Film Nights
Having been thinking a bit about movies for the last few days it has come to my attention that I haven’t run a movie night at my new flat yet. When I say “new flat” I actually mean “the place where I have lived for the last couple of years”, so it may be considered a little inaccurate as well as rather remiss on my part. I’ve even had my big telly for almost a year.
Anyways, as ever, my consideration of movie night has led me to the two things that make or break the evening – food and films. The food bit I will leave to my hindbrain to mull, but on the film front I have been putting together triplets in my forebrain and coming up with themes. Unfortunately, most of these are unsuitable for the general public because they would cause bleeding from the eyes by the time we hit the final movie, if not before, but I thought I’d spray some of the ideas across this here blog. That is what it’s for. So, the triplets:
The world said it shouldn’t be and nature tried to stop us, but we did it anyway: three films that were almost a washout but came through in the end, to various levels of success – Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, and Fulton and Pepe’s Lost in La Mancha. Waterworld got washed away, Apocalypse Now got caught up in tropical storms and Coppola watched his investment blow down river, and Lost in La Mancha tells the tale of how The Man Who Killed Don Quixote died a death (although their are rumours of resurrection) due to weather, back injury and general destruction. My only problem would be whether to show the Redux version of Apocalypse Now or not – the expensively shot and justifiably cut ‘French Plantation’ scene makes Redux one of the most ill-considered DVD double dips that I’ve made.
The studio tried to drown me with money, but I fought back and made this instead: featuring three overblown ‘masterpieces’ – Guy Ritchie’s Revolver, Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales and Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain. The saturation of those three films will leave permanent scarring to the retina and the combined batshit ununderstandableness of the so-called plots may cause vomiting unless sufficient quantities of alcohol are drunk. Which may cause vomiting. They do all, however, look rather special and definitely leave a lasting impression of ‘Well, I certainly saw a movie’. Sounds like a perfect combination of films to me. My only problem with this combination is that I would have to obtain The Fountain, and I think it would taint my house if I left it around for too long.
English isn’t our first language, you know, and sometimes films get made where we came from: three films from directors now known for their english language movies, but who made rather good movies before making that move – 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Intacto, Hellboy director Guillermo Del Toro’s Cronos (although I prefer The Devil’s Backbone [aka Espinazo del diablo, El]) and The Constant Gardener director Fernando Meirelles’s Cidade de Deus. 28 Weeks Later annoyed me, but it looked fairly pretty, so I went looking to see what the director had done before and was impressed by Intacto – a film about an underground trade in luck and the ’sport’ associated with it, complete with Max von Sydow as the man at the top of the food chain. Guillermo del Toro is now rampaging his way through the US film market, with two Hellboys behind him and The Hobbit (and its sequel…) on his plate for the next few years, but his three most recent spanish language movies are great. I’ve put Cronos in this group, as it was his first big movie, but The Devil’s Backbone is also fantastic, working with the Spanish Civil War setting later seen in Pan’s Labyrinth and giving a fantastic sense of horror that I have seen little to compare to. His films have a strange “sheen” to the look as well, which I really like. The final film in this group is a bit of a cheat, as although The Constant Gardener is quite a well known film, I suspect Meirelles is still better known for the excellent City of God. However, it’s my list and I want an excuse to watch it again.
Now to move on to thinking about food. Which I do rather enjoy doing.
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Posted: January 11th, 2009 under blog.
Comments
Comment from billy
Time 11th January 2009 at 5:09 pm
The fact that I hated every single character turned me against 28 Weeks Later a bit – they were all so stupid that by the end of the movie I would have fed them to the Rage Virus Infected myself, just to make them stop being so annoying.
Comment from riggzby
Time 11th January 2009 at 4:57 pm
Southland tales must be one of the oddest films ever made. I still have no idea if I liked it or hated it. Can’t believe you didn’t like 28 Weeks Later (lets not get into the discussion about whether or not it is a Zombie film), I really enjoyed it.