cardboard robot ninja pirate monkey

lets get lost

a film about chet baker by bruce weber

weber - always a fan of bakers does a remarkably honest and two sided portrayal of one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, showing baker for his immense natural talent aswell as his appetite for narcotics and women.

i really would urge anyone who has any interest in this genre of music to go and see this piece of work. its a very very good biography of a very interesting character, unknowingly in some of the last months of his life before he died after falling out of a miami hotel window.

with so many musicians today being industry by products, secondary to their sales targets, the age and scene in which chet baker was ensconced was one of true musical passion and calling. weber interviews mrs baker, chets mother, where she describes how he just taught himself how to play from an incredibly early age.
also remarkable are the somewhat tense interviews with his ex wives and their dealings with him. in love with a legend and adonis in some of their eyes, obvious resentment and bitterness is aplenty as they recount story after story of his philandering, manipulative ways. but alongside the bruised egos and tormented pasts, they all still talk about him with a helpless devotion.

falling in love with legends can be tough on anyone.

whats more remarkable is seeing quite honestly, all the joy, love, devotion, pain, confusion, laughter, kindness, respect and awe that one single person can conjure from so many others.
all with such a great soundtrack.

although, i think clare can explain it much much better than i...

anyone up for a warner brothers boycott?

Despite most right-minded people yelling, ‘nooooooo! It can’t be done!’ or ‘Nooooooo! It shouldn’t be done!’ or even ‘Noooooo! It can’t, and shouldn’t be done!’, Warner Bros. is pressing ahead with plans to turn the anime classic, Akira – the manga film for those who can’t stand manga – into a live-action American film.

read the full story here: Warner Bros. To Split Akira In Two

if anyone is up for it, im totally prepared to start some large scale petition to bring this travesty to an end. maybe if enough of us sign on the dotted line to say that no matter how much money they throw at this venture - we will not be entering the cinema to see their stinky remake of one of the most seminal pieces of japanese anime of all time (also no longer set in neo-tokyo but in new manhattan and yes, those american military will surely be involved, what a joy). at some point the film industry needs to stop and take a good long look at itself and understand that there are some things that are just too sacred and precious to go around creatively raping them for cash.

whos with me?

have to make a wolf suit now

link: worst previews wild things test footage

das leben der anderen

ok, so im no film critic and im not going to attempt to write some beautifully constructed piece of pretentious prose about one of the best films that i have ever watched in my life, because, well, i would never be able to do it justice. however, after seeing 'the lives of others' by florian henckel von donnersmarck i just had to write a few words on how brilliant it was.
i feel truly gutted that i missed it at the cinema. i can remember vividly standing infront of the board at a cinema in the westend one night with a friend, going, "shall we go and watch that?" but then apparently they had heard mixed reviews about it, so we opted to go elsewhere and muck about instead. which was fun.

with hindsight i would have gone right in there and then and probably watched it 4 times in a row.

basic storyline is thus (for anyone who hasnt seen it yet)...
Ulrich Mühe plays a german stazi officer who works in intelligence, monitoring and watching for socialist defectors. but while carrying out surveillance on a writer and his actress girlfriend, he finds himself drawn into the lives of these peoples lives and ultimately goes against his original convictions by helping them escape from the secret police.

the whole film is beautifully shot. calm and underwhelming colour tones/palettes help to bring more of a sense of cold and place to the time of 1984 in which it was set. showing an unspectacular environment in which some genuinely unsettling and ominous events took place.
having been 6 at the time of the events occuring in this film, i can remember small parts of the happenings on the news but little else. i remember my mum telling me about the berlin wall, but not understanding very much of it and later at school, when the wall did finally come down it was all a little too much to comprehend.
this film really served to remind of what a difficult and painful time the people of berlin lived in. a world so similar and yet so different to what i know now, but one that i really would like to know more about.

all in all, the parts were played with real humanity and compassion. at times it left you speechless. but overall i was just so impressed by the way that a story could be told with so much subtlety to the point where the very dark undertones were actually made more poignant by how delicately they were handled. i finished watching the film, left with a sort of feeling of awe about what i had just seen but also with a comforting feeling that all it was trying to get across is that the human spirit is stronger than you might think, and what is most important and most rewarding in the world is to be live your life as a good person.

a lesson that we should all take note of i think.