Drop of Life Trailer: Privatization of Water

Watch trailer of Drop of Life

In 20 years, says activist Shalini, 2/3 of the world population will have a problem to access water...

I got this by mail:

The story that Shalini is trying to tell about the privatization of
water needs to be seen and heard far and wide. You can help this happen just
by watching the trailer (link below). Shalini has entered her film into
Spielberg's ON THE LOT film contest. If she wins she will get a million
dollar development deal with Dreamworks. Since the contest looks at
how many times people view the films, you can help by taking a few minutes to
view the trailer, review it and/or send the link to others.

The site defines the film as "Drama Action Futuristic Sci-Fi Eco-Chic"... it's kind of a weird combination, I'm not sure how well this works. But it does features the cute girl from "Fire".

First Black Disney Princess

Afropop.org sources tell me that Disney is working on a film about New Orleans

The Frog Princess is an animated film currently in development by Walt Disney Feature Animation. It will be the first traditionally animated (2-D) feature film in Disney's animated features canon since 2004's Home on the Range. It will be directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, with music composed by Randy Newman.

Sources have revealed that the film will be an American fairy tale musical set in New Orleans during the 1920s Jazz Age, and the leading character, Maddy, will be the first black Disney princess. ^[1]

The film is scheduled for release in 2009.

Babel

Babel’s Official Site,
Babel’s trailer

I believe Babel is the best film and most important film I have seen in the past year. It is a film that encourages an understanding of the social global ties that exist in our world today. It is a sensitive, complex, original, well-written film that keeps you in suspense and impresses you with cinematography.

I admire Alejandro González Iñárritu for his fantastic Amores Perros, which I consider one of the best films I have ever seen.

(It got 96% in Rotten Tomatoes)

I would like to write a more extensive review of this film later on.

Žižek about Children of Men

Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, wrote an essay about the film "Children of Men".


Here are several quotes out of order:

If the terrorists are ready to wreck this world for love of the other, our warriors on terror are ready to wreck their own democratic world out of hatred for the Muslim other.
==

Today’s predominant mode of politics is a politics of fear, a defense against potential victimization or harassment: fear of immigrants, fear of crime, fear of godless sexual depravity, fear of the excessive State itself (with too high taxation), fear of ecological catastrophies, fear of harassment (which is why Political Correctness is the exemplary liberal form of the politics of fear). Such a politics always relies on the frightening rallying of frightened men. The big event in Europe in the early 2006 was that the anti-immigration politics “went mainstream”: they finally cut the umbilical link that connected them to the far Right fringe parties. From France to Germany, from Austria to Holland, in the new spirit of pride at one’s cultural and historical identity, the main parties now find it acceptable to stress that the immigrants are guests who have to accommodate themselves to the cultural values that define the host society – it is “our country, love it or leave it.”
==

In a typical Hollywood sci-fi, the future world may be full of unheard-of objects and inventions, but even the cyborgs interact exactly the way we do – or, rather, did in old Hollywood melodramas and action movies. In The Children of Men, there are no new gadgets, London is exactly the same as it is now, only more so – Cuaron merely brought out its latent poetic and social potentials: the greyness and decay of the littered suburbs, the omni-presence of video-surveillance… The film reminds us that, of all strange things we can imagine, the weirdest is reality itself. Hegel remarked long ago that a portrait of a person resembles it more than this person itself. The Children of Men is a science-fiction of our present itself.

It is 2027, with the human race rendered infertile - the earth’s youngest inhabitant, born 18 years ago, was just killed in Buenos Aires. The UK lives in a permanent state of emergency, anti-terrorist quads chasing illegal immigrants, the state power administering the dwindling population which vegetates in sterile hedonism. Are these two features – hedonist permissiveness plus new forms of social apartheid and control based on fear – not what our societies are about? Here comes Cuaron’s stroke of a genius – as he put it in one of his interviews: “Many of the stories of the future involve something like ‘Big Brother,’ but I think that’s a 20th-century view of tyranny. The tyranny happening now is taking new disguises — the tyranny of the 21st century is called ‘democracy’.” This is why the rulers of his world are not grey and uniformed Orwellian “totalitarian” bureaucrats, but enlightened democratic administrators, cultured, each with his or her own “life style.” When the hero visits an ex-friend, now a top government official, to gain a special permit for a refugee, we enter something like a Manhattan upper-class gay couple loft, the informally dressed official with his crippled partner at the table.

Children of Men is obviously not a film about infertility as a biological problem. The infertility Cuaron’s film is about was diagnosed long ago by Friedrich Nietzsche, when he perceived how Western civilization is moving in the direction of the Last Man, an apathetic creature with no great passion or commitment: unable to dream, tired of life, he takes no risks, seeking only comfort and security, an expression of tolerance with one another: “A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. ‘We have discovered happiness,’ - say the Last Men, and they blink.”

Dans Paris

[click on the title for a link]

Last night I went to a film called "Dans Paris" [Inside Paris].
It was part of the "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema" festival [February 28 - March 11].

I loved the film and I recommend it.

It was refreshingly original in content and form and it dealt with a deep and sensetive subject--depression--with delicacy, non-cliche understanding and humor. "Dans Paris" is about three men of the same family, two brothers and their father, and their relationship with (their) women as well as with each other.

In the first scene Jonathan (played by the charming Louis Garrel from The Dreamers) looks straight at the camera and addresses the viewers.

Jumping out of bed in which a man and a woman were sleeping on both his sides, the actor explains he will be the omniscient narrator of the film and will get back into character straight after this confession. He also explains he is not the main character of the film, and asks the viewers a 'final question'- can love really make one jump over a bridge?
These first 5 minutes of the film managed to charm me straight away.

The film has several scenes in which the actors recite poetry or prose in a very natural way instead of a dialogue, and sometimes they sing to each other instead of talking. I'm not a musicals person, and this worked perfectly. I found it quite refreshing. The way they played with words, scripts, music and also some dance and quiet moments.

This is not giving away the content of the film, so you can go watch it and enjoy.
It was fun, deep, playful, sensetive, artistic and experimental. Surely, that is a rarity.