Sunday 27 February 2011

Who are you wearing?

Just watched the Red Carpet Live from the Oscars, channel hoping between Sky Living (lots of people who aren't even there, talking about the nominations - boring) and E! News, which wins hands-down for interview face-time, which is surely what we're watching for!

Seeing as you can ONLY watch the actual ceremony on the Sky movie channels (and NOwhere online unless you're in the US - a conspiracy much?!), I'll have to wait for any actual news worth commenting on.

Red carpet-wise though, I can say that I LOVE Helena Bonham Carter, Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman. Most annoying - Celine Dion and Steven Spielberg's incredibly-teenage teenage daughter!

I might have to bail and go to bed. Reading the live blog on the Empire website isn't quite going to cut it on keeping me awake. Plus Monday is meetings day at work, have to present some semblance of being awake for that!

Thursday 10 February 2011

My New Favourite Horse

This is my new favourite horse. His name is Maximus. So, clearly we went to see Disney's new Tangled this week. Aside from the fact that I still HATE 3D (waste. of. time.), I loved this film! I'm delighted to say that the boyfriend loved it too, it was even his idea to see it, which was weird. Our mutual joy in this film was mainly based on our mutual love of this horse and the chameleon as well (his pic is at the bottom, so he doesn't feel left out).

As you can tell from the marketing, this film is essentially a re-telling of the tale of Rapunzel, still in the classic medieval-ish setting, but something of a 'modern take' if only in the dialogue and sheer amount of sarcasm and 'spunk' (oh grow up) exhibited by the characters. The plot itself is nothing profound, in fact it's profoundly simple, and therein lies its pleasure. Not being distracted by complex plotting and clever references (sorry Pixar), means one is really free to enjoy the sheer beauty of the animation here, and it's gorgeous. Not for years have I had an experience this close to the childhood joy of old-school Disney classics. We were even treated to that Disney-est of pleasures, the telling of the story through catchy songs. Oh, cheesy as hell, don't get me wrong, but brilliant all the same. A scene where a multitude of lit paper lanterns take to the sky around the fairytale castle, and reflected in the surrounding lake was so divine to watch it literally had me in tears. Which was tricky whilst wearing 3d glasses over my normal glasses.

Better than all of that visual sumptuousness was the comedy in this film. It was really REALLY funny. I mean proper laugh out loud funny, I think I had a stitch at one point. And 90% of that humor was down to good ole Maximus the Horse, and the Chameleon guy (if he had a name, I don't remember it)... they were Legends of the first order. The sheer amount of personality the animators have put into these animal characters with no dialogue is astounding. I can't say much about it without ruining it for you, but if you don't laugh at these guys until you're nearly sick, then someone stole your funny-bone. Here's a taster actually, that's probably best.

So in short, this gets a big thumbs up from me. If you're too much of a (boring) grown-up to take pleasure in traditional Disney fare, then give this one a miss. But if you're up for a dose of child-like joy, get on down to the cinema.
Images from disney.co.uk - thanks.

Saturday 5 February 2011

All work...


Unfortunately, this image does not mean I've been watching The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980). It's a comment on how interesting my week as been, i.e. not very. I've not watched a single film, hardly read anything, though we did cave on the money-saving and go out for a lovely dinner last night, so that's good. Hoping to rectify the lack of film-viewing asap. And OMG I just remembered I got The Shining for Christmas. Score! That's first on the list.

Image from overthinkingit.com (with thanks)