don't worry be happy

To start of with... a happy go lucky tune ( /me is feeling hopeful)

The Devastator - Stormy

Lack of inspiration, enthusiasm, patients and tiredness are among the reasons why one doesn't bother to sit at the laptop and type something interesting. It's a lot easier to copy and paste a code of what one's been listening to, watching, reading and it seems like once again it'll happen. But this time... a brief update. Have watched a couple of good and really good films, listened to some excellent music (which actually keeps the day going), been reading some interesting stuff (mostly true stories) and have engaged in some long ago hobbies. And cause this is probably the weirdest thing ever written it'll end with a list...

...

and yet another pasted code of a beautifully composed commercial video (IMHO of course)


In Bruges
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Üç maymun (Three Monkeys)
Slumdog Millionaire
Milk

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Bonnie “Prince” Billy - Beware
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It’s Blitz
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Dan Deacon - bromst
Tom Rush - What I Know
Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Been painting... from walls to wood to metal (in the near future)

As for the true stories...that’s personal, indescribable or maybe just completely untrue

Watched ... 2009

From 2008...To watch

International:
- Stellet Licht (MEX/NL/GER/FRA)
- Waltz with Bashir (ISR/GER/FRA/USA)

European:
- Entre Les Murs (FRA)
- La Graine et Le Mulet (FRA)
- Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto (POR)
- 4 Luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (ROM)
- Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (FRA)
- Yella (AUS)
- Caos Calmo (ITA)

European Films (Co-Productions):
- Le Silence de Lorna (BEL/FRA/ITA/GER)
- Auf der anderen Seite (GER/TUR/ITA)
- Aleksandra (RUS/FRA)
- Je veux voir (FRA/LEB)
- In Bruges (UK/USA)
- Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon (FRA/ITA/ESP)
- Uç maymun (TUR/FRA/ITA)
- Die Falscher (AUS/GER)

Film Festivals:
- El Cant dels Ocells (ESP)
- Pescuit sportiv (ROM)
- Aruitemo aruitemo (JPN)
- Les Plages d'Agnès (FRA)
- Rachel Getting Married (US)

American Films:
- You Don't Mess With The Zohan
- Twilight
- The Hottest State
- Quantum of Solace
- Tropic Thunder
- War, Inc.

recommended by a true cinéphile

2008 / 2009

2008 is over and five days into the new year seems like a great time to post some thoughts. Although "five days" may hint a certain lack of enthusiasm or laziness in posting, I assure you not... A Christmas spent abroad and a house-hunting end of year left little time to post.

The end of the year is a time where an astonishing number of individuals succumb to listography and post endless lists of "favorites". Having ended a somewhat roller coaster type year with many changes on all levels any sort of "favorite" list will amount to nothing but a ton of contradictions and miss-matches resulting in a total mess. Therefore, a short list of looking forward to: "read", "watch" and "do" in the next few months of the New Year makes a lot more sense (in no particular order and not in any way a type of New Year Resolution).









- pin mark all important locations on Google maps account
- backup the long list of films on the hard drive to DVDs
- upload all photos to a location for only photos
- backup old home movies on VHS's to DVD's
- move house
- take up painting again
- spend a lot more time in the Sea
- travel to Norway, Thailand or even Japan

35 Rhums (Claire Denis)

Claire Denis' latest film was screened in Venice during the last week of August this year and once again grabbed (some) of the critics' likes. For some odd reason or another it was rejected to enter the competition (both in the Venice film festival and in Cannes).

Shane Danielsen writing in indieWIRE had to say:

"magnificently directed, faultlessly performed, alert to the beauty and mystery of commonplace things."

The Plot
A father and his daughter live together in a Paris apartment. He is a train driver; she works in a fast food restaurant. They are perfectly happy together, settled in a routine of comfortable domesticity. Upstairs lives a man who is hopelessly in love with the daughter, and across the courtyard lives an older woman, a taxi driver, who pines for the father. These four players, and the cat's-cradle of their relationships, define the world of the film, which, though intimate, never feels circumscribed. On the contrary, it teems with life and detail (for which, credit must also go to her longtime cinematographer, Agnes Godard)."

Photography by Agnes Godard's

Music by Tindersticks

Due 2009 - Nine (Rob Marshall)

Another film to wait for, next year, is Nine, directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha). Based on the 1982 Tony Award-winning musical of the same name and with an excellent cast (Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, and Fergie - yep... BEP lady), Nine is bound to be a winner.

Go Fergie!
Rumor has it that Fergie is battling to put on weight (especially on her skinny legs) for her upcoming role in the film - a prostitute named Saraghina. Apparently, the singer/actress was told to pack on a load of pounds, and is currently rehearsing in Britain before shooting the first scenes.

Fergie had to say: "I actually love (British food). I was actually told to gain weight for the film so I've been eating everything - anything and everything. That's why I am covering up except for my legs because they never gain weight and that's the only part that never changes but everything else is covered."

Burn After Reading (Ethan and Joel Coen)

Once again the Coen brothers put together a suspense film without any of the logic of a typical Hollywood thriller. Burn After Reading is nothing but an excellent joke about how idiotic people (of all sorts of age/generation/career/upbringing/social status/etc.) can be. In spite of having spies, suspense, assassinations and thrills, it comes across as a surreal satire about spy thrillers.
The characters are madly absurd - no one really knows anything and what they do know isn't very important to anyone but themselves. The plot is completely ridiculous, nothing adds up as everyone lives in their own little bubble of obsession and confusion.
The film shouldn’t work, but it does.

Harry (George Clooney) is a federal marshal who is addicted to internet dating websites and has a weird fetish for wooden floor finishings. He is having one too many affairs: 1 - Linda (Frances McDormand), a needy secretary as well as a jittery instructor at Hardbodies Gym who convinces herself that costly cosmetic medical procedures will make her more desirable; and 2 - a bitter, loathsome paediatrician Katie (Tilda Swinton) who is married to Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich). Osbourne is a CIA agent who gets sacked because of his drinking problem and the fact that his wife, Katie, is banging more wooden planes of his boat than ever the ocean waves did, seems to be totally beyond him.
There's also Chad (Brad Pitt), a bubble-gum air-head who works as a trainer at the gym who can't live without his bike or his iPod and is Linda's best buddy.
The plot thickens and the characters come together when a CD of incomprehensible CIA type material referred to as “top-secret shit” by Chad containing Malkovich’s mad Balkan memoirs is discovered on the floor of a changing room at Hardbodies.

On the whole there is chilling cynical tone to the whole film but one has to be very attentive to notice it because the hilarious scenes, the set details and the great photography are bound to grab your attention.

Comin soon

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher)
With a release date until the end of this year this seems like it might just be the film to have waited for. With a budget of some odd 150 million USD, director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) along with writer Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Munich) have finally put together an excellent cast to rekindle the 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is born as a feeble old man, and ages in reverse until he becomes a baby at the end of his life. This causes complications when he falls in love with a 30-year-old woman (Cate Blanchett)."