Pan’s Labyrinth

This movie will catch you off guard and make you believe that magic lives, at least in a child’s imagination and what could be stronger. What is stronger than the imagination of a child not yet jaded, a child who sees realities of the world but still has a cache of magic to draw power from. What is more magical than when that reality of the world comes crashing down, that the child has this magic to hang on to and that magic is true for this and the next world.

There is no movie to compare this to! Not the Chronicles of Narnia or Alice in Wonderland. They are children’s movies which adults can enjoy.

Pan is not a kid’s movie. It is violent and scary but these are the realities that kids are exposed to. Never mind the Spanish Civil War. Kids everywhere (those who are lucky) are dodging bullets and abuse and being orphans. Think about Kabelo Duiker’s the Hidden Star, or even Thirteen Cents. You don’t really even have to go that far. Open the Cape Times and you will read about what children have to escape on a daily basis.

See this one and vow to be the Mercedes in other children’s lives and pray that you don’t get there before it’s too late.

Enchanted five spoons

Is the romantic comedy dead?

Or is it in intensive care. Do you remember the way that they used to make them? Think, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey, think, When Harry Met Sally, think Moonlight and Valentino, think Chasing Amy, As Good as it Gets. Annie Hall, even Pretty Woman and an Officer and a Gentleman? What (the f) have you seen recently that measures up?!

I rented Music and Lyrics the other day and I started thinking when last did I watch just a feel good romantic comedy. Not Sna/itch with Will Smith spreading non truths, or Jennifer Aniston looking puzzled. I am not talking about 101 ways to lose a guy or stupid David Duchovny trying to woo Mienne Driver who is dying of some other disease. Not Charlize Bloody Theron trying to get Keanu to get his freak on. What the f, has happened to just… ahhhh.

Anybody watch Fever Pitch/Perfect Match with the comically attractive Jimmy Fallon. Now that! Was one in a million! It was great but it is pity that one has to wait so long before you find that oh so funny! fantastic love story like Fever Pitch. One has to go through bloody, Music and Lyrics. Now that was (I thought) a good idea. When I saw the trailer I thought, hhhmmmm maybe that will do it for me.

Stay away from it. It is bad, it is so bad that I wonder about Drew and Hugh. Drew was excellent in Fever Pitch. Love Actually was actually quite good with Hugh and his weird dancing. You also have to give props to Four Weddings and a Funeral and Nottinghill.

But lately I have just been deprived of what could be. Romantic comedies is where I go to when I lose hope, when I think, argh, there is nobody there for me?! I go to the video store and rent somin', somin' and it is all right with the world. But the latest releases just do not measure up.

What is your ultimate romantic movie. What do you rent when you need to restore faith in Cupid? Let me know because I am running out of ideas, as always!

Here we go again - The Secret

I had a vision three times, of the red wax seal that is the cover of The Secret. I had a dream about it, do not remember the dream but I remember the seal, I walked into a book store and there it was again at the counter. Today after spending about half an hour in the video store I saw the red seal again and decided to take it. Eerie, well, my restless subconscious is maybe trying to tell me something.

If you knew me you would know ….that I am not gullible, in fact I am probably a very cynical person, about the world, about people and about my own self. So I take these motivational type, key to success and abundance, with a good dollop of salt.

D’you remember the What the Bleep do we know? You can say that The Secret is Part Deux of What the Bleep. Nothing new really, same premise, that we create our own reality.

It is difficult to live consciously. When you have to think about all your intentions instead of just reacting to your circumstances, that is difficult. I did not forget about What the Bleep, it is always at the back of ones mind but I have not tested it. I do think that we are responsible for our circumstances but I also believe that we also get dealt a hand, flip of a coin. It says that there is no such thing as luck, bad or good, we cause it. This makes me uncomfortable because there is just way too much pain in the world and I can not believe that those who are feeling it brought it on themselves.

What I was waiting for, what the secret could not tell me, was how do you change the next person’s life? How do you intend to make the next person richer and happier and fulfilled? If that secret exists, I would love to get it. And don’t tell me it all starts with me!

Oh, and the secret is ATTRACTION. Watch the first five minutes of the movie and you get the answer. Simple? Try it.

Dreamgirls

Jennifer Jennifer, Jennifer Hudson, the Oscar was so yours.

I obviously don’t know what the judges look for when they choose one person over another. For me, for what Jennifer made me feel watching her, the way she pulled me in, for her passion and her beauty, her fucking incredible voice, for all this and more she got the Oscar!!!

Usually we are pulled in by the story, but this story has been told so many times before, we are pulled in by CG screens, funny and intelligent scripts, this one was simple enough, we tend to be pulled in by beautiful people and incredible stunts.

Dreamgilrs had very little of the above, its saving grace Jennifer Hudson carried this movie on her back. I have never heard of this woman before today. What an utterly stunning performance. I cried.

Let’s go back to who she was up against,
Adriana Barraza in “Babel”
Cate Blanchett in “Notes on a Scandal”
Abigail Breslin in “Little Miss Sunshine”
Jennifer Hudson in “Dreamgirls”
Rinko Kikuchi in “Babel”

Although the above were interesting performances, none of them won me over, I could not sympathize with Cate Blanchet, it was a difficult part, being a pedophile and all, the Babel characters were just weird; and as gorgeous and cute as that girl is in little miss sunshine, all they had to do was fatten her up and put nerdy glasses on her., my nine year old niece could have done just as good a job!

The thing about Jennifer, is that although you have the orchestra or the band supporting her incredible voice, the drums and the base guitar and the piano, and the camera work, she rose above all of these and sang her heart out and made us believe. Beyonce can sing but you can not get over the fact that she is as interesting as cardboard really. Jennifer, oh Jennifer.

Okay, I have thought about it a little bit more, about why I like her so much when she sang, her performance felt familiar to me! And one day, others will recognize!

Driving Lessons is hilarious - go see it

It's not often that I enjoy a movie as much as I did Driving Lessons. There's really two things that I look for - which I'm sure is what most people look for - it's gotta be a special movie and it's gotta be a great story. Various things add to this. But first, lets tell you what the story is about.

Ster Kinekor says: Described as a mix between The Graduate and Harold & Maude this is a coming-of-age story about a teenager whose staid world is upended when he is employed by a retired actress.

Ben (Harry Potter's Rupert Grint) lives in London with his stern and religious mother (Laura Linney) who allows him to do little more in his school holidays than attend Bible classes, learn to drive, and do his bit at an old-age home. But, when this son of a vicar finds a job (through the pages of parish magazine, 'Hello Jesus') with eccentric retired actress Evie (Julie Walters), his life takes a completely different turn.

Evie's unconventional and sometimes bizarre behavior challenges Ben's beliefs, and forces him to confront the very idea of who he wants to be. But, when it appears that his freedom is about to be whisked from under him as rapidly as it came, Ben has to choose whether to conform or live life as the individual that he has become.

Okay going back to what I was saying about it being a special movie and a great story. By this I mean that I'd much prefer to watch a movie who's story line I haven't seen before as opposed to something like the award winning the Departed which I swear has been written a million times before.
The stuff you'll find at Cinema Nouveau are usually winners. I love eccentric characters and Evie in this movie...I just loved her. She shapes the movie. Absolutely brilliant. I think I might just end up like her at that age. And then there's Ben, the supposedly unattractive (I thought he was so freakin' hart), virgin weirdo with an equally strange mother and father - is lovely to watch as he breaks out of his cocoon to become somewhat of a butterfly.

FOUR SPOONS

The love that dare not speak its name...

I believe I am a simple creature with simple pleasures and simple pains. But ever since I could read or watch television my preference has tended to be for the out of the ordinary, the unusual and the surprising. This is true for anybody, we don’t want to be reading or watching the same stories over and over again do we?

Growing up I remember those teeny bopper romantic flicks that caused the way I see relationships now. You remember Pretty in Pink, the ugly duckling story, for example. Now that was one of my favourites. Another book/movie that made a lasting impression on my young romantic mind was Wuthering Heights. It broke my heart it was beautiful.

The conclusion that my young self came to watching all these movies was that love was not easy and more often than not people who are meant to be together find it difficult to get together but eventually end up together, whether in death or in a relationship. But this is after conquering great difficulties, my favourite difficulty to conquer is the inner battle where you don’t want to admit to yourself that he/she is the one.

The greatest battle is the fight for the love that dare not speak its name. I don’t remember the first gay movie I watched or the first gay story I read. I remember I was always into Stephen Fry and loved the stories about the English public boys only schools. I remember Threesome and watched it over and over again all the way through varsity. I remember Maurice and Tales of the City, My own Private Idaho and Midnight Cowboys. Then came a different kind of gay movie for me which made me laugh and love and enjoy the art that is to be a drag queen. Pricilla Queen of the Desert comes to mind. Even Russell Crowe did it for me in the Sum of Us!

I loved these books and these movies because nothing beats ‘forbidden’ love and I search for this kind of intensity in my own life where I get into impossible situations where my attraction to someone is so intense but forbidden, I still have not found my happy ending.

There are however those gay movies that are just bad! There is nothing worse than a bad gay movie and even though we are bombarded by bad teeny bopper movies all the time starring buffy the vampire slayer they are still avoidable because you know not to go there.

Push Play (virtual video shop that has an amazing selection of DVD’s) has opened a whole new world to me. They have a great selection of movies and I am going through their gay movies. I am finding out that they are not always so great and it pains me to say that. What makes them so bad is that I feel that they are made for those dirty old gay men who have fantasies about under age kids and it is just so borderline. It’s like watching that horrible movie Kids. There might be a reason why Kids was made but I bet you the pedophiles out there love it to bits and they are the only ones renting it out.

But there’s also a different kind of bad gay movie where they stereo type gay men. Movies that think that gay men are only out there to turn straight men. Drag queens who are just a cliché and have no creative insults. These I also try to avoid but not having not seen the trailers it is difficult to judge what’s going to be bad. I am going through the list on push play and some of the movies are gems, like The Trip. Some just leave you feeling very dirty.

I have to say something about Brokeback Mountain. When I first watched this movie I cried for a week, and then I went back and watched it again and cried for another week, and then I found the short story it is based on and read it and cried for another week. This was the ultimate romantic tragedy for me and I hope more directors like Ang Lee make the choice to tell these stories. The love that dare not speak its name whose story needs to be told, in all its variations.

Is there hope for all us in the world? One of few things I remember from my education, a philosopher philosophied that in the beginning, we were all physically attached to our partners in life, something happened and we were separated. We now go through life trying to find the person we are meant to be attached to.

"The Origin of Love"
by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask

When the earth was still flat,,
And clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky,
Sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms.
They had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love.
It was before the origin of love.

The origin of love.

And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back,
Called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.
And the children of the moon
Were like a fork shoved on a spoon.
They were part sun, part earth,
Part daughter, part son.

The origin of love.

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants."
But Zeus said, "No,
You better let me
Use my lightning, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales,
Dinosaurs into lizards."
And then he grabbed up some bolts
He let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle,
Gonna cut them right up in half."
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping around on one foot
And looking through one eye.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
'Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
That cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Tried to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was a sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.

So I watched Rra bubi

So is it Rra bubi, or Rabubi?
Spiderman number three. Hmmmmmm. Look, I think I generally enjoy these super hero movies. Kinda gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling - that good will always triumph over evil.
That 'there's no need to worry' kind of feeling - everything will be alright.

Well Spiderman wasn't all that. Whoever did the trailer is a genius because that's about the only thing that got me wanting to see the movie on the big screen. Well that and my love for Rabubi.
The comic strip was so good, that no matter how bad the movie is - I still appreciate it because I appreciated the comic strip. I could say the same about batman, spiderman, X-Men, Hulk and so on. (the X-Men movies were phenomenal though - didn't mean to bunch it up with the rest of the no so greats).

It's as if they just came up with a couple of different ideas - completely different from one another and tried to bridge those idea together. They tried to do too much in one movie. They should have stuck with one idea. I'd wait for it on Mnet if I were you.

Lucky number sleven

Josh Hartnet (who I'd only ever seen in teen flicks - is absolutely brilliant), Bruce Willis (who is made for these kinds of movies), Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman (less challenging roles), Stanley Tucci (who I adored in Shall We Dance) and Lucy Lui (who reminds me of how much I miss Ally McBeal) are the stars of the show.

The set, consisting largely of dizzying wallpaper, is New york and the story centres around Slevin, a girl, a cop, two mob bosses called THE BOSS and THE RABBI and a mysterious assassin. There is but one twist on this movie, and you won't catch on till...well I didn't catch on till about ten minutes before the end of the movie and I'm usually good with these kinds of twisted movies.

Brokensword, if you haven't seen this one - I'm sure you'll like it a lot. It's 'thrilling'.

Clerks 2

I am a fan of Kevin Smith. I fell in love with Jay and Silent Bob in Chasing Amy (one of my all time favourite movies) when Silent Bob tells the story of chasing Amy. I had seen clerks and enjoyed it. Then came Dogma and I was blown away. Jay and Silent Bob Strike back was hilarious! Jersey Girl was just too main stream for me.

And now there is Clerks 2 and I am thinking, hhmm, is this the end? Too crude, although I loved Wanda Sikes’ cameo. Nothing new. There is a scene in the movie where the two friends are in a jail cell and they confess their undying love for each other. This was done in Chasing Amy when Banky and Holden contemplate a three way with Holden’s girlfriend. It was unique, and it was heartfelt and not it gets repeated on Clerks 2.

I don’t want to say that Kevin has lost his touch but he lost me a little bit by making this not-worthwhile sequel. Dick and fart and masturbation jokes can only take you so far until it starts getting tired.

Television is the pits...

Haai no maan.
I'm going to go back to hi-fi corporation and demand my money back. Yes hi-fi corporation and not the sabc or etv...I don't want my television anymore.
You know I spoke about IPTV the other day...and some months ago about 18 different companies wanting to enter the paytv market (think dstv). SABC being one of the players.
I'm thinking if the SABC can't make three channels (four if you count SABC Africa) - would I want to have their paytv version?
e-tv's also vying for a paytv licence...they can't even get their soapies right. Who would want to buy a paytv version of their offering.
Haai no maan. You know I don't even turn the television on anymore.
If those sabc fuckers dare call me again wanting me to pay a tv licence, I'm gonna tell them I don't watch television. I don't need a licence anymore. Sheesh...the cheak. You know last year they kept hounding me about a licence for a good three months. I paid their silly bums and they kept calling...now I'm going to tell them straight up - I don't watch TV anymore.
Truelly I don't.
I have it so I can watch DVDs - I wonder what they'll say to that.
Thank God for the Internet, otherwise I really don't know what I'd do with myself.