Movie Reviews and other stuff
Aug. 3rd, 2008 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSaw two flicks this weekend. Tell No One and I'm Not There. Also ate a lot of scrumptious exotic dark chocolat from this new place near me entitled The Chocolat Room. These included chocolat caramel popcorn (which is amazing), chocolat covered cornflakes (mixed views on this) and truffles(also mixed, the best was the one with pepper and the one with a praline/framboise liguer filling). Yes it is that time of month, can't you tell.
Tell No One is a French thriller. It stars, believe it or not, Kristen Scott Thomas, as the lesbian spouse of the protagonist's sister, as well as his best friend and confident.
The story is about a man who loses his wife one night while skinny dipping in a pond. She disappears, after he was knocked unconcious. Eight years pass. We learn she was killed and for a while the police suspected him, since it happened on his property and even though he was knocked unconcious and thrown into the water, someone pulled him out and called 911 saving his life. On the anniversary of the event, the police discover two bodies on the same property where the protagonist, Arnaud's, wife disappeared. One of the bodies has a key on it, which is to a safety deposit box belonging to Arnaud's wife. At the same time, Arnaud, a peditrician, gets an anynomous email with a video of his allegedly dead wife, and the message: "Tell No One, they are watching". The story takes off from there. While it does drag in places, it is suspenseful and stuck with me long after it was over. Tightly written and each visual item or piece of dialogue does twist back on itself in an interesting way. So you should watch it carefully. Also it has a remarkably satisfying ending, even if I found it a tad predictable partly because I've seen far too many of these types of stories in my lifetime.
The title is rather interesting, for it does not just refer to the video but to a lot of things in the film and is in some respects a political commentary on our society. To tell more would give too much away, so, I won't. At any rate, an interesting film on quite a few levels and worth a visit.
I'm Not There is an ambitious if at times confusing film. If you rent it, you might want to check out the bonus features first, particularly the introductory material which explains what the filmmaker is doing. I didn't and can't help but wonder if it might have aided in the watching. The film is not so much a bio-pic of Bob Dylan as an examination on why it is impossible to do a bio-pic on Bob Dylan or anyone else for that matter. That we can't really know a celebrity, particularly someone who has become one via the route of entertainer. Bob Dylan like many actors, has spent a lot of time constructing a false persona to show the public. You don't see the real Dylan, so much as bits and pieces intertwined with fabrications. Who is the real Dylan, the film asks, the Woody Guthrie poor black folk-singer , the prophet and born-again Christian, the counter-culture hippie hanging around the Beatles, the drifter, the rock-star/celebrity with the disastorous marriage...or any of the above. The stories jump in and out of each other, with only songs as a guidepost. We flip from Cate Blanchett's Jude (who deliberately sounds and looks the most like Dylan next to possibly Christian Bale's Jake Rollins) to Heath Ledger to Richard Gere to Brad Whinshaw to Bale and back again. We also jump between color, black and white newsreels, black and white film, and locals. It's a story that is not told in traditional linear narrative style, it jumps about.
I found it difficult to follow at times and somewhat dull. Telling me very little that I did not already know about Dylan or his music. I did appreciate what the filmmaker was attempting however, hard not to, and found the style rather interesting at times along with the message. But I think he could have done it a lot faster and in a lot less time. The film felt repetitive in places and drug quite a bit.
Quick comment on previous post. If you haven't responded, please do. No worries about me changing my posting style - this is more out of curiousity than anything else. I'm just testing how people are perceiving me. One response threw me a bit and since they chose not explain themselves, I've decided to ignore it. The majority has more or less spoken and told me to please continue doing whatever I'm doing - apparently they like the spontaneous nature of the posts. Thank you for that by the way. If I write these things for anyone it's for folks like you.
Also, it is oddly reassurring to see so many people now supporting Obama who in previous polls were either undecided or supporting McCain. Dare I hope this election will be different than the last two? And regarding Twilight - if you've never heard of it? I'm envious.
As far as I can determine from thumbing through the book and reading reviews, not to mention the red_shoes line by line critique - it is basically a teen version of either the Moonlight tv show romance or Buffy/Angel circa S2, beginning of - except the female character is more like Buffy in the episode Halloween, when she lost her memory, was wearing the long black haired wig, and swooned a lot. (If you didn't see that episode or are unfamilar with Buffy, imagine a really insecure teen, with beautiful black hair, who swoons a lot). And, it has a lot of adverbs. Apparently some editors don't mind any more if you use a lot of adverbs.
Okay, maybe that wasn't so quick? Bit frustrated this evening, just realized it's past 7 and need to make dinner. Also that the editor I was going to send my book to - would cost me $825 smackers, can't afford that, have been advised to start writing queries (ack!) and send them.
Ugh, I hate writing query letters. But you do what you have to do. Heck, if Stephanie Meyer can get published, anyone can.
Tell No One is a French thriller. It stars, believe it or not, Kristen Scott Thomas, as the lesbian spouse of the protagonist's sister, as well as his best friend and confident.
The story is about a man who loses his wife one night while skinny dipping in a pond. She disappears, after he was knocked unconcious. Eight years pass. We learn she was killed and for a while the police suspected him, since it happened on his property and even though he was knocked unconcious and thrown into the water, someone pulled him out and called 911 saving his life. On the anniversary of the event, the police discover two bodies on the same property where the protagonist, Arnaud's, wife disappeared. One of the bodies has a key on it, which is to a safety deposit box belonging to Arnaud's wife. At the same time, Arnaud, a peditrician, gets an anynomous email with a video of his allegedly dead wife, and the message: "Tell No One, they are watching". The story takes off from there. While it does drag in places, it is suspenseful and stuck with me long after it was over. Tightly written and each visual item or piece of dialogue does twist back on itself in an interesting way. So you should watch it carefully. Also it has a remarkably satisfying ending, even if I found it a tad predictable partly because I've seen far too many of these types of stories in my lifetime.
The title is rather interesting, for it does not just refer to the video but to a lot of things in the film and is in some respects a political commentary on our society. To tell more would give too much away, so, I won't. At any rate, an interesting film on quite a few levels and worth a visit.
I'm Not There is an ambitious if at times confusing film. If you rent it, you might want to check out the bonus features first, particularly the introductory material which explains what the filmmaker is doing. I didn't and can't help but wonder if it might have aided in the watching. The film is not so much a bio-pic of Bob Dylan as an examination on why it is impossible to do a bio-pic on Bob Dylan or anyone else for that matter. That we can't really know a celebrity, particularly someone who has become one via the route of entertainer. Bob Dylan like many actors, has spent a lot of time constructing a false persona to show the public. You don't see the real Dylan, so much as bits and pieces intertwined with fabrications. Who is the real Dylan, the film asks, the Woody Guthrie poor black folk-singer , the prophet and born-again Christian, the counter-culture hippie hanging around the Beatles, the drifter, the rock-star/celebrity with the disastorous marriage...or any of the above. The stories jump in and out of each other, with only songs as a guidepost. We flip from Cate Blanchett's Jude (who deliberately sounds and looks the most like Dylan next to possibly Christian Bale's Jake Rollins) to Heath Ledger to Richard Gere to Brad Whinshaw to Bale and back again. We also jump between color, black and white newsreels, black and white film, and locals. It's a story that is not told in traditional linear narrative style, it jumps about.
I found it difficult to follow at times and somewhat dull. Telling me very little that I did not already know about Dylan or his music. I did appreciate what the filmmaker was attempting however, hard not to, and found the style rather interesting at times along with the message. But I think he could have done it a lot faster and in a lot less time. The film felt repetitive in places and drug quite a bit.
Quick comment on previous post. If you haven't responded, please do. No worries about me changing my posting style - this is more out of curiousity than anything else. I'm just testing how people are perceiving me. One response threw me a bit and since they chose not explain themselves, I've decided to ignore it. The majority has more or less spoken and told me to please continue doing whatever I'm doing - apparently they like the spontaneous nature of the posts. Thank you for that by the way. If I write these things for anyone it's for folks like you.
Also, it is oddly reassurring to see so many people now supporting Obama who in previous polls were either undecided or supporting McCain. Dare I hope this election will be different than the last two? And regarding Twilight - if you've never heard of it? I'm envious.
As far as I can determine from thumbing through the book and reading reviews, not to mention the red_shoes line by line critique - it is basically a teen version of either the Moonlight tv show romance or Buffy/Angel circa S2, beginning of - except the female character is more like Buffy in the episode Halloween, when she lost her memory, was wearing the long black haired wig, and swooned a lot. (If you didn't see that episode or are unfamilar with Buffy, imagine a really insecure teen, with beautiful black hair, who swoons a lot). And, it has a lot of adverbs. Apparently some editors don't mind any more if you use a lot of adverbs.
Okay, maybe that wasn't so quick? Bit frustrated this evening, just realized it's past 7 and need to make dinner. Also that the editor I was going to send my book to - would cost me $825 smackers, can't afford that, have been advised to start writing queries (ack!) and send them.
Ugh, I hate writing query letters. But you do what you have to do. Heck, if Stephanie Meyer can get published, anyone can.