Monday, July 18, 2005

Latter Half of July

This week and the next will be big ones, climatic events. Tonight, my only free night dedicated to MET research and other evenings (apart from Friday the lecture by moi) will be rehearsals. Lots of movements. Even though I got decent sleep last night, I woke up feeling exhausted and hitting the snooze for an hour.

to grease the wheels a bit I have comments/opinions/musings on two films and a book (which will be in next entry post).

Batman Begins. My brother said it right. He IMed me the day after the film's release saying "Drop everything! Go and see it!". Course, I had accessibility issues and I wouldn't be able to see it for another couple weeks. Regal cinemas now have much better captioned movie options and accessibility than AMC (you hear this you AMC freaks!) does. But their captions are grey (no good for those who are legally blind or have limited eye sight) and I had a bit of trouble reading captions in, say, scenes with snow or lots of lights. Anyways.

The movie blew my mind. I forgot about the ridiculous TomKat thing. Christian Bale is awesome portraying Bruce Wayne, testing his skills, knowledge and guts becoming Batman. Pure angst. I was momentarily spooked on Bruce's first night out as Batman. He seized and levitated some no do gooder and wimpy criminal. Batman positioned himself into some lightning to appear menacing shouted questions/accusations into the poor guy's face. The criminal losing all his nerve blubbered information. If I was him, I would've shat into my shorts from a case of shattered nerves.

Bruce trained with League of Shadows during his travels in Southern Asia, a ninja organization headed by Ken Wantabe (first saw him in "The Last Samurai") with Liam Neeson (most evil as I've ever seen him) where he learned to sharpen his wit and agility, mentally and physically.

Bruce/Batman struggles with what kind of justice to give to the criminals. Gotham was corrupted through and through. The police? Forget it. The mayor or councilman? Definitely in pockets of thugs/kingpin. The poor suffering, the rich ignoring, and the criminals pulling strings, keeping them apart. Bruce, who never got over his guilt of watching his parents murdered, decides to do something about it.

What I like about the film is that unlike the other Batman films, there's no egomanaics (the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin, etc) manipulating people's weakness for total domination. The League of Shadows isn't a bunch of bad guys. They're the other good guys with a harsher approach to justice to shatter the caste of the rich, the poor, the manipulators and those stuck in between (Batman, Gordon and Katie Holmes as the ADA). The League of Shadow's rationale is to cause true chaos forcing the society fall apart in order for society to improve itself from scratch. They claimed that they caused the Roman empire to fall and instigated the London burning in the 11th century.

Whoa. Oh my beating Irish Marxist heart.

I m definitely buying a DVD copy.

Lila Says - a French film I saw over the weekend. A friend who had seen it, warned me about the film's sensuality. She was sitting next to some cute guy, and feeling very inspired by the film, wanted to screw him right there.

It's a film about innocence and sexuality. A blond angelic girl and her batty aunt (and I mean batty) had moved into an Arab ghetto in Paris. When they first meet, she asks him if he wants to see her pussy? He's shy and intrigued by her but refuses. She goads him a bit and he gives in out of curiosity.. She goes to the swing set and picks one swing. Chimo stands in front of her. She pushes off the ground swinging higher each time. As her feet meets Chimo's field of vision, she opens her legs. Higher and higher and wider.

That's a sample from the movie. It's not smutty or anything. It challenges your sensual being, what you're willing to explore psychologically. I did feel randy, wishing that I did have a date to enjoy the film with. Afterwards my friend and I went to her favorite French restaurant and after a yummy meal of steak tatare, french fries, a bottle of wine and some creme de brulee.. My randiness became sedated.

The film had a bit of a post 9-11 feel to it particularly since all the main characters were Arabic. In the beginning, Chimo, the narrator stated, "Ever since those fuckers flew their planes into NY (loosely quoted).. we..." The scene cuts to a couple of French Arab youths being frisked by the (white and French) police.. Chimo and his friends, from the safety of a balcony shout out "where are our rights?" and the French policeman made a retort like "wan come down and join them..?" I Googled the film and discovered that it s based on a controversial French novel by Chimo. In the movie, Chimo is a raw writer, given an opportunity to apply to a school for writing and has to write a 30 page story to qualify for entrance. Some critics and reviewers of the book couldn't agree whether the author is a hoax or some writer pretending to be an uneducated but introspective young French Arab. A lawyer delivered 2 notebooks to a publisher. Worth seeing but recommend to bring a hot date.

Coming soon.. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

5 Comments:

Blogger K said...

Who's your friend? :)

7/22/2005 7:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I finally got my Harry Potter book today! So wouldn't read your blog until I finish it. ;-)

7/22/2005 6:37 PM  
Blogger Kate O. Breen said...

why should I tell you McCaul? If I said a friend then it's a friend..

7/23/2005 9:21 AM  
Blogger Keri said...

'Lily Says' sounds like a good movie...I added it to my Netflix queue for when it comes out on DVD. ;)

~K

7/24/2005 8:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey!--i just thought of something so i had to comment.

i oughta take adam ;}

7/28/2005 12:57 AM  

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