Come back to the old five and dime

Yes please.

Sugar Kane

I can't help but be fascinated by her.

The still point of the turning world

This summer, i would like to be Kirsten Dunst. She hasn't really done anything in a while, but i have a total girl crush on her at the moment.

I want Sofia Coppola to adopt her again so the two of them can make beautiful films made of sunlight.

If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything

I've written a review, for the first time in absolute ages. I hope you like it. Take my advice and don't watch the movie, it's beyond stupid.

The premise for Sucker Punch is strong enough. Abused orphan Babydoll (Emily Browning) is locked up in an asylum for the criminally insane and has to find a means of escape, aided by four other inmates. The execution of this premise, however, is so convoluted and overplayed as to render the film almost as redundant at the moral it strives to desperately to put across.

Spread across three levels of reality, the Evanescence-music-video real world, the trying-to-be-Chicago-so-much-it-hurts mental ward/dance hall world, and the every-bad-video-game-ever-made world of Babydoll’s quest. Each reality is less engaging than the last. The film’s opening and ending sequences, which take place in reality (or as close to it as the film ever comes) are definitely the most successful, establishing a level of darkness and brutality which would have greatly improved the film had it been continued throughout. All too quickly the film moves into the mental asylum, and the rest of the narrative takes place in a kind of Moulin Rouge meets One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest sub-reality, where the incarcerated girls must dance in their underwear in order to be cured of their mental illness. Babydoll has five days before she is sold to the High Roller (Jon Hamm) (in reality the doctor coming to lobotomize her), and must find five objects to help her and the other girls escape. You see more of the asylum’s sinister head orderly, Blue (Oscar Isaac), and therapist Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino), in this world transformed into a club owner/pimp, and dance teacher/madam respectively. While Madam Gorski seemingly serves no purpose whatsoever apart from to provide another pair of breasts for teenage boys to ogle, Blue provides the film with a credible and genuinely creepy bad guy, thus becoming the only vaguely interesting character in the exercise. When Babydoll is forced to dance she enters the third and most ridiculous world. The setting changes each time she and the other girls enter, moving from snowy ancient Japan, to the First World War, to cheap Lord of the Rings fantasy. Each of these interludes seem somehow both overdone and under-finished, pairing over-long action sequences with sub-par computer game graphics and hokey moralizing from the Wise Man (Scott Glenn). All these scenes include robots. While the first two levels of reality provide at least a little insight into character or narrative, this third level seems created exclusively for a mindless pubescent audience interested only in guns and tits. The film spends most of its time in this state.

It is a shame that Zac Snyder should fall so far from his previous cinematic exploits. While 300 certainly wasn’t the most intellectual of films, it was beautifully rendered and engaging for audiences whether they were familiar with the comic or not. Similarly with Watchmen; regardless of how you feel about the changed ending, the care Snyder took with the source material was clear. Here he is working from his own story, and seems perfectly content to abandon characterisation or plot development in favour of yet another shot of his young cast in their pants. It took over an hour for me to grasp the names of the central characters, but I doubt I’ll ever fully gather why they were involved in the film at all.

Emily Browning is good enough as Babydoll, looking as she does like an anime character come to life. She’s given enough to do but spends most of the film looking miserable and big-eyed while dressed as a schoolgirl with a samurai sword. Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish turn in solid performances as sisters Rocket and Sweet Pea, leaving the audience wondering what two such credible indie actresses are doing in this brainless mess; ditto for Jon Hamm, the two minutes he’s on screen are genuinely intriguing, but you’re left wondering what such a classy guy is doing in such a piece of crap. Jamie Chung and Vanessa Hudgens look good in lingerie, but serve no purpose to the story, and thus are given practically no dialogue and even less character development.

All in all the film takes a decent premise and a handful of good actors, and places them in a horny emo music video. Too earnest to be funny, not smart enough to be good, what we are left with is a mess of poorly executed action sequences and an ill-defined and almost comically inappropriate message about empowerment. Snyder has proved himself as the man to go to for solid comic book adaptations, but when working from his own material he is sadly lacking in both focus and flare.

The House of Mouse

Busy busy busy this week. Here's a review of the new Disney movie, which i think might be the best animated film they've done on their own since Pocahontas. It's more of a feature article than a review, but i hope you find it interesting anyway.

Tangled


Disney lost its way for a while. After the glory days of our collective childhood, with their steady succession of classic musical adventures from Beauty and the Beast to The Lion King, the animation giant’s pool of ideas seemed to stagnate. The only stand-out classics for the past decade were the Toy Story movies, and one suspects that Pixar did the lion’s share of the creative work on that franchise. So why did Disney dry up? What happened in the intervening years, and how will they regain their crown as the animation studio to beat?

One idea, and one I hold close to my own sing-along heart, was Disney’s decision to stop making animated musicals. While the musical as a genre had been out of fashion in mainstream, grown-up cinema since the sixties, in animation and children’s film it was still going strong. Try and imagine The Lion King without Hakuna Matata, or Aladdin without A Whole New World. Imagine how different, how empty your childhood would have been without Be Our Guest or Under the Sea. Singing along to Disney was part of growing up; but in recent years, for some unknown reason, the music has died, dragging audience figures and critical acclaim down with it.

Perhaps it was a bid to compete with Pixar, who have never made a musical; perhaps some market researcher told them children these days want catchphrases and comedy penguins more than catchy tunes; perhaps they just couldn’t be bothered any more. Whatever the reason, the Disney musical died a death in the mid-nineties, and (not necessarily as a direct result, but certainly as an interesting parallel) the company as a whole has suffered.

Thankfully, at the start of this new decade, Disney seems to be going back to its more tuneful roots. With the release last year of The Princess and the Frog, and with their new movie Tangled released this week, we have two Disney musicals in the classic tradition, and the good news is that they’re both great.

Tangled is a new spin on the classic fairytale of Rapunzel, which takes its cues as much from Shrek as from The Little Mermaid. The characters are energetically voiced and playfully rebellious, the script is fun for adults as well as children, and there are two genuinely amusing animal sidekicks, neither of which, thank the lord, are voiced by Eddie Murphy. While the film is needlessly in three dimensions, because the studios haven’t yet realized that their audiences have brains enough to follow a film that isn’t literally jumping out of the screen, it does look beautiful. One particular scene at the film’s climax is visually spectacular enough to rival any magic in the Mouse House’s back catalogue. But the real reason this film stands apart from anything the studio has done for a long while is the music. When the characters sing, it feels like you’re watching a REAL Disney film. The characters break into song and the film comes to life.

There is an obvious reason for this. The songs and music are written by Alan Menken, whose name you might not know, but whose music you were raised on. He composed the score for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Aladdin, and just about any other Disney film you secretly sing along to. His songs shaped our childhood, and now he’s back at the studio what won him his eight academy awards, introducing a whole new generation to the wonders of the animated musical. Watching the musical sequences in Tangled reminds you how you felt when you first saw Aladdin and Jasmine take that magic carpet ride, or sat down to dinner with Belle and Lumière. Alan Menken’s music makes you a kid again, and really, isn’t that what watching a Disney film is all about?

 
Also this week I had my first read-through for Antigone, which went spectacularly well. My cast are all lovely and i honestly can't wait for our first proper rehearsal tomorrow. Working with a small cast is such a relief, you have no idea.
 
And finally, I'm running for election at my student union. I'm running for activities officer, and if i get elected it'll be a full time job for a year, paying £17,000, to do stuff I've been doing for the past 3 years for free because i enjoy doing it. More info on that as it progresses, but wish me luck.
 
That's all for now. Have a wonderful evening.

The tiger dreams only of death

Oh Werner, you know how it goes.



So, uh, yeah...
There is a whole series of these and they crack me up.

You always hurt the ones you love

"Shall I, after tea and cake and ices have the strength to force the situation to its crisis."

Blue Valentine was 12 years in the making. The script had 66 drafts. When the concept was first created, Ryan Gosling was in a Disney show called Young Hercules and Michelle Williams was auditioning for Dawson’s Creek. In the intervening years, the two actors grew to become two of the finest and bravest working in their medium, and the script developed into one of the most raw, painful, heartfelt pieces of screenwriting I’ve ever experienced. As a result, Blue Valentine became a piece of filmmaking born from love, dedication, hard work and time, a remarkable achievement for both actors and director, and one which deserves all the recognition it can get.


The film tells the story of Dean and Cindy, a young couple on the brink of destruction. Intercutting between the start and end of their relationship, the audience is allowed to understand how the couple fell in love while watching their relationship deteriorate. The scenes of their meeting and initial romance are touching, funny, charming and beautifully realized. They could quite easily come from an indie rom-com along the lines of Garden State or (500) Days of Summer; complete as they are with spontaneous dance routines, quirky humour and a leading man to make any and all female audiences dissatisfied with their current partners. Gosling particularly shines in these sequences; effortlessly charming and handsome, his performance had every girl in the audience (myself included) giggling as though he were flirting with them alone, rather than with the characters on screen. Although the film of their early romance would clearly do spectacularly well at the box office (almost undoubtedly better than the actual film will fare), it is in the scenes of destruction, of love lost, that the true genius of the film lies.

Opening on a shot of their daughter calling out for their lost dog, the film sets a tone of searching, of desperation, of an impossible desire to regain what is lost. This heightens as the film continues, until every moment of tenderness between the pair hurts just as much as every harsh word. Instead of focusing on moments of high drama, as is the way of so many other films dealing with the breakdown of a marriage, here the film confronts us with the day to day life of the couple. The tedium and routine of daily life, the little frustrations, the things which used to be cute or funny but suddenly aren’t. This is the way love dies in real life, played out in excruciating detail. Parallel sex scenes from the start and end of their relationship spell out most explicitly the change that has come upon them, and make for some of the most uncomfortable viewing you’re likely to get in the cinema for quite some time.

The reason that the audience cares about the characters, that the film remains watchable and compelling even when you’re confronted with images and situations you’d really rather not see, is entirely down to the two lead actors. Ryan Gosling continues on his quest to avoid the heart-throb image in which Hollywood is so desperate to cast him, and by so doing provides us with yet another tour de force performance. His character, Dean, is a wonderful father but a sub-standard husband, an insecure, bullying dreamer caught in a life he chose but never wanted. Michelle Williams is quickly proving to be one of the best actresses in her generation, instilling Cindy with the quiet determination and vulnerability of a woman whose life has turned out the opposite of what she had planned. Both performances are so perfectly nuanced, so delicately observed, so essentially human that it is impossible to look away.

Blue Valentine will not be to everyone’s tastes. It is slow, quiet, understated and sombre. Beautifully and unobtrusively shot, with a cold, washed out colour pallet which makes everything appear even bleaker than it already is. The soundtrack by Grizzly Bear is dreamy and melancholic, hinting at a happy ending that we know won’t come. While not for the faint of heart, or those hoping to do anything after the film apart from sit alone and have a little cry, it is a film worth watching. Beautiful, brutal and heartbreaking, it reminds us that the happy ending is only half the story, and that the point where most romance films end is where the real story begins.

Make 'em Laugh

I'm writing an essay about Gene Kelly, but i can't stop watching videos of Donald O'Connor. He's such a charmer. I also completely love Vera-Ellen's pretend European accent. I wonder if this was intentionally as full of innuendo then as it appears to be now. Vera-Ellen's eyes suggest it was.



Honestly, how am i supposed to write an essay when i can just sit and watch this all day?



He's like an adorable, tap-dancing Bernard Black



I imagine, when i fall in love, this will be EXACTLY what it'll be like. If it's not, then i'll just stay single i guess...

"It's playing for a living."

This is fascinating and wonderful and I love each and every one of these men.



I love James's moustasche. I love how awkward Jesse is. I really love Ryan when he says "have you seen my work in Young Hercules?"
The way they talk about David Fincher and Danny Boyle is fascinating to me. It makes me want to direct direct direct.

I have nothing to declare except my genius

I've been saying I'd post my essay, but i was holding off until i got my mark back, in case it was worse than i thought and i got ashamed. Happily, i got my mark back today and i got a First, so go me! I'm over the moon about this.
Now i have confirmation that it's not a load of drivel, here's my essay. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it.

In what ways does ‘The Pirate’ embody the sensibilities of Camp?


The sensibility of camp is a subject which has been discussed by a multitude of writers, each of whom seem to come up with a different set of criteria to which something must conform in order to deserve categorization as a camp object. In this essay, for my own ease and in an attempt to come to some form of clear conclusion, I shall solely be focusing on camp as defined by Susan Sontag in her 1961 essay, ‘Notes on Camp’. In so doing I fully realize I am ignoring a vast and fascinating aspect (some would argue the defining aspect) of camp, namely the association between camp sensibilities and gay culture. By focusing on Sontag’s argument, and in particular her statement that “the essence of camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration” I hope to explain how a camp sensibility is translated into ‘The Pirate’ through set, costume and performance.

‘The Pirate’ was directed by Vincente Minnelli, a major figure in MGM musicals, famous for his “adventurously stylized” productions. He, probably more than any other director, popularized the idea of integrating the song and dance routines into the action of the film, so that they appear spontaneous and effortless. One way in which he achieved this sense of naturalized performance was by creating an obviously artificial or stylized world for the characters to inhabit, with the set and costume signifying a disassociation from reality to the audience even before any singing or dancing takes place. By establishing the unnatural nature of the character’s surroundings Minnelli created a space wherein “the boundaries between fantasy and everyday life could easily be transgressed” without jarring the audience. If we consider the film in the light of Sontag’s assertion that “camp is a certain mode of aestheticism... in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization” , we can appreciate the campness of Minnelli’s vision. The overstated visual aspect of the film, the colourful costumes, stylized sets and magnificently constructed backdrops frame the film within a code of campness, working against nature, so that the sets as well as the characters become performative.

The idea of performance, of “being-as-playing-a-role” is central to the sensibility of camp, and this is particularly prominent in the main song and dance sequences of ‘The Pirate’. Sexual desire is expressed through performance by both central characters, firstly by Gene Kelly as Serafin in the song ‘Nina’, and later in Judy Garland’s song, ‘Love of my Life’. The song ‘Nina’ starts with Kelly explaining to the men in the town the way he attracts women, before moving through the town seducing various girls, and finally ending up at a poster of himself, advertising his show. Kelly is performing his desire, but as an audience it is unclear to whom he is performing. Is the song for the men to whom he starts singing, to the women with whom he dances, or to the audience he wishes to entice to his show? What is clear is that the character is supposed to be focused upon. The women, with which he dances, far from serving as objects of desire, become a faceless multitude, entirely interchangeable and un-eroticized. As a result of this, Serafin “assumes the ‘feminine’ position of erotic objectification,” he is the one to whom we as an audience are attracted, thus subverting the traditional cinematic viewpoint of man as subject and woman as object. In this way, ‘Nina’ conforms to Sontag’s idea of “transcend[ing] the nausea of replica” by allowing something to be read in a new and different way.

Similarly, in Garland’s number, ‘Love of my Life,’ we are presented with a performative expression of desire, and here the element of artificiality behind the sentiment being expressed is made abundantly clear. The song is constructed within layers of performance. Garland’s Manuela is expressing her love to Kelly’s Serafin, who is pretending to be Macoco; but she is also singing to provoke Don Pedro, the real Macoco, whilst all the while pretending to be hypnotized. The artificiality is further highlighted by having the sequence take place on Serafin’s stage. Again, it is unclear to the audience to whom Garland’s performance is really aimed. Here, at the most obviously artificial point in the film, the audience is given Manuela’s expression of love for Serafin, supposedly “the most direct expression of ‘true’ feeling,” in the film. This acceptance of artifice in the place of real emotion adheres to Sontag’s statement that “camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness, and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling.” What could be seen as a romantic or emotional expression is instead layered within performance and artifice, so that it becomes impossible to read seriously, without the sense of “playful, anti-serious” humour on which camp is based.

This playfulness extends to the portrayal of gender and sex roles in ‘The Pirate’. I have already touched upon the way in which Kelly is ‘feminized’ early on in the film, and this fact is made even more explicit within the ‘Pirate Ballet’ sequence. Here we see quite clearly that Garland as Manuela takes on the ‘masculine’ role as an observer, the subject of the gaze, while Kelly is objectified into the ‘feminine’ position. The sequence starts with Manuela looking out of her window at Serafin, who is pretending to be Macoco. Serafin notices her watching, and plays up to her gaze by fighting the local police force. The camera then cuts back to Manuela before fading into a dream sequence. This editing leaves the audience in no doubt that the following dance routine is entirely Manuela’s fantasy; we experience it through her imagination. The image of Serafin/Macoco we are then given is highly sexualized. As the ruthless pirate of Manuela’s fantasy, Kelly’s body is on display for the audience to admire. Wearing tight black shorts and a low cut, sleeveless vest, Kelly is coded as a sexual object, the black of the costume blending into the darkness of the highly stylized black and red background so that the bare flesh of his legs and arms are the focal point. The camera is placed low, angled up at him so that his crotch is at the centre of every shot. Even the choreography is styled around the male as spectacle. In classical ballet, and in most dream ballet sequences of the period, the male dancer serves as a support for the ballerina (a good example of this is Cyd Charisse’s cameo in the ‘Broadway Ballet’ sequence from ‘Singin’ in the Rain’). Here, this is not the case. Kelly dances with other men, or alone. Only once does he dance with a woman, and then it is only for a second, and we do not see her face. This is a fantasy from a woman’s perspective in which men are sexual objects, thus producing a “provocative disjunction of gendered and sexualized understandings of masculinity,” with which the audience must try to align itself.

The fact that we see Serafin acknowledging that Manuela is watching before he puts on his exaggerated masculine performance leads us back to the point of Sontag’s, that “as a taste in persons, camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated or to the strongly exaggerated.” All of the performances in ‘The Pirate’ are exaggerated to some extent, but Serafin playing Macoco, and Manuela when pretending to be hypnotized are the most interesting in terms of camp sensibility. In both cases we see the characters playing heightened versions of gender stereotypes. Serafin as Macoco is all machismo, lowering his voice and puffing out his chest. Manuela under ‘hypnosis’ is a heavy breathing, quivering lipped parody of femininity. This “relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms” firmly places both characters in the realm of camp, performing gender stereotypes to an extent that could almost be considered drag.

A final way in which ‘The Pirate’ could be considered to embody the sensibilities of camp is in its portrayal of an unconventional romance narrative. Serafin falls for Manuela’s beauty, but as an audience we get the impression that he would be willing to forget her as he does all the other women until he hears her sing. The relationship is then less about romance than it is about Serafin wanting her for her talent, to the point where he even states that “it’s isn’t essential for you to love me.” The film instead provides the audience with a “camp romance narrative... [which] tampers with romantic expectations.” The two characters do not have a typical courtship; Manuela only falls for Serafin because she thinks that he is Macoco, and only finds happiness when she “exchanges dreams for self-conscious artifice” . The film thwarts our expectations to the last, when instead of the expected union of the couple we are given an androgynous, unromantic comedy musical number.

This final number, ‘Be A Clown’ could be taken as a suggestion for how to read the film as a whole. The couple perform on a lavishly decorated stage, surrounded by artifice, encouraging the audience both on screen and off to laugh with them. If “the whole point of camp is to dethrone the serious,” then ending the film on a subversive and humorous note is a perfect summation of camp sensibility. We are presented with the “artifice and exaggeration” of the film, in terms of set, costume and performance, and told by the leads that it is alright to find it funny; in the end they remind us that “camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment... camp is generous, it wants to enjoy.”

Bibliography

Cohan, Steven, ‘Dancing with balls in the 1940s: sissies, sailors and the camp masculinity of Gene Kelly’ in The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema, eds. Powrie, Phil, Ann Davis and Bruce Babington (London & New York: Wallflower Press, 2004)

Cohan, Steven, Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical, (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2005)

Dyer, Richard, ‘Judy Garland and Camp’ in Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004)

Naremore, James, The Films of Vincente Minnelli, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation and Other Essays, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1961),

Tinkcom, Matthew, ‘”Working Like a Homosexual” Camp Visual Codes and the Labour of Gay Subjects in the MGM Freed Unit’ in Hollywood Musicals and The Film Reader, ed. Steven Cohan (New York: Routledge, 2001)

So yeah, there that is. Apparently i could have gotten higher marks if i hadn't sold myself short in my introduction by saying i was only looking at Sontag when in fact my research was broader. Bah, live and learn. Still, I'm happy, and that's 25% of my grade for this course in the bag.
 
Had a rehearsal today for an hour and a half doing the last 15 minutes of act 3. The staging is fine, so we were really just focusing on lines and motivations. It does get better every time we do it, and people take direction very well, really listening to my notes and applying them to their performance, but the lines are still weak. The interesting this was that we did a line run with everyone sitting down and it was almost perfect. They just seem to get confused when we're up and moving. It's frustrating, but i think we've almost got it.
 

I'm spending the evening trying to get well, getting posters printed, and going up to London to get my hair dyed. I'm thinking fluorescent pink. Good idea?

Happy Turkey Day

A couple of random posts to celebrate my forefathers stealing from the native Americans and ruining their way of life. Pumpkin pie is tasty.



Yeah, it kind of speaks for itself.

Next we have a piece i write for the "Film matters" column on my newspaper page this week. It was supposed to be in reference to Never Let Me Go, and all the other book adaptations that are coming out at the moment, but it kind of became about Harry Potter and the unoriginality of directors. I hope you like it. I'm worried the ending isn't as clear as i would have liked, but i reached my word limit and had to make it more concise.

Whenever a  film adaptation of a book comes out, the audience is going to be split. Fans of the book tend to prefer the original, commenting on all the ways in which the film has altered the text. People who have not read the original often prefer the film. For most, it seems whichever way they first experience a text tends to remain their favourite. This generalization applies to classics, or books and films aimed towards an older audience, and it is not necessarily a bad thing.
But a change is developing, clearly defined among younger readers and audiences; the appearance of films and books which are inextricably linked. The Harry Potter and Twilight sagas, with their huge followings, have become cultural juggernauts, to the point where the characters in the books will forever have the faces of the actors portraying them. Edward Cullen is Robert Pattinson, Harry Potter is Daniel Radcliffe. Fans seem to love the franchise rather than the medium.
To an extent this makes life easier for the directors and screenwriters. They have a pre-built audience who are eager to love whatever they put on screen, so long as it doesn’t mess with the basic idea of the book. The lazy, poorly written first entries in the Harry Potter and Twilight film canon are evidence of this. These audiences don’t seem to want anything new, they demand more of the same. While this may be fine for tween hordes desperate for their safe fantasy fix, I don’t see why adult audiences should have to put up with by-the-numbers remakes.
When a book adaptation comes out which really shakes things up, either by changing part of the story, or by portraying the original text in a brand new way (think of the end of Fight Club, or Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet), it seems to first be met with resistance, before being praised for its vision and originality. Why then are so many adaptations so afraid of breaking the mould?
By their very nature films and novels are different. Books allow you to imagine characters and settings however you like, letting you create the visual world of the text within your head. In film, by casting, by choosing certain settings, the director is immediately imposing their interpretation of the text on the audience. There is no way a film can be exactly the same as each audience member’s experience of the text, and I don’t think it should try to be. If a film tries to exactly impersonate a book, it can only fail. In my opinion, if an adaptation is to really be successful, the director or adaptor must think about their own interpretation of the book, liberating themselves from the expectations of others. In so doing, the film would in some ways be more personal, more true to the original effect of the novel, and perhaps then we would have more Where The Wild Things Are’s and less P.S. I Love You’s, and the cinematic world might be a better, more imaginative place.

I had 3 hours of rehearsals today, working on act 1 and act 4. All of them went pretty well and were uneventful. I feel like we're at the stage now that we should have been at 2 weeks ago, and it's frustrating me, but there is little i can do apart from plan as many rehearsals as possible and beg people to learn their lines.

I am so ready for the weekend.

I wanna do some dancin' too.

I'm doing a presentation on Gene Kelly and how he made dancing manly, and in my research i came across an episode of Omnibus that he made where he danced with sporting legends called Dancing is a Man's Game.
I thought this was incredibly cool.



If you have a spare half hour you really should watch this. "I'm Here" is a short film by Spike Jonze, who makes me want to live in his brain. Sorry it's broken into 3 parts, but PLEASE watch it, you'll feel better for it.







How is Andrew Garfield still so recognizable and adorable, even when he has a modem for a head?

I had a good but brief rehearsal today, going over a scene from the very end of the play with my two leads. They are both awesome and make my job so easy. It's looking good. If the whole play were little intimate scenes like this I'd be laughing. They're so much more fun to direct. I'm never going a play with crowd scenes ever again!
I'm planning rehearsals for next week, because we really need to get a move on. Monday we're going to be doing a 4 hour character workshop, which should hopefully be fun and challenging and raise some questions and talking points for the actors. On Tuesday i might try and do a run through, or i might look more in depth at the first act. I haven't decided yet. Either way, more work needs to be done. The fact that i have a presentation to do tomorrow and an essay due in 2 weeks just makes things more interesting.

One final video. Advertising can be so great when it's done right.

This is gratuitous.

This video makes me giggle like an idiot. Seriously, every time Eddie Redmayne or Ben Wishaw come on screen i turn into a gurgling mess.

I think it's best if you ignore the other two, they're just not as good.



Would it be alright with you guys if i married Eddie? I think Lucy Redmayne has a certain ring to it.

And if he says no, then maybe Matthew might say yes?

Clockwork colour

A little video i made of a creative hair show i did at the beginning of the summer.



Loved that make-up.

Don't stop dancing or you'll fall off

A couple of film clips today which make me smile.
I was thinking about musicals, and about films which incorporate song or dance sequences but which aren't musicals, and i thought I'd share some of my favourite sequences with you. Enjoy.









This one is so beautiful it hurts. Watch Dans Paris right now, all of you!


This one is slightly less moving, but makes me smile real big.


This isn't strictly a dance sequence, and it won't let me embed the video, but this scene stuck with me. I think it's beautiful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHWm9O-WgRA
Another one i definitely wanted to include, but which can't be found on youtube is the scene in the dance club from Away We Go which had me sobbing for about half an hour. Melanie Lynsky broke my heart. Go watch it. Also the bowling alley tap dance from Buffalo 66, which is dreamy.

You've all seen this before, but it makes me happy, so deal with it.


We watched this in my film seminar on musicals yesterday and my lecturer started crying. I love him so much. If any of you haven't seen enchanted yet, you need to. I saw it 3 times at the cinema. Amy Adams is amazing.


Did you notice that Patrick Dempsey is wearing the same outfit as the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and that the dance and the shots echo the dance in the ballroom from that film, which in turn were taken from Sleeping Beauty? Disney is manipulating us with nostalgia, and it's working.

So yeah... more films should have dance sequences.
Can you think of any i missed, or that i should watch? I'm on the hunt.

Let your hands do the talking.

I'm going a little blog crazy tonight, because I haven't had internet at home for so long and there's so much I want to share with you. I think this is the last for tonight. Enjoy it.



I love their faces, and way that it looks so simple and so complex at the same time, and the fact that the song is a remix of the one sung by Tom and Dickie in The Talented Mr Ripley.
I want to learn to do that.

Action! And Glorious Adventure!

Fan made trailers make me happy, and this one is one of the best i've ever seen.



Oh so stylish.

And while we're on the subject of films, here's a review/article i wrote about "I'm Still Here" which i think you should read.

I’m Still Here, the Joaquin Phoenix “documentary” that has had critics and fans alike guessing for two years came out last week, and like its mysterious star it’s a tough one to figure out.


When Phoenix went on David Letterman two years ago, the entertainment world was shocked. Though the actor had already cultivated an air of unpredictability, shunning the squeaky clean image so many film stars try so desperately to acquire, the sight of him bearded, bespectacled and mumbling was not something the media or the general public were prepared for. Speculation about his mental health abounded, countless parodies were performed, and more than one person wondered aloud if it were not all just a big hoax to raise the star’s media profile. The film world waited to see what Phoenix’s next move would be. And waited. And waited.

The film, directed and primarily shot by Casey Affleck, brother of Ben and brother-in-law to Phoenix, opens with the actor wondering whether the media portrays him as dark and mysterious because he is, or whether he is that way because that is how people expect him to be due to media coverage. An interesting, if not altogether original thought, which raises the question of how much anyone in the public eye can really control how people see them when everything about them is filtered through the distorted lens of celebrity.

The image that the audience get of Phoenix from the film, often drunk or high, fat, hairy and almost unintelligible (subtitles are used throughout the film, despite the fact that everyone is speaking English), is so different from any ‘behind the scenes’ glimpse of celebrity that it is at first funny, but quickly becomes mildly disturbing. Whether you believe the film is real or not (and Affleck finally revealed last week that it was a hoax), you are being allowed to see something very rare, a performance without a shred of vanity. The man simply doesn’t seem to care what people think of him.

When people thought the film was real this was impressive, but now we know it isn’t it becomes something almost revelatory. Try and think, just for a minute, of any other actor who would be willing to put his entire life on hold for two years, ruin his public image, and potentially jeopardize any future offers of work for the sake of a giant prank on the entertainment industry, his fans, and the world at large. Whether you like him or not, whether you see the point of it or not, you must admit, that takes some balls.

The film itself follows Phoenix from just after he finished shooting Two Lovers, through his attempts to set up his hip hop career, climaxing with the now infamous Letterman show. At turns hilarious and poignant; regardless of whether you’re watching him as a character or a man, the journey on screen is raw, disturbing and occasionally absurd. More of a curiosity than a film you’ll want to re-watch again and again, it confronts the viewer and makes them question how much they should trust the images of their favourite stars as shown to them by the entertainment media. In its own unusual and deeply unorthodox way it serves as a reminder that celebrities are people too, and that you shouldn’t judge anyone until you have all the facts, because what you see and what is real may be worlds apart.

Tomorrow I'm starting an experiment up here, so keep checking back. Hopefully it'll be interesting. Also I've had a review of Despicable Me written for about 4 months and it's finally getting published next week so i can post it, and I'm writing a review of Buried as soon as i finish this post, so that will be up shortly.
 
It's all systems go around here!

Helpful hints.

I just re-found this video, which my beautiful and talented friend Angelina sent me at the beginning of the summer. I hope you find it as helpful and informative as I did.

How to Make a Situation About You: When Your Friend Needs To Talk	UCBcomedy.com
Watch more comedy videos from the twisted minds of the UCB Theatre at UCBcomedy.com

There's a whole series of them, in case you need more advice. Here's the link if you're curious.
http://www.ucbcomedy.com/videos/play/6260/how-to-make-a-situation-about-you

I hope you all have wonderful days.

In the mean time...

Hello lovers
Ok, so I'm back in Brighton for the rest of the year, so i can catch up with my sorely neglected blog. I have many things i want to say, but they're gonna require a little bit of time and effort to get up here, so for now i just want to say I've had an amazing summer with my wonderful mother whom i love, and i hope that when she gets off the plane she watches these videos and they make her laugh.



That one was random, this one has a purpose. We stayed up until 3AM on more than one occasion because of these gentlemen. I blame my eye bags on them.



You can't tell me that I'm not giving you hot pants.

A Very Petty Post

Ok, so it's way past my bedtime and I'm absolutely knackered, but i had to get this out before i went to sleep. The new Spiderman has just been announced and guess what?! It's Andrew Garfield!

This should make me super happy; and it did for all of 30 seconds, until i realized what it means. Yet again an actor that i loved in obscurity has hit the big time. Half an hour ago, millions of people had never heard of Andrew Garfield. Half an hour after the announcement hit the Internet his name was trending 3rd worldwide on twitter. I know i should be happy for him, and i am, but I'm also quietly mourning. This happens all the time. I've loved Joseph Gordon-Levitt since Third Rock, told people how awesome he was in Brick and Mysterious Skin (Watch Mysterious Skin, it's mind blowing, honestly), I cried for him in Stop Loss, all while my friends ignored his progress. But then (500) Days of Summer came out and suddenly everyone is re-living their childhood crushes on him from 10 Things I Hate About You. Matt Smith was awesome in The Ruby in the Smoke and adorable in Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which most of his die hard Dr Who groupies have never even heard of. Bitch bitch bitch, moan moan moan.

Anyway, while being excited for the film and happy that they are trying to repair the damage done to the franchise by the truly abysmal Spiderman 3, I've taken this news with a certain sadness. There is no question Andrew will make a wonderful Spiderman, he has yet to disappoint in any of his roles (I'll tell you again, watch Red Riding, watch Boy A, watch Parnassus, hell, even watch the episodes of Sugar Rush he's in, he aces every part), and i have full faith in Mark Webb as a director, i was just hoping i had a few more months, maybe until Never Let Me Go came out, until i had to share him with the rest of the world. I guess I'll just have to find a new ingenue to covet. It's a hard life.