In spite of being the newest item on the list, The Man Who Fell to Earth aged the worst. Mr. Bowie is probably the main reason the film acquired the cult status, but I was much more impressed by Candy Clark’s performance as Mary-Lou.
Here’s a curiousity: Nicolas Roeg was also a director of photography in Fahrenheit 451. Those were the days when film directors knew how to handle a camera.
Johannes reluctantly agrees to help his widower father, Ulrik, to communicate with the latter’s mail-order Filipino bride, Rosita. What could go wrong? Another dysfunctional family drama, or comedy-drama, from the cycle Cine danés en femenino. Compared with En familie, I found Rosita more honest, more relatable, and definitely funnier, in a very realist way. Starring Jens Albinus (The Boss of It All) as Ulrik, Mercedes Cabral as Rosita and Mikkel Boe Følsgaard as Johannes.
Tamara kept telling me how good Ocine 7 Palmas cinema was, so finally we all went there to see Dune: Part Two in VOSE. I was impressed. By the movie theatre, I mean. Huge screen, great sound and, most importantly, electric reclining chairs. Nice.
I have to say that I neither read the novel nor watched the first part. Maybe (I said, maybe) otherwise I would enjoy the movie not as much as I did. Which I did. It’s got stunning visuals: Miyazaki-esque machinery in Kin-dza-dza-ish setting. Not as funny as Kin-dza-dza! though. I find the (apparently important) genealogy stuff pretty boring. How can anyone be surprised to discover that this or that dude is also their sibling/cousin/grandparent is beyond me. Just look at the European royal families.
Paul the main guy (Timothée Chalamet) is a bit meh, and by the end of the movie grows almost as creepy as Frodo. Totally no match for the most psychotic of his secret cousins, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). Comic relief courtesy of Stilgar (our Canarian bro Javier Bardem). Assorted Bene Gesserit women, naturally, look like clones of each other. Chani (Zendaya) is both cute and cool, in the style of Miyazaki’s heroines. She seems to be the only principal character who does not buy into the Messiah bullshit. Respect.
Now, the blue liquid known as Water of Life. What the hell is that? According to Dune Wiki, it’s the bile of a young sandworm. Sorry, but there is no bile in invertebrates. My hunch is that it is haemolymph of the creature, and its colour is thanks to haemocyanin, which is not particularly toxic and could even have anticancer effects. (Another theory is that “Water of Life” is simply a translation of aqua vitae, and what we see in the movie is a coloured spirit such as Kosako Vodka Mora Azul brought on set by Rebecca Ferguson.) Never mind that: they don’t give Water of Life to every Tom, Dick and Harry but only to a few chosen. Easy enough to convince the rest that the chosen don’t die precisely because they are chosen. Do the recipients of Water of Life suffer the “spice agony”? Sure, why not, because they think they might die. Never underestimate the power of the placebo.
If a year (compressed in, well, just under 100 minutes) in life of a declining Danish tabloid newspaper sounds to you like fun viewing, watch this documentary. Otherwise, don’t bother.
The central story, if there is one, deals with the media coverage of two Danes held captive by Somalian pirates (the four fellow Filipino hostages were not even mentioned in the film). Naturally, the prominence is given to the newspaper’s stance (“if not for us, the world would forget about Eddie and Søren”) while the alternative points of view (“you guys are not helping”) are pretty much dismissed. In the end, one of the released hostages filed a complaint, Ekstra Bladet was reprimanded, the sales continued to fall, all in the midst of general apathy.
Meanwhile, Shipcraft, the owner of the hijacked vessel, was “cleared of any wrongdoing”. Great.
I first learned of this film from the 1974 book called «Алекс и другие. Полемические заметки о мире насилия» (Alex and others. Polemical notes on the world of violence), by one Yuri Zhukov. I remember how much I enjoyed reading this tendentious and hypocritical piece of work, especially the bits mentioning sex because, as we all know, there was no sex in USSR. Revisiting this book now — thanks, Internet! — I wonder if its author indeed believed all the things he wrote (unlikely), wanted the reader to believe them, or was just taking a piss.
По правде говоря, я долго колебался, прежде чем решил прикоснуться к этой теме: так ли уж актуальна для нашего читателя проблема преступности в буржуазном обществе? И стоит ли копаться в столь грязных делах, не оскорбят ли чистую душу советского человека их отвратительные детали, о которых неизбежно придется говорить по ходу повествования, ибо без деталей никакая картина не может быть достоверной?
Truth to be told, I hesitated for a long time before deciding to touch upon this topic. Is the problem of crime in bourgeois society really that relevant to our reader? And is it worth delving into such dirty deeds? Will their revolting details, which we inevitably have to talk about in the course of the story, insult the pure soul of the Soviet citizen, for no picture can be trustworthy without details?
Whatever it was, I am grateful to Mr. Zhukov (RIP) for those revolting details. Since then, I was longing to see the film in all its disgusting glory.
Much later, already in the early 1990s, I read the Burgess’s novel (as «Заводной апельсин») which was published in the magazine «Юность» (Yunost). I wasn’t impressed much by the Russian translation. The original remains on my to-read list.
Finally, I watched the movie as a part of the cycle «Hasta que el futuro nos alcance» of Filmoteca Canaria. What a surprise! I was preparing myself to be clockworkin’ shocked. Didn’t happen. I certainly haven’t expected so much Pythonesque comedy. I can easily imagine John Cleese as Chief Guard Barnes, Terry Gilliam as Dim, Eric Idle as Joe the Lodger, Graham Chapman as any of the officials and/or the Cat Lady, Terry Jones as Alex’s mum, and Michael Palin — sorry, Malcolm McDowell — as Alex himself. Another surprise was to see Prince Charles lookalike (2001 model) as the Minister of the Interior (Anthony Sharp). A masterpiece worth waiting 40+ years for.
Ditte (Lene Maria Christensen) faces a trilemma: to have a baby; to move to New York, New York; or to stay in Copenhagen with her terminally ill father, Rikard. There’s nothing particularly gripping about this Danish, um, family drama — as in [Danish (family drama)], or maybe [(Danish family) drama]. Grim outlook and general non-grippedness notwithstanding, it is actually quite watchable and at times even humorous. Although Ditte is meant to be the central character, it’s Jesper Christensen (lot of unrelated Christensens here) as Rikard who dominates the film; he alone makes it worth watching. The movie is spoiled — here comes another spoiler — by its happy sex ending. I mean, happy sex is great, I just don’t believe that Ditte could be back with her Picasso of a boyfriend (Pilou Asbæk).
Nicole is a young Costa Rican of Chinese descent who doesn’t speak Chinese. Her granny Guián, born in China, never learned Spanish. So the two women were never able to communicate in the same language. After the death of Guián, Nicole embarks on a journey to her grandmother’s natal home... An intimate yet universal story. You know, it’s OK to belong neither here nor there.
The title of the film supposedly means “paternal grandmother”. But 奶奶 is pronounced nothing like “guián”: /nǎinai/ 🔊 in Mandarin, /naai naai/ 🔊 in Cantonese. Could it be because Nicole, as she says herself, used to confuse it with 外婆, /ngoi po/ in Cantonese, “maternal grandmother”? Still, does not sound exactly like Guián!
