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Movie bloat: 1 day, 4 films.
Jan. 19th, 2011 02:28 amI feel somewhat bloaty and floaty after far too many films yesterday. I didn't plan it, but somehow, I watched Delicatessen, District 13, Synecdoche New York and Melinda and Melinda. That's caught up on the to-be-watched backlog a bit.
Delicatessen I've been meaning to see for years, no, decades; when I first moved to London all my mates were raving about it - it was the hot film of the last 12 months or so for them then. That would be early 1991. Oh boy; it'll be 20 years here quite soon.
I was a little let down. I think possibly the passage of time has robbed it of much of its novelty and shock value, a bit like a fantasy reader coming to Tolkien for the first time, today, and not seeing what's so innovative. It was weird, yes, it was shocking sometimes, it was funny sometimes, it was unique and very original, but it didn't grab me, I'm afraid. I must see La Cité des Enfants Perdu soon, I think. I've previously enjoyed later stuff by Jeunet, Caro or both.
District 13 - grabbed because I took an interest in parkour a few years back and several people recommended this. The stunts are amazing and far more effective than any Chinese wire-work I've ever seen - it's amazing, but crucially, it's actually believable in a way that using mad skillz in Kung Fu to violate the laws of physics just isn't. Very impressive, affecting, involving and remarkably pacey. Good soundtrack in places too. The urban "street French" dialogue is even less comprehensible than normal for me - I could follow what the ministers and senior cops said, a bit, but not the gangsters, barely a word.
Synecdoche, New York - the film that taught me that it wasn't pronounced "sin-eck-doshe." I have probably been saved from embarrassment by never actually using it, mind. (I had to work to find a place to insert "metonymy" into conversation when I learned it.) I liked this, even though it confused the hell out of me. It's the Truman Show for grown-ups. Every time you think you have it sussed, even early on when it's comparatively normal, it throws you with something outright weird, like Hazel looking at, buying and then living for 20 years in a house that is actually on fire throughout. Deeply odd, and the intentionally-muddled timelines were effective at breaking me loose from trying to track what was happening, when. I felt it worked far better at making the viewer stop trying to track what was real and what wasn't than Inception, for all the latter's fancy effects.
Then finally, Melinda and Melinda, on the basis that hell, it's a Woody Allen film. I'll watch a dramatization of the phonebook if he does it. I had heard of it but I didn't even know it was on. I'm glad I watched it; it was highly enjoyable. Mind you, I've never seen an Allen film that wasn't; I caught Anything Else completely randomly on Freeview a couple of years ago in exactly the same way, and I loved it.
The central conceit of Melinda and Melinda is a little laboured - over dinner, two playwrights fabulate two different tales based on the same anecdote, with the same central character. Sliding Doors did the different-lives thing a bit better, albeit that its intent and methods were totally different. I did get confused as to which Melinda's life I was following from scene to scene sometimes - the tragic one, which often wasn't terribly tragic, or the comic one, which sometimes wasn't terribly funny. But then, Allen is primarily a comic writer, not a tragedian.
Overall, though, the funny storyline really was and really worked, whereas the tragic one was just sad, not actually tragic, as it seemed to me. I found myself a little annoyed that everyone is so beautiful, everyone is rich (relatively), everyone lives in a great place in a great part of town, wears great clothes, has millionaire and billionaire friends and simply fantastic dinner parties and so on. Even the token chubby girl is radiant, kinda pretty and has the excuse of being pregnant. The main black character seemed pretty damned white to me, as well. The biggest surprise was Will Ferrell. He does a really remarkably good Woody Allen. OK, so, it's written and directed by the man himself, and nobody writes Allen like Allen himself - but in a role where clearly a younger Allen would have played himself in his own character, in this one, Farrell does it instead and he does it masterfully. It has to have been intentional, both from actor and director, but I didn't know he had it in him. I had him marked down as a overacting ham, like Ben Stiller, say, who just overdoes everything in every overdone overstated overloud over-silly slight-failure of a screwball comedy he does. (There's Something About Mary was Stiller's finest hour, and that is not a subtle film. Could be worse; could be Alan Sandler, who seems to love himself so much I just want to slap him. His work is mildly amusing, no more.) Also, a fine jazz soundtrack in places, as you might expect from Mr A.
Must Watch More Woody Allen films. Gotta see them all.
Also, if I watch enough French cinema, will it do any good for my French?
Delicatessen I've been meaning to see for years, no, decades; when I first moved to London all my mates were raving about it - it was the hot film of the last 12 months or so for them then. That would be early 1991. Oh boy; it'll be 20 years here quite soon.
I was a little let down. I think possibly the passage of time has robbed it of much of its novelty and shock value, a bit like a fantasy reader coming to Tolkien for the first time, today, and not seeing what's so innovative. It was weird, yes, it was shocking sometimes, it was funny sometimes, it was unique and very original, but it didn't grab me, I'm afraid. I must see La Cité des Enfants Perdu soon, I think. I've previously enjoyed later stuff by Jeunet, Caro or both.
District 13 - grabbed because I took an interest in parkour a few years back and several people recommended this. The stunts are amazing and far more effective than any Chinese wire-work I've ever seen - it's amazing, but crucially, it's actually believable in a way that using mad skillz in Kung Fu to violate the laws of physics just isn't. Very impressive, affecting, involving and remarkably pacey. Good soundtrack in places too. The urban "street French" dialogue is even less comprehensible than normal for me - I could follow what the ministers and senior cops said, a bit, but not the gangsters, barely a word.
Synecdoche, New York - the film that taught me that it wasn't pronounced "sin-eck-doshe." I have probably been saved from embarrassment by never actually using it, mind. (I had to work to find a place to insert "metonymy" into conversation when I learned it.) I liked this, even though it confused the hell out of me. It's the Truman Show for grown-ups. Every time you think you have it sussed, even early on when it's comparatively normal, it throws you with something outright weird, like Hazel looking at, buying and then living for 20 years in a house that is actually on fire throughout. Deeply odd, and the intentionally-muddled timelines were effective at breaking me loose from trying to track what was happening, when. I felt it worked far better at making the viewer stop trying to track what was real and what wasn't than Inception, for all the latter's fancy effects.
Then finally, Melinda and Melinda, on the basis that hell, it's a Woody Allen film. I'll watch a dramatization of the phonebook if he does it. I had heard of it but I didn't even know it was on. I'm glad I watched it; it was highly enjoyable. Mind you, I've never seen an Allen film that wasn't; I caught Anything Else completely randomly on Freeview a couple of years ago in exactly the same way, and I loved it.
The central conceit of Melinda and Melinda is a little laboured - over dinner, two playwrights fabulate two different tales based on the same anecdote, with the same central character. Sliding Doors did the different-lives thing a bit better, albeit that its intent and methods were totally different. I did get confused as to which Melinda's life I was following from scene to scene sometimes - the tragic one, which often wasn't terribly tragic, or the comic one, which sometimes wasn't terribly funny. But then, Allen is primarily a comic writer, not a tragedian.
Overall, though, the funny storyline really was and really worked, whereas the tragic one was just sad, not actually tragic, as it seemed to me. I found myself a little annoyed that everyone is so beautiful, everyone is rich (relatively), everyone lives in a great place in a great part of town, wears great clothes, has millionaire and billionaire friends and simply fantastic dinner parties and so on. Even the token chubby girl is radiant, kinda pretty and has the excuse of being pregnant. The main black character seemed pretty damned white to me, as well. The biggest surprise was Will Ferrell. He does a really remarkably good Woody Allen. OK, so, it's written and directed by the man himself, and nobody writes Allen like Allen himself - but in a role where clearly a younger Allen would have played himself in his own character, in this one, Farrell does it instead and he does it masterfully. It has to have been intentional, both from actor and director, but I didn't know he had it in him. I had him marked down as a overacting ham, like Ben Stiller, say, who just overdoes everything in every overdone overstated overloud over-silly slight-failure of a screwball comedy he does. (There's Something About Mary was Stiller's finest hour, and that is not a subtle film. Could be worse; could be Alan Sandler, who seems to love himself so much I just want to slap him. His work is mildly amusing, no more.) Also, a fine jazz soundtrack in places, as you might expect from Mr A.
Must Watch More Woody Allen films. Gotta see them all.
Also, if I watch enough French cinema, will it do any good for my French?
