"KvltSite is our collective scribbling pad, a way to talk about all the things that we get off on – music, movies, games, books, comics. We do so in the hope that when others come along and hear of our tastes and recommendations, they would realise how awesome we are. Hints of our old irreverence surface ever so often, with witty dissections of popular trends and cultural fads, in the form of textual harassment as well as crafty comics. In short, we're in the business of writing about anything we think is cool."
Made by the bugger that made City of God and The Constant Gardner and based on a novel buy Jose Saramago (or however else you spell it), Blindness is like a zombie survivor flick, but with blind people. An unexplained epidemic of blindness leads to the government herding all the blind into prison-like shelters where they're divided into groups and rationed out food. At one point this machinery breaks down and rival factions of blind people battle it out for resources. The premise was interesting and some of the scenes are really good, but on the whole quite unsatisfying.
saw The Reader which is another one of those love stories with the backdrop of World War. Kate Winslet plays the role of an older woman in love with a 16 year old kid. The first half of the movie is pretty much about how their relationship develops from pure sexual fun to a more serious nature. After few months she disappears from her apartment, never to be seen again. A few years later, the kid is now practicing law and encounters her during one of his case studies at the court. Some obvious questions and complications open up. The movie overall is interesting mostly due to Kate Winslet's excellent performance. But nothing great or epiphanic here.
Taken has pretty simple plot and could have been a lot of fun. Liam Neeson is an ex-CIA but has retired now to spend some quality time with his 17 year old daughter. The daughter gets kidnapped by a group of Albanian pimps during her vacation in Paris. He obviously uses his skills to bring back her daughter. But the action sequences are pretty dull and routine. It could have been a lot of fun if it had been a lot more blood and over the top. Directed by the same guy who made District B13, so I was hoping for some decent entertainment. But it fails probably due to restricting itself to being a PG-13 film.
I've only been watching twin peaks recently and it's pretty good but there's a huge drop in quality halfway through the second season. Two more episodes to go to finish this and of the 2000 different plot threads there's only one that's interesting.
In other news, I finally managed to get a nice subtitled print of Death Smiles at a Murderer. This Giallo comes with a huge reputation of being the most perverted, sickest, creepiest etc. Giallo ever made. I'm quite interested in checking out the Klaus Kinski - Joe D'amato combination. Should be interesting. I also finally got my hands on Fernando Di Leo's Milieu Trilogy with Milano Calibro 9, Il Boss and Manhunt. Milano Calibro 9 was an awesome and very stylish 70s crime thriller so I'm quite excited about watching the other 2 in the series.
Plus, that Barbara Bouchet dance from Milano Calibro 9 is quite unforgettable.
Watched Silent Running, the 1971 movie by Douglas Trumbuli who was the man behind some of the coolest special effects through the 70s and the early 80s before retiring. (Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Close Encounters). Earth is devoid of any plant life so there are these manned space greenhouse domes to grow some species (the idea ripped off on Sunshine more recently). They get orders to destroy all these domes when our protagonist who's the last guy who understands its worth goes all out in order to save at least one of the domes. A pretty good watch and it looks great - a perfect example of what can be done with such a small budget of $1M.
Btw, Suresh, the blind zombie-like idea isn't new. Watch early 80s BBC's mini TV series adaption of Day of the Triffids, if you haven't already. 6 half-hour and it's top notch.
Words From The Myths by Isaac Asimov. A delightful overview of classical myth, its influence on the English language and a couple of really cool word derivations I was not aware of ('gas' from the Flemish word for 'chaos').
Been laid up with a bad back and using time to clear movie backlog. Sad part is these reviews won;t be as long as usual.
When the wind blows - Personally found this more moving than the generally more highly rated Grave of Fireflies. An elderly British couple who have moved to the country find themselves having to prepare for a nuclear attack on the UK - a very real Cold War era fear. Armed with some rather ludicrous information from a government brochure, Mr Bloggs sets out to build a shelter. The conversations that centre mainly on pointless theorising on how the government will sort everything out by Mr Bloggs and fears of how the bomb, preparing for it and its fallout will ruin an entire lifetime of keeping a tidy household by Mrs Bloggs start out as sounding a bit twee, but as the film progresses, attain a high level of sadness. Both the Bloggs lived through the WW2 and expect the current crisis to be at least reasonably similar and wait for the spirit off solidarity that pulled Britain through to kick in, in a world where its unlikely there are any survivors/anybody who cares. It ends with them mumbling a hodgepodge of prayers as they settle down to die. Tremendous animation too and a great soundtrack from Roger Waters.
The Chaser Nobody does revenge dramas better than the Koreans. A cop turned pimp who finds his hos jumping ship (and who decides its because they are being sold by another pimp) sets out to track the guy down. It turns out the guy is a psychopath who has been killing the women. He's caught by the pimp within the first half hour of the movie. You guys really need to see the rest to figure out how the director keeps things interesting. Pretty fucking brilliant.
Goodfellas What an asshole of a film. Scorcesi is as culpable as RGV in India for making heroes out of the thugs and chuts that populate the American underworld. In fact i wouldn't be surprised to know the mafia funded the whole fucking thing and it was an ad for them. Kinda like the Godson to Copolla's Godfather this movie hits every single cliche there is - temperamental psycho funny guy gangsta, wife beating drug snorting protagonist, gangsta with strange moral compunctions against drugs blah blah blah. The action when it happens is a tasteless mess from having been reheated by so many directors. Between the saccharine 50s pop of the first half and the done to death and tired 70s rock of the latter, I really can't think of a movie that has been worthless on so many levels. Ray Liotta is decent though. Pity he never really got anything close to a good break.
Taxi Driver Ol Martin redeems himself somewhat in this film. I was avoiding it for a while because like is so many 'iconic' movies you just tend to pick up a lot of info on key plot points. For all that, it was riveting as hell with an outstanding performance from Robert De Niro as the titular pissed off at the world cabbie. Jodie Foster was fantastic too.
Casino doesn't make a Hero out of a thug. In Casino the lead character is a guy who's working to make money for himself by crook and it's basically his obsessive love for this woman which completely trips him up.
Even I thought Goodfellas was pretentious. It's like watching an overblown ad. Also agreed that Casino is miles better.
Going through a TV mini-series called MPD Psycho by Takashi Miike. Drags a bit and isn't worth all the hype it accumulated. Anybody seen this? Thoughts?
^^ I've read the manga and it found to be very twisted and entertaining stuff but somehow didn;t seem like it could be pulled off in a live action setting. How do they manage the flowers growing out of people's heads etc. in the tv show?
I watched The Fall with a sense of dread that almost overpowered any desire I might have had to see the film - I wasn't too happy with Tarsem's directorial debut, The Cell, and in spite of being a great guy to talk to (I'd interviewed him in 2003), he takes a certain delight in being oblique and pretentious. This film, he'd told me at the time, was entirely his own baby and not one where he would have to kowtow to the studios like he did with The Cell. If my memory serves me right, it was going to be a film in two halves - one purely fantastic and the other realistic. And it was going to star Gulshan Grover.
The film made it out some 3 years later (but got released only last year) minus Gulshan Grover. I finally finished watching it on my third attempt. The first two times, the opening sequences put me off. They are very visually arresting but nothing new to anyone who has sat through a showreel of the winners at Cannes, and I was half expecting it to end with a packshot of a glass of Stella Artois. Seriously. Their ads frequently make NO sense. Check this out:
Anyway after the oblique beginning, we are taken to a hospital where a depressed stuntman Roy, befriends a little girl Alexandria and begins to tell her a story. The story is very vividly imagined by Alexandria giving Tarsem enough opportunity to hurl a huge cavalcade of visual gorgeousness at the audience, (without using ANY CGI apparently). Is it visually overdone wankery? If you wanted to be very uncharitable and a bit of an asshole, yes. But it works tremendously within the plot and premise of the film.
Reality keeps disrupting the fantastic narrative as Roy manipulates Alexandria into stealing drugs he can kill himself with. Just watch the film to figure how it all pans out.
The total make-or-break role way i see it was that of Alexandria. Played by a Romanian
kid Catinca Untaru, this is without a shadow of doubt the absolute BEST acting by a child that I have ever seen. She's completely convincing and not even slightly cloying. Without her this would have been just another eye candy fest but an otherwise hollow film. Enjoyed this tremendously and will probably plump for a DVD sometime soon. Ouch. Should not let my enthu get the better of me. No more typing for the rest of the day *-(
Saw W, Oliver Stones bio pic on George W Bush with Josh Brolin as W. The movie was actually alright for the most part. George comes across as a mostly sympathetic and likable fellow and is helped by a terrific performance from Brolin. The movie focuses on the love hate relationship between him and his father played by James Cromwell as well George's interactions with his cabinet and while I was expecting some The Queen type drama I found this to be quite entertaining all round.
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