The Island President

As much as I enjoy a well written and unique story that has been created for the sake of entertainment, it is always nice to throw in a well made documentary from time to time. It wasn't the best made documentary that I have ever seen, but The Island President was an eye opening movie to the issue that is global warming and global flooding. The movie follows the president of the Maldives (or rather former president since he resigned according to the end of the movie) and his effort to try and get a worldwide effort towards reducing carbon emissions. I don't completely understand the science behind all of it, but somehow the carbon emissions are what create global warming and are the driving force for melting the ice caps. The reason that the Maldives and its president is more significant when talking about the climate issue is because the Maldives is the lowest lying country in the world. According to the movie, the highest point in the whole country is only something like 6 meters above sea level, so there exists a real possibility that the whole country will disappear completely under water because of the rising sea level.

The movie was relatively slow, and I'm not going to lie, there were a couple of points in the movie where I nodded off. However, there were many interesting points in the movie that were eye opening, one of which was seeing the overall selfishness of many countries that truly did not seem to care about the idea of a whole country disappearing. As an american and having had limited interaction with other cultures and their views, it was interesting seeing how these people (mostly from the Maldives and Denmark) felt about other countries such as the U.S., India, and China. It was a fairly sad portrayal of how selfishness and shortsightedness really does affect politics. I was happy though that the U.S., it seemed, did not oppose the passage of the agreement being pushed for by the Maldives. Although I'm fairly pessimistic about the chances of the Maldives' chances of surviving, it was still a good experience to watch the movie and hope that at the very least if they fail to survive, it will lead to the rest of the world wising up to the problem.

Also, it surprised me at first to recognize so many great Radiohead songs within the movie. It then led me to look up the soundtrack to the movie which led me to many articles explaining how Thom Yorke (lead singer of Radiohead) gave the film makers rights to use all of their songs, which was awesome to me. I knew that Thom was a big activist, so I wasn't completely shocked. It did make me happy though seeing one of my favorite bands supporting a good cause.

REPENT!!

As most people know, yesterday was the supposed “end of the world” as predicted by the Mayan calendar. Therefore, I appropriately watched the movie Seeking a Friend for the End of the World last night in order to prepare myself mentally for the end of all humanity…luckily that wasn't the case however and we have lived to see another day. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I actually am a big lover of the whole “end of the world/zombie apocalypse” genre. I have just always seemed to love seeing people in those sorts of situations and watching the theoretical way in which characters would react to them. I definitely prefer more of the serious interpretations such as Melancholia or 28 Days Later, but I still enjoy the occasional comedic twist to an obviously morbid situation.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was a very enjoyable movie and fairly well made. I felt that Kiera Knightly and Steve Carrell did very well in their respectable roles and truly made you care about the outcome of them. I feel like most of the other characters were miscast/poorly written. I was thoroughly disappointed with Martin Sheen as the Father. The whole re-connection with him just didn't feel dramatic enough. The movie tried to smoothly transition from being just the goofy lovable comedy of a morbid situation (such as Shaun of the Dead) to the more dramatic character piece such as Melancholia, but I just didn’t feel like it nailed it well enough. The only two scenes in which I felt were impactful in a dramatic sense were the part where Penny (Kiera Knightly) was on the phone with her family, which bothered me how easy it was for her to just call them with a satellite phone but whatever, and the part at the very end of the movie where Dodge (Steve Carrell) is laying with Penny saying how much he loves her while also trying to keep her calm until the end came. Those were both fairly powerful moments within the movie that I enjoyed. I actually strongly disliked many of the comedic moments much more than the dramatic ones.

The part at the beginning where there was the party and when you met Dodge’s friends just didn’t land for me and I don't think I laughed once. I hate quite a few of those actors in there and thought the characters just weren't funny. I also didn't see the point of many scenes within the movie such as the guy who picked them up in the truck. It didn't add anything to the development of the Penny and Dodge’s relationship and it didn't have any comedy in it. It was basically a drawn out way of putting forth the idea that in the situation people would possibly pay a service to be murdered. It just took way too long and could have gotten the point across much quicker without wasting time that could have been devoted to developing the main characters more or at least donating more time to showing Dodge and his dad rekindling their relationship. I mean, come on. Dodge hasn’t seen his dad in 25 years and you can’t donate more than one scene to showing them rebuilding a relationship that only hadn’t a second chance because of the end of the world?? That whole dynamic between the two of them could have been so powerful and really shifted the movie towards the dramatic side they were looking for, but they failed at that.

Overall, I thought the movie was decent. Luckily I didn’t have super high expectations so I don’t have the disappointment factor. I would say that it hit and missed. I was entertained, but, sadly, it ended up fizzling away just like the Mayan's prediction.

Synec-what??

I learned a very important lesson last night when I watched a movie that I was recommended by a random guy in my advertising class. I had gotten talking to him while waiting for our late professor, and it happened that he was an RTF (Radio Television and Film) major. I then asked him whether he had seen The Master yet since it had just come out and looked interesting. He hadn't but we then talked about what we were thinking the movie was going to be like. I mentioned how I was a fan of Phillip Seymour Hoffman (who is one of the main characters in The Master), so he then asked if I had seen Synecdoche, New York. I said that I hadn't even heard of it, and so he then recommended I watch it. I finally got around to it last night and I learned something very profound about movies. If you don't even have an idea how to properly pronounce the title of the movie, you are probably not going to enjoy it!!

Sadly, this turned out to be true. I didn't truly hate it. It had some redeeming qualities such as the fact that Hoffman really was great in it and there were many powerful scenes where you feel for him and other characters. Also, the cinematography was well done. Not the best looking movie I've ever seen, but better than your average Hollywood movie. The only part that lost me was the story. It slowly and slowly got progressively weirder, and there were many parts of the movie that I still don't completely understand the symbolic or metaphorical meaning of them. I thoroughly think that some of them may not even have reasons. Maybe I should slow down for a second and summarize a bit what the story line entailed.

It is about this theatre director (Hoffman) who does a play that becomes critically praised and because of it he gets awarded a McCarthy Genius Grant in order to put on a special play written by himself. He then attempts to create this insanely huge scale play that basically creates a "world" within New York City. The whole movie takes place over 40 years or something, through multiple divorces of his, and him falling in and out of insanity. The whole movie really made no sense to me even after reading a review online trying to explain what happened. There were small parts of the script that made for interesting stories on their own, but it seemed like none of them flowed together and created an understandable cohesive story. I'm sure that the director was attempting to get some sort of point across regarding some large philosophical idea (possibly death since that was a key part of what Hoffman's character dwells on), but I can thoroughly admit that I did not get that great enlightenment.

So next time, I should make sure to ask some other movies a person likes before I take their recommendations seriously. Or maybe the kid had just been forced to watch it in one of his classes and thought it would be funny to make a sad gullible kid go out and watch it too. If so, well played.