Category — Movies & Documentaries

Imagine an ocean without fish. Imagine your meals without seafood. Imagine the global consequences. This is the future if we do not stop, think and act. The End of the Line, the first major feature documentary film revealing the impact of overfishing on our oceans, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. Sundance took place in Park City, Utah, January 15-25, 2009. In the film we see firsthand the effects of our global love affair with fish as food. It examines the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna, brought on by increasing western demand for sushi; the impact on marine life resulting in huge overpopulation of jellyfish; and the profound implications of a future world with no fish that would bring certain mass starvation. Filmed over two years, The End of the Line follows the investigative reporter Charles Clover as he confronts politicians and celebrity restaurateurs, who exhibit little regard for the damage they are doing to the oceans. One of his allies is the former tuna farmer turned whistleblower Roberto Mielgo – on the trail of those destroying the world’s magnificent bluefin tuna population. Filmed across the world – from the Straits of Gibraltar to the coasts of Senegal and Alaska to the Tokyo fish market – featuring top scientists, indigenous fishermen and fisheries enforcement officials, The End of the Line is a wake-up call to the world. More infos.

Khan Academy, with Khan as the only teacher, appears on YouTube and elsewhere and is by any measure the most popular educational site on the web. Khan’s playlist of 1,630 tutorials (at last count) are now seen an average of 70,000 times a day — nearly double the student body at Harvard and Stanford combined. Since he began his tutorials in late 2006, Khan Academy has received 18 million page views worldwide, including from the Gates progeny. Most page views come from the U.S., followed by Canada, England, Australia, and India. In any given month, Khan says, he’s reached about 200,000 students. “There’s no reason it shouldn’t be 20 million.”

Apparently, Bill Gates has been enjoying them with his kids and says it’s amazing. I have watched a few of them about Biology and History and I think what Sal Khan is doing with Khan Academy is pretty great, too. Click here to visit this amazing website.

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Genre: Romance, Drama
Country: France / USA
Release Date: August 5, 2005
Rating:

As the devoutly single Don Johnston is dumped by his latest girlfriend, he receives an anonymous pink letter informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him. The situation causes Don to examine his relationships with women instead of moving on to the next one, and he embarks on a cross-country search for his old flames who might possess clues to the mystery at hand.

I watched Broken Flowers yesterday and I quite enjoyed it. I am a fan of the films about loneliness and existential angst. Broken Flowers deals with some of the same concepts (regret, longing, loneliness) as Lost in Translation, and the character he plays is terribly similar to his characters in this film. Actually, a big part of the reason why I liked this movie is Bill Murray. I feel like I could watch Murray for hours, just sitting on the living room couch as he often does in this film. It’s hard to describe the persona Murray has evolved in his recent work for Sofia Coppola, and now Jarmusch. He’s moody and melancholic, in contrast to the comedy that first made him famous in the mid 1990s. Here, Murray plays Don Johnston who finds himself alone in midlife. Early in the film Johnston receives an unsigned letter from an ex-lover with news that he may have a nineteen year old son. Unwilling to admit that he is affected by this, Johnston allows his neighbor to encourage him on a search for the sender and possibly his son. Johnston comes up with five potential candidates and leaves. This straight forward idea becomes an adventure where Johnston will meet his exes after more than 20 years without any contacts. Overall, I liked the movie. I didn’t enjoy this film as much as Lost in Translation but for me, even if it can be very slow-moving, this is one of the best kind of film. Like Lost in Translation or Virgin Suicides, I find it very “ambient.” Not a lot happens but the atmosphere created around the characters is very charming. The dialogues and situations are smart, funny and sincere. I was quite disappointed with the ending though. It generates lots of questions that I wish were answered, when in Lost in Translation I did not really need or want to know what was next. Anyway, Broken Flowers is a slow-burner, but a pretty good movie. I think if you enjoyed Lost in Translation or Bill Murray, you will enjoy this one.

Here’s the trailer of the upcoming movie from French director Gaspard Noe. Noe is the director of the extremely controversial and reputedly ultra-disturbing/harrowing/violent Irreversible. The trailer looks incredible, in that it mixes up beautiful images, disorienting techno and trippy eye candy. And I have just read that the movie will be scored by Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk. It’s about a small-time drug dealer, Oscar, who’s killed in Tokyo but won’t break the childhood pact he made with his stripper sister after their parents died that he would never leave her. “His spirit wanders through the city, his visions growing evermore distorted, evermore nightmarish. Past, present and future merge in a hallucinatory maelstrom,” says the synopsis. A film where the life of one person is linked to the love he has for another human being. It will hit US theaters on september 24, 2010.

This is a nice and short TED talk. In this video, he very quickly talks about assumptions and cultural differences. Notice how Chinese doctors operate differently than ours. This is one of those simply truths that so many people are blind to, and is the cause of so many problems from domestic issues to international conflicts. Derek Sivers is a captivating speaker.

Twenty-four years after the explosion of Reactor No. 4, April 26, 1986, the “forbidden zone” established within a radius of thirty miles of the nuclear power offers the paradoxical vision of idyllic and unspoilt the ravages of civilization. The territory where the radionuclides are dispersed irregularly, with the explosion and ensuing fire, has also become a vast open-air laboratory, where scientists are studying the long term, real situation, the effects of radioactivity low dose of living organisms. Why do some birds they die prematurely, why the growth of pines is disturbed it, while mice or poplars seem in good health? The species are apparently not equal to this radiation: research findings are mixed, disturbing, revealing the complexity of the living world.

Another great documentary from the Franco-German channel Arte, about a place that always fascinated me. Most of us think that is either deserted or filled with mutated creature (remember the game called Stalker?). Far from a burned desert, the gigantic area that humans were forced to leave more than two decades ago is surprisingly swarming with life. Despite radiation, nature has recolonized Tchernobyl and is even flourishing there. Within the exclusion zone that surrounds the ex-nuclear power plant, there are ten times more wild boars than there were before the explosion, and almost 3000 elks, wolves and lynxes have returned. Many species of wild birds threatened with extinction in other parts of Europe have also returned. Does this mean wildlife is outwitting radiation? The reality is more complex and this documentary is an investigation into the abandoned forests and villages of Tchernobyl. Some species, animal and vegetal, are suffering from mutations when some do not seem to be affected at all. In this self-created and unplanned “nature reserve” on the ruins of human habitation destroyed by the disaster, scientists such as radioecologists and zoologists are making extraordinary discoveries. The documentary is in French, not sure if subtitles are available but it’s definitely worth it to check.

Director: Sofia Coppola
Genre: Romance, Drama
Release Date: October 3, 2003
Rating:

Bob Harris is an aging movie star arriving in Tokyo to film a Suntory whisky advertisement. Charlotte (Johansson) is a recent Yale graduate and the young wife of a celebrity photographer on assignment in Tokyo. Left behind in her hotel room by her husband, John , she is unsure of her present and her future and about the man she has married. Bob’s own 25-year marriage is tired and lacking in romance as he goes through a midlife crisis. Bob and Charlotte meet in the bar of the hotel where they are both staying and strike up a friendship. The two bond through their adventures in Tokyo together, experiencing the differences between Japanese and American culture, and between their own generations. Wikipedia

“Lets never come here again, because it will never be as much fun.” Thankfully, I loved it as much as I did the two first time I watched Lost in Translation. I watched it again this week and that movie actually gets better every time I watch it. It’s one of my favorite movie of all time. Sure, there’s not a lot of action and it’s very slow paced but that’s not the point. It’s not so much about the scenario that it is about the atmosphere and the relationship between both characters. The first time I watched the movie I had a hard time figure out what the movie was. It has great comedic flair with Murray’s wonderful acting, but it’s also perhaps one of the most moving films I’ve seen in a long time. It has some form of a romance, too, but it’s not sexual at all (one kiss on the cheek is unbearably awkward). I find it really, really cute. Set in Tokyo, the film shows two strangers in both an emotional crisis, and a complete uncertainty of what the point of their life is all about. “Lost In Translation” is about loneliness. Separated from loved ones or from people in general. Bob and Charlotte are in Japan for a week. They don’t speak the language. Bob’s wife is in the US, and Charlotte’s husband is a work alcoholic. The two lost souls find each other at the hotel, spend time with one another and learn about each other. But we know that while this is giving a small comfort for the time being, it is not a lasting solution to their problems. My main love for this film comes from Coppola’s direction. No a lot of movie has the ability this one has to transport me to it’s location, with beautifully shot scene making me feel that I’m actually there in Tokyo with these characters. It captures the energy and look of the city perfectly. I know it sounds funny to write this since I’ve never been to Asia but at least that’s the impression I have. I really liked the soundtrack too which features good bands like Air, My Blood Valentines or Phoenix. Sofia Coppola always seems to pick the right music for her movies. Virgin Suicide and Marie-Antoinette soundtrack were pretty amazing too. Anyway, it’s so rare to see a movie that only has an interest in its characters and makes them so charming, lovable, and familiar. Lost is Translation is beautiful movie, and highly recommended.

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Commercial realized for Aides, a French association fighting AIDS.

Green Porno has been out for a while on the Sundance Channelbut for some reason I haven’t heard about it before. I just discovered it today on a discussion board and well, it’s probably the weirdest thing that I’ve ever watched but I find it genius and very educational. It’s just brilliant. You won’t be disappointed if you’re a minimum curious about the sexual life of animals around us. It’s an informative video series created by the famous Italian actress Isabella Rossellini, describing mating rituals in the animal realm. She has put together these really awesome shorts movie and their education factor is as high as the gross-out factor.

Green Porno began as an experiment,” says Rossellini. Fellow film icon Robert Redford challenged her to create a series of online shorts for the Sundance Channel. The constraints: “It had to work on a small screen, it had to be brief, and it had to be cheap,” she says, because she was given a tiny budget. “It also had to be about the natural environment in some way.” Her solution: Green Porno, a series of cartoonlike vignettes about the sex life of animals. “I want to give people a sense of wonder about the natural world,” she says, “to make them fall in love with it and want to protect it.” The first season’s episodes were all about backyard invertebrates. For the second season, she teamed up with conservation biologist Claudio Campagna and focused on marine creatures. And in the third one, she talks about animals that we eat such as shrimps, porks and chickens.