Films I saw

Some cleanup…

Here’s the LSC schedule.

Grindhouse: Planet Terror isn’t exceptionally good (but yeah, I seem to pick up on the zombie film culture by watching parodies of it, like Shaun of the Dead, first). Death Proof should not be watched as part of Grindhouse. See it independently — the full version basically has a lot more girl talk, but that’s what makes Tarantino special, anyway. Builds up pace better.

Knocked Up: Pretty ok.

Hot Fuzz: Heh. I had already seen this before and still went to see it. From the makers of Shaun of the Dead, comes an action film.

Paris, Je T’aime: I really do love Paris. The film is rather uneven, etc… I think I’ve written about this already in another post.

Ocean’s Thirteen: Awful. Even compared to Eleven. The sequels just keep getting more smug, not actually better.

The Lives of Others: Very very good. Please watch.

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Film I saw

Yesterday I saw A Mighty Heart. It is about Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was kidnapped in Pakistan. Angelina Jolie plays his wife. It’s hard to make a good film where everyone already knows the ending, but it’s a pretty good attempt. Everything looks authentic. (Although the outdoor shots were shot in Karachi, the indoor shots — including everything involving Jolie — were in Pune.)If you pay attention, you can find the scene where the police carry out a raid and confiscate the “computer” — a monitor.Jolie did a good job, I thought. Moving film.

Oui, vivant

Paris, je t’aime

Apparently, the Faubourg Saint-Denis segment (the one with Natalie Portman) was shot very quickly, and even used to recruit other directors to the project. Written and directed by Tom Tykwer. Must remember the name. He made Lola Rennt. The actor in the segment is blind in real-life too. (The movie here, but don’t watch it unless you are able to turn the volume up enough…)

I was actually considering visiting the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris when I was there (the segment with Oscar Wilde’s grave). Apparently the entire cemetery has been vandalised by Jim Morrison fans. Of all the great people buried there, …

Apparently the reason I understand so much of the French of the woman in the last segment is not because she is speaking slowly, but because she isn’t speaking proper French.

Now, Wikipedia says

Initially 20 topics representing the 20 arrondissements of Paris were planned but two of them (the XVe arrondissement directed by Christoffer Boe and the XIe arrondissement by Raphaël Nadjari) were not included in the film because they could not be properly integrated into the movie.

which seems absurd. I cannot imagine how the segment with the beauty products salesman in Chinatown integrates with the rest of the movie — or with anything else in the world. WTF was that?

The film also has Juliette Binoche (from Trois Couleurs: Bleu).

iTunes says my play count of We’re all in the dance is 15. Oh well… this happens to me very frequently after I see a film — I remember playing Requiem For a Dream on a loop for nearly an entire day. BTW Feist’s 1234 is featured in the new Apple iPod Nano ad (TODO: fix this link when it gets broken.) And I didn’t think it had both French and English just because I couldn’t catch some English parts, it really had both.