Oh, the little pleasures in life. I just love it when I'm scanning the 'flix and something I had wanted to watch months earlier suddenly pops up on my "New to Instant" list. That's how I ended up finally watching "Life in a Day," a unique little movie whose preview I first saw this summer while enjoying a screening for the Seattle International Film Festival.
The idea behind "Life in a Day" is that two directors told the world to send them footage of whatever they pleased--as long as it occurred within the 24-hour span of July 24, 2010. They ended up with upwards of 5,000 hours of footage from 190+ countries (dude, there are only 196 I'm pretty sure...) and after what I can only imagine to be one of the most grueling processes in film history, compiled selected bits and pieces into a loosely-directional piece.
At only 90 minutes, it is not a huge investment, and I would recommend it to most anyone. Some of the pieces are more like vignettes--my favorite was probably about a single Japanese father and his zombie-esque son, but that was mostly due to the fact that he used a fisheye lens which really highlighted the absurdly chaotic, small, and crowded 'apartment' in which the two live. The rest are little snippets. The film strives to cover the major things that arguably make us human, and make us One: What do you love most? What do you fear? What's in your pocket? Overall, the film fulfills its role of the arty, voyeuristic, optimistic little flick and my only major complaint is the last scene. I'm sorry, but it really had me going and then lost me completely on a non-compelling, non-novel final bit. And it does feel a bit like an elongated Kodak commercial. It did, however, remind me to continue to work on being present in everything I do; hell, if footage of an overweight dude in his undies brushing his teeth can make it to hollywood, it must be important.
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