Cloverfield

I have just been to see Cloverfield at the Vue in the OmniCentre in Edinburgh and I thought it was a really good film. One word to describe it? Tense. And just to dispell the myth, no I didn't get motion sickness (and I hate rollercoasters) and the hand held camera work didn't put me off. It was much better done than Blair Witch and added to the tension brilliantly - both what you couldn't see and what you could see through the lens - and was a tad more expensive than the 20p that Blair Witch was made for. The similarity between the films ends there.

Scariest moment: Definetely in the helicoptor, when you think he's dead.

Hi to everybody...have just watched John Turturro's 'Illuminata' about a writer's effort to get him play shown in the theatre at the turn of the last century....wonderful script, acting and was funny and moving and deep...I can highly recommend it...came out in 1998, but hasn't become dated because a period piece...Susan Sarandon, Rufus Sewell, and Christopher Walken are amongst the actors in it, and excellent they are too...in fact all the cast are wonderful...if you haven't seen it...try it...big hugs to one and all....

Hi to everybody...here's an animated film treat...watch the birdie in it...
'Ratrix Hero' is a short animated film with a running time of 6 minutes wich takes its inspiration from the film "The Matrix". The Hero is a rat and is chased by agents with cat's head.

Big hugs to one and all.....

Hi to everybody...has anybody here seen 'The Russian Ark' directed by Alexander Sokurov? The entire film was shot in one take...and lasts around one and a half hours...
It starts off with a narrator revealing that he is dead and a ghost taking you round the Winter Palace aka the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and takes you on a journey through history meeting fictional and real characters as he wanders through the galleries and massive rooms until it climaxes with an astounding ending, which should knock you over when you realise that only one thing had to go wrong and the entire film would have been lost...
I got it for my birthday last year, and we watched it through scarcely believing that somebody had achieved this astonishing feat or that the cameraman had survived...he nearly collapsed with utter exhaustion but didn't, thank goodness...
If you haven't seen it, cast aside your expectations of a normal film... by that I mean what usually appears at your local cinema...because this film is nothing like these...you can be a bit confused at times as to what's going on because some subtitles are missed off probably deliberately and, unless you speak the language of the ghost, you're not going to know what's happening...but these instances are rare. Most of the time, you realise that you're going through a dream like state and seeing snippets of the past and present like a wonderful tableau...
See it just for the experience if nothing else, and I think you'll be amazed...
Big hugs to one and all...

Hi to everybody...saw two films last night as different as chalk and cheese, but both were very entertaining in their own way.
The first was 'My House in Umbria' with Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall and Ronnie Barker...it was a gentle, tender film about the aftermath of a bomb going off in a train in Italy. Maggie Smith was a passenger in a full apartment with Ronnie Barker and his daughter, a young German man and his girlfriend and an American husband and wife with their young daughter of around nine or ten. The bomb explodes leaving only Maggie Smith, playing Emily, Ronnie Barker,the General, the young German man, Werner, and the young girl, Amy, alive...
They are all injured but Amy has stopped talking with the shock. Maggie Smith has a house in Umbria and invites them all back to convalesce including Amy, while any living relatives in the USA were traced. During all this, an Italian detective pops up every now and then to question all of them about the tragic events.
After they have settled in and have got to know and feel real affection for each other, an uncle is discovered in the USA of Amy's and arrives to take her back with him...he's cold and academic and nobody warms to him and he despises them. I'll not spoil the outcome, just to say that it was a beautifully acted film with magnificent scenery and a great deal of humour and pathos. Slow, but well paced, and I can recommend it.
The second was much more grim...'The Last King of Scotland' about the rise and fall of Idi Amin of Uganda and his relationship with a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who arrives in Uganda seeking adventure and intending to try to help the people out there. The story starts off entirely from the perspective of the young, and as it turns out, completely naive, newly qualified doctor. Idi Amin meets him and, eventually, invites him to be his personal physician because he likes Scotland and the Scottish people...their relationship begins with Garrigan reluctantly accepting the position and somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of trust that Amin puts in him and that he seeks his advice in all sorts of matters. Gradually though, the relationships begins to be oppressive as Amin's sanity deteriorates and the situation in Uganda becomes one of a bloodbath as Amin orders the removal of all who oppose or threaten him. Garrigan falls in love with Amin's third wife, and gets her pregnant, and from then on, he is intent on getting away from Amin, but hasn't counted on the barbarity of the man with dreadful results.
Although I've written a fair bit about the plot, this is still only a small part of the whole film. The acting by Forrest Whittaker as Idi Amin is excellent and James McAvoy is also very good as Garrigan, but I could not warm to him because his naivety and sheer stupidity at times was breathtaking. In the end, I felt he did a great deal of harm because of it and people ended up dead. That, he would have to live with for the rest of his life. He did, however, go on to write the story of his life with Amin, and this is the basis of 'The Last King of Scotland'. For an insight into a terrible period of Uganda's history, I can highly recommend this film but it's not an easy film to watch in parts because so horrific, and even that was tempered because the reality would never have got past the censors...
That's it, big hugs to one and all..

Hi to everybody...we went to the cinema to see 'Pan's Labyrinth' and watched spellbound for its entirety. Guillermo Del Toro, the director, has excelled himself in the making of this outstanding film. The young girl, who is the main character, caught up in the cruelty and savagery of war, is entirely lacking in tweeness, she is lovely, sad, fearful, at times petrified with good reason, and her hapless mother and brutal step father make her life a living nightmare, which ends in a shocking outcome. Throughout the film, a fantasy world is created by her in an attempt to survive what is going on around her, but is, in the end, insufficient to protect her.
A wonderful film that I cannot recommend enough...big hugs to one and all....

I've watched "Juno" last night and i liked it a lot!

Altough Ellen Page reminded me a little too much of the charakter she played in "Hard Candy" but since i thought that movie was also really good, that was alright.

I liked the overall style and mood of the movie. And i am not such big a fan of happy endings but this ending was well done.

If you haven't seen it, do so!

Hi to one and all...watched a French film last night on BBC4 called 'Heading South'...it was released in 2006 and directed by Laurent Cantet. It starred Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, and Louise Portal.
It was about 1970's Haiti and the older women who took holidays there annually in search of sex with the young men and boys who frequented the beach attached to the hotel they stayed in. There were some very poignant moments in it and it was very well acted by all involved in it, especially the young Haitian men, and the hotel owner. It started off fairly light heartedly, but, gradually, it darkened and you got to see glimpses of the hidden side of Haiti and the brutality of the authorities eventually gave it an unexpected ending. It raised a lot of questions as well about this increasing form of holidaying and the effect it has upon the indigenous peoples. All in all, it was a low budget film, with a good script, some fine acting and nicely paced...I can recommend it if you haven't already seen it.

Saw 'The Bucket List' today, what a lovely film. Jack Nicholson back to his very best.

So Rampage, CrapArtist and me went to see Cloverfield on wednesday.
I thought i was pretty entertaining but no movie to remember really. I liked the monster though.
But where did the monster come from and why was it so pissed about New York City? Hmm, dunno.
And the teaser/trailer was actually too good. So what do you think?

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