MOVIE - Les Amours Imaginaires (2010)

Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats) is a French movie that I had been wanting to watch for the past year and finally had the pleasure of doing so after my exams. Directed, written, edited by Xavier Dolan, he plays the protagonist Francais, a young man that falls for the new guy in town, Nick, at the same time that his good friend Mary does.

That's pretty much it, plot-wise. However, the movie does not depict the conventional love triangle and some scenes were uncomfortable to watch. No, not because of the acting (I quite enjoyed the performances of Dolan and Monia Chokri who plays Mary), but how much the movie reminds you the embarrassment that almost comes hand in hand with infatuation.

The competition between Mary and Francis is never explicitly said, but the undercurrent sensations of jealousy and lust are prevalent and the fact that the protagonists are unaware of all this, of how all their emotions are blanketed across their faces for the world to see allows us to reflect on our past infatuations. The movie illustrates how such lust can consume us, influencing how we act, how we perceive the world and the relationships present in our lives.

Les Amours Imaginaires is gorgeous, of which can easily be mistaken as the stylized preteniousness of any conventional French film and I must admit that thought did cross my mind. However, Dolan in this interview, raises an interesting point:

"The film is about the way we magnify people when we’re in love -- walking down the street feeling like we’re floating, hence the slow motion, the music, the costumes, the colors. A lot of people said it was a case of style over substance, but being in love is often a case of style over substance."

I feel that this movie and its stylistic devices felt less awkward than it did for Dolan's first film J'ai tué ma mère and Les Amours Imaginaires was more fluid in general, however I found more depth within J'ai tué ma mère and thus was able to connect to it more. Nevertheless, both films are fantastic and I look forward to eventually watching Laurence Anyways.

(x)

MOVIE - Scene Stealing Speeches

When I like a movie, there's usually one exceptional scene or speech that stands out, as if the whole movie was just built up to that particular moment. Here are some examples:


"Say a bomb goes off in a marketplace, you know, detonated by some suicidal zealot who hates I dont know - you know, fruit or vegetables or local handicrafts - viscera and gobbets of flesh and wet hanks of hair and teeth and splinters of bone are just shooting through airborne sprays of blood like on those soft drink commercials where the lemon splices splash through the arc of soda in some slow-motion orgasm of what it means to be refreshing. And every time it happens, it gets less tragic, not more.... 

I mean, we're just.. we're just fucked beyond all measure."

• The New Tenants (2009)

“If you really want to do this with your life you have to believe that you’re necessary. And you are. People want to live like this in their cars and their big fucking houses that they can’t even pay for? Then you’re necessary. The only reason they all get to continue living like kings is because we’ve got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off and the whole world gets really fucking fair really fucking quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don’t. They want what we have to give them, but they also want to play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from. That’s more hypocrisy than I’m willing to swallow. Fuck them. Fuck normal people.”

• Margin Call (2011) [here]

"It wasn't just the baby that died that day. Something inside Sick Boy was lost and never returned. It seemed that he had no theory with which to explain a moment like this... nor did I. Our only response was to keep on going and 'fuck everything'. pile misery upon misery, heap it up on a spoon and dissolve it with a drop of bile, then squirt it into a stinking, puerile vein and do it all over again. Keep on going, getting up, going out, robbing, stealing, fucking people over. Propelling ourselves with longing towards the day that it would all go wrong, because no matter how much you stash, or how much you steal you never have enough. No matter how often you go out and rob and fuck people over, you always need to get up and do it all over again. "

• Trainspotting (1996)

"I ask this... If there should be an assassination, I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out - - If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door... And that's all. I ask for the movement to continue. Because it's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power... it's about the "us's" out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us's. Without hope, the us's give up - I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you... You gotta give em' hope... you gotta give em' hope."

• Milk (2008)

Reading these makes me want to re-watch the movies again, but I don't have enough time to :(
I think what makes these excerpts so great is that they depict the real essence of the movie and by reading these, you're transported back into the movie without actually watching it. Movies can go by so quickly and so much within it can go unappreciated, so I suppose this blog post is a way for me to remember them.

Cannes Film Festival 2012

is happening at the moment! Oh how I wish to be watching a film now, but the HSC awaits me. Nevertheless, I've been watching some of the film trailers and I'm looking to forward to watching these one day:

Un certain regard

Laurence Anyways (no surprise there lol) - trailer

• I skimmed through this review, it's pretty mixed but I loved J'ai tué ma mère so I'm still going to check this out.

Antiviral - trailer

Mystery - trailer

I haven't had a chance to see the trailers of the ones in the competition yet, but hopefully I will soon. Also, Ewan McGregor is part of the jury this year! I'm looking forward to reading the results later on.

MUSIC - Movie Soundtrack Recommendations

Samskeyti - Sigur Rós (Mysterious Skin)

In context, this song is heartbreaking. Every time I listen to this, I remember exactly how I felt during the last scene of the movie. I don't listen to this much because I want to retain that feeling, I don't want it to diminish.

Johanna - Jamie Campbell Bower (Sweeney Todd)

Easily my favourite song from my favourite Tim Burton movie.

Born Slippy - Underworld (Trainspotting)

The tone this song sets in the final scene of Trainspotting is one of the main reasons why I really liked the movie so much. The film itself was great, but the ending was what stuck out to me at most. ("So why did I do it? I could offer a million answers - all false. The truth is that I'm a bad person. But, that's gonna change - I'm going to change.")

Man Or Muppet (The Muppets)

I had no idea that Jim Parsons was in The Muppets so this gave me a huge surprise. Needless to say, I was grinning the whole way through this song.

Hope you're having a good weekend!

MOVIE - Howl (2010)

Howl is an experimental film that combines both animation and cinema, portraying the life of poet Allen Ginsberg (played by James Franco) and the 1957 obscenity trial of his poem 'Howl'. I've had the film's IMDB page bookmarked for over a month and finding myself with time today, I decided to watch it.

Admittedly, I don't know much about Allen Ginsberg or his poems but subsequent to this film, I have a desire to enlighten myself and read Howl (of which a good portion of it was read and analysed in the movie). I think that my lack of understanding or knowledge about the Beat Generation impeded on my experience of watching Howl, a movie I enjoyed but have no intention of watching again.

There are a couple things that I especially liked, one of them being when Allen talks about prophecy:

“At the moment of composition you don’t necessarily know what it means; it comes to mean something later. After a year or two, the meaning becomes clear ... which takes time like a photograph developing slowly. What prophecy actually is, is not knowing whether the bomb will fall in 1942, it’s knowing and feeling something which someone knows and feels in a hundred years, and maybe articulating it in a hint that they will pick up on in a hundred years.”

And while he says this, he's looking at a painting and experiencing this while we, the audience, are viewing the film itself. So here, this idea of prophecy, that an emotion can transcend through different mediums and times, is displayed on various levels, not only with the character in a film, but with the actual audience of the film itself.

The courtroom scenes stand out to me, particularly Jon Hamm's character as a lawyer defending the literary validity of the poem.This to me was the most memorable part of the movie.

"The battle of censorship will not be finally settled by your honor’s decision, but you will either add to liberal-educated thinking, or by your decision you will add fuel to the fire of ignorance. Let there be light. Let there be honesty. Let there be no running from non-existent destroyers of morals. Let there be honest understanding."

With that, I'll end this blog post with the trailer for Howl, of which I watched after the movie.

MOVIE - Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho (2010)

Saw this film on recommended tumblr, thought I'd give it ago. It's a Portuguese short film about a blind boy and his friendship with a girl and their new classmate. That's about all I can say plot-wise, anything else will spoil the  movie.

Some of the comments on youtube suggest that a sequel should be made, but I disagree. What makes the film so great is its simplicity in dealing with contemporary issues. It talks about something that's so controversial in such a tranquil way and it makes you think 'why are we making such a big deal today about something that is, and should be considered, normal'. This is why I think a sequel is unnecessary, a continuation is unneeded when so much is already conveyed in the 17 minutes.

Overall, this is such a lovely, heart-warming film. The acting was great and the length of it was perfect, not too short or long. This is a film I'm glad I've watched and hope to watch again sometime in the future.

MOVIE - Laurence Anyways (2012) Film Trailer

It seems kind of pointless to have a blog post about a trailer for a film but nevertheless, I'm so excited for this! I absolutely loved 'J'ai tué ma mère' by Xavier Dolan, so I have high hopes for Laurence Always.

Slightly related, a few months ago I watched the television drama 'Worried About The Boy' with Douglas Booth. To be honest, that was one of the only films I've watched that centred around transvestism. Of course that is different to Laurence Anyways, of which is about a man and his transgender transitioning process, but nevertheless, both the movies are really not types of things I usually watch. It's a good thing read/watch/listen to forms of entertainment you don't normally engage with, as so much can be overlooked and you can really miss out.

I'm really looking forward to this movie coming out. From the trailer, the soundtrack sounds amazing, the characters are intriguing and I'm genuinely curious to what is going to happen. May 2012 is too far away for me :(

MOVIE - Shame (2011)

As always, I had very little knowledge of Steve McQueen's film Shame prior to watching it, only that it was about sex, a given considering its R18+ rating. Yes, the film is centred around a man's sexual addiction but there's so much more beyond that.

"In New York City, Brandon's carefully cultivated private life -- which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction -- is disrupted when his sister Sissy arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay."
- IMDB

The storyline is not complicated or elaborate. There are not sudden plot twists or curve balls, what you see on screen is simply what you get.

That is why the film is simultaneously simple and sophisticated. The film purely displays the destructive combination of Brandon's addiction and Sissy's impulsive lifestyle. Easily put, the siblings cannot function together, but beyond that are dark themes not just about sex, but façades, strained relationships and self destruction portrayed not only in Brandon but in Sissy as well.

The 'explicit sex scenes' didn't disturb me at all. About 3/4 through, I was even wondering what the point of the movie was. But the last 20 minutes of the film really hit hard. The movie is built up and executed well and the ending (and by extension the opening) scene was perfect. Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan are excellent and have such good chemistry which is why the movie works so well.

Brandon draw parallels with Patrick Bateman of American Psycho, nonetheless the character stands on his own and I'm conflicted in whether to reprimand or pity him.

Overall, despite my original doubts, this is a very engaging, intriguing, intense film. A seemingly straightforward plot gives you much to think about and more than one viewing is required to comprehend the film.

MOVIE - Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

I've been wanting to watch this movie for awhile and had the chance yesterday to see it. One thing I like doing is watching a movie with no prior knowledge of it and before watching this movie, all I knew about it was self-explanatory from its title, that this one kid really just wanted a day off. I was pleasantly surprised by this movie.

Before watching the movie, I was aware of its 7.9/10 rating on IMDB and heard good reviews about it but I did not predict how much I would love it.

It has a light-hearted story line of Ferris Bueller and his best friend and girlfriend taking the day off school but touches on issues involving uncertainty after high school, friendship and strained relationships within families in a way which the audience can relate to the movie without dampening the viewing experience.

Ferris is the one kid in the school in which everything goes his way and that you should hate him but find yourself loving him instead and because he's such an engaging and endearing character, you can't help but root for him to make it through the day without getting caught by his school principal.

There is one particular hilarious scene which Solane's (Ferris' girlfriend) father calls the school to get her out of class. The principal, thinking it's Ferris who's impersonating the father insults him, but then Ferris rings up the school to ask that his sister collect his homework. Then the principal realises that the person who he thinks is imitating Solane's father is not Ferris and assumes he's actually been speaking to Solane's father along.

Then it turns out Solane's father is being impersonated by Ferris' best friend Cameron.



One interesting piece of trivia:

Within the movie, the scene with the economics lecture is unscripted. Ben Stein the economics teacher actually graduated with an honour in economics and was supposed to lecture off-screen but this changed and instead was told to improvise the lecture on camera. Stein said that:

"Everybody on the set applauded. I thought they were applauding because they had learned something about supply side economics. But they were applauding because they thought I was boring...It was the best day of my life."

This is a great movie and I especially recommend it if you need a good laugh or your mood to be lifted. To end this, here are some good quotes in the movie (thank you IMBD):

• Sloane: (talking about life after high school) What do you think Ferris is gonna do?
  Cameron: He's gonna be a fry cook on Venus.


• Teacher: Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
  Simone: Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
  Teacher: Thank you, Simone.
  Simone: No problem whatsoever.


• Boy in Police Station: You wear too much eye makeup. My sister wears too much. People think she's a whore.


• Ferris: Cameron is so uptight, if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.