My handbasket
I saw two good, but dark movies this past week: Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth. Both were very well done, but both leave you kind of depressed thinking about the ability of humankind to do terrible things. I’ve been looking forward to Pan’s Labyrinth for a long time, so much so that I have it set as my desktop at work, which has the opening date in the bottom left hand corner. This ended up being frustrating as it didn’t open in Seattle at the same time it opened elsewhere, so on opening day, as I excitedly flipped open the newspaper to check for times, it was nowhere to be found. It turned out to be wonderful, although in a completely different way than I was expecting. While much of the movie is spent in a fantasy world, this world exists mainly to mask a very dark, brutal, and violent reality. Not a children’s movie in any way.
Ariel and I also went to 14/48, the world’s quickest theater festival this weekend. As one would expect with theater created in 24 hours, it was a little hit or miss, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Written, directed, and performed all within a day. I hope everybody involved was able to get a good night of rest after it was all over.
Last night, Ariel and I watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (I really, really wish he was our president). If you haven’t seen it, it’s sobering to say the least. He puts together such a compelling argument. It baffles me that global warming still has detractors. I also came across this today. If the link no longer works, essentially, Greenland’s ice is melting so fast that much of what was previously thought to be part of the mainland turns out to be a collection of islands that were joined to the mainland by the ice (which is no longer there). This scares me more than I can tell you. If Greenland loses all of its ice, the oceans will rise 23 feet! I have no idea how this will all pan out, but humanity’s ability to stick it’s collective head in the sand is almost impressive in its persistence. While I sure hope the world doesn’t go to hell in a handbasket, I’m kind of worried it will.
On a brighter note, it continues to snow here in Seattle. Our house is wonderfully covered in beautiful snow that is actually sticking. With more supposedly on the way! Yay!
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January 18th, 2007 at 11:30 am
pan’s labyrinth, man…def not an uplifting movie by any means, but beautiful. at least you didn’t get stuck sitting behind the tall dude the whole time…
June 14th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
it’s interesting… i actually had a totally different reaction to pan’s labyrinth. i didn’t find it depressing at all. it seemed like the same premise as life is beautiful which i was also very fond of… our whole lives are about making up stories to delude ourselves that the dark parts have meaning =P i didn’t find children of men depressing either, although i liked both of them.
but then again, my friend renee describes my taste in films as “ones that make you want to curl up into a ball and kill yourself”. heh.