close, right down to Ofelia’s (Christ’s) blood being the link to the heavenly father. If you want to go even further, you could start looking for parallel’s between Franco’s Spain and the Roman occupation of the Holy Land during the first century, but for our purpose here we’ll leave at the innocent blood thing. Kill Bill While not nearly the gospel-like parable of Pan’s Labyrinth, Quentin Taratino’s revenge epic does use a child as the central motivating force. A pregnant Beatrix Kiddo is shot and left for dead by Bill, the baby’s father. Four years later the wakes from her coma, assumes her baby is dead, and seeks revenge against her former team of assassins. Kill Bill isn’t about the redemptive effect of an innocent baby as much as it’s about motherhood, and what a mother will do to protect that innocence. Beatrix’s similarities to the Virgin Mary probably end there, but it’s still worth noting the central role that the maternal instinct plays in the film. Kill Bill is gratuitous in every way: it’s violent, it samples from an absurd amount of source material, and the total run time of the two volumes is over four hours. The plot is pretty spare, but Tarantino never has trouble sustaining a sense of urgency. In Kill Bill, as in the nativity, looking out for the welfare of a child is a motivation that never needs to be explained. Rosemary’s Baby Rosemary’s Baby isn’t an alternate nativity as much as it’s an anti-nativity. A young couple, Rosemary and Guy, move into a spooky old apartment building. Their meddlesome old neighbors, Minnie and Roman, seem harmless at first. After eating a few bites of Minnie’s chocolate mousse, Rosemary faints and has a dream where she is raped by a demonic presence. Minnie and Roman suggest an obstetrician who tells Rosemary her pains and cravings of raw meat are totally normal. Clearly something sinister is afoot, but will Rosemary forsake her own child, or join the dark conspiracy? Blood is thicker than water, as they say. And while giving birth to God must have been burden for Mary, how much tougher would it be to give birth to the Devil? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Spout Post: Holiday Gift Guide: Presents For Surviving The Apocalypse

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:00:38 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 12/16/2008 12:00:38 PM
Body: As the financial markets pull the entire economy into utter despair, it’s difficult to think about Christmas shopping. It’s tempting to shove your life savings into your mattress and ride this thing out in a homemade bunker, but holiday shopping is more important now than ever before. I’m not saying this with the hope that a boost in retail sales will jolt the sinking markets, that will never work. Think about it, they’re racking up trillions in debt and you’re going to help by buying an iPod? Nice try. No, the reason you need to stuff stockings like crazy is because this will be the last Christmas on Earth, at least as we know it. A trifecta of economic, nuclear, and environmental apocalypses will surely befall our poor planet in the coming year, leaving a small band of survivors to fend off death in the savage wastes of our once great world. But don’t worry! You and yours will be prepared for this dark tomorrow, if you follow our handy Post-Apocalyptic Gift Guide: Puppy This is a classic Christmas gift, and it’s surprising useful in a post-apocalyptic environment. While watching post-apocalyptic movies in preparation for a life wandering the ruins civilization (cf. I Am Legend, The Road Warrior, and A Boy And His Dog), you’ll notice that many heroes keep a trusty K-9. The obvious reason is companionship, as going months without seeing another human can be maddening. While dogs do need to be fed, a tough breed can eat trash and carrion that you wouldn’t go near. The right kind of dog (larger breeds are best) can also offer protection and help with hunting, assuming natural flora and fauna still exist. Lastly, and I hate to say this, Fido can even become a meal if the situation gets desperate enough. Solar Gadget Charger Second only to clean water, a key to survival in a post-apocalyptic environment is the ability to watch movies. Classics like Tank Girl, Six String Samurai, and The Postman offer invaluable tips for survival in the wastelands. Luckily, portable solar-power devices have become more affordable. The 30 Watt Mono-crystalline Portable Briefcase Solar Panel 12V Charger is a bit pricey, but with it’s 25+ year life-span and ability to charge not only laptops but also any other gadget that can be plugged into a car cigarette lighter, it’s a must-have. Portable game systems, rechargeable flashlights, even GPS units (assuming the satellites haven’t been shot down by invading aliens), could be used for years after the collapse of the power grid. Towel This one might seem odd, or even frivolous, but hear me out. The idea comes from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which was a BBC radio show, then a series of books, and finally a film in 2005. The film was tragically brief considering the amount of source material, so I’d recommend downloading the audio of the radio show to your solar-powered laptop while you still can. One piece of advice the book gives adventurers traversing the cosmos after the annihilation of Earth, is to always carry a towel. While it’s unlikely that you’ll ever get off of our doomed planet, the towel can be just as useful in the terrestrial wastes. From the book: …[The towel] has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon… The list of uses, including self defense and the psychological effect of seeming with-it enough to know where your towel is, goes on and on. A Good Pair of Shoes Shoes are a tricky gift, because the fit is so important. But if you’re planning on treading through the shattered remains of cities, you’ll want to think about arch support, ankle protection, and warmth. Hiking boots are probably a good choice, which can be expensive, but remember, these will need to last. Your next pair of shoes will probably be pulled off of a dead body, and they may not be the right size. If you’re still not convinced that navigating armageddon requires proper footwear, re-watch the final sequence from Children of Men, where Clive Owen struggles across broken glass and re-bar in bare feet. Ouch. Hazmat Suit This snappy Commander EX™ Brigade Level A Suit from DuPont runs about $1,900, but when it comes to avoiding the virus that wiped out the rest of humanity, you can’t put a price on safety. I tried to find the clear plastic variety that would expose your naked body and your vulnerability as a human in an unforgiving world, like the one worn by Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys, but they seem to be unavailable. Mailbag/Postal Uniform In the much-maligned post-apocalyptic classic The Postman, Kevin Costner’s character finds a bag of mail and a postal uniform. When he assumes the identity of the letter-carrier, he spreads his sense of purpose and patriotism across the shattered land. The key here is really the uniform, not necessarily that it’s a mail carrier. It’s been proven that uniforms can have a profound psychological effect, both for the wearer and for those interacting with them. It’s no coincidence that General Bethlehem’s sinister Holnists have uniforms of their own, a key element to building their fledgling fascist regime. It may seem impractical, but uniforms will nevertheless be key to re-establishing order in the midst of anarchy, for better or worse. BBC’s Planet Earth Once you have your solar-powered laptop, you’re free to horde whatever sort of DVD collection you choose. Certainly titles that preserve a sense of the former grandeur of the world would be the jewels of any such collection. I’ve picked BBC’s stellar nature documentary series Planet Earth. This series depicts the stunning beauty and mind-boggling bio-diversity of our planet better than anything I’ve seen. While you hunker down in an abandoned meat locker to avoid the latest fallout-laden dust storm, you can watch amazing footage of the thousands of species that no longer exist, and cry yourself to sleep. Happy Holidays! Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Spout Post: You won't fool the children of the revolution

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:04:42 GMT

Post By: Kowalski76
Post To: Rebellious Celluloid
Post Date: 10/10/2008 5:04:42 PM
Body: 2006 (UK)dir: Alfonso CuaronClive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael CaineIn 2027, in a chaotic world in which man can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of mankind.A clever premise with a totally unexpected twist at the end of the first act that took my enjoyment of the film to a higher level. The cinematography really stands out and there's some decent performances on show, but I found some of the lower cast of characters extremely stereo-typical. The Geordie eco-warrior and his recital of Blaydon Races was so cheesy it made me cringe.

Spout Post: FilmCouch #90: Blindness, In Debt We Trust, I’m Gonna Explode

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:01:52 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/3/2008 9:01:52 AM
Body: If the titles of the three films mentioned in the title don’t evoke a sense of anxiety about the present, I’m not sure what will. At the same time, they’re all immensely different films. Fernando Meirelles’s new film, Blindness, opens tonight. Will it replace Children of Men as our favorite recent film about societal collapse? Karina joins us to talk about one hit and one miss from the New York Film Festival thus far. While Happy-Go-Lucky inspired homicidal thoughts, I’m Gonna Explode did not disappoint. The financial mayhem of the day made us remember a little known documentary from 2006, In Debt We Trust (which can be viewed for free on SnagFilms.com). We call director Danny Schechter to talk about what’s been going on in the two years since his nearly prophetic film was released. (Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday) 0:00 - Intro, is the world ending? 3:26 - Blindness 16:00 - Karina reports from the New York Film Festival on Happy-Go-Lucky and I’m Gonna Explode 23:52 - In Debt We Trust, Danny Schecter interview filmcouch-90 Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Spout Post: Is this our future?

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:52:55 GMT

Post By: owtkast
Post To: owtkast Blog
Post Date: 10/2/2008 2:52:55 AM
Body: How do you rate a film that you admired for artistic achievement accomplished and disliked for it's endlessly depressing view of the future? You may love it or hate it. It is after all showing us that we all have 20 years until the end of the world. And the way it ends, all too realistically, is in pollution, pandemics, starvation, suffering, bombings, filth and cruelty. Alfonso Cuaron feeds us this apocolyptic meal based loosely on the P.D.James novel, casting a dissolute, Clive Owen as the unwitting hero in the last country surviving, the U.K., in 2027. Its all shot in a grim grey/blue hue. The direction of Cuaron and the camera style of Emmanuel Lubezki is a terrifying visual statement attempting to warn us of our tendencies towards war. You are caught up in the story of an infertile earth where no children have been born for 18 years and a "Black Madonna" of sorts appears to have conceived a child. The woman's life is at stake and despite the bleak unexplained beacon of hope,"The Human Project", we can't imagine anything but the endless evil we're shown. It doesn't have the sleek techno look of "Gattaca" or "Clockwork Orange", It's gritty and more like a novel by Margaret Atwood or a play by Caroll Churchill. The year of 2006 is seminal for showing us disturbing visions of violence through the eyes of filmmakers worldwide "Babel", "Pan's Labyrinth", "Blood Diamond" "Last King of Scotland", "Departed", "Letters from Iwo Jima, "Flags of our Fathers", "Apocalypto" and "Children of Men" are but a few to frighten you.

Spout Post: Could BLINDNESS Really Happen? Five Doomsday Movies Ranked by Likelihood

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:00:37 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/30/2008 2:00:37 PM
Body: Bailout talks implode, leaving economy’s fate unresolved, Chavez reaffirms Russia alliance during visit, Pirates seize ship carrying tanks, ammo. Just click over to CNN.com or any other news site and you’ll see why post-apocalyptic and doomsday movies seem more relevant than ever. The doomsday scenarios in movies can be pretty outlandish, but some of them are actually plausible. After all, in world where pirates have tanks, Hollywood doesn’t need to stray far from reality for a good yarn. Below the jump, we put five doomsday movie scenarios to the plausibility test. If you’ve always secretly thought Waterworld was a work of dead-on global warming prophecy, read on. 5. Waterworld The doomsday scenario: Global warming causes the complete melt of glaciers and polar ice caps, flooding nearly the entire planet. Could it really happen? No. Make no mistake, rising sea levels due to climate change are very likely to cause major problems in the the next century, but a near-total covering of the world in water is not possible. While the melting polar ice caps are destroying the habitat of the polar bear, it’s important to remember that most of the Northern ice cap is already floating in the ocean, so its contribution to sea level rise will not be as severe as Greenland or Antarctica. And even if all the ice melted off of those two land masses, the collective sea level rise would be about 67 meters, or 220 feet. That’s very bad news if you live in Amsterdam or New Orleans, but it’s certainly not enough to cover all but the highest mountains, as in the film. We also shouldn’t expect those chucks of ice to melt too fast. It will likely take a thousand years or more for them to be gone completely, so we’ll have plenty of time to hoard paper and build cool boats, or just move to Denver. 4. The Terminator/The Matrix (Separate films, similar problem) The doomsday scenario: Computers converge into one super intelligence, hell-bent on destroying the useless parasite known as humanity. Could it really happen? Probably not. In the 1980’s Vernor Vinge popularized the theory of a technological singularity. The basic idea is that computers will eventually become smart enough to think for themselves, and therefore make even smarter computers. Those computers would then make even smarter computers, and so on until the exponential growth of artificial intelligence goes far beyond human comprehension. At this point, as in The Terminator and The Matrix films, the machines would realize they no longer need humanity and seek to eliminate it. Most credible scientists doubt Vinge’s hypothesis. While it’s easy to imagine the exponential growth of computing power, as Moore’s Law does, it’s a big jump to assume that such increased power will lead to the creative thinking that would be required for self-improvement. So that’s the good news, the bad news is that if the singularity did want to destroy humanity, it wouldn’t be nearly so merciful as the machines in The Terminator and The Matrix. I’m sure it wouldn’t take long for the super intelligence to master the fields of biology and nanotechnology, at which point it would engineer a super virus that would wipe out humanity in a mater of minutes. Is it really a smart use of robot-overlord resources to send mechanized assassins back in time or dispatch swarms of tentacled machines into abandoned sewer tunnels? Sure, biological warfare seems like cheating in human-on-human conflict, but I doubt the machines would be so forgiving. 3. Blindness The doomsday scenario: The entire population except for one woman goes blind almost instantly. Mass hysteria breaks out, quarantines are ineffective, the strong and brutal hoard food and commit atrocities. Could it really happen? Maybe. There is a form of infectious blindness, caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. It’s usually passed physically, through towels or by touching an infected person’s eyes. It’s most common among children in poor areas where hygiene is lacking. The up side is that it takes a while, unlike the mysterious plague in Blindness. The down side is that blindness caused by trachoma is extremely painful, as the eyelids turn inwards, scratching the surface of the eye to the point where it’s no longer transparent. In its current state, Chlamydia trachomatis could not cause instant mass blindness, but if by some fluke the bacteria became exponentially more contagious, we could be in for a dark future. 2. Children of Men The doomsday scenario: Mass infertility. In the film the cause is unknown. Not only are women unable to get pregnant, pregnancies in progress also fail when the mysterious event occurs. Could it really happen? Maybe. In the landmark 1995 book Our Stolen Future, the authors examine how chemical pollutants effect reproductive health. In short, there are an increasing number of chemicals floating around that mimic hormones. These have been shown to cause all sorts of problems including reduced puberty age, fetal defects, and reduced sperm counts. The kicker is that many of these chemicals are extremely persistent, meaning that they do not break down. So even if the junk leaching out of your Nalgene bottle is very slight, it will join the other hormone disruptors lodged in your fat cells until they gather enough friends to do some real damage, even if it takes several generations. This differs from the film in that it’s likely to be far more gradual. A steady decline in global sperm count wouldn’t effect pregnancies in progress, and we’d see it coming. 1. Armageddon The doomsday scenario: A huge asteroid strikes Earth, wiping out every living thing. Could it really happen? Yes. It nearly happened 65 million years ago, causing the extinction of most dinosaur species, and it could happen again. More recently, a meteor or comet exploded over a remote region of Siberia in 1908, detonating with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs, knocking over trees in an 830 square mile area, and on the scheme of things, that was a small one. The US government and the UN have recently begun to take the threat of asteroid collision more seriously, but that doesn’t mean we’re prepared. Many experts put this scenario at the top of their list of likely causes of human extinction. There have been several near-misses, some quite recently. As far as we know, the rock that most likely has our name on it is (29075) 1950 DA, which could spin through space in one of two ways: if it picks door number 1, it will miss us by millions of miles, if it picks door number 2, it will have a 1 in 300 chance of ruining everyones’ day. Luckily, that day won’t come until March 16, 2880. In the meantime, we can work out a reliable way to either destroy the asteroid, as they did in Armageddon, or alter its course and eliminate the threat. The latter solution is looking more reasonable at the moment, but it’s no surprise Michael Bay preferred interstellar nuclear weapons to a film about altering an asteroid’s course by a fraction of a degree using the gravitational pull of an unmanned spacecraft. The really scary part, however, is that while about 800 near-Earth objects larger than 1 km across (the really bad ones) have been accounted for, many estimate that about 200 have yet to be found. Let’s just hope they find the one heading for us in time to get Bruce Willis and his team from their offshore oil rig and into a nuke-laden space shuttle. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Spout Post: Preparing for Global Financial Apocalypse: Seven Lessons from the Movies

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:01:20 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/16/2008 12:01:20 PM
Body: (Image: Hisaharu Motoda’s “Neo-Ruins” via Pink Tentacle) The latest news from Wall Street seems to indicate that a complete financial meltdown is only a few weeks away. Before you violently horde every morsel of food from your local supermarket or begin a hostile take-over of your corner gas station, there are several movies you should watch in order to prepare for life after the downfall of Western civilization. There have been plenty of films in which the world we know is nothing but a burned out shell of its former glory. Nuclear holocaust and virulent plagues are common Earth-clearing disasters, but there’s no reason to think that a global economic collapse would be any less destructive. Let’s not forget that one of history’s most common causes for war is a desperate grab for resources during tough times. So without further ado, seven lessons from the movies, essential for surviving our impending doom: 1. Hoard gasoline! Plenty of people are already getting a jump on this one, apparently upping demand to the point where falling oil prices are not translating to the pump. If you think waiting 15 minutes in line to buy gas at $4.50 a gallon is bad, watch The Road Warrior again. From the opening sequence where Mel Gibson gingerly harvests every precious ounce of fuel from an abandoned vehicle to the final deadly battle over a tanker truck, it’s clear that in a post-apocalyptic world, gas is gold. Sure, we’re working on becoming less dependent on the stuff, but what good is a Chevy Volt going to do you if the power grid is in shambles? 2. Learn a trade that’s useful regardless of available technology! Farmers, builders, doctors, these people will always be useful, even if your society’s currency consists only of the teeth of your enemies. If your skill set is of a less practical variety, don’t worry, people will still need entertainment. One good model is Kevin Costner’s character in The Postman. Before he takes on the titular role as a letter carrier, he makes his way from town to town as a traveling minstrel. The Pony Express-style mailman gig he eventually gets is a good job as well, but it tends to be quite dangerous. 3. Do not take a job at a butcher shop! I can’t stress this one enough. History has unfortunately proven that when times get extremely tough, people will eat one another, it’s a natural consequence of human depravity. If you see an ad in the paper for a general labor position with a high turn-over rate at a deli specializing in fresh meat, don’t be foolish like Dominique Pinon’s character in Delicatessen. The dark comedy, from Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, tells the story of a former circus performer who lands a job at a butcher shop with a less than wholesome supply chain. If McDonalds is still open when New York’s financial district is nothing more than a smoking ruin used to house gladiatorial death matches, be suspicious. 4. If you are fertile, be careful with your precious seed! The human race is notoriously tenacious, so don’t think the collapse of society means the end of our fair race––we’ll survive, somehow. But when things get really crazy, potential candidates for the new Adam and Eve need to be on guard. Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is an excellent example of how post-apocalyptic citizens can go baby crazy. There are also a number of examples of post-apocalyptic fiction where a fertile man is a highly sought-after commodity in a female-dominated dystopia. A Boy and His Dog and Hell Comes to Frogtown both feature walking sperm banks charged with saving womankind (played by Don Johnson and Rowdy Roddy Piper, respectively). Also, SciFi Wire reported yesterday that Eagle Eye director D.J. Caruso’s next film will be an adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s amazing graphic novel Y the Last Man. The film will (presumably) star Shia LaBeouf as Vic, who is, you guessed it, the last human male on earth. 5. For God’s sake, save the library! This tip doesn’t concern personal survivability so much as a general service to humanity. When I was in school I was forced to watch the 1960 film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine for some reason. I loved it. But I was also terrified by its vision of the future. My most vivid memory of the film is when our hero finds that future generations have not maintained the library, letting the entire record of human history literally turn to dust. It’s a good thing that people like Wired magazine founding editor Kevin Kelly are doing cool things like The Long Now Project, because digital storage of information is almost comically transient. Also, if you don’t think things this important can really be lost, watch the 2007 Iraq war documentary No End in Sight. The part about the looting of the National Museum and the burning of the Iraqi National Archives made me cry. 6. If you live in a temperate climate, head South! This one is simple enough, and it’s the premise of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road, the film adaptation of which will be in theaters this November, starring Viggo Mortensen. The story dispenses with the typical global catastrophe story line common to most post-apocalyptic tales, and focused instead on a man and his son attempting to avoid danger as they head South for the winter through a blighted landscape. This is the film I most look forward to this fall; it takes the genre in a very serious direction, so don’t expect any Mad Max-like car chases. For our purposes here, The Road really teaches two valuable lessons: one, even something seemingly simple, like heading South, can be potentially deadly; and two, it gives some great tips on scavenging through buildings that have already been picked over by looters. 7. If given the opportunity to travel back in time to thwart the collapse of civilization, do not fall in love! If you are the one chosen to save humanity via time travel, it’s important to avoid the retro sex appeal possessed by the single people of the past. This is no time for love! Two films illustrate this, one is a remake of the other. The 1962 French short film La Jetée uses a montage of stunningly beautiful black and white stills to tell the story of a time traveler distracted from his mission by romance. It’s one part French New Wave, one part killer sci-fi, and an absolute classic. Terry Gilliam expanded the story with his 1995 adaptation, 12 Monkeys. If you’ve seen either film you know that the missions to the past are not exactly successful, although it’s debatable whether or not romance is to blame. Nevertheless, if the future of humanity is in your hands, stay on task! Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Spout Post: Week 30.

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:08:45 GMT

Post By: CaptainRyannn
Post To: CaptainRyannn Blog
Post Date: 8/11/2008 9:08:45 PM
Body: Titles in bold represent a first time viewing. 346. Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)----------I thought that this was a pretty great collage-type film with the likeness of a more familiar title, Crash. Aside from Julianne Moore's performance, one of the few things I didn't like was the fact that the characters didn't connect with each other other than the bizarre finale at the end of the film. (7.5 / 10) 347. Stuck (Gordon, 2007)----------Based on a true story, stuck follows a wannabe-ghetto woman (Mena Suvari) after she hits a homeless man and drives him into her garage. The acting was terrible, the premise was good though. Towards the end, it began to pick up in terms of entertainment. (6 / 10) 348. Equilibrium (Wimmer, 2002)----------Christian Bale? Sweet. Reviews relating it to The Matrix? Awesome. This is why I initially checked out Equilibrium. The action was pretty sweet but every few minutes, I couldn't help but see a blatant plot-hole. Also, can someone answer me why do the people have dust fly out of them when they get shot? (7 / 10) 349. The New World (Malick, 2005)----------It seems that whenever Malick puts out a new movie, I become less and less interested. To me, Badlands was his best and his vast collection of movies since then have just seemed to have gone downhill. I appreciated the beautiful cinematography and music along with the great acting. But the pacing was just a little too slow for me. (7 / 10) 350. The Terminator (Cameron, 1984)----------It's funny to think that The Terminator, one of the most masculine movies of all time, came from the same guy who made Titanic, one of the most popular love stories of all time. I basically watched this for mere entertainment and it satisfied that. (7 / 10) 351. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, 1991)----------Again, I just watched this purely for entertainment. I think it did a better job at doing that than the first one. The best thing about watching these movies is just pausing it at certain testosterone-filled moments and thinking, This is the governor of California. (7.5 / 10) 352. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Mostow, 2003)----------This got quite a bit of negative reviews. I wouldn't say that it was especially bad, but rather on par with the first one. The best part was how they ended it. It got me excited for Terminator Salvation. (7 / 10) 353. A Home at the End of the World (Mayer, 2004)----------Although the subject matter may not be something many of us can relate to, the themes definitely are. The overall mood and and portrayals of friendship and love make this worth watching alone. (7 / 10) 354. Undertow (Green, 2004)----------When I first watched this, it was decent. Once I delved into some reviews and analysis' I watched it again and fell in love with it. The story follows two brothers who live with their dad out in the southern forests. Their mysterious uncle comes around and suddenly a game of cat-and-mouse begins. The tone of the film stays consistent and I think that that is it's strongest point along with great performances by Jamie Bell and Josh Lucas. (8 / 10) 355. Antikörper / Antibodies (Alvart, 2005)----------Antibodies is a film that follows closely in the footsteps of The Silence of the Lambs. Our protagonist is a village cop and the antagonist is a serial killer whose finally been caught. The cinematography was good and the acting was average. The basic story-line is something that's been done plenty of times before but the sheer intensity that this takes it to puts Antibodies a little bit above the rest. (7.5 / 10) 356. Cidade de Deus / City of God (Meirelles, 2002)----------I've seen City of God countless times as it is my favorite film along with Once Upon a Time in America. It takes us through two decades in the lives of a handful of children / teenagers in the slums of Rio de Janerio. Most grow up to be hoods and murder and robbery isn't something uncommon in their lives. Our protagonist, Rocket, is an aspiring photographer and just so happens to be there as all of the violence breaks out. If you're okay with subtitles, be sure to check this one out. (10 / 10) 357. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (Hurwitz, 2008)----------The whole 'Escape' part only really lasts about five minutes. The rest of the film is basically slapstick comedy executed in an non-comedic way. (5 / 10) 358. Shotgun Stories (Nichols, 2007)----------I have been looking forward to seeing this one for quite some time. After falling in love with the trailer, I had to see it. There are two sets of step-brothers. Their father just died. One set knew him as a loving man and the other knew him as a violent, neglecting one. A feud erupts between them and their egos don't allow themselves to stop until irreversible damage has been caused. This movie had some of the most real characters I've ever seen portrayed and it was as if I were watching this unfold in real life. (8.5 / 10) 359. My Bodyguard (Bill, 1980)-----------I rented this based off of Roger Ebert's shining review but found it to be just average in comparison to other tough-time-in-high-school films. The main kid is a rich boy who starts going to a public school. The bullys don't like this and pick on him. After getting pushed around he gets the tough-guy bodyguard and they become friends, but not after finding out a few secrets about each other. (6 / 10) 360. Kicking and Screaming (Baumbach, 1995)----------Unlike the 2005 comedy, this one is actually good. But it's not about a children's soccer team, but rather a group of friend who have just graduated from college and don't know what to do next. This has some of the most subtly humorous dialogue I've ever experienced and I couldn't help but laugh virtually the entire way through. The plot really isn't there, there's no character development or twists. This movie basically stands up on the dialogue and it's characters. The friendship that exists reminds me slightly of that of the American Pie trilogy. Great movie. Worthy of its Criterion stamp. (8 / 10) 361. Schizopolis (Soderbergh, 1996)----------What did I just watch? (?? / 10) 362. Children of Men (Cuarón, 2006)----------Featuring probably some of the best camera work and choreography in film in recent years, Children of Men was superb. To be able to shoot such busy scenes all in one shot takes a certain amount of skill. Watching the special features and commentary definitely gave me an idea of how much work went into this. Children of Men takes place about twenty years in the future where women are infertile and no one knows why. Immigrants are killed and the world is in chaos. An immigrant is found bearing a child and Theo (Clive Own) is in charge of getting her to safety. (8 / 10) 363. The Chumscrubber (Posin, 2005)----------Set in a 'Desperate Housewives' kind of neighborhood, shy-boy Dean, through a series of events, is in charge of getting drugs for the popular kids. With an all-star cast, The Chumscrubber is entertaining, dark, and comedic all at the same time. (7.5 / 10)

Spout Tag:family

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