Munich Film Festival
Jun. 27th, 2007 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThis week the Munich Film Festival is taking place.
Watched so far:
Amazing Grace: somewhat clunky biopic about W. Wilberforce, he who got slavery made illegal in Britain. Ioan Gruffud fans should be pleased, as he's playing the main role and doing a great job of getting Wilberforce's passion for the cause, self doubt and affection for various other characters across. Slashers should be pleased because quite a lot is made of a relationship between Wilberforce and Pitt the Younger, Prime Minister during most of that time. Also, Rufus Sewell has a scene-stealing minor role as a more radical abolitionist who gets accused of being, shock, horror, a Jacobin. The distaste Wilberforce shows for the word "revolution" reminds me of Tony Blair in The Queen where shortly after taking office he's taken aback when one of his speech writers - not Alistair Campbelll, of course, another one - uses the word "revolution" and wants it taken out at once. This revolution = bad thing strikes me as very British, never mind they actually had one or two (Cromwell and that state of affairs after getting rid of James II.). Anyway, I suppose the reason why I'm not more entranced by this film is twofold. A) Despite the big subject being slavery, we only have one black character with actual lines, and he doesn't get nearly as much attention by the script as the others. (He also dies about two thirds into the movie, but I suppose that couldn't be helped, him being historical.) Wilberforce has passionate speeches about the conditions of slavery, and we get to see an (empty) ship, just as we would today in a museum, to demonstrate the conditions, but film being a visual medium, I really think a subplot involving some actual slaves and their lives would not have been out of place. And B) The clunky structure, seen in a hundred biopics. Great man has fiery start, crisis, set back, gets reinspired, succeeds.
Dying in Athens: Greek movie with gorgeous actors which I nonetheless found myself walking out of, having lost patience with the main character (middle-aged man with wife, mistress and additional young lover whom he cheats on the mistress with on, who discovers he has leucemia) too much to care. You could tell the film aimed for bitter sweet, and tragicomedy, but failed to demonstrate what the three women saw in Spyros to begin with.
Dixie Chicks: Shut up and sing: documentary about the "we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas" incident in 2003 and the band recording a new album and taking on the road again in 2005/2006. Unabashedly pro-Dixie Chicks and doesn't pretend otherwise, but doesn't try to present them as political activists, either; the initial remark comes across as having resulted from a combination of general distaste with Dubya and the awareness their London audience (where there had just been one of the biggest anti-war rallies on the globe) would greet the remark with cheers, and after the uproar starts, the first thing the manager thinks is that this could be useful publicity. However, the aftermath does serve as a wake up call, and as things get more and more serious, you see the young women more and more growing. And the music changes. The song Natalie Maines sings near the end, Not Ready to Make Nice, is terrific. Speaking of Natalie Maines, on a "it's a small world" note, she's married to Adrian Pasdar who plays Nathan Petrelli on Heroes, and like the other two husbands is glimpsed being supportive in the background. Heroes fans might be amused by the getting ready for Halloween scene in which he tries to convince their son to wear the tie belonging to the Harry Potter costume ("Daddy has to wear a tie on tv, too, when he's playing a lawyer") and then gives up ("you're right, ties suck").
Not something to watch with the kids (lots of blow job jokes abound when the three women get talking), and I suppose if you took offense at the initial remark, this film won't convince you otherwise (actually, the initial remark is pretty harmless compared to something Natalie Maines says later when reading a Bush quote), but if you didn't, watch and enjoy.
Watched so far:
Amazing Grace: somewhat clunky biopic about W. Wilberforce, he who got slavery made illegal in Britain. Ioan Gruffud fans should be pleased, as he's playing the main role and doing a great job of getting Wilberforce's passion for the cause, self doubt and affection for various other characters across. Slashers should be pleased because quite a lot is made of a relationship between Wilberforce and Pitt the Younger, Prime Minister during most of that time. Also, Rufus Sewell has a scene-stealing minor role as a more radical abolitionist who gets accused of being, shock, horror, a Jacobin. The distaste Wilberforce shows for the word "revolution" reminds me of Tony Blair in The Queen where shortly after taking office he's taken aback when one of his speech writers - not Alistair Campbelll, of course, another one - uses the word "revolution" and wants it taken out at once. This revolution = bad thing strikes me as very British, never mind they actually had one or two (Cromwell and that state of affairs after getting rid of James II.). Anyway, I suppose the reason why I'm not more entranced by this film is twofold. A) Despite the big subject being slavery, we only have one black character with actual lines, and he doesn't get nearly as much attention by the script as the others. (He also dies about two thirds into the movie, but I suppose that couldn't be helped, him being historical.) Wilberforce has passionate speeches about the conditions of slavery, and we get to see an (empty) ship, just as we would today in a museum, to demonstrate the conditions, but film being a visual medium, I really think a subplot involving some actual slaves and their lives would not have been out of place. And B) The clunky structure, seen in a hundred biopics. Great man has fiery start, crisis, set back, gets reinspired, succeeds.
Dying in Athens: Greek movie with gorgeous actors which I nonetheless found myself walking out of, having lost patience with the main character (middle-aged man with wife, mistress and additional young lover whom he cheats on the mistress with on, who discovers he has leucemia) too much to care. You could tell the film aimed for bitter sweet, and tragicomedy, but failed to demonstrate what the three women saw in Spyros to begin with.
Dixie Chicks: Shut up and sing: documentary about the "we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas" incident in 2003 and the band recording a new album and taking on the road again in 2005/2006. Unabashedly pro-Dixie Chicks and doesn't pretend otherwise, but doesn't try to present them as political activists, either; the initial remark comes across as having resulted from a combination of general distaste with Dubya and the awareness their London audience (where there had just been one of the biggest anti-war rallies on the globe) would greet the remark with cheers, and after the uproar starts, the first thing the manager thinks is that this could be useful publicity. However, the aftermath does serve as a wake up call, and as things get more and more serious, you see the young women more and more growing. And the music changes. The song Natalie Maines sings near the end, Not Ready to Make Nice, is terrific. Speaking of Natalie Maines, on a "it's a small world" note, she's married to Adrian Pasdar who plays Nathan Petrelli on Heroes, and like the other two husbands is glimpsed being supportive in the background. Heroes fans might be amused by the getting ready for Halloween scene in which he tries to convince their son to wear the tie belonging to the Harry Potter costume ("Daddy has to wear a tie on tv, too, when he's playing a lawyer") and then gives up ("you're right, ties suck").
Not something to watch with the kids (lots of blow job jokes abound when the three women get talking), and I suppose if you took offense at the initial remark, this film won't convince you otherwise (actually, the initial remark is pretty harmless compared to something Natalie Maines says later when reading a Bush quote), but if you didn't, watch and enjoy.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 11:38 am (UTC)I heard an interview with Michael Apted, the director, and the gist of what he said was that there are great films to be made about slavery, but that wasn't what he was doing. His big subject was how politics can make a difference to the world, and he'd wanted to do a film on that subject for years, as a counter to the cynical view of politics as mere self-aggrandisement. My impression was that he'd settled on Wilberforce and the slave trade as the field to demonstrate this thesis quite late on - maybe because the bicentenary was coming up, maybe because it was a cause everyone could support.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 12:35 pm (UTC)Okay, that may be the cutest thing ever.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 12:43 pm (UTC)More family outing (http://i17.tinypic.com/3z1cvmg.jpg)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 05:41 pm (UTC)(This is my intellectual commentary. Yes.)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-28 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-28 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 02:06 pm (UTC)Interesting to know :-)
While I still haven't seen one single episode of Heroes yet, I'm having some rather fond memories of Pasdar, ranging back to the late 90s, when he was starring in the much too short lived thriller/satire series Profit.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 02:27 pm (UTC)