After Tom Avery (Martin Sheen) learns that his son Daniel (Emilio Estevez) has died while hiking El Camino de Santiago, he flies to France and decides to undertake the pilgrimage through Spain himself. Unprepared for the journey and approaching retirement, he buckles down and proceeds regardless to try and understand his son's bohemian spirit which he had routinely belittled throughout his life. While coping with his loss, he reluctantly befriends three younger adventurous subjects who take a mysterious shine to his rigorous no-nonsense elderly personality, each embracing the trek for different reasons. Their heterogeneous individualist assembly forms a peculiar undefined pact as they encounter a colourful cast of characters while seeking lodging along the way.
Emilio Estevez's The Way elastically populates a variety of different situations with thought provoking revelations towards its healing goal. Some of the dialogue and interactions could have benefitted from a careful study of Woody Allen or John Cassavetes, but I can't deny that he works well within his elevated wide-reaching down-to-earth frame.
Heated exchanges. Romantic musings. Acerbic challenges. Carefree suggestions. Confident purpose. Cohesive wanderings.
Unpredictable traumatic events necessitate change. Improvised determined responses supported by but not rooted within historico-cultural traditions can lead to revitalizing affects. Social opportunities and previously unconsidered theoretical trajectories abound after the embrace of the other. Letting go and enjoying the difference leads to spiritual rebirth.
The Way.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Oscar Picks, 2012
Here are some picks for the 84th Academy Awards.
Going with Hugo for best picture. It artistically celebrates the creation of film with neither pretension nor pontification and can be appreciated by children and adults alike. Without glamorizing the life of a successful artist, it playfully elevates the process of creation while providing its entire cast with moments to shine. Accessible, mischievous, heart warming, and tragic, Hugo functions on multiple levels which work instructively with one another to create a moving, enlivening, voice.
Unfortunately, I never got to see The Artist or a bunch of the other nominated films but saw 8 of the 9 movies up for best picture.
And I don't understand why Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II wasn't nominated when Return of the King won best picture.
Actress in a leading role: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Actor in a leading role: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Actress in a supporting role: Octavia Spencer, The Help (tough not to pick Melissa McCarthy from Bridesmaids)
Actor in a supporting role: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life
Directing: Martin Scorcese, Hugo
Film editing: Anne-Sophie Bion & Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Writing (Adapted screenplay): John Logan, Hugo
Writing (Original screenplay): Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Music (Original score): Ludovic Bource, The Artist
Visual Effects: Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossmann & Alex Henning, Hugo
Going with Hugo for best picture. It artistically celebrates the creation of film with neither pretension nor pontification and can be appreciated by children and adults alike. Without glamorizing the life of a successful artist, it playfully elevates the process of creation while providing its entire cast with moments to shine. Accessible, mischievous, heart warming, and tragic, Hugo functions on multiple levels which work instructively with one another to create a moving, enlivening, voice.
Unfortunately, I never got to see The Artist or a bunch of the other nominated films but saw 8 of the 9 movies up for best picture.
And I don't understand why Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II wasn't nominated when Return of the King won best picture.
Actress in a leading role: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Actor in a leading role: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Actress in a supporting role: Octavia Spencer, The Help (tough not to pick Melissa McCarthy from Bridesmaids)
Actor in a supporting role: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life
Directing: Martin Scorcese, Hugo
Film editing: Anne-Sophie Bion & Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Writing (Adapted screenplay): John Logan, Hugo
Writing (Original screenplay): Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Music (Original score): Ludovic Bource, The Artist
Visual Effects: Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossmann & Alex Henning, Hugo
Friday, February 24, 2012
Safe House
Fittingly timed considering Canada's conservative government's introduction of the hated Bill C-30, Daniel Espinosa's new action flick Safe House presents a young CIA agent tasked with delivering a rogue fugitive possessing private governmental information to an undisclosed location in order to bring him to justice.
For agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), it's an opportunity to demonstrate his prowess and procure a more invigorating post.
For longtime fugitive (and former CIA agent) Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), it's all just par for the course.
Frost has in his possession a file implicating several international intelligence agents in criminal activities. A mercenary by the name of Vargas (Fares Fares) seeks to pry it from his cold dead hands. Seeing nowhere to run, Frost turns himself in at an American Embassy in South Africa. He's taken to be interrogated at a safe house in Cape Town of which Weston is the "housekeeper." Vargas comes calling shortly thereafter, leaving Weston and Frost wondering which CIA agent coughed up the whereabouts of their hidden location as they frantically escape.
Into the unknown.
The film's anti-warrantless-police-online-surveillance agenda is highlighted during one of the chase scenes. Frost and Weston are fleeing Vargas and his men on the rooftops of a quiet shantytown. Some of the roofs aren't particularly sturdy and can't withstand the shock of the sudden tumultuous weight. Thus, as people simply try and enjoy their private life, mercenaries, fugitives, and intelligence agents come crashing unannounced into their homes, and then leave quickly, after having obtrusively disrupted their lives, in the pursuit of disparate self-serving agendas.
How does this relate to the ways in which Canada's conservative government has labelled environmentalist groups opposed to the development of the Northern Gateway pipeline as radicals within Canada and Bill C-30?
Well, it's cheaper to operate a mine/engage in oil and gas exploration/build a pipeline if you don't have to worry about reclaiming the land or behaving responsibly. But if you don't responsibly reclaim the land you create a toxic mess that leaves the area uninhabitable while people continue to live there. If you introduce a toxic substance into an ecosystem it has a lasting toxic effect.
Environmentalist groups seek to mitigate this effect so that such lands remain habitable and their drinking waters aren't irreparably polluted. If you are an environmentalist who has been labelled a radical by the government (as opposed to being labelled a responsible citizen who simply wants to have access to clean drinking water and doesn't want to have to clean up an industrial mess for the next century or so), whose to stop the police from monitoring your productive conscientious online activity and demonizing the sights you visit?
Demonizing is a strong word but so is radical and labelling environmentalist groups critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline development as radical is a form of demonizing, especially considering that a percentage of our elected opposition members of parliament are critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline, therefore I don't think I'm taking too much of a leap in thinking the police, through invasively monitoring your online activity after the passage of Bill C-30 because you are an environmentalist radical, can then take the next step of demonizing you within your community (hypothetically, some shitty anti-environmentalist law is passed after the passage of Bill C-30 [The Economic Stewardship Bill or something], it isn't debated in the House of Commons so media coverage is minimized, people aren't provided with the facts concerning the law and after someone breaks it they simply think that person's broken the law and are therefore a problem, the police having arrested the individual after monitoring their online activity without a warrant and discovering that by visiting a specific targeted sight they have engaged in radical illegal activity. They arrest that person, local media picks up on it, they are demonized within their community).
You think this is ridiculous? I repeat, labelling environmentalists critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline development as radicals is ridiculous, throughly undemocratic, and grossly irresponsible. Simply because they wanted to mitigate the environmental impact of industrial activity in their country in order to live a healthier life.
Environmentalists want jobs too and understand the necessity of mining and oil and gas exploration. They just want to ensure that it's done responsibly. The reason we have an environmental lobby is that these activities were not undertaken responsibly for centuries. It is not radical to believe that they will suddenly be responsibly undertaken without the influence of an environmentalist lobby.
In Safe House, Weston turns the situation around and releases Frost's file to the media who then begins to vilify the intelligence agents/governmental representatives mentioned within. Unfortunately, this ending indirectly supports Bills such as Bill C-30. Here we have a situation where invading the privacy of several organizations and making their private information public has positive results. By creating such a situation and making it seem cathartic, Safe House sinisterly supports the intrusive agendas of those seeking to freely invade our privacy and monitor our online activity by 'subliminally advertising' an example which motivates the invasion of privacy.
Although the roof crashing chase was a nice diversion.
For agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), it's an opportunity to demonstrate his prowess and procure a more invigorating post.
For longtime fugitive (and former CIA agent) Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), it's all just par for the course.
Frost has in his possession a file implicating several international intelligence agents in criminal activities. A mercenary by the name of Vargas (Fares Fares) seeks to pry it from his cold dead hands. Seeing nowhere to run, Frost turns himself in at an American Embassy in South Africa. He's taken to be interrogated at a safe house in Cape Town of which Weston is the "housekeeper." Vargas comes calling shortly thereafter, leaving Weston and Frost wondering which CIA agent coughed up the whereabouts of their hidden location as they frantically escape.
Into the unknown.
The film's anti-warrantless-police-online-surveillance agenda is highlighted during one of the chase scenes. Frost and Weston are fleeing Vargas and his men on the rooftops of a quiet shantytown. Some of the roofs aren't particularly sturdy and can't withstand the shock of the sudden tumultuous weight. Thus, as people simply try and enjoy their private life, mercenaries, fugitives, and intelligence agents come crashing unannounced into their homes, and then leave quickly, after having obtrusively disrupted their lives, in the pursuit of disparate self-serving agendas.
How does this relate to the ways in which Canada's conservative government has labelled environmentalist groups opposed to the development of the Northern Gateway pipeline as radicals within Canada and Bill C-30?
Well, it's cheaper to operate a mine/engage in oil and gas exploration/build a pipeline if you don't have to worry about reclaiming the land or behaving responsibly. But if you don't responsibly reclaim the land you create a toxic mess that leaves the area uninhabitable while people continue to live there. If you introduce a toxic substance into an ecosystem it has a lasting toxic effect.
Environmentalist groups seek to mitigate this effect so that such lands remain habitable and their drinking waters aren't irreparably polluted. If you are an environmentalist who has been labelled a radical by the government (as opposed to being labelled a responsible citizen who simply wants to have access to clean drinking water and doesn't want to have to clean up an industrial mess for the next century or so), whose to stop the police from monitoring your productive conscientious online activity and demonizing the sights you visit?
Demonizing is a strong word but so is radical and labelling environmentalist groups critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline development as radical is a form of demonizing, especially considering that a percentage of our elected opposition members of parliament are critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline, therefore I don't think I'm taking too much of a leap in thinking the police, through invasively monitoring your online activity after the passage of Bill C-30 because you are an environmentalist radical, can then take the next step of demonizing you within your community (hypothetically, some shitty anti-environmentalist law is passed after the passage of Bill C-30 [The Economic Stewardship Bill or something], it isn't debated in the House of Commons so media coverage is minimized, people aren't provided with the facts concerning the law and after someone breaks it they simply think that person's broken the law and are therefore a problem, the police having arrested the individual after monitoring their online activity without a warrant and discovering that by visiting a specific targeted sight they have engaged in radical illegal activity. They arrest that person, local media picks up on it, they are demonized within their community).
You think this is ridiculous? I repeat, labelling environmentalists critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline development as radicals is ridiculous, throughly undemocratic, and grossly irresponsible. Simply because they wanted to mitigate the environmental impact of industrial activity in their country in order to live a healthier life.
Environmentalists want jobs too and understand the necessity of mining and oil and gas exploration. They just want to ensure that it's done responsibly. The reason we have an environmental lobby is that these activities were not undertaken responsibly for centuries. It is not radical to believe that they will suddenly be responsibly undertaken without the influence of an environmentalist lobby.
In Safe House, Weston turns the situation around and releases Frost's file to the media who then begins to vilify the intelligence agents/governmental representatives mentioned within. Unfortunately, this ending indirectly supports Bills such as Bill C-30. Here we have a situation where invading the privacy of several organizations and making their private information public has positive results. By creating such a situation and making it seem cathartic, Safe House sinisterly supports the intrusive agendas of those seeking to freely invade our privacy and monitor our online activity by 'subliminally advertising' an example which motivates the invasion of privacy.
Although the roof crashing chase was a nice diversion.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Monsieur Lazhar
Immigrating. Searching for work. Adapting to the dynamics of your new surroundings. Quietly suffering from the trauma of your previous ones.
Philippe Falardeau's Monsieur Lazhar follows the activities of Bachir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag) as he seeks refugee status in Montréal and finds a job teaching in an inner-city elementary school. Matters are complicated by the fact that he replaces a respected facilitator of learning who recently committed suicide in the classroom. His students are confused and shocked.
His antiquated teaching style doesn't placate things.
But his strict yet forgiving direct approach has its merits as he attempts to bring his students's pain out into the open. Simultaneously creating a cathartic outlet and an administrative backlash, he boldly proceeds while negotiating the consequences.
With neither teaching degree nor classroom experience.
His traditional signs and points of reference have been displaced, transformed and differentiated, yet his wit remains intact, enabling him to manufacture structured cultural resources through the process of active creativity.
Which facilitate his socio-economic recovery.
Flexibly managing the viewpoints of the other while adopting components of their constructive criticisms to his professional and social practices leads to his modest integration.
Synthesizing divergent contents with similar forms systematically acculturates his multifaceted tenacity.
Because he gives a shit.
Philippe Falardeau's Monsieur Lazhar follows the activities of Bachir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag) as he seeks refugee status in Montréal and finds a job teaching in an inner-city elementary school. Matters are complicated by the fact that he replaces a respected facilitator of learning who recently committed suicide in the classroom. His students are confused and shocked.
His antiquated teaching style doesn't placate things.
But his strict yet forgiving direct approach has its merits as he attempts to bring his students's pain out into the open. Simultaneously creating a cathartic outlet and an administrative backlash, he boldly proceeds while negotiating the consequences.
With neither teaching degree nor classroom experience.
His traditional signs and points of reference have been displaced, transformed and differentiated, yet his wit remains intact, enabling him to manufacture structured cultural resources through the process of active creativity.
Which facilitate his socio-economic recovery.
Flexibly managing the viewpoints of the other while adopting components of their constructive criticisms to his professional and social practices leads to his modest integration.
Synthesizing divergent contents with similar forms systematically acculturates his multifaceted tenacity.
Because he gives a shit.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Circumstance
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, falling in love is a beautiful thing. Suddenly there's someone there with whom you get along and/or enjoy fighting with regularly who saves you from the interminable tedium of your own personal thoughts.
And loves it when you suggest going at it.
Through the exchange of ideas you learn and grow constructively and destructively as you challenge one another while suffering/flourishing as your dependency increases.
Having the opportunity to do this is something a lot of people take for granted.
Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance suffocatingly accentuates the torment of trying to embrace your mutual feelings in a homophobic socially conservative stasis, as Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) fall in love.
Atafeh is the privileged daughter of wealthy parents whose lifestyle is encouraged by the current Iranian regime. Shireen's parents were free thinking writers who didn't fare so well after the Revolution in 1979.
As they explore their affections in the Iranian underground, Keshavarz showcases their blossoming vitality before the morality police step in and rigidly crush it.
One of the policepersons is Atafeh's former drug abusing religiously reformed brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai).
If you're wondering how the affects of your socially conservative values and their associated misguided ethical conceptions can distort potentially productive members of your community and turn them into passionate iconoclasts, try and imagine a world where all you want to do is have a heterosexual relationship but everyone keeps telling you it's an unnatural crime for which you will be eternally punished.
And ask yourself, "why do I keep bullying gay people?"
Do you seriously think a loving God would encourage such behaviour?
And loves it when you suggest going at it.
Through the exchange of ideas you learn and grow constructively and destructively as you challenge one another while suffering/flourishing as your dependency increases.
Having the opportunity to do this is something a lot of people take for granted.
Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance suffocatingly accentuates the torment of trying to embrace your mutual feelings in a homophobic socially conservative stasis, as Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) fall in love.
Atafeh is the privileged daughter of wealthy parents whose lifestyle is encouraged by the current Iranian regime. Shireen's parents were free thinking writers who didn't fare so well after the Revolution in 1979.
As they explore their affections in the Iranian underground, Keshavarz showcases their blossoming vitality before the morality police step in and rigidly crush it.
One of the policepersons is Atafeh's former drug abusing religiously reformed brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai).
If you're wondering how the affects of your socially conservative values and their associated misguided ethical conceptions can distort potentially productive members of your community and turn them into passionate iconoclasts, try and imagine a world where all you want to do is have a heterosexual relationship but everyone keeps telling you it's an unnatural crime for which you will be eternally punished.
And ask yourself, "why do I keep bullying gay people?"
Do you seriously think a loving God would encourage such behaviour?
Monday, February 13, 2012
Le Havre
Loved Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre.
The story follows the bohemian shoe shining Marcel Marx (André Wilms) as he manages his affairs and takes a refugee for whom the police are searching into his care (Blondin Miguel as Idrissa). Idrissa hopes to be reunited with his mother in London but circumstances suggest he'll be shipped back to Gabon. But Marcel, who can't even find enough cash to pay for his daily bread, rallies his friends to come to his aid. Forming an innovative impoverished indelible team, they create a potential working solution and boldly put their plan into action.
As the law rapidly closes in.
There's little pretence in this film as Kaurismäki's long patient shots of his cast showcase their hardened stoic demeanours. It's not trying to glamourize living off the beaten track or accentuate hardship. Rather, it modestly celebrates the crafty designs of a clever group of feisty individuals as they creatively stretch their limited resources in order to generate an emancipated opportunity.
Through the power of unification.
Detective Monet's (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) no slouch and has been ordered to make discovering Idrissa's whereabouts a top priority.
Marcel's wife Arletty (Kati Outinen) falls ill leaving everyone worried as he starts to take care of himself.
If you're searching for heartwarming, cheerful, humble escapes from the dominant discourses that consistently dehumanize underprivileged subjects, Le Havre should be high up on your list. The vitality constituting this wayward band of resilient ontologists temperately coordinates an immaculate sense of freedom.
The story follows the bohemian shoe shining Marcel Marx (André Wilms) as he manages his affairs and takes a refugee for whom the police are searching into his care (Blondin Miguel as Idrissa). Idrissa hopes to be reunited with his mother in London but circumstances suggest he'll be shipped back to Gabon. But Marcel, who can't even find enough cash to pay for his daily bread, rallies his friends to come to his aid. Forming an innovative impoverished indelible team, they create a potential working solution and boldly put their plan into action.
As the law rapidly closes in.
There's little pretence in this film as Kaurismäki's long patient shots of his cast showcase their hardened stoic demeanours. It's not trying to glamourize living off the beaten track or accentuate hardship. Rather, it modestly celebrates the crafty designs of a clever group of feisty individuals as they creatively stretch their limited resources in order to generate an emancipated opportunity.
Through the power of unification.
Detective Monet's (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) no slouch and has been ordered to make discovering Idrissa's whereabouts a top priority.
Marcel's wife Arletty (Kati Outinen) falls ill leaving everyone worried as he starts to take care of himself.
If you're searching for heartwarming, cheerful, humble escapes from the dominant discourses that consistently dehumanize underprivileged subjects, Le Havre should be high up on your list. The vitality constituting this wayward band of resilient ontologists temperately coordinates an immaculate sense of freedom.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Keyhole
Where to begin.
We've broken into a building that's surrounded. Some of us have passed on. A search must be conducted. The patriarch is in charge. Part of his family is in attendance. Memories are temporally fluctuating.
Clocks ticking, imperious and constant. Joy revels in an immediate departure. What's to be made of these meaningful incursions? Electronic fissures resonating incorporeally.
And there's need of wallpaper.
Guy Maddin harnesses a permanently detached constructive sensibility to his productively ironic surreal cheeky familial incandescent aesthetic in his new film Keyhole, and this time there's no foundation to which one can directly cling, other than Ulysses, or David Lynch's Black Lodge, perhaps.
Few filmmakers can successfully unleash structured serpentine points of disjointed transient distinct significations through the popularized lampooned esoteric intellectual constituency as multidimensionally as Maddin.
We are provided with clues to what in fact might be going on. From these clues, depending upon the ways in which they are strategized, specific arguments (rhetorical facts) can be generated. Supporting evidence can be gathered from interpretations based upon hypotheses framed by logic, inasmuch as they fit into the whole, insofar as they cohesively belong.
To this precise moment.
Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) is in charge. This much we know. His authority is paramount to Keyhole's flexibly united incongruity as he tries to comprehend the motivations of the other.
He is also invincible.
He is trying to return to his family, some of whom he doesn't recognize. He seeks answers to questions he is in/capable of asking. The high seas have become his house as the internet minimizes geographic exploration. His omniscience is tempered by his forgetfulness as he struggles to determine what has been substantially dematerialized. An idea becomes pragmatic when historical echoes align themselves with its potent focused intent.
For the time being.
Leap frogging from estimation to realization for genuine enigmatic jaunts, from which catalysts instructively and divergently testify, while pliantly managing internal disruptions, his allegiances deteriorate as the hierarchy pulsates, made all the more hauntingly vivid by its enduring staggering lack.
It's about generating inextricable mysteries from which manifold dimensions (jurisprudence, politics, science) can find practical applications after mining their way through the discursive data.
And a good old-fashioned game of catch.
We've broken into a building that's surrounded. Some of us have passed on. A search must be conducted. The patriarch is in charge. Part of his family is in attendance. Memories are temporally fluctuating.
Clocks ticking, imperious and constant. Joy revels in an immediate departure. What's to be made of these meaningful incursions? Electronic fissures resonating incorporeally.
And there's need of wallpaper.
Guy Maddin harnesses a permanently detached constructive sensibility to his productively ironic surreal cheeky familial incandescent aesthetic in his new film Keyhole, and this time there's no foundation to which one can directly cling, other than Ulysses, or David Lynch's Black Lodge, perhaps.
Few filmmakers can successfully unleash structured serpentine points of disjointed transient distinct significations through the popularized lampooned esoteric intellectual constituency as multidimensionally as Maddin.
We are provided with clues to what in fact might be going on. From these clues, depending upon the ways in which they are strategized, specific arguments (rhetorical facts) can be generated. Supporting evidence can be gathered from interpretations based upon hypotheses framed by logic, inasmuch as they fit into the whole, insofar as they cohesively belong.
To this precise moment.
Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) is in charge. This much we know. His authority is paramount to Keyhole's flexibly united incongruity as he tries to comprehend the motivations of the other.
He is also invincible.
He is trying to return to his family, some of whom he doesn't recognize. He seeks answers to questions he is in/capable of asking. The high seas have become his house as the internet minimizes geographic exploration. His omniscience is tempered by his forgetfulness as he struggles to determine what has been substantially dematerialized. An idea becomes pragmatic when historical echoes align themselves with its potent focused intent.
For the time being.
Leap frogging from estimation to realization for genuine enigmatic jaunts, from which catalysts instructively and divergently testify, while pliantly managing internal disruptions, his allegiances deteriorate as the hierarchy pulsates, made all the more hauntingly vivid by its enduring staggering lack.
It's about generating inextricable mysteries from which manifold dimensions (jurisprudence, politics, science) can find practical applications after mining their way through the discursive data.
And a good old-fashioned game of catch.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
An imaginative inquisitive highly organized youth sets out into the unknown to find someone who can help him solve a mystery left behind after his father dies in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre. A small envelope is discovered in his father's room after the fact containing both a key and the word "black" written upon it. Having no knowledge in regards to what/whom the word "black" refers nor the lock to which the key corresponds, Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) looks up everyone with the last name Black in New York City and systematically sets out to question them. During his information search, he befriends an elderly man renting a room in his grandmother's apartment who can't speak and communicates through writing (Max von Sydow as The Renter). The two become friends as they travel throughout New York meeting new people, emboldened by purpose.
Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close humanizes research while providing a matrix through which one can rationally seek solutions to seemingly interminable problems.
As long as you stick to the plan.
By populating his thesis with living breathing representatives of New York's undeniable particularity, Oskar indirectly creates a community while simultaneously emphasizing the tragedy of 9/11, thereby universalizing his personal loss.
The research process itself is romanticized as it becomes apparent that sometimes elucidating sought after truths is secondary to the divergent revelations of the quest wherein they are potentially sequestered, as new avenues of inquiry are brought to life.
If the actual question indeed finds an answer the secondary/tertiary/. . . tributaries can still be categorically synthesized through the production of a multidimensional social democratic topography, modestly celebrating the new (the collection of letters Oskar sends out in the end).
The degree of ease with which such a topography is manifested directly corresponds to the intensity of the author's desire to illuminate his or her original inquiry.
Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close humanizes research while providing a matrix through which one can rationally seek solutions to seemingly interminable problems.
As long as you stick to the plan.
By populating his thesis with living breathing representatives of New York's undeniable particularity, Oskar indirectly creates a community while simultaneously emphasizing the tragedy of 9/11, thereby universalizing his personal loss.
The research process itself is romanticized as it becomes apparent that sometimes elucidating sought after truths is secondary to the divergent revelations of the quest wherein they are potentially sequestered, as new avenues of inquiry are brought to life.
If the actual question indeed finds an answer the secondary/tertiary/. . . tributaries can still be categorically synthesized through the production of a multidimensional social democratic topography, modestly celebrating the new (the collection of letters Oskar sends out in the end).
The degree of ease with which such a topography is manifested directly corresponds to the intensity of the author's desire to illuminate his or her original inquiry.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Underworld: Awakening
Vampires and werewolves are at in again in Awakening, the latest instalment in the Underworld series.
Fan favourite Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is set free from her chamber after having been preserved on ice for a dozen years at a medical corporation known as Antigen. Instantaneously regaining her combative flexibility, she terrorizes the surrounding security forces in order to acrobatically escape the premises.
In search of lover and vampire/lycan hybrid Michael Corvin.
Little does she know that during her cryogenic slumber she gave birth to a hybrid child known as Subject 2/Eve (India Eisley) whom the lycans now viciously seek.
She rescues her daughter from their clutches and is then fortunately provided with sanctuary at a secretive coven by the curious and friendly David (Theo James).
But the lycans soon come calling and successfully recapture little Eve before taking her back to home base.
Serene must now break into Antigen and rescue her daughter before the diabolical Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea) can cut her to pieces.
And proliferate his cure.
Oh, and humans caught on to the existence of vampires and lycans and killed most of them during The Purge which took place at the time Antigen acquired Serene.
If you really like the Underworld series and don't mind that its lore isn't significantly internally diversified or particularized, and are only seeking an hour-and-a-half of fast paced tormented action, Awakening will work for you, as it contains that which you desire.
If you are seeking the historical element that made some of its predecessors more noteworthy steer clear as there's little of tangential yet critical value within besides a brute examination of different generational attitudes concerning survival, a regenerative super-lycan (whose presence goes nowhere) (Kris Holden-Ried as Quint Lane), and a visionary cop (Michael Ealy as Detective Sebastian) who doesn't want to recondition The Purge's hysteria.
Headstrong, stunted and brief.
Could have used less hyperactivity.
Fan favourite Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is set free from her chamber after having been preserved on ice for a dozen years at a medical corporation known as Antigen. Instantaneously regaining her combative flexibility, she terrorizes the surrounding security forces in order to acrobatically escape the premises.
In search of lover and vampire/lycan hybrid Michael Corvin.
Little does she know that during her cryogenic slumber she gave birth to a hybrid child known as Subject 2/Eve (India Eisley) whom the lycans now viciously seek.
She rescues her daughter from their clutches and is then fortunately provided with sanctuary at a secretive coven by the curious and friendly David (Theo James).
But the lycans soon come calling and successfully recapture little Eve before taking her back to home base.
Serene must now break into Antigen and rescue her daughter before the diabolical Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea) can cut her to pieces.
And proliferate his cure.
Oh, and humans caught on to the existence of vampires and lycans and killed most of them during The Purge which took place at the time Antigen acquired Serene.
If you really like the Underworld series and don't mind that its lore isn't significantly internally diversified or particularized, and are only seeking an hour-and-a-half of fast paced tormented action, Awakening will work for you, as it contains that which you desire.
If you are seeking the historical element that made some of its predecessors more noteworthy steer clear as there's little of tangential yet critical value within besides a brute examination of different generational attitudes concerning survival, a regenerative super-lycan (whose presence goes nowhere) (Kris Holden-Ried as Quint Lane), and a visionary cop (Michael Ealy as Detective Sebastian) who doesn't want to recondition The Purge's hysteria.
Headstrong, stunted and brief.
Could have used less hyperactivity.
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