As the world crumbles...

Last night 41.3 million people were watching the Oscars in the U.S.A.
Today there were earthquakes in Turkey and Greece, a freak hailstorm in Australia, snow in Barcelona. All of this following the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Japan and Taiwan. NASA finally admitted that the Earth's axis has shifted. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of the world. It is no surprise that one of the best movies of the year wasn't even aknowledged by the Oscars, John Hillcoat's The Road.

The Road is a post apocalyptic tale, based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, that shows without any fancy special effects the aftermath of a global cataclysm and its effect on the remaining human population. At the core, is the journey of a man and his son trying to find... something and just simply strugling to survive in a hostile environment, trudging through the ruins of a world long gone, now inhabited by scavengers and cannibals. It is not a pretty picture, it is harsh and depressing and the worst thing is that it rings tragically close to what would really happen. The most terrifying aspect is that we are getting closer to the depicted apocalypse with each passing day and that makes us feel uncomfortable. It is so uncomfortable that the Academy decided it was better to erase such a powerful film (and performace by Viggo Mortensen)and pretend it never existed. It's better to celebrate an American soldier in Irak, or to put on a pair of 3D glasses and fly to Pandora, than to think about the impending demise of civilization as we know it and the final descent of humanity happening in a very, very near future.