The Past is a Foreign Country

[It was hard to find a short clip from this film - I think you can watch the whole movie if you've a mind to on You Tube]

There are ways and ways of making historical dramas. I watched the beautiful Elizabeth last night, the wonderfully put-together bio pic about Elizabeth the First. Elizabeth is powerfully played by Cate Blanchett, with a great performance from Geoffrey Rush too as the evil but effective (don't you hate that) Walsingham. The film is an absolute pleasure to watch - the story compellingly told (though I'm sure historians of the period could perhaps see holes in its accuracy), the characters mesmerisingly involving and the sets just lovely - I wanted to switch off all the electricity and switch to candlelight immediately (though I would have missed the end of the film if I'd done that!). I had seen it before, but it held me from beginning to end.

I ended up watching Elizabeth, you see, because I had decided against another week of blood letting on Underbelly. Overseas readers will not have heard of this show (sorry) but it is something of a televisual phenomenon here - this is the third installment of dramatised local 'true crime' stories. I had had hesitations about it from the beginning, wondering that surely there were more worthy and indeed interesting people to make tv shows about than criminals. But, as usual on matters of popular taste, I was (and am) in the minority. People love true crime and, if you throw in as much sex and violence as you possibly can, they love it even more. I thought I would give Underbelly: Razor a go this time around because it is set in 1920s Sydney (about the time and place my thesis is set) and at first I was in love with the costumes, if nothing else. Lots of beads and silky drop-waisted dresses. But the gratuitous gore and sex scenes clearly just there for the sake of them! It actually got beyond offensive to just downright boring.

Take a leaf from films like Elizabeth!

Crying over you

I like to have a good cry. Don't misunderstand me - I don't like to be unhappy - but I like a good cry when it's not for real - that is, when I'm crying over a sad movie. Why? I'm not sure. It's an opportunity to release emotion, I guess, which sometimes I have a tendency to repress. My mother tells me that even when I was a baby, hearing another baby cry would set me off. So maybe I'm a sympathy crier? But why am I telling you all this? Because today I've picked out three truly blubber-worthy clips - first, The Bridges of Madison County, second Brief Encounter and third, An Affair to Remember. Oh my. Especially Bridges. My DH is embarrassed to watch that one with me. Do you love a good cinema sniffle?

Two for the Road

I am addicted to pop culture. There, I admit it. But not just any old pop culture. Nothing against them, but I am a little non-plussed by the romantic problems of Britney Spears or Posh Spice. What I'm talking about is my very own little version of popular culture. The Feronia-brand special. What interests me. Because pop culture - movies, books, music, tv shows - have really had a big impact over the years on how I see myself and the world. I suppose this is true for many people, really. But as a teenager and a young adult especially, films were far more for me than just films. I entered right into the world they presented to me.

I had "Two for the Road" on VHS video cassette tape (!) and I watched it over and over and over again. I wanted to be Audrey Hepburn (and hey, I know I'm not alone there), even though a rake-thin, finely-boned, straight-haired woman was a long way from where I was at! Everything is so neat in many of these older movies, so precise, so succinct. Even bitter arguments are confined to a scene or two and then left behind. It took me a while to realise that life doesn't often imitate art in that regard! So the world of movies has been at least partially responsible for building up a lot of unattainable expectations about how my own scenes would be played out, but they've also had a significant part in refining (what I think is) my fairly quirky and individualistic kalidescope view of life.

What movies did you grow up with?