I know that you are all craving for more of these meme thingies from me, and I figured, Why not do two in a row? Especially, since this is a completely different type of meme, dealing with my literary tastes. I picked it up a few days back at Jason’s, my usual source.
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A new installment in the James Bond franchise has an irresistible pull on me. While I have few opportunities to go to the movies and tend to barely tolerate the distractions that accompany the procedure of sharing the viewing experience with a bunch of strangers, certain movie releases to me constitute “events” that I find hard to put off until their future availability on cable.
So, on Saturday, Natasha and I left the children to entertain themselves in front of TV and computers, and went for a matinee showing of Quantum of Solace.
I’ll give this movie 
purely on entertainment value, but I am ambivalent about it. On one hand, it has striking locales, fast-paced action, daring escapes, fanciful technology, great stunts, chases and explosions - all that I enjoy the most about Bond movies. On the other hand, I also expect a coherent storyline, and the sequence of events in this movie appears a bit too haphazard and disjointed to me.
There are a few spoilers below, proceed with caution.
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I am suddenly quite busy at work, with little time to come up with a worthwhile narrative for a post. Seeing how I’ve used one of my regular cop-outs just yesterday, I impulsively decided that I needed to pick up a little meme that Jason had tagged me with. I am not going to recount the rules - head over to Jason’s if you want to learn them in detail - nor am I tagging anyone afterwards (although, anyone interested in picking this up, feel free; and by the way, anyone interested in a free link to their website, please let me know and I’ll be happy to tag you next time). I am linking back to the originator of this meme, Blog Cabins, because it seems like proper etiquette.
The exercise itself seemed fun enough to take my mind off work for a few minutes. Here, then, is the list of my favorite movies, one per each letter of the alphabet. Yeah, in a nutshell, that’s all there is to this.
At first, I wanted to follow a theme, but later realized that I cannot call the selections favorites anymore.
I watched movies with regularity in the first half of the month, before Natasha and I resumed our almost-nightly routine of catching up with the latest episodes of our favorite American TV dramas. I guess I’m finding myself with a bit more spare time than usual these days.
Several of the movie sessions were devoted to repeat viewings of recent instant favorites such as Ocean’s Thirteen or The Incredibles (both of which I briefly discussed last month). On other occasions, I watched recorded movies that I have seen in the past, for instance, the violently hilarious Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Of the new - for me - movies discussed herein, a couple, Chocolat and 2 Days in Paris came to the fore via “Honey, do you want to watch this together?” inquiry from my lovely wife, and one more, Run, Fatboy, Run, via a rarely-seen desire of my elder daughter to watch something with her old father. Three other movies, The Hunt for Red October, Support Your Local Sheriff and Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer, were semi-arbitrarily selected from the PVR queue as usual.
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It took me a few extra days to get around to writing the next installment of one of my favorite regular features of the blog. But here it is.
The first half of September gave me several opportunities to watch long-recorded movies. A man can only take so much football, in the end. So, I got around to watching a couple of recent hits that were on my “must-see” list, Live Free or Die Hard and Ocean’s Thirteen, two movies that I missed in the past but always wanted to see, Burnt by the Sun and The Incredibles, one “oldie” that I heard referred to many times as a “classic”, The Dirty Dozen, and a couple of flicks that we chosen on the basis of “the shortest-duration movie currently recorded on the PVR”, Shoot’ em Up and Rush Hour 3. There was also a children-oriented flick, The Thief Lord, that we watched as a family.
The brief impressions and reviews are below the fold for those who are interested.
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During the short periods of being home in August, I made a bit of an effort to reduce my PVR queue. Except, it not a queue in the normal sense of the word. At any given time, I have fifteen-to-twenty movies recorded off my satellite TV in the past that I want to eventually get to watching. When I find a chance to do that, I pick a movie from the list in a fairly arbitrary fashion, adhering to neither FIFO nor LIFO methodology. Some of the titles may be languishing on the back-burner for quite some time because of that. But since movies that I thus record and watch are not recent releases, I am not too concerned about waiting another month or five before finally getting to them.
Anyway, below the fold are brief reviews of the following: Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Blade Runner, For Your Consideration, Hoodwinked, as well as one recent release, Sex and The City (and no, I did not watch that one on my own!).
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Surprising myself, I had a stretch of watching a movie roughly every other day in the first half of July.
I am not too keen on watching movies piecemeal, and my usual daily itinerary rarely leaves a two-hour block to watch one of our DVDs or one of the recordings accumulating on my PVR. Late at night, when the kids retire to their bedrooms, Natasha and I are more likely to watch a recorded episode of one of our favorite US TV dramas than a movie. We, maybe, get to watch 4-5 movies a month. But in early July, Natasha was occupied with our visiting dignitaries and worked through the photos that we kept shooting, so I regularly found myself left to my own devices after 10pm or so. Since my PVR archive contains mostly movies that I doubt Natasha has any interest in watching, I started to work through it a little.
I revisited old favorites such as Midnight Run and one of the few comparatively recent movies that I had actually managed to watch in a theater before, The Bourne Ultimatum (which I like the best of the trilogy). I also watched several titles for the very first time. The following are brief impressions.
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We were watching an old Soviet comedy with our friends last night, and I was reminded of an item that was sitting on my blogging back-burner for a while.
Natasha and I have a pretty large collection of movies on DVDs. Not as large as some, I am sure, but still quite extensive. A large part of the collection consists of Russian musicals, comedies - and musical comedies - from 70’s-80’s, but there are also a number of French movies that were very popular in our childhood and youth. A few weeks ago, on a night that we did not have any specific plans, we decided to watch Le Jouet, a movie that I probably have not seen in twenty years (even though the DVD was acquired a long time ago).
And what do you know!? I loved it all over again!
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When I do get to see a new release at the cinema, it is usually something that my kids want to watch. We did not have any specific plans for this weekend, my Aunt went back home, and while Becky has a booming social life with almost daily events, Kimmy was a bit bored with the lack of exciting activities, so Natasha and I decided that a trip to the movies would be a perfect antidote.
We went to see Kung Fu Panda, which opened in the UK just a couple of days ago. Kimmy loved it, and I found it tremendously entertaining myself. The story of a lovable misfit, who suddenly finds himself thrown into the middle of events for which he is clearly ill-suited, but from which he emerges triumphant and with a sense of finding his place in the world, is as old as anything, and this animated take on it tells the story at a close-to-prefect pitch.
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I have watched a bunch of movies in the last few days, from PVR recordings made months and weeks ago. Where does he find the time? some may ask, what with tons of football games already on tap. Let’s just say that in the last few days of Natasha’s Mom’s visit to us, my presence was not much required for the family activities. I had some time to myself at the conclusion of each night’s game, as well as several hours over the weekend when I could no longer stand my PC and did not feel like going outside on my own. Not even to play golf!
Pathetic, ain’t it?
None of these films inspired me to write a full-size review, so here is a quick roundup.
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Following once again in the steps of my inventive brother, I have gotten around to compiling a list of my favorite movie scenes. I have no doubt that given time I can come up with a few hundred more, but even this small selection is quite indicative of my overall cinematic affections. These scenes also have one simple thing in common: If I were to accidentally come across them on TV, I would not flip away from the channel…
This exercise was limited to English-language movies. Russian compilation may be attempted in the future.
I have just finished reading Merde Happens, which is the third installment in Stephen Clarke’s series about a young Englishman’s experiences with foreign cultures. Unlike the first two installments, A Year in the Merde and Merde Actually (I skipped over the latter by pure coincidence of it not being sold at the Eurostar terminal bookshop when I was in need of a new book), this book is not about France, but about good ol’ U. S. of A. instead.
Our protagonist, Paul West, an Englishman who now permanently lives in Paris, finds himself in a dire financial situation related to his tearoom business. In order to get the money he needs, he signs up for a wackily-organized campaign in the States to promote UK as a tourist destination. He takes his French girlfriend along for the trip, and proceeds by car, train and plane from New York to Boston and back, then to Miami, New Orleans and Las Vegas, ending up in Los Angeles, all the while getting in and out of silly, sticky, and occasionally downright dangerous, circumstance.
I wasn’t planning to write a review at all. While the author continues to exhibit considerable wit and mastery of comical situations, the plot gets too ludicrous for my taste, the situations too grotesque and the jabs towards American culture too gratuitous. The latter, however, are based on outsider observations that echo my own “reverse” observations of Britain through the eyes of an American.
By the simplest gauge, I have already had a handful of posts devoted to the tried subject of British weather, so I can hardly expound on it any more without truly approximating a broken gramophone record. Yet, that particular topic remains - as it would be in any civilized discourse - the only one that can inexhaustibly feed a conversation. For instance, the glorious week and a half of sun and warmth has now seemingly been replaced with the more customary drizzle and chill…
Oops, here I go again. Sorry!
Instead, let me heap a new meme thingie on you, courtesy of my friend Jason, who himself picked it up elsewhere.
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Oh man! I feel pretty let down by how the trilogy ended! I don’t exactly agree with Becky, since her view is more specific towards the last scene, but I am rather dismayed with how the overall story and all of its plotlines ended.
And the sadly ironic thing is, the third part of His Dark Materials trilogy finally rises to the level of engaging storytelling that I like to see in epic books. Landscapes are painted in detail, not briefly passed through. Things happen not just for the sole purpose of advancing the plot, but to make the world alive and substantial. Characters develop, even though most of it is due to revelations, as opposed to steady emotional progress. |
I cannot avoid spoilers in this not-exactly-review, including events up to the very end of the story. If you plan to read the book yourself and are sensitive to the idea of discovering the plot on your own, please do not click on the link to the rest of the article.
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I certainly went through The Subtle Knife much faster than through Northern Lights, which is partly of function of having more spare time on my hands in the absence of the rest of the family, but also a function of the second book being better than the first. The things that are important to me in a large-sized book all improved: The dialogues became conversations and not a vehicle to briefly state an important fact before moving on; the descriptions of places became multi-dimensional; and the action morphed from following a single main character obsessed with a single idea to following several undoubtedly converging plot lines and focusing on multiple characters along the way. |
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I finally finished reading the first book of His Dark Materials trilogy - yes, I know, two months for a single book is pathetic! - and it left me with ambivalent feelings.
The feelings are probably influenced by the fact that I saw the movie before I read the book, so I already had a few preconceptions and visualizations that were hard to shake faced with the slightly different narrative. But while the book certainly went to appreciable lengths to explain and set up the universe - compared to all the gaps that left me bewildered after watching the movie - it stopped well short of convincing me that the universe was fleshed out, and not just a fancy random flight of fantasy. |
To put it bluntly, the characterizations were trifling, the emotions occurred quite suddenly and were discernible for only brief stretches, and the narration ambled from one event to the next without dispensing much effort on making the characters and the world they inhabit truly come to life.
As an admitted fan of fantasy, I was very much looking forward to finally seeing Stardust. It did not disappoint. Engaging plot, a universe populated by well-developed characters, a healthy sprinkling of magic - it all comes together to serve as a wonderful stage to explore The Big Idea. Which happens to be not about an affirmation of some philosophical credo or a celebration of the triumph of good over evil, - make no mistake, the good does prevail! - but a simple lovely truth.
My general disinterest in lives of the celebrities has caught up with me today, in an unexpected way. Just two days ago, I expressed my delight with the recent Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, only to learn today that she happens to believe in two of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories in human history - that 9/11 was staged by the US government and that a man never walked on the Moon.
I am faced with a problem. I normally cannot bring myself to admire someone’s work if I dislike that someone as a person (see, Gibson, Mel, whom I used to like well enough until that infamous traffic stop), and it’s hard for me to like a person whose sense of reality is so evidently warped. I have not found anything to suggest that what she said was said in jest, or uttered for any reasons beyond expressing her true beliefs, and while I do not deny anyone the right to believe in whatever they choose, I reserve the right to call them idiots whenever their beliefs are, well, idiotic. Which means that any movie that she appears in will forever be colored for me in displeasing tones from now on.
It’s true what they say: Ignorance is bliss. I was better off an hour ago without having learned of this via some week-old entries in my blog aggregator.
I admit that I am biased when it comes to travel flicks. Show me a knockout beauty with the backdrop of gorgeous vistas, and I start salivating. Sprinkle in some cultural subtext, fortified by the prominent role of local food and wine, and I am so ready to live vicariously through the on-screen characters, that the actual plot becomes rather unimportant. Make the locale one of my favorite places on Earth, and I will invariably give you a thumbs up.
The events in A Good Year occur in Provence (Favorite place? Check! Vistas? Check!). The female lead is the ravishing Marion Cotillard (now, a newly-minted Oscar winner for her role in La Vie en Rose). The setting is nothing less than a vineyard estate. Everything is properly aligned for my enjoyment.
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I finished reading Stephen Clarke’s A Year in the Merde the other day, and I must say that it was a fun read.
The book that seemingly aims to ridicule the deserving bits of French way of life, succeeds in that, and more. It actually does a good job of exploring insecurities of a person suddenly faced with a world heretofore foreign to him. (And it heaps considerable ridicule on the Anglo-Saxon behavioral patterns, as well.) The circumstances are habitually exaggerated and the stereotypes, subsequently, get decidedly grotesque and overblown treatment. The story is terribly over-libidinous as well. But anybody who has ever been to Paris will readily recognize many familiar and uncomfortable situations - and laugh at their own recollections as much as at the story. |
Since the author is British, some of the stereotypes explored in his account would make less sense to an American. I obviously have an advantage of being already familiar with some British specifics, but I do not believe that an American reader without the additional insight that I possess would be much disadvantaged.
I suppose I can only recommend this book to people who have generally positive feelings about France. The book’s protagonist does warm up to several aspects of Parisian life towards the end, so that derision gradually lets appreciation to participate in the proceedings. French-haters will be repulsed, I am sure.
© 2008 Burlaki on the Thames
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