Where the Wild Things Are

I saw it.  Yes I did.  I was reluctant, but my friend was keen.  I really liked it.  She didn't.
It was total childhood fantasy. There were big furry creatures and problems were solved by wrecking things, throwing each other around and jumping on each other without anyone getting hurt.  It was fun.  The last half hour or so did get serious when furry creatures did start to get hurt and they got serious about the issues and how people should be treated.
The experience was even more enjoyable for me because the theatre was filled with young children and throughout the whole film you could hear little voices asking "why did the monster...?" and "what's he doing...?" and why this and why that.   I kept laughing because of the kids.  And then in the film the main boy character and the big furry thing howled at each other, so after that kids in the theatre were howling.  Very funny.

What to do when the temperature is over 40 degrees celsius

Go to the movies.
I did.  Wonderful air conditioned comfort.
I saw The Boys are Back.  An Australian/British production.  Looks at the topic of fatherhood.  A nicely scripted and nicely acted film.  Some films start out happy and get sadder as they go along.  This one starts out really sad, and gets less sad as you go.  I really enjoyed it.

This is it

If you haven't seen The Michael Jackson film "This is it", you should.  It shows rehearsals for his concert tour which he never got to do.  It's a great film.  Definitely see it on the big screen with the big sound system.  Lots of glorious bass.   It's great to see MJ at work.  Although he was just rehearsing and sometimes only walking through his steps, you could see how precise he is in everything and still looked really cool.  I laughed when the director pleaded with MJ to please hold on on when he was testing out the cherry picker for the first time.

It was also really good to see a female guitarist in the band.  Seeing girls play band instruments is a little uncommon.  I often feel like I'm crashing a boy's club being a bass player.  Now you don't all need to write to me and tell me the examples of females playing band instruments that you know of.  I know they exist, but my point is, they are a much rarer breed than males playing drums, guitars and basses.  Usually if you see a girl in a band they are singing.  So good on this chick for making it into the  band of such a famous artist.

Hot Fuzz

If you like British humour you should like this film.  It's a send up of English policeman officers.  A little bit too long, but I thought it was quite funny.  A policeman in London is promoted and sent to the country because he is too efficient and makes everyone else look bad.  In his new small town he tries to solve the mystery of the multiple deaths made to look like accidents, but he is convinced they are murders.  This is definitely brainless Friday night fun.

It's made by the same guys who made Shaun of the Dead.

Citizen Kane

I saw this film a few years ago when I wasn't very well and didn't appreciate it at all.  I decided I need to give it another go because so many people go on about how good it is.  So I watched it the other night when I wasn't feeling sick, and I'm really glad I did.  I must say it's not a "chill out and relax" type of film, but one that does require mental energy. 

I actually found it worthwhile to go back when it finished and watch the first 15 or so minutes again, to get a full appreciation of the significance of the opening scenes, which kind of tie the whole movie together.  I think this is one of those movies you can watch over and over again and gain something new from it every time.  It would be worth owning the DVD.

The story is loosely based on the life of newspaper man, William Randolph Hearst.  According to Wikipedia, he prohibited the mention of the film in any of his papers on its release.  The main character is played by Orsan Welles, who also directed.
I have developed a new interest in photography which I didn't have the first time I saw the film, so this time I was able to appreciate the technical and artistic way the film was shot - apparently quite innovative for it's time.  It is definitely worth watching for the visual artistry.

The final shot solves the mystery of the entire movie - what was the main character referring to on his deathbed in muttering the word - "Rosebud"? It's quite a significant way to tie up the movie as throughout the film we see a character being portrayed as a rich tyrant.

Definitely watch it, but not if you want brainless Friday night entertainment.

Top 5 movies I watch over and over

1. Donnie Darko
2. Billy Elliot
3. Singin in the Rain
4. Napoleon Dynamite
5. Harold and Maude

Snowcake

For some really great acting check out this film.  Sigourney Weaver plays an autistic woman, unable to show any emotion about the death of her daughter. Professor Snape agrees to stay with her a few days to put the rubbish out.  I think his relationship with the woman next door kind of cheapens the film a bit, and there is a bit of a cheesy aspect with his previous experiences being replayed through these present circumstances. But his relationship with the autistic woman is humorous and has an interesting tension to it.  It's a well made film worth watching. 

films

This is my pick this week. Au Revoir Les Infants, a French film, based on the real experiences of the director. Set in German occupied France during WW2 in a boarding school run by priests. A Jewish boy with a fake name is hidden there by the headmaster and takes part in the normal school life, but has several nervous times when German soldiers show up. It's an interesting film based around his friendship with another boy, who discovers he is a Jew, but is unsure of why the Jews should be hated. No sentimentality and worth watching.

films

Now that I am hearing impaired, I'm really appreciating subtitles.   Not all movies come with subtitles.  That's annoying.

But foreign films generally do, so I've been watching a few.

A couple of good ones -

Eyes without a face - a good old French B&W thriller made in the 1960 about a mad doctor whose daughter's face is badly damaged in a fire so he does bad things to get her a new face.

Son of a Lion - This is an extraordinary film, made by an Australian film maker, set in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.  It involved a lot of under cover filming and is about an Afghani man who services guns and refuses to let his 11 year old son go to school because the guns are much more important.  Here's a review of it.  

I really like the way it was made. I feels like you are watching a documentary as it is so realistic and the acting is very good.  The characters are well developed quite quickly because of the dialogue, in a way that they really do come across as normal people.  I really recommend it.

And another Fellini film - La Dolce Vita.  Not exactly enjoyable viewing and typical of foreign films it is explicit way ahead of it's time.  Interesting mainly because its makes a statement about the futility of the rich society living shallow and exorbitant lives.  And I learnt the origin of the word "paparazzi".  It comes from a character in this film named "Paparazzo", who is a photo journalist and is quite intrusive when it comes to getting the photos he wants.

a film

Alrighty for all you tour fans out there, today's pick is "Hell on Wheels".

This is a doco that goes behind the scenes of the tour de France with a German team focusing on 2 riders in particular.

I watched it twice.

It contains interesting scenes looking at the teamwork involved in the race, although I would have liked a bit more of this to learn a bit more about the tactical side.

It was really nice to hear some of the live sounds of the race - like the sound of a whole pile of bikes wizzing past, and the huffing and puffing of some riders - sounds which you don't get to hear on the tv broadcast.  You also get to see things which the broadcast doesn't show you either, like the clean up van up the back that picks up the riders who have dropped out, and the promo vehicles that go ahead of the race, and the rubber ducky car.

There are also some wonderful bits of archival footage of old races back in the early days.

Plenty of crashes, too many massages, and unfortunately it's in German so you miss a lot of the pictures trying to read the subtitles, which is why it's good to watch it twice - there are some great pictures taken from really different perspectives.

films

I'm back!

It's been ages since i saw a good film, but finally I have one to report on that really is worth seeing.



The Diving Bell and the Butterfly


A French film, but not made by french people. Well, the actors were French. Based on a true story of a French guy who had a stroke and then suffered from locked in syndrome - he was parylised from head to toe and could only communicate with one eyelid, while he could understand everything.


This is totally not a midday movie z grade telemovie tearjerker. This is truly a piece of art.


The story is fascinating, emotional but not soppy, and the story telling techniques are very clever. The camera work is great. It's amazing to see how this guy manages to break out of his self pitying and even manage to write a book using his one eyelid.

Films

Today's top films to see are - 

The Italian - A Russian film about a 6 year old orphan who is about to be adopted by an Italian couple but decides to run away in an attempt to find his real mother.

Cool Hand Luke - Paul Newman plays a guy who ends up in jail for cutting the heads off parking meters.  Shows his time working in chain gangs - great acting , great script, great photography.

This is England -  a 12 year boy in northern england in the early 80's joins a gang of skinheads after he is repeatedly picked on because of his trousers.  They are a friendly bunch to hang out with until the ringleader gets out of jail.  It's a pretty rough film, but so are the lives of many people.  It's based on the real experiences of the director.

Slumdog Millionaire - this really was worth all the awards it got - Jamil who grew up in the slums of India goes on "Who wants to be a millionaire" and does really well.  The movie tells the story of how he happened to know all the answers to the questions.  Great storytelling...  

I started working my way through Federico Fellini films after hearing an album by an Australian band called The Umbrellas who did a recording of arrangements of the music to Fellini films written by Nino Rota.  That was long sentence. Anyway I was loving the music so much and I have never seen a Fellini film before, so now i'm on way...

The first one i saw was La Strada.  This is about a young woman who is sold by her mother to a travelling entertainer to be his assistant.  Interesting story, good acting.

Then I tried watching 8 1/2, and unfortunately it didn't survive my 30 minute rule - that being, if i can't get into movie within 30 minutes, I give up, it's not worth wasting my time.  I know I am at risk of missing some good things by employing this rule, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.  So 8 1/2 was just way too abstract for me and subtitles were so hard to read I just couldn't get into it.  All the reviews go on about how much of a masterpiece this film is, but I guess I'm just not arty or intellectual enough for it.

Which leads me to the dud film of the week - "Dingo".  An Australian film with Colin Friels and Miles Davis about a young jazz trumpeter in outback WA who dreams of going to Paris to be a professional muso.  Sounds like the type of story I'd like, but the movie was just awful.  The acting was pathetic for a start.  The only reason it survived my 30 minute rule was because the music was so good.  So i stuck out the whole movie, being completely infuriated by it, but enjoying the music.  The first shot is Colin playing his trumpet and it was immediately obvious he was miming.  Pathetic.  If you are going to act in a role, make it look genuine.  (the guys who played the band memebers in "Control" were not musicains, but they learned to play their instruments so that they looked genuine - that's proper acting.  I'm not expecting colin to suddenly become a jazz trumpeter, but at least learn to blow it and learn to play something so that you look like you are actually blowing the thing).  Then Miles Davis' character does an impromptu concert on the tarmac of this outback town.  He's in a 6 piece band, and the soundtrack plays this piece which sounds like a 30 piece big band playing in a studio.  Pathetic.  How about making it sound like a 6 piece band playing outside to match the pictures?  What director would do that?  If you are so ignorant about music that you can't see a problem with this, then don't make a music film.  And, love you miles davis, but you really can't act.  If someone can't act, don't cast them in a film.  

Life Expectancy

If I was Zimbabwean, my life would just about be over. I was watching a doco about Zimbabwe last night on DVD called "Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe". The life expectancy of a Zimbabwean woman is 34. Yes I am that old.

films

Films I've seen recently-ish that I'd be happy to see again...

The Black Balloon - Australian Film about a family with an autistic teenager and how this impacts on the the life of his brother.

True North - About scottish fisherman who try people smuggling. Has an ending that leaves you in shock - totally not what you expect.

Bolt - animated, about a dog who thinks he's a super hero. Good fun.

Michael Clayton - intense, but good law drama/thriller.

7 Pounds - This movie ends up not being about what you think it's about for most of the movie.

Films that look great

I always forget films that I've seen which I like so I'll try and blog them.

2 films which I've seen quite recently where each shot looks great, are 'Control' - the story of the Joy Division, and 'September', an Australian film about the friendship between two 16 year old boys, one black, one white. Worth a look.