It took me a while to get around to watching this series, though I must admit that my TV watching habits have been pretty sparse of late (probably because there are a lot of other things that I would prefer to do than sit down and stare at the idiot box after I get home from work). Okay, I am watching TV as I write this, but it happens to be a football match and my team is getting absolutely smashed so I doubt I will be watching for much longer (though for some reason, whenever we are watching a sporting match a part of us seems to have this belief, however misguided, that our team will do something extraordinary and pull the mother of all comebacks).
Category: Film
Lost In Translation – Living in an Alien World
Director: Sophie Coppola
Starring: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson
Release: 29 August 2003
IMDB Rating: 7.7
Rotten Tomatoes User Rating: 85%
What is Truth? – 10 Cloverfield Lane
If you are reading this post and have not seen the movie then I recommend that you stop reading now and go and see it. There are two reasons – first of all, you probably won’t understand what I am writing about if you haven’t seen the movies, and that this post will contain an awful lot of spoilers. As with my other posts on movies, this is not a review, namely because I prefer to go much deeper into movies than simply looking at them in a superficial way as you would in a review. Anyway, I’ve already written a review of the film on IMBD (and there are plenty of reviews of the film there anyway).
As You Like It – Life in the Forest
I’ve probably mentioned this before but a friend of mine has suggested that the problem with Australian theatre is that it is basically rubbish. Okay, if that is the case then that is a really big problem, but a part of me feels as if I am becoming somewhat influenced by him. My problem is that Australian theatre tries to be so different that it ends up failing as good theatre. Sure, there are probably some good theatre companies, as there are probably some good playwrights, but the more that I am exposed to international theatre through National Theatre Live, the more that I begin to understand what he means by good theatre. In fact, it is probably a good thing that they ended up showing a version of As You Like It because I had recently seen another performance of it (which I have already written a blog post on) and it has given me the opportunity to be able to compare both of them. I have to admit that the version that I saw performed live in Melbourne was actually a little dry, whereas this version seemed to be much more dynamic.
JoJo Rabbit – Undoing the Propoganda
Imagine being a little boy who has grown up knowing only one world, and one thing, and then suddenly discovering that this whole world is actually a lie. In fact, imagine being a little boy of about the age of 10 who has grown up being told that a certain people are horrid demonic monsters, only to discover that, once again, this is all a lie. Well, not even that, but actually meeting somebody who completely dispels this whole concept that has been fed to you all of your life.
The Big Short – Capitalism in Crisis
Once again I watched a movie that when I started writing a review on IMDB I realised that there was a lot more that I could say about the film than I could easily fit in one of its posts (and even then those post are more for reviews of the film than actually deeply exploring the ideas that come out of the film, not that I actually don’t do that since it is better for me to jump over to my blog to explore the themes). Anyway, The Big Short is based upon a book of the same name and is about some Wall Street traders who predict the coming collapse of the housing market in the United States and decided to bets against this with the purpose of making a profiting (which is what Wall Street traders do). The movie follows these four people from when fund manager Michael Burry first identifies a problem within the market to when the US government bails out the banks.
The Hateful Eight – A Tarantino Western
Okay, before I continue it would be best that I mention that I am working on the assumption that you have seen this film, which means that there will be spoilers. Anyway I generally don’t write these posts as reviews, namely because I generally do that on IMDB (though I haven’t touched Rotten Tomatoes, and am unlikely to do so since I really don’t have the time to post all of my reviews up there as well, but who knows, I might do so in the future).
Adventure in the Vernian Underworld
When I was selecting the next lot of books that I was planning to read (I generally grab about five or six and put them on a pile on my dining room table so I don’t have to spend time working out my next book after my last one, and so that I always have at least two or three books in my bag in case I finish one while I am out) my eyes passed over this old Jules Verne book. To say that I’m a fan of the father of science fiction is a bit of an understatement, and since I hadn’t read this book in a while I decided to grab it. I really enjoyed it the first time I read it, and when that Brendan Fraser film came out I have to say that I enjoy it every time I watch it (I also own a copy). Actually, isn’t it funny that films are characterised more by the main actors than they are by the directors, unless that director happens to be Quentin Tarrantino (among others), but that is just a side note.
Joker – The Flip Side of a Dark Coin
Yeah, I have to admit that the Batman universe is pretty dark, so when we come to the origin of one of his most famous adversaries, then we are no doubt going to be delving into a world where no person should really ever think of going. Mind you, I’m not entirely sure if you can truly consider this to be an origin story, and if you have seen this movie you will probably know what I am talking about. However, I should warn you that if you haven’t seen the film, then this post is certainly going to contain quite a lot of spoilers, and it would be best to actually go and see the film before considering continuing. If you do continue, don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
Mad Max: Fury Road – The Art of the Action Film
I have come to realise that this whole debate about the illegal downloading of movies is little more than a storm in a tea cup. The reason I say this is because if the movie studios were not making any money because everybody was downloading the movie over the internet for free then they wouldn’t make any more movies because it would no longer be profitable. The thing is that even in the age of the internet movies are still very profitable, and Mad Max Fury Road is a prime example. Costing $150 Million to make, as of 19th July it has had a world wide gross of $367.2 million, which isn’t a bad effort.
Art & Literature with the Sarkologist 