The characterisation of Silver Linings Playbook is its strength. Bradley Cooper is Pat Solano, newly released from an eight month stint in a mental institution, filled with sanguine hope for the future and armed with positive philosophy. But you only need five minutes with him to realise that he has a serious problem. He is struggling with a barely simmering bipolar disorder that he doesn’t want to take medication for since the meds make him fuzzy. He blithely disregards the restraining order his wife has taken out against him, after he beat her lover nearly to death which landed him in the mental institution in the first place. The sound of his wedding song sends him on an uncontrollable furniture-wrecking rampage, since that was the song playing when he discovered his wife flagrante delicto with her lover. He can’t deal with negativity and throws books with tragic endings out of the window. He is so amped up in his silver lining philosophy that he would probably follow his positivity off a cliff. Bradley Cooper plays this role with a maturity belied by his stint in the Hangover movies. He renders Pat as an essentially decent guy, but in a delicately balanced mental state. He manages to convey that somewhere in the back of his head, Pat knows that he’s in trouble, he knows the pitfalls in his strategy, and is struggling to stonewall these concerns by deluding himself that all is well.

At home, Pat’s parents are concerned. They understand his fragility, but want him to get back on his feet and assimilate himself back into an old life, but without the burden of reconciling with his wife, who they think is a lost cause. Robert De Niro plays Pat Sr, a man with some issues of his own. He too has a violent incident in his past, he is obsessive-compulsive about his remote controls and Philadelphia Eagles football matches, and dearly loves Pat, believing him to be a lucky mascot who helps his team win games. Pat Sr matches Pat Jr blow for blow, and their relationship is rocky and poignant at the same time.

Into this brittle environment is thrust Tiffany, played with explosive screen presence by Jennifer Lawrence. She is just as unstable as Pat, having lost her husband in an unfortunate accident and dealing with grief in her own unique way. She taunts Pat and makes him uncomfortable. She is belligerent, overpowers people, lashes out in rage, and says the damnedest things which nevertheless ring true. A memorable scene is where she accuses Pat of thinking she is crazier than him, and reacts in a typically Tiffany manner.

The question then becomes, are these two suited to each other because each understands the others flaws, or are they going to wear each other out with their unique eccentricities? Does a happy ending come to those who find another to accept and coexist with their lunacy, or to those who find someone to coerce them out of their manias by bending them to social conformity?

The premise is intriguing, and the first half of the film, notably the scenes involving Jennifer Lawrence, are riveting, though the nervous camera movements do take some getting used to. Unfortunately the unlikely mix of football, gambling and dancing begins to seem too contrived, and at the halfway mark, the movie abandons its ambition to settle into comfortable rom-com mode. The characters suddenly seem much more normal, the ending predictably pat, and all’s well that ends well. The promise shown in scenes like Pat raging about the tragic ending in Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms and Tiffany succinctly summarising Golding’s Lord of the Flies fades into a stereotypical declaration of “I loved you from the moment I met you”. It’s almost like watching two different movies grafted together, and that can’t be a good feeling. By then, we are sufficiently invested in the characters to still root for them and cheer, but one wishes that they still retain their absurdities, because without them, their life would be very boring indeed.

My Rating: 3/5 (for fizzling out at halftime)

This is one of my personal favorite movies that I make sure to watch each year around Halloween. The story of a bullied teen getting her revenge on her peers still resonates today, probably more than ever. With school shootings occurring almost every month, this take on adolescent revenge really hits home. That, along with the spectacular acting and directing makes Carrie a horror movie you’ll remember long after you watch it.

Best Actor: Sissy Spacek is amazing as Carrie, but Piper Laurie really steals the show as her mother. Both got well-deserved Oscar nominations.

Best Scene: Of course, the prom scene. There are very few scenes of pure terror in the history of movies and this ranks with the best of them. The choice to use a split screen to double the action shown on screen was a stroke of genius.

What Went Wrong?: Oh man, this film has aged badly over the last 35 years. I would say, more than anything else, that distances the audience from feeling a connection to the characters.

With Django Unchained, the comparisons with Basterds is inevitable. Again, Tarantino attempts to appeal to the mainstream while maintaining his cultish stance, addresses a relevant topic, and casts Christoph Waltz in a key role. Django Unchained is another revenge film, but here the revenge is perpetrated by a black slave against white racist brutality, aided by the German dentist (Christoph Waltz) who rescues him. Jamie Foxx plays Django with grim determination, single-minded in his goal of rescuing his wife, Broomhilda. He has bulked up for the role and receives loving attention from Tarantino, with cool one-liners, appropriately glorified silhouettes and gripping slo-mo action sequences. Leonardo DiCaprio is Calvin Candie, who prefers to be called Monsieur Candie and owns a plantation called Candyland, the hypocritical Southern monster who currently owns Broomhilda and subjects her to all manner of denigration. Samuel L. Jackson, another Tarantino favourite, returns in a hellish, abuse-spewing role as the old faithful plantation worker Stephen who believes in slavery and betrays Django’s purpose in coming to Candyland.

True to form, Waltz does not disappoint. Dr. King Schultz is another finely performed character, with courteous, well-spoken dialogue and an artless disregard for the social boundaries that govern America two years before the Civil War. A dentist, complete with bobbletooth and wagon, who discovers a better way of money making by becoming a bounty hunter, Waltz reprises his Hans Landa avatar but without the evil core. Schultz wryly observes that bounty hunting is a cash-for-flesh trade just like slavery, but performed in public service. He doesnt baulk at shooting criminals and is a dead shot who never misses, but dislikes slavery and squirms when a reluctant black fighter is torn to shreds by a pack of bloodthirsty dogs on the command of a white plantation owner. He rescues Django to help him in his bounty hunting, but forms a bond when Django tells him of his brutal past with white owners and of his wife Broomhilda who he has lost to the slave trade, and decides to help Django recover her, recalling the Siegfried and Brunhilde legend of German folklore. Waltz, by himself, makes the movie worthwhile.

As for the rest of the movie, it is functional Tarantino fare, with bloodletting, gore and torture galore, and characters who seem to be having a lot of fun. An interesting aspect of the film is the fearful symmetry that Tarantino achieves with the opposing pairs of Schultz and Django on one hand, and Candie and Stephen on the other. Schultz treats Django as an equal and the result is an allegiance which leads to a rescue of legendary proportions. Candie and Stephen share an uneasy equation as well, with Stephen sometimes seeming to control Candie’s actions to a large degree. Stephen, in fact, is the worst product of the slave trade – a slave who believes in slavery and is crueler to his own kind than his masters.

Django Unchained seems to have unchained Tarantino as well. It is his longest movie yet – Kill Bill Vol 2, Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds were all over 2 hours but Django Unchained clocks in at a massive 2 hr 46 minutes playing time. The film takes the audience from snow capped mountains where Django hones his shooting skills wearing snow shoes, to the deep south where sprawling cotton plantations are peopled with violent and vicious men. Tarantino’s unwillingness to cut seems evident as some scenes could have easily been shortened: the endless debate before a posse raids Schultz’s caravan for example (Jonah Hill appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo), the interminable journey to Candyland and the Mandingo fight are all scenes that could easily have been several minutes shorter.

Irreverent as always, Tarantino isn’t making a statement film with Django Unchained. While racism and its harsh realities are made evident and widespread, it remains very much the story of one man’s personal crusade and revenge. In such a light, the fact that it is set two years before the civil war in America becomes irrelevant. This could have been the revenge story set in any age, in any country, and while this may have been deliberate, it does take away from the impact the film could have had.

My Rating: 3.5 (2.5 for the movie, but +1 just for Christoph Waltz)

I can imagine the actors baulked when they were told they would have to sing live on camera; live, not sung off screen and lip-synced, though the ease of cinematic production could have easily allowed the songs to be added in post-production. Hitting high notes both musically and emotionally at the same time can’t be an easy task, and the actors perform with varying success. There is no spoken dialogue that isn’t sung, and for those who are not fans of musicals, two and a half hours of dramaturgic singing may make them run screaming from their seats (and there were a few who did that in the movie theatre while I watched).

Hugh Jackman, as main protagonist Jean Valjean, carries much of the movie, and his singing is just as confident and powerful as his acting. Russell Crowe, as Javert, Valjean’s unrelenting Nemesis, is a surprise find, and my personal favorite. Who’d have known that brooding, square-jawed Crowe had a gruff but tuneful voice hidden away? Anne Hathaway as Fantine is functional, but her grimacing turns you off her singing. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are the Thenardiers, the ne’er do well innkeepers with whom Fantine left her daughter Cosette, and have one lively, comedic piece to deliver, and they do so with aplomb. Amanda Seyfried plays the grown up Cosette and does well in mid-range solos but turns quaveringly shrill on the high notes. Eddie Redmayne is Marius, Cosette’s love interest and revolutionary, and performs well though he lacks charisma. Samantha Barks plays Eponine, the Thenardiers’ daughter whose love for Marius remains unrequited, has perhaps the strongest musical credentials of all in the cast. There are two child actors with one song each – Isabelle Allen who plays little Cosette and Daniel Huttlestone as the impish Gavroche, and each of them is vibrant and memorable.

The main backbone of the story is that of ex-convict Jean Valjean’s redemption. Beginning as a hardened, cynical man thanks to nineteen years in prison (a disproportionate punishment for his crime of stealing a mouthful of bread for his sister’s dying son), he is transformed by one great act of kindness and proceeds to become a philanthropist and a hero, saving lives, overcoming temptation, and facing his sins. Fantine’s tragic death gives him a purpose, to provide for her orphaned daughter Cosette, and Cosette in turn redeems his heart and shows him the meaning of love. Hugh Jackman’s performance is as grand as the character he portrays – appropriately powerful, committed and emotionally commensurate with the events that wrack Valjean’s life. No other character really undergoes the emotional upheaval or moral dilemmas that Valjean is faced with, except Javert. Largely portrayed as a remorseless antagonist, Crowe manages to imbue his performance with nuance and pathos, and we get to see a Javert who is morally upright, determined, and no less heroic in his blind pursuit of justice. In Javert’s world, there is no concept of redemption, and the theory of right and wrong is rendered pretty much in black and white. “It is either Valjean or Javert,” he declares. Javert is cast into a moral predicament by Valjean’s actions, the tragedies he witnesses as part of the crushing of the Rebellion, and his own realization that sometimes the lawful path may not be the moral one; Hooper shows him walking on heights, on the edge of buildings and railings, looking out over Paris’s rooftops at the beginning and into the swirling depths of the Seine at the end.

Victor Hugo is to France what his contemporary Charles Dickens is to England, and Les Miserables is a story of misery, poverty, desperation, social injustice and class inequality, set in a France which is squalid, bloody and wretched. Visually unconstrained by a stage, Hooper’s version of the musical makes use of majestic set pieces, like the opening sequence with scores of prisoners hauling in a massive ship, while Javert looks on, or the closing finale symbolic of a revolution that continues, with hundreds of voices joined in an uplifting rendition of “Do You Hear The People Sing”. The film is awash in the colors of the French flag – red, white and blue – and several scenes are staged to be reminiscent of the art of the French Revolution and the July Rebellion, as evinced in the paintings of Eugene Delacroix. The barricade by night glows in chiaroscuro as if lit by a high-intensity stage light. We see the filth of sewers and idyllic mountaintop villages, we see a French flag trampled underfoot by uncaring decrepit prisoners and the red flag of rebellion waved over Lamarque’s passing hearse, we see churches permeated by flickering candlelight and the streets of Paris soaked in blood, while Cosette’s wide-eyed innocence is contrasted against the harsh reality of a young man’s body shot dead while clutching a red flag. These subtle signs of masterful moviemaking and visual imagery make the two and a half hour playing time bearable.

Tom Hooper’s last movie The King’s Speech was equally sophisticated visually, and while Les Miserables won’t sweep the main awards, we can look forward to several nominations and some technical wins.

My rating: 4/5 (could use some snipping)

It all just felt magical, but I would not sign for a dancing competition like that. I would not last 5 hours. The suicide scene was spectacular, summing up life so accurately, and the last scene ‘They shoot horses, don’t they?’ I was just amazed every single second.

10/10

Les Miserables

I was not impressed with Hugh Jackman’s singing, but a good adaptation, and the last scene killed me. The rape scene was not compelling and dramatic enough for my taste. I cried when they cut her beautiful hair. Anne did great job, and I am still singing all her singing parts, but oh well.

9/10

The Impossible

After Lincoln, my favorite film this year. When tsunami hit them, this scene left me speechless, the whole film did actually.

10/10

Hyde Park on Hudson

The scene when she realizes he lied to her and he has tons of lovers, oh marvellous, and all the contemplating of all these beautiful landscapes, and both Laura and Bill Murray were spectacular.

8.5/10

Jindabyne

I still have no idea how could they be so happy, fishing next to a dead body. That is both absurd and so sickly intriguing.

8/10

Maze

Laura Linney looks so beautiful in red hair. I loved the film, though the love twist at the end was not necessary, I really think the film would be better if he didn’t get the girl.

8/10

Coming Home

I adore the moment when I realize I have already seen the movie, though I thought I did not. My father must have showed this one to me when I was younger than 12, and that is why I did not remember. But when the scenes passed I realized I  remembered them all, but for some reason could not tell what would happen next. But why am I saying all this, amazing film, and Jane Fonda and Tom Voight were sensational.

Tommy

The beginning was excellent, but what happened after he grew up was just one big misunderstanding. But Ann-Margaret’s performance was glorious.

5/10

The face on the Milk Carton

What a great film. Jill Clayburgh was amazing in it.

8/10

On the Edge of Innocence

I was all depressed yesterday, so I thought, lifetime movies. It is hard to rate them, cause they are all pretty much the same. This one was pretty much bad and the happy ending, I am not keen of it.

5/10

Daughters

I love Holly Marie Combs, that is pretty much it. It is truly saddening why cannot the abused stop giving second chances to the abusers and just get out.

7/10

Confessions of a go-go girl

I am not going to comment on acting here, but I loved the film, it was light and cute, but with the lifetime scandal.

8/10

Why my daughter?

The scene when the mother finds out he is her pimp, yes, nice, and I am still shocked that he killed her.

7/10

Selling innocence

Of course this guy from help centre was the creep, I am disapointe din myself that I have not noticed that sooner, a great film, I wish she would tell the young girl what was going on. I am not surprised she did not tell her mother, that was a lot of money for a few, not nude pictures, and how old was the main character?

7/10

I had seen bits and pieces of Blazing Saddles on one of its many airings on television. I think the movie tended to lose something in that version because, although many of the jokes were there, many were altered or omitted. In comparing this film to my Monty Python viewing earlier, I can say Blazing Saddles wins hands down. None of the jokes are drawn out to the point of exhaustion and many of them still hold up well today.

Best Actor: Honestly, Gene Wilder stole every scene he was in. It was amazing to read that he had to take over the part from another actor after the movie had already started filming.

Best Scene: My favorite, even from the television viewings, is when the residents of the small western town are all gathered to welcome their new sheriff and a man on one of the buildings is trying to warn the townspeople that the sheriff is black. However, he keeps getting cut off by the sound of a church bell.

What Went Wrong?: I really didn’t care for the part at the end where the film left the western themed set and went into the real world. I know this is one of the classic scenes of the movie, but I hated it.

Date of Birth: August 15, 1990 (Age: 22)

Zodiac Sign: Leo

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky

Occupation: Actress

Reasons to love her:
- She’s the third youngest Oscar nominee for the Best Actress in a Leading Role
- One of People magazine’s Most Beautiful People in the World 2011
- Brought her parents as a date to the 70th Annual Golden Globes, where she won Best Actress for Comedy or Musical for her role in “Silver Linings Playbook”
- One of Variety magazine’s Top Ten Actors to Watch 2010
- Plays guitar 

Glamour UK

Memorable Quotes:
“There are actresses who build themselves, and then there are actresses who are built by others. I want to build myself.”

“Not to sound rude, but [acting] is stupid. Everybody’s like, ‘How can you remain with a level head?’ And I’m like, ‘Why would I ever get cocky? I’m not saving anybody’s life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I’m making movies. It’s stupid.’”

“I hate saying, ‘I like exercising.’ I want to punch people who say that in the face. But it’s nice being in shape for a movie, because they basically do it all for you. It’s like, ‘Here’s your trainer. This is what you can eat. … I don’t diet. I do exercise! But I don’t diet. You can’t work when you’re hungry, you know?”

Looks from the Red Carpet

We love her in:
PRABAL GURUNG

Jeniffer Lawrence looks amazing in Prabal Gurung

Best Trait: Sense of humor

She cracked us up on SNL

Photos, quotes and bio via www.eonline.com & www.IMDb.com

alexisjoyvipaccess

The A.N.T. Farm set had a special visitor today, January 18, 2013- the very talented, Oscar award nominee- Quvenzhane Wallis! China Anne McClain shared this super cute picture that brings a big smile to your face of herself and Quvenzhane Wallis giving each other a high five!

Along with this wonderful picture in this article China Anne McClain wrote, “Quvenzhane and I on the ANT Farm set! I had so much fun hanging out with her. She is a beauty and a HUGE talent. Who wants her to win the Oscar she has been nominated for this year?? I know I do!!”

Terrific picture! And the best of luck to the lovely Quvenzhane Wallis on her Oscar award nomination!

Follow Alexisjoyvipaccess on Twitter: @alexisjoyvipacc / “Like” Alexisjoyvipaccess on Facebook: alexisjoyvipaccess / Subscribe to Alexisjoyvipaccess on Youtube: alexisjoyvipaccess / Feel free to leave positive feedback in the comments section below and share this article around as much as you’d like!

The film essentially follows the story of Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave freed by the German dentist/bounty hunter Dr King Schulz (Christoph Waltz). Schulz frees Django because he has need of his help hunting down some of his targets. Along the way Schulz makes Django his partner, training him in the ways of the bounty hunter with the promise that, when the winter passes they will go and free his enslaved wife who Django became separated from as punishment for trying to escape from a former owner. In order to rescue her they must travel to the Candyland plantation owned by Mandingo fighter trader Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

That’s probably about as bare-bones as I can keep the synopsis without giving away too much away so let’s get in to the meat of the proceedings. Django Unchained is Tarantino at his Tarntino-est. That’s probably the best way to sum up this film in a simple, single sentence. Basterds was the film that showed what he could get away with up to a point and Unchained is his next logical evolution. It’s the kind of film that no one else in Hollywood could get away with. In fact, if anyone else had tried to make this film it probably would have resembled something more like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a low budget affair which would have gone largely unwatched and rightfully so. With Tarantino at the helm, this is pure unadulterated awesome. Everything is over the top and it’s beautiful to revel in.

It has everything we’ve come to expect from the director. Gratuitous violence, excessive bad language, extreme nods to exploitation cinema (including an appearance from the actor who originally portrayed Django) and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s all here. Again, these are all elements that could add up to nothing more than a shitty B-movie under the eye of anyone else but amongst all these elements, Tarantino also manages to include an incredibly engaging story that’s beautifully shot and a joy to watch.

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable things about this film is that Tarantino removes one of his most common reference points by the time period this film is set in: cinema. Now obviously the film is still peppered with cinematic references throughout but this time it’s merely through style. There’s no dialogue referencing film as there is in everything else. Hell, even Inglorious Basterds has it in spades. And yes, overall I think this makes Unchained all around a better film with Tarantino really having to focus on the script without having the particular crutch of characters just discussing film and film philosophy for minutes at a time to fall back on.

I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the controversy surrounding the film. Yes, the word ‘nigger’ is used a lot in this film. It’s uttered 110 times to be exact. I can see how some people would find this offensive and it’s probably that style that I mentioned earlier that would make it seem that way. If this were a sedate, “serious” movie like Amistad which gets a sheen of legitimacy because it’s based on an actual historical event and portrays the horrors of the slave trade without the filter of exploitation film making. It’s because Tarantino makes his movies in this particular style that his decision to use the word so many times can be seen as gratuitous as his use of violence. It’s in this film, however, that the bad language does serve a purpose. It’s a representation of what the South was like during that time. Would it be OK to show white people treating black people as nothing more than property but not have them using racial slurs? It’d be unrealistic. Yes, you can be politically correct and all that jazz but what you can’t do is whitewash a politically incorrect past. To do so is to belittle the suffering of the people who lived through those times and to learn absolutely nothing from that shameful past. It also helps from the point of view of the film in making the revenge aspect that much more satisfying.

Hell, this review is getting all over the place a bit now so let’s try and wrap things up a bit succinctly. This might just be Tarantino’s best film yet. The music is, as always, great particularly that opening theme. It looks amazing with the kind of beautiful shots that often make Westerns just incredible to look at. The performances are all pure class. I was going to say that Waltz and Jackson in particular stand out but honestly everyone is on the top of their game with DiCaprio playing the charming yet sadistic slave owner Candie with almost mustache-twirling finesse and Foxx playing Django slightly subdued, yet with dreams of vengeance always simmering beneath the surface, which is a nice counterbalance to everything else that’s going on. (Jackson is great though. It’s nice to see him playing someone other than Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson.) This might also be the funniest film the director has done is a while with the proto-KKK scene in particular standing out. If I do have one criticism, it’s Tarantino’s cameo. His Australian accent is fucking terrible. I mean, really, really bad. But thankfully it’s a small scene.

So yeah, in summation, fuck me this film is great. It’s really fucking great. It absolutely deserves it’s best picture nomination. Go and see it. See it now. Five pints out of five. Fuck me, what a great fucking film. Laterz.

Review of ‘Dr. Strangelove Or, How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb’

‘The hot-line suspense comedy’

Starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Dr. Strangelove is a comedy concerning a group of war-eager military men who plan a nuclear apocalypse. Its influences are wide, one can even see how George A. Romero’s ‘Night of the Living Dead’ is indebted to the film with its satirical darkness. 

The film itself seems to reference Orwell’s 1984 – the coupling of ‘red’ symbolism with atheism and the American desire to purge non-conformism. 

Two psychotic generals – U.S. Air Force Commander Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) and Joint Chief of Staff ‘Buck’ Turgidson (George C. Scott) – trigger a scheme to attack Russia’s targets with nuclear bombs. 

The brains behind the scheme belong to Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), a wheelchair-bound scientist who has unusual ideas about man’s future. 

The President (also Sellers) is helpless to stop the bombers, as is Captain Mandrake (Sellers once again). 

General Ripper is incorrigibly warmongering. 

He can no longer allow the Russians to ‘sap and impurify the American’s precious bodily fluids’. 

He is insane, described by the President as psychotic. 

He notes that the Communists seem to just drink vodka, not water… and that since most of our bodies are made of water… he believes water is the source of life… (Russians: lack of life). 

Whilst I watched Strangelove, I drank my Brita filtered water with relish. 

Filmed in Kubrick’s economic, spare and immaculate style, his direction expertly cuts between the action in the War Room and the events at Burpleson. 

I noticed the absurd way Turgidson’s men quietly knock on Ripper’s door to get the code from him. 

Product placement is almost excused because it is used so wittily. 

However, Kubrick seems to be striving too hard for laughs in the ‘Coin-Cola’ scene. 

The Americans in the film – from the President to Colonel ‘Bat’ Guano – seem typically uninformed.

The President seems unaware of the finer points… or even the general gist of the ‘Code R’ measures he himself approved. 

The President is played as naive. Timid. 

Emphasis on ‘SLAUGHTERED’ by Strangelove. 

Strangelove finally gets his way and has his ‘Nazi Survival of the Fittest Strategy’ voiced. 

Dr. Strangelove himself : Prosthetic nose. Played by Peter Sellers, a clipped, tense, toothy Strangelove. He is a Kraut… 

Can’t tell if some of the scenes where planes are flying are sped up for comic relief or if it was intentional. They are very jerky. 

This technique is called Rear Projection, where a foreground is combined with an existing background that could be filmed beforehand… used mainly in driving scenes that show motion. It is used to create an illusion that the characters are in a place they are not in. 

Conclusion: We will need to live underground for 100 years.

The music played frequently, ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’, was a song written by an Irish -American Patrick Gilmore during the American Civil War that related people’s desires for the safe return of their relatives who were fighting. However, the melody itself dates back many years, ‘Johnny Fill Up The Bowl’. 

Searching for Sugar Man.

This is the awesome story of fans of the almost unknown artist Sixto Rodriguez and their search for what happened to him. This movie is directed by Malik Bandjellou produced by the same people who produced Man On Wire, which I haven’t seen, but I heard it was incredible! So if you’ve seen that, maybe you’re already convinced to go watch this.

I had never heard of Rodriguez (obviously) and I assume everyone who’s reading this hasn’t heard of him either. However, the crazy thing is, when they start playing his music during the documentary you immediately recognise the quality and talent in it. It’s BIZARRE that he was practically unknown. I mean people talk about how nobody liked Bob Dylan because his voice wasn’t great. But after watching this documentary just compare Dylan’s situation and Rodriguez’s situation.

There is no better way to describe this documentary than to say it is tragically beautiful. It’s poignant. The story as regards the South African fans is wonderful, but Rodriguez’s story, while it has its silver lining, was a bit of a tearjerker for me.

It’s a must watch. Just like Inside Job was a must watch 2 years ago. So go out and find out about Rodriguez and then tell your friends and tell them to tell their friends because I think the name Sixto Rodriguez deserves a better place in music history.

Rating: 5/5

via Wikipedia.org

My first experience with praised author Yann Martel was not through reading Life of Pi but his third novel Beatrice and Virgil, a lesser known but still wildly interesting story about a novelist named Henry and a strange taxidermist fan of his.  While I wont go much into this story, I need to touch upon the captivating writing style Martel has mastered; the way he writes forces you to feel that the narrator is speaking directly to you in a way that I have not quite experienced in other reads.  This same connection is established throughout Life of Pi and is, in my opinion, the reason why Martel’s stories are ones you carry with you even after reading is done.

Life of Pi is a spiritual book and sets out to tell a miraculous story.  Pi Patel is an interesting person; as a young boy he is captivated by religion and engrosses himself deeply in not just the Hindu religion, but Christianity and Islam as well.  Pi’s family owns a zoo in Pondicherry, India, but shortly through the book his parents decide to leave Pondicherry to open a zoo in Canada.  They set out on a ship with some of the animals and head west – however, the family is shortly thrown off course when a storm rolls through the ocean, destroying the ship, and leaving Pi stranded on a life boat with a zebra, hyena, orangutang, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Pi is such an interesting, and uplifting, character.  He is incredibly human and therefore we can relate to everything he experiences.  When he is first stranded he seems hopeful, then shortly becomes incredibly depressed.  It is only when himself and Richard Parker establish a relationship that Pi realizes he is not alone and, without Richard Parker, he would have died.

The twist at the end of the novel was definitely unexpected, but it forces you to love Pi for his incredible imagination and need to create a much better story than what had really happened.  I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, however I did find it a struggle to get through and wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to everyone. Life of Pi is long and there is hardly any dialogue, so some readers may find that to be missing.

“Life of Pi” – Directed by Ang Lee

via Movienewz.com

The first thing I must say about this film before I go into the content is the wildly stunning use of CGI.  The visual effects were stunning and unbelievably realistic.  When “Life Of Pi” was nominated in the special effects category at the Oscars I was thrilled and I would hope this movie will take a win.  Richard Parker, as well as all of the other animals and settings, looked lifelike and I didn’t for a second believe it was not a real tiger.  Visually, this film was breathtaking.

In terms of mooks, this movie really did not go wrong.  Yann Martel’s novel left room for a great adaptation, however it could have been miscommunicated since so much of the novel’s content comes from Pi’s thoughts.  I felt that Suraj Sharma, the actor who played Pi, did an incredible job of acting considering the lack of dialogue and interaction with a completely animated acting partner.

There isn’t much that I disliked about this film at all.  I thought it was fantastic and uplifting, just like the book.  I strongly recommend this movie to anyone who is looking for a film about a adventure and I hope that we will see “Life of Pi” as a winner this awards season.

Mook Rating – ★★★★★

The Los Angeles Times – The Envelope Screening Series – Silver Linings Playbook: