Sunday, March 19, 2006
V for Vendetta and my pictures
Finally, after months if not years of threatening people, I started my own photo gallery online, on Yahoo’s site Flicker www.flickr.com/photos/evgueni/. So I joined the millions of people providing content for Yahoo, but that’s ok because I have been doing it for Google for a while already. All I really want is people to react to my pictures and hopefully inspire others to share their creations/thoughts/hobbies with everyone else.
On other unrelated news, last night I watched V for Vendetta by the Warchosky Brothers, the same ones that brought us the genius of The Matrix and the retardation of the Matrix II and III. V was a great movie though, with amazing acting (Nathalie Portman was at her best, and the police commissioner pretty much carried the movie on his shoulder with an amazing performance). What really made me appreciate the movie was the direct reflection of today’s politics and society: terrorism, religious intolerance, scares, the avian flu and people relinquishing some of their most basic rights in the wake of the fear that these "pseudo-events" inspire in them. The Warchosky brothers take a good jab at American society with this movie, reminding us that events that happened only last century in Europe can still repeat themselves. Some elements of the movie were very daring, for a main-stream Hollywood movie, mainly the fact that it was the totalitarian chancellor and his regime that had committed the "terrorist" attack on London that instated enough fear in people to allow them to take power, which directly echoes 9/11 and the events that followed in the US. I wonder if the movie was set and shot in England such that it would be allowed to proceed and exist in the state that it is now.
Another remarkable point was that one of the main actors, V, had no face and thus no facial expressions to support his acting, which was nonetheless remarkable: the actor’s use of hand and body gesture and his use of voice and intonation provided depth which was enough to compensate for the lack of possibility to use facial expressions.
Yes, the attacks on current political and social events is pretty ferocious in the movie: the red cross symbol of the dictatorial regime, the ostracizing of immigrants and homosexuals, the use of avian flu and others to scare people, the crazy TV anchor (a parallel of FOX and CNN anchors) and even a brief mention that the USA’s foreign policies eventually degenerated into a civil war, something we are somewhat seeing on TV everyday now.
Will this "tour-de-force" bear any fruits and make citizens of the US think twice about their situation and their responsibility vis-à-vis everything that is happening (after all, isn’t V you, me, her and him, like Evey said at the end of the movie)? I am not sure, but I believe that every little step is a step in the right direction; nothing will change over night but it is important for the voices of dissent not to give up. The Warchosky brother’s approach might even be more effective than Michael Moore’s approach of using reality to convince the public. Americans have grown suspicious and reactionary, and showing them reality makes them reject it even more. Showing them fiction depicting reality will probably be more effective.
On other unrelated news, last night I watched V for Vendetta by the Warchosky Brothers, the same ones that brought us the genius of The Matrix and the retardation of the Matrix II and III. V was a great movie though, with amazing acting (Nathalie Portman was at her best, and the police commissioner pretty much carried the movie on his shoulder with an amazing performance). What really made me appreciate the movie was the direct reflection of today’s politics and society: terrorism, religious intolerance, scares, the avian flu and people relinquishing some of their most basic rights in the wake of the fear that these "pseudo-events" inspire in them. The Warchosky brothers take a good jab at American society with this movie, reminding us that events that happened only last century in Europe can still repeat themselves. Some elements of the movie were very daring, for a main-stream Hollywood movie, mainly the fact that it was the totalitarian chancellor and his regime that had committed the "terrorist" attack on London that instated enough fear in people to allow them to take power, which directly echoes 9/11 and the events that followed in the US. I wonder if the movie was set and shot in England such that it would be allowed to proceed and exist in the state that it is now.
Another remarkable point was that one of the main actors, V, had no face and thus no facial expressions to support his acting, which was nonetheless remarkable: the actor’s use of hand and body gesture and his use of voice and intonation provided depth which was enough to compensate for the lack of possibility to use facial expressions.
Yes, the attacks on current political and social events is pretty ferocious in the movie: the red cross symbol of the dictatorial regime, the ostracizing of immigrants and homosexuals, the use of avian flu and others to scare people, the crazy TV anchor (a parallel of FOX and CNN anchors) and even a brief mention that the USA’s foreign policies eventually degenerated into a civil war, something we are somewhat seeing on TV everyday now.
Will this "tour-de-force" bear any fruits and make citizens of the US think twice about their situation and their responsibility vis-à-vis everything that is happening (after all, isn’t V you, me, her and him, like Evey said at the end of the movie)? I am not sure, but I believe that every little step is a step in the right direction; nothing will change over night but it is important for the voices of dissent not to give up. The Warchosky brother’s approach might even be more effective than Michael Moore’s approach of using reality to convince the public. Americans have grown suspicious and reactionary, and showing them reality makes them reject it even more. Showing them fiction depicting reality will probably be more effective.
