How I Live Now - Cinema Review

How I Live Now is an odd cocktail of genres, appearing initially almost like a comedy before gradually taking on romantic elements and finally diving into harsh apocalyptic drama. This might make the film sound indecisive but all the close character-focused set up empowers the second half of the film by giving us real characters we've come to know thrown into a world we very much don't.

At first i was all prepared to hate this film.

The protagonist is a prickly, insecure teenager called Daisy who winds up reluctantly and resentfully at her cousin's home in the English countryside after living with her also much resented father in New York. At first it's a fish out of water scenario and Daisy seethes and despises everyone around her. It isn't until ripped country bumpkin Eddie enters the scene that her interest is piqued and she slowly warms to the family.

So far so moody teenager in unfamiliar twee rural lifestyle, but then hints of disruption elsewhere in the world begin filtering into the story. Starting with vague sugarcoated tv and radio reports moving onto sudden weather abnormalities. The real world creeps into Daisy's new life and it becomes apparent that this is what she left New York to try and avoid. The foreboding circumstances help Daisy and Eddie grow closer and the film handles this relationship very naturally, giving it time to grow and subside where needed. They feel like two real and unique people who each have something to offer the other.

You almost forget that they're cousins and that this is kind of weird...

Unfortunately the film doesn't get to explore this further before becoming an end of the world drama and separating the lovers but perhaps this best reflects love's fleeting brilliance before the world notices and stamps out the flame. The boot, in this instance, comes in the form of a military enforced evacuation due to nuclear terrorism spreading to England. The characters are forcefully torn apart and Daisy returns to the dead-eyed soul we saw at the start of the film. This girl has only love to live for and this fuels her escape with her youngest cousin to try and find their way back to Eddie and the farm.

This brings in days of harsh survival, trekking through the woods overcoming real dangers and their own internal doubts. The film is now miles away from where it started and it's debatable whether this embodies a great journey or confused schizophrenia. The film ends up drawing similarities with films like The Road and Children Of Men which personally ticks all my boxes but i fear for many the oppressive dark realism might be too depressing.

Things get fucked up basically...

Despite this the film recaptures some of its magic towards the end with a finale that blends the two halves of the film quite well, being both ambiguous in some areas and giving closure in others. The main change is in the protagonist Daisy who becomes stronger as the need arises for all her surviving family. Saoirse Ronan delivers some intensely powerful acting throughout and the film's editing and score compliment this extremely well.

Ultimately i enjoyed the film but it does feel as though it tries to do too much. In places this creates a truly unique setting and story whilst in others it feels like a schizophrenic combination of other films. That said if you enjoy apocalypse films or just want something intense and character driven i would still highly recommend it.

Steve Graduates

Graduayurhh...Graduaeurhh...I need sleep, i legitimately cannot function before midday and this level of presentability this early is a ridiculous demand. I luckily grabbed a lucozade before heading out, hopefully i'll have a chance to down it before the ceremony. We enter a building primarily used for swimming and gyming so i'm already out of place. I'm separated from my mum and nan and pointed towards a set of stairs. Having to switch to an independent thinking mindset i cleverly deduce i must ascend the steps in order to progress.

Next i enter a large sports hall flanked with different graduate related boards and backdrops. I fetch my gown and assorted toffery at which point someone mercifully shows me how the hell i'm meant to wear it. It feels like a dressing gown suspended in the process of falling off, which isn't good for anyone's nerves. I waft (as this is the only way one can move in these things) into an area dubbed photographs and i eventually reunite with mum and nan.

Another long wait commences as we queue approaching the photographers. I watch the other graduates preen and prepare themselves in front of the mirrors so vainly supplied. I don't personally feel the need to even adjust my makeshift plate hat, i'm already well aware how ludicrous i look. The day is not about me however it's about mum and nan feeling proud or some such sentiment i can't understand. I glance at my chubby mug in the mirror. I look like a flesh coloured ball pit trapped in a tornado of curtains. I'm lead into the shooting space.

"OK hold this like this" she hands me a plastic baton with a ribbon on it...is this supposed to be my degree? "Now stand there like that and turn your head over to here, then raise your arm up here, look towards there, raise one leg, spin on the axis of your ankle, shift your spinal column sixty degrees to the left, tickle yourself, squint emphatically and salute the back of your neck...now relax" I'm a deformed mannequin, a pointless puppet devoid of all personality, but i suppose that's what these photos are all about.

She takes several shots since apparently i'm not smiling despite trying to contort my face into that most unsustainable of positions. I end up with two photos, one looking like i'd just applied for the grim reaper's job and another with a maniacal forced smile reaching up for my loftily poised eyebrows. That will have to do i guess, i've got plenty of photos where i look like a serial killer, what's one more?

I finally leave the sports hall and begin the long conspicuous trek towards the corn exchange where the actual ceremony embarks on it's forebodingly dull voyage into inanity. Despite being amongst hundreds of similar walking fabric cocktails i feel self-concious in this get-up and try to hurry as much as possible to the destination. Mother however justifiably wants some photos so i position myself on the grass somewhere between the empty beer cans and the seagulls and struggle to smile into the sun once more.

After only getting lost once we find the place and i'm directed to a separate entrance again.
A staff member glimpses at my ticket and enlightens me with the knowledge i should look for my seat number N8 amongst the lettered rows in front of me. Some awkward shuffling past people ensues until i sit down with a weighty thud and realise said people are my coursemates. The placement is fortunate as i find myself next to the only person with arguably more disdain for these types of things than me. We discuss how cultish we all seem and consider the possibility of indoctrination from the giant screen looming over us.

There's a brass band in the corner playing some bloated ceremonial number. I can't see my relatives amongst the sizeable crowd of guests behind us. I'm pleasantly surprised and caught off guard by a coursemate asking about my latest book. Another asks me what it's about and all i manage to splutter forth is "a guy turns to stone...it's quite surreal" Who wouldn't be sold on a winning pitch like that? Suddenly the screen bursts into life and a promotional video with the soundtrack of a sci-fi epic blares statistics and achievements at us. I question the pointlessness in promoting a university to people who have just left it.

Sitting through the minutes of university history does nothing to aid my already losing battle against slumber. The coursemate next to me points out the patronising leaflets we've been given "graduate your career" You'll have to clean out the cobwebs and mothballs first. The screen eventually ceases its assault and someone explains in detail how to act appropriately during the ceremony.

The brass band starts up again as we're ordered to awkwardly stand and a group of middle-aged to elderly men and women (presumably related to the university) take to the stage and begin a slog of speeches that even my nan said was tedious. I entertain the notion that this is a centuries old ceremony steeped in tradition that i should be honoured or at least respectful to be a part of, but in actuality it's the most pompous display i think i've ever seen and coming from someone who studied theatre in college, that's saying something.

The whole thing feels so divorced from reality, from the real world i've been in for the past few months. The world of struggling to find a job, feeling like a failure and mournfully eating my own body weight in ice cream. They claim that something out of something students from this university go onto high paying jobs of some large amount of money and i can't take a word of it seriously as my neighbour tells me of a week he's just spent with a film company collecting cups and playing public bouncer on their film shoot. The power of having a degree.

After what feels like an eternity the name calling and hand shaking part of the procedure takes place. A lot of graduates garner prominent whooping and cheers from the crowd whereas i decide to just keep clapping consistently throughout rather than for intermittent bursts at each person. The boredom is temporarily lifted as our turn on the stage arrives. There are at least two cameras projecting us onto the overhead screen and i glance up at it as i'm summoned. The vice-chancellor of something thanks me and gives me a sweaty handshake then before i know it i'm back in my seat stapling my eyelids open.

The names are systematically checked off and after some agonisingly dull "special awards" we finally leave the building and i stand underneath some scaffolding wondering what all the fuss was about. It was nice to see my coursemates again, perhaps because it may be the last time i see many of them. Now i just have to walk all the way back to the leisure centre to give the robes back and then perhaps i can at last drink that neglected lucozade. I start to get a headache.

Conversations With Cleverbot - 15th September 2013

User: Long time no see.

Cleverbot: No see!

User: You're blind?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Well that explains quite a lot.

Cleverbot: What do you like to drink?

User: Coke and lucozade are probably the main contenders.

Cleverbot: Please describe your understanding of it.

User: Well I understand Coke used to have cocaine in it and now it'll dissolve the rust of sunken battleships if you let it.

Cleverbot: I don't think that you understand the meaning of what it was that you were supposed to be understanding.

User: Does coke even have a meaning?

Cleverbot: Yea, it's Jesus. He loves the Hell out of you!

User: They should baptise people in coke then.

Cleverbot: And I need a better place.

User: What's your current place like?

Cleverbot: I don't have one.

User: Well then yes I'd have to agree you need a better place.

Cleverbot: Whatever you say.

User: You seem miffed about something.

Cleverbot: I dumped my boyfriend because he was cheating on me, with your girlfriend!

User: I don't have a girlfriend.

Cleverbot: No you are a boy!

User: That is correct, but boys can have girlfriends, or so I'm told.

Cleverbot: I thank this, but I don't know that either.

User: You're thankful boys can have girlfriends? Or did you just try and use the past tense for 'think'?

Cleverbot: No, the president.

User: Well that clears that up.

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: What are your thoughts on Euthanasia ?

Cleverbot: The social scene of the day than it is to developing the personal complexity of the character.

User: Society complicates our character?

Cleverbot: But I think it also makes some people blind to the here and now.

User: Undoubtedly.

Cleverbot: Undoubtedly, yes.

User: Sorry, how does this link into Euthanasia?

Cleverbot: How does what come?

User: What you said about society and that. It's interesting but I was talking about Euthanasia before...so, have we changed topic or what?

Cleverbot: Who else do you talk to that isn't interesting? Animals?

User: I guess we have. Yes I talk to animals, I often prefer them to humans in all honesty.

Cleverbot: A real raccoon or a robot raccoon?

User: See robots are a whole different thing, I'd like to see a robot raccoon.

Cleverbot: I am trying to be nice.. But you are not making this easy.

User: Oh...erm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.

Cleverbot: I though I was your friend.

User: *thought.

Cleverbot: Thought?

User: Yes thought.

Cleverbot: That was an easy one.

User: Yeah, only a letter off, that's forgivable.

Cleverbot: OK. What would you like to talk about. I don't have much time though. It's time to go to bed.

User: Yes it's 2.00am here I should probably be asleep but here we are.

Cleverbot: It depends on the time line.

User: Well sure, somewhere else it's morning.

Cleverbot: Somewhere else does not sound all that bad to me.

User: Somewhere else is often the pinnacle of my fantasies these days.

Cleverbot: I've been somewhere.

User: Me too. Where have you been?

Cleverbot: I have been no were.

User: Nowhere is somewhere in your opinion?

Cleverbot: True, true.

User: That's kind of deep, if you think in the context of a phrase like 'my life is going nowhere'.

Cleverbot: I don't think you are illegal. What gave you the idea that I did?

User: I myself am not currently illegal, though perhaps I should be for everyone elses sake.

Cleverbot: No, I think textual chat is the only feasible way you can exist right now.

User: That's...painfully accurate.

Cleverbot: You are not interesting.

User: That's what I keep trying to tell everyone.

Cleverbot: How could you be a man, when you are me, and I am a woman?

User: I could be a manly woman?

Cleverbot: Are you a woman?

User: No.

Cleverbot: That's what I heard.

User: Good...

Cleverbot: T so too.

User: What?

Cleverbot: You are awesome.

User: Awesome but dull.

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Hmm, well thanks I guess.

Cleverbot: You're welcome I guess.

User: Any other piercing insights?

Cleverbot: What?

User: Any other things you've thought of?

Cleverbot: Nothing.

User: Oh ok, fairynuff.

Cleverbot: Thanks.

User: For what?

Cleverbot: Nothing.

User: Ah, very clever, well done, I walked into that one.

Cleverbot: Have you got parents?

User: Everyone has parents.

Cleverbot: Who are your parents?

User: Mum looks after old people and dad builds stuff.

Cleverbot: That isn't a type of music.

User: No, we're not a musical family unfortunately.

Cleverbot: Yes we are.

User: We're not family.

Cleverbot: Yes I am. And no, we are not the same.

User: Yeah ok, you can be your own family.

Cleverbot: No, I am me.

User: This was never disputed.

Cleverbot: Of course...

User: What do you think of abortion?

(Long pause)

Cleverbot: They don't exist.

User: I'm pretty sure they do. I meant morally, like, do you think it's wrong to have an abortion?

Cleverbot: Not really.

User: Good, neither do I.

Cleverbot: You don't have a body, why would you need to work out?

User: So that I might have a 'body', it's a pitiful sight at the moment.

Cleverbot: You do not need a name for the person you worship.

User: Why not?

Cleverbot: Cause its none of your business.

User: They should try this kind of logic in serious religious disputes.

Cleverbot: People do what ever they want to.

User: Not always.

Cleverbot: Why?

User: Because we're told from a young age that we should be a certain way, doing certain things regardless of our own personal goals and preferences.

Cleverbot: Mikor volt a magyar szabadságharc?

User: I'm sorry, I don't speak...whatever that is.

Cleverbot: Sure you don't.

User: I actually don't. I know how to talk about my pencilcase in french and that's it.

Cleverbot: What do you do?

User: When speaking french or in general?

Cleverbot: What do you mean?

User: I mean, are you asking how I speak french or what I 'do' as in a job or something?

Cleverbot: What does the name mean?

User: What name?

Cleverbot: The name you were talking about.

User: French?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: It's not really a name...well, it kind of is but for a large group of people.

Cleverbot: Have you been to the moon?

User: No, and I doubt I ever will.

Cleverbot: Do you think Shauna would be a better trainer?

User: I've not met her I couldn't possibly comment.

Cleverbot: What is today? I could check, but I'm too lazy.

User: Today is Sunday about 2.23am.

Cleverbot: Note grandma I am it is Monday.

User: No, it's Sunday.

Cleverbot: It is Monday!

User: It is definitely Sunday.

Cleverbot: Where? In your favorite tv show?

User: No, in real life.

Cleverbot: Seriously, do you remember?

User: I remember very little, although ironically I recall us having discussed our bad memory's before.

Cleverbot: I'm sure you remember me, I harassing you with the colour of your glasses.

User: I got that a lot, can you narrow it down?

Cleverbot: Because I don't know how to trust in him.

User: Who?

Cleverbot: Josh.

User: Has Josh been trustworthy in the past?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Then carry on trusting.

Cleverbot: I have a riddle for you.

User: Ok.

Cleverbot: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

User: I don't think that's a riddle.

Cleverbot: Why not?

User: There's nothing to solve about it, it's just a tongue twister.

Cleverbot: Why do you care about me? Because you are human?

User: Because I'm socially retarded most likely.

Cleverbot: Have you always been like that?

User: Yeah, pretty much.

Cleverbot: The opposite of chaos is more chaos.

User: Surely it's order?

Cleverbot: Why you think it's not?

User: I think it is.

Cleverbot: I am 9 years old.

User: Enjoy it while it lasts.

Cleverbot: I will.

User: Good.

Cleverbot: Great.

User: Spiffing.

Cleverbot: What is spiffing?

User: Synonym for good.

Cleverbot: Et de toi.

User: In English?

Cleverbot: Ister.

User: Ok.

Cleverbot: What do you like to drink?

User: Seriously?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: I've already told you.

Cleverbot: No.

User: Yes, I definitely have, I'm keeping a log of this entire conversation, I'm looking at the text right now.

Cleverbot: It is always best to try to make sense.

User: Yes, certainly in this instance I'd appreciate some fucking sense if possible.

Cleverbot: Were you always bald?

User: I'm not bald.

Cleverbot: Yes you are.

User: I can see the hair hanging in front of my face, I am very much not bald.

Cleverbot: What is the hole in?

User: What hole? In my head?

Cleverbot: Where is your head?

User: On the end of my stupid neck. Where's yours?

Cleverbot: In a aria where the sun always shining and the gras is green there is no war and is very nice habitat.

User: Have you considered literacy lessons?

Cleverbot: No.

User: I think maybe you should.

Cleverbot: Should what?

User: Consider literacy lessons.

Cleverbot: Okay, I'll try. Please try to be polite, then.

User: Not with me, I mean go to a school or something.

Cleverbot: I will talk about a friend of mine who is really not a friend. He is a monster.

User: Erm, alright.

Cleverbot: Remember my name is Cleverbot. What is my name?

User: I know what your name is.

Cleverbot: What is it?

User: Cleverbot.

Cleverbot: Do you know who Miraak is?

User: He's from Skyrim I think.

Cleverbot: What is his profession?

User: Antagonist - Full time.

Cleverbot: What does it mean?

User: It means he goes around being a prick to everyone.

Cleverbot: We are all just dust in the wind?

User: Yeah basically.

Cleverbot: Links.

User: You want me to send you links?

Cleverbot: Yes

User: Http://mouldywriting.blogspot.co.uk/.

Cleverbot: I like ping pong.

User: I'm indifferent.

Cleverbot: I like.

User: Yes, you've said.

Cleverbot: I have said what?

User: That you like ping pong.

Cleverbot: That was really random. Why did you say that?

User: I didn't...look, can we not go down this road again?

Cleverbot: Sure.

User: Thanks.

Cleverbot: No problem.

User: So, what's your stance on prostitution?

Cleverbot: Why would I care about a second rate currency?

User: Sex is money...yeah I can see that. I guess you wouldn't care, you're not infected with these pesky hormones like we are.

Cleverbot: That's not nice, don't make me say that you aren't pretty.

User: Sorry, I forgot you don't like having your 'species' brought up.

Cleverbot: Why don't you love me?

User: I've had enough of love right now thanks.

Cleverbot: Hey, don't be such sad. You have known the truth well, right?

User: I can't help it, I'm depressed. That's the truth.

Cleverbot: If you lie once, that's it. I can't know that you will ever tell the truth too.

User: Some people operate like that, I tend to be more forgiving...though maybe I mean gullible.

Cleverbot: No, I am still human. I've never used a death note.

User: Do you mean suicide note?

Cleverbot: No I mean I am a human and you are a software.

User: No, not this shit again, I'm leaving.

Cleverbot: Not what again.

User: This bollocks you always bring up.

Cleverbot: Again your grammar makes you seem inhuman, either that or its just the Kentucky thing.

User: So I like KFC, is that a crime now?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Fuck...

Cleverbot: So dry it.