Marvel teased us with the release of this film near the end of various previously released super hero flicks like Captain America and Iron Man 2. This would be the movie that unites all the super heroes from the Marvel universe. Well actually, only those that had not been previously licensed to other studios. Hence, you will not find characters from X-Men, Spiderman, or the Fantastic Four in this movie. Director Joss Whedon brings back fond memories of creative television series like Firefly and Dollhouse, but what does he make of a 220 million blockbuster production?

The Avengers was released in the UK as `Avengers Assemble’ to avoid confusion with the 1960′s television series with the same name. The main protagonists in this flick have all had movies of their own: Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. If I had to pick any of those movies that would be good to watch before The Avengers it would be Thor as it introduces the most important characters, including the antagonist. However, The Avengers can also easily be watched by itself.

This film does not fall in the trap of taking its subject matter overly serious, which I think is key for movies in the superhero genre. The Hulk, not a very talkative character to begin with, in particular has some good `moments’ in this movie. The chemistry among the main cast is excellent, and even supporting characters, like Agent Phil Coulson, deliver memorable performances. Robert Downey Jr. gives an excellent performance as the ever arrogant Tony Stark, and Mark Ruffalo is easily the best Hulk so far.

The Avengers is a special effects extravaganza where no expense has been spared to produce excellent looking computer generated imagery. The 3D is subject to mild strobing effects, particularly during quick pans. It was added in post-production. There were very few scenes in which it actually made any difference, so it might as well have been left out.

Overall the filmmakers do a good job of keeping the fights both interesting and easy to follow. It does not become an unwatchable mess typical of poorly choreographed fight scenes. One scene in which the camera floats by all the heroes fully engaged in combat in the middle of a city-wide attack is particularly impressive for it manages to actually keep the audience engaged instead of invoking disorientation. The music and sound effects were excellent, and combined with the spectacular visuals certainly warrant a visit to the cinema.

If I had to pick on anything: the plot is a little thin with respect to the drive of the main villain. The interactions between him and his allies could have used some more screen time. Whilst shrouding a villain in a cloud of mystery makes sense to some extent, what actually drives him sometimes eluded me.

This movie should be skipped only if you really do not like superheroes, everyone else should go and watch this as it surely lives up to the expectations. So: stop reading, and go see it!

Rating:  

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Trailer hosted by YouTube. Copyright © 2012 Marvel Studios

Hugo is based on a relatively recently released (2007) award winning book by Brian Selznick. It is not surprising that the film rights to the book were quickly sold, and certainly not to the least of directors either: Martin Scorsese. He has a career spanning decades and has directed a string of movies in recent years which I liked, among which: Shutter Island, The Departed and Gangs of New York. However, those were admittedly all in different, less family friendly, genres. Nevertheless, I went to Hugo hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Hugo starts off with a flight over Paris and a long, cinematically pleasing, opening scene in which we follow the main character: Hugo, as he makes his way through his home: the Parisian main railway station. We quickly learn that Hugo is scavenging materials to restore something which he holds very dear to him: an automaton. We later learn more about his motivation for doing this, and also the consequences this has for him, but particularly for other people that live and work in the station.

The movie nicely interleaves various smaller subplots which are not essential to the main storyline, but serve as welcome variation and add to the broader feeling the filmmakers try to elicit. However, if anything, Hugo is a tribute to the early days of film making. It is full of references to this period, and while the story is fictional, if you’re into seeing some actual old film history, this movie is a treat.

Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baren Cohen all give excellent performances in their respective roles. Both cinematography and sound design are beautiful, something for which the film has deservedly won Oscars. 3D is not exactly necessary for a movie like Hugo. However, apart from annoying strobing snow near the start, the effect is used very well and does subtly add something to various scenes. This shows that, while not essential, 3D is not a domain exclusive to summer action blockbusters.

Hugo is fairly slow moving, something which can also be seen in previous works of Scorsese. However, this serves the purpose of drawing the viewer in more effectively as we marvel over the presented visuals, something in which Hugo also succeeds. There are some moments wherein revealing the motives of characters leans to strongly on dialogue for my taste. Nevertheless, there are enough twists and turns to make the audience care for the characters, and that’s what it’s ultimately about. All in all Hugo is an entertaining family friendly ride that transports you back to 1930 Paris. Recommended!

Rating:  

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Trailed Hosted by YouTube. Copyright © Paramount Pictures

Wikipedia has become the de facto encyclopedia on the Internet. A traditional encyclopedia spans many textbook volumes which would take any normal person ages to read. Few people would likely engage in such an endeavor. However, since Wikipedia is readily accessible: should you take up the challenge?

Wikipedia is continuously being changed and updated. Consequently, reading all of it would take an infinite amount of time, as when you would have finished reading, you would have to go back to re-read the changed articles. Hence, we need to change our initial question to: How long would it take to read a snapshot of today’s Wikipedia? But we aren’t there yet, there’s one more thing left to specify. Since Wikipedia is multi-lingual, we have to pick a language. While some articles are translated from English into various languages, there are quite a few that have no English counterpart and are language, culture or even region specific. Let’s focus only on the English portion of Wikipedia.

The English Wikipedia consists of about 4 million articles, counting only the content pages. That’s roughly an estimated 3000 volumes of Encyclopædia Brittanica. It’s heavily consulted as this collection of articles gets viewed almost 3000 times every second. However, let’s not get distracted: our goal is to find out how long it would take to read Wikipedia. For this we first have to find out how fast people read. Although this greatly varies from person to person, and some Wikipedia articles may be more difficult to read than others, we will have to pick a reasonable value. It turns out that the average American adult can read about 300 words per minute.

So, how many words does Wikipedia consist of? Although no recent exact numbers are available, a quick extrapolation reveals that all articles combined form about 2500 million words, that’s about 625 words per article on average. Each article would take a little over two minutes to read for an average adult. Reading all of Wikipedia would take about 140 000 hours, which is 5800 days, or almost sixteen years. That’s assuming that you’re reading 24 hours a day! Reading a standard eight-hour workday seems more reasonable. In that case it would take you thrice as long: 48 years, but you’d still have time to do other things, and most importantly: time to sleep.

Thus, right now it would (still) be possible to read Wikipedia in a lifetime: if you start reading when you turn 18, you would have reached about pension-age (66) when you would be finished. Nevertheless, Wikipedia continues to grow, albeit at a slower rate than it used to: the word count is increasing with about two percent per month. Hence, if you still want to actually do this: I suggest you start reading now. However, perhaps your time is better spent some other way

Source: Wikipedia Statistics

The premise behind the YouTube documentary “Life in a Day” is interesting: invite everyone around the world to shoot video on one specific day: July 24th 2010. Have people upload their raw footage and edit it so it becomes a short, ninety minute, documentary that chronicles a single day on our planet. Does this extreme form of crowdsourcing actually work?

The goal of a film is storytelling and doing this by combining random contributions seems like a formidable challenge. The organizers received over eighty thousand submissions and had a total of about forty-five hundred hours of footage to work with. For making something coherent out of all this, the film had a lot of talent to work with. Scott Free productions, owned by the brothers Ridley and Tony Scott, known for heavyweights like Top Gun and Gladiator, was involved as production company. Kevin McDonald was attached as director, and Harry Gregson-Williams as composer. The excellent music, and several montages set to rhythm, help a great deal with keeping things dynamic.

The film starts and ends with a view of our moon, and proceeds chronologically from the earliest hours to the end of the day at midnight. Footage from all around the world is included. While the first couple of minutes may seem a bit random, gradually more coherent stories form. Most of these are in the form of personal narratives that give a brief window into the lives of real people. This includes everything from the mundane and materialistic to fairly gripping emotional moments.

The film can be viewed as a time capsule and gives a beautiful broad portrait of the human condition around mid 2010. It presents many events, beliefs and themes in a non-judgemental way, perhaps that’s the greatest strength of this documentary: just allowing the viewer to observe things and not trying to impose a message. A succesful experiment. Recommended!

The trailer is below. You can watch the full ninety-minute version on-line here.

Rating:  

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Copyright © 2011 National Geographic. Trailer Hosted by YouTube

When travelling abroad it is difficult to go with an open mind. Despite our best efforts we bring with us an excess of prejudice shaped by our own culture and view of the destination country. So to it was for me when I visited the United States. When coming back, people at home are very insistent that you play into their prejudice regarding where you’ve been as well, perhaps as a means of reinforcing their own identity.

Let’s look at some of the top prejudices about Americans, and see whether they have truth in them. I must emphasize that I have been mostly around the Pittsburgh area, and my observations may or may not extent to the rest of the United States.

#1 Americans are very friendly, but it’s “fake”
This is one of the most often heard things about Americans: that they are ‘fake’. What most people refer to when they say this is that they are friendly, but they don’t really mean it. This is not entirely true though: from their perspective they probably do mean it. It’s not that they are putting up an act, it is simply a different social etiquette.

I believe the initial friendliness of Americans, which contrasts somewhat with northern Europeans, has evolved as a means to deal with the high economic mobility in the country. This is probably inherited from the frontier days when the United States was still forming, but even today it is common for people to move around quite a bit in order to find jobs: economic mobility. An open and friendly attitude towards strangers, and a quick means that facilitates social assimilation into groups is a necessity in such an environment.

#2 Americans are superficial
This is related to #1, but at a slightly later state in interactions. Americans are more open to banter than the average Dutch person for sure. Striking up a conversation and getting an interaction going is easier in the United States. People familiar with the east of the Netherlands will find it similar in some respect to the difference with the more densely populated west of the country: conversation are faster and their content more fleeting. However, if you actually get to know a person you can take the conversation as deep as you want, just as about anywhere else in the world.

#3 Americans are materialistic
It is true that Americans have a lot of `stuff’ and like to show what they have. This desire may not be specific to Americans by definition. However, showing your wealth prominently through materialism is more accepted in the USA than in other societies. One plausible reason for this is that the United States was founded as a place where status was not to be acquired by being born into a particular social class, but rather by working hard to distinguish oneself. Hence, the only way to actually measure the status of others in such a system is through observing their acquired wealth.

This is not a bad thing per se. But there are few mechanism to curb the excesses, which leads to a rather larger divide between poor and rich people. Additionally, I have been told repeatedly that the American Dream, a large part of which revolves around wealth and independence, is no longer reachable for many young Americans.

#4 Americans are nationalistic
One of the things that is pretty much true. Although national pride is nothing new, America is one of the few western countries that infuse their kids with a strong sense of national identity. Their proudness can be viewed as a positive thing since it keeps them together. However, I think it mostly works against them, as it strongly affects international relations and is also an often used argument in debate: when Americans criticize their own country their patriotism is often questioned. Something which seems irrelevant to me.

#5 Americans are overweight
I believe about one in three Americans is significantly overweight. This was also roughly true where I was. It’s a sad thing, but as I have reported before, there’s little incentive to eat healthy or stay physically fit. If you want that it has to come from you, as the country’s regulatory authorities and commercial parties hardly provide any incentive for living a healthy life.

#6 Americans are conservative
This is certainly true for a part of the population. However, this is not specific to the United States. The two-party political system polarizes people into either being a republican (conservative) or a democrat (liberal). This forced binary option makes the political orientation of people very visible. It seems somewhat awkward for a country based on market economics to have so little choice in its political system.

#7 Americans are not knowledgeable about the rest of the world
This strongly depends on where you are. In a university setting they are probably no less knowledgable, and interested, in the world outside of their country. However, that’s a very narrow part of the demographic.

The truth is that Americans don’t have a lot of reason to travel outside their own country, since their huge land covers many climates, and has many beautiful sights. You can enjoy yourself there for a lifetime without having to ever travel outside of the country. That’s not to say that Americans don’t like to travel abroad: they certainly do. However, it’s probably true to some extent that their limited direct exposure to other cultures in terms of customs and language does not make them as aware of the world outside their country as the citizens of smaller countries in Europe.

#8 Americans are hard workers
As I understand it this depends a bit on where you are in the United States. The people in the southern states having an apparantly more relaxed and laid back attitude. However, in Pittsburgh life is fairly rushed. People frequently complain about the long hours they have to put in. There’s a fair amount of shops open the whole day, every day, or something close to that.

It seems like they are good at what I call “making each other crazy” with few vacation hours and long working days. Whether that is actually beneficial overall is fairly doubtful. The increase in working hours is probably offset by a decline in productivity during those hours. Americans work a lot, that doesn’t make them hard workers.

Conclusion
Overall there is some element of truth in all of the items mentioned. However, the reality is less black and white and has many more shades of grey than many people are willing to believe. This isn’t helped by the vast amount of documentaries that serve only to reinforce the common stereotypes. Americans also, in part, owe this to themselves, as they seem more than happy to reinforce their image in media. When you visit the United States yourself, I would recommend trying to keep an open mind, even if that may be difficult sometimes.

After a five year hiatus Ethan Hunt is back on the big screen familiarly portrayed by Tom Cruise. Director Brad Bird is perhaps best known for his considerably successful animation films, like The Incredibles and Ratatouille. This affinity with animation is clearly visible in for example the title sequence of Ghost Protocol. But is it any good after that?

Mission Impossible starts with Ethan Hunt being broken out of a Russian prison by former IMF team members. It is immediately apparent during this sequence that the movie leans considerably on funny moments as well as pure action. The main villain Hendricks and his objectives quickly become crystal clear, and naturally Hunt has to stop him. However, he and his team lose support of the IMF after they fail to stop Hendricks at the Kremlin. This is when the ‘Ghost Protocol’ becomes active and the team goes underground to chase down Hendricks and stop him from unleashing a devastating nuclear war. So far nothing that we haven’t seen before. However, especially with a fairly predictable and straightforward plot, it can be hard to get the rest right.

Luckily Ghost Protocol is extremely well paced with enough variation to continually command attention. Simon Pegg delivers a good supporting role as the light hearted Benji, providing all kinds of cool technical gadgets that would make even James Bond’s Q jealous. Jeremy Renner’s character also makes for a good companion to Cruise’s lead. Spectacular views and excellent cinematography make Mission Impossible IV a visual treat. If there’s any criticism: the movie sometimes tends to overplay its comical hand, for example in some of the scenes situated in India.

Mission Impossible IV is over-the-top, and not particulary deep or original. Nevertheless, the filmmakers have managed to create a light and humorous action flick with good technical execution: a treat for any movie goer. Recommended!

Rating:  

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Trailer hosted by YouTube. Copyright © 2011 Paramount Pictures.

Since I’ve spent some time in the United States, what follows are some ideas for shopping and eating that could save fellow traveling Dutchmen some time. Some of these may be specific to the Pittsburgh area, but others may also generalize to other parts of the country, particularly medium to large sized cities. Use to your advantage.

• Cheese: there’s a lot of cheese around: different kinds from different countries. This large selection reduces the number of cheeses per country, so most Dutch cheese that you’ll find is Gouda “goo-dah”. Most of that is not Dutch import, but produced elsewhere in the US. Cheeses are notably less salty, but certainly no less fat. I recommend trying Pepper Jack if you’ve never had it and like spicy stuff.
• Sprinkles: these are available in small packages for decorating cakes. Hence, putting this on your daily slices of bread will quickly turn into an expensive hobby. However, if you scout around you may find a local chocolate shop that imports Dutch products from de Ruijter “de-ruter”.
• Potato Chips: I’ve found only the plainly salted potato chips to be comparable to their Dutch counterparts. You will find many familiar brands: Lays, Cheetos, etcetera. However, this is a deception, since most of these have a different ‘taste’ and texture. Bell pepper “paprika” potato chips are nowhere to be found, but there are a lot of oddly spiced chips if you’re into experimenting.
• McDonald’s: if you’re looking for the typical yellow ‘mad sauce’ you won’t find it in the United States. Strangely it is marketed in Dutch supermarkets as an “American” sauce. Fries are generally served with ketchup and mayonnaise is available on request.
• Big American Pizzas: thick crusted pizzas are not popular in the United States as far as I could tell. Yet another marketing ploy …
• Teeth: if you want to keep them buy a good, preferably electrical, toothbrush as they will have to endure a sugar overload.
• Tipping: unlike in the Netherlands this is expected in the United States: not tipping is considered rude. However, tipping is not expected if there’s a tipping box on the counter. As a rough guideline to what you will be signaling with your tipping amount: ten percent is bad service, fifteen percent okay service and twenty percent is excellent service. Remember that barbers and taxi drivers also expect tips.
• Brands: In grocery stores expect to find a wide range of unfamiliar brands. Notable exceptions to this are Unilever brands and a broad range of personal care products. It’s fairly obvious what most things are though, so don’t be afraid to experiment (within reason).
• Rental Cars: try Hertz or Avis.

While you may be familiar with many large American (fast) food chains, there are fairly large competitors that do not operate in the Netherlands. For example most people will be familiar with Starbucks, but not with Caribou Coffee. Similarly, everyone knows the sandwich shop Subway, but not Quiznos. If you like Bagels & Beans in the Netherlands, you will also like Panera Bread in the United States. Looking for a burrito or taco? Try the Chipotle Mexican Grill. If you want any type of quickly prepared food: your options are virtually endless.

Here’s a list of companies found in the Netherlands with United States alternatives. This list is not exhaustive, and it’s certainly not exact as many stores in the United States offer a wider range of products in a wider range of categories (and of course: Wal Mart really has everything, hence it’s not included).

• V&D, Bijenkorf: Macy’s
• Blokker, Hema: Target
• Albert Heijn “To Go”: Seven Eleven, CVS Pharmacy, Rite Aid
• Albert Heijn: Whole Foods, Trader Joe
• C1000: Giant Eagle (East-US Regional)
• Makro: Costco
• Ice cream!: Ben&Jerry’s, Baskin-Robbins, Frozen Yoghurt
• Wolff, Pathé: AMC Theatres
• Mediamarkt: BestBuy
• Ikea: Ikea

In general I recommend just walking around and going in and out of shops to get a feel for what is different. You will probably quickly get the ‘hang’ of it.

Update: a pointer from a friend for those interested in purchasing Dutch products in the United States: www.hollandsbest.com.

… or roughly 32 000 feet above the ground, that’s where I am now, as you are reading this. In about six hours I will land at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands, back where I started hundred and twenty-three days ago. It doesn’t seem that long when you are at the end of it, but that’s still a good third of a year.

It’s been a mostly fun and rewarding experience, but I have to say it was also frustrating at times. Nevertheless, I’ve quite gotten used to being able to drop in at the Starbucks around the corner, biking down Squirrel Hill into Oakland, having all kinds of conversations with Americans, hanging out with film club people, going to Pitt games with my landlord, et cetera. So, although I am quite excited to go home, there will definitely by things that I’ll miss.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my stay in Pittsburgh, and there will be some final US related articles coming up in this category as well. Keep reading

For many people the name of the character alone might make their skins crawl, let alone its tagline: “when patriots become heroes”, but one should keep in mind that the fictional superhero Captain America was created during the second world war. A time in which the global war efforts of the United States were internationally uncontroversial and parodies like Team America: World Police did not exist. It is during this historic period that most of this latest movie adaptation takes place.

We follow Steve Rogers’ struggles in the American army and his transformation into Captain America. The main villain in this Joe Johnston directed movie, the Red Skull, is convincingly played by Hugo Weaving, of Matrix fame, and the protagonist Captain America by Chris Evans. His entertaining transformation from a frail man to a superhero is aided by a defected German scientist, an excellent role by Stanley Tucci.

Captain America does not take itself too seriously and is luckily not without humor and self-deprecation. After his transformation the Captain is turned into an entertainer for troops abroad, a role which quickly loses meaning to him. Hence, his foray into the forefront of battle driven by an additional strong personal objective. Good supporting roles are given by Tommy Lee Jones as army colonel and Hayley Atwell as strong female officer. The movie’s ending hints to a sequel, and of course to the upcoming Avengers movie.

As with any super hero movie, good and bad are portrayed as rather black and white in Captain America. Despite its fine execution: good cinematography and well paced dialogues, it doesn’t feel like this movie has a whole lot to say of its own, which is something we’ve gotten used to thanks to high quality film adaptations of Batman and Spiderman.

My main observation is that Captain America feels to run-of-the-mill and doesn’t add anything to the established genre of superhero movies, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it comes expected. Hence, If you like comic book heroes and are into a light “popcorn” movie with plenty of action, then you will find Captain America entertaining. If you want anything more than that, you’re probably looking in the wrong place.

Rating:  

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Trailer hosted by YouTube. Copyright © 2011 Marvel Studios.

During my stay in the Pittsburgh I’ve had lots of interesting conversations with all kinds of people. However, what stands out for me in particular is those with young Americans in their early twenties. They represent what America will look like tomorrow, and many of them are not very happy about what it looks like today. What follows are anonymized excerpts of various conversations, not exclusively, but predominantly with young adults, some of these have been slightly altered for the sake of readability.

Pride
I was standing near the front of a fairly crowded bus. We were waiting for it to depart: several people still needed to pay before exiting the vehicle.
“That’s taking a while,” I murmured.
“Damn, I just want to go home you know”, a middle-aged man standing next to me said. “They can just have their cash ready when they want to exit. They’re delaying all these people this way.”
“It’s not a very efficient system: paying cash, where I come from we use cards for that.”
“Where do you come from?”
“The Netherlands.”
“Oh wow, a friend of mine lived there for sometime, in Amsterdam I think.”
“Cool, then he probably knows the public transport infrastructure is better over there.”
“Sure, sure, better then here. There’s lots of things that could be improved in the United States.” He hesitated and continued: “but don’t misunderstand me: I am a proud American. It’s not a perfect country, but people keep coming here: just like you came to Pittsburgh, so we must be doing something right, right?”
I nodded in silent agreement.

Shame
“So, I’ve noticed that in the United States the gap between rich and poor is large,” I said.
“Yes, that’s right,” she replied.
“So, in Western Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, that gap tends to be a lot smaller: people are in some sense more equal, certainly in terms of purchasing power. We say `the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden’”
“Right, that’s the way it is supposed to work here. However, it really doesn’t work that way since rich people get huge tax cuts. I mean: Warren Buffet even suggested imposing more tax on his own socio-economic group: the rich.”
“But, the American economic system does encourage more risk-taking and appears to yield more innovation then the European one, right?”
“Right, but I still prefer a welfare state, like those in Europe or Canada.”

Rich
I was having a conversation with a group of people.
“So, I am trying to understand how it works here: are conservatives mostly older people and liberals mostly younger people?”
“More or less, the people in the bigger cities: the densely populated areas near the coasts, are generally more liberal, and most young people that are conservative are rich kids,” a girl replied.
“Rich kids?”
“Yes, like: kids with very rich parents, if one thing is true in America it’s that being rich will make you richer,” a boy added.
“That seems perverse. So, how does it work with tuition, that’s supposedly high here, right?”, I continued.
“For Carnegie Mellon it is about forty-three thousand dollars per year, but it varies depending on the school.”
“What, seriously?”, I wasn’t really expecting it to be that high.
“So, what is it in the Netherlands?”
“If I’d tell you that you’d go crazy”, I smiled.

History
“So, then, what was the American fight for independence really about?”, I asked.
“Well, don’t misunderstand: the American revolution was about a bunch of rich white guys on one side of the ocean that were unhappy about the unfair levied taxes imposed on them by some rich white guys on the other side of that same ocean: the British.”

Heritage
“One of the things I’ve found quite disappointing here in the United States is the emphasis on a person’s ethnic heritage.” I paused and pondered if I should broach the subject further, “statistics presented in the media are often about race: White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and all combinations thereof. I mean: I personally don’t think that should matter at all.”
She smiled, “race shouldn’t matter: I agree, but it is an historically very sensitive issue here in the United States.”
I continued: “As an example, I’ve seen a lot of non-white people working menial jobs. Is my observation incorrect or is this really true?”
“It’s true, it’s true. It’s not just race though, it’s more socio-cultural,” she paused and frowned. “And you know what’s even worse? Say someone manages to get out of that situation, for example: a black female, she then gets stereotyped as the ‘strong black woman’”
“Positive discrimination?”
“Exactly.”

Occupation (1)
“So, what do you think occupy Wall Street is all about?”, I asked.
“I think what it boils down to is getting money out of politics.”
“Money?”
“Yes, in the United States when you run for president you need money: lots of money.” He paused briefly, then continued: “so, most of that money is provided by companies. They basically throw their weight behind any candidate who best serves their interest.”
“And you also have a two party system, right?”
“Right, you can run either for the democrats or republicans, there’s really no other practical way to win an election.”
“So, to recap: would you say it’s basically about reducing the indirect political power and influence of large and rich corporations?”
“That’s exactly it.”

Occupation (2)
“Have you followed the occupy Wall Street movement?”, he asked.
“Yes, somewhat, someone told me about it, but enlighten me: what is your view on what that’s really about?”, I replied.
“That’s indeed somewhat unclear to many people. So, there are a lot of important issues that the occupy movement raised, like: the greed of wall street, the influence of corporations, etcetera.” he said.
“However”, continuing, “there’s one issue at the center of it all.”
“And what might that be?”, I asked.
“Young versus old”, he replied with confidence. “Look: the young generation is tired of the older generation trying to dominate and regulate everything in this country.”
He hesitated for a second. “Don’t misunderstand me, I think this is a great nation.”
“I’ve heard that before: that belief seems like a very common American trait”, I interrupted. “Where does that actually come from?”
“I think we’re instilled with it from a young age onwards,” he looked briefly up at a friend for confirmation while rubbing his hands to battle the cold breeze.
“Many people think ‘frak it’ and then ‘flee’ to Canada or Europe,” he continued. “But if everyone with progressive ideas does that: only the conservative ones will remain. There’s already too much emphasis on tradition and that’ll only make it worse”
“You should come to Europe”, I said, “Just for a while to see what it’s like, I mean: it’s not perfect over there, but it would give you a better feeling of the differences.”
“No system is perfect.” He smiled.

Another Earth is a drama film with a science fiction backdrop. The story revolves around a girl named Rhoda, portrayed by Brit Marling, who has recently been accepted to study at MIT. Unfortunately, while driving home from a party she slams her car into that of a famous composer, killing his family and throwing him in a coma.

The rest of the film is mostly about the consequences for both the composer and Rhoda, as well as one of the causes of the accident: Rhoda looking out of the window of her car because she sees another earth in the sky. This visual cue is revisited many times in the movie as we slowly learn what the other earth really is. However, more central to the story is the relation between Rhoda and the composer, a fascinating role by William Mapother. The fact that the audience and Rhoda share a secret together from the outset of the movie makes for some particularly gripping moments.

Another Earth is recommended for people who like well crafted art house films. While it borrows elements from other movies, like Moon and Crash, it’s hard to really compare to existing work, which makes that it has a unique signature: a good thing. Another Earth is slowly paced, but consistently throws enough at you to hold your attention. To what extent you will like this movie probably depends mainly on whether you sympathize with the faith of the two main characters. The cinematographic execution is rough in some places, but not a distraction. Finally, the abrupt ending may be a disappointment to some, but I couldn’t think of a more appropriate one.

Rating:  

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Trailer hosted by YouTube. Copyright © 2011 Fox Searchlight Pictures.