Too much of everything

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I watched the film a life in a day as part of my A2 media course at college. The film focuses on the 24th July 2010 and what average, normal everyday people from all corners of the globe get up to in their life over the course of a 24 hour period. My first impressions of the film were that I had never experienced a documentary like this before. The producers used an unorthodox approach to filming with no narration which would be expected in a documentary. I would not have chosen to watch it but overall am glad I did. I do feel that there were many good features of the film. For example it allowed us to experience how people lived all over the world. We had an insight to cultures and traditions which would be highly unlikely to experience in any other way. We listened to people's opinions on subjects such as love and fears. And learned that even though ever human being is unique where ever we are in the world, be it the slums of Mumbai or the bustling cities in the USA we still share the same norms and values when it comes to loving and caring about things like family. Also it delivers a complete range of life experiences from birth (a baby giraffe is born) to the tragic death of people in the love parade. However it is not flawless. In places I found it to be tedious and dull. It often lingered for too long on clips that were not particularly interesting and on clips that I felt were very interesting were over far too quickly. A perfect example was the little shoe shine boy in a far eastern country I would have liked to see his life more however we didn't. In my opinion overall I enjoyed life in a day even though in some sections of the film it could become repetitive and tedious in places. It was interesting witnessing all the different cultures and how they lived their lives but sometimes it got boring. The best bits of the film I feel were when the people talked about their views on life and it was interesting to see the contrast on opinions in different areas on the planet.

I have met few people who can actually read me. To most, I come off as a sarcastic, jaded, curmudgeonly, and funny guy. Apart from those I have let through, only two or three have managed to peer through the walls that I have constructed to protect myself from pain, and let's be honest we all have walls of one form or another. Without them, there are a fair number of people who would tear us to shreds just for shits and giggles. Right now though, dear readers, I'm going to let you through for a brief moment.It is no secret that I have watched a plethora of films, after all until recently I was a film Professor. While a few here and there may have brought tears to my eyes (i.e. Casablanca, E.T.), only two have ever truly reached into my core and left a lasting indelible impression on me. These two films are Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, and Life In A Day, which is the one I would like to talk to you about today.In case you are unaware of this film, I will tell you what it is. Life In A Day is a crowd-sourced documentary produced by Ridley Scott & Tony Scott in collaboration with YouTube. Ordinary people were asked to answer three basic questions, what do you love? What do you fear? and What's in your pocket? Additionally, they were asked to document their lives on one day, July 24 2010. The result was 80,000 submissions totaling 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries. The resulting film is breathtaking in both its beauty and horror.I think many of us go through our day with the thought, perhaps unexpressed, that the world is a cruel and cold place. Violence is everywhere, much of it is random, and it is only a breath that separates us from death. In the film this can certainly be seen, since it does include a number of images of the evil we do to each other, and even to animals.What the film shows though is that there is more love than hate, joy than sorrow, and hope than fear. Over 94 minutes, we watch as people, real people, fall in love, express their feelings to those they have secretly loved, try to struggle through another day, explore the world, and come out to (and be accepted by) their family. While some of the images in the film are horrifying (at least from my cultural perspective), or heartbreaking, many of them are touching in their simplicity. I found myself enthralled in the lives of these diverse strangers' , and often moved to tears by their foils and triumphs.Ultimately what these 2 films share is they paint a picture of us. Cave Of Forgotten Dreams gives me a sense of where I came from, but Life In A Day (which is freely available on YouTube here) shows me who I am. It has given me a brand new perspective on this wholly all too short life. Virtually everyone, everywhere, wants the same things; to be safe, to matter, to love and be loved. In the end, it shows that there is more that joins us than separates us. Now go tell someone, anyone at all, that you love them.

How many times have you wondered how a human being lives in another city of this planet? Not something we see in the movies, just a regular, ordinary, mundane, and simple human being.How many times have you thought how life is short and how you should do to get the most of it.Well, this movie is about these questions and much more. Using raw footage sent by people from different backgrounds and 192 countries -which makes us think how powerful the media is - it takes to a fascinating journey to witness a long needed reality check. Fascinating in its own way, because the scenes you see are ordinary. And that is what the enchantment is... art from the ordinary.It is not a reality show, nor a fictional movie. Life in a Day is just... Life. With all frustrations , discoveries, sadness, and hopes. Just life.I watched this movie not expecting too much. And boy was I wrong - this kept me mesmerized for 94 minutes. And at the end, you will ask yourself if you are doing the best from your existence in this planet. Not to be missed!

A mish mashy melange was my first reaction on watching this. Then i watched it again and could see more coherence in it.It's structured around all the ordinary small stuff we have to do to get through the every day: waking up, washing, brushing teeth, shaving, making breakfast, lunch and so on.And then there's the bigger life-events like coping with illness, getting married, having babies.Questions are asked like, "What's in your pocket?" or "What do you love/fear? A lonely guy loves his cat… another guy loves his fridge.. another guy fears his hair falling out… a woman fears "not being a mummy"… and so on..At times the editing is very fast: periodic montage sequences whizz by a conveyor belt of micro images like a Planet Earth ad break.But then there are several personal pieces that follow individual situations. I liked these slower stories better, such as The post-graduate returning to Essex to catch up with his "old man" dad, both sat in the car, sharing a burger.The gay guy coming out to grandma on the phone ("I love you too" he's saying to her) And the sad scenarios: of the father lighting incense at shrine of dead wife – and the little sons perfunctory remembrance of his mother; or the "Family project" of mother dying of cancer, trying to help her anxious young son make sense of it; or the thankful – tearful – Aussie in hospital after major heart surgery "I'll be out there again, doing crazy things, and enjoying life" he says. But you sense he probably won't.There's smiley bits too, like the Peruvian shoeshine boy; the rude wedding vows read by the English vicar.And some nasty bits, like the slaughter of cow, its throat being slashed into to let blood – and there's a rapidly cut together montage of scenes of violence and fighting – deliberately rushed through so as not to dwell too long. The shoplifting Russian/Slav is a bit dismaying too (firstly, that he's filmed getting away with it; secondly that the clip gets sent to be included in the film; and thirdly – that it is included!) Throughout, is the continual narrative thread of a Korean cycling around the world for the last 9 years – feeling homesick for Korean flies.Come the afternoon outdoor pursuits – like skydiving out of planes – and Life in a Day has got to feel exhausting.So much packed in, so much to pack in. I think a million sub-editors were needed to prune the 4500 hours of submitted footage into a mere 90 minutes – just a blink of the Earths eye really.To begin with i was wanting not to like it, but come the end i was won over. Out of all this mashed up diffuseness something cogent got produced. Although I wonder how much actual directing input Kevin MacDonald did to it. It looks more like a cut and paste collaboration, the chopped up product of countless hours of endless editing – rather than something that's been singularly created.Question is, would selective clicking on any YouTube vids on any day of the year produce the same result? No, cus this is more of a polished product. But watching a load of randomised clips would probably seem as arbitrary as this film feels. And the effect would feel similar: trawling in too much information just makes the net of your attention go saggy.I might watch this again one day (Unless they come up with another life in another day next year) At the end – 2 minutes before midnight – there's a girl in a car bemoaning the fact that "I spent the whole day waiting for something great to happen….all day long nothing really happened…i want people to know that i'm here…. i don't want to cease to exist" "I don't want to cease to exist". As long as you're seen on YouTube, you can pretend you don't. If you get my drift.