― DavidM, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:42 (seventeen years ago) link
― Lostandfound, Monday, 23 April 2007 19:22 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 23 April 2007 19:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 19:58 (seventeen years ago) link
― HI DERE, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:05 (seventeen years ago) link
― Lostandfound, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:11 (seventeen years ago) link
― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:19 (seventeen years ago) link
― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― HI DERE, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:27 (seventeen years ago) link
― Lostandfound, Monday, 23 April 2007 21:02 (seventeen years ago) link
― Kiwi, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― That one guy that quit, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:17 (seventeen years ago) link
― max, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:19 (seventeen years ago) link
― kingfish, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago) link
― Kiwi, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:33 (seventeen years ago) link
― blueski, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:36 (seventeen years ago) link
― the next grozart, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:38 (seventeen years ago) link
― Beth Parker, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:44 (seventeen years ago) link
― chap, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:47 (seventeen years ago) link
― blueski, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link
― Masonic Boom, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:50 (seventeen years ago) link
― the next grozart, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:51 (seventeen years ago) link
― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:52 (seventeen years ago) link
― gff, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:56 (seventeen years ago) link
― Masonic Boom, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:58 (seventeen years ago) link
― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― Masonic Boom, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:31 (seventeen years ago) link
Good discussions above. I saw this in the theater back in January, and just rented it last weekend and watched it twice more. I really love this film, Cuaron is a fantastic director -- Y tu mama tambien was great too.
Would anyone recommend the Harry Potter movie Cuaron directed? I've neither read any of the books nor seen the other movies, but I was thinking about renting this one just for Cuaron's directing.
Also, here's one of the many, many fantastic reviews to be found on IMDB message boards, this one on Children of Men:
"Unimaginative rubbish. It's dull, and it's pointless. The soundtrack seems like it was made by Merzbow."
― Mark Clemente, Tuesday, 26 June 2007 14:02 (sixteen years ago) link
mmm fantastic
― blueski, Tuesday, 26 June 2007 14:10 (sixteen years ago) link
Mark - Cuaron's Potter flick is by far the cream of that crop, & def. worth a see. & not knowing much about HP shouldn't be a hindrance.
― David R., Tuesday, 26 June 2007 14:20 (sixteen years ago) link
I finally saw this on DVD last night and wow. I live pretty near Bexhill, it just felt so real, like this could really happen.
What it made me think of was something I read in an essay by Richard Rorty, where he described the greatest fear of one of the original American pragmatists, James or Dewey maybe. It was something along the lines that the greatest fear, if you take God out of the equation, is of the human race ending. That there will be no one to pass knowledge onto, that it all will have been pointless. He uses this image of the human race as existing on an iced-over pond, that we think we are so safe but at any moment it may break and we all may drown. The phrase I think I remember being used was "fellow sufferers", that's what Children of Men was about for me, the hope that though there'll be suffering it may in the end all be worth it.
The comments on those Rotten Tomatoes pages linked up thread are so depressing, many arguing it is little more than leftist propoganda.
I was suprised to noticed that the DVD includes "Comments by Slavoj Žižek", has anyone wathed these? Isn't Žižek anti-humanist or something, I only have a cursory knowledge of his stuff, because for all it's grimness COM was in the end I thought very humanist.
Also for in an odd way it was sort of like a superhardcore Dr Who episode.
― acrobat, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 10:16 (sixteen years ago) link
Also "The Last Dance" by Disco Inferno. That song as a film.
― acrobat, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 10:43 (sixteen years ago) link
thr zizek bit is interesting, i reviewed it. basically it takes little bits of footage from the film that resonate with real-world post-9/11 stuff, like the pens for refugees and the guantanamo stuff, and the armed guards at the railway stations, only abstracted from the film and without the main characters. they could even be off-cuts.
and over this zizek discusses the ‘paradox of anamorphosis’ and argues that ‘the true focus of the film is there in the background’.
he also appears in another doc on the dvd which is about the necessity of utopian thinking. i don't know if he's a humanist. probably he'd say "is it not precisely in the negation of humanism that we are at our most truly humanist?"... while being sucked off by a cult. studs masters student.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 08:44 (sixteen years ago) link
is your review online?
― acrobat, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 08:52 (sixteen years ago) link
naw dogg that was a preview. be in this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/DVD-Stack-Nick-Bradshaw/dp/1847670040/ref=pd_bowtega_2/202-3019500-9727855?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188397839&sr=1-2
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 14:33 (sixteen years ago) link
ah so! srank you velly much!!
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 14:44 (sixteen years ago) link
this movie lost money
― Tracer Hand, Monday, 3 September 2007 10:43 (sixteen years ago) link
Domestic: $35,327,768 51.0% + Foreign: $33,889,234 49.0% = Worldwide: $69,217,002
Production Budget: $76 million
― Tracer Hand, Monday, 3 September 2007 10:44 (sixteen years ago) link
surely it'll make a fair bit on dvd?
― acrobat, Monday, 3 September 2007 10:49 (sixteen years ago) link
i just bought the dvd so that should help
lol xpost
― emsk, Monday, 3 September 2007 10:49 (sixteen years ago) link
"probably he'd say "is it not precisely in the negation of humanism that we are at our most truly humanist?"... while being sucked off by a cult. studs masters student."
Ha ha that's brilliant nrq. OTOH he lambasts that very sort of pseudo-deep inversionism all the time. Not that that disproves your point whatsoever.
― Tim F, Monday, 3 September 2007 12:37 (sixteen years ago) link
don't all films lose money? I have heard that this is a key feature in how they are funded.
― The Real Dirty Vicar, Monday, 3 September 2007 13:29 (sixteen years ago) link
no some movies are hits
― da croupier, Monday, 3 September 2007 13:45 (sixteen years ago) link
the hits pay for the large proportion of movies that lose money.
also lawyers get very, very rich arguing the toss over hollywood's accounting practices.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 08:50 (sixteen years ago) link
Watched it again. Well saw bits of it. Watched the extras with Naomi Klein, Zizek et al prophesising the worst. Would have liked someone with a slightly different outlook to have been interviewed, maybe. Zizek due was kinda right about the film happening in the background but kind of wrong as well. Theo's arc is important y know. It's also IMO about the importance of Solidarity (Rorty again). The opening oddly reminds me of the opeing of Shaun of the Dead, sleepwalking through London as the world falls apart, probably in more films but y know limited frame of reference. Is the bomb meant to go off on Cheapside? Walked past there today then saw some Asian guy being stopped by the police and then all the newspaper front pages with Maddie starring out... and Let's Shake Our Heads About Political Discourse In Switzerland Hell in a handcart, man.
― acrobat, Monday, 10 September 2007 10:43 (sixteen years ago) link
i thought it was fleet street?
i know, zizek is basically overstating it. i was reading some stuff from the early '60s about how wisdescreen and depth-of-focus had made 'bringing the background into the foreground' a thing then, though the examples he was using escape me.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 10 September 2007 10:46 (sixteen years ago) link
Did you read the piece by erk Johann Hari on Zizek in The New Statesman?
― acrobat, Monday, 10 September 2007 10:48 (sixteen years ago) link
i think so. a few months ago?
hari doesn't know what he's talking about really, about anything. the fact he's been employed by the british press as an authority on anything is amazing. what'ss even worse is the americans employ him too.
this is the only hari piece worth reading:
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=831
fuck that guy.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 10 September 2007 10:55 (sixteen years ago) link
The article by Hari is itself postmodern in the sense that Hari speaks of something with limited or clearly 'googled' knowledge of the subject. Hari's article is nothing but a semblance of criticism, a parody. The work of a clown.
― acrobat, Monday, 10 September 2007 11:02 (sixteen years ago) link
That Johann Hari guy bugs the shit out of me for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. He's been on loads of things over the last few months, from Big Brother On The Couch to Newsnight Review, and I have to turn over as soon as his big fat baby face appears. Maybe those articles above will pinpoint my irritation better than I can.
― nate woolls, Monday, 10 September 2007 11:11 (sixteen years ago) link