Signs of life

I am still here but have been caught up in a flurry of work to write about all the interesting things that have been happening or even follow up on the excellent comments to my previous post (which I will very shortly). I've seen a few films in the interim though...

• Alfie(2004): This is the somewhat new Jude Law movie, which I ended up seeing as the tickets for The Incredibles were sold out. It is a completely predictable moral tale of a callous hedonist who goes from woman to woman craving the next easy pleasure, to be eventually dealt with the ultimate retribution of all -- loneliness. But unlike other films where the character is overtly nasty (i.e. cruel to children, old people and small animals), Alfie isnt such a "bad" guy per se and there is something tragic about how his world progressively comes apart capped off with the final scene when he happens to meet one his many women on a cold, winter night. :) Maybe I'm just not sufficiently cynical about Hollywood films, but despite the terrible reviews it has received, I thought the film was...was...was....kinda nice.

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• Trading women(2003) [Directed and written by David A. Feingold]: This is a documentary investigating the socio-economic drivers of the trafficking of women in Thailand. Being a layperson, watching this film was highly informative and being from India, where similar kind of trafficking is rampant, I could closely associate with many of the issues brought up by the film.
  
  Synopsis: "A clear and consistent message of the film is that trafficking is not a localized problem. The international crime of trafficking is susceptible to a complex range of influencing factors, which include the economies of supply countries and their neighbours, government anti-drugs initiatives affecting agricultural communities, sexual demand for particular ethnic types, the legal status of communities, restrictive immigration policies, official corruption and cultural stereotypes." [Pile Them High, Sell Them Cheap: Women and Sex for Sale, United Nations Chronicle][also read an interview with the film-maker]
  
  A quote from the filmaker David Feingold: "Trafficking conferences, conventions and government statements of goodwill are not enough. It is time we stopped simply presenting horror stories of individual women, and looked at the root causes. It is time we stopped feeling good about feeling bad.".
  
  NOTE: Though the content of the film strongly spoke for itself, in general it didnt seem particularly well edited and seem to indulge in a fair bit of "hand waving" while trying to make certain points. I'm just nitpicking

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• Summer Interlude(1951): Bergman, Bergman, Bergman -- sigh -- what more can I say, he never disappoints. The Seventh Seal is the film that turned on the light in my head one cold January evening in 2000 and ever since then watching a film (any film) began to mean something very different.

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