h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Feel free to wade in with other stuff about films. Or whatever.

I saw House of Flying Daggers last week - really good Chinese film. A lot of lyrical martial arts, much like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I thought Daggers was even better, mainly because the plot twists really kept me guessing.

Guess what I found on Ebay this week. A Cate Blanchett "ELizabeth" poster. Luckily I was the only bid and I got it for $8. Yay! Hope it comes safely as promised. It is a great poster for a great film.

Has anyone seen Go! ?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139239/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxzZz0xfGxtPTIwMHx0dD1vbnxwbj0wfHE9R298aHRtbD0xfG5tPW9u;fc=1;ft=6;fm=1

They used to show it all the time on FilmFour. We used to subscribe on cable, but stopped because the films became less and less artsy-fartsy and because they kept showing the same small pool of films over and over. Bizarrely, though, FilmFour World showed really, really obscure stuff but missed out on quality foreign films which had had art-house releases. Oh...and East is East seemed to be on every bloody day!http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166175/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxzZz0xfGxtPTIwMHx0dD1vbnxwbj0wfHE9RWFzdCBpcyBlYXN0fGh0bWw9MXxubT1vbg__;fc=1;ft=21;fm=1

Anyway...I rather liked it. Especially the last line 'So...what are we doing for New Year?' It's got a neat structure, with the same story shown from three viewpoints but diverging out into different back stories.

Good quotes, by the way:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139239/quotes

(Hey! Why does imdb sometimes have short URLs and sometimes long ones?)

Intolerable Cruelty http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138524/ Very, very poor! Finally the Coen Bros have managed to make a bad movie. Absolute pish from start to finish. I don't feel like wasting my time going into details...but I'll just say that even the editing was poor. Some seens just...finished....cut....at random moments.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290538/
I liked what I saw - but was tired and fell asleep.

101 Rekjavik: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0237993/
I rather enjoyed it...but will wait until JEllen has seen it to say more.

(Last Night) The Motorcycle Diaries
Rather good! Gorgeously and atmospherically filmed on location, following the actual route of El Supracommandante's journey. I'd also read the book. I'll freely admit to being a Che groupie and am puzzled by some of the MB comments on imdb comparing him with Nazis and Stalinists. It does a fairly good job of showing a slow awakening of a political conscience - although given the compressed timespan of the film, this maybe comes over as a little trite. The cinema verite style, using locals as actors works very well. And Gael García Bernal is excellent as the young Che! He doesn't look much like the real one - but he genuinely manages to pull off a lot of the charisma. The asthma scenes also particularly struck me: If you read his war diaries (I told you I was a groupie) you realise how much his health affected him during his campaigns.

Hasta la victoria siempre!