Wow, this looks depressing. I can’t wait!
Neil and I both read this quite some time ago and we both really liked it. So I think the memory of the plot has sufficiently faded to make the film worth watching… even if it is Keira Knightley in the title role.
I got a free ticket to see Au Revoir Taipei last night, its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It’s a light-hearted buddy-caper-love story. I liked the contrast with the usually overwrought Taiwanese drama available on teevee.
Kai, a young Taiwanese man, bids farewell to his girlfriend, who’s moving to Paris. Things between them work out in a predictable fashion, and Kai needs to find the money to fly to Paris to see her. He ends up getting his best mate, Gao, involved in something seemingly shady by borrowing money from Big Brother Bao in exchange for delivering a package. There are gangster-ish Ah Bengs with an effeminate leader (he ain’t exactly Omar) and they all wear bright orange suits. There are a couple of hapless policemen whose personal problems outweigh getting to the bottom of things.
All in all, it wasn’t exactly life-changing, but it was an amusing way to spend an evening with my best (edible) friend (read: popcorn). Being bilingual and also Hokkien (but unable to speak the dialect beyond those seven words one should never use), I thought it was pretty hilarious, especially when they subtitled ‘Sui!’ (beautiful) with 水 (‘shui’, or water).
(The film’s dialogue was mostly in Mandarin, but had quite a few lines in Hokkien as well.)
And OMG, the food. The street market scenes and in Kai’s family noodle and dumpling stall made me whimper with need. Also, the boy who plays Gao looks a helluva lot like my wee cousin Kai (who’ll always be wee to me, despite being pretty damn tall). And it’s the same Kai (凯). But Gao is a lot dopier than (my cousin) Kai, I just thought I’d clear that up right now.
The Ghost would have been a great thriller if I didn’t possess a functioning brain. It was kind of flat and not very thrilling at all (in spite of pretty good performances by the cast). Pretty much the only surprise came at the very end, and that was because it just doesn’t seem remotely possible that people are that organised. I’m not sure what it was that made it not great or terribly fun to watch. Maybe it was simply too obvious. Is that the fault of the novelist, scriptwriter, or director? I have no idea.
The Matador, on the other hand, is Pierce Brosnan’s Sexy Beast, I think. He plays a moustachioed and really unsuave Julian Noble — a corporate assassin — and one of my new favourite actors Greg Kinnear plays Danny Wright, a businessman. The two strike up an unusual friendship in a hotel bar in Mexico and both are changed by the experience. It’s a screwed-up comedy and a twisted buddy film. One of the best moments must be Noble (Brosnan) swaggering through the hotel lobby in speedos and boots. I did not know he had such skinny legs!
I love that I get to watch the Cameo Cinema’s double features for free. There are some stormers coming up in June. One of them involves Philip Seymour Hoffman, which makes me a happy girl.
Having a membership at Blockbuster means you can ‘try’ all sorts of films. We’ve seen loads of good things. And then I managed to talk Neil into renting Twilight.
Haha. Wow, is it bad. All those gagging noises came from me, as Bella and Edward’s lines got cornier and cornier as the film progressed. Could they be any lamer?
Carlyle Cullen’s quite hot, though. But I don’t think I’ll watch anything Twilight-related ever again.
This is one of those films you need to watch on a big screen to fully appreciate just how beautiful it is. Those colours, the grain of the film (real or digitised, I have no idea), those costumes… oh my.
One of my (now former) colleagues is an Isherwood. She wishes she was related to Christopher Isherwood, who wrote the novel A Single Man (from which the film was adapted). I’ve got the book on my wishlist, too. It was Ms Isherwood who recommended the film that I was planning to watch, but wasn’t adamant that I needed the cinema experience.
From what I understand, a lot has been said (written) about the homosexual storyline. It could have been a straight storyline and still be an amazing film. It wasn’t the fact that George Falconer had a boyfriend, but the loss and loneliness he felt at losing him that actually hurt (although the theme of minority groups clearly wouldn’t have worked otherwise). The easy comfort and contentment we saw between George and Jim in the flashbacks almost made me cry because I know how mature a relationship must be to reach that level of intimacy, and losing that suddenly and unexpectedly would be unimaginable.
Colin Firth really needs to win that Oscar, he is such an excellent actor who can communicate a whole range of complex emotion with just one look. Tom Ford also needs to win awards for his brilliant direction. And we all need to thank the fridge guy.
Neil and I saw Die Welle on the weekend. It’s based on a true story, and in this version the seemingly ultra left-leaning teacher Rainer Wenger sets up an experiment with his students to see if fascism could thrive in Germany today.
At first the students are completely sceptical, but once the experiment starts, many of them are wholly absorbed in The Wave (the name of their group) — especially the social outcast, Tim, who finds a real sense of belonging as The Wave ends up becoming a real phenomenon.
You can see where this is going. I don’t actually need to spell it out for you, do I — it’s got a fairly predictable plot, but it’s still a decent film. It was also interesting to note that German neds are pretty much the same as Scottish neds.
(Neil drew my attention to this film because I’d told him about something I’d heard about in my Psychology class, the Stanford prison experiment. That was really fascinating.)
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Invictus, William Ernest Henley
Yup. We saw Invictus (released here on Friday). What a great film.
I, on the other hand, do not have as generous a nature as Mr. Mandela. That’s why he could be President. Yeah. That’s the only reason.
Wow. Primer was a weird film.
From what I’ve been able to understand by thinking incessantly about it for a couple of hours and consulting Wikipedia, I think I’ve finally grasped how time travel works in the film (which helps explain the narrative). (Read more.)