Megan's Head

A place where Megan gets off her head.

Category: movies (Page 3 of 4)

District 9 like an alien my broe

So Big Friendly and I have been very excited by the sounds and noises that local movie District 9 has been making. It’s right up my alley. I love SF. I love send up. I love the idea that apartheid and xenophobia are looked at in an original way. I love that it’s local and that it has shot up the charts in such a huge way. It is a success story; just like our own Charlize. I especially love that it seems to have mainstream appeal overseas just like any other weird, SF, action movie would. It opens here on 28 August and I’m going to rush off to see it.

What has been really interesting (and telling) for me is that I have read two blog/reviews by two South Africans, both in America, who hated the fliek. One even walked out before the end. They both raised the same points and were equally disgusted by the movie and how it made them feel. They felt that the bad guy was a total Afrikaans stereotype. They felt that South Africans were portrayed as idiots. They felt that Americans would get the completely wrong impression of what South Africa and its people are like. They were embarrassed. They felt that the script was trite and weak.

Last night we got into a bit of a discussion before TheatreSports about art movies and mainstream movies and money and South African films. Everyone agreed that our serious movies often have a very limited, art house appeal. But we were all nervous about being misunderstood by a runaway success story, block buster, SF, action fliek.

I don’t know. I’ll reserve my judgement until I see it. In the meantime, I’m so excited that it’s raking in the dollars. Even if it had big, overseas money behind it. Bravo Neill Blomkamp.

An Encounter with Music

After a couple of months of just theatre; making, producing, watching, performing and commenting, I did what other people do on a beautiful, sunny Cape Town Saturday afternoon. I went to a shopping centre! I had a good excuse. I went to see one of the documentaries at the Encounters doccie festival, called Music from the Inside Out.

I could not believe how many people there were at the V&A Waterfront. Hellzbells. They weren’t all coming to see the doccie though. It was a delightful little movie, a personal look at some of the members of the Philadelphia Symphony orchestra and their thoughts and feelings about music and what it’s like to play in a huge team. It was delicious to hear the music and get to know the personalities. I couldn’t believe how many Israelis there are in the orchestra. Overall a really sweet movie.

Afterwards we went for a drink. My sister-in-law is down in SlaapStad, rehearsing Show Boat, and she wanted to sit somewhere pretty, so we went to this tappas place that has these great windows looking over the sea, Granger Bay and the new Green Point Stadium. We had glasses of wine that cost more than I normally spend per bottle. Oh Waterfront, oh snobby V&A.

The Satyr of Springbok Heights

 20090604 Wouter Hilda hi-resWhat an impressive premier of a local movie. The Labia was buzzing last night with friends, media and even the stars of this little movie, who had arrived for the first official screening.

is produced, directed and written by Robert Silke, who had all sorts of help from everybody involved on lots of levels, and so it’s this collaborative effort that makes the film work.

It’s all about this block of flats across the way from the Company Gardens in the middle of town, its history, design, and the people who lived, and live there, including a Satyr!

The movie is a mocumentary in the style of Confetti and I love the genre. There are two streams to the film; ‘real’ interviews with people who play themselves, talking about the block, Springbok Heights, and actors playing the people who live there. The ‘real’ people are architecture professor Fabio Todeschini, John Caviggia who knows everything about every style and period of everything, being a drama expert, and Sunday Times columnist Lin Sampson, who, slumped and virtually immobile in her chair, is hilarious and totally weird. Oh, and there are two excellent and very real cameos from two delightful street people, one very friendly and one not so very.

Some of the actors are Godfrey Johnson, who plays Wouter Malan, Victoria Caballaire who plays Hilda Steyn, Nicholas Spagnoletti who plays poor Nathan Golding and Nicole Franco who plays one part of a ‘lebanese’ couple. This is where the movie gets a little uneven. While the characters are huge and hilarious, the performance style is a little too big for the fake documentary style. Most successful is Nicholas Spagnoletti who underplays poor Nathan Golding perfectly. The others are terribly funny, but not very ‘real’, and even though I loved huge Hilda Steyn, I would have preferred slightly more ‘naturalistic’ performances.

That, and the funny way Lin Sampson referred to everybody in the past tense, were my two sticking points. Otherwise, I think the whole thing was quite fabulous. I loved Sean Michau’s music. I loved Nigel Murphy’s off screen interviews. I loved John Caviggia because he is so entertaining, and I mostly loved the fact that with no budget at all, Robert and his friends and connections made a full length feature and bladdy well put it on. Bravo to all involved!

The Wrestler

We have just come back from seeing The Wrestler at The Labia, and I am feeling totally shattered. I confess that I felt obligated to see it since Springsteen wrote the song for it, but by the time the song came up at the end for the credits I literally couldn’t move.

It’s a ‘real-life’ story about a wrestler who has gone to seed, and it is unbelievably sad, beautifully shot, excellently directed by Darren Aronofsky, but most importantly, it’s the best acting I have seen in a while. In fact, Mickey Rourke gives a performance that is beyond comparison to anything I have seen before. I don’t know how to even write about it. Marisa Tomei is also quite extraordinary as a lap and pole dancer. I will not really believe it if Mickey Rourke doesn’t win the Oscar for this performance although I haven’t seen the other performances in contention.

Don’t go and see The Wrestler when you’re having a bad day. Don’t go when life is feeling hard and you are feeling old. But make sure you go.

Director: Darren Aronofsky

In Bruges

I was feeling theatre’d out by the time yesterday came around and so we went off to see the early show of In Bruges last night. It’s one of those bizarre action, gangster, comedies, starring Colin Farrel, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, and written and directed by Martin McDonagh.

The tag line of the movie is, “Shoot now, sightsee later” to give you an idea. Briefly, it’s about two assassins from Britain who have to hole up in the tiny Belgian town of Bruges, after a job and wait for instructions from the big boss, Harry, played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes. It’s very reminiscent of Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, but I won’t give away why.

The movie is hilarious, irreverent, outrageous, touching at times and totally gory. Brendan Gleeson, who I remember seeing as Mad eye Moody in the Harry Potter films, is just fantastic.

The scenery of the tiny Belgian town and its exquisite buildings, bridges, piazzas, and swan filled canals is exploded onto by the crazy assassins, American and Canadian tourists, and a totally bizarre b-grade movie dream sequence being filmed in the city, whose star is a drug addled American, racist dwarf. It’s complicated. And totally hilarious. colin_farrell8

Everything is Illuminated

A few years ago I picked up a book at Wordsworth called Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Although I enjoyed the style and was connected to the subject matter, I struggled to read it through to the end.

On Sunday I was working on the lappie but the TV was on and I immediately recognised the voice and accent of the lead singer and founder member of one of my all time favourite bands, Gogol Bordello. I immediately started watching and within seconds I was totally hooked in to this extraordinary movie of the same title, Everything is Illuminated.

It stars Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello and Elijah Wood and it is an absolute gem. It’s the story of a young Jewish American boy who gets the help of a street smart Ukrainian, his grandfather and his ‘seeing-eye bitch’ collie dog, in searching for the woman who helped his own grandfather during the war. everything2

It creeps up on you, this movie. It is very funny, and director Liev Shrieber worked with the author on the screenplay, which retains all the funny translation quirks. It is shot on location in the Ukraine, which is exquisite and evocative. It is also so sad. I sobbed my heart out. And then there is the music, much of it made by Eugene Hutz and his band. It is brilliant. I must get the sound track. Most of the movie is in Ukrainian too, which makes it so authentic. This film’s fresh take on an old subject is really poignant. It is a truly original, finding your roots, holocaust, road movie that is also about friendship and love.

The movie is all over DSTV at the moment.

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