Films

So in light of the Oscars last night - many of the awards which I agreed with (for once) - I thought I'd give a quick synopsis of films that I have seen of late, because there have been quite a few good ones...

Cache (Hidden)
*Playing at the Curzon Soho (my favorite theatre in London, just north of Leicester Square); great French film that is at once provacative and almost painfully slow in its drawn-out suspense... very good.

The Constant Gardener
*Saw this at the Curzon Mayfair (also very nice but without the swanky bar and lively atmosphere of it's counterpart), great film in which Rachel Weisz, a Brit, is awesome... very femme fatale.

Detective
*Tried to watch it on dvd, fell asleep twice and never got throught it, though becuase it is a Jean-Luc Godard film, I have been promised it's good. Great readings and lists of Godard films are to be found at: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/godard.html. Extremely enjoyable - but I should not try and watch films in bed when I am that tired!

Good-bye Lenin
*Great film - saw it on dvd with Jack last week and even when he fell asleep I sat up straight and loved it. It's about a woman in East Berlin going into a coma right before the Berlin Wall fell, and when she wakes up her son tries to re-create the world pre-Westernization as not to send her mother back into shock. Sad and funny - great film that makes me stoked to go to Berlin next month...

Brokeback Mountain
*Beautiful scenery, important and sad - I loved it. There is an awesome review of not the film, but the response to it in last Sunday's London Times - you can access it at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2058537,00.html and I'll also re-publish it above

Good Night, and Good Luck
*Good film - and though Clooney didn't get the Oscar for this film and his role in Syriana instead (which I have yet to see) - I am glad to see he is recognized. I was impressed with the film and some of the text of the film you could have mistaken for present-day debates about censorship and the role of the media in American culture. I loved his quote from his acceptance speech... "I want to thank Jack Abramoff, you know, just because ... I don't know why," he said to laughter from the audience.

The General
*Playing at the National Film Theatre (NFT) on the Southbank of the Thames, it's a 1926(?) silent, black-and-white film about the Civil War. I thought it was extremely funny - something has to be said about being able to make people laugh outloud without words.... And yes - I realize watching black-and-white silent films is super pretentious... but that's why it's fun to live this life in London and be able to do these kinds of things!

I've been trying to see Walk the Line for forever now - since it came out when I was state-side in December... hopefully will see it this week and I can find someone brave enough to come with me when I'm singing along to all of the songs (like Mark had to deal with at the Death Cab for Cutie show last week)!

And my favorite new quote about films...

"There is a moment when every true creator makes such a leap forward that his audience is left behind. For Renoir, La Règle du jeu was the sign of maturity, a film so new that it looks confusingly as if it might be a failure; one of those failures that leaves you, the morning after, counting your friends on the fingers of one hand."

-François Truffaut, Cahiers du cinéma 34, April 1954