Thursday, February 22, 2007

Ticks & Fleas On Humans

DVD Suggestion: Deadly Disease

The Board, Monthly speaking at Concordia University, Montreal
Theme Issue: Disease modern

Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Romania, 150 minutes, 2005

Under the indifference of her three cats, Dante Remus Lazarescu lives alone among the beige walls of his cramped apartment. His sister lives in a nearby village, his daughter immigrated to Canada, his wife died ten years. But this is not just a day ahead in the life of an ordinary man. Since its awakening, he suffers from pains in the head and stomach. To turn off the pain, he gave of drugs, gets drunk homemade potions. Evil persists. He resigns himself to call for an ambulance to pick her home dirty and messy.
While awaiting emergency vehicle, a couple neighbor takes care of it with limited resources. Dizziness face of Dante, the man tries to reason about his alcohol abuse, after he vomited ale of bile and blood, the woman offers her moussaka.

The ambulance finally arrived, and the old Romanian is supported by a paramedical nurse. Unwittingly, she becomes the guardian angel of the patient until the end of his journey. In an emergency room to another, they all face the emergency overflow, insolence towards patients, cumbersome bureaucracy hospital, lack of respect for doctors to lower strata of the medical hierarchy ...

Lazarescu's case worsens over the trip, while his right side is paralyzed and slowly his mind s'embrume. What he suffers? Simple drunkenness, formerly treated ulcer or colon tumor? The following assumptions, but not confirmed until he passes a brain scan. The long road ends finally in a hospital friendly, humanitarian spirit, which lies on a metal gurney in human sixties between life and death. Ultimately, the film solves the riddle of the name to reach the mythical protagonist: the shift in hospitals in circles of hell Dante, death in the hands of relatives as Remus and disease like Lazarus, the resurrected Christ and the patron of lepers in the Middle Ages. In a spirit

documentary, Cristi Puiu gives a brilliant ode to mortality with the greenish hue, with a camera as nervous as accurate. The odyssey of a man condemned to death emerges a touching allegory on the universal themes: loneliness and aging, ethics and be human dignity and death. At the center of the ballet at the hospital staged naturalistic performance stands the colossal Ion Fiscuteanu, who lends his body to fully play the role of poor patient handling, stripped and shaved. Despite the heavy subject, the Romanian film avoids the trap of misery by black humor in the dialogues. Second feature filmmaker spent a painter, Death of Mr. Lazarescu has received several awards internationally, including the Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

aka White Fang cold wolf

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Cystic Fibrosis Jewelry

DVD Suggestion: Disease Environmental

The Board, Monthly speaking at Concordia University, Montreal
Theme Issue: Disease modern




Safe
States USA, 119 minutes, 1995

At the door of the 90s, dresses pastel patterned, huge chandeliers, plastic hair style permanent furnish the San Fernando Valley, California. To preserve the wealth of artificial paradise, safety devices and maintenance is mounting massive fences protect homes, castles, aerobics in the guise of synthesizer maintain healthy, cleaning women purify the houses.
the heart of a world as sterile, the slightest disruption becomes a major threat imbalance. Smoke from a delivery truck turns self in the back into a gas chamber, the chemical content of cosmetics transform the customer at the hair salon in guinea pig of a scientific experiment.
In the life of Carol - wife at home with husband and son in law - the first exponential expressions of discomfort is a simple sneeze, in the cool of the garage at home. At an alarming rate, symptoms are increasing. To the chagrin of Carol, medicine remains helpless before an evil as abstract as concrete. What suffering she really is: an imaginary disease in a superficial world where impulses are inhibited or extreme reaction to environmental pollution? The question remains. Carol then isolated in a clinic-style sectarian cleansing. In the end, survival hangs by a bunker and an oxygen tank. Under the obvious influence of Kubrick, the filmmaker Todd Haynes offers a more current dystopia, in which the artificial nature dominates.
aka White Fang not a blue wolf

Sunday, February 18, 2007

New Born Funny Messages

DVD Suggestion: Disease of blood

The Board, Monthly speaking at Concordia University, Montreal
Theme Issue: Disease modern


His brother
France, 95 minutes, 2003
July. Sitting on a park bench beside the sea, an old man talking with two young men, one alive, the other close to death. It tells the story of their missing off, removed by force from the water.
Mars. Flashback: Thomas knocked on the door of Luke, his brother, after years without contact. He tells her that death awaits him, he needs help. Thomas suffers from a rare condition. His blood does not have enough platelets, these bricks that clog holes in the skin. Each life-threatening hemorrhage. Begins searching for a cure for sore Thomas. His stay in hospital is increasing. In his room, is a succession of parents who sometimes speak little, sometimes too much, a love-to-end nerve, and still is Luke, a brother who watches over another. After some months, the medicine does not always cure. It maintains that life. The body of Thomas still supports, but his head hurts.
July, again. Starting to live a little longer, survive. Thomas and Luke would go to the beach for one last trip when the current does not forgive, the waves hide the bodies lost.
director Patrice Chereau soberly weaves a drama erupted at the time, sometimes bordering on the melodramatic, which moves in the truth of the game by Bruno Todeschini Thomas and Eric Caravaca in Luke amaze by their accuracy.
aka White Fang is a wolf-ing plane ...