TinkerBell

This is definitely an unusual choice – not because it is unusual for me to enjoy things made for children – but because it is very very unusual for me to enjoy anything made by Disney (apart from Fantasia and some of the early cartoons, of course.). I have always viewed the Disney brand name as a kind of Hand-of-Death whose touch would whither sensitivity and good taste and induce intolerable levels of slap-stick cheesiness and saccharin sentimentality. There is a certain kind of heavily over-done voice-acting which seems to ooze out of the depths of adult patronisation of children.... and badly drawn animals that just always have to have exaggeratedly American accents – and "larger-than-life" personalities.
So I was very pleasantly surprised when only two of the voice actors in this film made me squirm and wince. They are the proverbial dumb-ass fall-guys of all the really bad jokes about the overweight and those with glasses. In spite of this I really loved watching this and re-watched bits of it for the sheer pleasure of seeing the meticulous detail with which every object and surface and texture had been rendered. Admittedly some of the yellows were just a bit too, well … yellow and there were some horridly lurid skies, but most of it was very sensitive and truly magical. I think the greatest thing about it was that there were no talking animals. The creatures in the film were not it's strong point and I think this comes from a long tradition of hack-handed animation artists trying to do “Walt Disney”. If they would only spend some time looking at nature and less time watching tv! I think the problem, is that there is no such thing as a talking animal in nature, so they fall back on hackneyed clichés about cutesy-piedness and guffawing hilarity. Having human models to draw on, and everyday familiarity with human faces, means that the creators and animators of the fairies in TinkerBell were able to give great detail and subtle realism to every nuance of facial expression. This means that you really believe in them as the characters they are meant to represent. And the rest of the voice actors are really good ones and include some well known voice, film and TV actors such as Lucy Liu. The story is only very loosely based on J.M. Barrie's Neverland, it is about TnkerBell's pre-Peter Pan epoch and is about the role of fairies in nature and the changing of the seasons. It is definitely a very girly film and a feel-good bit of escapism. It is a joy to look at (most of the time) and certainly very enjoyable to watch (most of the time) if you happen to like flowers and fairies and that sort of thing. It is a straight-to-DVD film and it's a pity such good art-work and animation are somewhat spoiled by their association with the whole cheesy theme-park ride that is the Disney franchise.

Amazon With Bruce Parry

While this is clearly not a film, (the tv-sized-episodic nature being a bit of a give-away,) I still feel it's worth writing about, and indeed, viewing. This is not because of my usual - ooh-ah, the visuals are sooooo amazing. Visually it is not a work of art, although there are incredibly stunning images of the native Amazonians. It was filmed in a practicality-driven and energetic manner with the action of the moment dictating the shots. Some of it is frankly quite gross – I refer here to the extended vomiting sequence and some of the more revolting ways of acquiring and making use of alligator corpses. But it is a documentary of immense worth in terms of what it reveals about the realities of life in the Amazon basin. Starting at the very source of the river-giant, high up in the Peruvian Andes, Bruce Parry explores the lives of native people through the very intimate and charming means of living with them in their homes. He works hard, both physically and socially to earn his place amongst a disparate range of people. Rather than making a lot of intellectual statements about environmental and social problems, he lets the human realities emerge and speak for themselves. It is quite a privilege to be allowed so close to people who are still living in a primeval harmony with nature. They are extraordinarily generous and mostly very hospitable, it has to be said that a great deal depends on Bruce Parry's giftedness with people and his phenomenal eagerness to please. He spends time working in “the enemy camp” too, amongst loggers, cattle ranchers and illegal gold-miners. What emerges from this experience is that only a handful of very wealthy people and multi-nationals are benefiting from the exploitation of the resources of the Amazon. Those who are employed to do the actual damage are desperately trying to support themselves and their families. What is most touching of all is the eloquent plea made by the native Indian tribes for their lands and way of life to be preserved. The website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/amazon/ is well worth a visit and includes the blogs of Bruce Parry and the production crew written during the making of the documentary in 2008. It's a very heartwarming and instructive bit of viewing and something I would highly recommend to anyone who didn't get to see it when it was aired by the BBC.

The Duchess

I didn't not like this film. Which surprised me. I've never failed to fail to not not like a film that had Keira Knightley in it before. Is that because she is like a living essay on the relationship between insecurity and that most Hollywoodesque of atributes – vanity? Is it because she simply never stops being Keira Knightley.... never becomes the character she is meant to portray with any degree of convincingness? Is it because I just find it so goddam annoying the way she keeps arching her neck, baring her teeth, pouting her lips and giving that “gentlemen prepare to board ship” look - that she completely fails to comprehend that it is not meant to be about what she looks like – a true actress forgets about what she looks like and just becomes the role. Anyway... having said all that …. the fact that KK was playing someone who was essentially an expensive clothes-horse and whose stiff artificiality of manner was in keeping with the times for once allowed the fact that she is clearly chosen for her roles on the basis of her visible charms and not on her ability to act - to go unnoticed to a great extent. And she certainly did do a lovely job of showing off the gorgeous Oscar winning costumes she was bedecked in – I enjoyed all that – the gorgeous wigs and elaborate frills – worth watching for that alone. And then there's the fact that it's based on a true story which reveals just how powerless and down-trodden women were in those days – yeetch – that was scary – and it made me want to truly thank the Miscellaneous Feminine Deity for those suffragette sisters of old who emancipated us from domestic slavery and a legal position little better than slaves. Still, I don't think the feministas should allow that to get them all into a man-hating froth about it all – after all men had it pretty hard in those days too being generally used as canon-fodder and dying in their droves in the horrible freezing mud and all that - of course it is good and necessary to have freed ourselves from an authoritarian and male orientated society – one that repressed the “feminine” world of feeling and imposed an intellectual-rational world-order and a system of imperialism and capitalist oppression. What has changed? Significantly, the fact that it is women now, rather than men, who are automatically given custodial rights over children. How this is frequently abused by denying visitation rights, and the fact that men go through just as much pain when they are separated from their kids as women do, is something which is perhaps swept under the carpet these days. Anyway, in those days it was the other way around – only there were no visitation rights – and a women frequently had to just do what she was told or face having her children taken from her and never seeing them again. Perhaps this film could have been better cast – with a real actress in the lead role – and perhaps someone less visibly sensitive than Ralph Fiennes as the authoritarian-male-ogre, but it's got a lot to recommend itself by even if it doesn't quite make excellent status.

Rachel Getting Married

Anne Hathaway should have had the oscar for best actress..... in my 'umble opinion..... every dark, heart-wrenching moment of this rehab-ridden worse-guilt-than-guilt-ridden character's life. The juxtaposition with the multi-cultural gaiety of her sister's wedding I found disturbing – and noisy, but you have to love that wedding cake – in a sculptural-aesthetic, rather than drooling sense -this was a stomachless experience of pure visual bliss and aaaaargh-nooooo when they cut it up. My screen-shots can be viewed via the whatsamagiggy on the left-hand-side of this here screen-gadget should you wish to prevail, pertain or perhaps avail and obtain. This is it – no more long drawling litanies – I-simply-do-not-have-time.

Dogville

Last night I watched a film called Dogville. Well – to tell the truth – I didn't exactly watch all of it. I did try, I really did, but by the time Nicole Kidman had made her slender and waifly way onto the set I had grown thoroughly bored with the interminable set and was forced to can the thing. I probably wouldn't mind watching a film set on a small stark stage with lines painted on the ground to represent the outlines of houses if it didn't look so groaningly dismally dull. The whole reason I like watching films is because I like looking at stuff – and if I'm going to look at stuff, I want it to be worth looking at somehow. It wasn't the sameness of it so much as the hideously bad lighting – seriously it was like a car-park at night lit by security lighting. Anyway that's just one of my little foibles – the visual thing being most important and all that. Apparently Kidman gave a very good performance, I just couldn't bear to watch her do it against such a grey, grey grim background. I skipped through the film and it basically involves her being stitched up by this rather horrid little community she takes refuge in. None too nice I daresay. But I am in no position to say anything to discourage others from watching it. Since I didn't do so myself. Oh dear, this is not the worlds most scintillating review is it???? I think I will just go off and play my Glockenspiel... or possibly plant tulips in my hair, it's the new look so I hear. Not that I am interested in fasion ahem ahem. She is so wondourously spindlish and tall, though isn't she – Nicole Kidman I mean...... and she can act!..... I think that it could be a film worth watching for those less visually sensitised than myself (and perhaps less tired than I was last night.) Who knows???????????????????????????????????

Before Sunset

Part of the way into this film I became somewhat restless and asked in my rather childish and peevish I'm-going-to-throw-a-tantrum-if-I-am-going-to-get-bored voice “Is this whole film really going to be about these two people having a conversation?”
Well actually it was. But surprisingly it turned out to be really enjoyable. Not only that, but it was acted out in real-time – a chance meeting in the stolen moments before a flight must be caught, a journey through Paris and a conversation that touches on the fundamental issues of two people's lives, two people who had met years before and fallen in love – who had remained haunted by one another and had been prevented from seeing one another again by fate and the failure to exchange phone no.'s. Their conversation is quite light hearted, witty and entertaining.
I'm tragically ill-informed for a so-called “movie-critic” I'm afraid to say, as well as having the memory-capacity of a small mule - I just found out, when I went on Wikipedia to find out Julie Delpy's name, that Before Sunset is actually the sequel to Before Sunrise which was made in 1995... the real time thing is taken to another level here because the first film was made nine years before and portrays the events that happened nine years before what happens in the second film which was made in 2004 …. if that makes any sense. Well, you certainly don't need to have seen the first film to enjoy Before Sunset and Julie D. sings very beautifully.... plus it has a happy ending.... what more could you want????

The Changeling

In spite of the fact that The Changeling deals with a most heart-wrenching and harrowing true story …..as well as a very scary and sick real-life serial killer..... I really loved it. It is partly the compelling ring of truth that real-life stories always have, and partly the excellent use of shadow and light in the filming – as well as the truth of emotion that Anglina Jolie brought to the role of the mother desperately trying to find her missing child. In the beginning, when things were pretty normal, I actually found her very hard to believe in the role. I don't know if it was just my scattered preconceptions, but it really felt like her limbs were way, way too long to fit into the room when she was trying to adjust her action-hero stride to the demure movements of a middle-class working mum. As soon as the trauma and grief set in though, I believed her – totally – I think she must be a genuinely very maternal and emotional person, because this came out of her so very naturally and with both gentleness and force. I think Uncle Clink (Eastwood) must be quite a good director – I like the way the whole thing was put together – and the way it exposed the heinous corruption in the Los Angeles police-force at the time..... they actually incarcerated the mother and had her certified as insane because she insisted the child returned to her was not really her son.... in the end justice does prevail to some extent, which is good to see. It's gripping, harrowing, great – and not for the faint hearted.... that's for sure.