"A Giant Leap for Womankind"

BRIDESMAIDS

Year: 2011
Country: United States
Language: English
Number: 1100
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy
Oscar nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Melissa McCarthy), Best Original Screenplay

Bridesmaids is been called the female Hangover, where we see that women can do the same things as man; Fart, burp, crap and puke. it's the story about a bunch of different women on a crazy bachelor party. Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Lillian (Maya Rudolph) has been best friends since they were kids and Lillian is getting married and Annie is going to be her maid of honor. But they haven't seen each other in a long time, and Maya has got a new friend, Helen (Rose Byrne) who is super rich and consider herself as Maya's BFF. And so starts a fight between Annie and Helen over who's going to be Maya's best friend. The long time best friend versus the new rich one.

Bridesmaids is a some what funny comedy, with a lot of funny characters, such as the Melissa McCarthy character, Megan, who is basically a guy in a woman's body. But it's all basically just Hangover for girl, with the same formula that have been used in comedies the last three decades. And I specially thinks that Kristen Wiig's performance might be over the top, that she was rather stupid than funny. But still there are some laugh out loud moments and for that I give this film a thumbs up.

Grade: C+

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"NEW 2012 EDITION!"

Good news everyone, the newest edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, was finally released on the October 1st. This book includes 14 new titles from last year. And the following films are:

1) Senna
2) Le Havre
3) Shame
4) The Tree of Life
5) The Kid with a Bike
6) The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo
7) Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy
8) Drive
9) War Horse
10) A Separation
11) Bridesmaids
12) The Descendants
13) Hugo
14) The Artist

Out of all 14 films, 8 of them are american, 2 British, 2 French, 1 Belgian and 1 Iranian.

There's 5 movies that were nominated for Best Picture: The Tree of Life, War Horse, The Descendants, Hugo, The Artist.

10 of these films where nominated for ad least one Academy Award. 5 of these actually won.

BIGGEST SURPRISES

Why is the extremely cliche War Horse on this list?

Where is Lars von Trier's Melancholia? Did his nazi statement offended the editor of this book too?

Why isn't The Help, 50/50 or Midnight in Paris on this list? Why did the editor choose War Horse over these?

Any way these are just my opinions.

Please leave a comment and tell me your thoughts about this list.

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"Israel in a Nutshell"

LIVE AND BECOME

Original title: Va, vis et deviens
Country: France/Israel/Belgium/Italy
Language: Hebrew, French, Amharic
Number: 1032
Director: Radu Mihaileanu
Starring: Sirak M. Sabahat, Yael Abecassis, Roschdy Zem, Roni Hadar

What most people doesn't know, is that there lived over 100.000 jews in Ethiopia. They didn't know that there was any other jews becides them. But they weren't very well accepted by the christians and the muslims. But in 1984, the Israeli government developed a plan called "Operation Moses" which was to bring all the Ethiopian jews to Israel, but the same year a big drought occurs in southern part of Sudan, where christians, muslims and jews is placed in red cross camps.

It's here the story starts. A young christian Ethiopian boy named Shlomo and his mother is placed in the camp, but also there is the jews, who's there is arranged transport for. But one jewish woman just lost her child, and she agrees to adopt him and take her with him to Israel. He arrives Israel and is accepted as a jew. But his adoptive mother dies and he's placed in an orphanage, and then placed with a French Jewish family. But the society is exclusionary towards the new Ethiopian immigrants for many reasons like diseases and the questions of their jewishness. And Shlomo has a very hard time fitting into this society, but he constantly longing for his mother who's still back in Ethiopia.



Live and Become is simply a great epic drama, that spans over twenty years, and give us a great insight into the changes in the Israeli society the past three decades. How the different conflicts escalates, how the Israeli society acts towards the Ethiopians and how they are excluded from the society and how their not gonna take it. Besides the political aspects, it's a film with a lot of emphatic and afflictions, with all human emotions all the stages of longing. And we really feel bad for the young boy, and we understand his resistant toward being conformed into another society. And how he even ask the question, if Israel really is the land of milk and honey.

There's every types of characters from all the different levels of the society, both rich and poor, black and white, socialist and far-right, religious and irreligious. In other words there's discriminations between many types of jews, just like in all the other countries, even if they have the same religious beliefs. We watch Shlomo grow into this society and we also see all the political events effects him and his family. There's also some conflicts within this family as well. My conclusion of Live and Become is that it's an intense movie, with a wide range of characters, a great insight into the Israeli society through three decades, and most important, a protagonist who can guide us through it. Thumbs up.

Grade: A+

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"One Small Steep for Mankind, One Giant Leap for Motion Pictures"

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Year: 1968
Country: United States/United Kingdom
Language: English
Number: 488
Script: Stanley Kubrick, Athur C. Clarke
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Rain
Oscar wins: Best Visual Effects
Oscar nominations: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction

Stanley Kubrick's science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably the most influential film of all time, it's Jesus' Christ of cinema, and was a landmark for the science fiction genre, which was until then just adventure stories about flying saucers scary aliens and cardboard box robots. But what we see in 2001: A Space Odyssey is a realistic view of what people back then thought the future, an outer space that we could picture us as real, and it influenced a lot of film, like Star Wars and Aliens for example. Or put it this way. 2001 was the first real science fiction film and an introduction to how scary the future can be and how robots are taking over the simplest tasks, that's why it's clean everywhere because there's nothing else but machines. Star Wars gave us a future that had existed for thousands of years, where everything is dirty and rusty. Alien gave us the fear of all the horrible unknown creature that is waiting for us.

The film actually starts in the past, millions of years before, where our ancestors, the apes, is trying to make their living in a desert landscape, where other species, like the jaguars is the most dominant. But suddenly a supernatural black monolith appears from nowhere. This monolith gives the apes the intelligence, like when one of the apes realize that he can use a skeleton bone to kill other animal. We then jumps millions of years forward to the year of 1999 where scientist have discovered the same kind of monolith on the moon. Two years later, they discovered the same signals around the planet Jupiter, and a space ship is send there to find out more. The ship is not run by humans, but by a giant computer named HAL 9000, which might not be as perfect as one might have thought.

2001: A Space Odyssey is simply a perfect film in every way. The special effects which seems more realistic than today's CGI animation, although some of the lightning and lack of shadows on the model ships are sometimes poorly done, I'm afraid, which makes it a little unrealistic, but that is just a little detail. But the space ships themselves and all it's movements is actually stunning, specially how the space station rotates, and the way that they made the pods move. I loved all the details, all the people in the windows on all the space stations, makes it even more beautiful and realistic.

Besides the special effects, there's the plot which involves of course human against the machine, where the machine is taking control over everything we do, and have basically replaced us, and starts to think on his own, and even kills if necessary. It's a clear future warning that one should never let any machine have any kind of powers, and responsibilities, which makes HAL 9000 one of the meanest baddasses in the history of cinema.

My conclusion is that it's a great masterpiece which still stands the test of time, although it's now over ten years since the years in which the space odyssey should have occurred. There's things that looks like iPads, and it's ten years ahead of it's time. But it's kind of mind-blowing that only one year after the film the first human set his foot on the moon. And it might have not seen so unrealistic back then that the year 2001 would look exactly like in this movie. Although with all it's tiny errors, 2001: A Space Odyssey stands out from any other science fiction movies because it's realistic, it's repentant and it's a mysterious journey into space that does not require any scientific explanations, you have to find out what's going on yourself. Thumbs up.

Grade: A-

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"A Beautiful Mess"

THREE LIVES AND ONLY ONE DEATH

Original title: Trois vies & une seule mort
Year: 1996
Country: France/Portugal
Language: French
Number: 906
Director: Raoul Ruiz
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Galiena, Melvin Poupaud, Chiara Mastroianni

Raoul Ruiz' Three Lives and Only One Death is a what the title suggest. In this case it's the schizophrenic man, played by Marcello Mastroianni. He's playing three different people, from a butler to a politician. We don't know whom of them he really is. He's a dangerous man, who makes it worse for the people around him. But one thing is for sure, is that it's all are about to collapse, because of all his personalities.

This might sound like a great premise for a story, and it is. I liked how it all in the begining feels like three different short films with Mastroianni playing different roles, but it rounds up with some of the stories merged with each other and we understand it's one person. I liked the story concept, some of them I liked more than the other, some of them I can't stand, specially when all kinds of genre is blended, but one can argue that because it's many different stories of different genres that it's gonna be a mess in the end anyway. But for my taste, it kind of destroys itself when they decides to have a fantasy story in the beginning.

When it comes to the characters, they are basically just marionettes for Mastroianni's crazy actions, and seems to be helpless from all of his pranks and charades. It's basically him who controls the story. The other characters hasn't any control of their own actions, which I'm not sure if I like or not. But I certainly loved Marcello Mastroianni's performance which was one of his last before he died the same year. And he tops it all with a quarter dozen splendid roles. And it's thanks to him that I give this movie a marginal thumbs up.

grade: C+

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"I Really Have to Read More Books"

TIME REGAINED

Original title: Le temps retrouvé
Year: 1999
Country: France/Italy/Portugal
Language: French, English
Number: 954
Director: Raúl Ruiz
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, Vincent Perez, John Malkovich

Raoul Ruiz' Time Regained is based on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, a book that I should probably have read first, because this movie is to difficult to understand because it certainly doesn't follow a normal story structure. For me it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box, or looking for a treasure with out a map, which was of course the book. This is just the kind of film you have the feeling that you should read the book before the film, and from now on I shall follow that feeling.

Trying to judge it as a movie, it goes like this: It's confusing, it's impossible to keep track of who the character is, because there are too many of them. There's to many different plot lines. But what I did like was the whole setting of the film, the aristocratic one who barely notice the war. And also some of the characters are interesting, like John Malkovich as the Baron de Charlus who loves being whipped by other men on his time off. An the also features two beauties, Catherine Deneuve and Emmanuelle Béart, which is of course a plus. I did in fact like the acting pretty much, the characters have such a depth, that it actually makes me want to read the book. It's so close, but I have to give it a thumbs down because of the plot itself.

Grade: C-

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"Bitter Sweet Romance with Panorama View"

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO

Year: 1965
Country: United States/Italy
Language: English
Number: 433
Director: David Lean
Starring: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger

David Lean's three hour long epic, Doctor Zhivago, is based upon the Nobel Prize winning novel by Boris Pasternak, which is set during the Russian Revolution where we follows Pasternak's alter ego, Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago (Omar Sharif), a poet and a doctor whom is thorn between two women, his wife and stepsister, Tonya (Gerandine Chaplin) and the young and beautiful, Lara Antipova (Julie Christie) who Yuri meets several times during the revolution, from the crowded Moscow to the ice cold Ural mountains, but no matter what, the revolution will always find them.

Doctor Zhivago is without a doubt a very beautiful film, with all it's sets, costumes and landscapes, and the thought of how big the russian empire is, makes it even more breathtaking. Well that was my immediate reaction after I saw it the first time. But after years of watching other russian films by Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, Doctor Zhivago seems now like romance pocket books, with to many love cliches, and Omar Sharif's over the top theatrical facial expression, who was terribly miscast in the lead. The Magic is gone. And I can't lie when I say that the first hour of the film was so boring, and to long for character buildings, which could have been shorter, and I don't care if it's all in the book. 

But what I liked about this movie, is still the things which I was impressed by the first time. The beautiful cinematography, the landscapes, costumes, the art direction and Julie Christie. So my conclusion is that this movie is simply eye candy, with the right romantic tone and conflicts. So if I had to chose some one to recommend it to, it would have been the ones who haven't seen any russian movies, and since Zhivago follows pretty much a safe recipe, it's a good start for more breathtaking adventures about the mysterious and the majestic country called Russia.

Grade: B-

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