Children of Men

[intertext]

Bleak. Bleak. Bleak. Bleak. Bleak. Bleak. Oh, and did I say bleak?

Where did the fashion start that the future was all washed out colour? We don't owe it to Bladerunner, because the colours in Bladerunner are quite rich, even if seen through a filter of rain.

I have to admit that I've never read the P.D James novel on which this movie was based. My colleague the expert on dystopias has and commented that the film-makers had got the atmosphere and the look but lost the ideas. Certainly I didn't get much in the way of ideas from this movie. WTF was it about? I mean really? Beyond the obvious extrapolations of "gee if we carry on the way we're going the world is going to be just like this and it will suck."

I don't know what Julianne Moore was doing in it. Blink and you would miss her. Pam Ferris had more to do, really, which would have pleased my mother, who used to like her in "The Darling Buds of May" and "Where the Heart Is." I love Clive Owen, and he was looking handsome, his large face smudged and wide-eyed and solemn. He was largely expressionless, except for a few minutes with Michael Caine when he did crack a smile.

But quite honestly I didn't have much sense of who was doing what to whom. Nor did I much care. It was brilliantly done. And, yes, it was a very bleak vision of the future. Okay. We got that much.

One good thing - there may not be babies in the future, but there are dogs. There were dogs everywhere, and none of them died.

Comments

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I think that post came out sounding rather more negative than I intended. I didn't actively dislike it. (I have nothing against dark visions of the future - Bladerunner is one of my favorite movies) I should have looked at it as a quest, I guess. I was a bit disappointed, because I had heard and read really great things about it and I was prepared to be blown away. The film-making WAS brilliant. But it was sterile. Ironically :) Oh, and it's Jim Sexton who's the utopia/dystopia expert.

[superfoo.livejournal.com]

Drats!! If he only teaches in Fall I am at UVic come fall.

Maybe I will hunt him down once all the class-transferring craziness settles down and ask him to tell me how he came to be an expert on dystopias.

[lilyfriend.livejournal.com]

His big thing is Aldous Huxley and Brave New World. He helps publish some sort of journal or something associated with Huxley. Has had contact with Huxley's widow, etc. The whole nine yards.

For that class, we read Brave New World, William Morris's News from Nowhere, Marge Piercy's He, She, and It, DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover?? I think.. it's all so hazy lol.. Dickens' Hard Times .. and maybe one more, but it's not coming to me. He also thought about teaching the Tempest in that class as well. All dystopic, except News From Nowhere, which was so boring he stopped teaching it halfway through the book. haha. :)

Lots of discussion on Malthus, Adam Smith, etc.. especially coming up in Dickens' character names. And some separate articles, which I really would not recollect right now. But yea, lots of fun. :)

[intertext.livejournal.com]

And I remember you wrote a paper on _Never Let Me Go_, which I'm going to be teaching in my 160 classes this term. Jim hadn't read it, but his wife had, iirc ;)

[lilyfriend.livejournal.com]

That's right. :) Had to "out" myself to get your help on that, thank you again. First draft was a mess. haha.

Ended up getting a good grade too :)

I wish I was taking that class! I love _Never Let Me Go_ :)

Might want some advice too, later on, about this ridiculously long thesis I'm going to have to write next year. Currently have two ideas about what I might write it on, one of which Jim could help me, the other you could! Will make a post on my journal, eventually, to brainstorm my ideas out loud. :)

[superfoo.livejournal.com]

I really want to read that book, now.

Also did you get the email of all the little user icons i made?

[intertext.livejournal.com]

No! (dashes off to check gmail account)... I have too many places to look for things, that's my trouble.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Thank you!! They are awesome.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I was just looking at yours, and I see it's okay to crop the feet off so that the face shows up better. I may do that. I'm actually ... cough ... at work right now, so I'll probably fiddle with them this weekend. But thanks. Oh, and Jim said he may persuade UVic to let him teach his Utopia/distopia course one summer in the near future so you may get a chance after all. And read "Never Let me Go" - it's amazing.