The NYT covers "Necrocam," a movie about a Dutch nerd with terminal cancer who has a webcam put in his coffin to observe his post-final days.
The movie's accomplishment is to capture the way technology, including the Internet, has permeated contemporary culture. This is our youth's daily existence. The film's young people communicate through online messages, play computer games and record their pledge with a video camera instead of a quill dipped in blood. For them technology is an extension of life. So it is only logical that cyberspace would play a role in death.
This comfort with the Internet stands in contrast to how technology is typically depicted in Hollywood films, where it is glorified or, more often, demonized. Thus for every "You've Got Mail," in which Tom Hanks cutely woos Meg Ryan over the Internet, there are a dozen clones of "Birthday Girl," in which Nicole Kidman is a devious Net-order bride. The James Bond films take both approaches, so that a technological threat endangers the world until it can be defeated by 007 and his gadgetry.
(Thanks, Scott!)
