Backtracking: Movie Reviews part 4

Next 5 movies:

June 14, 2009: I thought the new Indiana Jones flick was fun and cheesy, but I was irked by Shia Laboeuf's lack of chin. :-P (C)







June 16, 2009: I just finished watching a bizarre black-comedy art-flick "Johnny Suede" (C+), featuring a VERY young Brad Pitt!








June 18, 2009: I just finished watching "Caterina in the Big City" (A-), which is like an Italian version of "Mean Girls"... but with more spontaneity, more involvement of famiglia, and even the meanest girls are still kind of sweet. And then everyone ends up being friends. Recommend! :-)


June 23, 2009: I was totally charmed by the Israeli movie, "The Band's Visit". Egyptian police band ends up in backwoods Israel, amusing & good-hearted hijinx ensue, and the world reveals itself as being full of kind, wonderful people just trying to get through life. (B+)



June 29, 2009: I saw "Blindsight", a documentary about a group of blind Tibetan teenagers doing a climbing expedition of Mount Everest... it actually happened!! Whoa. (Fact that it happened: A+, the movie itself, B)


Winner of the set: "Caterina and the Big City"

Winner so far: Unchanged! It's still "Blade Runner", with runners-up of "Be Kind Rewind" and "Into the Wild", in that order.

Backtracking: Movie Reviews part 3

Next five movies:

May 24, 2009: I was utterly wow-ed by "Into the Wild". Great performances, EVEN by otherwise-weak Twilight-damsel. Fantastic music augments mood -- Eddie Vedder on lone acoustic guitar really hammers home the solitude the main character seeks. (A)


June 4, 2009: I recently enjoyed two obscure movies -- Blame it on Fidel (A), and Boy A (B+). Check them out when you are in the mood for two great end-of-childhood films!







June 10, 2009: I've confirmed, through rewatching, that "Blade Runner" is among the best films of all time, and is as visionary, textured, and brilliant now as it was back in the 1980s. (A+)







June 12, 2009: I had liked the movie, "Bug", up until the point where everyone went TOTALLY batshit nuts. (*Somewhat* nuts is fine, but there's a point when things stop making sense, and somewhere after that things stop being interesting...) I give it a D.





Winner of the set: ... come on, it's not fair to pit any movie up against "Blade Runner"! ;-)

Winner so far: "Blade Runner". Clearly.

Runners-up: "Be Kind Rewind" and "Into the Wild", in that order.

Backtracking: Movie Reviews part 2

And now for the next five movies!

April 28, 2009: I really enjoyed "Be Kind Rewind" -- it's a sweet and funny movie, with gentle turns and loving homage to classic films.








May 1, 2009: I was blogging and watching the movie, "Troy". I'll let you guess which one is occupying the majority of my brain cells... ;-)








May 10, 2009: I enjoyed "Star Trek", but I'm not sure if it wasn't largely because of the very cute Zach Quinto...









May 11, 2009: I wanted to like"I'm Not There" (the Bob Dylan movie), but didn't. :-P I get the feeling that, to truly understand why Dylan was so important/controversial/whatever, ya had to be there...






May 16, 2009: I finished "Zwartboek", which is thus far surprisingly entertaining. Bad, but entertaining. Think "Showgirls" done a la Third Reich resistance.





Winner of the set: "Be Kind Rewind"

Winner so far: "Be Kind Rewind"! I adored this movie!

Backtracking: Movie Reviews

For those of you who know me on Facebook, you already know that I like doing mini-reviews of films. It's been awhile since I started that, and I often find myself tracking back in my statuses to see what I'd said about a specific film. So, for your enjoyment (and my records), here are my (brief) movie reviews!

Since I've seen a lot of movies since January 2009, I'll put them up five at a time to avoid information overload. Enjoy! ^_^

January 24, 2009: I really enjoyed the movie "Frost/Nixon". I wish airline travel was that posh nowadays!




April 15, 2009: I watched "La Vie en Rose", enjoyed it enough, but found it a little too moody and indulgent for my liking.



April 20, 2009: I just watched a really neat movie called "Joyeux Noel"... it's about the 1914 Christmas where the front lines of WWI unofficially called a truce and partied together! Amazing idea, eh?



April 21, 2009: I think that "Bridge to Terabithia" should be renamed to "My Girl: another sequel". Boo urns.



April 26, 2009: I just watched "The Man who Wasn't There", and think Scarlett Johanssen did a very good job of playing a young, awkward high school girl. :-)






Winner among these: "Joyeux Noel"!

Stay tuned for my next five flicks....

Ottawa Fringe Lineup!

It's that time of year again, where the wonderful world of the Fringe Festival descends on eastern Canada and makes its way westward. I can barely contain my excitement!!!

Indeed, one of my least favourite parts of living in the western-most city in Canada is that it is the *final* destination of the fair Fringe. I have to wait until September to partake! How sad...

And in my envy of Ottawa experiencing the Fringe in a mere two weeks from now, allow me to use my finely-tuned Fringe radar to scan the program and plug a few shows.

• Burlesque Unzipped: I've actually seen this one, and it's an excellent performance piece, impeccably acted one-woman burlesque/history/comedy/dance show. I liked it a great deal, and highly recommend it. Suitable for Fringe virgins (=never been to a Fringe show).
  
• The Sputniks is another one I've seen, and found it to be good. Not great, but solidly good. One-woman show talking about life in a Soviet refugee camp, and coming to Canada. Interesting, compelling, and worth seeing. Drama, not comedy. Not for Fringe virgins, though.
  
• I know (or know of) people in these plays, so I'd be going to Unequal Harvest, Wild Abandon, Cactus: the Seduction.
  
• I've found this theatre company to be fairly reliable: The Last Goddamned Performance Piece (Black Sheep Theatre).
  
• These were showing last year in Winnipeg (and/or Victoria), and despite hearing good things about them, I wasn't able to get to them: The Last Straight Man in Theatre, Archy and Mehitabel, The Peter and Chris Show, Underneath It All
• This is a show that I'll see just to support my Winnipeg peeps who've travelled so far: Misadventures of a Massage Therapist
  
• And lastly, plays whose descriptions were noticed by my Fringe antennae, as they sound reasonably entertaining: 7x1 Samurai, Every Job I've Ever Had, Aomega, TransCanada 69, Actionable, Men Telling Stories

Anyhow, these are my picks, listed in descending order of priority. If any of these make it to the Victoria Fringe (in September! sob!!), I will see them then; if you see them first, I would love to know what you thought!

Happy Fringing to you! ^_^