About Chocolate Parfaits

The Game

For some reason, David Fincher always gets incredibly uninteresting women in his movies. (I have only watched Seven and Fight Club so far though.) If Helen Bonham Carter wasn’t so sexually unattractive to me, I’d be sure I would have found her line “There are things about you that I like. You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re… spectacular in bed… But you’re intolerable!” very intriguing. Gwyneth Paltrow was still the best of them – and she had some “stupid woman in love” role. Some movie critic was right when he said that David Fincher’s world is predominantly male. What a sad thing that I didn’t notice it myself.

The fact that their names are a little bit similar (Milkmaster always forgets if it was “Finch” or “Fincher”), I always feel like associating Fincher’s movies with Lynch’s. Lynch, however, always features women as key figures – and even makes them protagonists in Mulholland Drive, for example. On top of that, his women are all very sexy. At the same time, Fincher’s movies are never confusing and the end turns out to be clear while Lynch, well, you know what I mean.

What I loved about this movie was the portrait of the main character (most definitely Michael Douglas’ achievement). Actually, his character feels a little bit like Ebenezer Scrooge O.o
What I disliked about this movie is that it actually wasn’t as suspenseful as the other Fincher movies. On top of that, it lacked the meaningfulness of Fight Club as well as the psychological intensity of Seven.

The end, however, was very good. This end was not soiled by Brad Pitt’s bad acting, but was into the hands of some actors who played their role well in the crucial scenes.

All in all, it’s sad, but basically this movie did not succeed in making me forget the unlucky events of this day. It’s sad on the one hand because I don’t feel better and and on the other hand because I think I can’t really give a serious, objective opinion about the movie – which I believe is actually a very good one.

PS. I like Armin Müller-Stahl. I know somebody who says he’s an arrogant idiot, but oh I like his acting.

From Hell

For all of you who knows the comic, this is obvious. The movie was completely new to me, I also didn’t know anything about Jack the Ripper or Stephen Knight’s theory about it (on which the comic and movie are based on), so I was able to feel lots of suspense during the whole story. I always had a little bit the feeling that Gull might be the culprit, but of course I wasn’t sure.
In the end, the story itself was pretty simple, but very well executed. Ian Holm is so lovely that I thought it’s another person who plays his evil side; and Johnny Depp is just priceless. When I saw him the first time (that was Sleepy Hollow, by the way), I couldn’t understand why the friend I went to the cinema with was fangirling about him the whole time. Today, however, I consider him one of the most attractive men in the world – I especially love his acting. A movie is worth to watch as soon as he plays the protagonist in it (see Pirates of the Carribean). He even is able to do the incredibly charming “I care about you” glaze. XD

In fact, I didn’t plan to watch this movie at all – I just saw it was on TV yesterday. And since everybody I know praises it and I was already captured in the suspenseful story, I had to watch it till the end (and now, today morning, I find myself unable to post something… meaningful *>.<*) A propos TV, the german dubbing is just awful. I will not watch Amores Perros today, because I fear the bad dubbing. I'm thinking about watching "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" though. Hm... should I? I'm seeing so many bad reviews about it on the net XD This movie actually made me want to read the comic, even though I know that the comic is completely different, of course. Who knows, maybe I'll really start to read comics now?

Sabrina

First of all, look at the nice colour the links have. A big load of appreciation for Momo please, who has worked on this without telling me! *hrr* Now my beautiful blog design is complete – and I most probably will never change this again! *harr harr*

Oh, another personal thing: My parents have bought two webcams, one for themselves and one for my grandparents – isn’t that cute? They are having a video conference with them now and are all delighted… oh noes! They want me to show myself too~

*coughcough* Sorry for the unrelated stuff. Now onto the movie:
Maybe one should not that Sabrina is the only Billy Wilder movie with Audrey Hepburn aside from Love in the Afternoon. Both are in my opinion rather un-Billy-Wilder-like and pretty similar: They both are comedies, mainly deal with the lovestory a young, poor girl and some rich guy, both have some fairy tale-like characterstics and a happy-end. (Of course. I didn’t really spoil you, you would have guessed this from the beginning *g*)

What makes Sabrina so great is not the (really generic) storyline itself, but the lovely characters, the stylish and funny setting and the gorgeously witty dialogues. It’s a pity that I didn’t blog about this earlier, because I have forgotten all the funny quotes I wanted to talk about XD Whatever.

Oh by the way, I was very pleased with Audrey Hepburn’s garderobe this time (like always, actually, but this time she really stood out). She has that incredibly slim waist that looks absolutely splendid in dresses. She even looks good in leggings! Aaah *___*

It was pretty annoying to write this post while listening to my mother phoning, so sorry for the, err, lack of content. Just a little side note on the “schedule”:
There is
* Breakfast at Tiffany’s
* The Children’s Hour and
* War and Piece
from my little REC-list left. Aside from these, I also want to watch “Charade”, which looks pretty interesting.
We will most probably begin with “The Children’s Hour”, because it is HARD YURI, even though they have the other movies at our videotheque.

PS. There is a Lubitsch special at the Babylon movie theater in Berlin. Maybe we will go and watch “Ninotschka” and/or “To Be Or Not To Be”. *_*

Festen (The Celebration)

It seems Shii was a little bit too early with this comment. On the day he posted it, I think we already watched Festen. However, I didn’t really found the time to blog about it. I’ve become lazy, I know.

For some reason, I prefer the german DVD cover over that picture you can see (for example) on the Wikipedia article of the movie. First of all, I don’t quite understand why that maid is on the cover (and not Michael or Helene, for example) because I think her role is pretty small after all. Also, the german cover gives away a feeling of “high class family” with everybody on the cover while this picture looks like some, hm, relationship-quartet.

I think it will be rather difficult for me not to compare the two first Dogme movies – but in fact, I think that Idioterne is completely different from Festen. If I didn’t know how closely they are related to each other, I would never have guessed. Idioterne really looks like a documentation while Festen reminded me a lot of Gosford Park – high class society and loads of scandals behind.

Compared to Gosford Park, Festen is much less epic and classy, but a lot funnier and shocking. Everytime Christian stood up, we had to laugh out really loud. The movie turned out to be nothing like we’ve expected, but what we got was gorgeous.

In the end, there wasn’t as much “meaning” behind the movie as in Idioterne and the story wasn’t all that original (if you look at Gosford Park, it seems all high class society families are – in some ways – related to sexual scandals), but the execution and the way the story was build up was much more than just suspenseful. The character portraits are truly insightful and the Dogme elements were perfect in order to put emphasis on the story itself. (By the way, I wasn’t annoyed by the bucking camera this time – maybe I’ve really gotten used to it?)
A propos Dogme, we noticed one slow-motion scene – this is a violation of the rules, right?

Now my expectations for the other Dogme movies have risen even more. I wonder if this is a bad thing… If you remember, I still want to watch “Italian for Beginners”, “Mifune” and “The King is Alive”.

Idioterne (The Idiots)

I love the word “Idioterne” for some reason. And I am in love with this movie. I’ve read here and there that people found this movie dragging and too slow-paced. Usually I also cannot stand slow-paced movies, but this one didn’t feel slow to me at all. Maybe I was too much into the whole subject, and to be honest, despite all the laughters, I’ve taken the movie pretty seriously.
Despite its simple storyline, I didn’t exactly found it easy to interpret the movie. I didn’t put much effort into analyzing it though. ^^;;; Basically I think this is a movie about not being like the others, some self-identification stuff. About what it means to be “idiotic” and how people perceive it, so it makes it definitely a socio-critical movie. I’m just not really sure in which way it exactly is socio-critical: Lars von Trier says that it is not about how the whole society is crap, and I don’t have this impression either.

We’ve managed to get the 2-disc edition from our videotheque and watched most of the extra footage as well – damn, that was insightful and interesting. It was especially interesting to get to know a bit more about Lars von Trier, even though these infos were about this movie and not about Dogville, my favourite of his movies so far. I haven’t watched that many movies and I definitely plan to watch “Breaking the Waves” and “Dancer of the Dark” one day, even though those tragic stories scare me off a little bit. I don’t like *really* tragic stories, just so you know.
Lars von Trier reminds me so much of Kafka, for some reason. They both seem so psychologically wrecked to me XD We watched the documentary about the ‘making of’ of the movie and ended up calling him Emo-Lars. Oh my! But his paranoic character must be one of the reason why he’s such a genius at making movies, so he’s forgiven. (Just like Kafka is forgiven for his emoness. *hrr*)

One other interesting factor of the movie obviously is the concept of Dogma 95. It started off a little bit difficult for me because I got a slight headache because of the camera, but I got used to it after about 10 minutes so it’s okay. All in all, I really like this concept – I also like the “set up some rules, it can be just anything” idea. Even though they don’t follow Dogma 95 anymore and have kind of grown out of it, I still think that this is a very original and creative idea.
We watched the trailer to “The Celebration”, the first Dogma 95 movie and were totally hooked. (Or at least I were.) Now I’m really really interested to watch more of these movies, namely:
* The Celebration
* Italian for Beginners
* Mifune
* The King is Alive
in this order.

Aaah, how great it feels to have finished these blogposts *haha* I feel like I’ve gotten a bit out of writing so that it takes me more time and effort to write these.

Wait until dark

Ladies and gentlemen, I am amazed by this movie. A little while ago, I used to watch the first 15 minutes of the movie, but stopped watching because Audrey Hepburn didn’t show up yet. For some reason, the beginning bore me a little bit. My parents however watched the movie until the end and I wonder if they have liked it. This is also the reason why I was a little bit unsure whether I should show this movie to Milkmaster who was (just like me) studying for exams. But we just couldn’t stop watching it! After awhile, it became so suspenseful, funny and enjoyable to watch!

The best thing of the whole movie is her blindness, obviously. And the fact that basically the movie revolves around their house and Susy herself despite her absence in the first 15 minutes. They were able to create so many hilarious, suspenseful and really, really original scenes because of that: She couldn’t see the dead woman in her closet, they deceived her with the telephone and always phoned each other when they pretended to call the police – and last but not least, the blindness determined every aspect of the way she fought these men.

As much as I liked Susy, I really disliked Gloria. What an ugly, unreasonable and emo girl *ugh* But of course, she found redemption at the end of the movie *harr harr*

About the title of this post: I have always known and recognized that Audrey Hepburn looks rather boyish with her slender figure and young face (and I really appreciate that), but she always appeared as a “Grande Dame du film” to me so that I could never perceive her as such. But it’s so great! that Milkmaster likes her too now – it helps me watching all her movies featured in REC *hrr hrr* So I don’t care about what he exactly thinks about her, the important thing is that he adores my favourite actress as well!
Now that I think about it, “Wait until dark” is the perfect movie to get him into Audrey Hepburn’s movies, because her acting performance is just top-notch in this movie. Before, I thought another movie such as Roman Holiday or even Two for the Road would be better to display her loveliness, but the princess’ or the loving girl’s role – even though they fit her – don’t show her full potential as an actress. This movie however is really challenging and makes up for the fact that her eyes don’t sparkle as much as in the other movies, imho one of her most important features.
Our videotheque also has “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “War and Peace” and the TV doesn’t show any of her movies in the near future, so these two are most probably our next picks. ^^

Dead Man

Recently, I have compiled a little list of what I could watch together with Milkmaster and ended up watching Dead Man.
At the same time, he copied down where the others are:

Blade Runner – 9/6
Adaption – 164/5
Amores Perres – 16/4
L.A. Confidential – 67/4
Capote – 17/5
Fargo – at the desk
Butterfly Effect – 65/8
Idiots – I’ve forgotten that, ugh, but it’s there
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – same
War and Piece – same

And now, there aren’t many Jim Jarmusch movies I haven’t watched yet. To be exact, it’s:
– Stranger than Paradise
– Down by Law and
– Year of the Horse
I’m not particularily interested in the last, but I want to see Stranger than Paradise and Down by Law. If by any chance I end up liking both of them, I will buy the Jim Jarmusch box. If not, well… I’ll buy Coffee & Cigarettes and Mystery Train alone. Maybe also Ghost Dog and Permanent Vacation, but I’m not sure. Ghost Dog is slightly too depressive at the end and Permanent Vacation a bit too… indie XD

To me, Dead Man was a little bit like Babel, just not as controversial: I have no idea what to say about it. There were parts of the movie I absolutely loved – and other parts that utterly bore me.

I loved the funny characters – Sally! Wahahaa! XD The others are great as well – especially the stupid trio. I even ended up liking the slightly sad end and the fact that Nobody died *snif*
Perhaps this is a movie that you will appreciate even more when you watch it a second time (I read that Jim Jarmusch paid very strong attention to the realistic portrait of the native american culture). Maybe I really should buy that damn collection box XD

What more should I say? Oh wait: Johnny Depp’s hair style in the movie was so perfectly random *g*

Two for the Road

In case you don’t know REC, it’s a cute anime about a couple where the girl is a seiyuu and an Audrey Hepburn-fanatic. Therefore, all episodes titles are named after some of her most famous movies – and a lot of the episodes feature lines from these movie titles (at least, I’m pretty sure that they watched “Roman Holiday” in episode 1 and there was a line of “Sabrina” in episode 2).

Let’s see which of them I have already watched (in bold and with an asterisk, because you can barely distinguish the bold and the regular lines O.o):
#1 – * Roman Holiday (This is my father’s favourite movie of all time! *hrr*)
#2 – Sabrina
#3 – Wait until dark
#4 – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
#5 – * Love in the Afternoon
#6 – The Children’s Hour
#7 – War and Peace
#8 – * My Fair Lady
#9 – * Two for the Road
Not very much, huh? I am planning to watch all of them. We probably have “Wait until dark” recorded somewhere on VHS. But actually it’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “War and Peace” (Audrey Hepburn is SO not like I would expect Natasha to be! *haha*) that I’m looking forward to the most. (And I also want to see Charade.)
I actually disliked “My Fair Lady” (ugh, the songs >.< ) and I liked "Love in the Afternoon" (even though it's not exactly outstanding). I also love "Roman Holiday" even if it's awhile since I have watched it - I think it's really romantic and cute, even though I might find it a bit too kitsch if I watched it now. So where should I rank "Two for the Road"? This is not a very easy task, because I don't happen to really enjoy the movie. I watched it together with my parents and I wished I didn't, because it seems they were bored. The non-linear storyline, the movie's biggest strength, is a big burden to my parents because they find it rather difficult to understand what's going on now with the language barrier (old movies in german actually sound really weird, if you ask me). On top of that, the movie wasn't exactly funny - it's probably supposed to be, but most of the funny scenes were nothing but annoying (especially that family with the most obnoxious brat I have ever seen in a movie). I didn't quite like the end because I found it too abrupt and unnatural. You don't suddenly say "I love you" and everything is okay. They indeed have lost that feeling of love, but regained it somehow. However, the movie didn't really show how everything that used to happen between them affected the decision to remain together - or whatever reason it was for them to continue to love each other. But apart from that, the evolution in their relationship was skillfully portrayed through the non-linear storytelling. There were some scenes which blended in together perfectly and it was interesting to see what comes next. Apart from the storyline itself, the movie's best feature is Audrey Hepburn, of course. Actually I never perceived her as a really good actress: In "Roman Holiday", she did nothing but sparkle, in "Love in the Afternoon" and "My Fair Lady", she played a little, let's say, air-headed girl, but in "Two for the Road", she was able to play a woman - and a very attractive one in which she can reveal all her acting skills. Everything she does, laughing, crying, freezing, looking crazy, bristling with anger, looks so incredibly natural (especially for that time!) Well, I am more than ever fond of her and I cannot imagine one actress from her time to surpass her. Now somebody give me the score for "Rhapsody in Blue"!

Babel

Yay, that was a good movie. However, I can already warn you that I will most likely talk about the rather bad points of this movie.

First of all, we have Milkmaster who dislikes movies that talk about misunderstandings. Apparently he already has seen too many movies and TV series in his life who deal about misunderstandings (mostly shoujomanga-style lovey-dovey soaps, of course). As for me, I also don’t think that the misunderstandings and the many languages are the prevalent thing in movie. Those are rather superficial characteristics. I think it was more the different cultures than really the ways of communication. On top of that, I think most of them actually managed to communicate pretty well: communication problems because of language itself, not because of the culture, are different.

A propos culture, what annoyed me the most was how the japanese culture was portrayed. Shibuya is not the only place that exists in Japan and girls do NOT wear miniskirts at school. They should at least have shown that the girls shorten their skirts themselves or something like that, but how Japan was portrayed in this movie was just cliché and totally unrealistic. Because of that, I find it difficult to take the movie for serious actually. (Another cliché was the scene where the girls sat on the swings and looked like in trance… that was just SO unoriginal.) So when it comes to the story itself, I think this was the weakest of all of them. Especially since the movie gave the impression that japanese girls are defined by their sexual problems, or rather, that their problems always shows through their failure in having sex. (Another cliché, ugh.)
However, the best part of the movie was also in the Japan part: the soundtrack was fantastic especially in that part (Tommy!), the atmosphere and especially the actors were the best. Rinko Kikuchi had a gorgeous role in which she was able to show her acting skills – and the rest of them (the father, the policist, etc.) looked really authentic. Even though I think it’s logical that Rinko – after finding that her problems cannot be solved by her friends, or by a man – turned towards her father and (probably) found her happiness finally, it was still pretty cheesy. And I don’t think of it as a happy end because I see nowhere how she and her father might be able to understand each other. On top of that, the main thing she wants is not to get over the death of her mother, but to be fucked – it’s not like she can fuck him. (Or does she? *hrr*)

My favourite character in the whole movie was Yussuf. Of course Milkmaster is right when he says that it really is a stupid thing to shoot a bus, but aside from that, he’s a rather sympathetic character: he’s strong, capable and brave enough to first shoot the police and then to give in to save his brother.
Oh! Now that I think about it, we were always talking about three scenes (Morocco, Mexico and Japan) but in fact, there should be four. I’d rather call them Yussuf, Amelia, Chieko and Susan. The Yussuf story and the Susan story both play in Morocco but actually they never meet each other, so that it’s basically two different stories.

The Mexico story was my favourite: Even though the scene wasn’t as good-looking as Japan, it was the most fun, and I also think that it’s the most realistic story (the nearer a country is to you, the less embarassing the prejudices become *cough*). The children were cute and Amelia was good. It also helps that the music was great in this part. But of course the main argument is an (unfortunately underachieving) Gael García Bernal. Oh well, who cares – the mere fact that he plays in this movie is already gorgeous!

The most annoying of the movie (and I think this is a compliment to the movie itself) were the horrible (english) subtitles. Except for the english-speaking part (without subtitles of course), I didn’t know any of those languages well (arabian, spanish, japanese, japanese sign language, but oh there was a tidbit of french in the movie). But from the little bit of spanish and japanese I’ve understood, you could easily see that the subtitles were crap. In my opinion, it was also a sign of mediocricy that there were some sentences they didn’t translate, even though they probably aren’t that relevant. This is just like Tokyopop not translating sound words.
Unfortunately we were also annoyed by an incredibly obnoxious cashier and stupid people in the cinema. However, I’m still very happy that we went to the cinema again *____* <3

So in the end the movie exceeded my expectations, but also was a disappointment. Without being overly meaningful (with that rather trivial message), it was a multi-faceted and extraordinary movie full of intense pictures. But at the same time, I can’t fully appreciate it mainly because of the cheesiness of the japanese part. With that portrait of Japan, the storywriter took away every possibility for me to think that the movie is meaningful in any ways. Well, tried too hard *hrr*
I still want to see Amores Perros though.