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    Current Watching

    Yes it was! I really liked it. Unusual; several really extraordinary scenes.I loved the way it was full of all the petty little jealousies and cruelties of life, in that setting.

    We all know how it feels to be the invisible outsider, even if not marked out as such by a disability. And the concentration on soul over body emphasised this. You can feel the overwhelming loneliness and sadness. At the same time it's really pretty - lovely colours such a treat after too many uniform sludge-grey Hollywood films.

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      Current Watching

      Blimey, The Tenant's brilliant, isn't it. I didn't think Repulsion quite lived up to its rep, and although I loved Rosemary's Baby I think this one probably tops it.

      Unfortunate voiceover on the trailor, though: "No one does it to you like Roman Polanski"

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        Current Watching

        It was always one of my favourites but, oddly, has never seemed to get the attention it deserved.

        (Carefully trying to avoid spoiler):

        Defenestration/cross-dressing/crawling... Top scene. Has stuck with me forever.

        I think Polanski is an excellent actor and The Tenant shows off this ability better than any film I'm aware of. In fact it might be one of the very best combined actor/director performances this side of Chaplin.

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          Current Watching

          Yeah, it's a great performance. Really well-judged pace overall too; a director probably needs complete control to pull that off. Perhaps the only bum note comes in the shape of his sturdy mate who keeps shouting "Let's go to the park and get blow-jobs!" / "He's probably playing with himself!" etc, but he is accidentally really funny.

          I've just ordered the novel it's based on, Le Locataire Chimérique by Roland Topor. He co-founded the Panic movement with Alejendro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabel in the early sixties - they were kind of punk surrealists; mischievous rennaissance men who infiltrated the European theatre, cinema, literature and comic book worlds. Topor's illustrations are top notch, and I suspect influential on American underground comic book artists:

          He's probably best known for acting in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu and creating La Planete Sauvage.

          *********SPOILERS**********

          I've often thought one mark of great cinema is the use of an image that burrows right into your psyche and rattles you, for reasons you can't quite put your finger on. Early on, when they visit the bandaged-up (almost mummified; that'll be the Egyptian connection, it occurs to me now) woman and she screams - fucking hell. Her lips already look pulled back from her teeth, like an embalmed corpse, and she's got that tooth missing . . . it's unforgettable.

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            Current Watching

            Ah yes the recurring tooth, I'd forgotten about that. I really must see the film again, I haven't done so since its release.

            That's an interesting image, it has a touch of the Serafini's about it:

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              Current Watching

              Bringing this thread back down to the wrong side of lowbrow, I went to see Kick Ass last night.

              Great, great fun. Lyra's right, it has its problems, but I'm willing to overlook them in the face of sheer entertainment value. I want to see it again.

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                Current Watching

                Saw it on Sunday and, yeah, it was great fun. I found it intriguing, as well, that it was this film that really brought home to me the normalisation of violence in modern cinema. I mean, it really is, by Western standards, an astonishingly graphic film. And, sure, a lot of the humour plays on that - an 11 year old girl going all Kill Bill, the juxtaposition of expectations of cartoon violence with equally cartoony, but in some sense realistic violence - but, still, I couldn't help but think back to when Total Recall was deemed an extraordinarily violent mainstream film. It looks like children's fodder compared to Kick Ass, let alone Saw and its ilk.

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                  Current Watching

                  We had more or less the same discussion over a drink afterwards. I used the Saw comparison too, after TLMG commented on the scenes of awesome violence; my point being that the intentionally cartoonish presentation of KA takes away some of the shock value of watching limbs being hacked off by a pre-pubescent whirl of knives and guns.

                  I mean, we all laughed when the guy's leg came off with a "clunk", Monty Python style. Didn't we?

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                    Current Watching

                    Incidentally, while we're on the subject, I loved the nod to Runaways in Kick Ass. One of the characters is shown reading the comic (one of Whedon's run, I think) and Hit Girl's hair seemed to be pretty obviously based on Gert from Runaways:

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                      Current Watching

                      I am watching the Tin Man. 300 minutes long! And I never was that fond of the Wizard of Oz in the first place. But it has a/ Leoben b/ Zooey Deschanel and c/ no songs so I suppose it could be worse. Ugh though, it is going to go on forever and ever.

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                        Current Watching

                        Oh and I so would love a purple wig.

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                          Current Watching

                          I went to see The Ghost Writer yesterday evening. I don't pursue Polanski's films as I once did but I still check them if they fall across my path, so to speak, and this thread provided the impetus. I almost always leave disappointed and last night was no exception. Not that The Ghost Writer is a bad film, it's not. It's a well crafted entertainment. But ultimately it does nothing but evoke memories of what used to be.

                          The story is serviceable but it's structure — centred around a corrupt and thinly disguised Blair dynasty — acts as a creative strait-jacket for someone of Polanski's abilities. There's nowhere he can take it really. There are worthwhile moments, a bored and trashily uniformed employee in an empty hotel at night. The 1000-year-old Eli Wallach in a ambivalently beautiful little cameo and, most of all, a discomforting and implicitly sinister scene between Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkinson. The latter especially, is a reminder of why Polanski was once viewed as the natural successor to Hitchcock, it alone almost makes The Ghost Writer worth seeing. Almost but quite.

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                            Current Watching

                            Whip It. Brilliant fun.

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                              Current Watching

                              I loved Whip It.
                              Ghost Writer was surprisingly unsatisfying.

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                                Current Watching

                                Whip It was enjoyable but I'm curious about the enthusiasm you two have for it. Ellen Page is at her usual brilliance and her interactions with her best friend (the best thing in Gossip Girl) and budding romance are better handled than most equivalent films. I didn't see anything to love though - what did I miss?

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                                  Current Watching

                                  Well it was just fun. I liked the handling of the family expectations stuff - someone actually called Bliss on being a brat and she listened, for example - and I thought the action scenes were really well directed and gave a genuine sense of the excitement of the game. And the swimming pool scene was fab. And I loved that most of the women were older than 20 and you could properly see that they were and they actually talked about it and about how you can get to middle age and not have lived yet and how depressing that is. One might say it's undercut by Ellen Page being so young, but I didn't think so at all.

                                  and there were some fun Slap Shot references.

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                                    Current Watching

                                    I know I really ought to see Samson & Delilah before it disappears, but is it really depressing?

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                                      Current Watching

                                      It's pretty depressing, although the first twenty minutes actually has quite a few laughs - I wasn't a huge fan of it but it is worth seeing. Getting into the reasons that I disliked it would entail spoilers so I'll just mention the things I liked - it's set in a beautiful scenic area but we don't see that much of it, all the focus is on the characters and the ramshackle settlement. There is lots inferred with just glances and looks and there are a couple of breathtakingly tender moments that are really well handled.

                                      On Whip It - the swimming pool scene was excellent. I agree with all the points you made (although I haven't seen Slap Shot so all that was lost on me) so it's probably me being snobbish. I did think the parents should have been developed further than they were and didn't like how obvious the storyline was. Although I do appreciate that the intention was to have an obvious storyline with each part played out in an well-handled understated manner.

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                                        Current Watching

                                        thanks - I will probably go.

                                        you must see Slap Shot immediately - it is a classic work of hilarious genius.

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                                          Current Watching

                                          La Danse and I Am Love are far superior so I'd go to either of those over Samson and Delilah if you have a choice.

                                          Has anyone seen La Danse? I want to talk to people about it without getting strange looks about liking a film about ballet that's almost 3 hours long. It's awesome.

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                                            Current Watching

                                            It's my husband's film & so I will be seeing it soon...

                                            I am Love - really? The trailer is absolutely preposterous.

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                                              Current Watching

                                              Whip It!
                                              I loved all the characters and how their strengths and weaknesses were believable and portrayed sympathetically. The roller derby bits were very well done.

                                              I really loved the clever names of all the players and their costumes and the whole DIY ethic of the sport.

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                                                Current Watching

                                                I am Love - I worship at the altar of Tilda Swinton so being at a screening that she and the director introduced may have influenced my thinking. It is definitely overblown but is also a sensory and sumptuous viewing experience.

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                                                  Current Watching

                                                  Fair enough! I don't like her I'm afraid.

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                                                    Current Watching

                                                    Zombieland

                                                    Caught this on the Filmflex cable service over the weekend and was hugely impressed by it. Smart entertainment, funny and warm (well as warm as a film about zombies could ever be), very well performed by a small cast, but the plaudits must go to Woody Harrelson as the zombie-killin', Twinkie-obssessed lone ranger. There's an amusing use of graphics which threaten to annoy but stay on the right side of acceptable, and a Bill Murray cameo which fits in neatly with the quirky humour of it all.

                                                    If you haven't seen it, then I urge you to do so now. Now, if only they could find out how to make zombies genuinely scary on film instead of just having a few extras run around snarling with blood and bits of latex on their faces...

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