Movies' Talk

Låt den Rätte Komma In (Let the Right One in)

Teen Vampire films - I guess arrive in pairs. Twilight was a Harry Potter with fangs pre teen romp - with some tooley fog sfx and youtube acting.

But this second Tween vampire film wins 100% not only a strong teen annexed story, but a tight plausible script.

author John Ajvide Lindqvist wrote the screen play and book. The casting of the two pre teens is perfect and the solid white snow setting really baring out the red in this metaphor.

Forced to attend, many fans of Twilight would doubtless spend the entire running time of Let the Right One In text-messaging their BFF about the boring movie they're presently enduring, while many admirers of Let the Right One In would doubtless flash their presumed intellectual superiority by openly scoffing as Twilight unspoiled before their jaded eyes


This is an arthouse meditation on the vampire genre, and it works out pretty well. The relationship between the two kids is sweet and tender, but there is also a sense of impending doom. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is a welcome addition to the horror genre. One that I think will get better with age, like a fine wine.

In the final analysis, Let the Right One In is superior to Twilight, although in the annals of vampire cinema -- a rich vein that has already produced definitive flicks with Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, two wondrous Nosferatu masterworks, and even a bloodsucking ballet (Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary) -- it would be a stretch to claim that it ranks in the highest echelons of the genre. But it comes closer than one would rightly suspect.

A Swedish import that uses its frozen environment to great advantage, this picture, like Twilight, shows the effect that a vampire can have on the social life of a school-age loner. Here, the central kid is Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a 12-year-old boy who has no friends and who's the constant target of the school bully and his sycophants. One night while hanging around his apartment complex, he meets his new neighbor: Eli (Lina Leandersson), a mysterious 12-year-old girl. Eli tells Oskar right off the bat that they can't be friends; what she doesn't tell him is that it's because she's a vampire. But Eli is every bit as lonely as Oskar, so the two end up spending a lot of time together. Oskar doesn't always understand Eli's behavior -- for example, why eating candy makes her violently ill -- but he accepts every aspect of their friendship in a matter-of-fact manner. Meanwhile, her empty stomach continues to rumble, and the other neighbors are looking mighty tasty.

From the Frankenstein creature to the wolf man, the movies have frequently given us sympathetic monsters. There have even been pitiable vampires, yet it's possible that little Eli is the most tragic of all. With no backstory on hand, we have no idea what led to her present situation, but it's poignant when she tells Oskar, "I'm 12. But I've been 12 for a long time." Her craving for blood can't be helped, yet it's still chilling to watch the manner in which she descends upon one of her victims (almost as chilling as the later scene in which the victim, now tainted by vampire blood, is attacked by a roomful of frenzied cats). But it's Eli's friendship with Oskar that redeems her, and helmer Tomas Alfredson, working from an astute screenplay by John Ajvide Linqvist (adapting his own novel), emphasizes this connection with a lovely directorial touch: During the bloody climax, he focuses not on Eli's blood-splattered mouth but on her twinkling eyes, ones that wrinkle slightly as she stares approvingly at the best friend a vampire ever had.

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An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong

The Edge of Love

Dylan Thomas comes to life.

Love, war and poetry swirl together to form this cocktail of a film, in which fantasy and reality are the main, but conflicting ingredients. Sharman Macdonald (who also happens to be Keira Knightley's mother) has written a dense screenplay about a high-pitched emotional story involving Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (played by Matthew Rhys), his first love Vera (Knightley) and wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller). Infatuation, infidelity, friendship, jealousy and betrayal are not comfortable partners, as Vera and Caitlin discover with the help of Cillian Murphy's catalyst soldier hero William Killick. In keeping with Dylan's ethereal poetry, director John Maybury injects an artistic flourish to this involving drama, allowing us to understand the intricate complexities of the spiral of love and friendship in which the characters find themselves engrossed.

To Dylan, Vera lives in his sky, while Caitlin remains in his earth. In an unexpected twist, the two women in Thomas' life become best friends. 'I might like you; then again, I might not,' Miller's Caitlin tells Knightley's Vera on first meeting. It is clear from the start that Vera still holds a large crush on Thomas, her first love, but lets the persistence of Murphy's devoted and loyal William to penetrate her reserve. He falls for her beauty and aloofness as she sings torch songs in the underground shelters of the 1940 blitz. But when William heads to the isolated Wales coast during the war, and finds the threesome comfortably settled in a controversial relationship, a war of a different kind erupts. To William, life is simple when it comes to the woman he loves, but to the parasitic Dylan who feeds off life in order to create his thoughts and words, people and emotions are nothing but commodities used for pleasure.

Knightley and Miller deliver splendid performances, the former showing she has a pretty, tuneful voice. Murphy is enigmatic as the strong-willed soldier, while Rhys is suitably soppy as the weak and often detestable Dylan. The story drags at times but there are rewards as the relationships each find their footholds, and Vera is taken right to the precarious edge of love as she finally realises what is most important.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
Artists and poets whose works have inspired and enriched our lives seem to have usually lived fairly rotten lives, and Dylan Thomas appears to be no exception. This wonderfully cinematic revelation of his life as seen through relationships with the two key women in his life doesn't have to convince us that every detail is historically accurate. It can't anyway. But it does convince in terms of characters and the mood of the times.

Matthew Rhys is remarkably effective as Dylan in a performance that captures the complexity of a man who lives to write, but is not very good at anything else. Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley are superb, too, as the sparring women united in friendship but at odds over love. Miller's feisty and risk taking free spirit Caitlin is an entire creation, while Knightley is riveting as the lovely and torn Vera.

The film's cinematic signature is made up of moody imagery that is still grounded in reality, but with poetic flourish. Angelo Badalamenti's score is elegantly understated but crucial, and Emma E. Hickox finds the right structure with her edit.

I really don't like the title, the pace sags at times and the ending is a bit of a mess, but these are luckily unharmful to the film's engaging tone and compelling characters. It's an ideal film for all those who complain about too many brash, youth oriented popcorn movies.

12

A remake of 12 Angry men - this take is very well done and is worth renting this DVD or to catch limited screenings of this Russian classic.
It has been nine years since one of the most internationally acclaimed Russian film directors, Nikita Mikhalkov, has released a feature film. So the appearance of "12" is something of an event.

The penultimate entry screened in-competition at this year's Venice Film Festival, it was for many the surprise non-winner of the Golden Lion for Best Film. The jury did, however, award Mikhalkov an ad-hoc Special Lion in recognition of his mastery as a filmmaker both in this and his previous works. (His "Urga" won the Golden Lion in 1991.)

Mikhalkov's latest production, which he directed, co-wrote and acts in, coincides with the 50th anniversary of Sydney Lumet's "12 Angry Men." Although inspired by the classic Hollywood courthouse drama, it is very different in many ways.

The initial situation of "12" is similar to Lumet's film, in which a young Puerto Rican boy is on trial for murdering his father. His guilt seems obvious, the witnesses reliable enough and everybody on the jury inclined to reach a rapid verdict - until a sole juror courageously suggests that they discuss the case further, and at least consider the possibility of innocence.

In Mikhalkov's film a Chechen youth (Apti Magamaev) stands accused of stabbing to death his adoptive father, a Russian special forces officer, who rescued the boy after his parents were killed in the fighting, and brought him back to live with him in his Moscow apartment.

Mikhalkov's "12" has a remarkable and unexpected twist at the end. It suggests two different conclusions: one in the style of Hollywood, another perhaps more in keeping with Russian realities, but not in the manner of, say, Peter Howitt's "Sliding Doors" - since, strangely and subtly, Mikhalkov's endings are not entirely incompatible, challenging the audience to continue to ponder the issues.

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\Berkeley Ca

Gigantic

Paul Dano's new film for 2009 is one of his best.
"Nothing is normal," one character needlessly reminds us late into director-co-writer Matt Aselton's "Gigantic," since, by that time, the film's disinterest in anything normal has already been loudly and strenuously announced. Smacking of an unearned love and fascination for all things eccentric, Aselton's debut steadfastly favors gimmicky dialogue exchanges and odd-for-the-hell-of-it scenes over emotional honesty in its telling of a young man's pull between his first real g.f. and his desire to adopt a child. Tailor-made for the terminally hip, pic will draw urbanite upper-crusters and nobody else.

Brian (Paul Dano) is the youngest of three sons, his parents (Ed Asner, Jane Alexander) so elderly that most people mistake them for his grandparents. He sells mattresses in an old Gotham warehouse, where portly, bossy Al Lolly (John Goodman) rolls in, ready to pick out the most expensive bed on the floor.

The film was panned at the T film fest but i liked it and I have always been a fan of Pauls work.

Look for this film in April 09

Vmedia
Berkeley

The Greatest Short Film Ever!!!

The Oscar-nominated Short Films 2009

Flixter has no link to the short films for the Oscars that doing it winter tour around the art houses -- I saw them this week and want to suggest if you see them playing at your local art house be sure to see them.

As if compensating for last year's weak slate of nominees in the Live Action Short Film category, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences has stretched further than usual for its selection of shorts this year-- The 10 Live Action and Animated nominees for 2009 come from nine countries with only one American entry, and only a couple in English.The Live Action shorts are almost entirely solemn and bittersweet while the Animated entries are almost entirely comedic, which gives this years touring program - which omits the Documentary Shorts entries completely-- a solid sense of balance.

Its also surprisingly difficult to handicap the winners. In the Live Action category, Germany's 'Toyland' has the obvious advantage of being a Holocaust story, specifically about a German boy whose nervous, protective mother convinces him that the Nazis are about to send their Jewish neighbors to Toyland. The story suffers from its similarity to the recent feature The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, but it benefits from sumptuous cinematography rich design, and an understated calm thats more effective than swelling strings and emphatic emotion. The Irish entry New Boy about an African boy trying to find his feet among the bullies in an Irish classroom, is more stridently emotional, but in ways appropriate to the exaggerated traumas of childhood. The Swiss German coproduction 'On The Line' uses subdued execution and terrifically soulful performances to rescue a melodramatic story about a romantic crush and a murder; in the other direction, Frances Manon On The Asphalt = spins a simple story of a dying girl into an overwrought fantasy that recalls the closing scene of 25th Hour. The one hint of comedy comes from Denmarks The Pig= in which a hospitalized older man desperately fixates on a whimsical painting. The dialogue is too on the nose and the ironies are too broad, but the playfulness ameliorates the obviousness.
In the animated category, manic comedy prevails== Two lovelorn octopi fight for their lives in the cute, three nminute French student goof Oktapodi pallbearers struggle to lay a body to rest in the gloriously dark, insane British entry This Way Up and a magicians rabbit faces off against his owner in the giddy Pixar short Presto, which toured theaters with Wall E. Russias black and white line art entry Lavatory Lovestory mixes slapstick and sorrow into a throwback concoction that feels like the Film Board Of Canada shorts of the 80s. The one wholly serious entry Japans heartbreaking = House Of Small Cubes serves as a lovely metaphor for memory, as a man explores lost rooms in a house mostly lost to a rising tide. This year, all 10 nominees in the Live Action and Animation categories will be available via iTunes as of February 17. But this years entries are so strong that its hard to pick and choose for once, there all worth seeing, and the Academy will have its work cut out for it in selecting a winner.

You can see these on DVD later this winter or on screen threw march

Vmedia
Berkeley

El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

Milk

I am amazed at all the Top 10 lists this film has made and I am proud its gone so far - In less than a year it has become one of the most honored films in 2008 - Thanks for all your support

This my original notes on the film:

The Premiere went well, Sean busted the red carpet on Tuesday 10/28 /08to join the No on 8 protest outside the theater.

I have been stressing over this film for weeks - worried that it was released out the gate too soon to beat the other holiday A list films.

But my feelings were positive at the screening and I was really moved by this film - I know i worked closely on this project - fact is all my scenes were cut and are some where in LA in some editors render file

James Franco and Emile steal the this film along with Josh, Luna and Penn. Dustins brillant script always moved me.

Danny Elfmans dark score really makes this gay bio pic raise the bar to the standard use of gay 70's music to make a statement of the times.

Golden Globe, SAG, NY Critics and Oscars are all over this project and I am proud to have been part of it.

Vince
Vmedia berk Ca.

I am excited to learn that the Box Office for MILK has done well rating number 10 in its 3rd week out. The Oscar Buzz is running high for Sean, Brolin, and Gus. But I am honest but the reality that MILK will not get Best pic -- that will go to Slumdog,,

The Unborn

Che: Part One (The Argentine)

My top 2 best film of 2008 - not be missed
I will write more later -- if you have a chance to see this Jan 09 - put it high of your list ..

Amazing film
more to follow

Vince
Vmedia

Taking Woodstock

I saw an early look of Taking Woodstock --

Its doesn't have that Ang Lee feel - yet its still such a good film.. but my gut feeling is that it won't be on screens long this summer ..

This is really an excuse to list the films i am looking forward to see in 2009
some good films should be released this year - many remakes -- darn
and the potter film has been held up == KEEP IT THAT WAY..


HERE IS THE LIST OF FILMS I WILL BE LOOKING FOR IN 09

Fanboys -- a film about film nerds
Benicio Del Toro as The Wolf Man
D Darko squeal - not sure but its on my list of hopes from the remakes
Robert Downy in Sherlock Holmes -
Colin Firth - In Dorian Gray
Ridley Scotts - Robin Hood
Che Part II
Stevens Sobrbergh's - The Informant
Scorsese - Shutter Island
Mike Cera's - Youth in Revolt and the Year One
Bill Hadder - Adventureland
Coen Brothers - A serious Man
wes andersons - The Fantasic Mr Fox
Eastwoods - The Human Factor
Diablo Cody and Amy Sedaris - Jennifers Body
James Franco as Allen Ginsberg - in Howl
Emile Hirsh and Paul Dano - Taking Woodstock
Sean Penn - Crossing over
Gael Bernal - Rudo y Cursi
Paul Dano - The Goodheart
De Niro - Everybodies Fine

Could be a waste for 2009 - Tarantinos - Inglorious Basterds Christian Bale in Public Enemies and James Camerons - Avatar -- and a slew of remakes ,, including the star trek prequel..

I know FanBoys is pushing it for me..
But its a guilty pleasure since deep down we are all FANBOYS - cheers to 2009 film season,,,

Vince
Vmedia Berkeley


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntzYG9t5zi0