films

Usually, when something is popular, it drops on my list of preference (should it have made it’s way there in the first place). Harry Potter is one such thing. The fact that they are kids films does not help either.

Twice, at uncommon times when I was ‘zapping around’ on TV, I ran into a Harry Potter scene in which the kids were repotting Mandragoras. When you know that a Mandragora is an alchemical symbol for a plant that is also a little man (homunculus), that scene is pretty funny. For many years I was mildly curious if more such elements have found their way into the films, scenes in with ‘inside jokes’.

Many of the films that I see come from a rental company. I have a subscription for four films per month. Usually this is enough, but I try to have some ‘extra’ films just in case I run out of rentals. This can be anything from the buying of films that I already know but never bought, to the buying of cheap, second hand films that I do away with after watching. Harry Potter falls in the latter category.

By now, I have seen four Potter films. “The Philosopher’s Stone” (2001) was alright. “The Chamber of Secrets” (2002) is the film with the Mandragora scene and it is alright too. I am less enthusiastic about “The Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004) and “The Goblet of Fire” (2005). So little even, that I wonder if I feel like watching the other four ‘episodes’.

It is not like the films are terribly boring, but they are not very interesting either. The kids fall into some forced adventure which are mostly a step-up for spectacle and a little humor. I see little ‘inside jokes’ or good atmosphere. All too popular for my liking I guess.

I seldom watch a film as soon as it comes out. In 2017 I saw five films of the same year: Baby Driver, The Last Jedi, Ghost In The Shell, The Beguiled and Trainspotting 2. It would be a bit odd to make a top-list of these few titles. When I add series, I can mention Twin Peaks 3 and American Gods 1. These are both better than all of the mentioned films.

I actually rated the films fairly highly. Baby Driver, Ghost and T2 all got four out of five stars, but I remember liking the first part of T2, but that it was going down after. I hardly remember Ghost In The Shell and Baby Driver I saw so recently that that is not really fair.

So what about films that I saw in 2017? The film I have best recollections of is Midnight Special (2016, 4 stars), but I do wonder why I gave The Jacket only three stars.

It does not happen to me often that I pick a film that I forgot I saw. “Somewhere” did not make a whole lot of impression, apparently it neither did the first time I saw it. A film without a story. We just see a few days of the life of a famous actor screwing around and spending time with his daughter. Not boring, but somewhat unimpressionable.

Last weekend I saw both Wicker Man films, the 1973 original and the 2006 remake and I just see that I ‘blogged’ about these films before.Read More »Wicker weekend

Last weekend I have rewatched both “Drive” (2011) and “Only God Forgives” (2013). The films are very similar, yet very different. Both have Ryan Gosling as poker-faced main character. In both films Goslings character is involved in illegal activities, but does not really seem to want to. Of course, both films are slow and minimalistic. Read More »Nicholas Winding weekend

A “blog” with one entry every two years, that is quite cool, is it not?

It has been a couple of years since I added “blogs” to the different sections so I could share information other than reviews. Looking back, I am not entirely sure what kind of information I had in mind. I could tell you about the decline in film quality I have experienced for many years. There are hardly no new films that I really need to see. I look forward to the new Twin Peaks series which I hope will be better than the newest X-Files. I could tell you how old fashioned I am and that I have a subscription to a DVD-by-mail-order. This for the simple reason that no VoD (video on demand) provider offers much that I want to see and all the il-/half-/semi-legal ways bring too much fuss for me. Or tell you about the page in which I see series (two episodes per week max). How interesting is all that?

Also, the nights on which I have the time to watch films seem to deminish as well. But when I do see a film that I had not reviewed yet, I will keep writing a little bit about that. Hopefully there are people that like these scribblings.

During two airplaneflights I have killed some time watching to fantasy spectacles. First the lauded “Avatar”, second the first “Hobbit”. I did not expect “Avatar” to be some sort of “Matrix”, but the famous blue characters inhabit some sort of ‘inbetweenworld’ that men can only come using some sort of machine. The film is an ‘ecological awareness’ film and I hope that all the people who saw the film picked up something of the message.
The “Hobbit” then seems to have been given in by all the people who did not find the “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy spectactular enough. Over-the-top action, tons of special effects and a high speed; yep, LOTR in overdrive. I personally prefer the worked out story of the earlier trilogy.
Anyway, on corny earphones in a noisy plane it is close to impossible to follow dialogues, so I undoubtely missed so much from the films that I decided not to really review then. I do not think I will watch either again on my couch if you are curious about that.

This comment was on such a strange place, that I almost spammed it. When I checked what this was about, I found a film with Genesis P-Orridge. The director apparently uploaded his 2006 short to Youtube for your entertainment. Check it out if you are interested.Read More »Pandrogeny Manifesto on Youtube

Now that I think of it, we also watched the first series of the lauded series “Breaking Bad“. The series have a nice joke here and there, but also here the first series did not make me want to watch the second. Many people say that the series develops, but frankly, when you want people to watch your series, the first have to be very good, right? I guess I missed that part.

We usually spend one evening a week watching series. Not on TV though, I am terrible with following things on TV, I just want to watch something when I want to watch it. Also I am no fond of all these 7+ season series and consequentally not of still running series. Also I find little of interest actually.Read More »Series