Current Watching

[Gangster Octopus]

Current Watching

Even telly trailers are too much for me.

(Full set?)

[Guest]

Current Watching

Carriers. Nothing original plot wise - post apocalyptic plague setting in which some good-looking teenagers have mysteriously survived and are now travelling through the glorious, if rotting-half-alive-victim-scattered, Southwest US countryside in search of a safe place to wait it out, etc. There are looters and rednecks gone feral and even a drop of spit transmits the plague and the group contains the requisite guy that acts like a cock all the time, the slightly sexy girl, the quiet one with the core of strength, etc etc. But in tone, it's a zombie-free slowish road movie with odd moments of horror, and it's very dark and it's completely grief sodden. Utterly depressing, lose your faith in the human spirit stuff counterpointed with the terrible wrenching horror of personal loss. It's sadness on a screen.

I keep meaning to write something about A Serious Man, but I can't work out what the dybbuk was about and I won't know what I really think until I do.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Curzon Soho is showing Bad Santa as a late show this Friday. I love Bad Santa. I'm tempted.

[Reed John]

Current Watching

I'm currently obsessed with Criminal Minds. They show reruns on A&E and ION. I record them all on my DVR. Unfortunately, they don't always show them in order so I have to jump around. Usually that's ok since it's a one-case-per-episode-crime-show but there are some story arcs.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Oh man. I *love* Criminal Minds. It's so good! I have a small crush on cute young Dr Reid. Elle has a weirdly fascinating face doesn't she? Oh and the crime stories are great too. I love all this Silence of the Lambs behavioural science stuff.

[Reed John]

Current Watching

I think I find Elle more attractive than the brunette that replaces her in the middle of the series, but I think Elle is coming back this season.

The crimes are all very gruesome. There really is an FBI BAU (although no job title called "profiler) but I don't think they work as many different cases as they do on TV.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Current Watching

The most recent series of Dexter finished on Sunday. It was a huge improvement on series three, with the best performance I've ever seen John Lithgow give. But the last episode was profoundly sad, in fact it woke me up at around 3:00am on the two nights following. Be warned.

[erwin]

Current Watching

It's a 2008 film but it's just got here: Afterschool, by António Campos. Bit too much like Gus Van Sant's Elephant, perhaps, but very perturbing in its own right all the same. The lead character is the creepiest little f*cker ...

[Guest]

Current Watching

Treeless Mountain. Very sweet endearing film about childhood/family bonds, the kind of private world that kids create and how it can clash with grown-up's problems/perceptions, and so on. It does have some depressing grim scenes of insects being killed & tormented though, cultural difference, I know, but you know what a sentimental fool I am about that sort of thing.

Then at my aunt's house only romcoms are allowed, for some reason, so we watched Fever Pitch (weird to see how much football has changed even since then. And whatever happened to that woman whose face looks like it got squashed between closing lift doors?) and Intolerable Cruelty, which was watchable & that without ever being properly good, and some dreadful shite with Renee Zellwegger and Harry Connick Jr, and some more dreadful shite with Cameron Diaz & Kate Winslet & Jude Law.

[erwin]

Current Watching

Un prophète. (Don't know if it's been mentioned here before - couldn't find it on the search).

Very powerful stuff. It traces a new inmate's six years in a rough French prison. Jacques Audiard gives it an uncomfortably realistic feel (although the City of God-like inserts, introducing the main characters, are a little intrusive, I found). The lead, Tahar Rahim, is very good, but the whole film is stolen by Niels Arestrup as the old lag who'll invite you to have a coffee, smile at you and then put your eye out with a spoon.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Oh man. I am totally dying to see A Prophet. I think Audiard is a brilliant filmmaker.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Current Watching

Me too, and the trailer is a great example of offering a flavour rather than a summary.

Meanwhile I've been lent 'Holding On' the Tony Marchant overlapping-lives 8-part series from late 90s BBC.

It's a lot darker than i remembered it-what stuck in my mind was Phil Daniels' darkly comic restaurant critic ("I'm Garry Rickey!") rather than the fact that many of the key cast members kill, maim or are killed or maimed in the 1st 3 or 4 episodes. Powerful stuff, but a bit overacted with hindsight, and not as good as I remembered it maybe.

[erwin]

Current Watching

Smart, pacey, funny, sad, uplifting, beautiful to look at, fabulous actors and performances, fantastic soundtrack, great story, great script, cracking dialogues.

Casablanca.

What a film!

[Ek weet nie]

Current Watching

I'll just catch up with a few I've seen in the cinema this month.

I really liked Treeless Mountain despite being a stereotypical "plausible" cf. Hitchcock, Alfred. We're meant to believe that the mother can't even call when there are mobile phones? I know it is based on the director's experiences but it did irk me. I'm a sucker for children in distress films though so tears did flow. Try to catch Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame if you liked this.

Nowhere Boy - Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff were fantastic but the rest of the cast were ho-hum. Can't believe that an artist made this, it was deeply unimaginative.

Departures had a lot of poignancy but I was taken out of the movie whenever the main character had to express shock - cue 1920's subtle acting. The film is hugely manipulative but does have worthy stuff to say about the cycle of life. Shamefully, I allowed the string music to get to me.

Sherlock Holmes had a charismatic friendship but an incredibly bad storyline, terrible CGI and supernatural shite.

The Road looked amazing. I haven't read the book (shame on me) so I can't compare. It didn't need the flashbacks concerning normal life with the wife but it was the most vivid apocalyptic movie I've seen. I'd love to hear from someone who has seen the film and read the book and liked both.

I'm Gonna Explode had loads and loads of ideas. Some wonderous, some woeful. Everything was thrown at the screen. The tender moments between the two lovers were brilliantly realised and the observations re awkwardness of adolescense were sharp. Worth watching even if it is flawed.

Up in the Air has some fantastic sequences - the wedding montage and the hotel conversation stood out for me. The young graduate didn't convince, she was a cartoon character really. There is more to it than I think some people are reading in to it but the clunky moments are really clunky.

Brothers is a solid film. I like that it focused on the nitty gritty of family life rather than the horrors of the imprisonment and the portrayal of post traumatic stress was excellent. Note to the guy sitting behind me at the screening - it wasn't a fucking comedy (although the kid does say some very funny things).

Yasujiro Ozu - are there enough fans to start a thread? 6 of his films were shown this month and 2 of them went straight into my all time top 5. Exquisite film-making.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I'm so glad someone saw Treeless Mountain!

I like Ozu although I'm not sure what I'd say in a thread. I might just walk around a bit, fold some laundry, make tea.

Have you seen the original Brothers? I can't bring myself to watch the remake, I just fear it will be hateful.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Watching

I've only seen Ozu's Tokyo Story and I loved it to bits. The BFI have gone to town on him this Jan/Feb; which others would people recommend?

Brothers I saw last week, and didn't really take to. I had low expectations due to the cast and it being a US remake of a European film, but they actually did a pretty good job at first, and Natalie Portman and the kids put in really strong performances. Then it went wayward, and Spiderman and his massive eyes were hopelessly miscast.

I finally got to see The Bed Sitting Room when I found it on YouTube this week: what a wonderful film. Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, the Goons and Michael Hordern (introduced in order of height in the opening credits) in a post-apocalyptic London. Samuel Beckett meets British surrealist comedy, with footage of the London Underground that will make London geeks yap.

[Ek weet nie]

Current Watching

I haven't seen Brodre, Bier is a name I keep meaning to check out but I haven't got to her yet. The remake is not hateful but it's not compelling enough to warrant a viewing if you've seen the original. I had low expectations for Tobey Maguire in it but I thought he did a decent job charting the change from loving father to crazy person having to deal with shit that no one could deal with.

Tokyo Story was my favourite of Ozu, it's probably my favourite film full stop. The others that I have seen in order of preference are Late Autumn, An Autumn Afternoon, Early Spring, The End of Summer and Floating Weeds. I'd rate all of them very good to excellent.

[erwin]

Current Watching

Up in the Air, with George Clooney and an absolutely ravishing Vera Farmiga. Lovely film - very warm and interested in the human condition ... but ultimately a bit bleak - at least for me: I recognised great chunks of Clooney's character, and I'm going to die alone.

[willie1foot]

Current Watching

Me and the wife are going with friends to see The Road next weekend, Nil. Most of us have read the book, after I read it on the recommendation of OTF, then passed it on. I'll try to give you my thoughts but I'm not very good at this stuff.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Bier is a name I keep meaning to check out

Oh you should yeah, I adore all her films, I really do.

I saw A Prophet & The White Ribon, weeks after the rest of the world, but I don't know quite what I think yet.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I know I should go & see The Island, and I will, but for tonight I am really tempted by the Wolfman. But everyone tells me it's appalling. But I might still go.

[erwin]

Current Watching

Saw The White Ribbon at the weekend. Loved the aesthetic, the brooding feel, the performances. Not so sure what it all means ('corruption and evil runs just under the surface of every day life', something like that) but there are so many unresolved strands, red herrings and cul-de-sacs that as a narrative it just doesn't work, really.

But then again, I suppose it wasn't Haneke's intention to 'make it work' on the level of a 'whodunnit'.

I must say, though, that almost a week afterwards, I'm still turning scenes and situations over in my mind. Haneke does that to you, I think ... the slow-burning fuse.

[Commodore]

Current Watching

Anyone seen The Cleveland Show yet? I had visions of it being a family friendly version of Family Guy, or a Griffin-lite.

Of course, there are crossovers from Family Guy and American Dad in the make up of the characters (Patriarch, Matriarch, sullen teenagers, talking animals, demonic infants) and the occasional cut-away gag but the difference is that, unlike Peter Griffin and Stan Smith, Cleveland Brown is not obnoxious. The stubbornness of Peter & Stan usually sets the scene for their programmes, which can be predictable but still funny (less so in American Dad’s case). Cleveland’s willingness to just let it ride takes him down a different turn of events which is refreshingly different and, based on what I’ve seen so far, no less entertaining.

My favourite scene so far is when Cleveland and his stepson Rallo (an infant with a badass afro who is five going on fifteen) talk about going to a Herbie Hancock concert and Cleveland confuses Rockit with Axel F, much to the annoyance of Rallo who can’t get Axel F out of his head afterwards.

It’s a shame that it’s on E4 and not the BBC as I’m having difficulty dealing with commercials halfway through each episode, but this is a grower.

[erwin]

Current Watching

I had the option tonight of watching the sublime The Wild Bunch again, or the Sandra Bullock vehicle Murder by Numbers.

Guess which one I chose.

Oh, woe!

[Guest]

Current Watching

Top Gun is on Film Four. It's so very pretty. And I am depressed and I can't be arsed with comedy fucking skiing or yet another awards show. So maybe that's good enough reason, I dunno.