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Shopping, Hugo and Beginners...
Jun. 23rd, 2012 11:33 pmAccomplished quite a bit today, including spending a boat-load of money at Lord & Taylor - where I made my semi-annual pilgrimmage to buy clothes. Been procrastinating it for weeks.
But was in the right frame of mind today. You sort of need to be - in order to stare at your body in two mirrors with poor lighting over head. Particularly if you are grossly over-weight and doing this in the ahem, women's department. Rather happy that it is called the women's department, while the regular sizes are in "junior or misses". L&T has a really good Women's department. Actually it's my favorite department store in NYC. 1) Least crowded, 2) you can bring as much clothes as you wish into the fitting rooms. 3) the fitting rooms are large, with chairs and multiple hooks, 4) the sales reps leave you alone and never bug you, 5) everything is easy to find and accessible. Best clothing store on the planet for people who hate to shop and need to find large sizes.(L&T always has sales, plus coupons - which you don't have to bring with you.)
Finished watching two movies tonight, which have been sitting on my tv stand for three months...courtesy of netflix. Beginners and Hugo.
* Hugo is basically Martin Scorsese's love letter to filmmaking or love poem to film or ode to film-making. Not sure which. It is a lovely film. Made me cry - but in a good why. A film for film-geeks everywhere. I've seen the silent film about the journey to the moon - which is heavily referenced in it. At any rate, I loved it more than I thought I would. It surprised me. Didn't go in the direction I thought at all, and wasn't the least bit predictable.
Wasn't sure what to make of the reviews on it. From the reviews I was expecting a silent film like the Artist, it's not that. Also expected something more in the line of Cinema Paradiso (another lovely film which you should rent if you haven't seen it yet). Wasn't that either. Flist loved it. Kidbro was lukewarm about it. Momster...was uncharacteristically vague. Actually for that matter, so was Flist. It's hard to tell if you'll like something based on someone else's recommendation. First of all, you don't necessarily like the same things they do, at least not 50% of the time. So it's a 50/50 gambit either way. Second? You have no idea why they liked it - they might have been in the mood for it. If they saw it a year ago or tomorrow? They may hate it.
Hugo is based on the children's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabernet by Brian Selznek. I own another children's novel by this author - who is an interesting author in that he illustrates his novels and they read like graphic novels. Half the book I own is in prose, the other half in drawings. So Selznek unlike other children's authors story-boards his tales or tells them through pictures - this lends itself to film better than most things do, obviously.
The film was in 3D. I obviously did not see it in 3D, but I could tell it was filmed in 3D.
Sort of happy I didn't see it in 3D. 3D tends to give me a headache - I don't like things racing or flying out at me from the screen - I find it jarring.
The story is about a boy who winds clocks in a train station in Paris for his drunken uncle. We learn through flashbacks that his father was mechanist who was fixing an automaton man and clocks and watches...before he died. The boy alone and grieving his father, hopes if he can fix the automaton he can connect with the long dead father. In the process of stealing items to fix the automaton from a toy operator in the train station, he gets caught by the toy operator...and well the story takes off from there. And it does not go in the direction you think. To say more would well spoil the beauty of the film, which is in part in your discovery of it. Hence the reason the reviewers were all so vague in their reviews.
Plus you get interesting cameos from Black and White Screen Cinema Greats...such as Christopher Lee. Martin Scorsese even makes a cameo in his film, like he does in all his films, this round his a photographer.
If you love books and film, you'll love this movie. Trust me on that much. If you don't, not sure why you're reading my blog, must be highly annoying to you, ...but okay.
Beginners is a weird film. It's not what I thought either. People reviewed this one oddly too. It's a story about a man grieving his father, who he discovered was gay four years before his death. The film starts after the father has died, we learn about the father in flashbacks. Often out of order. The story really is about dealing with grief and getting past it. One of the better efforts on this topic actually. It also deals with handling the news of a parent turning out to be gay, when you thought they had a happy heterosexual marriage with your Mom. Charmingly told and sympathetically, with a quiet tone..it's moving in its own way. But it is also incredibly slow. My attention kept drifting during it. The pacing reminded me of Lost in Translation, The Virigin Suicides,
and films of that ilk.
There's a love story, three actually...one between the father and his boyfriend (played by Goran Ivansek), one between Ewan McGregor (the son) and this French Woman he meets at a Halloween party, and one between the son and the father (who was portrayed by Christopher Plummer).
What struck me as interesting about the film - is the juxtaposition of photographs, still images, colors, and drawings at different points to convey the narrator's voice and state of mind. That alone is worth the effort it took to watch the film. I'd recommend it for that if nothing else.
But was in the right frame of mind today. You sort of need to be - in order to stare at your body in two mirrors with poor lighting over head. Particularly if you are grossly over-weight and doing this in the ahem, women's department. Rather happy that it is called the women's department, while the regular sizes are in "junior or misses". L&T has a really good Women's department. Actually it's my favorite department store in NYC. 1) Least crowded, 2) you can bring as much clothes as you wish into the fitting rooms. 3) the fitting rooms are large, with chairs and multiple hooks, 4) the sales reps leave you alone and never bug you, 5) everything is easy to find and accessible. Best clothing store on the planet for people who hate to shop and need to find large sizes.(L&T always has sales, plus coupons - which you don't have to bring with you.)
Finished watching two movies tonight, which have been sitting on my tv stand for three months...courtesy of netflix. Beginners and Hugo.
* Hugo is basically Martin Scorsese's love letter to filmmaking or love poem to film or ode to film-making. Not sure which. It is a lovely film. Made me cry - but in a good why. A film for film-geeks everywhere. I've seen the silent film about the journey to the moon - which is heavily referenced in it. At any rate, I loved it more than I thought I would. It surprised me. Didn't go in the direction I thought at all, and wasn't the least bit predictable.
Wasn't sure what to make of the reviews on it. From the reviews I was expecting a silent film like the Artist, it's not that. Also expected something more in the line of Cinema Paradiso (another lovely film which you should rent if you haven't seen it yet). Wasn't that either. Flist loved it. Kidbro was lukewarm about it. Momster...was uncharacteristically vague. Actually for that matter, so was Flist. It's hard to tell if you'll like something based on someone else's recommendation. First of all, you don't necessarily like the same things they do, at least not 50% of the time. So it's a 50/50 gambit either way. Second? You have no idea why they liked it - they might have been in the mood for it. If they saw it a year ago or tomorrow? They may hate it.
Hugo is based on the children's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabernet by Brian Selznek. I own another children's novel by this author - who is an interesting author in that he illustrates his novels and they read like graphic novels. Half the book I own is in prose, the other half in drawings. So Selznek unlike other children's authors story-boards his tales or tells them through pictures - this lends itself to film better than most things do, obviously.
The film was in 3D. I obviously did not see it in 3D, but I could tell it was filmed in 3D.
Sort of happy I didn't see it in 3D. 3D tends to give me a headache - I don't like things racing or flying out at me from the screen - I find it jarring.
The story is about a boy who winds clocks in a train station in Paris for his drunken uncle. We learn through flashbacks that his father was mechanist who was fixing an automaton man and clocks and watches...before he died. The boy alone and grieving his father, hopes if he can fix the automaton he can connect with the long dead father. In the process of stealing items to fix the automaton from a toy operator in the train station, he gets caught by the toy operator...and well the story takes off from there. And it does not go in the direction you think. To say more would well spoil the beauty of the film, which is in part in your discovery of it. Hence the reason the reviewers were all so vague in their reviews.
Plus you get interesting cameos from Black and White Screen Cinema Greats...such as Christopher Lee. Martin Scorsese even makes a cameo in his film, like he does in all his films, this round his a photographer.
If you love books and film, you'll love this movie. Trust me on that much. If you don't, not sure why you're reading my blog, must be highly annoying to you, ...but okay.
Beginners is a weird film. It's not what I thought either. People reviewed this one oddly too. It's a story about a man grieving his father, who he discovered was gay four years before his death. The film starts after the father has died, we learn about the father in flashbacks. Often out of order. The story really is about dealing with grief and getting past it. One of the better efforts on this topic actually. It also deals with handling the news of a parent turning out to be gay, when you thought they had a happy heterosexual marriage with your Mom. Charmingly told and sympathetically, with a quiet tone..it's moving in its own way. But it is also incredibly slow. My attention kept drifting during it. The pacing reminded me of Lost in Translation, The Virigin Suicides,
and films of that ilk.
There's a love story, three actually...one between the father and his boyfriend (played by Goran Ivansek), one between Ewan McGregor (the son) and this French Woman he meets at a Halloween party, and one between the son and the father (who was portrayed by Christopher Plummer).
What struck me as interesting about the film - is the juxtaposition of photographs, still images, colors, and drawings at different points to convey the narrator's voice and state of mind. That alone is worth the effort it took to watch the film. I'd recommend it for that if nothing else.