Saw this trailer last Saturday when going to see Prince of Persia. Really looking forward to this third part of the Twilight Saga, hope to be able to finish the book in time though…
The Butterfly Tattoo (Trailer after the break) is a British movie made after the novel with the same name by Philip Pullman. The description of the plot of the movie was intriguing: “She was his first love, He was her killer”, so I decided to watch it yesterday. The Butterfly Tattoo is an independent movie, and while the budget was obviously a lot lower than most Hollywood productions, the story and young but skilled actors make it an interesting watch. The Butterfly Tattoo tells the story of Chris, a student, that works for Oxford Entertainment Systems. When installing the light & music at a posh party, he meets Jenny and helps her to hide from some ex-boyfriend who has been harrassing her. Gradually, the relationship between Chris and Jenny develops, and it becomes clear that Jenny has a troubled past. More than that, Chris discovers that his boss has some troubles of his own and is hiding from a criminal who is searching him. How this ends in the death of Jenny I will not spoil, you will have to watch it for that 
. And although the story does not end well, and leaves you with a slightly unsatisfied feeling, I think the movie portrays a much more honest, true, tragic, and interesting story than we know from those Happy End movies, all so common in Hollywood. Moreover, the movie’s brilliant Brit Pop sound track adds another reason to watch!
Since the Namesake introduced me to 1947 Earth, I have been exploring some more Bollywood movies. New York is a movie filmed by an Indian director Kabir Khan, mostly filmed in Hindi, but takes place in the city that never sleeps. The movie, featuring the lovely Katrina Kaif, portrays a somewhat different vision on the world after 9/11. The movie starts when Omar, a taxi driver, is falsely accused of terrorism and interrogated by the FBI. It seems one of his college friends Samir, is suspected to be a leader of a terrorist sleeper cell in NYC. Already soon, Omar realises that the FBI has a double agenda, and probably planted the weapons on his taxi on purpose to force him to spy on his old friend. Omar, however, broke of contact with Samir just after 9/11, and gaining his former friend’s confidence will also entail meeting Samir’s Wife and Omar’s former crush, Maya. While Omar believes in Samir’s innocence, his work for the FBI reveals otherwise, and suddenly Omar has to do everything possible to stop his friend from committing a terrorist attack. As said, New York portrays a somewhat different perspective to terrorism that we see in most Hollywood movies, which makes it an interesting watch. Right after 9/11, Samir is illegally held, interrogated, and tortured by the FBI, to reveal nothing but his innocence. Free again, his plans are revenge and this leads him to the path of terrorism. While providing a different viewpoint on terrorism, especially condemning the American actions that resulted in thousands of innocent muslim men being detained without any form of process, the movie unfortunately fails to give the necessary depth to the topic. A depth that would really make its audience think about this topic. Instead, the characters remain shallow, and the movie addresses the theme quite lightly, without the necessary tension and drama to make it credible. Still it sparks some thoughts about terrorism and is fit for larger audiences. Summarising, a relaxing movie to watch on a Friday evening, that at least provides something to think about…
“This is a story about boy meets girl, but it is not a love story”, a remark at the very beginning of this interesting movie 500 days of summer. And indeed, this quote characterises the entire movie very well, because it tells the story of a woman, Summer, who doesn’t believe true love exists and a man, Tom, who is desperately looking for “the one”. When Tom meets Summer he believes he found that one, and what follows is a description of the 500 days they spent together, seen through Tom’s eyes. A hopeless story, because Tom is desperately trying to make it work, and Summer is doubting whether she’s just looking for the causual flirt, or for something more serious. This story is portrayed especially well; as the movie randomly jumps from day to day, from start to end, to middle, and back again, Tom’s emotions seem to follow this randomness. A little bit like Goethe’s “Himmelhoch jauchzend und zum Tode betrübt”, he goes from utter joy and hope the one day, to complete sadness and despair the other, even onto a point that his job starts suffering from it. Summer, on the other hand, seems not too much affected by their relationship, is mostly lighthearted about it, but also does not seem to have a clue of what she really wants. While this sounds like a heavy theme to deal with, the movie does not overwhelm the viewer with sadness or heavy feelings, and the randomn order of events even seems to result in some distance to the topic and makes it a very interesting movie to watch. Especially, Zooey Deschanel, an actress I love to see and who mostly portrays somewhat odd characters, gives Summer the necessary substance that is needed for this movie. And while the relationship between Tom & Zooey does not work out as expected, the movie ends positively and in a happy mood. In short, if you like arthouse movies, this is certainly a movie you should not miss.
Ok, I admit that although I’m not a teenage girl, I still liked the Twilight Movie a lot. The movie already starts with a catching quote that must have been taken from the book directly, and gathers momentum as it goes. In the beginning, I was still sceptical, thinking for example that Bella’s friends were too damn shallow (they are) and that would they have come at me on my first schoolday I probably would’ve been freaked out by them. While most of the supporting characters stay shallow, the relationship between Edward (a Vampire) and Bella (Human) develops during the film and the tension between them is clearly felt throughout. Most of all, I think the movie was a good mixture of romance, tension and action and is beautifully shot; especially the American scenery is breathtaking. And hey, a movie that has Flightless Bird of Iron & Wine on its soundtrack has to do a lot to lose my favour 
. Anyway, a good way to spend a Friday evening and the film has made me curious about the books too. One thing I thought quite funny was that both this movie & the True Blood series have Vampires and mind readers in them, and both use the theme of attraction between them, wonder whether that was a coincidence.
Yesterday, the drizzly winter weather in the Netherlands lend itself for a visit to a nice warm cinema. I already decided to go and watch Avatar since I saw its movie trailers in the States, and I had been playing around with the idea of going to see it; yesterday I finally got round to see it, and I’m glad a did. The movie is just awesome! The story tells us about a paraplegic marine, Jake Sully, who is shipped to an earth-like planet to help the mining operations there. The mining company is searching for an ore ironically called “unobtanium”, but met fierce resistance of the humanoid Na’vi, the original inhabitants of the planet. Jake is hired to control an avatar, a Na’vi-like body, to win the confidence of the locals. However, in his contact with the Na’vi he starts to admire their ways and falls in love with Neytiri; one of the Na’vi women. When a confrontation between both peoples is at hand, Jake has to choose his allegiance. Thus, enough matter for an interesting movie, and although I feel the story and characters could have been worked out better, the movie is shot beautifully: you’ll find yourself emerged in it from the beginning to the end. The 3D graphics were also astounding and set a new standard for the industry. Moreover, this was my first 3D movie and I was quite impressed by the effects; my seat right at the front row probably wasn’t ideal, but it was really interesting to see parts in the movie where objects suddenly started to float towards me. All in all I would really want to advise you to go and see this one, you definitely won’t regret it.
Last Tuesday, was the one and only day a special documentary about one of the best (in my opinion) metal bands ever, Iron Maiden, was shown in our local movie theatre in Heerlen. Olivia had found out quite early that it was playing so Stephan, her, and I, all having Iron Maiden in our all-time most favourite band top five, decided to go and see this special documentary. I’m lucky we did! The documentary showed the life of the band members on the last “Somewhere back in Time” tour, that took place in 2008. Iron Maiden apparently was the first band ever to be crazy enough to tour the globe in a customised airplane: Ed Force One. Not only did they travel around 50.000 kilometres, but also the plane was most of the time flown by their lead singer Bruce Dickinson, who is a commercial airliner pilot as well. The documentary was the first in its kind because normally the band members of Iron Maiden do not like to have a camera team with them, and they tend to keep away from press. Even without actively seeking out commerce, they still manage to sell a lot of albums, and I think they must belong to the most successful metal acts around. The documentary itself gave a nice personal view of the band members, who unlike other famous bands, seem quite modest and laid back; going golfing and sight seeing whenever the opportunity arises. The thing though that surprised me most was their enormous popularity in Southern America, ok I knew metal was popular there, but I couldn’t have imagined it was so popular. Apparently, the music means a lot to the people there. Luckily, there was also a lot of Iron Maiden music in the documentary, and I can say this, after watching it, I really am looking forward to seeing them live! I hope they will have a gig somewhere near soon. But for now, I think I have to do with playing their albums over and over and the videos like the one below; Up the Irons!
I think it was almost two years ago that when visiting the namesake, we were discussing Indian movies and he told me most of the Bollywood movies he did not really like. At that time, he did show me some scenes of one of the movies he did appreciate: 1947 Earth. I remember being impressed by the beautiful scenes and music at that time and us planning to watch it together in one of the movies nights we used to plan when he was still living in NL. Unfortunately, we somehow never got around to watching it, maybe also because most of the movie was in Hindi and I needed some kind of subtitles to understand . But still I was really curious to see it one time, so a couple of weeks ago I decided to go ahead and order it from Amazon; last week it arrived.
The movie revolves around a group of friends of different religions that live in British India of 1947, just before India’s independence and breakup in what we now know as India and Pakistan. More specifically, it tells the story of Leny baby, a Parsi girl, and her nanny Shanta, who is a Hindu. Shanta falls in love with the muslim masseur Hassan, which arouses the jealousy of Dil Navaz, also muslim, who is better know as the Ice Candy wallah and is also madly in love with Shanta. During the violence that occured at the breakup of India and Pakistan, also the group of friends starts falling apart, and the classical love triangle between Shanta, Hassan, and Dil Navaz leads to growing tensions between the former friends with in the end devastating results…
Indeed the namesake was right, it was a beautiful, yet more specifically a really impressive movie. As I said, the scenes were brilliantly filmed and are supported by beautiful music, which in the good old Bollywood tradition also plays an important role in this film. More importantly, the movie gives a personal view, that of the little girl Lenny, on the atrocities that happened between different religions at the time of breakup of British India, and illustrates the madness of good friends becoming enemies solely because they don’t share the same religion. And although, I think the characters were not fully deepened out, 1947 Earth illustrates one thing very well, it starts out as a joyful movie but grows dimmer and dimmer as it goes on. It’s a movie that incites one to contemplate and think about the results that difference in religion, opinion, or just a normal chain of results can ultimately have in extraordinary circumstances. Moreover, it illustrates how an ordinary life can turn into complete madness… Thus, if you can get your hands on it, it’s a movie I would certainly recommend you to watch! Hint: you might find more where this came from (see below).
Last Night, I watched a new film version of the old English myth Beowulf. This cartoon-style movie really surprised me, as I did not expect too much from it. However, the characters, based on famous actors like for example Antony Hopkins, John Malcovich, and Angelina Jolie, are beautifully animated and the film is definitely entertaining. Not sure if the story was adapted though, because an earlier movie I saw about the same myth, was telling a somewhat different story. In short, the legend tells the story of Beowulf, a legendary hero that sails out to Danish shores to help King Hrothgar defeat the evil giant Grendel. Grendel attacked the mead hall Heorot and killed a lot of King Hrothgar’s subjects. It’s an old epic poem in a Viking tradition, and for those who like old mythology with monsters, dragons, and mighty heroes or enjoyed the 13th Warrior, this is definitely worth the while. Go and check it out on imdb, then I will try and find a version of the poem.
|
