Thousandapologies

“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.

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Is it finally there?

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!

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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).

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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.

I did have the House of the Flying Daggers in my posession already for quite some time; after watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which I liked too, I decided I should watch more of these Chinese martial art movies, and so, Yesterday I finally watched another one. Beautiful movie, I really would like to recommend you to watch. These Chinese films have a different atmosphere than the Western movies we’re used to watch, but not so different that it’s not possible to understand them (like for example Japanese Manga is making entirely no sense to me). House of the Flying Daggers again stars the lovely Ziyi Zhang, is quite entertaining and at the same time beautifully filmed; ballet-like fighting scenes that near the artistic, beautiful nature and music that really empowers the atmosphere of the film. Add to that an unexpected (read not Hollywood-like) ending, and you have the recipes for an awesome film. I’m certainly going to check out more of these movies, like, for example, Hero, which I also still long to see!

One of the best songs by the Beatles I think, but now also a movie with only Beatle-songs in it, it turns out. Last week, I watched this film and still I am not too sure what I need to think of it. The film portrays the story of a young fellow Jude moving from Liverpool to New York in the late 60s, getting involved in the hippy community, student protests against the Vietnam War and finally, how could it be different in the ‘All you need is love’ spirit of the Beatles, falling in love with one of the hippie women, Lucie.

First, I thought the film just used Beatle-songs performed by John, Paul, George and Ringo themselves as background music, but it turned out to be a musical-like flick with the actors singing the songs, backed up by new compositions of the music. In my opinion, trying to portray the songs in a similar or better way than the Beatles, is one of the most difficult things one can do in music. The vocal lines and the music itself, especially in their later period, is just of a genious quality. Additionally, Beatles songs are still played every day, and thus very much established, therefore changing them too much might lead to critiques easily.

So when I found out the actors where singing themselves, my feelings about it were immediately mixed, although I must say the creators of the film (and the new compositions) did quite a good job with a lot of songs; trying to modernise the music a bit, but still adhere somewhat to the original atmosphere or style of the song. Conversely, some of the songs were a complete disaster. Really, one thing that I realised after viewing this film is that they should forbid Bono to sing Beatle songs, if not forbid him to sing altogether…arggg I was just outraged by his feeble voice trying to sing one of the lyrics; he provided the perfect example of the fear I wrote about above. Another thing I wasn’t to sure about was the musical-like quality of the film, song after song followed and this might have been a little less dense, some more normal conversations, a bit more attention to the story, and a lot less cheesy musical dancing choreography. However, I would still advise you to go and see this movie, just because the Beatles and their songs, in what form their songs are put, are just awesome. Oh and one last thing…all characters in the film are giving names from beatles songs, quite nice

If you haven’t got the film or the book yet, I really advise you to go out now and go get either of them, preferably both though. I first saw the film quite a while ago, in University to be precise. The film started with a turning record on a turntable and a piece of vinyl is always a way to attract my attention. When seeing the film the first time, I got hooked on it: the countless awesome quotes it had, the continuous enumerating of such-and-so top five lists and one of my favourite actors, John Cusack, in the leading role. This month I decided to buy the book and after finishing it, I can say two things: a) the book is brilliant b) the movie becomes even more brilliant after reading the book; the cast in the film is just awesome, John Cusack as Rob Fleming, playing the way too much rationale guy that’s doubting about everything, Jack Black is the raving lunatic Barry, and even Dick and Laura are perfectly chosen. Somehow they also managed to put almost an entire book into the movie, only ommitting some of the less important stuff. The movie also has some cool additions that would immediately fit in the book, would Nick Hornby decide to rewrite it (for those who have seen the movie the “Ray enters the shop” part). Well, I can say up till now, I think I did only like one book-movie combination so much, and this book has really left me wanting to explore more of English literature. Even more so after the big disappointment that’s called Dutch “literature”, of which only authors that are either sexually frustrated, plain crazy or major attention whores (in both the male and female meaning) seem to reach the wide public. Anyway let’s not get me started on that; what are you still waiting for, go out and buy High Fidelity immediately!