Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Three Colours: White (1993)

When I rented this movie, the movie-renting-woman asked me whether I had seen any other movie from this trilogy before. I said, yes, blue. And that I had liked the athmosphere. Yeah, she said, no wonder, I mean, it's not like you could tell their plot. 

Let me try: Karol, a Polish barber, gets thrown out by his French wife in Paris because he cannot satisfy her sexually. Wow. As he is blowing the comb in the metro, Mikolaj picks him up. Mikolaj takes Karol to Poland in a suitcase
because he wants to die and cannot do it himself, he wants Karol to help/kill him. Karol then makes a lot of money and stages his own funeral. He wants his ex-wife to come and the only way he can think of to make her come is by bequeathing her a lot of money. She comes, they have extraterrestrial sex and possibly live happily ever after (the movie ends before that). 
If you were wondering whether Karol killed Mikolaj: No, he didn't. The first shot was a blank cartridge and while Karol was crying, Mikolaj began to want to live again. Seemed like the theatrical radicalisation of something I talked about with Rieke the other day: How much you can approve and love a decision of yours when you were almost completely sure before that you would do just the opposite, which you had all thought through.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Schwarze Katze weißer Kater/ Black cat white male cat

We have: three mafia bosses, one grandson of a mafia boss who falls is love with a girl but his father, the son on one of the mafia bosses got cheated by another mafia boss and now his son, the grandson of the one mafia boss, has to marry a girl he doesn´t love. She wants to marry someone she loves, he loves another girl. And in the end everything happens like we don´t expect it, or maybe we do? Well, that´s more or less how this movie is, crazy, unexpectd, funny, wild. I didn´t have time to take a breath. And the soundtrack is gorgeous. Wow, I love it.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Some like it hot

I watched another sweet classic: Marilyn Monroe is half naive, half sensual, and half cunning. The two pals dressing up as women stick together through thick and thin and don't care much when Marilyn Monroe switches from one to the other. Arguing is their hobby anyway. The dressing up is completely unbelievable and I wonder: could they get away with it because people didn't look as closely back then or just the movies were more theatrical? Oh, and I fall for Billy Wilder slapstick dialogues and chases. But what I liked best was how the bass guy - who becomes the loved one of a millionaire - looks and laughs like my (female) literature professor. Could she be dressing up?

Friday, July 04, 2008

Kung Fu Panda

This is one of the movies you catch when you visit the "sneak preview". When it started I thought I won´t make it till the end. My first impression was: A chinese movie, full of life philisophy stuff and wise slogans, computer animated and with animals. So the worst mixture you can imagine. But it turned out to be a realy funny movie, which wasn´t interested in any realism whatsoever, and a fat, hungry hero (the panda called Po). Po grew up as the son of a nudle cook. But is this all? He dreams of an adventures life as a Kung Fu fighter, and his wish becomes fullfilled by accident (ah no, this "by accident" doesnt exists, as the wise turtle was saying). Our hero isn´t quite the kind of Kung Fu student the mouse like teacher was expecting, but something has to happen, because the dangerous, revenge claiming snow leopard Tai Lung has broke out of prison. What I took from this movie? Well, there is no secret ingredient.