Fame!

I've just come back from seeing "Fame" at the cinema, and one thing I noticed at least 3 times on different items of clothing worn by the characters was the product placement of "Lacoste"! This isn't usually something I pick up on very often when at the movies so either they did a pretty good job for Lacoste, or all things advertising / marketing are on my mind at the moment due to this blog and the deadline looming!

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Directed by Peter Webber, starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth, Girl with a Pearl Earring is quite a quiet but striking film based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier. By quiet I mean that it is not a movie bursting with conversation, but more focuses on the subtlety of body language and interaction. Whilst I was watching the film I felt that what I could understand from the characters' expressions and the eye contact made between the actors said much more than the words spoken.

The movie tells the story of the artist Vermeer (Firth), and the maid to his household, Griet (Johansson), and the interest he shows in her as well as her deep interest and understanding of his work. Although quiet, the film holds much tension, as we can tell that there is a connection between Griet and Vermeer, but of course nothing ever happens between them. Griet helps Vermeer mix his paints, and as the film goes on he makes more and more excuses for her to spend most of her time working in his studio. Pieter Van Ruijven takes an interest in Griet, and commissions Vermeer to paint a portrait of her for him. This is when the film holds the greatest tension as Vermeer's wife becomes very jealous, and Vermeer and Griet become more intimate as he paints her. As the film's tagline describes, "She gave him a look that would last forever.."

The film was nominated for 3 Oscars and won numerous awards. The story is a lovely take on how such a striking and beautiful painting came about, and the film, like the painting, is a masterpiece.

Fermat's Room (La habitación de Fermat)

La habitación de Fermat is a Spanish thriller in which 4 mathematicians are invited by who they know to be one of the greatest mathematicians (a man under by pseudonym of Fermat) to solve an enigma in a secret location. In order to choose these guests, Fermat sent out a puzzle to a large number of mathematicians that he knew of, and only those who managed to solve this puzzle were invited to meet him, and solve another - or so the guests thought! When they arrive at the secret location they discover that they have in fact been tricked and the room they are in gradually begins to close in on themselves if they do not manage to solve each puzzle they are presented with in the given time.

The film keeps you on your toes, and it is quite enjoyable too, to try and work out the puzzles yourself before the characters do! The only problem is that as the film is in Spanish, one has to make sure to read the subtitles in order to know what is going on, but as it is a thriller we want to keep focused on the screen as well, so in parts of the film, as it becomes more tense, it is hard to choose between the two!

The film is directed by Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopeña, and has won numerous festival awards. It's a great thriller with a twist and good too if you enjoy maths or logic problems!

Inglourious Basterds

I went to see this film spontaneously last Thursday evening, not knowing a thing about it but rather just tagging along on a cinema trip with my flatmates. I don't often go to films that I haven't read up about first, and it was actually quite a nice experience not to have any expectations of enjoyment or knowledge of the storyline.

Inglourious Basterds is the latest work of Quentin Tarantino, and tells the story of Lieutenant Aldo Raine and his mini army of Jewish soldiers, the Basterds, in Nazi Germany, 1944. According to Empire, Tarantino has been talking about his WW2 action movie for nearly a decade; it has finally hit our screens with Brad Pitt taking the role of Aldo Raine, and the film providing for us a violent fairytale in which the ending of WW2 is completely reimagined by Tarantino so that cinema itself plays the principal role in bringing down the Nazis.

In true QT style the film is very dramatic in all aspects: use of close-up 'peering-through-one's-fingers' violence, striking music, the way it is shot and especially here the ostentatious use of language, carried off in a markedly expert manner by the character Col. Hans Landa aka "The Jew Hunter" (Christoph Waltz), who speaks a total of 4 different languages with comfortable ease throughout the picture.

My favourite scene takes place in a restaurant, where Landa comes into contact with Shosanna - a girl from the Jewish family he suspects of hiding in a French house under the floorboards at the start of the film, 3 years ago. He succeeded in killing the rest of her family, but she managed to escape and fled to Paris where she now owns the cinema that is to go on and destroy the Third Reich. In the restaurant we are not sure whether Landa recognises Shosanna, which causes a huge amount of tension that continues to build up throughout the scene with help from the fast, sharp, close up shots and flashbacks that are used. At the end of the scene, Landa looks at Shosanna and says to her, leaning close with a very uneasy sense of knowing, 'You know, there is one more thing I meant to ask you... but I just can't remember what it was.' And with that the camera zooms straight in to where he stubs his cigarette out on his apple strudel (which is a Jewish dessert), and which for me strongly symbolises Landa's horrific killing of Shosanna's family in the first scene.

I won't ruin the rest of the story for those that haven't yet seen the film (!) but I can certainly say that it is worth its full 3 hours of your time. It is a long film, but with so much to keep the audience entertained you will not be fidgeting in your seats checking to see how much time there is left! Inglourious Basterds is currently showing at cinemas now and you can view the trailer here.