I was hugely looking forward to Serenity, and this probably resulted in my mild disappointment in the film. I guess I really should have watched Firefly first to clue me in, but I didn’t so there we go.
There was nothing really wrong with it – in fact there was an awful lot right with it, and I have to say I was hooked the whole way through (and ended up watching the end half of an episode I came across on Sky One). In general I liked the characters, and the plot was fine – in fact it had me guessing once or twice. I liked the ‘bad guys’ aspect of the protagonists, and the special effects were unoticeable, which is my definition of a good special effect. There was some fantastic moments (the bit with the Reaver fleet is awesome), and I guess the impact of the River/Simon back-story and her .. erm.. prowess would have been greatly enhanced by having seen the TV episodes first. In fact I think the film would have seemed quite different if I’d have seen the TV episodes – I only just found out that the film is set after the last of the TV episodes! Coming at both cold, the film reads very much like an introduction to the Firefly world, and not its epilogue.
In fact, even I was write this, almost all of my objections to the film fall away, given that it was made on the back of a TV series, and not a stand-alone film in it’s own right. Things that seem disjointed or poorly explored has presumably already been introduced on the TV? So I would definitely say that you need to watch a TV episode before plumping for the film.
What was good? Well, the acting, special effects, story.. it doesn’t shy away from the realities of war. I loved Chiwetel Ejiofor as The Operative (awesome character and acting), and when River’s “Big Moment” finally came it was carried out to perfection.
You knew it was coming the whole way through the film, and in anything it was left too late, but that’s just opinion.
What was bad? Well, the “Big Shocks” were mainly duds if you weren’t already familar with the characters from the TV, the thing became just a bit too much the “lovechild-of-Friends-and-Buffy-set-in-space” at times (for instance, Mal (angry, but comic angry) “Do you want take command?” Jayne: “Yes.” Mal: “Well…. (looks around desperately) you can’t!”.. but then a bit later Mal threatens – seriously – to shoot any his crew who get in the way of the mission). At times it was a bit confused too, I felt.
So it was very Joss Whedon (and I say that as a Buffy fan, at least the earlier series), an entertaining enough way to spend a couple of hours – no, better than that suggests. One to watch, but try to catch an episode of the TV first!
This is another of these trendy films in the vein of Lost in Translation, where not very much happens, no real reason is given for the whole film, and nothing is resolved at the end. It’s not a style of film-making I’m particularly fond of, although I did quite enjoy both Lost and this one. I think the closest film to this genre that manages to pull it off (outside French cinema) is Sideways.
Anyway, the film is about Bill Murray as Don, a retired, wealthy bachelor who is semi-dumped by his girlfriend as the film opens. As she leaves, there’s an anonymous pink letter in the post informing Don that an ex-girlfriend from 20 years ago actually became pregnant but only found out after they’d split up. She went on to have a boy, who’s now 19, and the letter went on to vaugly threaten that he might turn up at any minute as he’d left on a road-trip to find out about his father.
So Don is persuaded by his neighbour, Winston, to make a list of all the women it could have been, and to go and visit them to find out which one it was. This takes up the first 20 to 25 minutes of the film, and after this the film really picks up. Don ends up on the plane to the first of his 4 or 5 visits to old flames – which form the bulk of the film. This is actually superb, very funny and engaging, and caused endless speculation in our house about “is she the one?”. The common theme was pink – the original letter being pink – and everywhere he went he spotted items of pinkness and wondered “does this mean…?”
The cast were fab, and fairly hot – Bill Murray, Sharon Stone, Tilda Swinton, Jessica Lange – not to mention the gorgeous Alexis Dziena, who is definitely and up and coming star. Actually Alexis is worth a bit more of a mention as Lolita, the very appropriately named daughter of Laura (Sharon Stone). Let’s say the first time Don sees her, her attire and behaviour is surprising (a 16 maybe 17 years old girl answers the door wearing only a very short dressing gown, invites in a totally strange man by taking his hand and pulling him in) – the second time is jaw dropping, but hilarious!
The meeting of each ex-partner is different, and all their life circumstances are different. It’s very nicely played out, and certainly had us guessing the whole way through.
The big problem with this film is the ending. The last five or ten minutes are simply pants. It almost feels like they ran out of money and/or ideas so just wrapped it up there and then. Not that anything was wrapped up mind. It’s a shame because it’s a really lovely concept, and the bulk of the film was played out really nicely.
Can I recommend it? Not really. Definitely worth the effort of tuning in on terrestial, but probably not worth renting the DVD. Unless you fancy Alexis Dziena, I suppose!
Comme Une Image (altogether unsatisfactorily ‘translated’ to Look at me) follows the life and times of Lolita, her family, and random other people along the way. It’s a study of hero-worship really, and how people’s attitudes and attention vary enormously based on whether or not they are considering their hero.
Young Lolita lives under her father’s shadow – is absolutely convinced she’s overweight and ugly, and further convinced that people are only interested in her in order to get to her father (who’s a very famous – and rich – author and publisher). The film follows various people as their lives mingle with her and her father, and asks all sorts of questions about motives. Everyone, as far as I could tell, had someone they worshipped (whether overtly or not), and in several cases they were faced with the flaws in their hero, and had to decide whether to overlook them or not.
I didn’t really engage with Marilou Berry’s Lolita – although her father is wonderfully played by Jean-Pierre Bacri. He ends up being a thoroughly unlikeable and unsympathetic character who never truly redeems himself. In fact the hero of the film has to be Agnes Jaoui’s music teacher character.
As always it’s all brilliantly understated, with very underplayed irony – while not a classic comedy, I did laugh out loud – well, snorted anyway – on two occasions when the sheer ridiculous of all it got to me.
The other star of the film is Virginie Desarnauts, who has a background character in many ways (as Karine, Lolita’s step-mother and long-suffering wife to her Father) – but she is so beautiful she just captures the entire scene whenever she’s on camera. I’ve not seen her in anything else, so can’t comment on the quality of her acting, but it was either nearly flawless or she wasn’t acting at all and just being herself. She also plays an enormously sympathetic character – I almost lean towards thinking she’s to nice for the role of Karine, but maybe not.
But overall a very solid cast. Very understated comedy, and that classic French film “je ne sais quoi” that almost always hits the spot for me. By no means a classic, but entertaining none-the-less.
Listening to Paradise City has got me thinking about intros to songs. I would probably back off a bit from saying Paradise City is one of favourite song intros, as there’s so many good song intros – but it’s definitely an intro I really like to a song I don’t particularly like.
It seems to me that it’s actually very easy to make a good intro – most songs seem to manage it. Whether it’s a long building up/layering approach, which quite a lot of songs do (Layla, Justified and Ancient, Nirvana of course do it) a jump straight in with the words or only a short instrumental that nevertheless represents the instrumentation of the whole song (Beautiful South tend to do this, as does Centrefold), or the plain odd or shock starter (e.g. Batdance by Prince, even Hey Mickey. Possibly even the Shoop shoop song, although this might be a jump straight in). I suppose you could add a fade in too (More than a feeling, by Boston).
Finishing a song seems a lot harder – repeat and fade seems very popular, and the other main one is probably back right off for the last time, quite possibly with a slow down (KT Tunstell, please step forward). A guess the rock ending is to sustain a power chord for a few bars and finish with a big BAM. Occasionally you get endings just to keep DJs on their toes, although I can’t think of an example right now. I guess Batdance is a bit like this. Do you get de-layered endings, where the instruments disappear one by one. In fact there’s a song tickling the back of my mind that does this, but can’t quite remember it.
My conclusion is that, in the main, endings are pretty boring. Intros are many and varied, after all you can choose which instruments to start with when – start with acoustic guitar (Pinball Wizard), leccy guitar (Sweet Child of Mine, Layla, …), drums or other percussion(Obvious Child, Walk like an Egyptian), bass (lovely day), piano (I can see clearly now). Then choose which are next, and so on.
All this pondering led to me to think about the fact that “spot the track” games are almost always based on Introduction. I guess “Bits and Pieces” on Radio 1 (do they still do it?) is a notable exception, but whenever I’ve been to a party that’s had a music game, it’s been based on the intro. The obvious reasons are
It’s a lot easier to grab the first 5 seconds of a track, then it is to have to listen to the whole track and choose a section.
Intros don’t usually have words, which makes it harder to identify the artist and title.
Intros don’t always have an obvious connection to the main body of the song.
These are all good reasons, but I was thinking that if I ever hold a music quiz at a party I’ll do it on either the ending or on an instrumental bridge. It would make a change, if nothing else!
Spooky thing – Guns’n’Roses’s Paradise City is quite possibly one of my favourite introductions of all times. I’m not actually wild about the song as a whole, but the first 80 seconds, until the thrashy overdriven bit starts, just hit the spot everytime. Ok, I’m a huge fan of “layering” in almost any song – by which I mean building up layers of music/instrumentation/harmony a bar or stanza at a time. (I guess Kirsty McColl’s Days struck me the other day as the example par excellence of layering up an entire song). Still, I love the the sort of clean guitar and high-hat, then on to heavy kick and snare, then vocals, bring in some bass and distort guitar, sounds like some pads going on too. The comes the policeman’s whistle, and the song goes downhill for me.
Ok, so nothing too spooky so far (except for the fact that G’n’R are interspersed with The Monkees on my MP3, which is plain odd) – and indeed had it not been for my headphones Paradise City might have passed unnoticed. These are the headphones I bought last year (Shure e2c’s, I think) when was putting together an in-ear foldback system, and decided to actually spend more than 5.99 on a pair of naff bud earphones thingy which are tinny and last about 2 days. Anyway it’s a world apart – fantastic reproduction, full frequency range. All of which meant I heard something on the intro to Paradise City that I’ve never heard before.
What is it? Well there’s a fourth part singing “Take me down to the paradise city…” in the intro. Right down the bass end, almost below hearing – although he’s plain enough when they get to “oh won’t you please take me home.” Actually I can’t decide how many parts there are – might only be three. They’re messing around with reverb and panning, and I’ve never been very good at pulling out parts. Still, his voice is so low it’s almost like the bass strumming a single note in time, and I have never noticed it before!!
Now if we’re talking Guns and Roses, of course Sweet Child ‘o Mine doesn’t have any of Paradise’s flaws, except for when they cut out the riff between the verses in the single release. I challenge anyone not to succumb to air guitar for Sweet Child. Quite possible air drums and air bass too. It’s got everything – instantly recognisable riff, great tune, lyrics, and it just rocks. And it’s got surprise too; just as you think you know what the song’s doing, along comes a bridge and some thrashy overdrive, and the whole “where do we go” back-off, which isn’t really a back off.
Strangely, I hate pretty much every other G’n’R track I’ve heard. 🙂
What an unexpected delight. Failing to read the cover properly, and assuming that because it had Nicole Kidman in it was going to be another Holywood number (itself a strange assumption given the awesome Dogville), I was amazed when it opened with John (Ben Chaplin) recording his pitch for a Russian bride in St Albans on his webcam – in a clearly low budget exercise.
I supposed the involvement of FilmFour should have given this away, but the real surprise was that it was hilarious, low budget, but also very gripping. There wasn’t any doubt from the start that this was going to be a very funny film, although very much black comedy rather than sit-com.
The basic premise is that Nadia (our Nicole) is the bride John has ordered, and after his initial shock at her not speaking English, starts falling for her. Then it’s her birthday, and two Russian friends from her past – Alexi and Yuri – turn up for the party (actually only one of them is her friend, the other is in a band with her friend). Party is probably an overstatement too.
It soon transpires that the Russian guests aren’t quite as nice as Nadia seems to think…
To say anymore would spoil it, but it was only shortly after this point that John seemed to snap and become a much more interesting character – as indeed did Nadia.
A really well executed film – full of ambiguity about who people really are, and what they feel for each other. And the ending was fantastic – very much in the Tarintino vein of not really resolving anything (e.g. Reservoir Dogs, and more modern films like Memento, Sideways, …), which I kind of like. It was a nice length too – very punchy!
I went to an Ebor lecture last week, at York Minster, by the Archbishop of York – John Sentamu. The title was Uncovering the Purposes of God, and he was really talking about the purposes of God through
trust and worship of a loving God
love for your neighbour
care for creation
There were two quotes in particular that stood out to me
Faith is not a crutch to lean on, but the act of leaning, and
Reason and human worth are core to our Christian culture in the UK
The second one was particularly in the context of wanting to rename Christmas Winterval – he said that it wasn’t having a Christian culture that offended, but the cynicism of politically correct people trying to deny it.
The other really good bit was the Chocolate Trinity – Cadbury, Rowntree, and Fry – three Quakers who essentially were the UK Chocolate industry in the 18th,19th, and start of the 20th centuries. A quick Google gives me Quaker food. I’m a died in the wool protestant, and so disagree with some of the principles and beliefs of the Friends Movement, but clearly the principles and ethics are basically Christian.
Well, survived my first day in my new job. It’s always an interesting experience starting a new job – new people to meet, new systems and software to learn. I’m very much a pioneer in my outlook, and am happiest when forging ahead with new things, so in many ways the first few months in a new job are my favourite. The real satisfaction comes from completing projects, of course, but I just love learning new things and starting new ventures.
The applications are really interesting too – it’s a GIS company, so there’s lots of mapping and route finding code which I’m getting to grips with. Takes me back to my undergraduate days at Imperial, when I wrote a GIS tool called GERMS (Generic Environment for Reviewing Municipal Statistics) for my friend Phil. Actually the really interesting about that project was the data structure I used, rather than the graphics bit – but then again the really clever thing about the “RouteFinda” software is the memory management (anyone can find the shortest route through a graph and draw a picture of it – doing it quickly with a small memory footprint is the real challenge). It is weird how you can not understand something, but know that you will understand it after having put in the hours thinking about it. It almost begs the question why we can’t just instantly understand things. I guess it’s the brain making new connections between the neurons and what-not.
Anyway the other people in the office are all very nice, and there’s a really good work atmosphere. I think I’m going to enjoy it. A lot! 🙂
