Cielo despejado

I did watch The Last King of Scotland yesterday, and was blown away by it. It was optimistic and colorful at times, and raw and painful and powerful at others, particularly at the last half. As everyone, I was floored by the acting, which were superb. Forrest Whitaker deserved his oscar, no doubt (what a stunning performance he gave! He became Idi Amin), but I am somewhat shocked at how little recognizment James McAvoy got out of the film, considering what a solid interpretetion he gave. Nicholas as a character, actually, was surprisingly well-developed for a fictional character in a movie based in real events, and it was rather an interesting point of view.

As I said, this movie's just really, really powerful - it strikes a chord, of sorts, and I ended up suitably traumatized and shaken but pleased. Another surprising detail: The photography was quite beautiful. And let us be shallow for a moment: Mr. McAvoy looked all sorts of good. *cough*

I--I hadn't seen a movie in nearly a month. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME. Is it really me, anyway? Have I been swaped with aliens? How, how is it possible.



I saw Becoming Jane yesterday, and I have to say it was completely charming. The camera work was real good, and there were some really lovely shots. The music was lovely as well - I might have to get part of it. The cinematography was good, but with all the, uh, potential, the sets had, it could've been used better (I am thinking of Pride and Prejudice, which had an astounding photography). Oh, and the acting was wonderful! I was... quite dubious, of Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen, but her accent was actually somewhat decent and she gave a good performance. James McAvoy, on the other hand, was just a joy to watch. Oh, he was so good and cute and I like how he gets inside character's skins - he truly was Tom Lefroy. (Who, by the way, was such a well rounded character - I didn't expect that).

So yes, I liked it lots - it was hopeful and then not and while it still felt a bit on the fantastic side, it still felt quite real. So yes, it draws rather a bit too much from Pride and Prejudice* and it is in no wan an biographical film but it was still pretty good and I smiled throughout it.

Cielo lluvioso

This is me, today. Feeling horrible about myself and worse, deserving it completely.

My entry for this week's Illustration Friday, the theme is The Blues. Pretty fucking fitting, I'd say.

Cheap watercolors on cheap paper because the only paper I had with me at school was bond and I was feeling too shitty and too lazy to redo it in watercolor paper.

Cielo lluvioso

And this, kids, is why teenagers should be forbidden from marrying.

My entry for this week's Illustration Friday. The them was Weddings. Just a lazy doodle, but oh well, I've really been busy.

Cielo lluvioso

Well, I finally got to see Stardust and my, but it was wonderful. Let's get the only bad thing out first, shall I? IT WAS IN SPANISH. NO ONE TOLD ME IT'D BE IN SPANISH. I HATE HATE HATE DUBBED MOVIES. So yeah. It was so good that I stopped focusing in my hatred for dubbing pretty soon, though, and I guess I now have an excuse to go see it again XD



Anyway, I loved it. I caught on to this fact when I caught myself grinning ideotically through every. single. scene. in the movie, lol. The Tristan/Yvaine relationship was really well treated, and they had so much chemistry and spark; Lamia was wicked and Captain Shakespeare made me laugh insanely. Also, the photography was real pretty, even if the music was a bit repetitive. I'm also really okay with the changes they made from the book - the only thing that rings untrue is that 'one week' deadline, but everything else? Really well made, and anyway, the book's ending was always somewhat plain, and it just made sense for the producers to spice it up for the silver screen. I didn't think it'd be that funny, though! That was a nice surprise, 'cause I honestly laughed and laughed at both the Captain's (hilarious) and princes' storylines. :) In short, I loved it to bits and so did everyone else in the theatre, it seemed.

And today I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum and, of course, it rocked my socks off. BUT. Y'ALL FAIL. WHY DID NO ONE TOLD ME DANIEL BRÜHL WAS IN IT? (ALL THREE MINUTES OF IT, WHATEVS.) In any case, it was much better than the second one and pretty on par with the first one, I'd say. I liked the development on Julia Stiles character, if I gotta be honest, and as always, Jason Bourne is souch an easy character to empathyze with, which is difficult considering who he is. Anyway, me ♥ spy stories, so of course I dig these movies. I still missed Franka Potente's character, though, she was cool. ;__; I'm considering reading the books.

Lluvia ligera

I went to the movies with my dad and we saw Paris, je t'aime and oh wow, it was so lovely. It truly is the mark of a good director/writer when they get the audience to empathize and understand the characters when they only have about five minutes onscreen. I only wish there'd be some marking as to who was directing which part, but my wikipedia-fu is nothing but fierce so now I can say which were my favorite segments:

The best one, in my eyes, was the one directed by Tom Tykwer (director of Run Lola Run, and it all fits now), the one with Natalie Portman - it was absolutely stunning and beautiful. The second best was the one directed by Isabel Coixet, about a man torn between staying with his sick wife or running away with his mistress. It was just lovely and so well shot - it reminded me of Amelie somehow, probably because of the narrator. I laughed the hardest with the one directed by Alexander Payne, the one about a tourist from the US talking about her love for Paris. My dad must have burst something laughing, he says he sounded just the same when he was backpacking through Paris, haha. (but he was with friends and was twenty something and sent passionate and wacky love letters to my mom, so he wasn't that pathetic, I guess)

The one with Elijah Wood made me laugh in all its B-series-ness and I went OMG IS THAT GASPARD ULLIEL, IS IT? IT IS OMG, AND HE'S TELLING ANOTHER DUDE THAT HE MUST BE HIS SOUL MATE OMG OMG. lol. I liked the one-shot format in Alfonso Cuarón's segment, and the mime one was so funny. In all, I really loved this movie, to capture such a different range of emotions with such different characters was definitely a task, and now I really, really want to go to Paris again.

Cielo nublado con posiblilidades de lluvia

I saw The Dreamers yesterday night, and oh wow. Oh man, I'm in love. One of those movies, you know? The premise: Matthew is an exchange student in Paris, and he meets and falls in love with a pair of fraternal twins, Isabelle and Theo, and the three of them seclude themselves from the world, lost in a fantasy world made up almost entirely of reminicenses of old movies while the student rebellion of 1968 comes to a peak outside their window. So yes, there is incest, somewhat explicit sex and a lot of nudity, and yet, I loved it to pieces. Just - the way they interact with each other, the games they play, it was all incredibly moving, even if they're all somewhat disturbing characters. Then the love of cinema of all of them was just incredible, and the lovely Parisian atmoshere coating everything and the subplot of the revolts was really well made. I'm only sad that it didn't have subtitles for the French parts, few as they were, and I feel like I lost something of the sibling's interactions. In all, I just loved it, so, so much.

It's weird, though, remember what I said a few days ago about gratuitous sex? It didn't feel like that at all in here, because, just like in Y Tu Mamá También, sex is one of the main ways in which the character interact, and it tells a lot about their characters. Plus, they were really well made, and not at all pornographic or anything of the like.

Cielo parcialmente nublado

I saw Sakuran last, uh, Thursday, I think, and I kept on forgetting to write about it for some reason. It's a pretty straightforward film, girl fights adversity only to find true love at the end, but it was pretty well executed, and the cinematography was just about brilliant, made entirely of bright, vibrant colors and contrasting colors. The music was pretty good, too, really jazzy with hints of bossa nova, rock, electronic pop and tango, which aren't at all what one expects to find in a movie set in the samurai-ruled Japan. Even though logically I know that an Oiran is nothing like a Geisha, comparations with Memoirs of a Geisha are instinctically made, because it has somewhat the same plot (young girl is sold! Girl fights through adversity only to become the best at what she does! Girl finds love! AND all while wearing Kimono!), and really, Kiyoha has ten times the guts and will to live meek Sayuri ever had. She's quite an amazing character, too, because she's childish and selfish and capricious and has quite a modern-day approach of life for a woman living as a whore in the Tokugawa era Japan. So yes, a very pretty, very nice movie, even if not a master piece.

And then, after yesterday's cinema fiasco (which was really a hard blow for me, because Amores Perros is one of my favorite movies ever and seeing Guillermo Arriaga going so low as that [en el hoyo y siguiendo cavando, como decimos por aquí] was downright depressing for the state of today's Mexican cinema) I just had to go see something decent. I chose the movie well.



I saw The Painted Veil, and my, but what a lovely, enchanting movie. First off, I loved the characters, the movie did a great job of developing them into kind, loving people that can be completely horrid at times - they're mean, and petty, and childish at times, and I loved it. A right battle of wills. And then the setting was gorgeous and while my dad is right and there was much more to be done with the photography because the landscapes were just stunning, it was still gorgeous, and the time frame helped it somehow. And then the plot was awfully interesting and well done and the ending had me tearing up a bit. I honestly tip my hat off to both Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, they gave wonderful perfomances - completely believable, and their accents were top-notch (or at least they were to my uneducated ears). Ah, it was just nice to see something good enough to restore my faith in the film industry.

Cielo despejado

I saw El Búfalo de la Noche (The Buffalo of the Night) today, a movie I'd been looking forward for months, and I'm sorry to say it disappointed me. It hardly feels like Guillermo Arriaga's writing (the man who wrote Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel) - it felt clumsy, amateur-ish. The worst of it, though? The gratuitous sex scenes. Seriously, it's like someone's taking their clothes off every five seconds, with no motivation whatsoever (all Camila Sodi does is get naked for five minutes, talk for two of them and THAT'S IT. That's ALL she does in the entire movie, ugh), and while it was nice to see Diego Luna's bits, yes, I'm shallow like that, it just gets boring when it's not helping to the story at all.

So yes. It had lots of potential, because the characters are pretty interesting (especially Gregorio) and there's some subplots that are honestly intriguing but they fall flat and they're never developed. The premise is: Gregorio's girlfriend, Tania, cheats on him with his best friend, Manuel, while Gregorio's locked away at a psychiatric hospital, and when he finds out, he kills himself. Days later, Manuel gets a letter written in Gregorio's handwriting. It could've been such a good mystery, and all of the characters are deliciously insane (literally), but it just didn't live up to my (or anyone's) expectations. It's not a bad movie per se - it's still better than most of the crap in the cinemas right now - but it's not that good either.

For all that Guillermo Arriaga keeps on bitching on and on about not needing Alejandro Gonzáles Inárritu's directing to shine, he's done a piss poor job of convincing me.

...lluvias pobladas? No me acuerdo.

An old entry I forgot to actually post. Originally dated July 14th and posted now for the sake of thoroughness.

I'm watching Howl's Moving Castle right now, and really, now that I think about it, the Potter movies really do fare well as book adaptations go, I mean -- as enchanting as Miyazaki's film is (because it's Miyazaki, and he can do no wrong in my eyes), it's nowhere near the sheer awesomeness that the book is (then again, HMC is one of my favorite books, so...). Howl isn't nearly enough of an asshole, Sophie isn't nearly enough of a nosy bully and the With of the Waste isn't nearly enough of an evil bitch. That's not ever saying anything about Michael suddenly being turned into a six year old in desperate need of Ritalin and the scarecrow being all happy-happy, and the way they pulled a World War II-esque plot out of their asses and DID I MENTION THERE'S NO DRUNKEN, RUGBY PLAYING HOWL WHICH IS SUCH A DISAPPOINTMENT?

Er, now it sounds like I hate the movie, don't I? No, I do like it, it's got fantastic music and a lovely feeling to it that makes me smile and smile and well, Miyazaki did wanted to turn it into a more him movie, instead of a Diana Wynn Jones one.