trendaway.com

Serenity (Josh Whedon) was awesome! I recently got turned on to Firefly and have been immersed in the compete series DVDs for the past week. It was really cool to see it on the big screen.

They did a great job of setting things up for those who are not familiar with the setting, characters or plot. It was cool to see them work without the 43-minute time constraint from being on television. We got to see more action, better special effects, and a lot more character development.

I’m almost finished watching the series DVD and I don’t want it to end. Hopefully I won’t resort to watching Buffy or Angel in a desperate attempt to hold on.

I finally checked out A History Of Violence (David Cronenberg). I liked it, but it took some thinking first. This is definitely a character piece rather than a story. It has so many major events, however, that it feels like a story-driven film. Sometimes I like Cronenberg’s style. His story and visuals are fairly graphic, but his themes are very subtle. It’s an interesting way to make you really think about what you are seeing, and why.

It was different to see a Cronenberg film without anything extremely weird in it. (Um… I guess having a secret life where you killed lots of people is weird, but at least none of his house appliances turned into talking, leaking insects.) Everything that may be considered as weird in this film is fairly believeable (granted, somethings less than others), and I never felt as if it was taking place in another reality. Corny as they are, Tom (Viggo Mortensen) and his family are very “likeable”. They are set up in such a “perfect family” kind of way that you just KNOW there’s going to be some pretty brutal violence. And there is, hurray!

It was nice and graphic. Not the actually hitting/shooting, but the shots of what the people after being hit and/or shot. I’m not complaining, I love a good 18A rating. But I don’t know, I didn’t find myself asking myself questions like “What is violence?” or “Does everybody have the capability to punch a guy until his nose falls off?”. I saw Mortensen and Cronenberg talk at this film’s press conference when they were here for the Toronto International Film Festival, and I don’t know what they had to talk about so much (especially Viggo). Granted, that’s probably my desensitization talking. It was also cool to see Ed Harris freak out and throw his glass of water.

Anyway, my point is that this was a pretty cool movie to sit through. The way the characters responded to events was interesting. There were a lot of intense scenes. Afterwards, I did find myself thinking about the different ways in which people experience, seek out, and express passion. I’m not thinking about it any longer, though; that moment has passed.

Green Street Hooligans (Lexi Alexander) is about a kid named Matt (Elijah Wood) who takes the blame for something that results in him getting kicked out of Harvard, and then goes to England to visit his sister. There, he meets his brother-in-law’s brother, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), who is the leader of a “firm” of football enthusiasts who take their team VERY seriously.

It’s a pretty fun movie. There are a bunch of graphic fight scenes that caused me the occasional wince. They’re very glamourized and it’s obvious that a lot of care went into shooting and choreographing them. The story was fine, but it ended up being one of those coming-of-age movies where way too much comes and there’s not enough actual aging.

Anyway, Elijah Wood fan that I am, it was still pretty satisfying seeing the crap get beaten out of him. Apparently one of the reasons that he got this part was because he was perceived to be the exact cultural fish-out-of-water as his character.

It was written and directed by Lexi Alexander – I read that she is a professional kick-boxer, so her love of fighting and the like is the perspective that Green Street is coming from in regards to how it took precedent over story. Still good, though.

Saw Qi jain (Seven Swords) (Hark Tsui) at the Isabel Bader theatre or something, on the University Of Toronto campus. It wasn’t the first showing of the film at the festival so nobody was there to introduce it, except for some volunteer. Anyway, the movie was kinda cool, but a bit hard to follow – perhaps because I don’t speak Chinese, and there was a lot of reference to myths and other things that would most likely be common knowledge to a native Chinese viewer.

I was attracted to this film because I like martial arts epics, and also because Tsui is pretty well known for directing a bunch of the “Once Upon A Time In China” films. Those are also the films that helped make Jet Li an internation superstar. Also, the film had tons of press from screenings in Asia and Europe, and as far as genre is concerned, it helped us to broaden our film picks.

Great acting (I think), great fight sequences. It was long; including, for example, a ten-minute scene where the guy lets his horse go. I mean, just let it go! Do we really need mutli-angle shots, sweeping cinematography, slow-mo galloping and teary waves (the man was waving, not the horse)? Anyway, I digress. Actually, I’m not digressing. There were some really long and boring scenes and I had to fight to stay awake for some of them. I mean, I ate TWO chocolate bars to try to get a sugar rush (that’s my justification).

The actions sequences were cool but I had some trouble following who was who. I figured that there would be seven warriors or whatever, but I was never too sure on where exactly they came from – they appeared to jump out of a magic mountain after a meteor came crashing down on it. I dunno, sometimes these Chinese films use mythical and literal characters in such a way that I don’t know what is what.

So, it was a pretty cool film, but it was no Crouching Tiger or House Of Flying Daggers.

Dear Wendy was written by Lars von Trier and directed by Thomas Vinterberg. These men have a history of working together, as both were co-founders of Dogme 95 (Vinterberg directed Dogme #1, Festen (The Celebration). Starring Jamie Bell and featuring Bill Pullman, this film?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s theme is ?¢‚Ǩ?ìpacifists with guns?¢‚Ǩ¬ù, an obvious contradiction that is played out very nicely. Vinterberg was present for this North American premiere, as well as two of the young actors from the film. They were all very well spoken and provided what was probably the best q&a of the six that I saw during the festival.

I loved the movie. It used a fair amount of voice-over narration which was pretty witty, and also provided some depth to Bell?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s main character, Dick. The setting is a small American mining town, where basically everyone works underground. The story revolves around a group of young social outcasts (?¢‚Ǩ?ìlosers?¢‚Ǩ¬ù) who form a group (led by Dick) called The Dandies. They hang out in an abandonded mine and obsess over guns. They clean them, learn about them, name them, ?¢‚Ǩ?ìmarry?¢‚Ǩ¬ù them, and shoot them at targets. If they think something is cool, they call it ?¢‚Ǩ?ìdandy?¢‚Ǩ¬ù.

Each of them develops an eerie relationship with their guns, as well as a unique style of shooting which represents their personality. They are very firm on the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìpacifist?¢‚Ǩ¬ù thing, and one of their creeds is that they are never to be used to kill another person; they are so horrified by the idea of killing that they call it ?¢‚Ǩ?ìloving?¢‚Ǩ¬ù ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú an interesting allegory to the relationships that they have developed to their firearms, and also a clue to their disillusionment.

Each of the characters has just enough depth and development to remain interesting. They carry their guns around with them (concealed) and we witness them change from scared kids into confident young adults. Contrarily, they start to act like little kids in the way that they play around. I read that von Trier?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s original script was written with the characters being in their thirties, but Vinterberg felt that they would be better suited as young adults ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú a great decision, I think. Anyway, at the movie?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s climax (which was both expected but still somewhat shocking), I was thinking about how childish the events were. The situation was juvenile and completely unnecessary, but I guess we aren?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t supposed to be noticing the story at this point; what?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s going on is simplified so that we think more about the themes rather than the story.

I loved the character development, photography, tongue-in-cheek humor, build-up and use of music in Dear Wendy. It was satisfying in so many ways ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú a fun, intense film with enough food for thought to last at least month (which is how long it took me to post something about it).