Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2007-02-24 09:51 pm
sophinisba) wrote2007-02-24 09:51 pm
Entry tags:
movies! (not spoilerish)
I should say though that I had two awesome movie experiences last weekend. On Friday night I saw Children of Men and was blown away; it's one of the most powerful things I've seen in a long time. If you're like me and you like your disturbingly plausible future dystopias, I highly recommend this. Also, I've never been hot for Clive Owen before but I totally am now. I know it doesn't have much chance for the big awards tomorrow night, but hey, I can hold on to hope for one more day, no?
Oh, and Marica is speaking Romanian! It took me the longest time to realize that too, pretty bad for a girl who claims to be fluent in that language. My excuses are that she's speaking in a dialect and crazy and also that there were a lot of explosions.
Which reminds me, it's probably one of the more violent movies I've seen, so be warned. (But it's really, really good!!)
On Saturday morning I went to a special screening of The Lives of Others, with the director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, there to take questions from the audience afterwards. This is one of the other movies up for best foreign-language film and, though it didn't move me as much as Pan's Labyrinth, it was very absorbing and well done. It's set in East Berlin in 1984 and is about a Stasi officer who has to spy on a playwright (and his girlfriend) to find out if he's loyal to the government.
I love that the word Orwellian is used in reviews of both of these movies.
The director, who also wrote the screenplay, speaks English without a foreign accent (not that I don't love accents or translations, but this just made things very easy) and was really interesting and charming. Probably my favorite part was when someone asked him about whether he was writing with a certain kind of viewer in mind and he started out his answer by saying, "You're also a writer, I assume?" The guy hesitated a bit before saying yes -- I figure he's probably someone who writes but wouldn't normally refer to himself as a Writer, but what do I know. Anyway, von Donnersmarck talked for a while about how even a person who writes a lot of screenplays is also an audience member and can make judgments based on what they like to watch. Some people think the way to write something really personal is to write about their everyday life, but that tends to end up being pretty boring to watch. For him the way to write something personal is to write what he'd like to see when he goes to watch a movie.
He went on to say that he'd had this idea for a long time but the way he finally managed to get the first draft written out was to arrange to stay in a monk's cell in a Cistercian monastery for a month to get away from all of life's other distractions. :)
ETA: Someone else asked about the research he'd done to write the movie and he said that quite a few people had been generous enough to share their own police files with him -- one is only allowed access to one's own file because there is so much personal information in them. The lead actor in the movie, Ulrich Mühe, was such a talented actor that from the time he finished high school his teachers had alerted the authorities that he would go far and so they should keep an eye on him. Later, when he got to read his file, he found out that his ex-wife had been informing on him and that four members of his acting troupe had been placed there by the Stasi. These other actors are his closest friends and because the official files used code names, to this day he doesn't know who two of the informants were. [/ETA]
I also watched A History of Violence on DVD this afternoon. Viggo was fantastic and I liked the movie very much, but I'm home alone in a snowstorm and the way the house creaks in the wind sounds like someone walking around downstairs and is FREAKING ME OUT.
Oh, and Marica is speaking Romanian! It took me the longest time to realize that too, pretty bad for a girl who claims to be fluent in that language. My excuses are that she's speaking in a dialect and crazy and also that there were a lot of explosions.
Which reminds me, it's probably one of the more violent movies I've seen, so be warned. (But it's really, really good!!)
On Saturday morning I went to a special screening of The Lives of Others, with the director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, there to take questions from the audience afterwards. This is one of the other movies up for best foreign-language film and, though it didn't move me as much as Pan's Labyrinth, it was very absorbing and well done. It's set in East Berlin in 1984 and is about a Stasi officer who has to spy on a playwright (and his girlfriend) to find out if he's loyal to the government.
I love that the word Orwellian is used in reviews of both of these movies.
The director, who also wrote the screenplay, speaks English without a foreign accent (not that I don't love accents or translations, but this just made things very easy) and was really interesting and charming. Probably my favorite part was when someone asked him about whether he was writing with a certain kind of viewer in mind and he started out his answer by saying, "You're also a writer, I assume?" The guy hesitated a bit before saying yes -- I figure he's probably someone who writes but wouldn't normally refer to himself as a Writer, but what do I know. Anyway, von Donnersmarck talked for a while about how even a person who writes a lot of screenplays is also an audience member and can make judgments based on what they like to watch. Some people think the way to write something really personal is to write about their everyday life, but that tends to end up being pretty boring to watch. For him the way to write something personal is to write what he'd like to see when he goes to watch a movie.
He went on to say that he'd had this idea for a long time but the way he finally managed to get the first draft written out was to arrange to stay in a monk's cell in a Cistercian monastery for a month to get away from all of life's other distractions. :)
ETA: Someone else asked about the research he'd done to write the movie and he said that quite a few people had been generous enough to share their own police files with him -- one is only allowed access to one's own file because there is so much personal information in them. The lead actor in the movie, Ulrich Mühe, was such a talented actor that from the time he finished high school his teachers had alerted the authorities that he would go far and so they should keep an eye on him. Later, when he got to read his file, he found out that his ex-wife had been informing on him and that four members of his acting troupe had been placed there by the Stasi. These other actors are his closest friends and because the official files used code names, to this day he doesn't know who two of the informants were. [/ETA]
I also watched A History of Violence on DVD this afternoon. Viggo was fantastic and I liked the movie very much, but I'm home alone in a snowstorm and the way the house creaks in the wind sounds like someone walking around downstairs and is FREAKING ME OUT.