The side effects of Side Effects

1) I enjoyed the Side Effect. It might have been a run of the mill story but the direction that Soderberg took it was very inspiring. I thought that the photography and the music was like where Soderberg was trying to go with Solaris and he he got better at it. I was relieved that Lewd Jaw went for a nearly normal London accent and felt that it was his best performance since eXistenZ, but having said that I am not much one to comment on his performances since I have only seen a handfull of them. But in that light it might be one seemed to make him appear to be a valid actor again after many years.

There might be a few things to say about Lewd Jaw's different accents that are often unkind but it is probably good that he went into acting to try out his variety of different ways of speaking from around the world rather than sit in front of the TV instead practising dodgy ever changing accents. His eXistenZ Canadian accent sounded fine enough.

I liked how Soderberg shoved down the audience's throats lists of psychiatric medication names and their side effects andthe way the way these women were so happily recommending the latest pills as the ultimate thing to the main female character. In the end the products of the pharmaceutical industry are the extreme form of punishment rather than the saviour . Once Lewd Jaw's character found his place, it showed what an evil bastard he could be. I wanted Roony Mara's character to be free, and I thought that Roony Mara and Catherine Zeta Jones started to look nice together, they almost became forgivable. Helmut Newton might have come back from the dead to photograph them together doing interesting things with one another

2) A few days afterwards, I came to terms with the idea that Side Effects must really be about some bored Psychiatrist living out a Walter Mitty type fantasy. It's probably great movie to read too much into in that way without making too much out of it

3) Just for those confused about who Lewd Jaw is, that is the name I give to the actor who goes by the name of Jude Law. Renaming him this way gives the world something to chew over.

Hansel and Gretel

Well, saw the film and it was an enjoyable action packed load of old cobblers, not ideal for toddlers since it gets rather bloody at times with brains being splattered one direction and another, the appearance of the witches started to become a little bit boring after the appearance of one or two witches but the movie was interesting enough to get me to want to see the director's previous movie Dead Snow. It looks as if my experience of the movie was fairly typical. However one might say that the actors and the production staff etc involved in the movie didn't completely waste their time by making the film. This one I will definitely pick up in DVD form because it was that enjoyable

Lincoln

I went to see the Lincoln film yesterday at the cinema and enjoyed it very much, but started off wondering for a moment if the battle at the beginning was supposed to be one of the ones from Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter where the Confederates were vampires, I was sure that I saw someone ramming a metal spike of some sort that had broken off something, into the chest of one of the victims of the mud in this film.

However I got lost most of the time about who was supposed to be who, and who was supposed to be against or for the abolition of slavery in the film, but now I realise it looks as if Spielberg's script writer wasn't actually sure himself.

I thought that the Lincoln character was very pleasing and the brief dream sequence near the beginning of the film was very interesting to see and so I wondered because of that what sort of direction the movie would take but it didn't go any further with that sort of thing at all. However I thought that Daniel Day-Lewis held the film together very well

But I might even buy the DVD for the quick dream sequence in the Lincoln movie and not bother to watch the rest of it. I suppose they could have cut out a good chunk of what was filmed in Lincoln and give it some better form rather than forcing viewers to trudge through endless scenes where possibly very little was actually taken in from the dialogue. 

I received a text message this morning from a friend named Peter who wrote "Brief note. Discussing truth v. 'Artistic licence'- or LYING -in films, this morning on Radio 4, a film critic said that, though both Argo & Lincoln distort history- for instance the congressmen-or do I mean senators- from Connecticut did NOT apparently vote against the 13th amendment- All four voted in favour -and a current representative for Connecticut was extremely angry that his predecessors were portrayed as opposing abolition (of slavery); -it seems that neither film will suffer at the Oscars as a result,- while Zero Dark Thirty, with its contention that Bin Laden was tracked down due to information by torture, is as a consequence likely to have its haul of awards diminished. Maybe the message is that if you distort history in a way which which doesn't offend too many American's self-righteousness, that's OK; but present, in your movie, Americans being as vicious, ruthless, cruel and corrupt as people of other nations, then you'll be punished by the academy awards committee". 

However I also very much liked the shots of the dimly lit room with the net curtains and the light pouring through those windows.

Some title like Djingle Djangle

Django Unchained

I remember seeing that movie today that might as well be called Djingling Djangling Chain as far as I am concerned,  and realised that the movie was a lot longer than I expected it to be. Despite the fact that I didn't understand what people in the audience found so funny and I got a little bored with the endless bloodshed and violent deaths, but I thought it was a marvelous story and a good number of actors were playing roles with unusual twists to them. There were some scenes that had very brief moments that were beautifully shot in a haunting way such as when the maids were preparing the dinner table and the black slave women were wandering around a garden or sitting on swings in one of the plantations. As a whole I felt that I had watched a very enjoyable good film that almost went off in some curious directions.

So that was the first Tarantino movie that I saw at the cinema since the Kill Bill movies and before that it was the Pulp Fiction movie

It looks as if once every ten years he makes a movie that I want to see in the cinema. The idea of a ritual did come across to me, I haven't seen Gosford Park and I am not quite sure why I was thinking about Peter Greenaway during these ethereal moments because there didn't seem to be a directly obvious connection other than ethereal flamboyance with artistic direction in those seconds.

Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, who remembers the name?

a) I managed to get to see the new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and found it to be quite splendid action film, although it seemed as if they did their best to ditch corny one liners and actually give Arnie a few scenes where is seemed as if we had at least a minute or two of actual acting from him which might be a worrying thing for some people. So it shouldn't be a surprise if it bombs but it wasn't a big budget movie anyway. Shades of spaghetti western lightly stir friend in a Korean way. The way the blood and violence in it was sometimes bleakly dark which might be something to do with Jee-woon Kim the director. 

b) I liked Jee-Woon Kim's A Tale of Two Sisters very much when it came out almost a decade back

c) I think this movie also had a bit of the gun debate as a subtext if that can be said

So the Gnome King said....

The Gnome King, code name for one of the inhabitants of the Harrow environment, said to Wmm while at a bus stop and aboard a bus and in stream of conscious mode : 

"You know, I walk in the street here, right I sit there, by myself and some bastard had driven into a bus stop, right, he has, some bastard had driven into a bus stop, right, it's true down that road down there, he drove into a bus stop. you know, It's serious, you know"

"They want me to give up smoking, no smoking in my own, my own, er, room , they don't want me to smoke, course I smoke, I'm allowed to smoke. That's not going to kill anybody is it. That's not very good is it. When I smoke, I smoke, you know, if I can't breathe air in and I'm breathing gas of some, some description, right, and if there's some gas leak there, right and it's all over Burnt Oak there. Right, and there's gas everywhere, and there's gas over there, and it was stinking gas, and I put a cigarette in the toilet, I have this idea that erm, that if I put a cigarette in the toilet, it could explode. They've put spirits of salt there, right and supposedly, somebody in my erm, my car there, right and I'm in the kitchen by myself, I phone somebody up there, I said I reported it, right, leave him, right, don't talk to him, right, I put the phone down on them, right, and I'm not talking to him anymore, right, don't talk to them, don't talk to them. He says I can't beat them with a brolly, right…."

"I can't seem to drive, I can't seem to drive, I don't like driving, they drive so fast, right, you know, they drive so fast. I lifted something up there, doing a weight training there. they're all in there, I was on a squash court there, and they all hang around erm, Hanson Road there, I'm driving away in Anselm Road, driving there, I'm driving away, when I'm driving in a car, because what happens when you're driving in a car, right, I'm driving away by myself, and supposedly, I was driving, and i got a parking fine and I got some kind of parking tickets with something there, right and I parked it there, and I ripped it to pieces, I didn't pay for it, I threw it away, right and then supposedly I parked it in the drive there, Kieth thinks that I burgled his house, right, which I didn't, people were smashing it to pieces, they beat the fuck out of him then, right, here in number 9 now, I hear them and they raided number 9, they're in number 5 Hanson Avenue, I'm watching television and they think I'm in number five, right , I'm not, the police are in there and there's a fire in five right, there's a fowl smell in the garden there, and there's a stink there, there's a dog there, there're all these dogs in there, and I'm thinking they've hit this Alsation dog there, right, this poor Alsation dog there and I'm thinking what total and absolute arsehole. They have ordered their dogs in their gear in "Montesors", playing football there, right, they're playing football. I opened my door and supposedly I touched something, I can't open the door, I can't change the lock at all, I got change for no lock, right, I have a door it's okay, I electrocute … there and everybody says that they don't know what it is, right, and supposedly I have a problem touching metal and I think it's made of metal."

"Somebody's erm sending me letters, they don't belong to me, right, and I think to myself, why on earth are they sending me letters if they don't belong to me, and I take it down to the post office by myself, right, and that means I go to the post office, they're changing their mind about everything, right, I go to the post office, I go in there, I buy a load of stamps there, fill out an application form, right, stamp whatever, whatever, whatever it is, I phoned the court up, I phoned the court up, I went to Bishop Stortford or something, I went there, I went to Essex Police Station, Essex Magistrates court, they changed the court there, right, I was driving then, very very fast. I can't see them coming up front or the left, but there's something about tailgating, right, driving behind me, right, there's all this, erm, car crashes, right, I'm driving very fast. I'm on a train, somebody's leaving messages on my answer phone, right, something about football, and I'm thinking , why do they want to phone me , I'm looking at a telegraph pole, somebody's driven into a brick wall and I'm terrified that possibly that…."

Conversation was ended by the fact that Wmm got off the bus and could no longer hear the words of the Gnome King as he remained in his stream of consciousness flow and the doors shut.

Texas Chainsaw whatever

I recall that I went today to see Texas Chainsaw 3D, made as a sort of a direct sequel to the very original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To some degree it made the character Leatherface seem quite fearful and also a being that one might have sympathy for. However a trail of blood that went on for quite a distance in the film possibly went on too far to fill up one body and certainly too much for the body in the state that it was found. 

There were a few other things that just didn't ring right with the story but it was a brave attempt and the director had the original house rebuilt for the movie rather than something that looked like the remains of the house next door in the original movie. It certainly wasn't a cheesy piece of rubbish, it was much more interesting that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake even. 

I actually enjoyed the film for what it was, along with the unfolding drama, it didn't leaveme wondering if I could have spent the time doing something else such as stare at the wall or through a window, but a little while later the film seemed more and more meaningless as a memory. It didn't quite have the bite of the original but this seemed to be a serious attempt at a different sort of a movie.

Maybe the sequel to this movie might do away with the events of this Texas Chainsaw 3D completely to look as if it might have a sequel worth watching because the story didn't really set itself up for any sort of an interesting follow up movie, unless I totally missed something.