maggi dawn

TV Vicars and on-screen priests

Su notes in the post below that there are some good screen portrayals of priests, to relieve the awful TV-Vicar image. She suggests two films with robust priest depictions:

'The Godfather' trilogy      

Mystic River

To these I would add Gary Lewis's

wonderful portrayal of Palmer,

the Chaplain in the trenches in Joyeux Noel (2005)

Bad on-screen vicars? There is vicar who is a spoof of the TV Vicar caricature in Emma Thompson's romp of a kids' movie, Nanny McPhee. My son has his impression of this simpering Vicar down to a tee - but then he also asks me why they put strange vicars, not "normal" ones, in stories like that (this the child who has grown up amid an assortment of pretty normal people who are also priests).

What are your favourite good and bad on-screen portrayals of priests, ministers etc?

Joyeux Noël

Al last I have seen Christian' Carion's imaginative re-telling of the story of Christmas 1914 in the trenches, when French, German and British troops met in no-man's land to sing and play football. Carion adds lots of imaginative development to the historical detaisl fo the story, and certainly the British don't come out particularly well in his telling, although his condemnation is more for the hierarchies, and his most poignantly made point is the profound difference in the experience of this war between those who strategised in offices and headquarters, and those who fought on the ground. I thought a three-language film would be a bit too Brain-stretching, but in fact it's not hard to follow at all, and part of the charm of the movie is the men from 3 nations trying to understand each other.

It was fantastic to see a REALLY positive image of a priest on screen, beautifully played by Gary Lewis (who was also brilliant in Billy Elliot).

French review:       English review:

As it is in Heaven

A movie to see. Link: Colourful Dreamer: As it is in Heaven. Hat tip to AKMA.

Da Vinci Code Dr Seuss style

I would not watch it on TV,
I would not watch on DVD.
I would not watch on VHS,
I would not watch on CBS.

I would not watch it in a car,
I would not watch it in a bar.
I would not watch it with my dad,
I would not watch it when I'm sad.

I would not watch it in my bed,
I would not watch with my friend Fred.
I would not watch it on a box,
I would not watch it shown on FOX.

I would not watch it on a table,
I would not watch when it's on cable.
I would not watch it in a chair,
I would not watch it anywhere.

I wish I had not paid eight bucks,
This movie really really sucks.

Hat tip to Ruth: Weblog - Ruth Gledhill - Times Online: Dr Seuss-style review of Da Vinci Code.

Da Vinci Code

I was thinking of blogging on this.

A N Wilson, in his customary style, has neatly macheted the whole spin into a pile of shavings with his column in the Observer:

"I think it's absolutely brilliant of Sony to have made this fifth-rate thriller into a great international controversy and make everybody feel as if they need to be having conversations about it. This was one of the most tedious films I've ever seen. It was supposed to be a thriller but it told you what the answer was to start with. There was gratuitous violence, especially involving the mad monk, but no build-up and no suspense. It simply hopped from one four- or five-minute adventure to the next.

Also, it is blatantly anti-Catholic at a time when we're all trying to learn to be more polite to one another. It's fairly easy to imagine what would happen if it were about the holy prophet. All the cinemas would be in little heaps of ash by now. I wasn't in the least offended, though. I just thought that it was silly."

And as far as church reaction goes, Real Live Preacher has said all I wanted to say. The extremists in the Church have already guaranteed the success for a number of productions that is disproportionate to their artistic merit, either by denouncing them, or by attempting to use them as "evangelism" - Jerry Springer the Opera, for instance, or Mel Gibson's Passion. I shall probably go and see the movie of the Da Vinci Code as it will save me the trouble of having to read the book. Fiction is fiction. If it isn't that significant, it won't change the world. If it is, wake up and listen.  Way to go, Gordon.

kiss hank's ***

satire on door-to-door salesman style evangelism. It bites. If you don't like swearing you probably won't like it.  Hat tip to Richard

Pierrepoint

A friend and I went to see this movie on Friday (and given that it was the first night, we were slightly astonished to see that the cinema wasn't even remotely busy). It's a film about Albert Pierrepoint who was one of the last Chief Executioners in the UK, resigning in 1956 only 8 years before the last executions took place. He was one of the quickest and most efficient executioners in history, and hanged more than 500 people in his lifetime. The film, despite its creepy subject matter, was focussed on Pierrepoint's and his wife's life (beautifully played by Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson). In the early part of the film the focus is on the Pierrepoint family tradition - that execution is the decision of the Courts, and the hangman's job is simply to carry out the job with minimum distress to the guilty person, and to give them a dignified end. It is surprisingly touching, the way he treats these people with such tenderness. He then becomes something of a hero, when it becomes publicly known that he is the executioner in charge of the Belsen trials executions, and how the perception of him then shifts as later public opinion changes is viewed through his eyes, and the effect it has on him, his marriage, and his later reflections on capital punishment.

It's also an elegant little study of a marriage in the war era - an affectionate and devoted marriage in which, nevertheless, there are conventions about what may or may not be discussed between husband and wife.

Definitely a go-see movie, although not on your own - you'll need someone to hold your hand in the icky bits.

brokeback mountain

Went to see this last night with a couple of guys from work. We were all agreed it was a pretty amazing film: we came out feeling a bit stunned, with lots to think about. It wasn't at all what I was expecting from the write-ups; I was under the impression that the whole focus of the film was the  grand passion at the centre of the story. But, a bit like The English Patient, although the story revolved around two people who fell in love, the film was much much more complex than that, the most interesting threads being the contributing factors to their love, and the consequences of it to themselves and to other people. 

A few things stay with me 24 hours later. First, the film is absolutely beautifully shot. The very slow opening sequences with the sheep going up the mountain are absolutely fantastic - they look like a river flowing uphill. The fact that the first few months of the story occupy a disproportionately large amount of the film, and the gradual acceleration of time thereafter, cleverly places the life-changing significance of that summer for the two men.
One of the most poignant parts of the movie is the depiction of the rolling shockwaves that hit Alma  when she discovers Ennis in a clinch with Jack. The way those scenes were shot and cut together were brilliant - you could physically feel her sick, gut-wrenching realisation that her whole life as she knew it was sliding away from her. The hollow despair that followed was tangible and poignant; she played the part brilliantly.
There have been some reactions against the movie because of its focus on homosexual love. I found the horror of the homophobic violence depicted in two scenes in the movie much more affecting - one in Ennis's 9-year-old memory, the other in his imagination as he hears a "version of events" over the phone.  Violence is always sickening.

Narnia and religious intolerance

interesting essay here

The quest for the historical wardrobe...

this little theological/Narnia joke cheered up my morning.

Oliver Twist

Has anyone seen the Polanski Oliver Twist? Is it suitable for an eight year old?

Mrs Henderson presents

At last, I got to see this film (my first two trips were cancelled at the last minute).

Our obliging Picturehouse put on an extra showing on Boxing Day.

The astonishing Judi Dench was predictably brilliant, Bob Hoskins played her counterpart beautifully, and Will Young was jolly good too. Nice to hear him singing something a bit more challenging than trivial pop, and although he wasn't called upon to do too much acting, the bits he did looked OK.

The plot revolves around the Windmill theatre during the second world war, and its reflections on the spirit of London, and the stubborn determination of the civilians to continue their lives in the midst of random bombing carried poignant contemporary parallels. 

Chronicles of Narnia

I went to great efforts to make sure we had tickets for the first night. Booked in advance, arrived early in case of massive queues. Hah! The cinema was only a quarter full. But maybe that was because it was a week night.

So many things could NOT be right when you go to see a movie of a book you've known for years. I was relieved that the possibilites of Disneyfication were not all that bad. And of course, after the incredibly hammy BBC version a few years back, the comparison makes the movie look even better. Although why Aslan (god?) has to have a posh American accent beats me - especially when the part is played by an Irishman.

I think it's a good movie - nicely cast, beautifully filmed. There were a few liberties taken with the plot, but on the whole I thought they were justifiable for the sake of dramatic action. I also liked the blurring of guilt and choice - when Edmund betrays, Peter admits that his own holier-than-thou attitude had pushed Ed into isolation. The white witch is perfect - Tilda Swinton being cool, distant, beautiful, elegant and utterly charming, making it entirely plausible that Edmund would be seduced. Her utterly evil and destructive ways are even more sinister for the cold, under-played style Swinton brings to the part. No passion. Just ruthless self interest.

It's also fairly scary (for kids) - my brave nearly-eight son did OK. Not at all sure it would be OK for a less brave or a younger child than that.

finding neverland

At last... got round to seeing Finding Neverland. At New Year I met someone who is involved in the film industry who expressed the view that it was the best film of 2004 (though I forget what his qualifying comments were... best one from hollywood? best one on general release?) Anyway, it is charming, sad, beautifully acted, and features the incredibly beautiful Freddie Highmore (who was in Five Children and It, and AKA Charlie Bucket). Top recommendation. It's a PG, but I'd say not suitable for youngish children (a bit too grown up and complex, as well as almost unbearably sad). 

hitchhiker's guide

saw the movie on Friday - have to admit I was a bit nervous about seeing it: I loved the books so much and was somewhat of the view that (like a George Eliot book) there was a great deal that smiply wouldn't transfer to the screen.

Found the movie "good in parts" (sorry, Kathryn).
There were some bits that were positively excellent - like the casting of Arthur and Ford Prefect, 
and the inimitable Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast.

Trillian was gorgeous; the Vogons suitably obnoxious; and Slartibartfast's trip through the planets under construction was quite wonderful.

But there were some other bits that I thought trawled along very slowly. OK, it was Friday night at the supposed end of a very long and tiring week, with - hurrah for the priesthood - a whole weekend-at-work to look forward to. So maybe I'm not the best person to judge. But I found myself a bit close to dropping off a couple of times...

The Interpreter

Another movie last night - Nicole Kidman and the gorgeous Sean Penn in a complex political thriller with lots of themes about language, communictaion, linguistics, verbal v. visual communication. The thriller aspect worked OK for me (although I'll admit I scare easily) - I jumped right out of my seat a couple of times. Some of the aerial shots of the disaster zones were a bit predictable. The plot was good and believable, and the little threads of ideas that gradually unfolded and tied up at the end (like naming the dead, or saving a life) were clever without being too obvious.

THere was something about it that didn't quite gel for me, though. Nicole Kidman is so beautiful, so cool, so mannered - a bit like Meryl Streep was in her early roles - perfectly, exactly executed in every detail, yet somehow you come away impressed by her acting technique but not quite convinced by her character - which suggests there's more to acting than technique. There's some element of convincingness that she somehow doesn't have. Sean Penn had it, and so did Hugo Speer in his all-too-brief cameo.

Good movie fodder for a Friday night, though.

Sahara

This improbable tale draws together every possible movie cliché in one package: Out of Africa a la James Bond, or The English Patient meets Indiana Jones. Watch two (usually unarmed) men and a girl wipe out several armies amd emerge without so much as a smut on their noses to go home with the buried treasure.  All very shiny, lots of eye-candy and no effort required. It will make a fine Bank Holiday TV film for the next few years. I have to say it was a lot of fun, though.

5 X 2

Cinq fois deux (Five Times Two)
is a fascinating film from Francois Ozon. It's not comfortable viewing, given that it begins with a divorce and what amounts to a marital rape, and continues with scenes that are chock full of disillusionment, a fragmented and ultimately doomed relationship, and not a great deal of happy clappy hopefulness. All the same, it's a brilliantly observed piece, beautifully filmed, and completely believable - not least because, typically of a European film, the actors look like real people, not stick-thin, airbrushed, sanitised, disengaged Hollywoodettes.

The "five" refers to five episodes in the film which, beginning with the couple signing the divorce papers in a lawyer's office, work backwards chronologically through a dinner party, the birth of their son, their wedding, and finally to the time when they first met. Between the five episodes are deep, dark pauses - the silent, untold episodes that the viewer is left only to imagine or wonder about. Why these five episodes? What did we not see? 

Events and moments early in the relationship that might have seemed insignificant had the story been told chronologically are highlighted for their catastrophic effect through the device of tracing it backwards. Go see. 

Sideways

Having missed this when it was on in cambridge, drove to a nearby town to see it last night. What an outstandingly good film - a fantastic mixture of perceptive comment on life, with a tremendous comic thread that got gradually funnier as the film progressed. It faced quite a lot of life's darkness and shadows head on - rather appropriate for this time of year - yet ended on a note of hope. I loved the wine as metaphor thing that was going on the whole time, and I fell about when he gave the girl the second box of manuscript...
I think it's one of those films that will stay with me for ages - and doubtless I'll have to see it a second time.

There were trailers for two other recent films I haven't seen yet, which are must-sees by all accounts - A very long engagement, and Vera Drake.

shall we dance?

Whenever I have a babysitter lined up, and nowhere to go and no-one to see, I go to the movies. Motto for motherhood: never waste a babysitter.

Shall We Dance? was a pleasant enough evening's entertainment. But I think a year from now I shall have forgotten all about it. John Clark (Richard Gere)'s not-quite-affair with Paulina (J-Lo) just lacked the sizzle to make it convincing. He was good, I thought, as a decent guy with a mid-life crisis, but she was way too cool and too flat to give it the egdy tension that screen relationship needed. Susan Sarandon (I love her) was not quite coming off the screen either, almost too perfect in her tolerant, hard-done-by character. I wanted her to be just a bit more jealous at the start, a bit more strung out with the detective stuff, and a bit less OK with it all at the end. You surely don't watch your partner of 20+ years have a serious wobble in your relationship and just weather it, do you? She was supposed to be his wife, and seemed a bit too much like his mother to me. I think, overall, they wanted the end result to be that he was tempted, but not too much; bored, but not actually in a crisis. That makes for a really nice marriage fantasy story, I suppose, but in playing down any actual threat to the relationship (quite different, I am told, to the original of which this is a remake) they didn't quite find any alternative focus for the narrative tension that was needed to make the viewer climb right into the story.

SOme of the supporting characters were the best - the colleague (larry? - see, I've forgotten his name already) who danced incognito for fear of ridicule; the fat middle aged woman desperate for love. Miss Mitzy's mid-life cirisis was far more poignant and convincing than John Clarke's.

Recommendation? It's nice, the dance scenes are cheering and there are a few good smiles in it. I came away not absorbed with the characters, but thinking I might check in for dancing lessons. Not a great movie, but quite watchable. Definitely better than Spongebob, which I saw earlier the same day...

spongebob squarepants

I would rarely, I think, find myself agreeing with Dr James Dobson on very much at all. And I don't agree with his reasons for disliking Spongebob Squarepants (edit: although everyone in the Spongebob Video spat story is now rewriting history as fast as they can, apparently including Dr Dobson. It's impossible to tell after the event. But read here and  here if you are interested, and judge for yourself.)

Just for the record, the pink guy is made up of pink triangles, not because he's gay, but because - doh! - he's a starfish...

But as for the movie, I have to say it really was very dull indeed. Utterly forgettable. Don't waste your money - wait for Robots, which promises to be much better.

Nathalie

                 

   

      
nathalie this review has been reproduced at TheOoze

Nathalie (Anne Fontaine, 2003) is an absorbing and well-played film about love, sex, deception and the separation of body and soul. Fanny Ardant and Gerard Depardieu play Cathérine and Bernard, a 50-something married couple whose relationship has become strained and distant. He has occasional one-night stands; she suddenly becomes obsessive about this side of him she knows little of. Hoping to find out what he gets from these brief affairs, she hires Marlene (Emmanuelle Béart), a girl from a hostess bar, to pose as "Nathalie" and lure Bernard into another affair, the details of which she will then report back to Cathérine. Thus the gender roles are neatly reversed in this otherwise unremarkable tale of infidelity.

Typically French, the plot becomes more and more complex as one initial deception gives way to a tangle of deceptions between the three main players and various friends and relatives who enter the story. The separation of love and sex, body and soul, is emphasised as we discover that Cathérine is a gynaecologist, dealing clinically by day with the physical aspects of female sexuality, while privately torturing herself by night with its emotional complexities. And the issues surrounding female allure and sexuality are further highlighted in the fact that Marlene/Nathalie has a day job as a beautician, thus dividing her time between transforming the appearance of women who want to be someone else, and the experience of men who wish they were with someone else.

This is not a film for those who find graphic portrayals of sex offensive, but it is very far from gratutitous, and skilfully emphasises the disorder that follows when sex and love become dissociated. The despair of a sexless marriage is offset by the poignancy of a depth of longstanding and familar love. The sex scenes in the brothel are filmed from the hookers' point of view - the sex is depersonalised and appropriately unsexy, its veneer of excitement punctured by the realisation of its dull, repetitive nature for the hooker. By contrast, the verbal exchanges between Ardant and Beart, in broad daylight and deliberately unglamourous, postively throb with sexiness, curiosity and unleashed desire.

A good film - well worth seeing.

Running Time: 105 minutes
UK BBFC rating: 15

Callas Forever

Wow. Wow, and wow. Go and see this movie. And take a hanky.

If you like opera you'll probably love it (though you never can tell with opera buffs). But I don't think you'd have to love opera to like the film, and you certainly don't need to be knowledgable about opera to 'get' what's going on. It places opera in the broader world of rock music, film, journalism and abstract art, and is really a film not principally about opera, but about relationships -friendship, love and growing older (youth hitting middle age, I mean, not old age). And if you know nothing of opera, the tracks you'll hear will make you understand what you've been missing all this time. Traviata could make a grown man cry.

It's beautifully shot, quite a bit of it in Paris. Fanny Ardant is brilliant, and, as you'd expect from Zefirelli, the subtleties of the unfolding relationships are so real you think you're in the movie yourself. And the sight of Jeremy Irons playing Zefirelli's brain inside Francis Rossi's body and hairstyle is absolutely unmissable. I took one look at posh Irons with a ponytail, and thought ''this will never work". But how wrong I was.

The Snow Walker

      
Went to see this tonight at the Cambridge Film Festival. (I got the LAST seat in the house!!) It is THE most stunningly beautiful film, with a deeply moving story. The casting is perfect. (Tonight the film was introduced by Piugattuk, and there was an interview with her afterwards.)

The movie opens with a shot of a blizzard, and just appearing in the distance, a man walking, apparently carrying something in his arms or on his back - carrying another person, maybe?

The story then unfolds of how, three months earlier, a Canadian pilot and a young Innuit woman get stranded on the tundra, way off their flight path, with no means of contact. He can't survive in the tundra (especially once it starts snowing) but she knows how to live off the land. But she has TB and is struggling to survive this European disease. Together this unlikely pair try to save each other and find their way back to their respective communities. More than a fight for survival, it's a story of how two people go from hostile non-communication to loving, affectionate respect for one another's gtraditions and skills. It's a story run through with ideas of sacrifice, love and redemption, that makes you feel a deep respect for the earth, and a glad about the grand possibilities of being human.

At one point in the movie, Cromwell recites (very beautifully) this lovely, and perfectly chosen sonnet:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never the lark, nor even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee (1922-1941)(Canadian Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britian)

Here's the blurb:
The Snow Walker (Charles Martin Smith) Canada, 2003
Cast: Barry Pepper, Annabella Piugattuk, James Cromwell
Based on Walk Well my Brother (short story by Canadian writer Farley Mowatt)