A Viking Saga: The Darkest Day

Drakkar (A Viking Saga: The Darkest Day) has a low grade both on IMDB and RottenTomatoes, but, as usual, it is a matter of taste, and a Hollywood alike action movies’ world! This one fails to fit these last mentioned movies. I crossed upon it by mistake, but it was no mistake watching it! This is “a brutal tale set against the Viking attack on Lindisfarne in 793 A.D.” (http://www.chris-crow.co.uk/). The story revolves around the Lindisfarne Gospels, and the monks’ struggle to keep it safe.

The Welsh director, Chris Crow, does a well made movie with a low budget.

The acting and the story are fair, and why not say it, this is a piece of history after all! I am looking forward to the performances of:

• Elen Rhys
• Mark Pickering
• Mark Lewis Jones
• Joshua Richards
• Michael Jibson

A Room with a View

I’ve “landed” on this movie with Helena Bonham Carter, A Room with a View (the adaptation of E.M. Forster homonym novel), a few years ago, not by chance, but by searching a few lines.

A few lines that have drawn my attention while listening to Dream Theater’s Space Dye Vest.

I am talking about George Emerson’s (Julian Sands) lines:

He’s the sort who can’t know anyone intimately, least of all a woman. He doesn’t know what a woman is. He wants you for a possession, something to look at, like a painting or an ivory box. Something to own and to display. He doesn’t want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn’t love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms. It’s our last chance…

There’s a nice description of the novel on goodreads:

One of E. M. Forster’s most celebrated novels, “A Room With a View” is the story of a young English middle-class girl, Lucy Honeychurch.

And here’s the movie sequence with the quote above: Lying to George.

Director: James Ivory

Starring:

• Maggie Smith as “Charlotte Bartlett”,
• Helena Bonham Carter as “Lucy Honeychurch”,
• Judi Dench as “Eleanor Lavish”,
• Denholm Elliott as “Mr. Emerson”,
• Julian Sands as “George Emerson”,
• Daniel Day-Lewis as “Cecil Vyse” and
• Simon Callow as “The Reverend Mr. Beebe”.

This blog post is an improved version of an older one published on Sleepless Bobby.

Never Let Me Go

After watching Mark Romanek‘s “Never Let Me Go“, words such as “fury“, “outrageous” “dehumanization” came into my mind. I was willing to know how much fiction and how much truth lies beneath this dystopian film. So I was looking for “National Donor Programme” (the name and NDP initials were clearly shown on a van’s rear door).

Director: Mark Romanek

Cast:

• Carey Mulligan
• Andrew Garfield
• Keira Knightley

So I have discovered that the film is based on Kazuo Ishiguro‘s homonym dystopian science fiction novel. He won the Booker Prize in 2005, and he previously won this prize with The Remains of the Day.

Until now I only knew about Iced Earth‘s album named Dystopia, not having a single clue about the meaning of this (rather new) word:

dystopia – an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dystopia

Speaking of “a new word“, one may wish to discover 3freewordsaday, Vocabulary Building the Easy Way! Actually there are not one, but three words each day!

Anyway, fiction or not, I was intrigued by the idea behind this movie (book) clearly explained by one of the characters in the movie, a new teacher in (Hailsham) school, to her students:

None of you would do anything except live the life that it was already set up for you. And sometime around your third donation your short life would be complete. That’s why you were created to.

The other day (this is an update) a dystopian sky photography found on Capricii [pseudo] literare urged me to integrate it within this post, so here it is:

Dystopian Sky

Reading further on this topic on the web, I have found “National Marrow Donor Program Research Website“, were it is stated:

Extending and improving lives through innovative stem cells therapies.

It is something somewhat different (at least in statement) than the methods (“therapies”) in the movie, but I still have a question mark regarding the methods in the film. I hope that science and medicine made a step ahead and moral methods are used.

Well, a fact for the end: I grew up in such a dystopian society from the day I was born until the last days of my 18th year of life (December 1989)!

Below, you’ll find the trailer and (fictional singer) Judy Bridgewater‘s song, “Never Let Me Go“, sung by Jane Monheit.

Ce que le jour doit à la nuit – Yasmina Khadra

“Ce que le jour doit à la nuit” is the movie that I’ve watched the other day. A certain quote at the end of the movie drawn my attention, and I remembered the author: Yasmina Khadra. Surprisingly it wasn’t the name of a woman, but the name of a man. A man called Mohammed Moulessehoul, the author of “Ce que le jour doit à la nuit“, the book that inspired Alexandre Arcady the director of the movie.