Lucky enough to score a Curzon member's free preview screening ticket for this Argentinian film this afternoon. It won the best foreign film Oscar in February but the academy don't always get it right as we know. So was it a worthy winner?
Well the first thing that struck me about the film, described as a thriller and with an 18 certificate, is how much humour there is in it.
The film starts with Benjamin Esposito, who is retired from the legal profession and trying to write the first paragraph of a novel. His creative vision is haunted by two things: an unsolved rape and murder of a beautiful young woman from 25 years ago and his long held but secret love for his boss Irene.
He visits Irene to test out his idea of writing a novel based on the murder and so begins a series of flash backs to the events that followed the crime. The boundaries between fiction and fact are as hazy as the witty repartee and put-downs between the co-workers within the legal profession are crackling.
First of two cinema trips today and yet another French film (how many is that this year????). This one by writer/director Claire Denis is set in an unnamed French speaking African country with an escalating civil war. White French woman Maria (Isabelle Huppert) runs a coffee plantation with her ex husband (Christophe Lambert) and teenage son (Nicholas Duvauchelle).
Ignoring constant warnings to cut her losses and leave as the fighting moves ever closer, Maria is determined to stay and bring in the harvest. Her workers are fleeing, fuel is running out and her son won't get out of bed but still she soldiers on in a seemingly blind stubbornness.
She labours in the dirt and dust with a steely determinism working like a Trojan until she falls asleep on a bench on the porch. But her love of the country of her birth is evident throughout from the motorcycle ride across the plantation with head thrown back enjoying the sun to feeling the breeze in her lose hair.
And here is one of the few clues to her pig-headedness which grows increasingly uncomfortable to watch as the atrocities and danger of conflict creep ever closer. The country Maria loves is rejecting her but it is here she feels like somebody.
This technically isn't a film-related post -
but I know a few Ben fans sometimes stop by to read my ramblings so I'm
writing it anyway (it's my blog and I'll break the rules as and when I
see fit). Besides I'm just so excited there is finally some Mr W casting news, I've got to write about it somewhere.
So, he is to take the lead in a new HBO pilot by
Alan "True Blood" Ball about a man who cleans ups crime scenes.
It is based on crime noir novel The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (guess what I'll be shopping for today?) but for TV will be called All Signs of Death.
Ben's character, the wonderfully named Webster Fillmore Goodhue, from what I can glean from
the web is a bit of slacker. However, he finds that his job helps him
deal with his own past but gets embroiled in a potentially life
threatening mystery.
Blimey, yet more French cinema. I'm beginning to wonder whether the Curzon bought a job lot...not that I'm complaining there has been some great french cinema in recent years. But will Rapt be classed among them?
It is certainly a fresh take on the standard kidnapping yarn. Neither rich industrialist Stanislas Graff (Yvan Attal) or his wife and family bargain on quite how a life changing experience his kidnapping will be for start.
*potential plot spoilers* Aside from the more usual trauma - these kidnappers show they mean business by cutting off one of Stan's fingers and posting it before even so much as writing a ransom note - there are all the sordid little details of his past which the police and, disasterously, the press unearth.
If the affairs and love nests aren't bad enough there is the expensive gambling habit which means that Stan isn't quite as rich as the kidnappers think which, inevitably, leads to some questioning whether the whole thing hasn't been elaborately staged.
OK so the trailer made me nervous but this little behind the scenes featurettes has got me all excited again. Perhaps I just shouldn't watch any more trailers?
I'm rubbish at finding Easter Eggs* on DVDs partly because I have no patience to search so I'm eternally grateful when they end up on YouTube and even more grateful when people post them on websites and blogs. Thanks in this instance has to go to mydailyjoke.com
This one is a very funny joke interview played on Elijah Wood by Dominic Monaghan while they were promoting Lord of the Rings and anyone who knows me, will know I am a teeny bit of a fan of those films.
* I've tried those sites that show you how to find them but the instructions never seem to work for me.
Christopher Nolan wowed us with The Dark Knight and so Inception was naturally highly anticipated and, in many ways, it does live up to expectation.
There are some jaw-dropping set pieces and incredible effects in it, almost worth the DVD alone if the behind the scenes extra's are up to muster. And the basic concept of being able sneak around in someone else's dreams with the motive of stealing from them or planting an idea refreshingly original.
But here's the rub, it's all a bit too over conceptualised. It's almost as if Nolan was trying to out-clever himself. The result is that you are left clinging on to the bits of plot you understand while watching the waves of the rest of it wash away. It leaves you feeling almost as soggy as Leonardo diCaprio's character Cobb when he is dunked in a bath of cold water to wake him up.
Perhaps the concept of time increasing the deeper into the consciousness Cobb and his team travel, relative to the 'real time', is a device to help the audience keep up but after a while, you just want them to get on with it.
Indeed for a film that is essentially set in people's dreams it lacks any
humour. Maybe Nolan never has dreams that are a little bit silly.
Every now and again a film comes along that proves that you don't need mega bucks to make an imaginative and entertaining film. Nick Whitfield's Skeletons is such a film offering a simply-shot, surreal and engaging comedy that has echoes of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind done in the style of Withnail and I.
The two central characters Bennett and Davis are exorcists but not in the traditional sense. Watched over by The Colonel (Jason Isaacs) they are hired to exorcise skeletons from closets. Donning protective aprons and goggles, they harness special powers, channeled through some shiny stones and enter the closet to erase the embarrassing little secrets by inhabiting them.
Each has his own weakness which could affect their future career in the skeleton exorcising business. Davis likes to be a voyeur of his own memories in his spare time which could corrupt his powers and Bennett always feels some sort of obligation to the people whose secrets have been exposed, finding it difficult to walk away when the job is done.
Their strengths and weaknesses are put to the test when asked to examine the skeletons in the closet of a husband missing from his family for eight years. To say more would spoil it but overall the film is laugh out loud funny with some lovely touching moments.
Skeletons is definitely a classic British film in the making. It's only got a limited release but it would be a shame if more people didn't see it.
Film Four website gave it four stars concluding: "This bleakly comic high-concept psychodrama about family, memory and
grief defies easy categorisation or summary - but missing it would be
your loss."
Just perusing the websites of my favourite cinemas to see what was on other than Inception (of course I'll be seeing that, can't wait) and I came across this little French movie called Bluebeard.
Hadn't heard of it until I saw it listed so I watched the trailer and I'm intrigued. It reminds me a little bit of Pan's Labyrinth crossed with Alice in Wonderland
Mark Kermode has been saying good things about this low-budget, indie Brit-flick. It sounds amusingly surreal and is about two men that travel around the country exorcising skeletons from people's closets. I've got to say I love the premise so I've booked to see it tomorrow.
It's not on at many screens because of the budget and marketing is being done by interviews with the likes of Mark Kermode and through simple word of mouth.
(Hello) Jason Isaacs, who plays The Colonel, told Kermode that one read of the script was enough to get him involved. The limited budget meant all the actors living together in one house during filming and eating mainly cheesecake - doesn't sound too bad to me.
Have seen some interesting low-budget Brit-flicks in the last few years; Fish Tank and Scouting Book for Boys spring to mind. And where could be more appropriate to see it, than at the Curzon Soho where the cafe bar is a popular meeting point, indeed a make-shift office for some new film makers trying to get projects off the ground?
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