Right now, I love all things British and it started long before William and Kate, the Queen's Jubilee or the hoopla of the upcoming Olympics. I don't know it seems to come from their ancient castles and
cemeteries...
Plus a gigantic white horse left by ancient people....
is something I would love to see. But the characters of England are so different that the sort here, that is what I think is so entertaining.
But alas it will be awhile before I will able to travel afar, not so little ones are still my priority, so for now I am reading and watching anything I can about the British Isles and luckily Netflix, Amazon, BBC America and Masterpiece Theater has plenty to offer.
Of course there is Downton Abbey...
but for some little less know and truly modern British movies, here are a few RomComs I have been watching while working in the studio this week...
A funny farce on Hollywood's attempt to out smart the paparazzi, sending an up and coming starlet and her British author boyfriend to the far distant Scottish island of Hag. where we meet some very interesting characters and the "decoy bride", trapped by her circumstances, a terminally ill mother and well a tiny, tiny island. It is all very hilarious...
If you are a real classic Sci Fi fan you might recognize David Tennant as one of the many Doctor Whos, ( 2005-2010)...
Tennant was also in...
He plays Barty Crouch, Jr., who impersonate "Mad Eye" Moody and has the creepy tongue action.
Another fun truly British RomCom is What Rats Won't Do...
Sorry, but I am not going to do anymore of a image search on that one, cause really really bad things come up when you image google "rats"!!
The movie stems from the lawyer joke and the setting is England's legal system were both attorney and barristers defend the people. It was fun to see how they do things over there, I married my husband during his second year of law school...
I think those little white wigs look so funny, especially on the female barristers. Wonder if Jon would wear one if he had to? What Rats Won't Do stars Natascha McElhone...
Who I finally remembered I had seen in...
Another fun British film set during World War 1.
James Frain is etched in my brain as the villain Chess, from the short lived NBC superhero drama called The Cape...
It was nice and but a little weird to see previous "bad guy" become love interests.
Lastly is....
I didn't watch that this week, but did recently and wanted to recommend it. Grant is charming in this Word War 1 movie about a village attempt to defend their mountain that surveyors Grant and his boss have declared is a few hundred feet short so will be stated as a "hill" on the upcoming maps of the area.
Right now all the above movies are available on Netflix's downloads.
Rachel Weisz, best known for another huge Hollywood franchise...
Did a little horror movie, in 2010...
It didn't do so well at the box office, but she did marry Daniel Craig, her costar...
best known for being "Bond, James Bond"....
Whose's new movie is coming out in October....
But the attention right now is on his wife, Rachel Weisz, who has a spread in the August Vanity Fair Magazine...
Because she stars in the Bourne Franchise's new movie premieres August 10th...
There is no Matt Damon in this Bourne movie. There is a new better model of Jason Boune, starting to sound like the Six Million Dollar Man, "We can build him better, faster".
The new and improved "Bourne" is played by Jeremy Renner...
who most recent role was as a side kick to Tom Cruise in...
Which all makes me very curious. When GHOST PROTOCOL came out, I wondered if they were transition Renner into the "younger" agent of focus for the franchise, cause at 50, Tom Cruise has to be thinking of stepping aside, soon? But what do I know, or possible trying to apply logic to what Hollywood does is a waste ot time.
Well I liked Renner, who has been a side kick in such movies as...
with Ben Affleck
With Brad Pitt
Now Renner has the focus on him and if the trailer is accurate to what the movie can offer, he is going to be fun to watch in BOURNE LEGACY...
His character, Aron Cross, is the new Golden Boy of the newly revamped Operation Treadstone, well until due to politcal fallout, the CIA decides to do some housecleaning...
Weisz is one of the mad scientist who made him what he is and now with the "clean up" team wanting to kill them both, they join forces.
So like I said Mrs.Bondd is running away wiht the new and improved Jason Bourne, who apparently is NOT destined to be a new Mission Impossible agent, though they gave him a trial run.....Renner is dubbed, according to InternetMovie Data Base to be the new........Hansel, as in Hansel and Gretal...
I kid you not, something about a few decades later the brother, sister dou are out fighing all the other fairytale goonies...Like I said, I should probably stop trying to figure Hollywood out!
BRAVE came out today and since it was also daughter #2's birthday we headed over the pass, that now tonight might be burning, (click her for that story), and went to see the movie in Durango.
I can't do the "yeah, it was a great movie" dance, but it was the best summer offering I have seen in so many summers, I refer back to my "whining" last summer on Cowboys and Aliens.
BRAVE does deliver an enjoyable and refreshing two hour ride.
Most excitingly is that BRAVE is totally a "Girl" story. Be forewarned there is quite a long view of "kiltless" Scottish backsides, but I kept waiting for the obligatory love or crush interest that always appear in fairytales like HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON...
or TANGLED...
But there isn't a Boy, well other then her three three young menacing brothers....
The story is actually about a daughter's fight to be in control of her own destiny, her greatest adversary, her mother. You could call BRAVE a Celtic FREAKY FRIDAY...
Where a witch helps the two see each other's side of things, I won't say more since I don't want to ruin the story.
BRAVE also has kudos for passing the "Girl Test", not once does any character talk about "A boy" and there is lots and lots of dialogue between mother and daughter.
Pixar Animation has come a long way in their technology, since the break through of animating each hair of Sully's fur independently in Monster Inc.
Merida hair, red long and curly is continuously waving around her head. Her only real companion is Angus, a gorgeous huge and rather hairy horse...
Which also is so much more amazing because of the advancements made in animation over the last couple of years since Avatar...
But the neatest thing for me about BRAVE, was how a Scottish tapestry played a big part in the movie, I'll say no more, but do recommend going and seeing BRAVE this week, since it is about the best offering we have on the horizon for kids.
Well there is MADAGASCAR 28! , I mean 3, MADAGASCAR 3...
Which showed at Cannes, no joke! I am worried, very worried for the coming movie seaon!
"Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" are the famous lines spoken by the Evil Queen in Snow White. Problem with particular take on the legendary tale, is The Evil Queen has almost all of the lines and most of the spotlight....
The movie is like the trailer, The Evil Queen, The Evil Queen, another special effect with ......
the Evil Queen, a little bit of Snow White, more Evil Queen, the Huntsman is actually the most developed character with a tragic back story and actually has dialogue. The Queen is too busy being beautiful and Snow White has very little dialogue or much control of her fate, or much time to develop her full blown character. The assumption is we all know the classic tale, so we can just appreciate the cool effects and drop dead gorgeous actors and actress, which they definitely are. It is another what I call a "pretty and I know it" movies designed for the younger generation, with the philosophy that if the effects are cool enough and the actors pretty enough, seems even the guys, teenagers will flock in, guess they do, cause they keep making them, but I don't recommend....
or.....
Please someone in Hollywood, please write a story, instead of a redo!
Took the girls over the pass to Durango for a girls day and saw The Lucky One starring Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling. The film brings to life another of bestselling author Nicholas Spark's novels, which quiet a few have been turned into movies, starting with...
Which is about, sorry for the spoiler, about finding love in an unusual place, momentarily, before someone dies. Then came ...
also finding love before someone dies, except this time it is quick and unexpected instead of long and slow... Then comes....
which is about finding love, again, before someone dies, of old age this time. Then there was...
which is about.....finding unexpected love before someone dies, quick this time. Then comes along...
About Not finding love for a long time because of duty and guilt, while someone else dies. Followed by...
which is also in a nutshell about love and life waiting until someone dies.
Do you see a pattern in Nicholas Sparks movies. So here comes The Lucky One. Does someone die? Should I tell you? Of course I will, but first let me get up the red Alert Spoiler is coming warning.
SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT
No one dies in The Lucky One..............well, that isn't really true actually, cause the family Efron comes to, to find "girl" is grieving the loss of a son who was also a soldier and didn't come home, thus why Efron finds the picture on the battlefield, but the lovers prevail until the very end....and then someone dies ( But it is a minor character, so don't worry, it just gives a clean tidy ending to the story)
The Lucky One wasn't a "bad" movie, it just wasn't a good movie. It didn't inspire me, give me anything to chew on and think about when I left the movie theater. It, like really all of Spark's stories, took the easy way, the cliche' way of pulling at our heart strings- death, grief, cancer- all bring up the emotional Geiger counter really fast without a lot of effort in the writing side. His stories really are just a matter of "same song, different verse". He has created "a universe" and now it is just a matter of changing the names and the setting of the characters and reaping the huge financial benefits from what Hollywood considers a "sure thing". I just wish they would start taking chances again!
Something else I find odd- that will definitely be a post in itself- what is happening with the trailers of these let us say- not very meaty offerings Hollywood is trying to ram down our throats, with the lie that they are giving us something new, refreshing and well, good! We are getting the WHOLE story in the trailer- no longer is it a teaser, a peek of just a few of the good bits, with the allure of coming to see the whole movie to get the rest of this good interesting story. Which by the way is what a trailer should offer. Now, we usually get ALL of the few really interesting bits, cause there ain't anymore and lately, even the endings! The Lucky One Trailer to me is not trying to tantalising us into coming and finding out the rest of the story. It is, like many trailers aimed at a young demographic saying.... come watch Zac Efron! Which I guess is nothing new, really, and you know Elvis made movies....
and I think the girls of that generation were not going to the movies to be taken on a journey of a really good story. But I am old and I can be "tantalized" at the movie, but how about a good story with some muscle to it, instead of it being a vehicle to just watch the firm and possibly tattooed muscles on the screen!
I have spent the last couple of days, doing battle with a "un-named" hacker who entertained themselves with messing with my google account and all the blogs there within! Finally got that all fixed and it inspired me to think of the good "hacker" movies I have seen and totally realized I have never reviewed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Warning! This is the vilest of vile stories turned into a really good movie. Which is very different than a good story turned into a vial movie. Every bit of nudity, language and violence in this movie, in my opinion, just makes the story more real and honest. That is the difference between The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and some of the trash out there now which is like those "Butterball" turkeys that start out kinda of puny but then it is injected with a lot of crap or in the movie business naked women, cuss words and blood spatters. How about we just get back to Real stories told honesty?
The story, originaly titled Man How Hates Women, is first of a series. It was written by the late, Swedish author Stieg Larsson and already made into a Swedish movie. This is a story that has gotten a lot of press, articles in Vanity Fair and such and Larsson's legacy has definitely lived on through the efforts of his partner Eva Gabrielsson.
The story, or US movie adaption, centers around Mikael Blomkvist...
a black marked journalist who seeks sanctuary in the far north writing the patriarch of a wealthy family's memoir, but what he ends up doing is solving one of the family's little dirty secrets, intertwined in power, anti Semitism and as the original title suggested....men who hate women.
The Swedish setting is wonderful, I wish more movies would be set in such places, instead of always in LA, New York, or London. The stark landscape and Scandinavian style of the cars, houses, furnishings set against the greys and white of winter really adds to the story.
Mikael is played by one of the my favorite actors Daniel Craig, of course known for the OO7 franchise...
The patriarch of the family is played by Christopher Plumier...
who, though in his early 80's , has had a resurgence of late with movies such as the Last Station...
And Lisbeth, as TheGirl with the Dragon Tattoo...
is played by Rooney Mara, whose biggest movie so far has been The Social Network...
which I confess I have no desire to see, but will be definitely looking out for her next starring roles.
In the movie, Mara is a brilliant computer whiz and hacker and a ward of the state with an sadistic social worker, who demands sexual favors from her. Putting an end to that, Mara also seeks refuge in the far North, taking on the job of research assistant to Craig.
The two form a rather untypical love interest and the dark secret of the Vanger Family empire only are revealed with both of their unique skill sets and tenacity. Again, be warned this is an uncomfortable movie to watch in many ways...
Interestingly, for a movie with such a strong female character, it fails "the girl test" which according to bechdeltest.com...
1. Does the movie have at least two named women characters in it? YES
2. Do they talk to each other? NO
3. Do they talk to each other about something besides a man? NO
Most movies fail or barely make it. In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth has a adversarial relationship with a company archive secretary, when she is trying to research the movements of one of the company's executives, but she never talks to another named female character. Hum?
The US version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is out now on DVD and available for download on Amazon.
The original trilogy...
in Swedish is available on Netflix at the moment with English subtitles.
Tonight is the second installment of PBS's Masterpiece Theater's Birdsong, based on the 1993 novel by Sebastian Faulks, about an impossible love during the First World War. The story, centered around Stephen Wraysford, a young English officer, losing men and digging trenches to nowhere under the battlezone known as "No Man's Land"...
Flashback tell us the story of his lost love and the reason for the added anguish he feels now. The modern story has a classic feel to it, more like Hemingway's Farewell To Arms...
Eddie Redmayne, his name fitting, with a blaze of red hair and freckles, you might of seen in a recent Burberry fashion spread plays Stephen in the movie. The actor hasn't had a lot of starring roles yet, but amazingly he has comeback from the dead twice already, not too much of a spoiler for Birdsong, which includes the mircle in the trailer, but amazingly, he was also almost buried alive in his other well known role, that of Jack, the young apprentice to Tom Builder in Pillar's of the Earth...
At the moment you can see Birdsong- here on pbs.org and Pillars of the Earth is available to rent on Netflix.
