W10

The once yearly (well twice if you go to MEIFF) chance to see some real cinema...

Yesterday I went to see love and other crimes, a slightly cliched but touching story set in the middle of a grey, concrete housing estate in Belgrade. Well scripted with touches of real humour in amongst the dark slices of real life. The ending is a little predictable but there is a lovely little twist to it.

Ein shams - an Egyptian independent film, shot under the radar of the authorities and for around $6,000. Ok so the camerawork and art direction are a bit shaky at times and when you start the documentary style narrative throws you a bit, but the story, the backdrop and the soul of this movie are immense. Very much from the experimental school, with traces of Wong Kar Wai as he worked the whole film without a script and isn't afraid to mix up cinematic styles and mediums, the film focuses on the lives of an extended family in the slum-like ein shams area, touching on the themes of poverty, corruption and escape - but always weaving them in and out of a nicely fractured story. I was very impressed by this film...

Autonomy

Not so worldly so far, but yesterday went to see a firm favourite of mine and the chance to see it on the big screen was great - Terry Gilliam's 1985 Brazil. A brilliant twisted dystopian comedy with tragedy and fantasy interwoven... all the more delicious to watch this version of 1984 in Dubai with it's own Ministry Of Information and Central Services....

Hoping to catch Steven Soderbergh's Che or Darren Aronofsky's Mickey Rourke comeback movie "The Wrestler"....

A definite is Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire on Weds night.

W10

I am hoping to go to see Gilliam's round table...should be interesting (esp re Heath Ledger)

Are you going to see Hunger? Not too keen on it myself but will be worth checking out as a piece of art cinema.

Might go to see the Bill Plympton feature tonight, and either an Indonesian film called 3 wishes or the palestinian 'pommegranites and myrrh'

Slumdog Millionaire definitely looks like it is worth checking out...

highlander393

Gomorrah is also worth seeing based the on novel by Roberto Saviano,a young Italian journalist ,about the Naples Comor-ra . He is now living with police protection. But I agree slumdog millionaire looks like one also not to miss.

Roadking

Oops, sorry I thought it said Duff. Beer, beer, beer, beer...

W10

Last night I went to see:

Kandisha. A Morroccan supernatural drama, which acts as an allegory for women's rights in the Arab world. Nicely shot (especially for a low budget film), good atmospherics and very reminiscent of Korean movies from a decade ago. 3 out of 5.

3 Wishes: Indonesian film about three kids growing up in a religious school. It's a weird film that is flabby (30 mins too long) and doesn't really know what it wants to be. Starting as a coming of age farce full of juvenile (but funny) humour and then making a long but still very clumsy transition into a semi-serious movie about religious teachings and the manipulating of Islam and about steering your own path. There is a brief climactic scene which attempts to hold it all together but it doesn't work and we are quickly back onto the resolution...not a great effort. 2 out of 5

Blue Cat

just heard the director of Angels and something interviewed in radio. sounds excellent!

admon

Sounds like a riveting night out for those that enjoy pretentious drivel..


I take it they weren't screening the latest bruce willis film..

W10

Bill Plympton? Angels and Idiots?

Anyone of a certain age who watched MTV will know who Bill Plympton is. What an amazing animator...

Blue Cat

that's the one, did you see it?

W10

Vacation: A film about the Japanese death penalty system and its effects on people. With stellar (for an Asian audience) acting talent and a very touching and interesting plot based around an emotionless prison guard who gets 'buddied' up with a man with 48 hours before his execution, because he will get a week vacation after the execution. The plot obviously centres on their relationship with lots of sly digs at the capital punishment system.

Tonight I'm going to see Steve McQueen's controversial 'Hunger' about Bobby Sands. Not sure what I will make of it.

W10

No, it was on at the same time as another film I watched - I think its on again this week.

Blue Cat

wish I could go, but it was 3.30 pm screenings and I have got the child with me then

W10

Hunger: As a piece of art it is on a different level. Brutal yet strangely poetic. Every scene is beautifully and artfully shot. The recurring themes are intelligently used, the use of sound is first rate. Anyone who can make a snowflake falling onto a battered hand seem beautiful is fully in control of his aesthetic senses.

But...as a film, it fails. For such a serious film, with such a serious subject matter (the last days of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands) it doesn't really make you think, it doesn't really pose enough of a moral dilema and it doesn't overtly polemicise (just subtely). It is the arthouse equivalent of a Hollywood action movie.

Switch off brain (except to be taken aback by the odd clumsily shoe-horned cliche - Bobby's childhood memory justification, the crying guard juxtaposed with his colleague's brutality, the christ-like imagery at the end) and enjoy a visual feast which will make you wince and coo in equal measure.

The acting is first rate, and Michael Fassbender plays the part perfectly...you can almost see the life being sucked out of his eyes as the strike goes on. But at the end of the film, you just don't feel anything at all. It's an event certainly, but you're not quite sure what for...