Friday I saw Smile, a strange and wonderfully cynical movie from the 70s about beauty pageants. Think Drop Dead Gorgeous but thirty years back. Lee found it too cringeworthy but I loved it to bits. Especially some of the random throwaway jokes.
Saturday, first thing was Conversations with my Gardener. A French film about a man who moves back to his childhood home and hires a gardener who it turns out, is a childhood friend. The pacing was perfect, the humour sharp and fun, the emotions deep and moving. I loved it to bits, and recommend it for everyone, especially since Lee loved it too.
Tales from Earthsea. The latest from Studio Ghibli, and not the best. It was good, beautiful and fun and sweet although the end became kind of nonsensical, but then I haven't read the Ursula Le Guin books it was based on.
Forever. Well, this one let me down. The old song from The critic...
"I like French films
pretentious boring French films
I like French films
two tickets s'il vous plait!"
This one was just not very good. It was a doco about a cemetary in Paris where a bunch of famous people are buried, but it was unfocussed and long and the director had too many long lingering shots of everything.
It wasn't helped by the fact that I had the latest Harry Potter in my bag waiting to be read.
Sunday I saw U. U is a French animated movie about a Princess and a Unicorn, but it was mostly about growing up and the loss of innocence and falling in love. I loved it. I was watching it and trying to think how I could make my book feel more like this movie somehow. I found the trailer for it on youtube, you can see it by clicking on my youtube favourites link on the sidebar there.
The art style was rich and painterly, very impressionistic and the jazzy folky music was incredibly catchy. The characters were simple and the design was very French....Ah, I loved it.
I went home after seeing U and read Harry Potter for a few hours straight and then back out to see Animation Now!.
As ever, it was a mixture of breathtaking animation and stuff that was so boring I wished I was asleep. I found a couple of my favourites on youtube...follow the link for 'The Story of How' at least. It's a very lush musical fable that reminds me of the Hunting of the Snark kind of. It loses a lot in the low-res world of youtube but is still cool.
I am now finished with Harry Potter. I won't say anything except that I loved it.
PoF: cold
CO: why is winter so very very cold?