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).
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.
Although Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo are fine as the widowed admiral and widowed handbag designer with, respectively, 10 and 8 children when they decide to get married, the film cannot hold a candle to the 1968 original starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, supported by the likes of Van Johnson, Sidney Miller and Tom Bosley. Or, for that matter, to the Cheaper by the dozen films that started in 1950 with Clifton Webb, Myrna Loy and Jeanne Craine, and continued in 2003 and 2005 as Steve Martin remakes. If you want to see a family film with lots of kids, then go to the originals. For this one, suggest you send the kids by themselves on Saturday morning (or do they have kiddie shows anymore?).
23 December 2005 Ballets Russes Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, California
Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, directors A documentary must for all balletomanes and an enjoyable cultural history for those who only enjoy the occasional dance programme. Great early footage, going back to the 1930s. Marvelous, still alive, talking heads and sometimes moving bodies too many to mention but including Irina Beronova, Taliana Riabouchinska and archive footage of Alicia Markova who died in 2005. Two of the five famous native American ballerinas from Oklahoma–Maria Tallchief and Yvonne Chouteau–are there, along with Chouteau’s Argentine husband Miguel Terekhov. A story of the growth, struggle and, finally, demise of this wonderful, international company.
A long time ago when I first met Bails at university, my boyfriend of the time was away studying in Egypt, and she and I used to go and watch art-house erotic cinema. Some of them were good, others were pants.
I had wanted to see the Libertine because a. it has Johnny Depp (rather predictably and much to my current boyfiend's horror) and b. it was supposedly a great costume drama. When the movie started it brought us right back to our university days. The opening sequence set the tone and gave good warning of what was going to happen.
Grainy film used, dark and although the characters used the pasty white makeup of the time, they frequently appeared un-made up. The film was sort of gritty, and dirty. Seemed to portray the time in a very realistic manner. None of the over-romanticism of many costume dramas.
Johnny Depp plays John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester - witty, clever, promiscuous. A poet and a playwright. He is banished, unbanished and banished once more.
But the film is like a play of that time. It starts with a prologue. The dialogue is sort of shakespearean with a good deal of base langauge thrown in but in a way seems very fitting. Excess, exuberance and womanising in an Aubrey Beardsleyerotica asthetic. Very cheeky, rather rude and hilarious in part until the Earl gets syphilis and ultimately dies.
Went expecting the genius of Matthew Bourne. Production was great - beautiful lighting, evocative and atmospheric. Music was familiar (and was based on themes from the original movie score). And the stalls gave it a standing ovation.
But but. There were moments which were great - ensemble dances, with music that carried you along but really the dancing was weak generally. Nothing of the excitement of say a Michael Clark production, nothing which made you feel wow. It was a literal translation of the film and therefore somehow didn't manage to make the most of the fact it was dance. The film was already a fairytale, so it sort of needed to bring something extra which is couldn't quite. Did like the dancing topiary though.
