And I didn’t even know there was something missing
From my life, that is. Until now.
Now that I am 15 minutes into Barbarella, I realise that there had previously been a gaping hole in my life. No longer! Filled with Jane Fonda, hairy wallpaper, Jane Fonda’s boobs, a lot of plastic and the knowledge that Duran Duran is the name of a character in the movie. Which makes them even more screwy than I previously thought.
Oh, and now there are nasty biting dolls after Our Heroine. Hmm, an excuse to remove more of Jane’s clothing, clearly.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch the whole thing, to be honest.
A few movies from the last few months
Just out of interest…
Chronicles of Riddick: I was inspired to re-watch this after reading a post about how bad it was as a sequel to Pitch Black. I loved Black, but I actually saw it after Riddick so perhaps my reference frame is a bit skewed. For me, they are best viewed as essentially separate movies, since that’s what they feel like. Yes, if you’re looking for more of the sparse, mildly terrifying, barely-any-scenery action of Black, I can see why you might be disappointed. But I just adore Riddick. I love the crazy costumes, I adore Crematorium as a planet, the mercenary is hilarious, and – was it Karl Urban? – he and his missus are basically Macbeth and his lady in space, which is always going to be a winner with me.
Henry V: I thought for a while there I was going to go through a little Shakespeare on the silver screen mode, but have decided against it. I did, however, watch this – the Brannagh version, with a little Emma Thomspon cameo that I wasn’t expecting. I haven’t ever read or seen this one, and had even forgotten that it was the one set at Agincourt until it actually started. I have a story about Hamlet and cliches which I’ll recount sometime, but it applies equally here: there were so many of them! Seriously, there were a good few times where, after the first line was said, I knew what the response or capping line would be because it was so well known. I’m no Bard-idolator, but my goodness the man knew how to write a pithy phrase.
Cleopatra: oh me, oh my. How could I have called myself a lover of antiquities or an old-film buff without having seen Liz, Richard and Rex doing their thing in this insane extravagance of a movie? I got the 4-hour version, split over 2 discs, from BigPond, and the split is basically right in the middle of the movie – and about 5 minutes after the death of Caesar, thus almost exactly split between Harrison (quite an old Caesar, which was probably about right actually) and Burton (oh, lovely lovely voice!). One quite weird thing about watching this is that I knew pretty much every detail of what was going to happen, before it got on screen. There aren’t that many books-turned-film where I can do that, so it was an unusual experience. Liz was a bit too over the top as Cleopatra, for me; the sets were stupendous though.
Dark Knight: actually in the cinema! You don’t need me to tell you about it; if you haven’t seen it, you should, if you are an action fan. If you’re not an action fan, you likely won’t like it. You should know, though, that my appreciation of Ledger as the Joker has zero to do with the fact that he is dead. That performance was breath-taking.
Charlie Wilson’s War: had wanted to see this at the cinema, and didn’t manage to. I am so-so towards Hanks, but thought he was marvellous in this role. Julia Roberts, too. She looked a lot older than last time I saw a picture of her, or saw her in a movie. I was impressed that the movie mentioned the screw-up of reconstruction the US made of Afghanistan (does this haunt them today, I wonder? – I mean, I know policy makers must have thought about it when the US invaded (some of them anyway), but is it part of the reason for sticking around in Iraq so long?), but thought that section could have made the point much more forcefully. And there was no mention of bin Laden, which was something of a surprise. Brilliant movie, anyway.
There have been others… but that’s enough ruminating for now.
Across the Universe
Finally saw this yeaterday, with the squister. I loved it! I don’t know what to say about it, exactly, except that it was awesome… the actors were all good, and the music fit the storyline superbly. ‘Sadie’ was clearly channelling Janis Joplin. I loved all the silly little references to other songs (“she came in through the bathroom window…”), and I’m sure there were lots I missed – I’ve never heard of Mr Kite before, and let me say Eddie Izzard is something of a genius. The sets were brilliant, the costumes delightfully stereotypical, and it was not as saccharine as I had at first feared. As a hyped-up, wishful version of the 60s, it worked very well and dealt with some of the issues we now think of as pertinent to the era rather well. The Vietnam bits were poignant… the parallel scenes, and the dropped-in bits, were powerful.
My squister loves Jude. He’s a bit too broody for me.
Am I that strange?
So when we went to see Indy (which I should blog… sometime…), we went to a cinema with allocated seating. When we got to buy our tix, we were both – shall we say – a bit excited. My love asked if we could be in the middle, and I said “Up the front?” at the same time. The dude looked at his screen and said we could have off centre, near the back. My love frowned and said, “How about up the front?” The dude looked surprised and replied “I thought you were being sarcastic!” So we got row 5. No one in front of us.
Hello?! If I go to the cinema, I want to really be at the cinema: I would prefer not to have anything in my peripheral vision except more screen! How is this such a strange thing? Because there were very few people near us, for Indy.*
Then tonight, my love and I went to IMAX, to see U23D (which will also be blogged, and was awesome). It was IMAX, so we didn’t go too crazy: we sat in the third row, which was quite close enough. There was a couple sitting behind us (who insisted on talking… grrr…), but no one else in our row and no one in front.
Are we strange? Tell me there are other people who sit up the front!
*Except for a dad and three kids under eight. I looked at the kid who sat next to me and told him, gravely, that he hadn’t been born when I started looking forward to this movie. The dad laughed; the kid ended up moving… which maybe wasn’t a bad result  ;]
Making The Labyrinth
Further to my entire afternoon of cooking, I am now being entertained by the ‘Making of’ doco on my copy of The Labyrinth. It’s really long!! And it has interviews with Brian Froud, both Hensons, Jennifer Connelly (who is all of about 14 at the shooting of the film), and David Bowie… and a lot of the production people, too. It’s a real, proper, making-of: I reckon they don’t often get done like this these days. Insight into the production process, the recording process, and a huge amount about the making of the puppets – which was brilliant, because goodness they were amazing: pulleys and levers and remote controls… and there’s actually someone inside Hoggle!! And two people alternated inside Ludo.
Truly it’s an awesome movie. (Ah ha! I thought I caught sight of George Lucas on set – he wasn’t interviewed – and the opening credits say it’s Henson and Lucasfilm, so I must have been right.) I never knew Terry Jones was one of the writers! – but he was; he got quite a bit of time in the making-of (in fact, according to the credits just now, he is the screen writer. No wonder it’s so damn good). Impressively, I think I could re-watch the doco; I just like watching the behind-the-scenes stuff of the puppetry, I think.
So, in case you hadn’t guessed, I have started watching the movie proper… so back to Sarah and Jareth, and making curry, for me.
Proving George Clooney doesn’t suck
I never got in to ER; I didn’t like Clooney’s Batman in the slightest. I got very impatient with my friends who thought Clooney was sooo dreamy.
Pft.
Then I saw O Brother, Where art Thou?
I still don’t think he’s that dreamy (although Danny Ocean was more convincingly so), but this movie showed me that Clooney has real acting talent. I loved this movie – and I rewatched it today, for the first time I think since I saw it at the flicks – as I have been cooking all afternoon in preparation for my darling’s birthday party. Gosh it’s good! Firstly, the soundtrack – which I own – is one of the best soundtracks overall ever. Clooney and his two cronies are fantastic, convincing and sympathetic and inimitably entertaining. John Goodman is cool as Cyclops, I don’t know who it is plays Tommy, who sells his soul, but he’s great too… and Holly Hunter, not my favourite actress in general, is perfectly prim.
I love the cinematography, too: the juxtapositions, the close-ups and wide angles… in general, one of my favourite movies. If you haven’t seen it, you ought! And, of course, I loved the Odyssey references, which were stronger for me this time around.
It’s just so wrong
So very, very wrong.
My love and I both had crap days. We both got home tonight feeling the need for utter mindlessness, so when we discovered The World is Not Enough waiting for us, it felt like fate.
It’s just such utter crap!
Denise Richards – Dr Christmas Jones – argh! What an embarrassment to the sorority of Bond girls everywhere!
Even Sophie Marceau is pretty crap. And I loved Hamish Macbeth, but Robert Carlyle is also quite average.
As for Pierce Brosnan… well, it’s reaching Roger Moore levels of stupid one-liners, in this one. The stunts aren’t quite as daft as they get in the next one – and the speed boat chase is pretty cool – but still, I feel quite impatient watching it a second (third? Can’t remember) time.
Perfect, though, for a Monday night with the need to do nothing.
Call yourself a space fan?
If you do, and haven’t either seen In the Shadow of the Moon or made plans to do so – hang your head in shame!
Seriously, one of the best things I’ve seen at the cinema in ages. Ages and ages.
Take as many of the Apollo astronauts as are still alive (as far as I can tell; except Armstrong, who has apparently been basically a recluse almost since we got back to terra cognita), and make them talk about what it was like becoming an astronaut, flying in space and to the moon, and being home again. Splice this with genuine, rarely-seen before footage, and you have a spellbinding nearly-two-hour movie.
There’s no interviewer shown, so it’s just the blokes in their own words (and it is, by its nature, very blokey – there’s maybe two women who speak in the whole thing, and they’re in interviews from the sixties). All the men are given identical, nondescript backgrounds behind them – and they’re all only shown from the torso up. It’s almost like they’re floating in space, or outside of real time – which sounds daft, but bear with me: they’re utterly divorced from now – they only exist with relation to the space programme; they don’t interact with anyone except the viewer; and there’s nothing to date the film, except their clothes which are utterly nondescript as well. It was a fascinating way of compiling them.
The footage shown… well, I had to watch until the end of the credits to make sure it was all genuine NASA footage, with no CGI, because I’ve got a bit cynical in my old age. But, apparently, it was all real – and it was awesome. And so much that I, at least, had never seen! Views looking out as the stages separate – the moon buggies – that Earth-rise… I got goosebumps at several points, it was all just so beautiful. And there’s real audio too – Armstrong’s famous bit, of course, but also stuff from inside the command module (footage from there, too): it was almost funny listening to Jim Lovell’s voice, because I could almost recite his words along with him c/o Apollo 13. And I really did get goosebumps when they showed the first men who went around the moon – Apollo 8 maybe? – and they read from Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.[1]
Probably the person who was most interesting to listen to was Michael Collins – the poor sucker who got stuck in the Command Module, while Neil and Buzz went walking. He was fascinating, and a great speaker. Eugene Cernan, too, was also great… actually they all were, pretty much.
I cannot stress it enough: if you like this sort of thing, you really should try to see it on the big screen. Yes, it will be OK on DVD – but some of that footage just looks so much more impressive when it’s huge![2]
[1] And then to hear that some woman sued them, when they got back to Earth, for mixing church and state… hilarious!
[2] We sat in the second row, in a tiny little cinema… it was insane, but very cool.
The Jane Austen Book Club
I am not, generally, a fluffy movie kind of gal. However, I agreed to go see this movie with two of my very good friends (I realised the other day that I’ve known them for 10 and 11 years! Amazing!) at the Moonlight Cinema. Sadly, Al had to pull out at the last minute, so it was just K and me: right up the front, with blanket and very tasty food, and a bottle of moscato.
Overall, I must admit to enjoying the movie: five women get together to read the six Austens, through various means and for various purposes. A bloke joins them as well, for the obvious reason – getting into the pants of one of them, although it was more refined than that.
A couple of things occurred to me, which I thought I’d share here – mild spoilage:
1. The bloke is a sci-fi buff, and has never read any ‘classics’: in fact, the bloke first meets up with the woman for whom he joins he bookclub, he’s at a scifi con (SwanCon! woohoo!). One of the funnier moments of the movie comes when he first turns up with all six books in one: in case they’re sequels. This is such a classic scifi idea; it makes perfect sense to me. It’s also very interesting to see that this scifi buff is perfectly capable of reading, understanding, and communicating ideas about ‘great literature.’ There’s also an interesting sideline in him convincing the woman to read scifi, at first Ursula le Guin. She refuses for a long time, before he shames her into reading them and she, of course, loves it.
2. Singleness is a huge issue. One of the women is middle-aged-ish, and another is going through a divorce; one is in a troubled marriage, one is a lesbian with fairly tempestuous relationships, and the other has been married six times (currently divorced). So how to deal with being single, and what this means for a woman, is explored a bit (although not great depth). This is not my issue, and as far as I was concerned this was simply part of the movie. The interesting part, I realised, was that there was no mention of Grigg’s singleness. He was in his mid-thirties, at least, and single, but this was never an issue. Not once. Because it’s ok for men to be bachelors, but women are spinsters – bachelorettes just don’t cut it.
3. The last thing to mention is the conclusion. I quite liked the end – I am totally fine with happy endings, even sappy endings, sometimes. The thing that bugged me here was the scripting! It was appalling! There were so many other possible ways of communicating the same idea – even I could have written something better! Anyway… grrr. Nearly spoiled a good movie.
Randomly Yours, Alex 