It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” ā some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it ā I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury ā he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā I was with her at that moment ā she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy namedā” “Yeah, sure ā you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that Iām on the phone with you now, after all thatās been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didnāt seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereās not a case of that. He wasnāt using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā if that were what the accusation involved ā the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. Iām not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, āYou know, itās not this, itās thatā? Because ā let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatās what it lacked. Thatās what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
The entire beginning of this column is full of shit because it serves the lone purpose of disregarding the opinions of others rather than posing a new and/or fresh take…
I noticed the blood disappearing, and I think it’s fairly obvious there was some sort of digital removal or addition going on, David, because that shot (which I rewound over and over again to be sure) couldn’t have been a seamlessly woven double-take. So don’t posit something like “I should be sticking my hand down my pants with the rest of the smart boys when an 8 minute sequence that is made of at least two shots, but seems seemless, hits the screen,” like a smartass, without knowing for sure.
“Unless it is.”
At least you’re trying.
“The pregnancy is, for all intents and purposes, a McGuffin. The whole issue of the world being unable to reproduce is a distraction. Aside from the personal relationships and fears of the individuals – well drawn – the big hook of the story means absolutely nothing. It really is just a story point.”
You have absolutely no idea what this film is saying, do you? Well, no, you don’t. You tell us as much by the end.
“this film fails to deliver on that promise”
The film never promised that.
“V for Vendetta was an extremely intimate piece of filmmaking”
That certainly provides a lot of perspective here…
The rest seems wanting to compare the film to Kubrick and Gilliam for…some reason.
And haven’t you already written at length about “Children of Men?” Why go there again? In reaction to a lot of people loving it and “sticking their hands down their pants?”
Happy holidays.
How many viewings was this the fruit of?
Based on the experiences of Pee-Wee Herman, I would actively discourage you from watching too many movies with your hand down your pants.
David, why is it it you think you’re supposed to sympathize with the rebels? I thought the movie made it pretty clear by the end that both sides were fairly awful and willing to abuse people to make their political points.
And just curious…did anyone other than me actually read the P.D. James novel? The vast differences between book and film might give you some idea what Cuaron was going for.
I personally couldn’t get through the novel. It was bogging down even in the first chapter. I’ll get it another go some day.
Kris… apparently, you are taking the review personally. But it has/had nothing to do with you. I assume you saw the Jim Hoberman reference… he’s also the one who brought up V for Vendetta, which I would not have done myself.
And after all that anger at my opening paragraph, the question still remains… what do YOU think the movie is really about?
And Luke… clearly, the rebels are not a claer force for good or bad… we have no real perspective on them from the film, because they play both sides. But the film seems – feel free to disagree – to be railing against the government in this case. And there is a parade of specific references that leas back to Bush… with the occasional dip of Hitler in WWII.
Let’s say both sides were political and badly intended… what’s the point? Is the message of the film, “people suck?”
Really, I am still waiting for an argument of meaning regarding this film and not just style… and yes, Kris, style that gets critics – many long established veteran ones who want to blame the studio for the inevitable commerical failure/geek cult status of this film – unabashedly excited.
I think the beauty of COM has more to do with the exciting visuals than the thematic elements. When that baby is born, though, it’s a chilling moment. Once the baby arrives the movie gets good. The stuff with Julianne Moore and Michael Caine was sort of eh. Beautiful, exciting filmmaking, though.
I do love when DP and KT get into spats, though.
sigh
http://www.incontention.com/2006/11/children_of_men.html
http://www.incontention.com/blog/2006/11/isnt_this_a_bit_hypocritical.html
The film is about hope. It’s been spelled out over and over again. Because you choose to think otherwise, fine. But don’t pretend the case isn’t being made all over the place.
Reading the opening of this review makes me think that David is taking the love of Armond White a bit too far. Having seen the movie again last night, I was just as amazed and impressed as the first time I saw it.
The pregnancy is more than just a McGuffin. The world that has been set up is barren, there is a lack of hope, and Clive Owen’s character, a former idealist, now sees no point in activism. But that pregnancy, that baby…it represents potential, a fecund reawakening of the world and, in particular, Owen’s desire to transform it.
Also, it’s Owen, not Owens (just like it’s Cate and not Kate Blanchett). Hey, if you can gun for Hoberman’s mistakes, I can remind you how to spell movie stars’ names! š
Thanks, JL… seems that I changed my position on that in every graph… fixed now…
Well… not that I have read that… quoting you, Kris…
“Specifically it is about the necessity of hope in the universe.”
Any more than, say, The Devil Wears Prada? And as silly as that sounds, I am serious.
I am willing to accept the notion that the movie is about the fight for hope in Owen’s character. But as such, I think it comes up short. And as I wrote, the world he lives in is more than the backdrop of a Blade Runner or a Brazil… it picks up and drops political ideas like so many beautiful puzzle pieces that will never be put together.
“It is about what Pandora captured in her box at the very last moment, and the idea of a world where that fleeting notion escaped with all the other ideals of the world. At its core, that is the horror ‘Children of Men’ explores.”
So you are arguing that COM is about the horror of a world without hope… okay… so how does that idea manifest itself in the film? How does it engage that idea?
As I wrote, I would love to have seen that film. But Owen’s character behaves pretty much as many who have lost a child behave. The “rebels,” as LYT points out, are self-absorbed too… except, of course, for Owen’s idealized former wife. And the state has no real face in the film.
What would the world do if its demise became virtually assured by a mysterious medical condition that kept us from procreating? Is anarchy followed by the state trying badly to control anarchy really the important idea?
And ED is close on the Armond thing. My objection is that the background is so much the story. I have a similar problem with The Devil Wears Prada, where the fashion world is so la-dee-dah. But I am not enraged by TDWP, I can see why it is just a girl empowerment and fashion romp, and I don’t think Armond should be so angry about Dreamgirls for much the same reason. Here, the target is so serious and so steeped in bashing, it seems to me irresponsible… just, I suppose, as Armond sees some greater responsibility in making a movie about faux Motown.
I have no objection to people enjoying COM as a visual feast of ugliness and despair. Cool! But when guys like Hoberman start claiming importance
Indeed, it is railing against the government. But that doesn’t preclude it from railing against the other side as well. It seems to me it embodies the fears of both left AND right — a more fascist homeland security department, and an influx of immigrants who march down the streets with rifles held high chanting “Allahu Akbar!” (which is what some rightie bloggers think is happening in Europe right now). Both sides are aggravating each other, and want to manipulate the one symbol of hope not to give the people hope, but to make their particular political point. Is Chiwetil Ejiofor’s character any more or less sympathetic than Peter Mullan’s?
I think the movie’s thesis, which isn’t an original one but an old perennial, is that to have hope, you need think for yourself. Even when it seems absolutely certain that your fate is set and everything is doomed, there’s a point to swimming against the stream anyway, because you never know.
Also, it’s one really fucked-up nativity allegory.
Also, I should point out…I’m not necessarily claiming “importance.” I rate films predominantly on whether they tell me a good story or not. 1980’s Flash Gordon isn’t important, but it is one of my top 5 favorite films ever.
I enjoyed…loved…Children of Men not for the visual feast (which I dedicated ONE paragraph to in my review) but for the theme and the power of that theme. You seem to think that my enjoying it for that theme is a form of self-delusion and, therefore, seem to be aiming for some underlying “true” opinion. That’s insulting. But it’s your blog.
Man, I wish I had seen this movie so I could join in.
I will say that it has the aura of something a little more abstractly post-apocalyptic than one might expect, like Weekend or the more subtle parts of Twelve Monkeys, which would mean that Cuaron may be priviliging mise-en-scene over characterization…but this is supposition until whenever the hell I get to see it.
Incidentally, the novel’s theme is that there is no hope whatsoever, everyone is just as bad as everyone else no matter what you may think, so just chill the hell out already and try to enjoy what’s left.
That’s what I got out of it, anyway.
Much more interesting to me, Luke… I’ll be headed to the bookstore tonight…
how many more discussions are going to be tainted by shitty incontention.com links?
Dave, you should probably head over to their forum and start randomly posting links there.
David, have you posted your best and worst ten lists? (didn’t see them) If not, can we have a bit of fun and try to guess?
I’m going with in no particular order:
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Children
The Departed
World Trade Center
Dreamgirls
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
United 93
Little Miss Sunshine
Hm… okay, at a loss for the last two. Probably something you saw at a festival.
Children of men is one of the best movies of the year. It opened here, in Spain, a couple of months ago and passed almost unnoticed.
And what i really can
David, another question, how did this review end up with a Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes?
Ha! I just read the Dargis best of the year, and not only she thinks the same as me about Children and the Departed , she remember me the other very good picture of the year: Miami Vice. Ok, it’s worse than Heat, The insider or Collateral, but in such horrible year, even the worst Michael Mann picture would be one of the best pictures of the year.
So the best of the year : Children of Men, Babel and Miami vice
Other good flicks: Volver, Pan’s Labyrinth, Inside Man, Happy feet and…
Kris, I respect and appreciate that you loved the movie and think it is about hope. We all define hope in different ways, I think prefer it as “the thing with feathers.” I don’t think COM is about hope at all. Sure, you can interpret it that way. But it is one long journey to an end I saw coming a mile away. It fell apart for me in that it wasn’t challenging on any level other than the comfort zone. He was depicting a world gone terribly wrong and how that world might find its way out of the mess it’s in – rescuing the last baby on earth. COM is exciting, vital filmmaking. But you lose me when you start talking down to me about what it was about. I saw the movie, after all. I know you can interpret it any way you like. And I appreciate it that it doesn’t force an emotion on you. I appreciate what he was doing. I don’t think it suffers, btw, for being so distant and ambiguous. If anything, it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker give the audience credit for a change.
Wells says that this will be the film people will be talking about fifteen years from now. I’m not sure about that. If they do talk about it they will say it terms of the Mexican new wave – the three amigos have made their mark this year in a big way. I haven’t yet seen Pan’s Labyrinth, but Babel is pretty amazing. I would say I feel lucky to be living during this since I missed out on the French New Wave.
p.s. Ed Douglas, not a bad list except for Dead Man’s Chest. Are you out of your mind? What a stinking pile that movie was. The sequence on the island was like a couple of high school kids with some lame costumes and a video camera. Very poorly done.
On a more happy note, watched The Departed again and man, is that fun to watch. Better the second time around.
BP: you don’t remember David’s rave during the summer? I remember him being very proud of his early review and being able to proclaim (before anyone):
“Easily the best studio confection of the year… kicking ass, taking names, and reminding us all of the joy that going to a big summer movie is supposed to inspire in us.”
Ah, and that reminds me of one of the other two on David’s list: Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, which might actually get into my Terrible 25 of the year now that someone reminded me. I actually paid to see it because I was a huge Mann fan and remembering thinking that I would have left after 20 minutes if there weren’t so many people on either side of me I’d have to climb over. It gets better towards the end with the shoot-out but other than that, it was all over the place.
Two terrific movies… neither as good as The Departed…
I don’t expect P2 will be on my Top 10. But I also don’t subscribe to the absurd notion that the film was crap. It was too long. So was the first one. But it did what it set out to do brilliantly.
And ED, I sat on my review for a long while and wrote it a couple days after I was given the freedom to do so. Never assume anything… especially when you are just trying to make an ass out of me.
“And ED, I sat on my review for a long while and wrote it a couple days after I was given the freedom to do so. Never assume anything… especially when you are just trying to make an ass out of me.”
Hmm… I think someone has an embargo complex. I certainly didn’t mean it *that* way… I just remember your review being one of the early ones out there and being overwhelmingly positive before most others (including me) had a chance to see it. That’s all.
The big difference between the first and second Pirates movie was that while they were both long, the first one didn’t FEEL long… and I think some of the actors in the second (particularly Knightley) were trying too hard in the second one. Well, here’s hoping that the third one is better than them both.
The main problem with Pirates 2 was that structurally it had to tie itself in knots in order to get all of its plots and subplots up and running, and to leave them dangling to set up number 3. When it was in full action mode it was fine, but too much of the movie was setup and exposition.
Yeah, Jeff, agreed. I think without that hideous desert island sequence it would have been a good movie – I loved when they went into the voodoo swamp, for instance. There were just okay elements to it – not as good as the first, imo.
And I don’t begrudge Dave his blockbuster love. I would like them too if they didn’t ultimately disappoint. I don’t have high brow taste at all. But, as Judi Dench might say, I AM NOT YOUNG!
Not being in NY or LA, i have yet to see Iwo Jima, Dreamgirls, or a few other holiday movies.
As i started to think about my favorite films i saw this year, they all ended up being very mainstream but enjoyable movies (there’s a few weird ones in there). It was a shitty year overall, and most of what i liked was just good, entertaining popcorn films.
Casino Royale
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest
The Prestige
The Fountain
Thank You for Smoking
13 Tzameti
The film i hated the most was Superman Returns.
It made Brett Rattner’s directing on XMEN 3 seem subtle in comparison.
So you are arguing that COM is about the horror of a world without hope… okay… so how does that idea manifest itself in the film? How does it engage that idea?
—————
I thought the idea of “a world without hope” was represented fairly palpably throughout. Every frame reeked of hopelessness. Every tiny detail (the trash piling up on the streets, the wire mesh on the trains to stop vandals from throwing bricks through the windows, the people praying to god for forgiveness in the streets, the fact the government are handing out suicide kits) gives a sense of hopelessness.
Just because these things are given no more than a passing background glimpse or mention in favour of the main story doesn’t mean they aren’t confronted. CoM’s an incredibly dense, layered film. It doesn’t skimp on exposition and detail – it just assumes the viewer has the wherewithal to put the pieces together themselves.
COM’s big problem for me was that I never really had the sense that anything other than what ends up happening would happen. Kind of like the same problem I had with the Lord of the Rings series. I never felt that there was any conflict because I knew they (the hobbits) would always get away and all would be well. But given that, COM is more along the lines of 28 Days Later or They Live, or even I suppose Bladerunner — and it is brilliant on that score. I just can’t behind the whole reading into it a greater theme thing. “Hope” just doesn’t cut it for me.
Like Jeff, I too wish I’d already seen the movie so I could participate. All I will say is that it couldn’t possibly be any more juvenile in its politics than “V for Vendetta.” And if it is, that would be some achievement.
Ed, Dave’s review can be “fresh” at RT because their criteria for determining what’s fresh and what’s rotten are often plainly irrational. If they have a rhyme and reason, I haven’t figured it out.
“Ed, Dave’s review can be “fresh” at RT because their criteria for determining what’s fresh and what’s rotten are often plainly irrational. If they have a rhyme and reason, I haven’t figured it out.”
It’s usually selected by whomever posts the review there (I’m assuming Dave or someone from moviecitynews) and they set some guidelines via rating (number stars, letter rating, etc.) but when you use that system, you have to decide which way to go.
The RT guidelines are:
Fresh = recommended, B- or higher.
Rotten = not recommended. Doesn’t mean it sucks, just that you don’t recommend it. So a neutral review tends to equate as rotten.
Some of their reviews are entered automatically, i.e. with my Village Voice reviews, they pick the quote and estimate my grade. But with my E! reviews, sometimes I have to do it manually and choose those things myself.
Those of you who say you saw the ending of COM coming…were you really not surprised by any of the character deaths [I’m treading vaguely here to avoid spoiling things too much]? Maybe the reason I was is because they differed radically from the book’s.
Anyway, seeing the ending coming surely isn’t a make or break deal — if it were, UNITED 93, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, and THE QUEEN would fail to satisfy, no?
“I should be sticking my hand down my pants with the rest of the smart boys when an 8 minute sequence that is made of at least two shots, but seems seemless, hits the screen. But, alas…”
You make it sound as if you haven’t wanked yourself silly over certain things this past year that not everyone else agrees with. Just because others get excited about things you didn’t doesn’t give you the write to insult them and be a smartarse.
I think it was Kris who asked you this, and I’d like to ask it too (i don’t believe you asnwered it). Why did you bother with this review. You’ve already written about it and we’ve had discussions about it. But now you felt the desire to write more about it, even more negative.
I just find it strange that you seem to think the only reason people like this movie is because it’s visually exciting.
“Just don’t expect too much.”
Maybe if the film was marketed as a brains-for-hire scifi movie then it would actually make more money.