I was a bad girl. I went to the movies instead of marking papers. Perhaps I should have marked papers...

So I went and saw 2012...just because Chiwetel Ejiofor had a major role in it. I'm sure he'd manage to act his way through the crappiest movies and yet would remain somehow untarnished because he's just a classy talented actor, and I hope this big movie would help his career but it's probably the worst film he has played in.

Don't get me wrong I like me some disaster movies from time to time– for example I actually enjoyed The Day After Tomorrow despite a certain formulaic storyline (the brave daddy turned into a hero!)– but in this case the suspension of disbelief was really really impossible and I didn't think it was possible to write more clichés and more predictable scenes!

When I see a big Hollywood crap like that on the silver screen I love my tv shows even more.

Now it's Rugby time, we're playing South Africa for a test match!

ETA: They did it! They ruled the game and beat the world champions 20-13!

As usual it's a fact that we can beat any team during a test match but we can't do it when it's the world cup. Go figure.

ETA 2: I am not alone! via whedonesqueI found this article! I can't help quoting the ending:

"The movie's most spectacular special effect is an actor. As far as I can recall, Ejiofor has never given a bad performance, although near the end of "2012" Emmerich, surely unwittingly, challenges that record by saddling him with an overwrought and overwritten speech about how necessary it is for human beings to treat one another with kindness and compassion -- otherwise, why save the human race at all? Ejiofor delivers this tin-can dialogue, which probably took Emmerich all of 12 minutes to write between bites of sandwich and phone calls to his agent, as if it were the St. Crispin's Day speech: With his perfect and yet wholly human enunciation, he turns a few dumb words into a tone poem of deep emotion and conviction. I leaned forward in my seat, gladly buying every syllable of this godforsaken baloney and then, when it was over, wishing there were more. The Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may crumble, but Ejiofor, thank God, is here to stay."

BUGGER!

Yesterday I saw Das Weisse Band , Le Ruban Blanc, which got La Palme d'Or in Cannes this year. I usually don't like Haneke's films for I think that, since Funny Games, he has just made films for the shock-value, to hurt the audience, to punch them in the face with the unbearable violence showed on screen, as if the film and the actors were just a tool used to cause a reaction. I don't mind violence and shocking scenes in movies as long as they mean something, and make sense story-wise, even if what it means is that some time violence is meaningless and just happens in the most cruel, uggly and gratuitous way, but Haneke always made me think that he didn't care much about his work, or at least cared less about it than about the uneasiness it caused. I'm sure it did it with the best intentions, to educate the viewers, just like the parents showed in Das Weisse Band.  

So I used to consider Michael Haneke a perverse film-maker rather than a film-maker interested in perversity; I found his films gratuitous and unhealthy, especially La Pianiste which I hated.

However this film is different, and for the first time, I saw a movie that has a true aesthetic side, and I saw Haneke examine the mechanism of perversity rather than being perverse himself. In a way, I could write now a review that would draw a parallel between what happens on screen in this movie and what Haneke used to do with his previous films (well I already kind of did above).

In Das Weisse Band the cinematography is great (white and black movies always are), the kids are fantastic, the atmosphere is heavy as it should be. Haneke took care over his film.




( Read more... )
 

I mean the BSG writing team, not the cylons...

Because I've just watched "The Plan", that BSG movie that was supposed to reveal a lot of things thanks to the Cylons' point of view. Well...I feel underwhelmed, to say the least. I didn't have high expectations, but since I had been pleasantly surpised by the pilot of Caprica I thought that maybe "The Plan" was worth watching.

Alas, this movie was disappointing and unnecessary. It hardly added stuff to what we knew. It's the first time I'm so negative about BSG but this tv movie didn't live up to the series. Compared to "The Plan", even "Razor" was a masterpiece.

( Read more... )

Watching yesterday's episode of Dollhouse, "Belonging", I kept thinking:

- the actors are great but Enver is fabulous. How cute Victor is!!!!
- where's Tahmoh? Do handlers get a day off when their dolls don't have any engagement?
- if Joss Whedon is not God, he is really an unconscious Catholic! Well, sort of.

Because now we know that, no matter how paradise-like the place may look and how painful the engagement may turn, the dollhouse is neither Heaven nor Hell, it's just a Purgatory. Yes, after the palimpsest on Chaucer's tales, now the show plays on Dante's territory. Once and again, it's all about the journey.

( Belonging )

First off, may I have a marking doll, please?

I should be marking instead of posting about Dollhouse but I have to write down some thoughts before I forget them. I usually use my Paul Ballard icon for such posts but my Medieval Demons icon seems to fit in today, since Tim Minear's script could be read as a palimpsest from The Canterbury Tales.

( La Belle Chose )

I will write about "La Belle Chose" later but I saw it and I needed to squee right now!

Victor-Chaucer-Paul is the best trio in my book. I've been saying for a year that Enver Gjokaj is an acting wonder and he was again fantastic! That man is a gem. What an amazing versatile actor! Tahmoh was also VERY good in the episode (he got the chance to show his skills at last), and extremely handsome. And tall!

Enver and Tahmoh are a great team, they both owned the episode.

After that one, I'm still torn between being a Paul/Adelle 'shipper or a Paul/Victor supporter. Perhaps Paul/Victor/Adelle is actually the right combination(and Adelle can watch, just like in my favourite scene from "La Belle Chose"!).

Joss, what you do to me!

I've just watched "Instinct", an episode I was ready not to like, given that it was Echo-centric, but actually I enjoyed it.

Looks like that after all those years of letting us pondering the soul issue, Joss has finally given an answer: the soul lies in the milk !!!!

( Read more... )

Today I saw another of the Cannes films that won a prize. It's the British Fish Tank, and again its Prix du Jury is well deserved. That portrait of a teenage girl won't be forgotten.

Mia is a rebellious British teenager whose life isn't a piece of cake. Actually it sucks a lot. You wouldn't want to live in that Essex housing estate that is her fish tank. As for her family, it sucks too, her mother (the wonderful actress that starred in Loach's Its a Free World) wouldn't get a prize in parenting, and her little sister has a filthy mouth(yes the film is filled by bad language from all the female characters but the little sister delivers a very creative coarse language and is hilarious). The three females basically keep insulting each other all the time. Mia doesn't go to school anymore and she doesn't have any friends left. The 15 year old Mia is alone, feeling awful –she hides her body beneath shapeless sportswear just like she hides her softer side–reckless and restless.
The fish tank is the metaphor of the many cages Mia wants to escape.  One of the them is her own body, hence her drinking booze (something her mother must have passed on her), her practicing hip-hop dance when nobody watches, and her trying to free a white horse who's chained up by some gypsies in a wasteground. One day a man shows up in the flat and sees her; Connor a hunk whom Mia's mother has brought back. His arrival leads to new possibilies, hope and, perhaps, disappointments.

( Read more... )

 

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Season 2 of Dollhouse has begun at last! "Vows" didn't blow me away but, as premieres go, it was a rather good episode. Much food for thoughts.

( Vows )

I'm off to Brittany tomorrow morning for five days, I don't know exactly when we will drive back on Monday, and then school is starting again so this may be my last post for a while.

I've seen the premiere of Dexter (yes it has leaked!) and the latest True Blood (not  a masterpiece for sure but a lot of fun). We're close to the season finale, but fortunately there's the new season of Dexter and Dollhouse to be aired very soon. I mostly rely on streaming sites now for I can no longer play the videos that are saved on my computer (must be the driver because the bug happens with every software I try) so downloading is useless. :-(
Anyway the DVD box of BSG 4th season should be released at the end of September.

Also I'm becoming quite obsessed with Caprica. I guess it's both Bear's music(I'm currently in love with the track   "A Tauron Sacrifice") and  the Eric Stoltz Daniel Graystone effect....




Something struck me during the second viewage but I wasn't sure so I re-watched Blade Runner for the 3333333th time and...bingo!!!!
The heavy glasses that the defence minister wears in Caprica are the same as Tyrell's in Blade Runner. I love little details like that. The pilot of BSG was already filled with references to Blade Runner and they did it again with Caprica. It makes me happy.

If you are interested in tv, there is a new the place to go so you can check on your favourite tv shows(True Blood, Dollhouse, Lost, Caprica, you name it!) and leave comments to share your interest with other tv addicts.
Ian, whom I've known for years thanks to the Internet, started a blog that  will give you the lastest news and info while avoiding spoilers so make sure to bookmark the TV LOWDON.

http://thetvlowdown.com/

Today I was at the cinema and saw the original and beautiful Elia Suleiman's film, The Time That Remains. It's a shame it didn't win anything in Cannes Festival.

It's a semi-autobiographical chronicle that follows Palestinian people, especially the director's father, in Nazareth from 1948 to nowadays. I wonder if the title has something to do with Pauline Epistles given that Elia Suleiman used his father's notebooks and his mother's letters to exiled relatives, to tell the story.

There are very few dialogues and the film mostly consists in saynettes that play on the absurd which may put off some viewers but it is beautifully shot, and the humour is irresistible.

I had rarely seen a Palestinian's movie that talks about the situation of Palestinians(or rather Isreali-Arabs) who remained in their homeland and have been living, as a minority, in Israel since 1948 while being that funny, poetic and tragic at once. Suleiman is a mixing of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton...there's even a little bit of Chaplin in him. 

The Time That Remains isn't perfect, the choregraphed playlets may annoy eventually and some viewers may prefer more pathos, political message and less distance. Personally I enjoyed the style and the way the director shows the everyday life of the Suleiman family and its neighbours in Nazareth, even though I'd rather have less Elia Suleiman in front of the camera in the long last 15 minutes(he portrays himself observing life around him).

At the end of the day it's a must see. Besides the actor playing Elia's father, Fuad Suleiman, is really handsome. I mean, really.

Part One about Daniel Mendelsohn

My second American hero is a genius whom it's difficult not to admire. I've been marathon-reading Richard Powers' s work for about a year now, starting with the widely and rightly acclaimed The Time Of Our Singing –I reread it after Obama won the American elections, which added to the emotions the story and the characters convey, and I've failed to post about it since then but I will some day because it deserves a post of its own–going on last Autumn with the wonderful The Eko Maker that convinced me that Richard Powers was one of a kind, and perhaps the best American writer alive. So I've decided to explore Powers' s bibliography before.

( Read more... )

No this entry was not prompted by a documentary about WWII GI's; it has nothing to do with movie stars and I am not particularly into those superheroes born in comics of which Americans are so fond either. Actually I guess it goes against a lot of clichés but my American heroes are writers.The more I read Daniel Mendelsohn and Richard Powers the more I adore them.

Perhaps you remember how I fell in love with the former while reading his The Lost. I have read two other books of his since then, and I'm still under Daniel Mendelsohn's spell.

( Read more... )

PS: I'm spamming(yes there's a Part Two coming soon) today but since the History & Geography test took place yesterday morning and given that this afternoon I went to Saint-Cloud to picked the Baccalauréat papers, that I'm supposed to mark in the 7 upcoming days, these entries are probably my latest "big posts" for a while. Marking Hell begins tomorrow morning so you won't see a lot of me until I'm done, unless I need a place to rant and whine from time to time...which might happen.

The words are from Tom McRae's song, "One more Mile", but this isn't about Tom(I suppose that the icon gave it away!). Instead of one more mile we actually have a few months to wait now, until the last season of Lost.

The 84-minute finale felt too short but gave me enough food for thoughts. So here we go...

( The Incident )

What am I going to watch now that Dollhouse and Lost are over? There's still Ashes to ashes but brit series are very short and we're nearing towards the end...

( My thoughts on Dollhouse's Omega )

With Joss, there's always the obvious, the less obvious and the least obvious. Dollhouse deserves a second season!

( Dollhouse episode 1x11 )

I'm going to watch Lost but first, I need to write down a few thoughts...Spoilers under the lj-cuts of course!

( About Dollhouse episode 10 )

( A quickie on Heroes finale )


Last but not least, I finally saw the second episode of Ashes to ashes.

( Shall we always trust the Gene Genie? )