[Fiddlerdave]

The piles of burning cattle briefly shown I presumed to reflect continued Mad Cow Diseaee.

[TheDude]

Funny, I was just reading "Trading Post" by Neal Barrett, a short story where a guy scavenges works of art from a bombed out Houston. His clients: aliens.

Hey, Neal's written some Doomer Porn: Amazon.com: Through Darkest America (Isaac Asimov Presents) (Isaac ...

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nother in the new Isaac Asimov Presents series (see above), this provocative novel is set in a world that nuclear war has almost decimated of cities, technology and large animals. To replace farm livestock, the country's sole source of meat is genetically altered humans, without intelligence or speech. A distant civil war out west, its harsh taxes and harsher collectors, force Howie Ryder to flee his family's Tennessee farm. He falls in with outlaw Pardo, who signs on with a big meat drive only to rustle it and playsand preys onboth sides in running guns. Barrett's SF rendering of this latter-day civil war comes complete with a version of slavery, cavalry charges and a young boy representing the country's coming of age. The romantic narrative skillfully moves from a well-told if familiar story of war and the western frontier to areas of ambiguity and uncertainty that readers are left to answer for themselves.

[alexscarrow]

Children of Men....an absolutely brilliant piece of work. For me, it is THE most compellingly authentic depiction of future dystopia I have ever seen.

That alone deserves recognition enough to put it up there with the greats like BladeRunner, Citizen Kane. But, add to that, the fantastic original characters (Caine's hippy-trance music-reefer dude, the new-age midwife, the hilariously nasty immigration guard), the sweeping themes (immigration, secular world vs religious fundementalism, global resource depletion, pollution) and the incredible one-shot set pieces (car ambush sequence, refugee city escape sequence). Those sequences were deliberately taken as one continuous shot rather than an edited sequence of shots....because the director (Cuaron) intinctively knew that one-shot pieces carry with them a sense of authenticity...life isn't edited.

The book by comparison (I read it about 8 yrs ago) was a rather dull and muddled implementation of a pretty cool idea.

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fiddlerdave', 'T')he piles of burning cattle briefly shown I presumed to reflect continued Mad Cow Diseaee.

[Tanada]

OK I picked the DVD up at Wallmart for $4.00 when I got one of my perscriptions refilled on the rave reviews my fellow peaker's gave it.

One of the weirdest film noir movies I have seen.

As is typical of the genre it didn't explain anything and did not end with a sound conclusion.

No explanation is given for why infertility began, or ended.

Well acted, and directed.

.

[davep]

I'll own up to having seen this film at least a dozen times. It is dystopian fantasy for adults and I'm having a hard time thinking of a better film I've seen.

If you haven't seen it, do so.

[Revi]

This is one of the best depictions of a world that has gone awry. I didn't know that the car chase/attack sequences were done as a one-shot, but it makes sense. They felt like the real thing.