Monday, November 22
Current Mood:
Current Music: La Belle et La Bad Boy - MC Salaar
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My favourite new movie Poster: Tideland, Directed: Terry Giliam (I luff this guy!)
Hehehehe. Summation: After her mother dies from a heroin overdose, Jeliza-Rose is taken from the big city to a rural farmhouse by her father. As she tries to settle into a new life in her mother's childhood home, Jeliza-Rose's attempts to deal with what's happened result in increasingly odd behavior, as she begins to communicate mainly with her bodiless Barbie doll heads and Dell, a neighborhood woman who always wears a beekeeper's veil.
I veto the Olsens and okay Dakota Fanning. She can be creepy when she wants, but still cute.
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Finally got videos out from the video store after an eight week abstinence. So brillant. Except it was kinda early and everything was still out. Still I've seen, Mean Girls, Ripley's Game, Intolerable Cruelty, Before Sunrise although I still have a few more to go.
Okay, Reviews. Mean Girls, well I wasn't expecting that. It was brillantly thought out, well acted (Lohan is one child actress I can actually stand), wonderfully and craftily written and yeah, a fantastically incisive social commentary on what it really means to be a teen in high school. While it'll likely do nothing to break the social cliques in American high school, I still loved it. Ah, the bus. And the icing on the cake, scripted by Tina Fey from one of my favourite TV shows, SNL (Staurday Night Live) and hence featured many of its actors, Amy Poehler for one. There was also Lohan's Mum and the Principal, who were old SNL stars and funnily enough, the janitor from Scrubs. This one is truly up there with Rules of Attraction, and any John Hughes film.
Ripley's Game, starring the always favourite of mine, John Malkovich and well...Dougray Scott. Yeah, that was pretty much it for famous-ites. However, I enjoyed it, if not for the sex scenes (they weren't bad, less risque than any Sex and the City scene), it was good. Malkovich plays Ripley, older, more worldy, impeccably stylish and living in a grand old villa, very, very, very rich and dating this young harpsichordish who's all fine with 'ze killing'. Dougray Scott, unlike any of the characters I've seen him play (now i want to watch ever after again!), is this guy dying of some cancer or somewhat, who is sick of his life and his little money. After insulting Ripley (unbeknowst, Ripley's in the room), Ripley plays a 'game' and turns him into an assassin, via his associate Reeves. However, things go awry, and the two end up as partners, fighting for their lives and their family. If I haven't told you before, well John Malkovich is just one of those people I adore, like I adore Warwick Davis or I adore Rowan Atkinson. Not for really any reason, or because they're epic actors, just because they were a) a part of my childhood b) or they've got something no one else has got. Davis was part of my childhood and so was Atkinson, although Atkinson is one of the very few comic entrepreneurs and also, one of the best. With a flailing of his arms, he can have me fall off the couch in hysterics, or with one sentence of his acerbic wit. Malkovich is the same in a way. Its just the way he is, his presence, the way he moves, there's something about him that's intimidating. Oh no, not like Robert De Niro. Okay, let's call it charisma. He's ugly, I give you that, but there's something about his ugliness that draws you to him. He's like the opposite of the siren. You'll probably totally disagree with me, but there is something about him that keeps me glued to the screen. He reminds me of Draco something, cool, smooth, suave, unseemingly intelligent. He may looks like an ape, but I luff him. Anyway, he uses that to his advantage in this movie, portraying himself as the later, 'un-conscienced' Matt Damon, who doesn't care how he kills. In the first five minutes, he beats to death a guard with a trowel, and just moves on. Scott on the other hand, breaks down crying after killing a man, the distance and difference is palpable but yet they are pulled towards one another, and one ends up dying for the other. Its really quite amazing really, but at the same time, except for Malkovich's 'something' it feels like a very ordinary film. Nothing really extravagant or different. Meh. Nothing like 'The Talented Mr Ripley' which surprisingly I still don't own. *adds to list* There we go.
Intolerable Cruelty I just finished watching. That just blew. I didn't really like it. I mean, Clooney and Zeta-Jones are both awesome actors. They know how to handle this sorta simple, flimsy dialogue of their very 2-d characters (one after money, the other after a challenge, both alone.
Before Sunrise? What can I say about this movie? Its not a big action flick, or a chick flick, or even a rom-com, or a war flick. Its a dialogue flick. Its about two people who meet on a train, share some sort of instinctual connection and spend a day together, revealing their wishes, hopes, desire, problems and even begin falling in love with one another. Starring Ethan Hawke (recent divorcee of Uma Thurman, Gattaca) and Julie Delphy (of nothing really since or before). Its a really beautiful movie, not only showing us the depths, love and humor of these two people (sometimes opposites, Hawke is cynical, Delphy is idealistic) but also how beautiful and 'surreal' the world (in this case, Vienna) can be when you're completely absorbed in someone else and know how fleeting and how non-existent their relationship, how finite it will be after sunrise. And that's kinda the beauty of this movie. Although at the end they promise to meet each other in six months, the director leaves us unaware whether they do or do not, although there is a feeling which they discuss later, in which they will not meet. The surprise? Well, ten years later, to teh day (this was made 1994), Linklater (dir) makes the sequel, starring the same people called Before Sunset, in which the two people meet again, this time deliberately as you find out as the day goes on. Except this time, they're more committed to those 'other lives' and you have to sit along for the ride to find out what has happened to them, did they got to meet one another in six months etc. I can't wait to see it, because I personally adored this movie. Delphy is a wonderfully, romantic person and Hawke is so charmingly likeable despite his cynicsm, that its hard not cheer for them, in the hope that they will stay together after sunset.
That's enough out of me.
~ M.M.W ~
