The movie, adapted from writer-director Rebecca Miller’s novel of the same name, tells the story of Pippa Lee (wonderful Robin Wright Penn), a fiftysomething housewife with a wild past, who has just moved into a plush New England retirement community with her (much older) publisher husband (Alan Arkin). The arrival of a (much younger) good-looking neighbour (Keanu Reeves) makes Pippa realize that there is something missing in her life.
WHAT I THOUGHT Worth going to seejust for the splendid performance by Robin Wright Penn but there is plenty of other interesting stuff to enjoy. 7.5 out of 10.
This afternoon I went to see Humpday. Here's the synopsis from the official movie site.
SYNOPSIS It's been a decade since Ben and Andrew were the bad boys of their college campus. Ben has settled down and found a job, wife, and home. Andrew took the alternate route as a vagabond artist, skipping the globe from Chiapas to Cambodia. When Andrew shows up unannounced on Ben's doorstep, they easily fall back into their old dynamic of macho one-upmanship.
Late into the night at a wild party, the two find themselves locked in a mutual dare: to enter an amateur porn contest together. But what kind of boundary-breaking, envelope pushing porn can two straight dudes make? After the booze and "big talk" run out, only one idea remains—they will have sex together...on camera. It's not gay; it's beyond gay. It's not porn; it's art. But how exactly will it work? And more importantly, who will tell Anna, Ben's wife?
WHAT I THOUGHT Anyone expecting a Judd Apatow-style buddy movie or 'bromance' with lots of juvenile humour and swearing may be disappointed, but Humpday is much better than that. The relationship between the two old friends has real emotional depth, the performances are excellent, and there are plenty of laughs. Do they go through with their crazy plan? You'll have to watch the film to find out. LANGUAGE NOTE The movie's title is a play on words. In American English, Wednesday is sometimes referred to as hump day or humpday. This is because Wednesday is the middle of the work-week, and therefore when this day is ended, you are "over the hump", i.e. past the most difficult part. However, used as a verb, hump means "to have sex with". • Jeff Koons's room – one of several extremely raunchy interludes – consists of a giant, gross, plastic sculpture of Koons humping La Cicciolina, his sometime porn bride. REVIEWS • TIME • Roger Ebert • Rotten Tomatoes (78%) • Metacritic (74) • Interview with director Lynn Shelton (Guardian Film Weekly)
Yesterday evening I went to see Fish Tank by Andrea Arnold, which won prizes at the Edinburgh and Cannes film festivals.
Set on a grubby Essex council estate, it's about a foul-mouthed, violent, uneducated 15-year-old (played by non-actor Katie Jarvis) living in a depressing council flat with her unloving, sluttish, boozy single mum (Kierston Wareing), and a disturbed, hate-filled little sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths). Their torpid lives are disrupted when Mia's mother miraculously gets a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender, last seen in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds).
WHAT I THOUGHT I found Fish Tank to be extremely depressing, rather disturbing at times, and far too long (over 2 hours). The characters are uniformly unpleasant, not to say obnoxious. They may be victims of society but that doesn't make them any more sympathetic. The trailer gives a good idea of what to expect.
Last night I went to see Inglourious Basterds, the new movie from Quentin Tarantino. Reviews have been generally positive (89% on Rotten Tomatoes) but some critics panned it, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The film, set in the Second World War, involves a Jewish-American revenge squad (led by Brad Pitt) intent on killing (and scalping) as many Nazis as possible in German occupied France. Historical realism is not a concern!
WHAT I THOUGHT At two and a half hours the film is far too long and very uneven, but I can't say I was bored. Christoph Waltz is brilliant as the evil, polyglot, Jew-hunting SS Colonel Hans Lander (he won the Best Actor award at Cannes for this role), and there's plenty of trademark Tarantino humour and dialogue. There are also some very gruesome scenes—be prepared to close your eyes if you are squeamish. So it's no Pulp Fiction, but it's certainly not a total disaster either. Here's the trailer:
FOOTNOTES 1. One interesting feature of the film is that the actors speak the language they would 'in real life'. So we hear English, French, German and even Italian. The use of these different languages is integral to the plot, especially in the gripping opening chapter (the best part of the film). 2. The title of the film was inspired by Italian director Enzo Castellari's 1978 Dirty Dozen-like war film The Inglorious Bastards. However, Tarantino's film is not a remake. (Source: Wikipedia) 3. To date, there has been little explanation of the title spelling (in English, the correct spelling would be "Inglorious Bastards", without the extra u in Inglourious and with an a instead of an e in Basterds). When asked, Tarantino would not explain the u and said, "But the 'Basterds'? That's just the way you say it: Basterds." He commented on The Late Show with David Letterman that "Inglourious Basterds" is the "Tarantino way of spelling it." (Source: Wikipedia)
We know them as trailers, but they don't trail anything; they play before the movie, not after it. The name dates to their earliest incarnation, when they actually did follow the feature. The documentary "Coming Attractions" dates the very first trailer to a 1912 Edison serial entitled "What Happened to Mary?" After each installment, a black card with white text would appear to inform audiences "The next incident in the series of 'What Happened to Mary' will be shown a week from now." Not exactly "In a world..." but it did the trick back in 1912. Full article >>
You can view the 50 trailers on the IFC site. Here's the trailer for Hitchcock's Psycho (No. 2 on the Top 50)
Abduzeedo, a blog created by Fabio Sasso, a Brazilian designer living in Porto Alegre, has a wonderful collection of vintage posters including film posters, travel posters, advertisements and miscellaneous curiosities.
FOOTNOTES 1. Ft hereis an abbreviation of "foot" (it can also be short for "feet"). One foot is equal to 30.48 centimeters, so 50 feet is 15.24 meters. That's a pretty tall woman.
2. Why, you may wonder, do we not say "50-feet woman"? The reason is that when a compound adjective consisting of a number and a noun comes before another noun, the noun in the compound adjective is always singular. Don't ask me why—that's the rule. Here are some examples:
Farrah Fawcett has died in a Los Angeles hospital after a long battle with cancer. The actress, who rose to fame as the star of the U.S. TV show "Charlie's Angels" was 62 years old. Sky's Mark Stone reports.
The latest film by the controversial comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Ali G) has come under fire from gay rights campaigners, who say 'Brüno' could reinforce negative stereotypes about gay people. The film, which premiered in London on Wednesday night, pushes the boundaries of social satire. Razia Iqbal reports.
COMMENTS I'm looking forward to seeing Brüno, but I still think Ali G was Sacha Baron Cohen's best character. Some of the interviews from the Channel 4 and HBO TV shows (e.g., feminist Naomi Wolf) were classics (the Ali G movie was rubbish though).
This afternoon I went to see Sunshine Cleaning at the Sirius. Described on the official site as an "offbeat dramatic comedy", the film tells the story of a single mom (excellent Amy Adams) and her slacker sister (equally good Emily Blunt) who set up a crime scene clean-up business and discover important things about themselves and each other.
WHAT I THOUGHT I really liked this movie. It's not quite in the same league as "Little Miss Sunshine" (from the same producers), but it has a similar mix of humour and emotion. The poster sums it up very well: "life's a messy business" (nice pun!)
Gucci, Stella McCartney, La Redoute, Puma have funded a new full-length environmental film from movie producer Luc Besson and photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, which will be made available on video-sharing site YouTube today.
Home, a 90 minute full-length film, will be available across Europe for ten days. Home YouTube channels will also feature a range of videos including in-depth interviews and a behind the scenes look at the making of the movie.
Coproduced by EuropaCorp and Elzévir Films, Home raises awareness of the current state of planet Earth by showing landscapes from the sky.
Along with its YouTube premier at youtube.com/homeproject, Home debuts in 180 countries in cinemas, on more than 80 television stations and on big screens at 80 public places from Time Square in New York, to Champs de Mars under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, to Trafalgar Square in London.
Google Maps will also pinpoint real-world locations where the film will be broadcast and offer educational material on subjects from the movie.
COMMENTS
1. The aerial images are spectacular but the commentary is incredibly bland and the overall effect is soporific—I'm sure I'd fall asleep if I watched this in the cinema. Give me David Attenborough any day!
2. You can turn the captions on and off by clicking on the upward arrow icon at the bottom right of the screen.
This afternoon I went to see Looking for Eric, the new film by Ken Loach, which was well received by critics at the Cannes Film Festival (though it didn't win any prizes). The film tells the story of Eric, a depressed, middle-aged postman, who is also a Manchester United fan. His second marriage has failed and he has to look after his two teenage stepsons, who treat him like a doormat. Worst of all, when Eric meets his first wife, he realises that he is still in love with her. The only man who can help Eric out of his mid-life crisis is his namesake, footballing legend Eric Cantona, who magically appears in his bedroom, offering typically enigmatic pieces of advice.
WHAT I THOUGHT A very entertaining film with a superb performance from Steve Evets as Eric the postman. We also get to see some of Eric Cantona's greatest goals. (He's a better footballer than he is an actor.) Being a Ken Loach film, there are some darker themes of poverty and desperation, but it's probably the closest we're going to get to a feel-good film from the veteran British director. The final scene involving several coachloads of fans wearing Cantona masks is wonderful.
This afternoon I went to see Wendy and Lucy at l'Eden. It's an indie road movie, which was well-received at last year's Cannes Film Festival, and tells the story of a young American drifter (Wendy) and her dog (Lucy), who are on their way to Alaska, where Wendy hopes to find work in the fish canneries. Not a lot happens. Wendy's car breaks down; she gets arrested for shoplifting; she loses her dog; she finds her dog, and that's about it. It doesn't sound very exiting, and it's not, but it makes you think and I quite liked it (though the Daily Express critic said that it was "only marginally more absorbing than watching paint dry".) One thing the film has going for it is that it's only 80 minutes long (you could actually show it during 90-minute lesson—not that I would dream of doing that, of course). When many films clock in at two hours or more, it makes a refreshing change to watch a movie that doesn't outstay it's welcome.
Scientists estimate that of 7,000 languages in the world, half will be gone by the end of this century. On average, one language disappears every two weeks.
The Linguists joins David Harrison and Gregory Anderson, scientists racing to document languages on the verge of extinction. David and Greg's 'round-the-world journey takes them deep into the heart of the cultures, knowledge, and communities at stake.
WHAT I THOUGHT A fascinating look at the work of two academics who seem to have a lot in common with Indiana Jones. It's sad to think, however, that the languages featured are almost certainly doomed to disappear.
This afternoon I went to see In The Electric Mist at the Sirius. Set in New Iberia and New Orleans, the film, directed by French director Bertrand Tavernier, follows a detective (Tommy Lee Jones) on the hunt for a serial killer who preys on young women, a glamorous Hollywood star, and a local crime kingpin who are all involved in a bloody murder mystery. Along the way he is led into a series of surreal encounters with a troop of Confederate soldiers.
WHAT I THOUGHT
Anything with Tommy Lee Jones in it is worth watching and this atmospheric crime thriller is no exception. However, the fantasy/supernatural elements didn't work for me, and the film would have been tighter and more focused without them.
A court in Sweden has found those running the file-sharing website 'The Pirate Bay' guilty of breaching copyright in a landmark case which could help music and film companies recoup millions of pounds in lost revenue. Sky's Julian Druker reports.
