5 November 2009
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I’ve just had the strangest feeling. Was looking for photos for this yoke so was searching in folders on the ‘puter and on impulse decided to look in my writing folder. Why, I don’t know, I’d never have stuck a … Continue reading
2 November 2007
Cast: Baltasar Kormákur, Erica Gimpel, Helen Mirren, Julie Christie, Robert John Burke, Sarah Polley
Script: Hal Hatley
Genre: drama, sff
Setting: Iceland
8 Stars
2 Comments
So there I was, flicking around this afternoon when I came across No Such Thing. My wonderful browse feature told me it was the story of a young female reporter who tried to find out what happened her missing fiancée … Continue reading
5 September 2007
2 Comments
And the internet is just as small, cause I’ve just discovered that I was in college with Alan. And I did have something else I wanted to say, I even had open tabs for to provide linkage, but now I … Continue reading
10 September 2006
Cast: Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Steve Carrell, Toni Collette
Script: Michael Arndt
Genre: comedy, drama
10 Stars
9 Comments
Families are a source of much amusement and not a little tragedy. Especially when your father is a motivational speaker, whose “9 steps to winning” doesn’t seem to be working, your uncle is an attempted suicide, and your brother is … Continue reading
4 September 2006
Script: Werner Herzog
Genre: documentary, natural world
Setting: Alaska
9 Stars
2 Comments
In 2003 Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huegenard were killed and eaten by a bear. That was Treadwell’s 13 year in bear country, and he left behind 5 years of footage. These shots of the grizzlies, the foxes, and … Continue reading
17 August 2006
Cast: Bob Balaban, Bryce Dallas Howard, Cindy Cheung, Freddy Rodríguez, Jeffrey Wright, Paul Giamatti, Sarita Choudhury
Script: M. Night Shyamalan
Genre: sff
5 Stars
3 Comments
This is an odd film. A very odd film.
Ever since The Sixth Sense Shyamalan has been known as the “twist guy” for his film endings; I don’t think that is a fair description. And while you can say that Unbreakable, Signs and The Village all had twists to their endings, the twists weren’t all that important. The films were stories about people, truth, and finding out who you are. The Lady in the water continues in this vein, but at the same time it is a very different type of film. As Shyamalan has said, it is a bedtime story. A fairy tale, for children. So it is, of course, going to be more simplistic and yet at the same time it is more complicated than that.
22 April 2006
Call no: 800
Genre: detective & mystery
Setting: France
10 Stars
2 Comments
Fred Vargas Trans from the French: David Bellos
Yes again a cover influenced purchase, so I am glad to report that a good cover can lead to a good read too. I really enjoyed this book. The language, characters and descriptions are fantastic, so I suppose a lot of praise must also go to the translater as well.
The book opens with the character of Lawrence Donald Johnstone, a Canadian in France to film wolves. He’s been away from his true love, grizzly bears, for far too long, and is rooting in in Mercantour. Not only for the skinny European wolves, although he has come to love them, but also because there’s a woman, Camille, in his life.
But when dead sheep, always ewes are found the locals begin to look at the “foreign Italian wolves” with suspicion and hate. They organise local hunts. Coming to believe that it is all the work of one, huge, extraordinary animal.
4 March 2005
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Came across this from Neil Gaiman’s journal. A bridge in Scotland has been the site of apparent dog suicides, with animal behaviourists unsure of why the animals are leaping to their deaths. They are advising owners to put a lead … Continue reading
18 January 2005
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Dropped by The Menagerie today, and came across a wonderfully weird story of a fella who shot a nail into his own head. The nail gun backfired, he wasn’t just arsing about. The really weird thing; he didn’t notice.
15 July 2004
Cast: Betty Bonifassi, Jean-Claude Donda, Lina Boudreault, Michéle Caucheteux
Genre: animation, musical
Setting: France
7 Stars
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This is film that got quite a lot of attention when it came out, but I will admit to being a little put of by the trailer, and as it didn’t stay in my local cinema for very long I … Continue reading