Tuesday 2 February 2010

my friend oscar


Ho Ho Ho, I am amazed that as someone who rarely tips out into the cold night air to the cinema these days, I have actually seen 2 of the 10 nominations for Best Film......Inglorious Basterds and surprisingly District 9. Saw both on the planes to and from America, how starry.
I have also seen Sherlock Holmes in the States and In the Loop on the gog, they have been nominated in various other sections.
Inglorious Basterds was a very odd concoction, but it got me back across the Atlantic, [once I had read an entire book] so it gets a tick.
District 9, an Indie film was even odder in a way, in a better way - tho very gory. Neither film was subtle, the gore count was lower in IB, in District 9 it was fairly horridly high, it was also funnier as well as knowing, but still tense and engrossing, which where giant insects are involved is clever.
They both had a message I suppose, one that hardly needed subtlety - naughty Nazis and Apartheid [+scifi] is also naughty.
Both went about their story in a singular fashion, and were well acted but i prefered District 9, but not on a full stomach.
Sherlock Holmes did look very good, [inevitable as it was led by Robert Downey jr]I think it is up for Art Direction, and In the Loop for adaptation, however I think the TV programmes were better.
I don't fancy Avatar, even tho I expect it is beautiful, the story line looks crap. I would like to see the Hurt Locker maybe, tho it must be gory as it is about dismantling roadside bombs in Iraq. The director is a woman, interestingly the ex of Avatar's director, so it should be worth seeing to decide if gender does affect POV.I hope she wins as i doubt any of my films will.
In our Big Textile Group we are having trouble keeping people trapped in the committee to do the grunt work. Creative women are probably not the correct profile for knuckling down to making executive decisions in the main, and those that are possibly shouldn't be.

3 comments:

carol said...

As with books it seems with films I am not amongst the avant garde. I've been working my way through the Hitchcock collection here!! I'll see Sherlock when it come out on DVD but miss the other two. Avatar - won't work on the small screen at a guess so I'll miss that one as well. Did I say I bought Laurent Cantet's 'The Class' with François Bégaudeau? That was a troubling film. Stirred up many memories of feeling inadequate in the classroom - no belief in what I was doing there and certainly not getting the impression I was equipping them for life at all, just nannying really.

Unknown said...

I envy your list of watched films. Cinema was alwys our entertainment of choice as we don't have TV, but we go a lot less than we did cos D can't hear the dialogue now. We have yet to investigate those films shown for the hearing-impaired. We do watch lots of DVD's, always with sub-titles - if they are offered. Sometimes indie films don't. We did see In the Loop and liked it a lot, so much that I ordered the director's previous film Jump Tomorrow. In the Loop was developed from Jump Tomorrow so it was interesting to compare the two.

Gillian said...

Have seen IB, D9 and Avatar. All so different and good enough not to be slept through. IB was a great twist, D9 was a solid social science lesson and Avatar was glorious to watch and get carried along with. It was a remake of John Boorman's "Emerald Forest" based on the destruction of the Amazon and starring Charlie Boorman as a young teenager in a "based on a true story" movie.
As for a winner....well I reckon Avatar for being so entertaining, kitschly attractive and having a mostly happy ending. Also it is so enthralling that you forget you are wearing the geeky 3-D specs!
Welcome home.
Cheers Gillian