Sunday 20 May 2012

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.

Saturday 12 May 2012

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!

Saturday 5 May 2012

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.

MUSIC - Quick Song Recommendations

Sóley - Smashed Birds

Exactly what the song title entails. The lyrics are quite.. strange to say the least. But it's such a lovely song.

I took all of your birds 
And I smashed them in my pocket
Oh 
And then I got the feathers off and I made myself a beautiful dress



Sky Ferreira - Obsession

I found this really catchy. I heard of her in passing but never really made the effort to listen to her stuff until now. I also really like her song Animal.

Ain't nothing wrong with OCD 
Long as it's for me, long as it's for me 


M83 - Too Late

If my dreams had a soundtrack, this would probably be in it.

Like a wall of stars
We are ripe to fall


Hope you're having a good weekend!