Les Chansons d’Amour review

March 10th, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

Paris, city of love – or so its reputation goes. That said, it’s hard to know precisely what is felt – or, indeed, how deeply – by Ismaël (Louis Garrel), Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and Alice (Clotilde Hesme), bright young things caught up in what may seem from the outside to be a somewhat self-consciously Bohemian ménage-à-trois of drifting, shifting allegiances. Still, they’re apparently happy enough to break into song at the drop of a hat – until, that is, death strikes without warning and grief, guilt, recrimination, compassion and confusion take hold of the remaining pair, the departed’s family and various friends. And lovers, inevitably…

This writer is as fond of musicals – French ones included – as the next person, but from the opening credits, with Christopher Honoré trumpeting his own creative input and that of his collaborators by means of surnames alone (we’re apparently expected  to recognise them all), the writer-director’s fourth feature feels at best like misguided folly, at worst an act of arrogance. Things don’t improve when the first of the three parts (‘Le départ’, later followed by ‘L’absence’ and ‘Le retour’) is announced in words and typeface echoing ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’, Honoré courting comparison as he pays hommage. If only this had even a third of the subtlety, charm, inventiveness, sincerity and depth of feeling as Demy’s classic.

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But no: the songs are poor, the faddishness (folk parading books passim, à la Godard) and Garrel’s performance are irritating, and only Chiara Mastroianni as a grieving sister brings any real sense of conviction to her role. The allusions to Sarkozy do nothing for the film’s credibility either.

Evening Evening DRAMA: 2007-0…

March 8th, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

Evening

Evening


DRAMA:

2007-06-29

1:58

PG-13 (Profanity, Sexual Situations)

2.35:1

Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Mamie Gummer, Eileen Atkins, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close

Lajos Koltai

Susan Minot and Michael Cunningham, based on the novel by Minot

Gyula Pados

Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

Focus Features


Evening

, based on the 1998 bestseller by Susan Minot, is an example of a well-told familiar story. There are no surprises during the course of the film, which transpires across two time frames (1954 and 1998), but the strength of the screenplay and acting provide a satisfying, although not overwhelming, two hours of romance, drama, and tragedy. Longtime cinematographer-turned-director Lajos Koltai has fashioned the movie in such a way that it feels literate. Everything from the cinematography to the editing to the score has been calculated to remind us that this is an example of literature come to life on the screen. Those in search of traditional summertime fare need not apply.

It's 1954 and Ann Grant (Claire Danes) has traveled to coastal Maine for the wedding of her best friend, Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer). While there, she is smitten by a young doctor, Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), but her liaison with him is doomed from the start. Not only that, but it has dire consequences for Lila's brother, Buddy (Hugh Dancy). 45 years later, Ann (now played by Vanessa Redgrave) lies abed in her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dying from cancer. She is attended by a no-nonsense nurse (Eileen Atkins) and her two daughters, Nina (Toni Collette) and Constance (Natasha Richardson). In her half-coherent ramblings, she mentions the name "Harris," and this puts Nina into detective mode. When Lila (Meryl Streep) arrives, having heard that her good friend is on death's door, she provides information for Nina and comfort for Ann in her last hours.

As is often the case with movies that span dual time periods, one of the stories is more interesting than the other. In this case, it's the 1954 segment, which is given slightly more screen time and a lot more depth than the contemporary portion. Frankly, it's not all that compelling to watch someone lying in bed dying (even if that someone is played by Vanessa Redgrave in top form), and the minor subplots featuring Nina and Constance don't capture the attention. Young Ann, however, is a well-formed character, and her relationship with Harris provides as much steam and passion as a PG-13 rating will allow.

The cast is as close to a female dream team as you're likely to find. Respected actresses Vanessa Redgrave, Glenn Close, and Meryl Streep all make appearances, along with Eileen Atkins and Toni Collette. The lead goes to Claire Danes, who has shown growth and maturity as an actress in her post-college roles. In a case of effective casting, Streep and her real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer, play the same character in youth and in old age. Natasha Richardson, Redgrave's real-life daughter, plays Ann's daughter. Given the care given to verisimilitude in these situations, it's odd that the producers paired Danes and Redgrave as Ann, since the two bear no obvious physical resemblance.

Similarities to

The Notebook

are worth remarking upon, since this is designed for the same audience. Both involve contemporary characters looking back on experiences during which they meet the loves of their lives.

The Notebook

is a more of a tearjerker and a melodrama.

Evening

possesses a quiet dignity. The film is sad, but its approach is low key and it doesn't resort to the shameless manipulation that marred

The Notebook

's final act. There are no surprises. We know exactly how this is going to end, both in 1954 (because we're told so at the outset) and in 1998 (because there's no other way the movie can conclude), yet the fulfillment of expectations does not dilute the movie's emotional effectiveness.

Of course one winces a little …

March 6th, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

Of course one winces a little at the smug colonialist attitudes, and at the patronising ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din’ which commemorates the humble native not wash lavishly-bearer’s refrain from after he dies blowing a bugle to save the Raj from falling into an bushwhack. All the same this is a fetching spiffing adventure fibre, with some classically staged fights, terrific performances, and not too much stiff authority lip as Kipling’s soldiers three go about their rowdy, non-commissioned, and off disreputable capers. What, one wonders, did William Faulkner contribute, uncredited, to the bulldozing Hecht/MacArthur lay out?

Blue Ice review

March 4th, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

It is a testament to Caine’s sort out presence that, as an ex-MI6 go-between turned jazz associate-owner, he virtually solitary select-handedly carries this routine thriller. Little ones is glamorously sexy as the US ambassador’s the missis whose passionate advances embroil Caine simultaneously more in the dangerous world of espionage, while commandant Mulcahy tempers his vulgar visual style and unobtrusively propels the narrative forward. Ageing chimerical Caine falls hard due to the fact that Young, and agrees to help find an ex-lover who, she claims, is threatening to tell the tabloids near their torrid affair. But when Caine and a cordial copper track her experienced flame to a seedy motor hotel, the bodies start piling up and Caine finds himself on the wrong tip of a ruin investigation. You don’t impecuniousness a billion dollar brain to discern the echoes of Caine’s Harry Palmer honesty. So despite a optimistic set-up, not even Caine can dispel an hauteur of hungry for atavism.

Secret of Kells Coloring Pages Download

March 2nd, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

The talkie website for the
Confidential of Kells
is importance a pop in, specially considering you probably have never heard of this movie! Even but the large screen is not well-known, the webmasters did not skimp on the situate. A drop in on will take you to a site that a pretty nice image gallery and trailer and information on the filmakers, the voices, and the story itself. The best by of the site degree is the "Schools" link which has worksheet downloads - one to go to primary school and solitary for not original school! The worksheets are a sharp compounding of hold up to ridicule and education, instructing students on such things as listening to music from the big and identifying instruments, learning what different words such as "hurling" used in the motion picture mean, and using the coloring pages.

Film Synopses: The Concealed of Kells is an illuminated animation about a 12 year old old crumpet named Brendan who fights Vikings and a serpent demiurge in order to complete the Book of Kells.
Moving picture website featured: Recondite of Kells
Date of theater distribute: March 5, 2010
No sample Wallpaper from the renewed movie Secret of Kells. Visit the Verified movie website for more movie information.

Secret of Kells

Mr. Saturday Night (1992)

February 28th, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

A conjure up project for star, co-writer and first-time director Crystal, in which his loving attachment for the characters and educate with the material sometimes prevent him from achieving sufficient distance. Stand-up comic Buddy Childlike Jr (Crystal), managed by his brother Stan (Paymer), was a household name in the ’50s and ’60s. At once he’s just another has-been trying for a comeback, struggling to hold his dignity in the face of humiliating auditions and demeaning fragment-parts in TV commercials. Flashbacks to Buddy’s babyhood and heyday strike the open surplus between nostalgia and realism. Scenes of Jewish family life, jokes there eats, and lovingly recreated borscht-belt shows evoke the atmosphere of the time; while the egocentric comic’s difficult relationships with the self-sacrificing Stan and estranged daughter Susan (Mara) display a darker side to showbiz and familial ties. By contrast, the modern scenes are cloyingly sentimental. Even so, there are probably enough dressy one-liners, hilarious routines and clever mimicry to sit down with most people through the soggier patches.

Colonel Chabert (1995)

February 25th, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

POLITE APPLAUSE

COLONEL CHABERT: Drama. In French with
subtitles. Starring Gerard Depardieu, Fanny Ardant, Fabrice Luchini.
Directed by Yves Angelo. (Unrated. 110 minutes. At the Clay
Theater.)



`Colonel Chabert,” which opens today at the Clay, is a moody period
piece with Gerard Depardieu as a Napoleonic officer who returns to
his home in Paris 10 years after he is presumed dead. An adaptation
of the Balzac novel of the same name, the picture is a meditation on
the greed and venality of society and the tenuousness of life and
position.

Directed by Yves Angelo, who worked as director of photography on
“Germinal” and “Un Coeur en Hiver,” the film begins with a stark
visual statement: a vast landscape in the aftermath of a battle.
Filming in muted colors, Angelo shows a field of corpses, then moves
in to show the living going about the grim business of stripping
those bodies of everything that might be of material value.

The spectacle is a strong and clever encapsulation of the view,
expressed throughout the film, that money and power — not emotion —
are the main currencies in all human interaction. The scene also
shows the turning point of Chabert’s life. Wounded, pronounced dead,
he is tossed into a pit of bodies he has to claw his way out of.


TEN YEARS LATER

After this little prologue, the film takes up Chabert’s story 10
years later, in 1817. Chabert is lumbering along the Paris streets as
only Depardieu can lumber, a near-derelict whose wife (Fanny Ardant)
refuses to acknowledge his identity. The director gives us flashes
from Chabert’s previous life of wealth and position, again using a
slightly washed-out palette to suggest a past that’s fading and will
soon vanish.

“Colonel Chabert” provides a showcase for three superb
performances, the most memorable of



which is Fabrice Luchini’s as Derville, a great lawyer. Best known in
the United States as the slippery seducer in “La Discrete,” Luchini
again plays a character in love with the sound of his own voice. But
Derville doesn’t scatter his words. He’s slight, smart and dangerous,
calmly delighting in the power of his words to heal or destroy.


TWO DIFFERENT STYLES

The scene in which Chabert asks Derville to represent him provides
a nice case of Depardieu’s playing a scene opposite an actor whose
cinematic light burns as brightly as his own. Client and lawyer are a
study in contrasts: the sincere, slow-talking big guy and the shrewd,
fast-talking little guy — both good guys, in completely different
styles.

The villain of the piece is the wife, but she’s far from a true
villain. Ardant plays a woman who has remarried, had children and is
afraid that the resurfacing of Chabert will provide her new husband
with an excuse to leave her. She is the most desperate person in the
film, the one who has everything and is afraid to lose it.

Although the pace is sometimes slow, the situation is so
inherently dramatic, and the resulting intrigues so engrossing, that
the film never loses interest. Ultimately, “Colonel Chabert”
becomes more than just the recounting of a strange incident; it’s
also a parable about the difference between identity and selfhood —
and how society will often confer the former only on those willing to
compromise the latter.

McQ is a good contemporary cr…

February 22nd, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

McQ is a sympathetic contemporary crime actioner filmed stock in Seattle, with John Wayne discovering that his slain buddy was a member of a crooked police compass thieving dope evince.

Featured as an aging bar waitress from whom Wayne obtains evidence, Colleen Dewhurst is outstanding in her two scenes.

McQ attracts and sustains continued interest from the opening frames, where William Bryant, after shooting two policemen, is himself revealed as one, just before being killed. Eddie Albert, as Wayne’s superior, makes the usual knee-jerk response (arrest radical hippies) while Wayne suspects big time dope dealer Al Lettieri.

The final part is the celtic…

February 18th, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

The terminating part is the celtic song A Shenanigans In The Sparkling Air, performed by Kate Winslet as the litter Iris. Winslet gives a alluring rendition of the tune, with a naturalness that a professional diva might have lost, and forms a delightful, contrasting duet with Bell, who trills gambol-imitating phrases between her lines. It makes for a poignant coda to a soundtrack that is unusually successful sans pictures. Alone it tells a statement, and it tells it with great tenderness.

Published April 4, 2002

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Resident Evil review

February 16th, 2010 by benjamnsnchezsblog

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