31 replies to this topic

[Matt]

I got to watch the movie yesterday and found it to be quite powerful and moving. It was a really good piece of art and the scenes and acting were great! The ending was very unexpected though! Still a great movie imo.

[Shannon Vyff]

When I first saw "The Fountain", I was very angry. Maybe it was because I had very high expectations for it. But now, after having watched it again recently, I found it strangely moving and tragic. I still think there are parts of the film that invoke the same old cliched apologies for Death. But, when I saw the film the second time, I was imagining what it would be like after we've achieved biological immortality.....after we've visited other stars and galaxies......after we've done every possible thing that human beings could accomplish. Then, someday, we will have to consider dying. I think the film captures that tragic final act of "letting go". Of course, this is assuming that what we know about the Universe remains static. Who knows what this strange blackness we're all floating around in is? What are we doing here?

<!--YouTube 425+350+http://www.youtube.com/v/qFiJbJgYlE4--><object width='425' height='350'><param name='movie' value='http://www.youtube.com/v/qFiJbJgYlE4' ></param><param name='wmode' value='transparent'></param><embed src='http://www.youtube.com/v/qFiJbJgYlE4' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='transparent' width='425' height='350'></embed></object><!--End YouTube-->

I'm sure all of you understand the feeling that i'm talking about. It reminds of the beginning of a Greg Egan short story:

"In their ten-thousand, three hundred and ninth year of marriage, Leila and Jasim began contemplating death. They had known love, raised children, and witnessed the flourishing generations of their offspring. They had travelled to a dozen worlds and lived among a thousand cultures. They had educated themselves many times over, proved theorems, and acquired and abandoned artistic sensibilities and skills. They had not lived in every conceivable manner, far from it, but what room would there be for the multitude if each individual tried to exhaust the permutations of existence? There were some experiences, they agreed, that everyone should try, and others that only a handful of people in all of time need bother with. They had no wish to give up their idiosyncrasies, no wish to uproot their personalities from the niches they had settled in long ago, let alone start cranking mechanically through some tedious enumeration of all the other people they might have been. They had been themselves, and for that they had done, more or less, enough."


Full Story

I loved 'Riding the Crocodile'!!!

I do not love 'The Fountain' I like what reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes said, "It is highly pretentious and vies for your attention like an emo sixth grader."

I'd not seen the movie till now because the effort did not seem worth it after hearing from so many that they were highly disappointed. Hey it was on cable tonight, and I watched it--the 'Death is awe' and 'We have to come to terms with, and be happy with dying' --really irritated me. The overly artiness was just annoying--I like 2001 one a lot better for that...