My Movie Journal

Just saw Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Everyone Id talked to had said it was either really bad or so-so, but I loved the books so I had to try it.

I thought it was pretty funny. Nothing as funny as the books of course, but it had enough of its moments and lines.

Course, most of the funny lines were verbatim from the book. And perhaps its sort of a tribute to the books that too much of the movie was basically stuff from the book, read aloud in the form of graphically illustrated quotes from the Hitchhikers Guide.

But still, cant beat those quotes.

Funniest moment I thought was when this crab-like creature on a planet they landed on went ajumping and ajollying to their ship when it saw it coming in, wheehee! yaaay! wheeeeheehee!, only to be crushed under the gangway automatically flipping out. Very Monty Python, that.

Anybody stopped to think, btw, that the Hitchhikers Guide, the way its first described in the book (how it works, what its got) is pretty much exactly, well, the Internet? Pretty neat that, for a book written in the late 70s.

Now I'm gonna go find out in which other film I recently saw this Slartibartfast guy.

Love, Actually.

Reminds me, the happy love story of Arthur & Trillian didnt happen in the book, right? Worked pretty well tho.

I just "watched" (had it on in the living room while I worked in my room) it this weekend.

Didn't catch my attention but I didn't really give it much of a chance for that either.

Oh, I have been wondering whether to try that film (LOVED the books/radio/TV series, so I have been reluctant). Sounds nice and escapist....

I wasn't convinced to take a trip to the multiplex and I like the BBC series but nimh has prompted me to look for "Hitchhicker" as a rental or on a movie channel in the future.

Actually, I did like "Love, Actually" as a credible romantic movie, one some guys might enjoy as well as the gals.

Everybody's saying that "Good Night and Good Luck" is amazing. Anyone here seen it?

Of course, come to think of it, that was also one of the few things thats not literally/directly from the book (that I remember). Well, that and the fishing Vogons. (Which makes you wonder what's the director's thing about shellfish... )

Last night I went to see Eros with Susannah. Film in three parts, by three different directors, all big names (Antonioni, Soderbergh, Kar Wai). Each about - well, the appearance of eros in life. Very different three parts, abrupt breaks. Very variable.

The movie starts with Antonioni's part, which is (mercifully) rather short. Pphhhrrrtt.

Antonioni is one of the Great Directors, inn'e? In that case I've been terribly unlucky. Some years ago I saw his Par-delà les nuages, which - I think I described it here recently - left me feeling that the man behind the camera must have been a spoiled older director gone lazy by too much praise, and deteriorated into projecting dirty-old-man phantasies on cliche shots, cloaked up in much vacuous pseudo-intellectual dialogue.

This was the same, kinda, but worse. Basically a really bad, cheesy little porn film thing. Even the music was fully-fledged seventies cheesy porn, which happens to be very hip right now (Vampyros Lesbos and all that), but then in an ironic way. I thought for a while this must have been ironic too, but I dont think it was. Kinda sad when the best a (once?)-talented man can come up with, when given a totally free hand (erm) to visualise eros, are cheesy porn cliches. Naked chicks = eros, something like that. Not that I have anything against naked chicks, and one of these was perfect fersure, but geez.

The second part is the Soderbergh part, and brings a drastic change in pace and style. In an immaculately designed throwback to film-noir set, a neurotic, blustering but not-quite-so hard-nosed advertising exec, in a distracted shrink's office, 1950s. Cant explain what happens, cause it would ruin the fun. But in mostly black and white, the whole finger-exercise in film art that this is has every detail just right - and it's very funny.

A finger-exercise it is, mind ya - he took the freedom to direct an intermezzo and ran with it. But the eros is in there still too, on the margin, in the dreamy and grotesque (with a hint of frustration in sharp dialogue: "my wife? She's like the nurse on the night when I had my tonsils out. Civil and unavailable").

The last, long part is Wong Kar Wai's. OK, so Kar Wai (or is it just Wai?) is my favourite director, or one of my most favourite, anyway, so cant go wrong there. Again drastically different setting, pace and mood. Hong Kong or the like, some time in the past I assume. Old China. Colours are dimmed as if filtered through fog, and yet everything feels sumptuous, or thick with mood anyway.

An elegant and, err, cocksure prostitute holds court, has wealths of ordered dresses delivered to house. By a young, dutiful and somewhat shy guy, our guy in the movie. Their first sexual encounter is hilarious, kinda - well, but endearing even as you're giggling at him (Susannah giggled too).

But then he falls in love - and she just falls. Forced by reality (there, then) to stand by, literally, without being able to be aside the woman he loves, even as she rapidly deteriorates (sad fate of an Old China prostitute), he slowly tilts the movie into a classic, quiet drama, a sad love story.

The crowded tailors' atelier under yellowish bare light bulbs, the many doors of a cheap hotel, all the imaging is moodily beautiful. The story's a lot more easy to follow than his 2046, tho basically a simplified version along the same lines. All a far cry from the exhilerating cool of Fallen Angels, or the skipping gainess of even Chungking Express's sad moments. He has gotten a bit heavy on the hand, as we say, with little light or air left in it (in 2046 neither, despite all the amazingly beautiful smoking). But for what's still a brief intermezzo film, just one part in a three-part thing, it's classic and sad and beautiful enough.

What a weird combination tho, these three things in sequence. Totally erratic. But two out of three aint bad I guess.

OK, looked it up. Antonioni by now is a staggering 93. That explains a lot, I suppose. But can't someone tell him that it's OK, now? Or at least stop his films from being disseminated to screens around the world, even less squeezed in alongside two perfectly proper pieces of work?

Here's the IMDB page for the movie. The featured review is funny (he liked the Soderbergh one best, thought the Kar Wai bit was middling). On Antonioni's bit:



Meanwhile, for the real buffs, I found the full transcript of the films online here on script-o-rama.com.

<browsing thru the other IMDB reviews>

Hehheh:



It was a cool car, if a bit show-offy...

Why is it that negative reviews are always more fun to read/quote than positive ones?

Odd and perhaps significant?

Here in Budapest, The Corporation is playing. Havent seen it, but the poster prominently bills Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky.

Its playing in five theatres in this city of 2 million, and only two of those are art houses, the others are commercial, even multiplexes.

Thats a lot.

"The Corporation" is a great documentary -- it relentlessly tears apart the facade of America's corporate entities and explains how the ordinary American has little defense against these behemoths.

Saw the Brothers Grimm tonight, the Gilliam movie.

- Lesson one: Never follow a flying cloth
- Lesson two: Never believe a talking horse
- Lesson three: If a bird drops down a well .. ok, you get the idea.

Movie was Cs' choice, played in a beeautiful cinema, the Urania. Thought it was a good choice actually, very vivid movie, very funny, lots of small clever cutages. Great entertainment.

Dont take children to see it, tho..

There's this mini-festival of young European directors in Muvesz: all films in original language with English subtitles, hoorah! So I finally can see something else but English- or German-language films.

Last night was the lucky break: they played the last movie of Petr Zelenka and friends (yes, thats how the director slot is billed). They did Knoflíkári a few years ago (IMDB check: English title was The Button-Pinchers), which was very weird, very funny and very cute. It was a hit at the film festival but never reached circulation I dont think, and I hadnt heard of him since.

So now they screened the movie he did this year, Príbehy obycejného sílenství (no English title given in IMDB; the Hungarian title wasnt any easier: Hétköznapi őrületek). It was as brilliant and as weird as Knoflíkári. He really knows how to come out of leftfield with plot developments, and the overwhelming quirkiness is enchanting. Lots of Amelie-type moments again.

But something has changed, too. This movie has an underswell that's a lot darker, with the plot even taking a downright biting turn that leaves you kind of aghast.

It reminded me of the Slovak 1969 film Birds, Orphans and Fools that way, which, in a metaphor of the fate that befell the Prague Spring I suppose, inserted sudden shock into an idyllic, peace and love story - tho nothing in this film is quite as drastic, to be sure. And vice versa, in this film the strand is there all along, kinda - underneath the endearment and surreal jokes, the looming madness and loneliness is there from the start.

With a cast of people who each in their own way are quite crazy and lonely, but seem funny in the way they express it in weird sexual quirks, there's also a hint of Todd Solondz (Happiness). But while Solondz is very heavy-handed, his Happiness funny mostly because it presented bizarrely behaving people in such earnest seriousness, this is much more Czech: light-hearted, gentle, ironic.

The latent bitterness is more kind of encrypted: for example, when the old man tells his wife he loves her (which makes you go, awww), but then follows up with the same hackneyed phrase he used earlier to his son, which she doesnt know, but makes him look, and us frown. Everybody in the movie is always lying or fudging, mostly because they cant help it, which is endearing, but ...

Yeah, good movie.

Oh, and Zuzana Sulajová as Jana is very charming again ... <sighs>. She was earlier in Martin Sulik's sweet-magical The Garden, and in Two Syllables Behind, which played at the Rotterdam filmfestival this year and was all-right, in a light-weight ego vehicle for Sulajova kind of way... and in which she was definitely the biggest draw <smiles>

That's what I miss in the US: European movies like these.

Some do make it to the US Videotheks though, like the three
colors trilogy (Blue, White, Red) by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski. They're still available at blockbuster with english
subtitles.

Here is a short synopsis about them

Blue represents liberty. The saddest of the three films, Blue explores the loneliness of independence and liberation from an internal prison. Julie (Juliette Binoche) loses her husband and her daughter in an accident. Her grief is devastating, and she can do little but mourn.

Her husband was a composer. His symphony for the unification of Europe was left unfinished. She also discovers that he had a mistress, who is now pregnant with his child. Although these facts only add to Julie's pain, they both eventually offer her a reason to come out of her self-imposed isolation and sorrow.

White represents equality. It is a comedy, although the comedy is so subtle you may miss it. Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) is a Pole living in Paris. His wife Dominique (Julie Delpy) leaves him because he can't consummate their marriage. Without a French wife, Karol loses his citizenship, his bank account, everything.

He returns to the newly-democratic Poland to rebuild his life. He becomes a shrewd and ruthless businessman, but he hasn't forgotten Dominique's betrayal. He is prepared to use his new wealth and status as revenge.

Red represents fraternity. Red earned the most attention and praise (it was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar; the others were not). Kieslowski himself called Red the best of the three, although I place it below the other two as the least focused and intense of the trilogy.

Valentine (Irene Jacob, who worked with Kieslowski on The Double Life of Veronique) hits a dog with her car. She tracks down its owner and finds a retired judge who listens in on his neighbor's private telephone conversations. The two develop an unexpected friendship, connecting with each other in ways that neither can seem to manage with their more traditional peers.

Went to see Capote tonight with a Russian and Belorussian colleague. Good movie.

I liked the parallel that was drawn between the writer and the criminal. The writer saying: "I feel we grew up in the same house; but he walked out of the back door, and later I walked out the front door". This keen sense that, but for a whisker of fate, it could have been us on the other side, appeals to me.

Then there's the darker side of the same thing, in this film. When the criminal's sister warns the writer: he can wrap you round his finger - he'll show you his sensitive side, and you'll be taken in - but make no mistake, he might kill you the next moment; you realise that - the man described here, who will manipulate as much out of instinct as to get what he wants, will play on your emotions and in the end will - in cold blood - do whatever he needs to get it his way - that's the writer, too, the writer who will leave the criminal at sea without a lawyer for his crucial Supreme Court appeal when he thinks that, if the criminal would win it, he wouldn't be able to finish his book. They are each other's mirror image.

Fascinating. Well acted and well shot, too. Still, dont know whether I will remember much of it in a few months' time. In fact, the reason I've dug up this thread to type out the above thought is because I suspect the movie will quickly disappear from memory..

Drat, Capote was the only one of the Best Picture Oscar nominees I missed this year, and it sounds so much more worth seeing than three of the four I did see...Hmph. Well, I shall see it soon I hope-- I'll have to bump it up on the priority list.

Yeah, I liked it better than Brokeback Mountain ... saw Brokeback last weekend, and was kinda disappointed. I mean, its great that there's a mainstream Hollywood movie with gay lovers, even gay lovers who are nothing like the cliche image of gays. But the film itself was ... well, a bit Hollywood. Very polished. And yes, the nature there is beautiful, but I swear, sometimes I thought I was watching Discovery Channel ... I dunno, was disappointed at how ... conventional it was.

Prolly seems conventional to you hedonistic Europeans, with your excesses and your opium dens and illicit love affairs and whatnot, but to us simple 'Muricans, it's a big damn deal...

I loved Brokeback, but then I'm a big fat sucker for a love story. And I do see what you mean about how polished it was, but I thought that seemed to be Ang Lee's intention, and it really did fit with the tone of the original story, which was very deliberate and almost dispassionate. I also felt like the emphasis on the landscape was sort of to make you focus all the more on the spareness of the dialogue. I dunno, I thought there was a lot to it if you sort of dug into it a bit-- I'm actually really looking forward to seeing it again.