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In the future, high-powered female corporate execs will pay to have our female immigrants carry their unborn children to term as surrogates. A new company, Silver Sling Enterprises, employs patented technology which promises to cut the gestation period down for surrogates by a whopping two-thirds. Prospective parents are herded into the company’s well-appointed conference room to greet potential surrogates in a series of carefully-orchestrated greeting sessions at the company’s downtown Manhattan HQ. If a surrogate is chosen, she undergoes the experimental procedure and three almost-miraculous months later, a healthy fetus is born. Surrogates are paid handsomely for acting as host, money which many use to support their families abroad. Lydia — played by the talented beyond her years Julia Kots — is one such surrogate. She’s been wrangling with the decision about undergoing her third Silver Sling surrogacy. There are side-effects, to be sure, for upending Mother Nature’s natural progression: three accelerated pregnancies are almost guaranteed make a woman stone-cold sterile. Yet Lydia promised her dying Russian mother she’d care for her talented younger sibling Pasha and deliver him to America at all costs. Her extraordinarily patient boyfriend, Stepan, wants to have children of his own and encourages Lydia not to go through with it. She finds herself torn between these two worlds and we’re left wondering what Lydia will decide to do.
What I loved most about this film?
Many Americans — hailing from immigrant stock themselves — will never experience the high and low sensations of being a newcomer to a strange land. To be compelled to make excruciatingly difficult and challenging life and money decisions is well beyond the intimate comprehension of the majority of Americans today. Kudos to director Tze Chun for making this easier to relate to in Silver Sling. The immigrant’s odyssey is one most Americans live in denial about. The process is a generational phenomenon, to be sure, yet when citizens deny newcomers the dignity they rightfully deserve, decisions of the sort our lead character Lydia will be forced to make ensue. Just about the best line in this film (for me) was uttered by Karen Chilton, playing the Silver Sling nurse Ana, who chided Lydia with: “When you’re young you never think about the future.” That pretty much summed Silver Sling up for me and brought thing down to a personal level — now there’s something I can relate to! Let us hope we are never cornered into making the sort of life-altering decision Lydia has to.
PLASTIC BAG (2009, ITVS, short, runtime: 18m32s, director: Ramin Bahrani)
What if the hundreds of millions of plastic bags, containers, and cutlery sets we use could speak? What would they say? Well, their dialogue would likely emulate that of “Plastic Bag,” the lead “actor” in this vitally-important film. Narrated flawlessly by the idiosyncratic Werner Herzog, we tag along with Plastic Bag on its journey. First, it meets its “maker” at the store. He gets used, re-used and further abused until his maker finally has no further need for him and chucks him into the bin. He ends up finally at a landfill just outside of New York. The film reaches its climax as Plastic Bag begins his meandering and life-altering path back home to his “maker.” Along the way, he encounters a motley crew of beasts, various inanimate objects, and other plastic bags who inform Plastic Bag of the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vortex-like resting place for all plastic people who can dwell there and “just be themselves,” forgetting all about their makers and being at one with their soul. Yet once Plastic Bag reaches the vortex, he becomes unsatisfied by his new adoptive home and longs to catch sight of his maker once again. He remains a restless castaway in a restive world.
What I enjoyed about this film?
Plastic Bag is truly the way of the future for trenchant social commentary. Sure, documentaries are important and convey a vital message to their captive audiences, yet do they entertain? I mean really entertain like this film does? Ramin Bahrani‘s project is a sweet twist on an incessant message hammered into us about the evils of rampant, unrestrained plastic production. If we, as a society who ignores the required calls to modify our 3R-behavior in relation to plastics, don’t demand, for instance, biodegradable plastic bags from our supermarket chains, what incentive do they have to change their ways? If we don’t stop asking for extra packaging, can we be held blameless for what’s surely coming our planet’s way? (I remember arriving at my neighborhood supermarket during my woodshedding month with yesterday’s bags at checkout. I received several strange every day as I’d pack my new products in my old bags. Somehow, though, I felt vindicated). Soon it will be illegal to issue new plastic bags in stores. It will be a practice as heavily-regulated as no-smoking bans are in certain jurisdictions. It’s almost here.
MISTER GREEN (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 15m52s, director: Greg Pak)
Mister Green defines a world which has been utterly defeated in the on-again, off-again climate change battle. Everything the naysayers claimed would never happen? Forget about it! We’re already done for. It’s 30 degrees Celsius in December (!!!) and most of the world’s seaside cities are already submerged underwater. As a species, we’re struggling to pick up the shattered pieces of our lives to make the most of the world we’ve been left with, which isn’t much to begin with. US Secretary of the Department of Global Warming, Mason Park — played convincingly by Tim Kang — informs a meeting of notable climate-change delegates that the best the world can now hope for is plain survival. Enter Dr. Gloria Holtzer — played by the grossly underrated Betty Gilpin. She and Park connect later at the conference’s hotel bar, where they rekindle memories as college classmates, retiring up to Park’s suite for a would-be dalliance. But the good doctor’s got another trick up her sleeve, one that’s set to change the way humanity interacts with the biosphere forever. Secretary Park is set to become her experimental technology’s most notable guinea pig, it’s just that he doesn’t know it yet…
What was great about this film?
For someone who spends most of his time at a drafting table pumping out comic book panels, Greg Pak shot Mister Green gorgeously. Especially that day out at the marsh. Did he use filters? The exterior colors are all so vivid! Yellows are luminously accentuated. Whites are crisp and cut magnificent lines. And all of that luscious verdant green. Delicious! Holtzer and Park display some excellent on-screen chemistry, and as I’d mentioned to Betty Gilpin, too bad this was a short movie: I’d have loved to see the relationship between them blossom. The characters in Mister Green all seem tremendously hopeful, despite the ravages of the battle which has already been lost. And will we, as a collectivity, be as sanguine about our future once the eventual environmental calamity hits the proverbial fan? Or will we take films like Mister Green as our clarion call to do our utmost in preventing this from happening? Presuming, of course, that we can actually prevent something from happening.
If there’s anything you’d like to have curated in particular, just let me know in the comments below.
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CURATE-A-FILM | Silver Sling, Plastic Bag & Mister Green
DATELINE: July 28, 2010
PMD-For-Hire HQ
Contemplating what our future might be like at FUTURESTATES…
SILVER SLING (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 11m18s, director: Tze Chun)
In the future, high-powered female corporate execs will pay to have our female immigrants carry their unborn children to term as surrogates. A new company, Silver Sling Enterprises, employs patented technology which promises to cut the gestation period down for surrogates by a whopping two-thirds. Prospective parents are herded into the company’s well-appointed conference room to greet potential surrogates in a series of carefully-orchestrated greeting sessions at the company’s downtown Manhattan HQ. If a surrogate is chosen, she undergoes the experimental procedure and three almost-miraculous months later, a healthy fetus is born. Surrogates are paid handsomely for acting as host, money which many use to support their families abroad. Lydia — played by the talented beyond her years Julia Kots — is one such surrogate. She’s been wrangling with the decision about undergoing her third Silver Sling surrogacy. There are side-effects, to be sure, for upending Mother Nature’s natural progression: three accelerated pregnancies are almost guaranteed make a woman stone-cold sterile. Yet Lydia promised her dying Russian mother she’d care for her talented younger sibling Pasha and deliver him to America at all costs. Her extraordinarily patient boyfriend, Stepan, wants to have children of his own and encourages Lydia not to go through with it. She finds herself torn between these two worlds and we’re left wondering what Lydia will decide to do.
What I loved most about this film?
Many Americans — hailing from immigrant stock themselves — will never experience the high and low sensations of being a newcomer to a strange land. To be compelled to make excruciatingly difficult and challenging life and money decisions is well beyond the intimate comprehension of the majority of Americans today. Kudos to director Tze Chun for making this easier to relate to in Silver Sling. The immigrant’s odyssey is one most Americans live in denial about. The process is a generational phenomenon, to be sure, yet when citizens deny newcomers the dignity they rightfully deserve, decisions of the sort our lead character Lydia will be forced to make ensue. Just about the best line in this film (for me) was uttered by Karen Chilton, playing the Silver Sling nurse Ana, who chided Lydia with: “When you’re young you never think about the future.” That pretty much summed Silver Sling up for me and brought thing down to a personal level — now there’s something I can relate to! Let us hope we are never cornered into making the sort of life-altering decision Lydia has to.
PLASTIC BAG (2009, ITVS, short, runtime: 18m32s, director: Ramin Bahrani)
What if the hundreds of millions of plastic bags, containers, and cutlery sets we use could speak? What would they say? Well, their dialogue would likely emulate that of “Plastic Bag,” the lead “actor” in this vitally-important film. Narrated flawlessly by the idiosyncratic Werner Herzog, we tag along with Plastic Bag on its journey. First, it meets its “maker” at the store. He gets used, re-used and further abused until his maker finally has no further need for him and chucks him into the bin. He ends up finally at a landfill just outside of New York. The film reaches its climax as Plastic Bag begins his meandering and life-altering path back home to his “maker.” Along the way, he encounters a motley crew of beasts, various inanimate objects, and other plastic bags who inform Plastic Bag of the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vortex-like resting place for all plastic people who can dwell there and “just be themselves,” forgetting all about their makers and being at one with their soul. Yet once Plastic Bag reaches the vortex, he becomes unsatisfied by his new adoptive home and longs to catch sight of his maker once again. He remains a restless castaway in a restive world.
What I enjoyed about this film?
Plastic Bag is truly the way of the future for trenchant social commentary. Sure, documentaries are important and convey a vital message to their captive audiences, yet do they entertain? I mean really entertain like this film does? Ramin Bahrani‘s project is a sweet twist on an incessant message hammered into us about the evils of rampant, unrestrained plastic production. If we, as a society who ignores the required calls to modify our 3R-behavior in relation to plastics, don’t demand, for instance, biodegradable plastic bags from our supermarket chains, what incentive do they have to change their ways? If we don’t stop asking for extra packaging, can we be held blameless for what’s surely coming our planet’s way? (I remember arriving at my neighborhood supermarket during my woodshedding month with yesterday’s bags at checkout. I received several strange every day as I’d pack my new products in my old bags. Somehow, though, I felt vindicated). Soon it will be illegal to issue new plastic bags in stores. It will be a practice as heavily-regulated as no-smoking bans are in certain jurisdictions. It’s almost here.
MISTER GREEN (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 15m52s, director: Greg Pak)
Mister Green defines a world which has been utterly defeated in the on-again, off-again climate change battle. Everything the naysayers claimed would never happen? Forget about it! We’re already done for. It’s 30 degrees Celsius in December (!!!) and most of the world’s seaside cities are already submerged underwater. As a species, we’re struggling to pick up the shattered pieces of our lives to make the most of the world we’ve been left with, which isn’t much to begin with. US Secretary of the Department of Global Warming, Mason Park — played convincingly by Tim Kang — informs a meeting of notable climate-change delegates that the best the world can now hope for is plain survival. Enter Dr. Gloria Holtzer — played by the grossly underrated Betty Gilpin. She and Park connect later at the conference’s hotel bar, where they rekindle memories as college classmates, retiring up to Park’s suite for a would-be dalliance. But the good doctor’s got another trick up her sleeve, one that’s set to change the way humanity interacts with the biosphere forever. Secretary Park is set to become her experimental technology’s most notable guinea pig, it’s just that he doesn’t know it yet…
What was great about this film?
For someone who spends most of his time at a drafting table pumping out comic book panels, Greg Pak shot Mister Green gorgeously. Especially that day out at the marsh. Did he use filters? The exterior colors are all so vivid! Yellows are luminously accentuated. Whites are crisp and cut magnificent lines. And all of that luscious verdant green. Delicious! Holtzer and Park display some excellent on-screen chemistry, and as I’d mentioned to Betty Gilpin, too bad this was a short movie: I’d have loved to see the relationship between them blossom. The characters in Mister Green all seem tremendously hopeful, despite the ravages of the battle which has already been lost. And will we, as a collectivity, be as sanguine about our future once the eventual environmental calamity hits the proverbial fan? Or will we take films like Mister Green as our clarion call to do our utmost in preventing this from happening? Presuming, of course, that we can actually prevent something from happening.
If there’s anything you’d like to have curated in particular, just let me know in the comments below.