L'ironie francaise

It's been a while since I watched a good French film. I was just looking through this year's French Film Festival programme I'd forgotten how true the french film stereotype can be sometimes. Out of 12 blurbs that I read, 6 mentioned some kind of complicated sordid liason. Some of them are quite comical... my favourite has to be "Envoyés Speciaux" where apparently amongst the normal crazy lives of war correspondants in Baghdad, "Things also get complicated when Franck inadvertently sleeps with Poussin's wife before their mission." Inadvertently...?! Only in French films!

The last time I was in France I did however see one that didn't fit all the stereotypes - for one it had French actors speaking English!! Welcome is definitely worth seeing, being beautiful, thought-provoking though unfortunately also heart-breaking. You can watch the trailer here. Some of it is in English so hopefully you'll get the gist! Though good luck with the accents... Anyway I highly recommend it, go and see it while it's out in the UK during the festival!

Prince Caspian

Saw this tonight with two of my flatmate's bridesmaids-to-be and it was amaaaazing!!! Again the C.S Lewis magic was beautifully captured on film, beautifully played, the characters came out brilliantly and were well developed over the course of the film. I love the fact that a plot can be so fantastical yet the characters, their personalities and inner tests and struggles they go through are so tangible and easy to identify with :)
And again Edmund proved to be my favourite character of all, Lydie (maid of honour/la dame de la cote d'or) put it beautifully when she said "I love that he's so humble, or rather so humbled. Edmund's living under grace and he knows it."
I also love the fact that my heart goes a putter and I get excited shivers when Aslan appears!
...and I'm going to see it again next week with the bf and sis! woop woop! :)

blue sky patches in the cloud that is exam-time

Sunshine, wearing flipflops, jamming/studying/wandering in the park (of which I do have pretty photos, but these are on my flatmates computer which is currently down in London with her fiancee, doh!), heartbreaking news, playing in the pitchdark planeterium with the band, new beginnings, giggles, silly late nights, scrabulous, getting fed, plenty banter, bonding over exam pains, fluishness forcing me to have a day off when I needed it so much, hearing and being freshed by the gospel yet again at one of those leader days run by them, sunshine, good jazz (both live and on lastfm.com)...

And I finally finally saw Once! Bizarrely realistic! :- from that first jamming encounter where everything just clicks, band practices in tiny bedrooms, the jamming dinner party... and all so beeeeyooootiful!

And the cloud ends (at least for me) on Thursday afternoon.... oh yeah :)

Animated Iranians

I'd originally intended not to blog until exams are over. But to be honest, I need a brain break!
Plus this film (which I saw on Tuesday) was truly amaaaazing, I've been dying to rave about it!
Why is it amaaazing?
Because: (in bullet point form)
- It's aesthetically beautiful
- The characters are so real and well depicted
- It's witty and often very funny
- It's highly educational! I didn't know anything about Iranian politics or political history yet didn't feel lost at all since it explains it all really well!

Amazing I tell you! Go see it!

saturday

Mmmm... I love Glasgow Saturdays! :)

Time to catch up on things and chill and sort myself out and enjoy quiet...

Last night I saw Juno - amaaazing film! Definitely almost on a par with that comedy gem Little Miss Sunshine! As per usual did a shed a tear or two. I tend to get somewhat emotional in films. What surprised me was what happened to me this morning as I was standing waiting at Glasgow International airport before picking up and redirecting 19 Canadians. Was watching all the people drifting in through the International arrivals door from a Toronto flight and it was more moving than watching a film... there was a mum smothering her small boy with kisses and a couple of cuddly couples that blatantly hadn't seen each other in a long time and friends reunited with delighted grins and digital cameras everywhere. It could have been a scene out of Love Actually, though (thankfully) a lot more believable! And before I knew it I found myself getting weepy! Completely took me by surprise and had to stay composed to greet the pile of Canadians that soon followed out of the door.

Oh and all this sunshine after so many months of grey... I feel truly photosynthesised! :)

Films of 2007

Reading and hearing other peoples thoughts on what their favourite films of the year 2007 have been has spurred me on to create my own list... the only thing is a couple of these I saw last year weren't actually released last year. (The joys of french release dates)

In no particular order

Films that I enjoyed the most in 2007

Most moving and thought-provoking
- The Kite Runner (and they stuck very closely to the book :) though they missed out some of the most gruesome bits)
- Life of Others

Funniest
- Little Miss Sunshine easily one of my favourite films of all time! (saw that in france this year although it was released the year before)
- Run Fat Boy Run - Miles better than I thought it would be! Touching and funny!
- Ratatouille - wonderful treatment of stereotypical france, though (a mon avis) tarnished by the inconsistency in and appallingly bad french accents!

Most exciting, kept me at the edge of my seat (also most attractive actors heehee)
- Bourne Ultimatum
- The Departed (ditto with the France thing)

Film that made me most want to sing and dance like a madwoman
- Hairspray (yes I know!)

Weirdest Film I saw this year
- The Golden Door - one of those films that "doesn't do what it says on the packet"

Films that were released last year and I wanted to see but didn't
Once, The Counterfeiters, La Mome, Simpsons Movie, La Science des Reves

Bitterly disappointed by -
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Golden Compass (though both were ok films, they just didn't compare to the books), Spiderman 3 (just plain mince)

Bring on Prince Caspian!

Trop trop trop

I've been watching far too many films lately, in the same way that I used to consume books in my younger geekier days, I have relished escaping but I think I might be taking it to extremes.
Over the last few weeks I have watched
- Billy Elliot - several times. Best facial expressions of any film I've ever seen.
- I bought the sister High School Musical and Bugsy Malone - now that was a mistake.
- That gem of a musical West Side Story twice.
- Along came Polly - why?!
- fractions of Princess Mononoke. Think I might need to watch all of it before I understand it.
- A bbc production of Woman in White with my dear mother
- Amelie - for the first time in about a year believe it or not!
Been to see
- The Bourne Ultimatum - now that was good :)
- Hairspray. Twice I'm not ashamed to say. Second time was even better!
- Shrek 3, Harry Potter 5 - disappointments
- A random french-canadian film at the Edinburgh international film festival - Dans les villes - the blurb promised light-heartedness, the film delivered the opposite. Though I must admit the enlightening chat with director/producer afterwards improved it.
Oh and I saw one festival show quite possibly better than any of the films I've seen of late... I blame the changeyourmoodinablink atmosphere and amhaaazing soundtrack!

ticktockticktock just over a week to Glasvegas and return to a TV-less flat... wooo! :)

saying that, it never stopped us from watching copious amounts of Dawsons Creek

Das Leben der Anderen

I saw this on Friday with french subtitles and wanted to blog about it, to encourage you all to see it because it was such an interesting, moving and well-made film based in the same era as this film which I also love but which is of an utterly different genre, but was distressed to find that google yields no results of the film showing in Britain... yet (though I might be wrong, let me know)! What I was particuarly struck by was the development of the very vivid, very real characters. I was made to like, dislike, empathise, understand, grow to like without even realising... So I'm encouraging you in advance... when "The Life of Others" is released in some manner or form in the UK, go and see it!