Month: April, 2012

April 26, 2012

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi

Great news! Yann Martel’s excellent Life of Pi is being made into a movie … and it’s being released at the end of this year. This one slipped completely under my radar. Life of Pi is the bestselling novel, released in 2001 and won the Man Booker Prize. If you haven’t read the book then drop everything and read it. It’s a fantastic story and easily one of my favorite books. I’m very curious as to how they will transfer what seems to be an unfilmable story. It certainly is an ambitious venture. However, with Ang Lee (The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) at the helm I’m quietly confident that they will pull this one off.

Here is a the first released still … can’t tell a lot from one pic but they seem to be on the right track aesthetically. This is now up there as one of my most anticipated films of the next year, right up there with Prometheus.

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Ang Lee's Life if Pi

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April 19, 2012

Carnage by Roman Polanski – review

I won’t go into the politics surrounding Roman Polanski and his dubious past … suffice to say that it always feels a little bit like an elephant in the cinema when his name flashes up in the opening credits. There’s no doubting that he is a talented director and I do, for the most part, enjoy his films … and Carnage is no exception. 

You can read my full review here.

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April 17, 2012

Bridgette Bardot – Et Dieu… créa la femme

With reference to Bridgette Bardot, Feminist Simone de Beauvoir stated that “Males are an object for her, as much as she is an object for them. This is precisely what hurts males’ pride.”  Just added this abstract from an essay I did last year about gender in  Et Dieu… créa la femme (1956)

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April 8, 2012

H.R. Giger’s Alien

Stumbled upon this fascinating doco/interview with H.R. Giger by Dennis Lowe. Giger was the artistic force behind the Xenomorph in Ridley Scott’s original Alien(1979). For me it was his design of the derelict ship (including its interior) that had me in awe. The documentary itself is pretty average and perhaps a little bit cheesy, however, it does give an interesting account of Giger’s professional life. The doco is about 45 minutes long and is in five parts. Apparently it was not officially released because for some reason Giger was unhappy with it. I’m not sure how long these will be on YouTube and at the time of writing part two is missing. So here are the remaining four. (update: you can download the entire doco here. please bear in mind it is a 229mb download)

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