September 2009 Archives
Disco Pigs
Today, I want to write about one of my favorite movies ever, called Disco Pigs. It is starring Cillian Murphy and Elaine Cassidy, who are best friends Pig and Runt. The two are turning 17, and they are getting ready to deal with all the changes that life throws at them as they grow up.
You see, Pig and Runt were born almost at the same time in the same hospital. They have been best friends since they were born. They have their own language, their own way of communicating, and they are always together. Pig and Runt also live next door to one another, and their rooms are next to each other. They put a hole in the wall so they can hold hands and talk at night when they are in bed. They call themselves the king and the queen of their own little world.
Up to before the movie starts, their two lives are well balanced and they live in their own bubble very comfortably. But when they get older, things start to change. Runt, who is the girl played by Elaine Cassidy, starts to want to date boys, and Pig only wants to date Runt. He gets jealous and violent and acts desperate when she goes away from him. One day, she is sent to a school in Donegal and it’s the first time they are separated in their lives. They have to find a way to deal with growing up and all the changes that are happening in their lives and inside them all at the same time.
The reason this is one of my favorite movies is becuause as a young person you can relate to really being close to someone before you grow older, and then you start to drift more and more away from them with time. I can’t tell you how the movie ends but I will say that it is very painful, just the way that growing up into an adult can be. I hope you check it out.
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Nine
I just read about this movie that’s going to come out in November. It’s called Nine, and it’s directed by Bob Weinstein –the same director who did Chicago with Queen Latifah, Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta Jones and Renee Zellweger.
Nine has an all-star cast as well, that’s probably even more impressive than Chicago, if that’s possible. They all have Oscars or Grammys. It’s going to be:
- Daniel Day-Lewis (main character)
- Marion Cotillard (wife)
- Judi Dench (colleague)
- Fergie (prostitute)
- Penélope Cruz (mistress)
- Nicole Kidman (muse)
- Sophia Loren (mother)
- Kate Hudson (journalist, just has an Oscar nomination)
I don’t know why the film is called 9, because it only has 8 people in it. But I do know the movie is based on Fellini’s movie 8 1/2, and it stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an Italian film director Guido Contini. Guido is trying to balance out all the different women in his life, at the same time as trying to finish a movie and get through a mid-life crisis. And they sing all the way through.
I’m not ashamed to say I really liked Chicago. I saw the Broadway Show, and I actually liked the movie more, which isn’t too common. I liked how the lead characters were cast so well in their roles, and they also made each of the songs work really well on film, which can be hard because they were made for the stage. Queen Latifah became so famous after filming this movie. I really liked how the makeup and costumes were done as well. So, this makes me really look forward to seeing Nine on November 25th. I’ll leave you with a link to the preview here.
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The Sweet Hereafter
So, I read a review by another blogger about this film and he was really slagging it off and so I went and got it and saw it. It’s another one that got highest prize at Cannes in 1997, and here’s what it’s about. There is a terrible accident that happens to this community of people. In the wintertime, a bus full of schoolkids loses control and crashes into a lake. Then the bus sinks and all these little kids die. It affects the whole community, cause almost everyone in the town has lost someone that they love.
So, there is this lawyer who comes in and wants to get all the parents together and sue somebody so the families can get some kind of compensation. Well, first of all, a lot of people think, well, it was an accident so why are we dragging this thing out? And who would we sue anyways? So, the lawyer says we could sue the city, or we could sue the bus company, or we could sue somebody like that because it must have been someone cutting corners.
The lawyer himself is really interesting cause he’s got a daughter himself. His daughter is a drug addict who just uses her dad to get money to get high. So he’s really angry and hurt in his own personal life and he wants to find someone to blame, too.
So the movie goes back and forth with the lawyer guy when he is trying to get all the families together to make a case. He talks to the bus driver and he talks to all different kinds of parents and he talks to one girl who survived the bus crash. The girl is played by Sarah Polley and she was crippled by the accident. The lawyer wants her to testify in the lawsuit. She doesn’t want to but her dad makes her (oh, and she’s sleeping with her dad by the way).
Well, I can’t tell you what happens in the end of the movie, of course, but one thing I will say is it was really unexpected. I disagree that this film was confusing and unoriginal, because I have never heard of something like this before, and I thought all the actors did a really good job. I would recommend this film to other people who want to see it.
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[image: imdb.com]
Underground
I watched a really cool Yugoslavian film over the weekend.. it was called Underground. It came out in 1995, and it got the highest prize at Cannes. It was directed by Emir Kusturica.
[image: imdb.com]
Basically, it’s about these two Yugoslavian guys who are best friends during World War II. They live in Belgrade, and they are both in love with the same actress. It covers them over 15 years of World War II, the war ending, the Cold War, and the Yugoslav Wars. So, it’s a lot of conflict and awful things happening, but at the same time, you get to know these characters and they have so much inside of them and they are so alive, that they steal your attention away from all the war and death going on.
The thing I really love about this film is how it’s basically like an eyeful and an earful at all times. One of the first scenes is when the zoo gets bombed by the Germans. And so there’s all these tigers and monkeys and stuff screaming and ratling their cages, and then theres all these bombs dropping. And in the very first scene, there is a band that plays behind the main guys, who are coming home drunk. It’s hard to describe it in words cause it’s so visual and there’s so much that goes on, but here is one version of the preview:
stay tuned for more movie reviews
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