Snowpiercer (2013)

JohnyTwoToes likes this post apocalyptic shaky train ride! 

Snowpiercer is a deeply powerful, allegorical and smartly written post apocalyptic film, but seemingly missing something. I liked it for a 3 star film but not 4, like I was expecting after all of the buzz I had heard. Rumor has it there is an over 3 hour long director's cut floating around but that the studios thought it was too long for us mere mortals to grasp. 

We, after all went in droves to see long ass films like the Lord of The Rings trilogy (each film 3-4 hours long and then some), the full length Dances With Wolves (over 3 hours), Black Hawk Down (almost 3 hours), The Wolf of Wall Street (almost 3 hours), Gladiator (almost 3 hours). Yea, those studio execs really know what we want. NOTICE TO STUDIOS: PLEASE STOP SPOON FEEDING US LIKE WE ARE ALL A BUNCH OF BABIES. WE CAN HANDLE LONG FILMS AS LONG AS THEY ARE GOOD. 

Roger Ebert once said, "No bad film is short enough. No good film is long enough." Some might take issue and I have seen films that are time just right but Snowpiercer ends seemingly lacking something after all that it promises. It starts out in the thick of things which is okay but there is very little leading up to where the film starts. I still liked Snowpiercer and would recommend it. 

Chris Evans who, aside from his role as Captain America has not made that big of an impression on me as an actor. The Fantastic Four films were laughably bad and Cellular was decent, at best. In Snowpiercer, Evans is terrific and is the sole reason to see the film. His performance as Curtis, the chosen leader of the planet's survivors on the train called Snowpiercer (after the Earth is destroyed) is a challenging act. He is a intelligent leader but with doubts, a no-nonsense guy but still made of all that is human so he comes out brave yet flawed and strength. 

Apparently, there was a knock down, drag out fight between the film's Korean writer and director, Joon Ho Bong and the studios which delayed the release for almost an entire year. What has been released is a good, if not great film. It IS worth watching at the theater, but hoping they release the full length director's cut on DVD, is my wish. I blame the studio not film makers. Snowpiercer-*** out of 4.

4 Movies I Saw This Week (and You Must too)

What I have been watching this week

Falling ill has its advantages like getting to watch some great and not so great movies! Here are 4 flicks you ought to watch too. 

Godzilla (2014/Gareth Edwards) – This 2014 new reboot is a class act – with great special effects, fantastic cinematography, stupendous action sequences but one missing element - Godzilla. Yes, you read it right! Unlike what the teasers and trailers promised, Godzilla is pretty much absent throughout the movie not until it’s already the half way mark. And when you do finally see him, he is not the angry, berserk monster you would expect but the friendly beast out to save humanity from the MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). Maybe the idea was to pay homage to the traditional Japanese TOHO movies (with Godzilla as the savior of mankind) but for many fans like me who were expecting something fire and thunder bombastic, it’s a big letdown. Anyway, it’s not that all bad and with no big name stars in this vehicle except Godzilla, you never know what’s coming!

American Hustle (2013/David O. Russell) – Let me put it straight.  Though based on the 1970s FBI Abscam  sting operation, this is not really the con movie it sets out to be but more of a character study of the 5 protagonists and their internal machinations. Christian Bale is Irving Rosenfeld (based on the real life con man Melvin Weinberg) and he is a standout in this role with his balding pate, failing health and a bulging waist line. Christian Bale is living proof of how far some actors will to get into the character literally and movies like this (and The Machinist), reiterate his strengths of what a fine actor he is.  Amy Adams is his partner in crime, the hot, conning damsel who cons for a higher purpose in life and Bradley Cooper the insecure but over ambitious FBI agent on their trail who entraps them to entrap bigger fish or so it goes. You also get support from Jeremy Renner in a rather unusual casting as the mayor with a golden heart but its Jennifer Lawrence as Bale’s hyperactive and unpredictable wife who literally steals the show. Robert De Niro is largely wasted in a potentially explosive character that’s never explored beyond his 5 minutes of screen time. However, the club scene when he speaks in Arabic is stellar! Though it has it flaws, this is still a great watch just to relish the 70s scenery and the antics of Bale, Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence!

Wer (2013/William Brent Bell)– It’s been a while since you had a great werewolf movie and this independent horror thriller from the director who gave us the Devil Inside(2012) and Stay Alive(2006) turns this genre upside down with interesting results. A deformed man is accused in rural France of ghastly murders and in his defense, comes our heroine – A.J.Cook, her work partner Chuck’s Vik Sahay and her ex boy friend researcher Simon Quaterman. Is the deformed guy the dangerous killer that he is accused of or an innocent persecuted for his odd looks. I wont spoil it further for you.  From a rather sedate start, that had me almost hit the forward button, the movie suddenly picks up steam and becomes quite engrossing. However, the last final act is sort of a lame cop out but I would still recommend you watch it for the bloody fun!

Snowpiercer (2013/Joon-ho Bong) – The advantage of international travel is that you get to see some movies first than others, especially if you live in the US or UK. Touted as one of the most expensive South Korean produced English movies, this sci-fi thriller was on my watch list for a long time for 2 reasons – it’s based on a famous French dystopian graphic novel Le Transperceneige written by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochettewiki and its directed by Joon-ho Bong who gave us fantastic movies like The Host(2006) and The Mother (2009) in his first English debut. With a great cast including an almost undecipherable Chris Evans, the amazing Tilda Swinton (in one of here best performances), Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, John Hurt and Korean superstar - Song Kang-ho, this actually could have been better. Sadly, the intentionally multilayered script suffers from many contradictions and inherent flaws in scince & logic making Snowpiercer a odd mishmash of kinetic action, sepia toned sci-fi and silly eco-activism. As a hard core sci-fi fan with high expectations on this, I was a tad disappointed but regular fans will probably gloss it over. 

June 8 is World Oceans Day

Saving the Worlds Oceans 

June 8th is World Oceans Day. More than 70 percent of the globe is covered by the ocean and half the world's human population lives within minutes of the coastline. Rich with resources and potential, our oceans have long been thought of as both infinite and indestructible. But they are not. 

Overfishing, climate change, pollution, acidification, dead zones, irresponsible tourism and more have put the world's ocean and marine life at great risk. Increasingly, we face the real possibility of seas without edible fish; an acidic, plastic-filled ocean in which nothing can survive except jellyfish; rising sea levels and mass extinction of fish and mammals. Yet if we take action now, this grim future can be avoided. 

We all have the ability to affect our oceans, for better or for worse, no matter where we live. Together we have the power to protect the Ocean. Do your bit today. Learn more at World Oceans Day and SaveMyOceans.

Hot Water Massage ?

Elusive Hot Showers & Other Watery Issues!!

Goes in, goes out, goes in, goes out!! It’s almost an hour and the house keeping guy is still trying to figure out what’s wrong with my bathroom shower!! It still trickles like a baby pee – not the rain shower I want!! And they don’t have a spare room to shift!! All this for a proper hot shower.

Well, I hate showers that have all the force and grit of a miserable drizzle. Yet, they seem to be the omnipresent thing, everywhere I go including my current room of misery in my supposedly ‘ubercool’ boutique hotel.

Are all the other people in the world afraid of water or something? What is with this glum dribble? (And don't start in with me about that "water shortage – save water” eco mantra, I am a ecoactivist myself but it's the middle of an extended freakin' cold country, here. Besides, this hotel doesn’t have buckets either!!) Heck, at some places I have been, where it rains more than it does here, you could get a better rinsing off standing outside in the rains than waiting for your hot shower to work.

You see there are two things I really want in a shower (well aside from a non-skid bath floor, branded toiletries and the occasional sexual fantasy): lots of very hot water and enough ‘massage’ pressure to force the shampoo out of my hair and the stinging pain out of my back. Is this a lot to ask? Apparently Yes.

I was in a hotel room in Singapore and there was a note on the bathroom mirror informing me that this room was supplied with low-consumption fixtures for my convenience. Whose convenience? Excuse me, but I do not find it convenient to wander about with my hair and skin sticky from an over moisturized soap I can't rinse out. Now, Singapore is mostly a well-manicured, sanitized city and is constantly whining about how they don't have enough water (and at the moment, enough electricity) and, despite the fact that I think the place is more full of pessimism than an overflowing septic tank, I'll grant them the smugness (sort of).

But, why is almost every other hotel I go full of showers that mostly spit, instead of spray? Do worn out travelers like to be sprinkled upon? I want the water to shoot (Hey, none of that, now, you dirty minds!)

This just ticks me off. If the problem is indeed the water supply, then send it though a smaller pipe. Even as kids we noticed that putting your thumb over the end of the garden hose made the water shoot out more forcefully. Put a figurative finger over the flippin' pipe and get me some be-damned pressure!

Even my club has showers which drool morbidly onto one's head (either they are apparently designed with very, very tall people in mind, the shower heads being a good 2.5 meters off the floor or the guy who designed it was on drugs).

Luckily, there is one place I can get a decent shower and, ironically enough, it's at my rickety Gym. Gyms are not noted for having great showers. Usually they are dark, dirty & cold and have limited hot water at very limited pressure. I mean, who really cares about a bunch of obese souls or transient body builders, right? But I got lucky. My Gym showers, though a bit dim, have plenty of hot water and it comes out of tiny shower heads at an adjustable pressure. Fantastic.

Not everyone is like me, I know, in that desire to have little hot water needles pounded into their flesh, so they can adjust the spray as they see fit, but me, I've got the thing adjusted to the hardest setting I can get and the hottest water I can stand (which is pretty hot). Boiling Egg temperature, you could say! When I step out of the shower, I want my skin to whine and steam, utterly clean and shrimp-pink. None of this apathetic oozing and mincing about, quivering. Blah!

A cold shower is nice in the summer (and necessary under certain conditions), but it's not in my fetish-collection. Maybe that's the problem: maybe people are just becoming too wimpy and too peculiar. Could it be that my fellow friends are actually in favor of this “no pressure’ deviation? Or maybe they even like it - along with squashy, over-soft mattresses? Ugh! I may have to declare myself a member of a separate nation: the land of hot showers, soft but firm beds, weird movies and lotsa shiny, happy people!.

When did we all become a world of green tea-sippin', wellness-spoutin' dribblers who can't even operate their mobile phones? I'm disgusted. In fact, I might have get the hell out of here, hit my gym, beat up on something for a while and then take a power packed massage shower. A hot one, that is!!

A Poem - Dark Skies

On Violence, from the Websnacker Archives

As I stare out the window, hoping a new day to dawn,

I wonder how destructive, we’ve really become.

The daily violence has colored the grime,

the view of the sky seems darker this time.

Day in and day out, I see the same scene,

it only gets worse, when our world could be pristine.

The buzz of the gun, the red of the sky,

the taste of the dirty air, the burn in my eye,

the pain in my chest, and my throat feeling rough,

when will we say, enough is enough?

Do we accept violence as a matter of change,

and days like today are things that seem no more strange

What is the price we’re willing to pay,

and will we just stop, to stop having days like today?

I wonder if ever the world will stay clear,

if there will be peace and happiness near?

I worry that we may have stretched our world too thin,

This is a battle that no one can ever win.

We need as a people, to be more aware

to really pitch in peace and to do our fair share.

The life we kill is our society as a whole,

the world is damaged; it’s now bloody out of control.

I ponder these things as I sit here and stare,

stuck on the highway, and going nowhere...

Happy When It Rains

Talking about the weather represents everything that is most unexciting about being on Urbanite. But it is for some reason; recently I have found myself doing it. A distant great, great grandfather of mine used to top barometers for the British Raj during colonial India. In 25 years, I have never tapped one and didn't intend to start anytime, but during my recent trip to good old Delhi, I got into an autorickshaw and did the chatty equivalent. 

Usually, bound in an auto, I sit in dour silence keeping my resolute and liberal (and not so good) opinions to myself. The other day, however (which incidentally was unusually hot as is common in Delhi), I found myself developing a strange rapport of completely unneeded meteorological detail with the autorickshaw driver - who apparently, was a full-time farmer and part-time driver with a lot to lose if the monsoon rains were going to be late (and he was ranting they were.)

Excluding my enviro-conscious slant and my campaigner role at Green Coalition Network, I really shouldn’t care whether if it would rain or not. I don't run a laundry, I don’t farm nor do I make money frying eggs on the pavement. There is no worldly reason why I should be concerned if whether it will rain or shine but I discussed it all with my auto man as if I were about to accompany Sir Edmund Percival Hillary to Mount Everest.

I told him it all started with the Asian Tsunami. Or may be it started with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the Ozone black hole, the Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez disasters or maybe it was my Grandma complaining about her sun dried pickles. Anyway, before that the weather just happened. Although only boring scientific people talked about it, it rained on all of us. Angelina Jolie got as wet as your mother-in-law but when the tsunami came and devastated Asia, things changed (for good in one way). 

Yet for many, the forecast is now just about whether there’ll be the T20 Cricket match tomorrow or if they would be able to board that early morning flight to New York. For some though, if it rains a great deal or when they hear of an approaching storm, such events signal the ‘End of the World’ and that there would possibly be no tomorrow, tomorrow. So, when the weather dame comes on the telly at primetime news, she isn't such reading the weather, she's Lady Nostradamus dishing out our post-apocalypse survival rates. These days, especially in the US and Europe, the TV weather presenter is a celebrity and the weather gets talked and twittered about more than Nicholas Sarkozy and his sizzling wife - Carla Bruni.

In the good old days, use of climate terms like “trough of depression” was about as scientifically technical as we got. But now, we talk about “Global Warming”, “Ozone Layer” and other weather terms as if we are all first class graduates from the International Climate Academy. We all seem to assertively strut with expert knowledge about the environment although most of us know as much as about it as the former US President – George Bush who loathed the environmental movement and did his part helping his Wall Street corporate cronies by propagating the Global Warming “Global Hoax” myth.

Nonetheless, one of the big culprits in this unstable weather scenario is held to be the Aerosol (or technically, CFCs - Chlorofluorocarbons). Until, a dandy scientist figured out their eco-wrecking, ozone-depleting power, we had wreaked so much damage keeping our rooms AC-cool in the 60s and our bodies scent-fresh in the 70s and 80s, that we had not only created perfect conditions for achieving the ideal tan on a beach but had also created a big hole in the Ozone layer - letting in unadulterated, vitriolic sunshine of our bright star play havoc with our climate.

And its not just spray cans or CFC based fridges of the past, there is a verified connection between eating meat and a deeper body tan (and consequently a bigger Ozone hole and a hotter Planet). Every meat based product you eat, lets say, every beef steak you eat pushes the demand for more meat and thus, the number of cows for human consumption. The more cows there are, the more methane they release. In fact, it’s estimated that on an average, a cow releases enough methane everyday to fill over 400 one litre bottles. Methane is one of the gases that destroy the ozone which in turn increases the amount of sunshine or rather Sun’s harmful heat. So, when you tuck into your ‘medium rare’ beef steak or a double-decker Beef burger, a cow somewhere on this planet backfires more methane, the ozone layer further depletes and a pensioner gets sunstroke in sweltering hot Delhi.

Of course, the weather being only slightly pre-Armageddon in its behaviour means it’s pretty complicated to forecast anything. No doubt, inspite of their celebrity status, the handsomely paid weather folks on TV or at the meteorological office never get the weather right. We can’t complain though, the global climate these days seems to be as fickle as the mood swings of a hormonally volatile pregnant woman. One minute it’s all sober and dull and the next day, it all thunder and storm.

Anyway, half an hour later, as our rickety auto made through to my destination, it suddenly started raining – first a stutter, then a drizzle and then, all out waterworks, accompanied by enough thunder and lightning. It was a welcome relief from the scorching heat and it felt so coincidentally nice. My new found driver-farmer friend seemed more than pleased, he felt relieved. He gave me a big smile, the rains temporarily comforting his drought worries. I returned his smile, got down unmindful of my clothes and laptop getting wet, paid the fare and let the rain fall over me. Like the school children on the street who were relishing the showers, I suddenly felt carefree and happy. The Rain Gods should have been smiling too, they had made us both happy.

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FireFighting a Global Warming Duel

For those of you who are unaware, I am actively involved in an Environmental and Health NGO – Green Coalition Network. Part of my participation involves reading voluminous environmental reports related to climate change, global warming, sustainability, pollution, public health, etcetera, etc - submitted by various organizations that is later compiled and summarized for content syndication worldwide. Being an avid green activist, I would be a hypocrite if I criticized the reports I read every week, discounted their theories or disputed their findings.

But after 4 years of almost significant participation, I am still wondering where this is leading to? Daily news continues to roll in with regard to global warming and weather change especially but international and national policymakers remain unsure of both its veracity and consequences. Information that supports the theories of eco-alarmists and environmental skeptics alike seem to pepper the airwaves, while news of bush fires in Australia and devastating floods in India only aggravate the issue. To add to the barrage, I recently read that an internationally funded Weather satellite has just been tasked to exclusively study the melting of ice that sits atop the North Pole, allowing researchers to watch the movement of ice in great detail for the first time (yes, apparently first time). And the borders of Italy and Switzerland have to to reworked due to the melting icepeaks!

This issue that the human industrial presence was causing an unprecedented rise in global temperatures sparked a lively discussion among 2 of my close friends who are also involved in this area but in diametrically opposite fields. One is a researcher at a Greencetric NGO that actively hunts environmental violations by corporates and fights it out in courts while the other is a lawyer who coincidentally represents these corporate baddies. I played the firefighter albeit with a green bias and got to hear interesting arguments.

For my attorney pal, he dismissed the alarmist point of view and argued that nature needs to be harnessed. With regard to ice melting at the poles and the Italian-Swiss borders, he felt we could gather scientific data before jumping to political conclusions. Just because a wacky global warming activist misrepresents scant satellite information for her own visionary schemes, he felt there was no reason to go off half-cocked and ban the global internal combustion engine.

He complained that there were too many people who wanted social change at all costs, such as those who released urban bred animals to certain death in the forests rather than use them to warm our bodies or fill our stomachs, those who would rather leave millions starve for water than let build a dam and those who preach about poverty alleviation, govt negligence but themselves don’t pay the tax. Hmmm!

Even if the ice was indeed melting at the poles, he argued that we needed to avoid the divisive rhetoric of the eco-radicals in dealing with it, if we need to deal with it at all. After all, he felt there has been far more damage to forests from Mother Nature’s rains and floods than harvesting by loggers would ever cause. And responsible loggers replant with a constructive purpose; nature still needs to be harnessed. Mother Nature doesn’t think, and often environmentalists and global warming worrywarts don’t take time for that either. He stated both needed to be challenged when they run amuck.

After my lawyer pal was through downing almost a full bottle of Smirnoff, my eco-warrior buddy made his case for caution in our overconsumption and overcopulating ways.

Mother Nature, as you say, “needs to be harnessed” because we as a species have this mistaken notion that our running amuck is a “natural” Progression. If we hadn’t been so arrogant as to think plopping down 7 billion people on this planet wouldn’t have adverse effects on the climate, ecology, etc. then we’d understand that losing 200,000 acres of forest to wild fires isn’t that big a deal – or wasn’t till we reduced our forests to such a small tiny mass. We’d rather believe that this planet can get along fine with very limited populations of all species except our own.

Sure, the ecosystem is very large and not all effects are felt immediately; however, the belief that our present course of action won’t result in the destabilization of said system and the destruction of the planet as we know it - is the same stupidity and lack foresight and judgement which resulted in so many our children being born deformed due to their parents either exposed or/ of drinking contaminated water and food. He added that everyone wanted to believe that if it looks good two years down the road, then there are no worries… but as we all now know, that’s a big mistake and too big a gamble to risk this planet.

After hearing this loud verbal duel, I was left with enough food for thought of my own that I couldn’t declare a verdict nor present my personal view to this hugely gigantic issue. Mankind I realized needed a much bigger, collective and gargantuan firefighter for this burning problem and I was just a small fry. Really small indeed.