I Recommend: 'Life in a Day' (YouTube Film)

(Image courtesy of YouTube)

I'm back, people! I just looked it up and saw that it has been two months since I last posted on here. And I deeply apologize. May and June have been extremely busy for me: May for work reasons, and June for personal reasons (vacation), and then the procrastination afterwards. But I know I need to get back into it, and what better way than with a recommendation, which has been a signature piece here.

So let's get right into it. Here is what I Recommend:

Jeff Dodge's Recommendations:

Movie:
Life in a Day

Before I get into it, here is how Wikipedia describes Life in a Day: "Life in a Day is a crowdsourced drama/documentary film comprising an arranged series of video clips selected from 80,000 clips submitted to the YouTube video sharing website, the clips showing respective occurrences from around the world on a single day, July 24, 2010. The film ... includes scenes from 4,5000 hours of footage in 80,000 submissions from 192 nations."

It made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival and premiered on YouTube (where you can still watch it in full), and it's now available to buy on DVD. For your viewing pleasure, you can watch the entire film on YouTube below:





That above description is pretty much what the movie is. But you might be saying, that doesn't sound too exciting. But trust me, once you start it, you won't want to tear your eyes away from the screen for the duration of the film. By having the entire premise based on the same day for everyone (July 24, 2010), we can get a glimpse into how all different cultures around the world spend their day and night on pretty much any given day. And we see not only how different we all are as human beings, but also being reminded of what the links are that bring us together, that show us that we're all going through this journey that is life together.

We get to see people waking up, in the bathroom getting ready for the day, having breakfast and lunch. There's a section where both humans and animals are giving birth. To go along with that, we see a marriage proposal, someone wanting to ask another person out on a date, weddings, someone coming out. And we even see our military overseas.

Most of our everyday life may seem mundane to us, but there's always something exciting happening to someone in some place in the world. And what we find mundane or take for granted is seen as a treasure to others. There are celebrations, protests, war, tragedy, beauty, life, happiness, sadness ... everything you can imagine. And once you start seeing how everyone goes through their day, you might realize how your life is the opposite of mundane, or how beautiful your own "backyard" is. We all go through life, but just a little differently. (And the final scene with the woman talking to the camera really brings everything together.)

(And by the way, if you watch it on YouTube, turn on Captions, so that you can read the subtitles when someone is speaking a foreign language.)

Life in a Day is a work of art; it is extremely beautiful and inspiring to watch. And I urge you to go and watch this film. It's out on DVD now, or you can always just head on over to YouTube and watch it for free online (the video is embedded in this post above). If it seems like I'm talking about the film more in generalities instead of specifics and details, it's because I want you to experience it for yourself rather than me telling you everything. I give Life in a Day an A.

Websites:
TV Watch Online (@TVWatchOnline)
BuddyTV

Jeff Dodge Blog:
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#1 Recommendation: Life in a Day Film

As I've mentioned on Twitter, I went to Las Vegas earlier this month, and I have loads of pictures that I took. I'm going to select the best ones and post them on my blog here. Then throughout the summer, I'll have a series of blog posts that focus on TV shows from the previous season, this summer and coming up in the fall.

Follow me on Twitter @TheJeffDodge. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, either tweet me, e-mail me or leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you!