Well I'm back from New York where I managed to see two super exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum -- Prague 1400 and Fra Angelico (yes, I really do have some other interests) and where I stocked up on a number of Region1 Dvds that are not available here (back to interest number one). Memo to movie-lovers, given the choice fly with Virgin rather than American. The former always has a choice of at least eight films at a time at worst and on some of their aircraft there is a choice of over fifty with the ability to start at any point in the flight, pause or fast-foward -- a really cool system. American with whom I flew this time in comparison have a dismal choice of three or four movies, most of which have been around for a while. So here's what I viewed, although as mentioned previously a miniature screen hardly provides a decent viewing experience:
Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005); This was the only newish movie available and if you love the shorts, which I do, you know what to expect in their first full-length feature (well 70-odd minutes): great visuals, good clean fun, and some singularly British humour. I'm not surprised that business fell sharply Stateside after the first weekend since it is all probably a little too old-fashioned for them, but I'm sure we'll happily be watching here for decades.
Christmas with the Cranks (2004): One of the seasonal choices and reasonably pleasant with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis deciding to forego their usual Christmas celebrations to their neightbours' extreme displeasure. A few chuckly bits and the actors did try hard, but it all got a bit saccharine by the end. Too much peace and good will for my taste!
The Polar Express (2004): I was singularly untaken with this animation although I know it has its fans. The technique is called motion-capture where the actors play out their roles and are then painted over; to my eye this produces a very flat and boring picture. The story tells of resurrecting one boy's belief in Santa Claus by taking him to the North Pole on the titular train, but apart from a few small scenes, I felt there was little magical in the story-telling.
A Good Woman (2004): This is the film that I slept through in part -- the main risk of watching films on airplanes. It was a reworking of Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan" moved for some reason to the 1930's. The female leads were Helen Hunt and the nowadays ubiquitous Scarlett Johansson who brought some passion to the Merchant-Ivory feel of the movie (it was not incidentally one of theirs); the young male actors were unknown to me, but Tom Wilkinson and John Standing added some class to the older roles. A comedy of manners with some smart repartee but a strange choice for the modern audience.
1 comment:
Sure there must be some film art at the Met - there has to be some way to lure you in....
Soundz gooood.
Wallace and Gromit was just drop-dead funny from the moment it started. You kinda know what's going to happen, but that's what's so loveable about it, and there's the unexpected in there too - like Gromit's car journey through the centre of the earth. There's some quite risque jokes in there too, depending on which way you take them. I'm gaurding my crop of next years tomatoes very carefully. Oh, and Gromit's marrow. Poor lad. You kind of knew it's fate. But it's demise was quite clever, as were all the devices. Well with 5 years in the making you'd expect it to be really....
Polar express? I have it in my hand ready to stick in the DVD port on the laptop. Tom Hanks. You've gotta love him.....
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