čtvrtek, února 26, 2009

Winter 2009


OK, enough of naming the posts by every single day of the week, let`s just stick with year`s seasons, that should be enough for my frequency of writing. So. After admiring the picture from my cell phone (quite a surprise) and in case you`ve understood everything so far, you can enjoy few lines about WhateverWillComeOnMyMindHereUnder. I haven`t written anything in English for a long time, so here I go today.

Exactly after half a year, the "new post" button attracted my attention and so after clicking on it and after blowing out the dust from the keyboard, I pressed shift....and what now. I guess writing came on my mind with first finished pages of my diploma thesis which should be done and bound on May 20th and so my brain is switched on creating very meaningful and highly sophisticated sentences for most time of the day. Although most of them are concerning very funny, humorous and interesting European steel industry, a change for a while is necessary. So back to the start --> finally my second finger fell on "O" and first, the most difficult word was written. It`s true, I`ve never been continuously writing anything on any other web page and here spider webs slowly began to appear on the last post. Especially in today's time of twittering, posting dozens of actual statuses and rss readers there is nothing more boring and thousand times discussed than yesterday news and so half a year looks almost like last century. It was btw right in August 2008, as I see the last post, when the airplane going to the Canary Islands crashed on Barajas near Madrid. And right now that half a year later there is sky full of airplanes troubles again.

As well it`s shortly after fabulous Oscar awards, which is the time when cinemas and internet are packed with awesome pieces, usually last worth-seeing before summer "blockbusters" time. It doesn`t happen too often but it`s true that the Millionaire was almost unrivalled this year. Everything has been said so there is no reason in either repeating the words of glory or finding defects in its perfection. Let`s better see why the others didn`t make it.

Even though I`m quite tolerant and there probably wasn`t better way of shooting the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk in the same named movie, the movie won`t belong to my favourites. Partly it`s because the movie is not too much inventional as there are quite many movies betting on the documentary style of shooting today, partly it`s because of the topic itself and as well because of many intimate gay scenes that might be appreciated just by a certain percentage of population. Not to be only critical, the Oscar nomination speaks for itself. The 70`s atmosphere was showed perfectly and actors performances of Emile Hirsch and especially Sean Penn were the main (but probably as well the only) reasons why to see this movie again. Sean Penn was really the one who deserved the Academy Award this year and Harvey Milk certainly belongs to his best acting performances ever even though it`s on the other side as well the one where he`s at least sympathetic to me. But still high five for making all the love scenes from the 21 Grams, The Interpreter or Thin Red Line star:)

Regarding the other competitors I think I`ve seen the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with all the respect to David Fincher, with too high expectations. Those 166 minutes ran quite fast but didn`t leave in me very good impression. Except the makeup, special effects and strange and original screenplay. Cate Blanchett was likeable, as well Brad Pitt didn`t anyone let down for sure and I really liked the main idea which I`ve read about before seeing the movie. But unfortunately the idea itself wasn`t enough, the second half of the movie became a bit boring and predictable with anything to be looking forward to and I`ve found the last half an hour of teenage- and childhood of the main character even very weird.

Much better was the duel of an unsuccessful playboy moderator David Frost and not much more successful politician and former US president in Frost/Nixon. It has burned me into the brain president Nixon as perfect, absolutely unbelievable disconsolate Frank Langella from last scenes of the movie. The movie is great, full of thrill from the beginning to the very end and one really feels oneself to David Frost`s role as we can see him in different moods and under such a pressure during the preparations and especially during the exhausting interviews. The movie has filled its topic, political and moreover just a one-interview-story, on 120%, but thereby sentenced itself "only" to an Oscar nomination because its win would outrage other epic movies, even though I didn`t like them all without reserve. And from my point of view the competition was especially strong this year.

The more interesting it was that one of the biggest experiences surprisingly appeared among the documents, in the awarded Man on Wire about one unusual traverse between two World Trade Center towers in New York. A great document about something that most of the people don`t care about, but the movie doesn`t have a single moment that might let them think about leaving the cinema or switching the movie off. It`s mostly because of the good direction and balanced mixing of old original camera shootings, photographs, interviews and reconstruction of stories that couldn`t have been shot. The direction of the photography for example lets you realize as far as after a while that you`ve seen the most important part [from the walk itself] only from documentary pictures but still you`ll feel like being up high by yourself. I haven`t seen so much of optimism, joy from undefinable, intangible things in the form of fulfilled dream, joyful story reconstruction and funny french english in one movie, especially in a documentary one. I have never heard anything about any wire walker before but I have to admit I envied the Philippe Petit`s feeling when standing in the middle of the wire between those two towers like anything else before.

That`s for the movies. It`s necessary to be a bit critical, at least to those that aspire on the highest movie awards. Nevertheless as there are thousands of movies published every year, it won`t be waste of money or time spending a while with any of these chosen.