Yesterday, Everybody Loves Hypnotoad was released on DVD. The TV show -- produced, written, and directed by the Hypnotoad, and starring the same -- is a hilarious romp that follows the ins-and-outs of the Hypnotoad's daily life. As a viewer, I was fully captivated by the show, except during the brief establishing shots (a suburban house; a Seinfeldian diner) and the commercial breaks -- for some reason those scenes failed to hold my attention.

The DVD includes one full 22-minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad, and features a flashback sequences and even some bloopers. It also includes some DVD "extras," such as a 90-minute time-travelling episode of Futurama, which was of some interest.

All Hail the Hypnotoad!

While Children of Men is by no means flawless, it is one of the few films I've seen in from 2006 that is clearly the product of a masterful director -- Mexico's Alfonso Cuarón.¹ I loved Y tu mamá también and find his Harry Potter entry to be the best so far in the series, but with Children of Men he enters the territory of classic sci-fi films such as Brazil and 12 Monkeys: the near-future dystopia.

The dystopic premise -- a world where for unknown reasons no child has been born in 18 years and where only Britain has maintained a semblance of civilization as we know it now by means of a fascist and sometimes genocidal government -- is handled with such realism that it's almost alarming. We're not talking here about robot armies or advanced Big Brother technologies; these are broken versions of the very political situations we read about every day, the logical extension of terrorism and insurrection when precipitated by an apocalyptic disease. I won't say more about this dystopic world, except to say that the story both flourishes and, in the end, finds its flaws in how the main characters live in it.

But the premise is not where I found Cuarón's masterful direction, because in many ways Children of Men is actually an action/war film. The two lengthy single-shot sequences² have already been much ballyhooed by critics, but I can only corroborate what's already been said -- these sequences aren't just an opportunity for Cuarón and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to show off, but actually add to the suspense of the action on screen. Much of the film, and especially in these sequences, comes off as balletic, with each gunshot, explosion, Clive Owen expression, spoken line, and swing of the camera precisely enacted as in the effects of a large-scale Broadway show.

It may sound contrived here, but I can only say that this technique actually enhances the realism of the scene, as opposed to the effect of the quick-cutting approach used so bluntly by most action and war films of our day. The closest comparison I can come up with is the mid-career work of Francis Ford Coppola, especially the electric first half of Apocalypse Now³ and his early-80's flop, the Las Vegas musical One from the Heart.⁴ Cuarón really is that talented.

I'd like to end with a brief mention of one of the most important building blocks for making true cinema: the car chase. Children of Men has an incredibly suspenseful car chase ranking high up with the best, and I don't think anything ever goes more than 10 miles per hour. It's the anti-Speed, and only a truly skilled director could make them this fun without resorting to pretty cars, fast cuts, and flame-riddled explosions.

Children of Men is one of the best films of 2006, and I can't wait to see what Cuarón does next.

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¹ The others were lesser films, relative to their respective pantheons, by Martin Scorsese and Darren Aronofsky, and Spike Lee's excellent Katrina documentary. (return)

² Including a ten-minute battle involving tanks, bombs, soldiers, and a chase sequence where, yes, the shot never once cuts. (return)

³ Which in my book, contains some of the finest cinematic direction in film history. (return)

⁴ Which is an incredible technical feat -- Coppola basically built downtown Las Vegas on a soundstage with an obsessively constructed lighting design -- but fails on so many other levels. (return)