Saturday, March 24, 2007

reprise and random ramblings

These days it is a nightfilmfestival in Copenhagen, and last night I planned on having a Norwave (as it is described in the filmfestival programme) -marathon, watching Sønner, Free Jimmy and Reprise. It turned out I ended up watching only Reprise, which was also the one I was most keen on seeing.



The last year I have started to become quite interested in things norwegian, I guess one needs to get away from it to see the beauty of it. Walking around the mountains of Iceland made me long for and develop an interest for norwegian nature. (the northmost point I have been to in norway beeing bergen-->flom) I know I have something undiscovered right there. I have also started to watch Nytt på Nytt, Først og sist med Fredrik Skavlan, Typisk Norsk and Eva og Adam online, to get in touch with the mothercountry and figuring out what is going on there, but mostly because they are GREAT tv-shows. I also try to read books in norwegian, rather than in english. I am seeing more and more wonderful things that is actually going on in norway. One of which, is the movies that have been popping out of norway the last few years (norwave). norwegian is suddenly, to my ears, becoming a beautiful language suited to be captured on the silkscreen. in my early years i refused to watch norwegian tv-series and movies because norwegian sounded totally wrong. now I have come to realize that it is the acting and the dialogue that has changed, or my perception of it, into the better, not the language. it was suited all along. I have always preferred watching swedish or danish or even icelandic movies to the norwegian ones, just because I always though norwegian was a bad language to act on. but norwegian is actually the perfect language to act on or with! with all of our different dialects, that all have certain characteristics that we (norwegians) have certain assosiations to.

the patriot in me has awoken.

I took my moviebuddy baixiang with me to the cinema called Gloria, by rådhuspladsen. we enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine before the movie. I was excited to be able to show baixiang something in norwegian, seeing how our language of communication is english. (our danish-norwegian talks dont get us as far as those in english) the movie started out with an imagery of norwegian 17.may celibration, which made my norwegianbeatingheart skip a beat. people were walking around in bunads and russ were rolling around being drunk. proudly I turn to baixiang and whisper; "last time I was in norway during our national day; I was one of those; russ!"

onwards with the movie,
I was totally blown away.
maybe I say this a lot.
but I was.
the acting.
the music.
the plot.
the references.
one that stuck, the mentioning of the movie "Mondo Topless" by Russ Meyer, made be giggle. I watched this one while working in the videostore in iceland. I put it on, didnt know what to expect really, except of course what you can guess from the title. to my discovery this is a movie where topless girls are dancing, while their thoughts are voice-overed. and it goes on like this for I cant remember how long. but I was forced to shut it off seeing how children could come in to the videostore.

and back to the movie again:
this is such a beautiful, touching, mindblowingly fantastic movie. I dare say it is the best norwegian movie I ever saw (with a little bit of guilt towards Salmer fra kjøkkenet). I will let reprise and salmer fra kjøkkenet (directed by a man from my tiny hometown even!) share the first place in the norwegian department of my movieheart.

reprise has a lot of grace, a lot of warmth, and it is told in such a wonderful, wonderful way.
very impressive is how most of the actors are new to the game, and the fact that this was the first long movie made by director Joachim Trier. read a wonderful interview with him and his co-writer Eskil Vogt here (in english):

wow. but the acting! oh, the acting!

I think this movie made be realize that I too want to act.
yes, it might sound silly.
I might suck at it.
I have no idea how or where to start or how to go about at all.
but it is right now the thought that makes me smile.
and my stumach to be filled with very eager butterflies.

and oh, another thing worth mentioning.
I always fall for the leading character when I watch a movie.
it is something I have done since I was a little girl.
it is something all girls do when they watch titanic at age 13 and they fall in love with leonardo dicaprio.
but my infatuations with the main character who is acted by a man,
is,
maybe,
because of,
just the ability to act.
the abiltity to act is the one sole thing that captures my attention more than anything else.
and I am so intrigued by it, how these poeple become some one else for a short while,
they convince me that they are someone else.
maybe this ability is what makes me so interested.
mostly because I want to, so badly myself.

in this movie, both the two main boy characters were wonderfully charming,
but my infatuation fell heavely on the one called erik in the movie and Espen Klouman Høiner,
in real life.
it might be funny how i write this in a blog I share with a boyfriend.
but I am sure he does the same thing.
fall in love for a short while with the female character of the movies.
dont we all?
they are supposed to seduce us, capture our hearts.
and mostly,
they succeed in capturing mine.
I am easy to capture.
I know.

this was a great watch!
watch it!
if you are a very close friend of mine,
(I am guessing those are the only ones that actually read this blog)
then you can expect a copy for your next birthday.
my sister and my ex being the first ones coming up.

heres a short summary in english that I found on their website www.reprisefilm.no
REPRISE is a playful film about friendship, madness and creativity, about love and
sorrow, great ambitions and the often unpleasant clash between youthful
presumptions and reality. With its somewhat un-Norwegian structure, REPRISE
has a distinct style and narrative technique which moves the story forward in a rich
and enthusiastic manner.

heres a short summary in norwegian that I also found on their website:
Erik og Phillip har bekymringsløst dyrket punk, ironi, jenter og en felles drøm om
å bli store forfattere. Men nå er de snart 23 og hva har de gjort med livet sitt?
– Ingen verdens ting!

Så skjer alt. Phillip får utgitt sin første bok, stormforelsker
seg i Kari, men blir syk og må innlegges på psykiatrisk avdeling. Eriks bok blir også
omsider utgitt, noe som utløser en lammende redsel for å bli avslørt som fullstendig
talentløs; nevrosene er på opptur, kjæresten på vei ut og vennskapet til Phillip i ferd
med å rakne.

REPRISE er en norsk film du ikke har sett før; en humoristisk film om
vennskap og galskap, om kjærlighet og katastrofer og om ungdommelig overmot
som frontkolliderer med virkeligheten.

for a more professional review than I can bring

Sunday, March 18, 2007

the man who cried

one might think that I am obsessed with boys or men crying. since that also was somewhat the theme for my last viewed movie. I watched both these two movies on the same day, and it was highly coincidential. I had watched boys dont cry, then my friend baixiang called me and asked if I wanted to go see the man who cried in cinemateket. I did not know it was on.

the movie starts off in russia where a tiny jewish girl has to part with her father. the father went to america. then the little girl has to leave the village, because war is coming, and she ends up on a boat to england where she is raised by an english couple. she grows up and becomes christina ricci. she loves to sing, and she goes to paris to entertain. here she meets russian lola. lola is acted by cate blanchet.lola falls in love with a famous italian operasinger, and christina riccis character (suzie) falls in love with johnny depp (cesar). then the germans are coming, lolas boyfriend, the italian operasinger tells the germans that christina ricci is a jew, and she now has to escape.

the things i liked about the movie:
-the wonderful russian accent and the wonderful acting of cate blanchet. she spoke perfectly russian-english. her research for the part was very well done, very well done indeed, and great played out.
-johnny depps counting in what was in, I guess czech. so beautiful. I love how great johnny depp is with languages. I am truly very intrigued by that. (in my opinion, being good with languages is not normally the case when it comes to american actors.. I could be wrong)
-johnny depps character, I loved.
-the beginning of the movie, with the little girl and her father was beautiful.
-the horseriding made by depp. maybe it was a double or a stand-in, but seeing him riding through the streets of paris doing horsetricks on his white horse, was truly a treat for the eye.
-there was some nice singing in the movie. particularly by the father in the beginning of the movie.
-i also liked the dancing scenes.



the things I didnt like about the movie:
-the love between Christina Riccis character and Johnny Depp. I so didnt believe it. they hardly said a word to eachother. they were both supposed to be silent and calm characters, but they hardly said anything (!),they had sex, and then they were in love? the idea was perhaps that they had so much in common, that they didnt need to speak.. but heck, it was so strange.
-when christina ricci was singing, someone else sang for her, her miming wasnt too good. neither the voice they had chosen for her.
-the end. not to believable either.



this movie made baixiang long for a white horse.

boys don't cry

jannicke:
what a powerful movie. hilary swank acts amazingly good. and chloe sevigny is a favourite, as always.

wow.. what a movie. I cant believe it was a true story.. I had no idea it would be a true story, so that hit me with quite an impact at the end.

this story was also powerful in the sense that it hits close to home for me in real life. a girl born a few years after me, (the mother a friend of my mum) used to be my namesister. he is no longer my namesister, and he has (coincidentially) changed his name to my favourite name of all times. the name I want my baby son to have some day. it is a beautiful and strange coincidence.

it is hard to not say something here that will not spoil or reveal the story, because there are so many things I want to say about the end. but I guess I shouldnt.

but I both can and will say that hilary swank truly did deserve that oscar. such great acting. such amazingly great acting..

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Sex and Fury

Jannicke:
The movie starts out with a little girl watching her father getting killed, and then the rest of the movie is about her sought for and longing for revenge. She wants to kill the three people that were responsible for her fathers death. Three people that have the tattoos of a deer, a boar and a butterfly.

Both boas and I have a distinct liking for the japanese. Anything japanese really, and we have a tendency to watch any japanese movie that comes our way.

But this movie was a little different from our typical japanese watch though. This one stands out in perticular due to its dramatically exaggerated sexscenes, and its way too much blood and goryness. The acting was also at times way over the top (in such a bad way that it was great). The Cream-of-the-Crap-Prize went to the Swedish actress Christina Something who was terrible both at speaking japanese and english (we both used to think swedish-english was very cute before we heard Christinas go at it). Christina had the role of a spy who was in love with a japanese boy. Her talents as an actress came to its right in her sexscenes, and I told boas I suspected her to be an adultfilm actress. After the movie was over I checked her IMDB profile and right I was, there were wonderfully titled movies in her resumé such as The Milkmaid, Swedish Schoolgirls (or something up that alley), to my amusement I also clicked her; Read more, and discovered that she has now left adult film-making and went into editing a Swedish magazine about planes, Flygrevyn. It is so wonderfully, wonderfully wrong. Read more about it here: http://www.flygtorget.se/flygfakta/flygrevyn

The movie started out great, and the vengeance theme, is as always, a great one (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance as one of my favourite ones), the scene where the maincharacter fought around a dozen men, naked in slow motion in the snow were one of the best moments (might probably have been one of Quentin Tarantinos favourite scenes from this movie aswell before he made Kill Bill).

It was basically a movie about sex and fury. A gory japanese sexploitation movie about fury and vengeance. And I guess, a good one at such. At least, higly amusing because of Christina. She was (to use a phrase boas most recently tought me) "the comic relief".

I liked some parts of this movie better than others. But all in all, I liked it.



Bóas:
Alot more Sex than Fury. This is a soft-porn movie, complete with bad make-up, over the top lighting, ridiculous soundtrack and strange costumes. No expense spared. The romance between Christina and the japanese samurai will have to be a contender for least inspiring on-screen love affair. Got a lot of laughs out of me and must be considered an achievement in being such a bastardization of well known themes in asian and western cinema.

The Passenger

David Locke: Now I think I'm going to be a waiter in Gibraltar.
The Girl: Too obvious.
David Locke: Maybe a novelist in Cairo.
The Girl: Too romantic.
David Locke: How about a gunrunner?
The Girl: Too unlikely.
David Locke: As a matter of fact, I think I *am* one.
The Girl: Then it depends on which side you're on.
David Locke: Yes


Bóas:
A very low key movie, I like the pace of it, giving plenty of room for thought, while luring you into the plot. Reminded me a little of one of my favourite movies, John and Mary. A movie from the same era about romantic relationship although the circumstances are very different, well the man has a relationship with two female characters in The Passenger and in John and Mary there are two men to one woman. The cinematography was beautiful with plenty of long hand-held shots and interesting angles involving vehicles, made me want to see a 70´s car chase movie. To me this movie is about taking a step out of whatever life you have built around you, an opportunity leading into unforseen adventures. Making your own adventures in fact. Memorable dialogues for me where something like, it is not the places we visit that are the same it is us that give the same meaning to different things, like we use the same codes for analysis of different situations. Which can only be true.

Jannicke:
Sometimes this movie was a little bit too slow paced for my liking. What I enjoyed the most about the movie was its cinematography, its beautiful cars and architecture (especially in the part of the movie shot in Barcelona, where the main characters visit some of the houses that the great architect Gaudi has made). I have never been to barcelona, and I had never heard about Gaudi before a few weeks ago, so I found this particular part of the movie especially intriguing. the movie put an extra spark in my longing for travelling.

other than that; I found the characters somewhat not believable. some of their lines were quite quirky, and a bit out of place at times.

I didnt find the plot too exciting either. (had I not read the word thriller on the back my expectations would have been quite different and I wouldnt have demanded so much of the plot) I was a bit restless as we watched it. my computer died from battery half an hour from the end, it was late, and in stead of finding the plug and watching the rest, we went to sleep and then we saw the rest of it this morning together with our breakfast. when we watched the last bit this morning I liked the "world of the movie" much, much better. maybe I was in the wrong mood yesterday, or the movie had grown on me overnight. who knows..

I also though the main characters were very beautiful and hot which is always nice.