A [slightly late] weekly round-up of what I have been watching,
listening to and discussing. Rather than just posts about film, this is a bit
more all-encompassing as I think my interest in cinema and art crosses over and
between a variety of sources...A little late because, again, it seems that a Summer Holiday becomes much more busier when you are recently engaged. Many-a-trip to see family and a great time with friends!
Highlight of the Week
Tom & Gem's Wedding: Saturday saw me as an usher to a best friend. A fantastic day with a fantastic couple. Funnily enough, the friend briefly became a blogger - and still has a site active. A strong interest in silent cinema and Ozu see's him purchase some incredible films that I only wish I could watch myself. Ironically, his interest in these films made for the perfect run-of-jokes for his Best Man, shocking everyone with his ownership of the exploitation 1988 Italian-Horror classic Ratman
DVD's/Blu-Rays/Cinema:Funny Games: Sarah became fascinating by Michael Haneke after we watched The Story of Film, and consequently recieved a Haneke boxset for her birthday. I have only seen White Ribbon myself, so hopefully this present for Sarah should rectify this as we watch his back-catalogue together. Suffice to say, Funny Games is brilliant. And I completely "get" the reasons behind a US remake.
Cool Hand Luke: My belief that Inception is a Pro-Atheist work of cinema can join the ranks of other Pro-Atheist cinema that includes Cool Hand Luke. What other films are Pro-Atheism (opposed to Anti-Religion ... because that's easy to do)
The Bourne Legacy: My god. What an awful film. It is not the fauly of Jeremy Renner of Rachel Weisz. The buck purely stops with Tony Gilroy who wrote the script and directed the film. Bad pacing and, in many cases, completely over-complicating the matter. I think the trick that Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass pulled was making a very simple story seem complex. The Bourne Legacy is over-complicated and yet could've been much more easier to digest.
Music/Podcasts:
/Film: Caught up on a couple. Great discussion on the Cloud Atlas 5-minute epic trailer. I'm with Dave and Adam: Could be an epic-mess. It clearly wants to be incredibly profound - the question is whether it can effectively reach those heights. I think people who hate The Fountain can relate to that outcome. The episode on The Dark Knight Rises whereby they assessed the feedback had one letter summarising the film in the exact manner I did recently. The biggest complaint is "Why don't we see more of Gotham under Banes' rule". My answer is what would need to be removed to make that happen. It's already 2hours 40mins long. 20-mins showing Gotham-ites losing it, might've just been too much.
David Guetta: Was close to seeing him in Ibiza but never did. He really does manage to capture the right beat that you crave a dance too.
Hot Chip: Great to work out too and a damn good album. Much appreciated Alistair and Richard for constantly reminding me how good these musicians are.
Frankly, My Dear/The LAMBcast: Discussions on The Dark Knight Rises seemed to raise the same ol' argument about minor issues - How did Batman survive the explosion? How did he get back to the city? How did he survive his back being broken? Rapper Scott argues the impossibility that you can't survive a back-break using a rope. Seriously guys! It is a Batman film, the themes are consistent. I wouldn't appreciate Nolan showing us the long, boring journey Bruce Wayne made to get back to the fictional Gotham (for all we know, the prison is on the outskirts). I wouldn't appreciate Nolan developing some convuluted story whereby a spinal-specialist "happened" to be sharing his cell. This is the very definition of nit-picking I'm afraid.
TV/Theatre/Art Galleries/Books/Misc:
Olympics 2012: Sarah and I were lucky enough to watch the Taekwondo, which, Team GB won with Jade Jones. I find it fascinating how much column-inches is given to Pendleton, Ennis and Mo Farah. They are great and well-deserved winners. I'm more impressed with the sporting stars who weren't funded as well - but still came out on top.
The Bodysculpting Bible For Men by James Villepigue and Hugo Rivera: No need to explain. I have a very long road ahead of me...
Haha, glad to see your dissection of that Lambcast. Conversations about TDKR seem to fall exactly into that trap (hell, even my podcast tread towards that at points from what I remember) because there's always someone who has to know exactly what's happening and who demands everything must be completely realistic or else. It's frustrating to listen to when there's so much more interesting things to talk about in regards to it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, completely right. I think too much time is spent on the minor issues - which I doubt Nolan gave a second thought to. Either it adheres to the overall story or doesn't - and if it doesn't, he won't waste screentime on it.
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