I saw this movie on the day Melbourne made a brief returned to winter. It was cold, bleak and drizzling. (Of course the drizzle is a good thing in this rained starved country.) Parking was a problem and we were a little late and had to blunder into our seats in the dark.
We laughed at the opening sequence. It was predictable with a street map and a coffin moving along it, but it was funny. Was it the day, our mood or the fact the movie is very funny in a slap stick, farcical way? It was probably all those things. I laughed out loud, I was moved by the emotions and at others times caught up in the tension that was there.
Well known faces popped up - Matthew MacFadyen, Jane Asher, Robert Graves Peter Egan and Peter Vaughan etc. The story is the funereal of Daniel and Robert’s father at his country estate and the dysfunctional family that is brought together for the event. There is also a blackmailer who has come to expose unsavory episodes in the father’s recent past.
Some of it is predicable, some plain silly, some scatological and some gloriously funny. It is also a family drama and full of family problems.
If you want to lighten the day go and laugh. We all need something to make us laugh. The shots of the inside of this country house are fascinating – what a beautiful house.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Rabbits on the Prowl
There are times when I want to laugh and dance and forget the problems of the twenty first century. That feeling surged over me when I saw the rabbits in this photo. They are my new slippers. They came as a pair but as you can see they are not alike which only makes them more endearing.
We need some nonsense in our lives. There’s so much to worry about, horror to listen to and disaster to contemplate that I can feel myself weighed down by it.
These ridiculous rabbits progress around my house on my feet. Their ears flap in different directions and two of the paws make a little thudding noise as they connect with the floor. No one else sees these animals on their evening journeys, except me and my cat S. I laugh out loud as look down at them. I don’t want to endow them with animistic qualities but they appear to have a personality and soul of their own. I stroke them and smile at them and I’m careful in the kitchen not to splash them. S watches them pass and I can see her allowing her mind to drift back to the days when she would have pounced on a flip flopping ear and killed it off. She occasionally raises a paw if they get too close but rousing herself to interfere with them is too much trouble.
The grey rabbits will have a short life. They are aging already and I have had to do repairs to their outer skin. Their life at my place has given lightness to the atmosphere and they will be remembered with love.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
October and My Favourite Gym Insturctor
A new month and I’m saving my horoscope to read in a few days time. I thought I would live a week in October and then check out how things are suppose to be going.
Postings from the Northern hemisphere are never up on time for me to read my horoscope on the 1st of the month. This month the 2nd (before I read any horoscopes) produced an unexpected change in my life. Hence my interest in living through seven or so days of October before I read Susan Miller http://www.astrologyzone.com.
I know now why people have relationships with their personal trainer. We lean on them emotionally. I don’t have a personal trainer but from trotting along to regular gym classes I can see how it would be. My favourite gym-class instructor has gone. I arrived on Tuesday and someone else was there and announced they had replaced him. No reason was given. I am bereft. His class is one of the highlights in my week. I go to a couple of other classes but they are a sort of tag-on his.
All through the class I thought about what had made him special. How can you stand out in such a large group as a group of gym instructors? Physically he is unlike the usual mould. He is tall and gangling. Yes gangling is the word. Others are sort of compacted, slim and neatly put together. His face breaks into a wide and cheerful grin and his voice is loud. If he is taking a class as you approach the gym you can hear his voice bellowing out. That always makes me smile and lighten my step. His humour is light and flippant and acknowledges the individuals in his class. He winks at slackers and shouts “keep it moving. Keep the pace up”. He keeps it moving in a casual easy way and we all work harder for him. His classes were packed and it was often hard to find floor space. “Here,” he’d say swinging a step in the air for latecomer, ‘There’s room here!” and he’d lower the step into some space where he felt there was room.
His absence has started October with a sense of loss. I will have to re-build my enthusiasm for the gym. Standing tall, being supple and having some strength will have to be enough to motivate me to go on. The fact that I am hooked into a payment system will also motivate me!
Postings from the Northern hemisphere are never up on time for me to read my horoscope on the 1st of the month. This month the 2nd (before I read any horoscopes) produced an unexpected change in my life. Hence my interest in living through seven or so days of October before I read Susan Miller http://www.astrologyzone.com.
I know now why people have relationships with their personal trainer. We lean on them emotionally. I don’t have a personal trainer but from trotting along to regular gym classes I can see how it would be. My favourite gym-class instructor has gone. I arrived on Tuesday and someone else was there and announced they had replaced him. No reason was given. I am bereft. His class is one of the highlights in my week. I go to a couple of other classes but they are a sort of tag-on his.
All through the class I thought about what had made him special. How can you stand out in such a large group as a group of gym instructors? Physically he is unlike the usual mould. He is tall and gangling. Yes gangling is the word. Others are sort of compacted, slim and neatly put together. His face breaks into a wide and cheerful grin and his voice is loud. If he is taking a class as you approach the gym you can hear his voice bellowing out. That always makes me smile and lighten my step. His humour is light and flippant and acknowledges the individuals in his class. He winks at slackers and shouts “keep it moving. Keep the pace up”. He keeps it moving in a casual easy way and we all work harder for him. His classes were packed and it was often hard to find floor space. “Here,” he’d say swinging a step in the air for latecomer, ‘There’s room here!” and he’d lower the step into some space where he felt there was room.
His absence has started October with a sense of loss. I will have to re-build my enthusiasm for the gym. Standing tall, being supple and having some strength will have to be enough to motivate me to go on. The fact that I am hooked into a payment system will also motivate me!
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Forbidden Lies -Forbidden Love-Norma Khouri
The movie, Forbidden Lies, has been described as gripping, irresistible, thrilling, remarkable and incredible. These are just a number of adjectives that have been applied to it by the promotional material. Remarkable perhaps. Norma Khouri has charm, good looks and style but she is incredibly irritating.
It’s actually a documentary about the “true story” in the book Forbidden Love by Norma Khouri. The book is about the horrific honour killing in Jordan of Norma’s best friend, Dalia. It turns out that this is not her real name.
The book was a runaway best seller around the world and then Australian journalist Malcolm Knox exposed it as a work of fiction. Norma went into hiding and according to the promotional material has been in hiding ever since but decided to come out and talk to the director of this movie-length documentary Forbidden Lies. It is hard to know why she made this decision.
I was kkeen to see the documentary. I use to make radio documentaries and although they don’t have a lot in common with a full-length movie, the problem of what to put in and what to leave out is a decision all directors have to make. It is also possible to slew the content to fit the hypothesis you have in mind. We see this all the time in Australia in television magazine programmes like Today Tonight and Current Affair.
What is indisputable here is that Norma Khouri is able to write a pager tuner. Thousands of people all over the world were gripped by her story. I suppose a question we could ask is whether they would have been so gripped if the book had been marketed as fiction.
During the interviews in the movie Norma refuses to answer questions and tells one lie after another and when she is found out then tells another to justify the first. I felt that director Anna Broinowskit showed great restraint in not slapping her but just occasionally her impatience showed through. At one time she pleaded with Norma to give her something that was true: some fact that that would check out.
I found all this evasion, contradiction and justification (“I’m protecting the people involved”) boring. To me it wasn’t thrilling or exciting it was dull and I found at one stage I had dropped off to sleep. I think that it is remarkable that Anna stuck with it.
This may be because I can’t find it in me to care greatly if this honour killing was true, fiction or an amalgamation of a number of such killings. Not because I’m not appalled by honour killings. I am. I am grateful that I have born into a society where women are not a possession of their family to do as they will with. This story may be written with a fictional killing at the center but there are still such killings and Forbidden Love has made many people, who may perhaps have never heard of such a thing, aware. Ultimately this story could be one more step in a path to prevent such things. Perhaps this is why I don’t care whether it’s fact or fiction and watching Norma wriggling around on the end of the interview’s questions is not particularly interesting. At the end of the film Norma Khouri was still an enigma..
It is a finely put together documentary with great camera work and the interview style is generally sympathetic and well balanced but in the end we have to ask ourselves do we need 106mins on Norma and her book. I believe that Anna succumbed to the dilemma “it took me so much time, effort and money to get this I can’t cut it out.” I am of the opinion that a great deal could have been cut and we would have ended up with the same outcome.
What makes it remarkable is that it is about one of the great publishing hoaxes of last century.
Let me know what you think.
It’s actually a documentary about the “true story” in the book Forbidden Love by Norma Khouri. The book is about the horrific honour killing in Jordan of Norma’s best friend, Dalia. It turns out that this is not her real name.
The book was a runaway best seller around the world and then Australian journalist Malcolm Knox exposed it as a work of fiction. Norma went into hiding and according to the promotional material has been in hiding ever since but decided to come out and talk to the director of this movie-length documentary Forbidden Lies. It is hard to know why she made this decision.
I was kkeen to see the documentary. I use to make radio documentaries and although they don’t have a lot in common with a full-length movie, the problem of what to put in and what to leave out is a decision all directors have to make. It is also possible to slew the content to fit the hypothesis you have in mind. We see this all the time in Australia in television magazine programmes like Today Tonight and Current Affair.
What is indisputable here is that Norma Khouri is able to write a pager tuner. Thousands of people all over the world were gripped by her story. I suppose a question we could ask is whether they would have been so gripped if the book had been marketed as fiction.
During the interviews in the movie Norma refuses to answer questions and tells one lie after another and when she is found out then tells another to justify the first. I felt that director Anna Broinowskit showed great restraint in not slapping her but just occasionally her impatience showed through. At one time she pleaded with Norma to give her something that was true: some fact that that would check out.
I found all this evasion, contradiction and justification (“I’m protecting the people involved”) boring. To me it wasn’t thrilling or exciting it was dull and I found at one stage I had dropped off to sleep. I think that it is remarkable that Anna stuck with it.
This may be because I can’t find it in me to care greatly if this honour killing was true, fiction or an amalgamation of a number of such killings. Not because I’m not appalled by honour killings. I am. I am grateful that I have born into a society where women are not a possession of their family to do as they will with. This story may be written with a fictional killing at the center but there are still such killings and Forbidden Love has made many people, who may perhaps have never heard of such a thing, aware. Ultimately this story could be one more step in a path to prevent such things. Perhaps this is why I don’t care whether it’s fact or fiction and watching Norma wriggling around on the end of the interview’s questions is not particularly interesting. At the end of the film Norma Khouri was still an enigma..
It is a finely put together documentary with great camera work and the interview style is generally sympathetic and well balanced but in the end we have to ask ourselves do we need 106mins on Norma and her book. I believe that Anna succumbed to the dilemma “it took me so much time, effort and money to get this I can’t cut it out.” I am of the opinion that a great deal could have been cut and we would have ended up with the same outcome.
What makes it remarkable is that it is about one of the great publishing hoaxes of last century.
Let me know what you think.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Blogging
It’s always interesting when I check out who's entered my blog. I don’t do this very often but when I do I feel I’m on a world tour. I love it that people in Nevada and New York have accessed it. They may have given the content only a quick glance but they were there. I have visited both these place in the USA. It was a while ago but a number of mind-pictures have stayed with me so I can bring them up on my mental plasma screen.
I have had some one in Adelaide reading me off and on and in England and Hong Kong. Now there’s a place that feeds the imagination. Other places pop up from time to time. Writing a blog is largely self-indulgent and I mentioned this is my first blog, but it is also a way of connecting with a wider group of people, and becoming a citizen of the world.
Do keep accessing my site and try this one wwwstrollingplayer.blogspot.com interesting but don’t go there when you’re hungry the food is mouth watering and the photos great.
I have had some one in Adelaide reading me off and on and in England and Hong Kong. Now there’s a place that feeds the imagination. Other places pop up from time to time. Writing a blog is largely self-indulgent and I mentioned this is my first blog, but it is also a way of connecting with a wider group of people, and becoming a citizen of the world.
Do keep accessing my site and try this one wwwstrollingplayer.blogspot.com interesting but don’t go there when you’re hungry the food is mouth watering and the photos great.
Monday, September 17, 2007
After the Wedding
J and I always hope for some vicarious travel so we chose a Danish film this week. We do get some Danish crime on T V that gives an idea of life in Scandinavian but not enough to satisfy the would-be traveler. ‘After the Wedding’ is an unforgettable drama from Danish film maker Susanne Bier. And pictorially Denmark comes out reasonably well.
To begin the film gives the cinema-seat-traveller some great glimpse of the teaming masses in India. Jocob Peterson (Mads Mikkelsen) is a Danish aid worker in Indian. He is persuaded to return home to Denmark to meet with an aid benefactor Jorgan (Rolf Lassgard) who is only going to ha over the aid cheque in person..
In a sentence you could say the film was not about Jocob but Jorgan who tires to arrange everyone’s lives. Mads plays his character in a rather grim way. Perhaps he always acts like this but he has a great reluctance to smile. Very occasionally gives us a glimpse of a smile that lights up his face. Jorgan has manipulated Jocob’s return and his time in Denmark to bring him face to face with a past he has tired to forget.
I found the camera work a great irritation. The camera closes into someone’s face and enlarges their eye and perhaps the side of their nose or their mouth. We don’t need to see the enlarge pores or the larger than life eye in its wrinkled socket. In day-to-day life we don’t jam our faces so close to others that we get these views and I found it distracting. Jorgan lives in a Baronial mansion that houses the usual trophy heads on the walls and the camera zooms into the dead eyes of a buffalo or deer and delivers them to us hugely magnified – very off-putting.
The threads of this mystery are woven and tightened by Jorgan until finally the clothe and its flaws are revealed to us. It is an unusual story and the ending not in least predictable.
Even with enlarged eyes popping on and off the screen there are some very memorable moments and some shorts scenes that are likely to become mental flash backs in the days after viewing the movie. The characters do evolve and it’s a film about everyone learning something that causes them to re-evaluate who they are and where they in life.
It’s worth seeing. You may like the eyes and feel they are giving an opening to the internal struggles of the owner. I think any internal struggle the trophy heads may have had has long since gone.
To begin the film gives the cinema-seat-traveller some great glimpse of the teaming masses in India. Jocob Peterson (Mads Mikkelsen) is a Danish aid worker in Indian. He is persuaded to return home to Denmark to meet with an aid benefactor Jorgan (Rolf Lassgard) who is only going to ha over the aid cheque in person..
In a sentence you could say the film was not about Jocob but Jorgan who tires to arrange everyone’s lives. Mads plays his character in a rather grim way. Perhaps he always acts like this but he has a great reluctance to smile. Very occasionally gives us a glimpse of a smile that lights up his face. Jorgan has manipulated Jocob’s return and his time in Denmark to bring him face to face with a past he has tired to forget.
I found the camera work a great irritation. The camera closes into someone’s face and enlarges their eye and perhaps the side of their nose or their mouth. We don’t need to see the enlarge pores or the larger than life eye in its wrinkled socket. In day-to-day life we don’t jam our faces so close to others that we get these views and I found it distracting. Jorgan lives in a Baronial mansion that houses the usual trophy heads on the walls and the camera zooms into the dead eyes of a buffalo or deer and delivers them to us hugely magnified – very off-putting.
The threads of this mystery are woven and tightened by Jorgan until finally the clothe and its flaws are revealed to us. It is an unusual story and the ending not in least predictable.
Even with enlarged eyes popping on and off the screen there are some very memorable moments and some shorts scenes that are likely to become mental flash backs in the days after viewing the movie. The characters do evolve and it’s a film about everyone learning something that causes them to re-evaluate who they are and where they in life.
It’s worth seeing. You may like the eyes and feel they are giving an opening to the internal struggles of the owner. I think any internal struggle the trophy heads may have had has long since gone.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Horoscopes Again
To follow on that theme. I have read Susan Miller’s predictions for a couple of years and I have found her to be reasonably accurate. However the last few months seem to well off center
I wonder if you’ve found the same? I’m Capricorn and it may be that every other sign is dead on the mark.
I use to read my family’s too and if it looked positive I would send them a copy. My pragmatic and housebound mother said that her life was so uneventful it was difficult for any thing to apply to her. Now that I’ve written that I must go back and see if I can read the month covering her fall from her chair. That was far from uneventful.
I wonder if you’ve found the same? I’m Capricorn and it may be that every other sign is dead on the mark.
I use to read my family’s too and if it looked positive I would send them a copy. My pragmatic and housebound mother said that her life was so uneventful it was difficult for any thing to apply to her. Now that I’ve written that I must go back and see if I can read the month covering her fall from her chair. That was far from uneventful.
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