Category: film

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

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?

In The Mood For Love/Scott Pilgrim @ Somerset House

In a giiiiant fit of awful planning, I got tickets for two nights in a row at Somerset House. Next time…I’ll probably not do that and avoid being hideously tired after.

I saw 2046, the sort of sequel to In The Mood For Love, back when it came out at the cinema in a spur of the moment double bill along with Hero. I remember it involved a mad dash from one screen to the next with my friend Corinne. 2046 makes a lot more sense now after seeing In The Mood For Love.

I <3 how you never see Mr Chan’s face and you never see Mr Chow’s wife’s face either. Totally works the whole absent spouse thing. The out of sequence bits worked really well too. Not sure it’s a film you can really talk about, you just experience it.

Scott Pilgrim, the next night, was aces. I <3 Scott Pilgrim…though I don’t really like Scott as a character. He’s kind of weaksauce.  It’s the rest of the characters that really make the film for me.

Annnd before each film, I went to the Behind the Screen talks. Which were pretty good. Although the 2nd was a tad hilarious since I realised I was probably in a room full of people who work on computer games or films and there I am… the legal cashier who’s technically a software engineer. Oops.

paratoi stondin yn y BL




paratoi stondin yn y BL

Originally uploaded by traed mawr

On Sunday I went to see “The Life of David Lloyd George“. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from what is basically a silent documentary – or how that whole idea works. It was *amazing*. The music was awe-inspiring – the guy playing was the composer and this film is 3 hours long so he was playing non-stop (well, apart from the interval!) the whole time. The music was a great accompaniment to the film and the film is structured very well – you get a wonderful introduction to how Lloyd George grew up and got to be a MP first of all and then the second part of the film focusses more on his action through the First World War. If you get a chance to see this, I heartily recommend it.

Dan Snow gave a sort of introduction to the film. I say “sort of” because he got stuck in traffic and arrived late to the screening so the introduction got moved to the interval. As a however-many-great grandson of Lloyd George he has quite a different perspective on the man – more of the stories he got told about him from his grandma rather than the war leader, I guess. He was right though about there only being room in the British conciousness for one great war leader at a time – and for us now, it’s Churchill who has eclipsed Lloyd George and all those who came before. I’m kind of glad though that there hasn’t been a war that has affected me that personally on such a scale as the world wars effected those who lived when Churchill and Lloyd George were in power.

Wrath of Gods

When Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson and his cast and crew, including Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgård, set upon Iceland to film Beowulf & Grendel in 2004, they expected the usual complications involved in making a major motion picture.

What they encountered was a ruthless Icelandic winter on a foreboding landscape, financing complications and a bizarre run of bad luck that led some of them to believe they were in an epic battle with the Norse gods themselves. Filmmaker Jon Gustafsson was along for the ride. Hired to play one of Beowulf’s warriors, he’s one set with his camera as the crew battles hurricane force winds and he’s in the backroom as the producers scramble to shore up a collapsing deal, creating an intimate portrait of filmmakers fighting the odds in pursuit of a vision.

I really enjoyed Wrath of Gods. Not only is it good value for money (it has hours and hours of stuff to watch), but watching all the problems that they had making the film Beowulf & Grendel was bizarrely interesting, as was seeing what kind of sort of “normal” things go on behind the scenes. Like stuff to do with cashflow and accounting and health and safety and mud. And it make makes me want to see Beowulf & Grendel even more, because the little bits you get to see to do with the film look wicked cool.

Plus Iceland is a beautiful place.

Number of cinema-goers drops

The number of people going to the cinema in the UK fell for the second consecutive year in 2006, despite an increase in the number of films shown.

…going to the cinema is bloomin’ expensive and there seems to be some surprise that less people are going?

For one adult ticket at my local cinema it’s about £7.50. Now on orange Wednesdays, I bring my mum along and then it’s two for £7.50. Which is tolerable, except I like going to the cinema on my own.

In Birmingham however, one adult ticket is about £3.50 and then with Orange Wednesdays again, it’s two for £3.50. Far more tolerable.

So why is there the huge variation in ticket price? For the cost of one ticket to my local cinema, I could WAIT until the film comes out on DVD and then buy that. It’d probably end up cheaper.

A for Andromeda

Went a bit mad last week and ordered a bunch of DVDs, most of which arrived yesterday. Last night I watched A for Andromeda, which was really good. It’s a remake of a sixties tv series of the same name condensed down into one episode/tvmovie. I’ve not seen the original and I know that a number of changes have been made from the original, but I enjoyed this production.

The idea of an alien civilisation sending us the instructions to build a computer which is then found to be able to potentially save lives and bring us everything we could dream of is an interesting one and the question of whether we should blindly do what we are told and not question why they might be doing it is something that is addressed in the film. Although, of course, we never find out in “A for Andromeda” why (other than to destroy humanity) the computer design is sent – it’s suggested that it might be because this alien intelligence is looking for a new place to live as their current home is under some kind of threat.

The characters, especially John Fleming, all undergo some sort of transformation – with Professor Dawney and Dr Fleming swapping viewpoints. Initially Dr Fleming wants to keep working on his quantum computer and deciphering the message that they are being sent and Prof Dawney tells him to stop (or at least, passes on instructions from the powers that be). Then, when Prof Dawney is building Andromeda according to the instructions from the alien civilisation’s computer, Dr Fleming voices his doubts and misgivings and says that she should stop.

All in all, a good film. 🙂

Shooter

The other day I went to see Shooter. It’s a fun action film with a dash of conspiracy. Also, nice to see that the easy romantic set-up between Swagger and Sarah wasn’t taken – the slight tension from her being the widow of his partner and him feeling responsible for his partner’s death was a nice touch and certainly the single-minded focus on revenge on Swagger’s part shouldn’t have allowed time for romance!

Another small point that I liked was Swagger always standing to attention when faced with any kind of authority – even vague authority, which he kind of mentions later on, saying something about being trained to follow orders.

I think I will probably go and see Next or Spiderman 3 next, but I’ve not really heard anything good about Spiderman and at least if Next is bad, it’ll be hilariously bad. Whereas Spiderman will be just… meh. I don’t remember seeing the other two films in the cinema. In fact, I don’t remember seeing the second film at all. I’ll probably just wait until it is on tv.