Tuesday, March 23, 2010
CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Surrogates (2009)
It’s actually one of my favorite sub-genres because it often involves a very human (hence imperfect) detective or police officer interfacing with new technology and new social norms based on that technology.
Sometimes, this format is what accomplished author Paul Meehan dubbed Tech Noir. Or to bring up the sub-title of his excellent book on the subject, it's "The Fusion of Science Fiction and Film Noir."
To wit, in Soylent Green (1973), Charlton Heston’s investigation of a prostitute's murder led him down the rabbit hole, into a wide-ranging conspiracy concerning food supplies in an overpopulated city of the future.
In Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), Deckard (Harrison Ford) came to a reckoning about what it means to be human -- and even what it means to love -- through his investigation and pursuit of android called Replicants.
Other examples of the future police procedural include Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002), which arrived soon after 9/11 and the Bush Doctrine, and involved preemptive police “strikes” against "thought criminals" who have not yet actually committed a physical crime.
And then there’s also Alex Proyas’s flawed I Robot (2004), concerning a new "leisure" technology's terminal glitch: it might be murderous.
Obviously, some of these films are stronger and more well-regarded than others, but the “future police procedural” is valuable because it offers us one foot in the past (with the genre conventions of the police investigation) and another in the future. It’s a speculative format, but not so speculative that we can’t relate to it. In other words, it reminds us of human history at the same time that it tries to predict accurately the shape of things to come.
In 2009, Hollywood gave audiences the latest example of the “future police procedural,” Jonathan Mostow’s Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis. Based on the 2005-2006 graphic novels by Robert Venditti, the movie adaptation is an 88-minute actioner packed with both intriguing ideas and insightful social commentary on the direction the human race may be heading. Specifically, the film involves the widespread use of avatars…uh, I mean surrogates.
In the near future (2017), ninety-eight percent of the human population makes use of robotic surrogates on a regular, daily basis. This means that the “real” person sits at home in a “stim chair” while his or her better-looking, virtually-indestructible surrogate engages with the world outside.
It is the perfect surrogate who commutes to work (thus cutting down on car accident fatalities). It is the perfect surrogate who engages in sexual intercourse (thus cutting down on the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases). And it is the perfect surrogate who fights our foreign wars (thus cutting down on military fatalities.) But there's a dark underside to this technology as well, as the movie quickly points out.
Indeed, it’s not a stretch to read the whole surrogate phenomenon/revolution as a comment on two specific components of our contemporary 2009 society. First, the anonymity of life (and work) on the Internet. And second, our society’s increasing and even dangerous obsession with youth, beauty and physical perfection.
On the former front, an obese bald man may have a surrogate out in the real world who is a drop-dead gorgeous blond woman. So when you have sex with her, are you really having sex with her? Or with the obese bald man?
Similarly, when we choose a name or “avatar” on the Internet, it may or may not reflect our true identities (including age, sex, nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, or even physical appearance). In other words, our Internet and Surrogate personalities may be but vainglorious fiction. In aggressively living this fiction, this fantasy, the film asks, what do we leave behind in the real world?
In the film, surrogates indeed offer human beings a chance to build an entirely new identity, one outside the constraints of our biological blueprint. In one sense, this is extremely freeing and empowering: we can literally be anybody online (or in Surrogates, in the outside world). Interestingly, the film notes that racial discrimination has diminished in the world of surrogate robots. This is because you "choose" your identity. You can choose to be black, white, Asian, straight or gay, based on your desires, not your biology. in this future world, skin color and sex are just fashion statements.
Yet oppositely, the film suggests there’s at least some level of deception and perhaps even cowardice involved in recasting yourself as someone entirely "new" and "different" I mean, why hide behind the blanketing wall of anonymity if you really believe in yourself, your abilities, and your words? Why pretend to be something you aren't?
One possible answer is that the motives of the hidden "concealer" are impure. When cloaked in anonymity, we can vociferously criticize other people with no possibility of being personally attacked in return. Consider: when an anonymous source attacks a political opponent, is it because the attack is truthful, or because that anonymous attacker is paid to do so, or even already ensconced in an enemy camp? We just can't know. When an anonymous source reviews a movie or book savagely and viciously, is it because the anonymous author was beaten-up as a snot-nosed kid by the author or filmmaker in question? Again, there's just no way to know. Motives become opaque; words can't be taken at face value. Trust is lost.
So anonymity proves itself both a shield and a point of deception: How can we accurately judge the real value of a persons' words if he or she won’t even stand behind his or her real name. Or behind his or her true appearance?
Surrogates has a grand time playing with this notion, utilizing the technology of surrogate robots to make a point about modern life on the Internet. Accordingly, there are at least three occasions in the film during which an operator’s identity proves to be far different from the public face of the surrogate. Operators change surrogates in secret. Operators hide in unlikely surrogates, and so on. This nifty element of the film – a new wrinkle in the police “mystery” -- joyfully updates the format. How can you apprehend a criminal if that criminal's identity is fluid, ever-changing?
Finally, Surrogates seems to suggest that anonymity on the Net or in the real world, is actually a mechanism of trickery, denial, and hiding. “Look at yourself,” the film’s luddite Prophet (Ving Rhames) implores. “We’re not meant to experience life through a machine.” Later, we see a banner that reads “Unplug Yourselves!” and it’s another warning about living a false online life at the expense of our life as so-called "Meatbags," flesh-and-blood humans.
The company that creates surrogate robots in the film is VSI, and it has a slogan: "Life...Only Better." What this sound-byte comes down to is that every surrogate robot in the film boasts a sort of super-enhanced (but ultimately creepy...) beauty. Everyone in this future has perfect, youthful, almost plastic-looking, unblemished skin. All the men are tall and athletically-built. All the women are curvaceous and perfectly-coiffed. And most importantly, everyone appears to be young and vibrant. It's the Botox, plastic-surgery, breast-implant, diet pill culture taken to the logical and extreme ending point: robots with perfect tits, robots with perfect hair, and robots with the Peter Pan Syndrome: forever young.
This is disturbing, however, because of what the world of surrogates has so plainly lost: diversity. Bruce Willis (as Agent Greer) is a perfect example of this argument.
As a surrogate, Greer appears plastic and vapid (though young). Yet as a weathered, bald man in his mid-fifties -- as the real Operator -- he looks terrific...and utterly distinctive, unique.
There's a nobility in wrinkles; an honor in wearing your years on your face, the movie implies. A few powerful interests have sold to the many that there is a single concept of beauty, and that somehow we must all adhere to it. That's true in the movie, and in our lives.
Washboard abs. Big breasts. Perpetual youth. We can't all be Taylor Lautner or Angelina Jolie. And we shouldn't have to be to be considered beautiful or valuable.
Again, we're losing something vital, right now, here in our world, as we creep ever-closer to the universe of Logan's Run: where only those under 21 are considered worthwhile; where qualities such as physical perfection are preferred over qualities like intelligence, even experience. This world of "physical perfection" is an unattainable lie, and one that makes many people feel inferior (and hopeless) if they don't conform to society's stringent rules. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and Surrogates goes out of its way to remind us that by depicting how plastic and fake the beauty of 2017 really is.
I really enjoyed these didactic, science-fiction qualities of Surrogates. Yet, honestly, the film is one of the few "future police procedural" examples that gets the speculative sci-fi right, and the standard cop elements/investigation wrong. Specifically, the film involves a hand-held O.D. (Overload Device) weapon that can simultaneously fry a surrogate and his operator at home. The weapon liquefies human brains and blows out robot circuitry.
In investigating the murder of a surrogate, Greer learns of this weapon, and of the dark forces hoping to acquire and control it. But the problem is this: the culprit, when he is ultimately unmasked, has no compelling reason to act as viciously as he does; no motive. His master plan is to "upload" the O.D. weapon into the surrogate network and kill 98% of the world's population (meaning the Operators as well as the Surrogates). A little extreme, no?
This plan is essentially genocide, yet the villain sees it as a gift, a "rebirth" of the human race. That just makes no logical sense, especially when (as the movie makes plain), there is an easy way to destroy all the surrogates but leave the Operators intact, thus accomplishing the villain's goal of destroying surrogacy. Also, the villain himself is hooked up to a surrogate as he is about to launch his overload virus, so he's committing suicide too...
The details of Greer's investigation never prove particularly compelling, and the movie fails to make enough of a big character moment involving this protagonist. Greer's surrogate is destroyed in a pulse-pounding, well-directed chase sequence, leaving the Operator -- the man -- no choice but to unplug, leave his home for the first time in years, and reckon with ugly, messy reality.
After one scene in which Greer experiences a brief panic attack, this subplot is never again addressed in the film. A key to the "future police procedural" format is the detective's level of personal involvement with the revelatory investigation. How Greer is personally impacted by his sudden return to the real world should be the crux of the movie; and it isn't. We should understand what it means to be human again, in a dangerous world with high stakes. But the movie simply pays lip service to that idea.
There's a subplot here involving Greer's wife (Rosamund Pike), who has fled into her Surrogate on a seemingly permanent basis after a deeply affecting personal tragedy. It's an emotional subplot, but it's treated as a side-alley, a B-plot, and not as a convincing motive for Greer to throw all of contemporary society into unfettered chaos (as he does at the film's conclusion).
Again, perhaps it is my cynicism and personal bias, but I tend to prefer my future police procedurals gritty and realistic. I don't believe society can be changed in a day; I don't believe one simple act (or stroke of a keyboard) can undo decades of change and untangle decades of entrenched interests. In Soylent Green and Blade Runner, the imperfect, dominant system isn't brought down. Either the hero is killed by City Hall, or he flees City Hall, a fugitive. I find those resolutions more believable than the upbeat ending here. In fact, I would have preferred the darker ending of the comic-book series. It culminated with the destruction of surrogacy as well; but also with a suicide. You can't change the world without consequences.
Ultimately I enjoyed Surrogates' science fiction metaphors (particularly the message "Live for Real,") but felt that the script was contrived and the resolution nothing but forced Hollywood B.S. I don't buy the villain's motives either.
This is a particularly frustrating experience: that the film's cop angle should be so trite and cliched even while Mostow nails the really tough stuff: the science fiction.
So Surrogates gets a berth in the pantheon of "future cop procedurals," but not, ultimately, in one of the top spots. Like the Surrogates of the film's title, the script is just, finally, a little too...plastic.
Alisha Ali's Profile Pictures
Source: lollycelebritiespics.blogspot.com
David Beckham and His New Bentley
Source: livinglikecelebs.blogspot.com
Fringe Theory: Manhatan and the Alternate Universe
Many people have noticed that in the opening sequence of the Fringe episode Jacksonville, the city of Manhattan is misspelled "Manhatan". Could this really be just a typo? Not a chance. This was the first hint that the opening scene started out in the alternate universe!
There are other odd things that could have been a tip-off: the strange reaction to seeing coffee (perhaps due to the "blight" mentioned in Grey Matters), and the blueprints for a "new" Pentagon.
Ted Pratchet can be seen wearing a wedding ring though out the scene, and we learn later that our Ted Pratchet was never married. And just for fun, there was even a photo of the Twin Towers on the wall of the office.
So what exactly happened? It was the reverse of Walter's car experiment. Thomas Newton's experiment transported the Dodst & Rathje building from "Manhatan" in the alternate universe, which collided with the Manhattan building in our universe. At the end of the episode, the universe compensated by taking the Brayson Place Hotel.
Monday, March 22, 2010
1.10 crores To Ileana For ‘Tom and Jerry’
Source: exclusivewoods.blogspot.com
Aishwarya Rai attend "Retta Suzhi" Audio Launch - Photo Gallery
Source: exclusivewoods.blogspot.com
Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice is a film about two ghosts called Adam and Barbara they died in a horrific car accident then about a week later this couple moves into there home with there daughter Lydia but the ghosts hate it and they try to scare them away but it doesn't work then Lydia catches them up in the attic and ends up becoming friends with them but because they failed to get rid of them out of there house they find out how to contact this evil ghost to scare them away all the have to do is say the word Beetlejuice three times then he appears.
They had no idea how evil and dangerous he really was and to get rid of him all you had to do was say Beetlejuice three times again but once he was out he refused to go back he knew how to do all this cool stuff so when they wanted rid of him and started saying his name he would put a zip over there mouth and when they would open it he would put a piece of metal over there mouth so that they couldn't take it of because he was trying to marry Lydia even though she was alive but then this big snake at least i think it was a snake comes crashing through the ceiling and eats him and after all of that they all come to an agreement that they will all stay in the house they will just divide it up between them because the house was that big so they all lived happily ever after.
Rachel Bilson-Steal The look! Shhh..
Scooping out celeb's day to day fashions is my niche and stealing Rachel's refined edge look for much less is the most happening ending!Click on the item for purchase info and buy the whole look I put together!
The Cult-TV Faces of: Jonathan Harris
A mainstay of the 1960s and 1970s, the late Jonathan Harris headlined in several popular cult-TV series over the years, both as heroes and as scoundrels. How many of the many cult-tv faces of Jonathan Harris do you recognize? If you can, name the series, character, and episode (though that's harder this week...).
Stephanie Seymour Shows a Flawless Bikini Body at 40
Source: celebpic.blogspot.com
The Chloe Glowey
Totally diggin' these Chloe sunglasses from their Summer 2009 collection. These shades make me think, "Mary J. Blige meets Victoria Beckham." The fly frames go for $290, but Delia's has a similar version for only $12. Sport these with a pair of sexy stilettos or thigh-high boots, and you're golden!
Source: rhetoricandy.blogspot.com
Lady Gaga Surfaces Without her Make-up, and it ain't Pretty!
Source: celebskank.blogspot.com
Kings Punjab XI Wins The Matach After Super Over
Preety zinta's Team Kings Punjab Eleven Won The Beautiful Match After Tide Match Then Starts the super Over and kings punjab eleven won the match
Hot Mallika Sherawat Videos From Murder Hot Scenes
Katrina Kaif Bikini Images
Deepika Padukone Photos And Videos
Hot And Sizzingly Tanushree Dutta Exposing Photos
For Gossips And Mirch Masala Log On To Bollywood Paradize
Is There Really a Diet Pill That Works?
Source: www.blogger.com
Weekend Weirdness SXSW Trailer and Review: Dirty Pictures
It’s a crazy, mixed up world and we are thankful for movies that offer proof. Slashfilm’s Weekend Weirdness examines such flicks, whether in the form of a SXSW premiere for a provocative indie, a mini review or an interview. The new documentary, Dirty Pictures, opens with a shot of two old folks naturally sitting and chatting in good spirits. The man has a white beard, white hair, and is blessed with one of the longest eyebrow hairs I have ever friggin' seen, white or otherwise. The man looks like a retired professor who has smoked many joints late at night at a chalkboard. Close. This is Dr. Alexander Shulgin, or Sasha for short, the chemist credited with discovering the mind-altering effects of MDMA or Ecstasy and lesser known psychoactive drugs numbering into the hundreds. Utterances like “I don’t like drugs that inhibit communication, like 2C-E…I mean MDE. …2-CI is good,” roll off his ...
It’s a crazy, mixed up world and we are thankful for movies that offer proof. Slashfilm’s Weekend Weirdness examines such flicks, whether in the form of a SXSW premiere for a provocative indie, a mini review or an interview.
The new documentary, Dirty Pictures, opens with a shot of two old folks naturally sitting and chatting in good spirits. The man has a white beard, white hair, and is blessed with one of the longest eyebrow hairs I have ever friggin’ seen, white or otherwise. The man looks like a retired professor who has smoked many joints late at night at a chalkboard. Close. This is Dr. Alexander Shulgin, or Sasha for short, the chemist credited with discovering the mind-altering effects of MDMA or Ecstasy and lesser known psychoactive drugs numbering into the hundreds. Utterances like “I don’t like drugs that inhibit communication, like 2C-E…I mean MDE. …2-CI is good,” roll off his tongue like the drugs roll onto it. His wife, author Ann Shulgin, warmly backs him up with, “If you can’t make love on a drug, there’s something not quite right [with it].”
Weekend Weirdness was able to screen an early, semi-rough cut of Dirty Pictures before its premiere at SXSW in Austin last week. As drug docs go, it’s sober and objective, and since it deals primarily in chemical substances the film doesn’t offer up the eye candy of, say, the recently reviewed doc Know Your Mushrooms. Nor does it offer any sort of illicit visuals possibly conjured by the title; “dirty pictures” is simply what Shulgin calls the charmingly classic and precise molecular compound illustrations he draws on his amber-colored drug bottles. This isn’t to say director Étienne Sauret didn’t happen upon the opportunity to capture second hand sex-tales. Ann Shulgin tells the camera that she’s written at length about her sexual experiences while on super-trips—published tomes on them—but we curiously never hear about these sexcapades in detail. Ageists will be fine with that, I imagine.
To contrast the Shulgins—who conduct their studies independently at home in San Francisco and in Sasha’s backyard lab (Breaking Bad’s Walter White would approve)—the filmmakers talk with several modern day academics and scientists in the drug field. These professionals, as one would expect, tend to view their white-coated experiments and studies of psychoactive substances using a clinical and atheistic eye. Much of the doc allows for reserved awe and curiosity at Dr. Shulgin, who has personally ingested all of his studied substances for decades and promptly recorded his findings about their mystic and spiritual qualities.
What about the cops? Rather awesomely, Shulgin held a license sanctioned by the Drug Enforcement Agency until the mid ‘90s that legally permitted him to hold elaborate drug sampling meet-ups with colleagues. These group tests ceased—or at least slowed—after the DEA raided his lab, but the Shulgins were never charged with criminal wrong doing. His wife proposes the bust was incited by the publishing of a book of studies they wrote entitled PiHKAL and remembers with a tsk tsk punch, “…these people [on the DEA] were really scared [of the peyote]. It’s just a damned cactus.” Dr. Shulgin adds in a huff, “There’s no mention in the Constitution of drugs anywhere.”
One of Dr. Shulgin’s theories discussed in the doc–if too briefly—suggests that human beings are equipped with active psychoactive receptors in their brains because eons ago the human body naturally contained psychoactive substances. Evolution phased this out i.e. “Wow, that hairy animal over there is such a spectacularly pretty and well built creature. It’s feathers are turning into stars. [chomp] [chomp] [chomp]” It’s worth noting that late writer and counter-culture figure Terence McKenna had similar ideas about evolution and drugs, but these are not mentioned in the film.
Today, Dr. Shulgin continues to look down at many psychoactive drug studies because they are conducted on animals and thereby ignore what he feels are many of the drugs’ therapeutic and psychological benefits for humankind. (It would have been interesting to hear his ideas about the impact these drugs have had on creativity and artistic achievement). For viewers who don’t follow this subculture and science, the doc will shed light on the surprising amount of academic activity involving psychedelic substances ongoing at universities (Purdue, John Hopkins). The doc rarely if ever sheds an equally positive light on recreational drug use for hedonistic purposes—the ill-fashioned, semi-waning rave culture and aught movements like Burning Man are filmed at a distance or shown via old news broadcasts.
For viewers who have tripped, the film addresses the common wonderment about the experience: is it a brief window into enlightened bliss and/or frightening madness…or a glimpse of something bigger. With America’s younger generations typically less accepting of traditional gods and religions than those previous, and secular science accepted as, thankfully, the norm, Dr. Shulgin represents the last of the authentic ’60s Haight-Ashbury idealism.
We watch as he tends to his impressive collection of peyote and other druggy cacti,wobbling a bit and facing mortality. The film unexpectedly cuts to shots of the Shulgins staring out at the Great Pyramids while traveling in Egypt. Eschewing “goals,” Alexander Shulgin speaks with excitement about all the ancient mental hallways he’s walked and all of the infinite ones left explore still, destinations that existed before the DEA and will continue to after his life permanently goes hypercolor or black, like everyone else’s.
Dirty Pictures is an official selection of the 2010 SXSW Film Festival. For its SXSW info page, here.
For previous installments of Weekend Weirdness, here.
Hunter Stephenson can be reached on Twitter. If you’d like to send him a screener, or a screening invitation: h.attila/gmail.
Cele mai frumoase rochii la Golden Globes 2010
Acum doar cateva, la Los Angeles, a avut loc a 67-a editie a Globurilor de Aur. Alegerile vestimentare ale nominalizatilor si invitatilor au fost, ca de obicei, in cazul unui eveniment cu o astfel de amploare, un important punct de interes.
Cei mai buni stilisti si designeri au conlucrat pentru ca celebritatile prezente la Golden Globes sa arate cat se poate de bine. Ploaia, care putea distuge coafurile si pretioasele rochii, a fost inca o provocare pentru ei.
Zoe Saldana, vedeta din Avatar, a optat pentru o creatie Louis Vuitton cu volane si trena.
Pentru Christina Hendricks tanarul designer Christian Siriano a personalizat aceasta superba rochie cu volane, din colectia de primavara. Tinuta este completata de bijuteriile Loree Rodkin si poseta Christian Louboutin.
Drew Barrymore se bucura de ploaie, desi i-a udat rochia nude Atelier Versace, toamna 2009, decorata cu cristale. Bijuteriile sunt Loraine Schwartz si clutch-ul Roger Vivier
Diane Kruger a iesit in evidenta cu rochia Christian Lacroix couture accesorizata cu un clutch Raven Kauffman couture
Nicole Kidman a imbracat o rochie din satin Nina Ricci pe care a accesorizat-o cu bijuterii Fred Leighton
Cameron Diaz in Alexander McQueen, rochie din precolectia de toamna 2009, bratara vintage din anii '5o de la Van Cleef and Arpels si pantofi peep toe din satin de la Ferragamo
Creatiile Marchesa nu puteau lipsi de pe covorul rosu. Kate Hudson arata impecabil intr-o rochie alba, din colectia pentru mirese, pantofi Casadei si bijuterii Stephen Russel
Noua silueta a Christinei Aguilera, mult mai supla, a fost pusa in valoare de rochia in ton delicat de piersica, cu detalii metalice, creatie a Donatellei Versace
Dupa cum ne-a obisnuit, Jennifer Aniston este minimalista. Tinta este destul de banala si lipsita de stralucire, dar rochia Valentino este frumoasa, sandalele sunt Versace, iar bijuteriile Fred Leighton.
Penelope Cruz a stralucit intr-o creatie Giorgio Armani Prive accesorizata cu diamante Chopard
Pentru acest eveniment Chloe Sevigny a renuntat la tinutele moderne cu un aer rebel si la rochiile foarte scurte, purtand o rochie din sifon, cu volane, din colectia de primavara semnata de Maria Grazia Chiuri si Pier Paolo Piccioli pentru Valentino. Bijuteriile Buccellati i-au completat lookul.
Sandra Bullock a aratat superb in rochia mov Bottega Veneta din colectia de primavara 2010, clutch de la aceeasi casa, pantofi Casadei si bijuterii Loraine Schwartz.
Movul a fost culoarea vedeta la Globurile de aur, Leona Lewis, Jane Krakowski si Rose Byrne au facut aceeasi alegere cromatica.
Rose Byrne intr-o creatie Lanvin din precolectia de toamna 2010