Month: May 2012

Snow White & the Huntsman (2012)

First off, no idea why “& the Huntsman” is in the title other than to get more of a male audience. This is about Snow White and Queen Ravenna. As it should be. Kirsten Stewart was ok as Snow White. Charlize Theron was really good as Queen Ravenna. Chris Hemsworth was actually really good as the Huntsman, and had a pretty interesting character and story and all. The dwarves. OH THE DWARVES. I loved them all. Ian McShane! Nick Frost! Ray Winstone! Toby Jones! Other people who I recognised but cannot name right now! Bob Hoskins! OH. They were lovely.

So yeah. It was pretty good.

Rating: 7/10

IMDB Link

Antigone @ The National Theatre 24/05/12

I pretty much went into the Olivier Theatre with no idea what the play was about.  Luckily, a fairly friendly man sat next to me and pointed out the Oedipus family tree in the programme, which reminded me that I’d already seen Oedipus at the NT when Ralph Fiennes took the title role (my verdict on that boiled down to “it was good, but really really grim). We speculated a bit on what kind of era the play seemed to be set in – I went with early 80s, he went with 50s until I pointed out the printer/fax machine/whatever. Might have been 70s with all the beige and brown in the set.

Other thoughts:

  1. Play called “Antigone”, but Antigone isn’t really there most of the time. Probably a catchier name than “Creon” though.
  2. The Soldier = very attractive (yep, I’m shallow).
  3. I did like the about-turn from Ismene – she might not have been willing to actually go against the state, but she stuck with her sister when push came to shove.
  4. The whole duty to your family versus duty to the state was interesting. Even more interesting when I remembered about this being written back in the day with the whole ancient Greece thing going on and the role of women being entirely different back then.
  5. Which did make Ismene being unwilling to bury her brother at the beginning make more sense. She’s not supposed to really have a mind of her own, and Antigone’s disobedience of the state (and also her own Uncle) is that bit more shocking/unusual.
  6. Creon was a bit of an arse after the initial bit where he seemed fairly reasonable, wasn’t he? Admittedly, that’s not a technical term…
  7. Poor Eurydice. She’s there for all of five minutes and then she’s dead.
  8. Christopher Eccleston was nicely politician-y as Creon.
  9. I think the comments on gender and the roles of men and women were what caught my attention most while watching (and probably raised the few giggles that the tragedy does have). Possibly because most of my thoughts are on my presentation/essay about women and fundamentalism that I’ve got to do.
  10. Actually, when they were talking about Creon’s son, Haemon, being betrothed to one of the sisters, I thought they were talking about him being engaged to Ismene rather than Antigone. Which made me confused later on. Ismene gets forgotten about after being taken away pretty much. I wanted to know what happened to her.

It was very satisfying to watch.  Glad I knew it was a tragedy, at least, before watching because, with that knowledge, you can see exactly what’s going to drop on Creon when Haemon comes to talk to him.

Not entirely sure what the point of the slowing down of time/slow motion bits were. It was interesting to see, but… yeah.  I’d probably have to think about that more than I have brain-space for.

 

Charlie Casanova

So. Someone I follow on twitter has been pimping this film like a mad thing and since I was already in London, I figured I might as well go and see it (it is only on at the Empire Leicester Square in the UK atm).

I don’t know whether I liked it or  not. There were bits that got a bit slow, I didn’t really sympathise with any of the characters and many of the horrific actions of Charlie, the main character,…didn’t really horrify me at all. It probably says something about my expectations of a sociopathic character, the way my imagination works and the kind of media that I consume on a regular basis (and have done since I was very young). Admittedly, I used to hear about these kind of actions on a regular basis from my Dad, who was a psychiatric nurse on a locked ward for violent, mentally ill people – so as soon as I realised that Charlie was a serious nutjob (not a technical term), then none of his actions were that much of a surprise or a shock.

Charlie is both fascinating and hateful all at once – the kind of creature that’s interesting to watch like a science experiment, but someone you wouldn’t want to know in real life. I didn’t understand why his wife or friends stuck with him, from his normal dinner-table kind of behaviour or exactly how he came into their lives and remained there for so long ( I suppose, I only really get it in the case of his best friend from childhood). Is it a case of being too close to someone to see how awful they are or being able to excuse their behaviour because you’re already close and it reflects badly on your judgement if you admit it? More interesting than Charlie on his own, was the way he was able to egg on his seemingly regular, normal-ish friends to do things they would never do under “normal” circumstances. There’s something in there about abdication of responsibility and the sort of general trend there seems to be in stuff I read about in the news (banks, corporations, various people etc) of not being responsible for something that’s gone wrong.

However, I’m too fuzzy-brained to really talk about that now.

I’m not too fuzzy-brained, on the other hand, to boggle at the woman sitting to my right in the cinema that was BROWSING FACEBOOK ON HER PHONE during the film. Seriously. We’re in the smallest cinema screen ever – how is that not going to be noticeable?

Hot Water Music @ The Old Blue Last 2nd May 2012

CONFESSION TIME. I’d never actually gotten around to listening to any of their music. Not really. I had an mp3 of Jack of All Trades somewhere and I’d heard one of the new songs but that was it.

Which is really weird because back when HWM did that split with Alkaline Trio, I got hold of all the Alk3 tracks and liked them and thought “well, you know, the HWM tracks will probably be good too right?” AND THEN JUST NEVER LISTENED TO THEM.

Weird. I know. I even saw Chuck Ragan on The Revival Tour last year and once again (like.. a decade after that Alk3 moment) thought “I should really listen to Hot Water Music, I like all of their friends’ music…”

So yeah. I jumped on getting a ticket for this because…I figured that it was as good a time as any to really listen to a band for the first time and OMGOMGOMG IT WAS AWESOME. :D:D:D:D

Admittedly, that’s somewhat similar to my reaction to the Avengers film when I saw it last week. You get the point though.

And they played the two songs I was vaguely familiar with, so bonus.

HildaMay were cool. I confess here that I didn’t look them up online anywhere so was genuinely expecting a girl band because of the name. I still liked them though.

Sharks were the same as they usually are. I’ve realised that I keep seeing Sharks when they’re supporting someone else. I don’t think I’d put the effort in to see them headline, but they’re ok.