Happy New Year!
First of all... a belated
Happy Birthday
Hope you had a great one!
I think I've got to the point where writing up LiveJournal entries has become chore-like. I feel like I have an obligation to myself to keep them, if only to be able to look back over my life (in a way) in years' time, and to get down at least my immediate reaction to the movies I watch and books I read, since I don't want to forget what I think about movies (like I have about many I've seen before.) But, I've been meaning to type out an entry since before Christmas Day, and I keep putting it off. I think part of the reason is the size of the entries. Obviously, typing out a 1000+ word entry is going to take me a heck of a lot longer than if I just updated every day with smaller entries. So I think this might be the last of my massive livejournal entries. Whether I stick to this or not is another matter. But I don't want something I like as much as LiveJournal to be something I put on par with essays as something I *have* to do, rather than something I want to do. I enjoy writing them, but it take me ages to get started on them. I think this year I'll update more regularly with much smaller posts. That's the plan anyway. We'll see how it goes.
I had a really great Christmas this year. One of the best I can remember having. Partly because Christmas/New Year is always a time when I look back over the year and compare my life now to how it was in previous Christmasses, and thanks to all the friends I've made, my life is so much better than it has been for years. The other reason is that I got cool presents, and spent the entire day with the family without there being any arguments. :) My two youngest brothers got Air Hockey for Christmas. It doesn't do a lot for the living room, since it's big, and in the middle of the room, and makes the place look cluttered. But it's air hockey!! In our living room! :D I, by the way, totally suck at it. I am yet to win a single game against any of my brothers. Plus they got a bunch of board games like Battleships, Ker-Plunk and Connect 4 that I've not played in years and years, but still love playing. (I know, I'm a total kid. *g*)
I hadn't been expecting any Christmas presents at all this year. I ended up with computer games, and books, and loads of clothes (some of them smart! *g*) and a bunch of other stuff too. I'm really overwhelmed by the kindness of some people. :) Oooh, and we had Christmas dinner for the first time in a good few years. It was just a really great day all round, and I realise now that spending the day playing board games and computer games with my brothers is the way I should spend every Christmas.
Oh, and at 1am on Christmas morning (yes, of course I was awake *g*) a guy knocked on the door and asked if we had any petrol since his car had run out while he was in our street. Of course, we don't carry spare cans of petrol around the house, but we said he could take some from our car and put into a can to put into his car. None of us had the right equipment for doing this though, so in order to take petrol from our car this guy put an old shower pipe thing (that we had lying around since we got new shower parts a month or so ago and it takes that long for us to clear stuff up *g*) into the car and sucked on the tube to get the petrol to come out. So he had petrol fumes going into his mouth and he was coughing like there was no tomorrow. Poor guy. :( (Though he did get the petrol he needed and managed to drive away, so I'm glad we could at least help somewhat.) I'm just mentioning this because it's one of the most weird things I can ever remember. It seems normal, I guess... but there was just something so weird about it, and on Christmas morning of all times! Ok, I'll stop babbling. :)
So, anyway. I had a really great Christmas. :)
I've been totally unable in this entry to put my finger on exactly why it was great. It was one of those days that just felt right, where everything went right and nothing went wrong, I guess. See, I'm still babbling now... does anyone else get this thing where if you're writing about a certain subject, you can't quite find the right words to express what you're thinking, so you just keep babbling and babbling, not necessarily deliberately, because you haven't been able to express yourself properly? I get this all the time, and it's one of the biggest reasons why I go on and on so much.
On Christmas Eve I watched The Remains Of The Day. This is the first time I have ever watched a movie based on a book I've read (and similarly, I've not read a book based on a movie) so this is the very first time I'm able to get a feeling for the differences between the two mediums. It's fitting, I think, that my first movie-based-on-a-book-that-I've-read experience should be one based on my absolute favourite book of all time.
The Remains Of The Day was the book that was instrumental in me doing well in my last year of school. Throughout my A-Level English Literature course I absolutely loved the lessons, but didn't read a single one of the books, nor write a single essay. So discussions in the classes would almost always be about things other than the specifics of the books. We'd talk about general themes and things, but when it came to any textual analysis at all, there was nothing at all for me to say. For each of the books I had read a chapter or so of, but my attitude towards reading was so overwhelmingly negative that I never gave any of them a chance. I dismissed poetry outright as being boring and pointless, I put Jane Eyre immediately into the category of 'boring old classic books that I have no intention of ever reading' and I had a pretty negative view of Shakespeare as well. The very last book we were given to read was The Remains Of The Day. I always got myself into the state of mind of "Oh, I suppose I should do my homework this time", though it infrequently turned out like that, but that was enough to get me to read a few pages of the book. Not enough to get into the story or anything, but, a start at least. Then a week or so later I went to a party, and took the book with me (was the only book I had lying around) in case I left the party early, and couldn't get to sleep. (I was going to be staying at my old house - which still had beds and things, but everyone had moved out of there, so it was without a TV or computer or anything like that at all.) The party was as boring as anything I'd experienced in a long time, so I did end up going back to the house long before I was tired. With nothing better to do, I thought I may as well do a little bit of reading...
I couldn't put the book down. I got totally engrossed in the story, cared deeply about the characters, went through loads of different emotions as I read it, and basically fell in love with the book. I wrote, and enjoyed writing, essay plans about it and actually discussed the book in detail in classes. It also made me realise again how wonderful reading can be. So me and one of my friends (who had always been into reading and doing his essays and stuff) spent pretty much all our free time in school (for a few weeks) writing loads and loads of essay plans, and I found it staggering at the time how much I actually enjoyed writing them. My teacher actually had to point out to me that one of my Paradise Lost essay plans was, essentially, an essay. *g* I'd like to say that I managed to read all 8 of my English Literature books, but I'm far too slow a reader for that. But I *wanted* to read them all, that's the important thing, right? :) And I did read Jane Eyre, and really loved it. Anyway, those essay plans and actually reading the books paid off since I got an A (which surprised everyone, including myself), but really it was The Remains Of The Day that I most loved reading, and that which I most enjoyed writing my essay on in the exam. I'd lost track of that over the last few years until halfway through this year when I got back into reading, and I'm so glad I have.
Wow, tangent or what? :)
Anyway, The Remains Of The Day is a terrific movie as well. Anthony Hopkins does a truly amazing job as Stevens, the English butler whose life has been characterised by putting duty ahead of everything else, a misguided loyalty to his former employer, and a refusal to accept or express his own romantic feelings for Miss Kenton (a superb performance from Emma Thompson.) It's a melancholy story: Stevens' denial of his own feelings result in him not having a happy life with the woman that he loves, but a wasted life of doing a brilliant job as butler for a man that, in the end, didn't deserve the respect or loyalty that he received. It's heartbreaking, but is so filled with humour and charm, and sends such an uplifting message telling you to seize the day, to admit and express your feelings for the person you love, that it's a really powerful and lovely story, despite all the loneliness of the characters.
This is very possibly the best unrequited love story I have ever seen. One of the key scenes was Miss Kenton catching Stevens reading a novel, his refusal to allow her to see what it is, and his almost-squirming in embarrassment (though, still keeping a perfectly straight face of course, because he's Stevens) as he tries to conceal what he's reading, and it turning out to be nothing more than a romantic novel. The whole love story was summed up in that scene. Stevens repression of his own feelings. Ditto that for the scene where she puts some flowers in Stevens room to brighten the room up, and he refuses them because he wants to keep distractions to a minimum. His refusal to allow Miss Kenton to brighten up his life because of his desire to be one hundred per cent committed to doing a perfect job as butler. So sad.
The movie is absolutely full of little touches like that, and add to that an entire background plot about the build-up to the Second World War, and a hundred other things I've not mentioned, and this is one of the best movies of all time.
I think I understand what people meant when they've told me that books are better than movies. Because as great as this movie was, it still wasn't as good as the book. The movie had absolutely perfect performances from everyone, and it didn't have a single flaw. It was a perfect movie. Yet it still didn't quite touch me to the extent that the book did, or run me through so many emotions.
Still, if you've never seen the movie, I can't encourage you enough to check this one out. Truly superb.
I've seen an absolute tonne of movies over Christmas. Going through the double-sized TV guide had me choosing about 5 movies every single day that I wanted to watch. Naturally, I didn't get anywhere close to that, but I did still watch a fair few.
Having loved Once Upon A Time In Mexico, I watched the first two parts of Robert Rodriguez' trilogy, El Mariachi and Desperado. The latter, I loved. It looked great, had lots of good gun fighting, cool weapons, brilliant Mexican music as the score, and moved really quickly. I didn't enjoy the former anywhere near as much. Not only did it lack the score music that Desperado had, but I thought the directing was really bad. There was a whole lot of slow-motion, fast motion, weird edits, etc. that had the effect of taking me out of the movie a little. Sometimes that sort of thing can make a movie work a lot better, and help the pace of it. For this, it just felt over-directed to me, as if he was trying out different techniques for the sake of it, not because they were needed to tell the story. Also, the movie really highlighted just how much Antonio Banderas brings to the lead role, since the guy who played El Mariachi in this one didn't have the same screen presence or charisma. Perhaps that's best, since this showed his origins, before he was heroic in any way, and perhaps with an actor of Banderas' presence it would have been difficult to buy him as an innocent bystander brought into something way over his head. The movie has the novelty value of being made for less than £10,000, and of course Rodriguez deserves loads of credit for that. I just didn't think it was a great movie. Of the three, I definitely think Once Upon A Time In Mexico is the best, since it has all the great things that Desperado has, plus Johnny Depp. But they've all been interesting.
One of the best movies I saw over Christmas was the Pride And Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, aired as a six part mini-series. This was another of those movies that was completely perfect. There wasn't a single element of it that could have been improved on. It had so much warmth, and charm, and humour, and the performances from ever single member of the cast were so good that it felt completely real. I felt connected to the characters, and cared about them, in a way I rarely do with even my favourite movies. Colin Firth was awesome, as he is in everything, but it was Jennifer Ehle that really grabbed me. I hadn't seen her in anything before and a quick look at her page on IMDB shows that she hasn't been in a whole lot of movies, but she was amazing. One of those truly captivating performances where you feel everything that her character feels. She was great, and the whole movie was great.
I've seen Goodfellas finally! I've been told for about four years that I really need to see this movie, both my my real life friends and then by
mrcrain, and it didn't disappoint. One thing that always strikes me about gangster movies is how likeable and sympathetic the characters seem to be, when in reality they should not be. None of these characters are good people, and yet there's a certain glamour and coolness to them that makes us like them. The same is true of the characters, and this movie shows this from the very first part of Ray Liotta's narration, they see the gangster life as being a glamourous and powerful one, and even when they become one, they think there's a lot of honour and respect in it, but in the end there is none of the honour they think there is, it's all about money, and their lives are all meaningless to each other. Plus, they almost always end up dead or in prison. Joe Pesci's Tommy was particularly nasty and horrible (like, *really*), but cracked me up so much that it was almost impossible not to like him ("I'm funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to F'ing amuse you?" - that whole scene was one of the best I've ever seen in a movie.) The whole movie was just fantastic though. The narration, the direction, and three truly outstanding performances from Liotta, De Niro and Pesci make this one of my favourite gangster movies of all time, if not my absolute favourite.
I think that Stanley Kubrick is the most overrated director of all time. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey over Christmas, and while it was interesting, some of the shots were quite breathtaking, and the use of classical music was really good, the storytelling was just about as bad as it gets. It's a pity, because the movie has a message, and things that are probably worth thinking about, but the story was so badly told (the pacing was just terrible, the characters didn't develop and made no impression whatsoever, the plot wasn't engaging) that I really couldn't care. It's a pity, because I really did want to like this. Movies that do something completely different, and challenge you to think instead of just sitting back and relaxing, are something that appeal to me in principle. And stuff like using Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra and how the ideas in Nietzsche's book of the same name ran through the movie, from the very beginning with the apes. But none of that mattered when I got so bored that I was constantly checking the time to see how much longer the film would be on for. Add to this my dislike for all the other movies of his that I've seen. I hated Eyes Wide Shut, thought A Clockwork Orange was pretty weak, especially for the first hour or so, and consider The Shining to be completely boring, unscary and overrated (plus I really didn't think Jack Nicholson was any good in it.) Since then, I have seen Full Metal Jacket, which I did absolutely love. The first half especially, because R. Lee Ermey was just outstanding and really cracked me up. This was a movie that managed to explore the message of dehumanisation in the army, but managed to be thoroughly entertaining as well - it had that balance to it that 2001 didn't. Still, having seen five of his movies, and liked only one of them, I think it's fair to say I'm not a Kubrick fan at all.
Some of the other movies I've seen include Double Indemnity (which absolutely blew me away, and is, I think, my new favourite black and white film - staggeringly good), Bonnie And Clyde (which I loved), Rebel Without A Cause (which I didn't like *at all*, and I really hated James Dean in it - but the movie seems to be praised by most people that watch it - if anyone can tell me what's so good about it, I'd appreciate it), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which was alright - had some good songs in it, but was a bit... strange, for my liking), The Adventures Of Robin Hood (they do these adventure movies a lot better now, but this was still great, and it was interesting to see the origins of this sort of movie, and a good blend of action and humour as far back as 1938) and Boyz N The Hood (really great movie, but as any movie that deals seriously with black-on-black murder in American inner-cities is going to be, was depressing and upsetting as well.)
I didn't got to the cinema nearly enough last month. Just seen a couple of movies there in the last few weeks. The Return Of The King which I liked a lot more than I thought I would, and after an hour and a half finally cared about these characters for the first time in the entire trilogy, and Peter Pan, which I liked well enough, though it was a bit... I guess childish, for my liking. Though I did watch it with Alun, and watching a movie is always fun with him making comments like "do you think we're gonna get to see Tinkerbell's boobs?" all the way through. :) Fine, I'm easily amused. *g*
New Year's Eve was really good. It wasn't a wild, partying New Year's Eve or anything of the sort, but I still really enjoyed myself. We went to a club in Bedwas, which is where I used to live for about 10 years... so it was weird bumping into my uncles, my old neighbours, my dad, etc. There were 8 of us in all, which was fairly impressive considering it was all organised last minute. The most fun conversations me and my friends ever have are ones where we look back over our school days (I say it as if it was more than just a few years ago!) and talk about all the things we did back then. The vast majority of last night's conversation was spent doing that, and I think we were all laughing for pretty much the entire night (even the couple of people who were with us that hadn't gone to our school and didn't know any of us except one were laughing.) Despite being someone who can't help but constantly look back over the past, and I do at times wonder about whether I've been wasting my life, me and my friends all have an almost infinite supply of memories from our school days that will keep us entertained for the rest of our lives. Half the stuff that was brought up I'd almost forgotten, and it's great having my memory refreshed with that sort of thing. Plus when people I don't know well and are meeting for the first time are laughing at stories of me and others during high school, it always makes me feel good. Conversations like that also serve as a pretty good reminder about how much fun I've actually had in my life, which I don't always appreciate.
Either way. I remained totally sober, my brother was getting bored because he couldn't drink (since he was driving), and so he drove me and him home shortly after midnight. But I ended the year happy, and with my friends. A good end to a good year. :)
I hope you all have a really fantastic 2004!
Happy Birthday atter!!
Hope you had a great one!I think I've got to the point where writing up LiveJournal entries has become chore-like. I feel like I have an obligation to myself to keep them, if only to be able to look back over my life (in a way) in years' time, and to get down at least my immediate reaction to the movies I watch and books I read, since I don't want to forget what I think about movies (like I have about many I've seen before.) But, I've been meaning to type out an entry since before Christmas Day, and I keep putting it off. I think part of the reason is the size of the entries. Obviously, typing out a 1000+ word entry is going to take me a heck of a lot longer than if I just updated every day with smaller entries. So I think this might be the last of my massive livejournal entries. Whether I stick to this or not is another matter. But I don't want something I like as much as LiveJournal to be something I put on par with essays as something I *have* to do, rather than something I want to do. I enjoy writing them, but it take me ages to get started on them. I think this year I'll update more regularly with much smaller posts. That's the plan anyway. We'll see how it goes.
I had a really great Christmas this year. One of the best I can remember having. Partly because Christmas/New Year is always a time when I look back over the year and compare my life now to how it was in previous Christmasses, and thanks to all the friends I've made, my life is so much better than it has been for years. The other reason is that I got cool presents, and spent the entire day with the family without there being any arguments. :) My two youngest brothers got Air Hockey for Christmas. It doesn't do a lot for the living room, since it's big, and in the middle of the room, and makes the place look cluttered. But it's air hockey!! In our living room! :D I, by the way, totally suck at it. I am yet to win a single game against any of my brothers. Plus they got a bunch of board games like Battleships, Ker-Plunk and Connect 4 that I've not played in years and years, but still love playing. (I know, I'm a total kid. *g*)
I hadn't been expecting any Christmas presents at all this year. I ended up with computer games, and books, and loads of clothes (some of them smart! *g*) and a bunch of other stuff too. I'm really overwhelmed by the kindness of some people. :) Oooh, and we had Christmas dinner for the first time in a good few years. It was just a really great day all round, and I realise now that spending the day playing board games and computer games with my brothers is the way I should spend every Christmas.
Oh, and at 1am on Christmas morning (yes, of course I was awake *g*) a guy knocked on the door and asked if we had any petrol since his car had run out while he was in our street. Of course, we don't carry spare cans of petrol around the house, but we said he could take some from our car and put into a can to put into his car. None of us had the right equipment for doing this though, so in order to take petrol from our car this guy put an old shower pipe thing (that we had lying around since we got new shower parts a month or so ago and it takes that long for us to clear stuff up *g*) into the car and sucked on the tube to get the petrol to come out. So he had petrol fumes going into his mouth and he was coughing like there was no tomorrow. Poor guy. :( (Though he did get the petrol he needed and managed to drive away, so I'm glad we could at least help somewhat.) I'm just mentioning this because it's one of the most weird things I can ever remember. It seems normal, I guess... but there was just something so weird about it, and on Christmas morning of all times! Ok, I'll stop babbling. :)
So, anyway. I had a really great Christmas. :)
I've been totally unable in this entry to put my finger on exactly why it was great. It was one of those days that just felt right, where everything went right and nothing went wrong, I guess. See, I'm still babbling now... does anyone else get this thing where if you're writing about a certain subject, you can't quite find the right words to express what you're thinking, so you just keep babbling and babbling, not necessarily deliberately, because you haven't been able to express yourself properly? I get this all the time, and it's one of the biggest reasons why I go on and on so much.
On Christmas Eve I watched The Remains Of The Day. This is the first time I have ever watched a movie based on a book I've read (and similarly, I've not read a book based on a movie) so this is the very first time I'm able to get a feeling for the differences between the two mediums. It's fitting, I think, that my first movie-based-on-a-book-that-I've-read experience should be one based on my absolute favourite book of all time.
The Remains Of The Day was the book that was instrumental in me doing well in my last year of school. Throughout my A-Level English Literature course I absolutely loved the lessons, but didn't read a single one of the books, nor write a single essay. So discussions in the classes would almost always be about things other than the specifics of the books. We'd talk about general themes and things, but when it came to any textual analysis at all, there was nothing at all for me to say. For each of the books I had read a chapter or so of, but my attitude towards reading was so overwhelmingly negative that I never gave any of them a chance. I dismissed poetry outright as being boring and pointless, I put Jane Eyre immediately into the category of 'boring old classic books that I have no intention of ever reading' and I had a pretty negative view of Shakespeare as well. The very last book we were given to read was The Remains Of The Day. I always got myself into the state of mind of "Oh, I suppose I should do my homework this time", though it infrequently turned out like that, but that was enough to get me to read a few pages of the book. Not enough to get into the story or anything, but, a start at least. Then a week or so later I went to a party, and took the book with me (was the only book I had lying around) in case I left the party early, and couldn't get to sleep. (I was going to be staying at my old house - which still had beds and things, but everyone had moved out of there, so it was without a TV or computer or anything like that at all.) The party was as boring as anything I'd experienced in a long time, so I did end up going back to the house long before I was tired. With nothing better to do, I thought I may as well do a little bit of reading...
I couldn't put the book down. I got totally engrossed in the story, cared deeply about the characters, went through loads of different emotions as I read it, and basically fell in love with the book. I wrote, and enjoyed writing, essay plans about it and actually discussed the book in detail in classes. It also made me realise again how wonderful reading can be. So me and one of my friends (who had always been into reading and doing his essays and stuff) spent pretty much all our free time in school (for a few weeks) writing loads and loads of essay plans, and I found it staggering at the time how much I actually enjoyed writing them. My teacher actually had to point out to me that one of my Paradise Lost essay plans was, essentially, an essay. *g* I'd like to say that I managed to read all 8 of my English Literature books, but I'm far too slow a reader for that. But I *wanted* to read them all, that's the important thing, right? :) And I did read Jane Eyre, and really loved it. Anyway, those essay plans and actually reading the books paid off since I got an A (which surprised everyone, including myself), but really it was The Remains Of The Day that I most loved reading, and that which I most enjoyed writing my essay on in the exam. I'd lost track of that over the last few years until halfway through this year when I got back into reading, and I'm so glad I have.
Wow, tangent or what? :)
Anyway, The Remains Of The Day is a terrific movie as well. Anthony Hopkins does a truly amazing job as Stevens, the English butler whose life has been characterised by putting duty ahead of everything else, a misguided loyalty to his former employer, and a refusal to accept or express his own romantic feelings for Miss Kenton (a superb performance from Emma Thompson.) It's a melancholy story: Stevens' denial of his own feelings result in him not having a happy life with the woman that he loves, but a wasted life of doing a brilliant job as butler for a man that, in the end, didn't deserve the respect or loyalty that he received. It's heartbreaking, but is so filled with humour and charm, and sends such an uplifting message telling you to seize the day, to admit and express your feelings for the person you love, that it's a really powerful and lovely story, despite all the loneliness of the characters.
This is very possibly the best unrequited love story I have ever seen. One of the key scenes was Miss Kenton catching Stevens reading a novel, his refusal to allow her to see what it is, and his almost-squirming in embarrassment (though, still keeping a perfectly straight face of course, because he's Stevens) as he tries to conceal what he's reading, and it turning out to be nothing more than a romantic novel. The whole love story was summed up in that scene. Stevens repression of his own feelings. Ditto that for the scene where she puts some flowers in Stevens room to brighten the room up, and he refuses them because he wants to keep distractions to a minimum. His refusal to allow Miss Kenton to brighten up his life because of his desire to be one hundred per cent committed to doing a perfect job as butler. So sad.
The movie is absolutely full of little touches like that, and add to that an entire background plot about the build-up to the Second World War, and a hundred other things I've not mentioned, and this is one of the best movies of all time.
I think I understand what people meant when they've told me that books are better than movies. Because as great as this movie was, it still wasn't as good as the book. The movie had absolutely perfect performances from everyone, and it didn't have a single flaw. It was a perfect movie. Yet it still didn't quite touch me to the extent that the book did, or run me through so many emotions.
Still, if you've never seen the movie, I can't encourage you enough to check this one out. Truly superb.
I've seen an absolute tonne of movies over Christmas. Going through the double-sized TV guide had me choosing about 5 movies every single day that I wanted to watch. Naturally, I didn't get anywhere close to that, but I did still watch a fair few.
Having loved Once Upon A Time In Mexico, I watched the first two parts of Robert Rodriguez' trilogy, El Mariachi and Desperado. The latter, I loved. It looked great, had lots of good gun fighting, cool weapons, brilliant Mexican music as the score, and moved really quickly. I didn't enjoy the former anywhere near as much. Not only did it lack the score music that Desperado had, but I thought the directing was really bad. There was a whole lot of slow-motion, fast motion, weird edits, etc. that had the effect of taking me out of the movie a little. Sometimes that sort of thing can make a movie work a lot better, and help the pace of it. For this, it just felt over-directed to me, as if he was trying out different techniques for the sake of it, not because they were needed to tell the story. Also, the movie really highlighted just how much Antonio Banderas brings to the lead role, since the guy who played El Mariachi in this one didn't have the same screen presence or charisma. Perhaps that's best, since this showed his origins, before he was heroic in any way, and perhaps with an actor of Banderas' presence it would have been difficult to buy him as an innocent bystander brought into something way over his head. The movie has the novelty value of being made for less than £10,000, and of course Rodriguez deserves loads of credit for that. I just didn't think it was a great movie. Of the three, I definitely think Once Upon A Time In Mexico is the best, since it has all the great things that Desperado has, plus Johnny Depp. But they've all been interesting.
One of the best movies I saw over Christmas was the Pride And Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, aired as a six part mini-series. This was another of those movies that was completely perfect. There wasn't a single element of it that could have been improved on. It had so much warmth, and charm, and humour, and the performances from ever single member of the cast were so good that it felt completely real. I felt connected to the characters, and cared about them, in a way I rarely do with even my favourite movies. Colin Firth was awesome, as he is in everything, but it was Jennifer Ehle that really grabbed me. I hadn't seen her in anything before and a quick look at her page on IMDB shows that she hasn't been in a whole lot of movies, but she was amazing. One of those truly captivating performances where you feel everything that her character feels. She was great, and the whole movie was great.
I've seen Goodfellas finally! I've been told for about four years that I really need to see this movie, both my my real life friends and then by
mrcrain, and it didn't disappoint. One thing that always strikes me about gangster movies is how likeable and sympathetic the characters seem to be, when in reality they should not be. None of these characters are good people, and yet there's a certain glamour and coolness to them that makes us like them. The same is true of the characters, and this movie shows this from the very first part of Ray Liotta's narration, they see the gangster life as being a glamourous and powerful one, and even when they become one, they think there's a lot of honour and respect in it, but in the end there is none of the honour they think there is, it's all about money, and their lives are all meaningless to each other. Plus, they almost always end up dead or in prison. Joe Pesci's Tommy was particularly nasty and horrible (like, *really*), but cracked me up so much that it was almost impossible not to like him ("I'm funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to F'ing amuse you?" - that whole scene was one of the best I've ever seen in a movie.) The whole movie was just fantastic though. The narration, the direction, and three truly outstanding performances from Liotta, De Niro and Pesci make this one of my favourite gangster movies of all time, if not my absolute favourite.I think that Stanley Kubrick is the most overrated director of all time. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey over Christmas, and while it was interesting, some of the shots were quite breathtaking, and the use of classical music was really good, the storytelling was just about as bad as it gets. It's a pity, because the movie has a message, and things that are probably worth thinking about, but the story was so badly told (the pacing was just terrible, the characters didn't develop and made no impression whatsoever, the plot wasn't engaging) that I really couldn't care. It's a pity, because I really did want to like this. Movies that do something completely different, and challenge you to think instead of just sitting back and relaxing, are something that appeal to me in principle. And stuff like using Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra and how the ideas in Nietzsche's book of the same name ran through the movie, from the very beginning with the apes. But none of that mattered when I got so bored that I was constantly checking the time to see how much longer the film would be on for. Add to this my dislike for all the other movies of his that I've seen. I hated Eyes Wide Shut, thought A Clockwork Orange was pretty weak, especially for the first hour or so, and consider The Shining to be completely boring, unscary and overrated (plus I really didn't think Jack Nicholson was any good in it.) Since then, I have seen Full Metal Jacket, which I did absolutely love. The first half especially, because R. Lee Ermey was just outstanding and really cracked me up. This was a movie that managed to explore the message of dehumanisation in the army, but managed to be thoroughly entertaining as well - it had that balance to it that 2001 didn't. Still, having seen five of his movies, and liked only one of them, I think it's fair to say I'm not a Kubrick fan at all.
Some of the other movies I've seen include Double Indemnity (which absolutely blew me away, and is, I think, my new favourite black and white film - staggeringly good), Bonnie And Clyde (which I loved), Rebel Without A Cause (which I didn't like *at all*, and I really hated James Dean in it - but the movie seems to be praised by most people that watch it - if anyone can tell me what's so good about it, I'd appreciate it), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which was alright - had some good songs in it, but was a bit... strange, for my liking), The Adventures Of Robin Hood (they do these adventure movies a lot better now, but this was still great, and it was interesting to see the origins of this sort of movie, and a good blend of action and humour as far back as 1938) and Boyz N The Hood (really great movie, but as any movie that deals seriously with black-on-black murder in American inner-cities is going to be, was depressing and upsetting as well.)
I didn't got to the cinema nearly enough last month. Just seen a couple of movies there in the last few weeks. The Return Of The King which I liked a lot more than I thought I would, and after an hour and a half finally cared about these characters for the first time in the entire trilogy, and Peter Pan, which I liked well enough, though it was a bit... I guess childish, for my liking. Though I did watch it with Alun, and watching a movie is always fun with him making comments like "do you think we're gonna get to see Tinkerbell's boobs?" all the way through. :) Fine, I'm easily amused. *g*
New Year's Eve was really good. It wasn't a wild, partying New Year's Eve or anything of the sort, but I still really enjoyed myself. We went to a club in Bedwas, which is where I used to live for about 10 years... so it was weird bumping into my uncles, my old neighbours, my dad, etc. There were 8 of us in all, which was fairly impressive considering it was all organised last minute. The most fun conversations me and my friends ever have are ones where we look back over our school days (I say it as if it was more than just a few years ago!) and talk about all the things we did back then. The vast majority of last night's conversation was spent doing that, and I think we were all laughing for pretty much the entire night (even the couple of people who were with us that hadn't gone to our school and didn't know any of us except one were laughing.) Despite being someone who can't help but constantly look back over the past, and I do at times wonder about whether I've been wasting my life, me and my friends all have an almost infinite supply of memories from our school days that will keep us entertained for the rest of our lives. Half the stuff that was brought up I'd almost forgotten, and it's great having my memory refreshed with that sort of thing. Plus when people I don't know well and are meeting for the first time are laughing at stories of me and others during high school, it always makes me feel good. Conversations like that also serve as a pretty good reminder about how much fun I've actually had in my life, which I don't always appreciate.
Either way. I remained totally sober, my brother was getting bored because he couldn't drink (since he was driving), and so he drove me and him home shortly after midnight. But I ended the year happy, and with my friends. A good end to a good year. :)
Happy New Year everyone!!!!
I hope you all have a really fantastic 2004!