Word: humanity
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...German-born twins, Michael and Peter Spierig. They picture a near future in which a plague has turned 90% of the world into vampires. The upside: immortality. Then again, with the vast majority of the population now bloodsuckers, there's a significant shortage of bloodsuckees: the few remaining humans, most of whom are imprisoned and "farmed" in a vast, multi-tiered, Matrix-like abattoir where their blood is systematically drained. Still, it's not enough. As I learn from a fellow reviewer of Daybreakers, Peter Hartlaub in the San Francisco Chronicle, "the average human body holds approximately 1.5 gallons...
...human population is depleted, there's worldwide panic, a run on the blood bank, with no bailout in sight...unless Bromley Marks, one of the major blood-supplying companies - Big Farma - can develop a blood substitute. The vampires are addicts; and if real blood is their heroin, this would be their methadone. Leading the experiment is Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), Bromley Marks' chief hematologist. But Edward doesn't have his heart in his work. When his younger brother Frankie (Michael Dorman), a soldier in the vampire army, brings him a birthday bottle of vintage blood (sang-real-a?), Edward snaps...
...beginning of the plague, going red was a decision most of the population made - except for people like Edward, who was vamped by his brother. So he's ripe for being tapped by some renegade humans led by Elvis Cormac (Willem Dafoe) and his henchwoman Audrey (Claudia Karvan). In the spirit of modern sci-fi movie thrillers like Avatar and District 9, the insider goes outside to join forces with the aliens. Becoming human is a painful process - exposure to sunlight in brief, sharp blasts - but for Edward, it's a chance at redemption. Vampires live forever, but on other...
...which at a distance looks like a handwoven carpet but is in fact composed of hundreds of photographs from slaughterhouses. But the better of the 55 pieces are subtler. Hamra Abbas' Ride 2, a fiberglass sculpture of the legendary Buraq, the Prophet Muhammad's winged steed with a human head, is local in its imagery. But the glinting cherry-red form also recalls a highly waxed Ford Mustang. Like it, Pakistan and its revving art scene are poised to drive into the future with one foot in tradition, the other in modernity. May they cruise, not stall...
...knows what its carbon footprint is. At its heart there is a sickness, with tales of dreadful working conditions for migrant laborers, who form a kind of permanent underclass. But what else can be expected of a place where the rich can party in their castles of sand while human rights for the poor are not on the agenda? Derek Smith London