Where this occasional contrarian, freethinker and all around opinionated sob rumbles on about just about everything under the sun from the movies to art, culture, literature, politics, science, history, blogging, the web, web design, maybe even friends and family and current affairs. (And then some) And if you flatter me a bit, I may even claim to have all the answers.

Monday, December 21, 2009

A Great Movie by a great Canadian


I couldn't wait to see James Cameron's new movie after an eleven year hiatus from movie making. Well, the wait for this James Cameron fan has definitely been worth it and "my" Multiplex does not even have 3-D capability, just good old 2-D, and my town does not have an IMAX theatre either, unfortunately. In spite of my "handicap" I can describe the movie in one word: AWESOME" or in three words: I was impressed. Having seen real tropical rain forest on three continents, I could relate to the setting, but even if you haven't seen the real tropical rain forest you cannot help but be impressed by the computer generated rain forest which is essentially the product of Cameron's fertile imagination. As a passive viewer, I could not help but get completely caught up and "sucked in" by this beautiful fantasy realm. Even though this film would be considered Sci-Fi or fantasy fare, it is really much larger than either of these categories because it has so many obvious parallels to our world which is generally not the case with most Sci-Fi and fantasy films. This is one reason why I found this film so compelling. Even though the essentially simple story is taking place in a distant future on a ficticious planet, in a sense it is really taking place on our planet Earth as we speak. And that is the real magic of this movie.

It transcends the usual categories of Sci-Fi and fantasy and is really part fable, part polemic, part morality tale and in typical Cameron fashion all wrapped up in a generous part of great entertainment. This is no mean accomplishment.

I spoke of magic earlier. I believe this film is a real step (leap?) forward as far as the magic of computer generated moviemaking is concerned. Here, it is becoming obvious that the boundary between naturalism and cutting edge animation is increasingly becoming blurred and in the process is perhaps inventing, as I would suggest, a whole new fusion genre or 'mash up', - to use a contemporary term, -that one could call 'magic realism'.

In closing, (and at this point some discerning readers might question my sanity) I will go out on a limb and say something I rarely say about any movie: I really hope this movie will do well at the box office so Mr Cameron and 20th Century Fox will be inspired to make a sequel and a third one and perhaps even a prequel. (But please, please: NO MADE FOR TV MOVIE VERSION !!) This is where I draw the line.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Has humanity gone collectively insane ?

OK, WHO HASN'T HEARD OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING YET ? HAS EVERYONE LOOKED UP COPENHAGEN ON THE WORLD MAP YET ??

CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE CHANGE, SCHMIMATE CHANGE !

This summit has been billed as the most important summit in the history of mankind. Hmmm !, Okaay ! After I heard this example of shameless, self serving media hype, my immediate thought was.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE OTHER PRESSING ISSUES FACING HUMANITY ?

What about such issues as growing world poverty, capitalist greed gone berserk, a world wide military budget and the attendant waste of the world's finite resources that is going through the roof, the fact that we still live side by side with nukes, bio weapons and chemical weapons, the world's population that is still growing unabated and faster than our capacity to reduce third world poverty.

MY POINT IS: WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE ISSUES AND OUR COMMITMENT TO TACKLE THEM? HAVE THEY COMPLETELY FALLEN OFF THE RADAR SCREEN?

JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!

A while ago the excellent idea of taxing all currency trades world wide with a minuscule tax of (0.5 %, I believe) was proposed. (I can't remember if other financial products were included), (remember, these transactions or "investments" don't really produce actual value) The idea was to use this tax to tackle some of humanity's most pressing problems.

(YES, INCLUDING THE PROBLEM OF CLIMATE CHANGE!)

The idea never gained traction for reasons that any cynic worth his or her salt can piece together for themselves. You may ask: WHAT IS YOUR POINT? My point is: most countries, including most if not all of the rich ones are border line broke and are running high deficits again.

We were not willing to tackle just ONE! of the world's problems during good economic times when we presumably had the money. What makes us think we will tackle one pressing problem now during tough economic times? (It's the ECONOMY, stupid)

JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!

The way the media carries on about climate change you could be forgiven for believing that solving the problem of climate change (whatever that actually means) will solve all of humanity's problems. ---- ARE WE REALLY THIS NAIVE ? -- (AND BRAIN WASHED ?)

JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!