where you going?
nowhere

who are you going with?
no one

when will you be back?
later



























 
PREFACE
This is the sporadically updated blog of reviews by Harriet, author of In the Aquarium: a londoner's life. I have kept the reviews separate to enable them to be indexed and therefore more easily accessible (see listing below).


ARCHIVES
Read other reviews here










BACK TO
In the Aquarium


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REVIEW LISTING



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Citroen C4


CINEMA
Ballet Russes
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Bright Young Things
Brokeback Mountain
Broken Flowers
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Capote
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlies Angels 2
Confidences Trop Intimes (Intimate Strangers)
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Riddick
Crash
Creep
The Da Vinci Code
The Day After Tomorrow
Derailed
Down With Love
ENRON: the smartest guys in the room
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Family Stone
Fantastic Four
Finding Nemo
The Forgotten
Four Brothers
Good Night, and Good Luck
Gothika
The Grudge
Hidden (Caché)
Hitch
Hotel Rwanda
House of the Flying Daggers
Howl's Moving Castle
The Incredibles
In the Cut
Into the Blue
The Island
Kill Bill Volume 1
Kill Bill Volume 2
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Libertine
Lost in Translation
Love Actually
Lucky Number Slevin
Match Point
The Matrix Reloaded
Mission Impossible 3
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Out of Time
Pride and Prejudice
The Producers
The Proposition
Secret Window
Sin City
Starsky and Hutch
S.W.A.T
Syriana
Transamerica
Unleashed
V for Vendetta
Walk the Line
X-Men 2
Yours, Mine and Ours


SHORTS
Tony Scott's Beat the Devil
Gold


PALM SPRINGS 17th INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
JED reviews thirty films that he saw from the 250 films shown during the festival.
Adam and Steve
a/k/a Tommy Chong
Blush
Border Café (Café Transit)
Boynton Beach Club
Buffalo Boy (Mua Len Trua)
Changing Times (Les Temps qui changent)
Chicken Tikka Masala
Cinema, Aspirin and Vultures (Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus)
Cold Showers (Douches Froides)
C.R.A.Z.Y.
Favela Rising
Fuego: John Waters presents Movies that will Corrupt You
George Michael - a different story
Gimme Kudos (Qiuqiu Ni, Biaoyang Wo)
Gold
Joyeux Noel
Lost and Found
Low Profile
March of the Penguins
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
My Best Enemy
News from Afar
Odete
Persona non grata
Queens
Simon
That Man: Peter Berlin
Two sons of Francisco
Whole New Thing
A Year Without Love


COMEDY
Big Night Out, Comedy Pub 29 Jan 2005
Downstairs at the Kings Head, 1 Oct 2004


DANCE
Edward Scissorhands
Fuerzabruta
Onegin
Play Without Words


EXHIBITIONS
After the wave: tsunami remembered
Art Deco 1910 - 1939
Brancusi: the essence of things
Bruce Nauman - Raw Materials
Catherine Sullivan - The Chittendens
Dan Flavin - A Retrospective
Dreamspace
Invisible @ Corsica Arts Club
Rachel Whiteread - Embankment
The Weather Project
The Weather Project Revisited


MUSIC
CLASSICAL
Yuri Bashmet - Great Performers
Philip Glass - Orion


ROCK/POP/etc
Country Teasers
Little Barrie
Pete Rock
Pimp
Salt Perverts
Tiger Lillies
Tiger Lillies, Ether Series 2006


WORLD
Klezmer Swingers
Mariza
X-Bloc Reunion Festival


OPERA
Faust
The Handmaid's Tale


PERFORMANCE
Carnesky's Ghost Train
Immortal
Immortal2
Sticky


THEATRE
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond
A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum
His Girl Friday
Julius Caesar
Lifegame
Man Falling Down
Playing with Fire
Stuff Happens
Underground
We Will Rock You


TELEVISION
Lost




COPYRIGHT
All content (words and images)
© Harriet Duncan
1997-2005
(unless explicitly quoted or credited)
Please link if you quote and ask permission to use images.

READ ME (disclaimer)






LINKS - elsewhere

100 Word Reviews
Armchair Critic
Arjan Writes
Clark Schpiell Prodcutions

Guardian Arts Reveiws
Guardian Film Reveiws
Glazed Donuts
Jailhouse Reviews

Movie Bums
Plot Kicks In
re:mote voices
Reviews Reviews Reviews!






BLOGS

Spearbearer Down Left
The Diogenes Club



«#Blogging Brits?»

Listed on Blogwise
Blogarama - The Blog Directory





FAVE FILMS
DEAD MAN
What an idea, the man is dying for almost the entire length of the film, the music is fantastic, its black and white, ideology, mythology, funny, sad, Johnny Depp sex god...

THE DRAFTMAN'S CONTRACT
The first Peter Greenaway film I saw and possibly the most accessible. Beautiful set, costumes, direction. Fantastic soundtrack.

MULHOLLAND DRIVE
I knew exactly what was going on right up until the last 15 minutes and damn it but then I lost it.

NIGHT ON EARTH
Jim Jarmusch made the only film with Winona Ryder worth watching and it had Beatrice Dalle (say no more)

O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?
Roar out loud with laughter and tunes that make you love country music. My sister had to sneak out of the cinema ahead of our dad and me cos she was so embarrassed at our laughing.

ORLANDO
Quiet, passionate, time travel.

PITCH BLACK
Bails and I watched this with its bleached scenery and its whoar factor star. We LOVED him, Mr Diesel take a bow.

RESERVOIR DOGS
Tight Tarantino gang heist gone wrong. Great soundtrack. And there's something about Michael Madson, dancing just before cutting off the cop's ear...

ROMUALD ET JULIETTE
Truely lovely romance comedy.

THREE COLOURS TRILOGY
Blue, White and Red. I liked them all. Quiet stories, beautifully shot.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Its a story told. And the first time I saw it I didn't get the twist until just before it happened.


























Seen
The Reviews
 
 

29 September 2005
Immortal2 - No Fit State
Potters Field


My work intranet keeps showing me things that are happening that I want to see. Saw this before in Clissold Park. Its a circus performance which is a bit Tom Waits and a bit burlesque. Rope acrobatics, hula hoopers, trapese, high wire. A man peels an apple while sitting in an old barbers chair, swallows the peel whole and brings it back out again. Contortion. Woman with a whip snapping back and forth. Man in a bath high high in the tent blows bubbles. Tumbling. Frilly knickers. Accordian. Juggler in victorian men's bathers and huge high heels. Then the cast leaves through doors with light on dry ice like the end of Close Encounters.

Previous visit review (when they didn't mind you taking pictures).
TimeOut


10:46 PM


 

15 September 2005
Playing with Fire
National Theatre


A failing labour council is advised by central government civil servant in how to make strides to recovery. Local politics entrenched with local counsellors being ineffectual, marginalising new communities. Diverse but segregated communities, racial tension. Far right groups and radicalised ethnic groups emerge. Somehow incidents lead to a riot.

Seems to be making an anti-Blairite statement about how bad centralised, one-fits-all solutions are - no room for local knowledge and flexibility leads to career politicians being flown in (good intentions perhaps, but without the knowledge that could lead to good solutions specific to the situation) and making a hash of it.

Was fairly absorbing although sometimes hard to hear when the actors intonation was poor.


10:46 PM


 

7 September 2005
Julius Caesar
directed by David Farr
Lyric Hammersmith

BANG. Lights flash. Cast runs out, put on jackets. The populous, modest clothes. Sort of like the Sopranos - leather bomber-style jackets (touch of the 80s) and 3 button stretch tops (with collars). Caesar, wealthy, black suit, large entourage, glamourous ladiees. Reminded me of Christopher Walken playing mafia - slightly shaky voice. Brutus and Cassius somewhere inbetween.

Sparce set but use of smoke and flourescent lighting created differences to space and atmosphere. Interesting use of video - sometimes recorded, sometimes playing a large version of what was going on onstage (like huge screens at a political rally), enabling closeups of the stage. Caesar was suffering from the megalomaniac's compulsion to have enormous icons of self around him.

Shakespeare is kind of talky - lots of monologues, and long speeches. I find my attention span has dwindled to frighteningly short proportions. However, this version helped to keep me interested - there was enough action and acting of the non-shakespearean type to animate the play and keep me engaged. No togas. A nod to american TV cop dramas, and armies in fatigues - the conspiritors vs the UN. The stabbing scene was violent, and bloody. Frenzied.

I've never studied the play and I'm not sure who's side I'm supposed to be on. Caesar seemed dictatorial, autocratic. Which is what the conspiritors are afraid of. Cassius was slippery, never quite sure of his intentions and prone to affected subserviance, which is never trustworthy. Brutus, a conflicted character, had a slightly flaky voice. His intentions are good, but the act which he takes part in leads me to have no sympathy - perhaps, because politicians are untrustworthy and we no longer watch public executions in my world, its harder to relate to the actions of the characters.


Julius Caesar is at the Lyric Hammersmith until 15 October.


6:21 PM


 

5 September 2005
Man Falling Down
Shakespeare's Globe


Its like the theatre itself is part of the play. You pay £5 for a standing ticket and lean with your elbows on the stage, staring up at the painted ceiling, surrounded by a tight circle of balconies topped off by thatched roof. Lovely.

This play is part of a series of Persephone Projects. This particular one is written and devised by Jack Shepherd and Oliver Cotton. Jack Shephard introduced it saying its a work in progress and this is where they'd got to. A masked play, all sorts of different kinds of masks used, to great effect.

It was based on the story of Adam and Eve's fall from grace when they are thrown out of Eden. Firstly taking us through the story as read from the bible, Adam and Eve in fleshtone pajama pants and t-shirts with nude 'bits' drawn on. Then they eat the apple. In the middle of this fairly typical biblical story an old woman come through the crowd and retells the story from Eve's point of view as an elderly woman. Adam and Eve are then thrown out of paradise.

They are then refugees in the second half. Adam and Eve as illegal aliens arriving in a foreign land, encountering sleasy rip-off merchants who take them for a ride and trick them into seedy jobs pole dancing. They are caught by the police, held and tried.

Marcello Magni was fantastically awful, a sleasy grotesque.

And just as my legs were getting tired Adam and Eve were up against a judge (they got deported) who was wearing an oven glove over his head instead of a wig (well it was pretending to be the wig). Bails and I cried laughing, that silent shoulder shuddering laughing, hiding our face in our sleeves with tears rolling down our faces.

Almost before I'd recovered my decorum the play ended with the merciless god and cast singing Lord of the Dance (hateful hymn).

Interesting to see the actors using the masks and their own faces (when wearing half masks) - their expressions altered in a mannered (affected) but most effective way.


10:44 PM


 
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