Shaken, not stirred …

Photo from Wikimedia

Photo from Wikimedia

One of the realxing activities I have involved myself into this summer is (re)watching all the Bond movies in chronological order, and in the original version. I know this won’t make us climb to the highest tops of intellectual achievement, but we, that’s me and my family, are enjoying it tremendously.

One of the most distintinctive features in James Bond movies are the main titles, most of them in my opinion, jewels of contemporary design. Maurice Binder designed fourteen of them and was also the creator of the gun barrel sequence. He died in 1991, and was succeeded by Daniel Kleinman.

Dr No, the first James Bond film starring Sean Connery as the British secret service agent, was released in 1962, since then the character has been reinterpreted and reinvented by George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig. My favourite Bonds were Moore, Brosnan and Connery in this order. Dalton and Craig might be more believable but are also far less fun!

This year is the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth and to celebrate it the Times online has done a special, James Bond and Ian Fleming, packed with articles, reviews, photos and an interactive timeline.

Next November the new Bond film ‘Quantum of Solace’ will be released, I certainly won’t miss it!

Once at Cajastur


The story is simple, fresh and real. It is about a love that couldn’t be, but above all it is about hope, about hoping against all hope that your dreams will come true and the music is brilliant!

And we don’t know weather Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová dreamt of getting an Oscar but they have just won the Academy Award to best original song with “Falling Slowly”. Congratulations!

Thank you Ana for suggesting this great “school trip”!

Once

This is the Irish film Ana told us about:


http://www.cajastur.es/osyc/acultural/actividades/actividad1326.html (it is about the film)
http://www.cajastur.es/osyc/acultural/ciclos/ciclo81.html

The film is next Monday at 8 in Cajastur, Mieres, it is free until the place is full and it is about 90 minutes long. We can discuss the possibility of going tomorrow.

Titanic

Titanic

One of the best films along these years was Titanic which has won eleven awards including Best film. This masterpiece was interpreted by many famous actors and it was written and directed by James Cameron.

Jack is just a poor boy who has won the ticket for the Titanic in a game of poker and Rose travels in the ship with her mother and her fiancé in business class. Rose and Jack meet when she is trying to commit suicide but Jack doesn’t let her go.
Something very special begins to grow between them although Rose’s mother doesn’t approve of their love. Suddenly, the captain of the ship receives a message warning him about the presence of an iceberg but he turns a deaf ear to it and steers the ship straight on. Unavoidably, they crash and the magnificent and unsinkable boat starts to go down. Rose, instead of getting on a lifeboat, goes to look for Jack who had been arrested before for no reason.

The main characters of the film are starred by Kate Winslet in the role of Rose and Leonardo Di Caprio playing the main character Jack Dawson. Another outstanding role, the centenarian Rose, is played by Gloria Stuart. From my point of view, the film is incredibly well-done and the special effects are stunning. Moreover, the actors play their roles in a fantastic way. The plot is so sensitive and many aspects are treated in such a sweet way that many tears will be shed.

This film was thought for all kind of people and I think it has caused such an impact because it is based on a real story. I recommend you to watch it because it is surely one of the best films in history.

Laws of Attraction

Laws of Attraction

“Laws of attraction” is based on a current romantic comedy, with a fairly amusing plot, which mixes competition but also lots of love.
Set in New York, “Laws of attraction” tells the story of Audrey Woods and Daniel Rafferty, two high-powered divorce attorneys who will fight in court; However something more than business will come up between them.

The role of Audrey is played by Julianne Moore. She is impeccably dressed and formal and always practises law strictly by the book. Her confidant is Sara, her mother, who is most of the time obsessed with cosmetic surgery and always gives her daughter pieces of advice on how to deal with men. Pierce Brosnan (Mr. Rafferty) gives a superb performance of a clever, scruffy man who often uses underhand tactics and always manages to win. But the two of them have something in common – they have both the best career and none of them has never lost a case.

Soon, they have to face each other in court, trying to defend opposite sides of a public divorce between a crazy rock star and a fashion designer. The case is focused on an Irish castle that the two clients want for themselves. Audrey and Daniel need to travel to Ireland to get some evidence. Once there, Woods and Rafferty find themselves at a romantic Irish festival. After a night full of fun and drinks, they wake up the next morning as husband and wife. They must return to New York to go on with the case and to start a new way of life as a married couple, in which they don’t know what love is… Could they finally discover it…?
Well directed by Peter Howitt, he has opened an interesting discussion between business and love. The good performance of the main actors and cast has made this film entertaining, romantic and funny.

I found the plot rather enjoyable and I can thoroughly recommend it to people who like beautiful stories about love.

The Terminal

The Terminal

It can be surprising, but The Terminal (2004) is not just another blockbuster by the American director Steven Spielberg. Starred by Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones, the film is based on the true life story of Merhan Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who has been living at Charles de Gaulle airport (Paris) since 1988.

The plot centres on the story of Victor Navorski (Tom Hanks), who is a citizen from the fictional East European country of Krakozhia. Mr. Navorski lands at JFK airport of New York and he tries to go through passport control. However, the immigration authorities do not allow him to leave the airport because a civil war has started in Krakozhia in the course of his flight. Thus, the USA does not recognize the new government of his country and the validity of his visa. This is the reason why Mr. Navorski has to live in the airport.

The film is a fable that shows how bureaucracy can make people’s lives more difficult. It also shows other aspects of life, combining drama, romance and comedy. It can make you cry and, five minutes later, laugh.

In my opinion, The Terminal is an amusing and captivating film. It is true that the plot is not original since there is a previous film that tells the story of Merhan Nasseri. However, it seems completely different from most other films. I would like to highlight the excellent performance of Tom Hanks. My only reservation about this film is the ending. From my point of view, the ending is disappointing because there is not a conclusion or a moral. Despite this, it’s well worth seeing and I highly recommend it.

Aeon Flux

Aeon Flux

Based on a MTV animated series “Aeon Flux” is a futuristic thriller by Indian director Karyn Kusama
Set in the distant future, eight generations after 99% of the world’s population has been destroyed by a virus; the remaining humans live in what appears to be an enclosed Utopian society.
A band of rebels called Monicans are unhappy with the ruling Goodchild regime, so called for the man who developed the vaccine that kept their ancestors alive during the plague. They plan to unseat the current administration through assassination. A highly trained killer named Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) is being sent into a heavily guarded complex where the society’s leader Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas) is planning a speech. When her opportunity arises, she hesitates. Something she doesn’t quite understand is troubling her and she decides, instead of killing Goodchild, to work with him to figure out what it is.
Aeon Flux has a strong cast, including Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand, and Oscar nominees Sophie Okonedo and Pete Postlethwaite. Despite that, there isn’t a good performance to be found. They’re doing the minimum necessary to collect their pay checks. Theron apparently put all of her efforts into doing her own stunts (she was seriously injured during the filming), leaving little room for emotions and other sensations.

In my opinion although Ms. Theron, in her tight-fitting wardrobe, does her best to distract the viewer from remembering just how many holes there are in the script, after 20 minutes watching the film you will discover that woman isn’t good for you and your health….Sometimes the book is better than the movie. Other times, the cartoon is better than the movie. Whatever format “Aeon Flux” was previously in – books, cartoons, video games– they had to be better than this movie.

Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain

A young woman (Nicole Kidman) and his father leave their city and go to Cold Mountain, a small village in North Carolina, where her life changes dramatically.

Based on Charles Frazier’s novel, the film is directed by Anthony Minghella, who is well known by his third film, The English Patient, which earned him 7 Oscars, including Best Film and Best Director. Most parts of the film were shot in Romania and only a few scenes in Virgina the USA with spectacular landscapes, as for instance the snow landscapes.

Ada Monroe, (Nicole Kidman) and his father start a new life in Cold Mountain where she meets Inman (Jude Law) and they fall in love very quickly. But the Civil War breaks up and Inman is made to enlist and go to fight. Then Ada promises that she will wait for him. Inman is wounded and he decides to desert and return with his love, in a hard journey escaping from the local militia. Ada´s father dies and she meets Ruby Thewes (Renée Zellweger) who helps her with the farm.
When finally they meet again they have changed a lot but they are still in love.

This is a very long film but it is quite entertaining, with an unexpected end. In this film we can see the horrors of war, the cruelty of the people but of course we can also see the triumph of love.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean

This movie directed by Gore Verbinski is an attempt to put long-forgotten pirate movies back on the spotlight. “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”, is the first movie of a trilogy.
After a pirates attack, Will Turner is rescued by the Governor’s ship. The Governor’s daughter, Elizabeth Swann, had to take care him, and she found a pirate’s necklace round his neck so she hid it to protect him. The years went by, and one day the Black Pearl attacked Port Royal looking for the necklace and kidnapped Elizabeth because they thought she was Tim Turner’s daughter. Will, who had fallen in love with her, with the famous Captain Jack Sparrow, who was going to be hanged, are persecuted by the Royal Navy while they were trying to rescue her.
The role of Jack Sparrow is played by Johnny Depp and he gives an excellent performance that makes the movie alive with humour. This new interpretation of a pirate movie revives the genre with magnific special effects, and marvellous landscapes.
Everyone should watch so as not to feel left out because everybody will be talking about it for years.

Meet the Fockers: A Clash Of Cultures

Meet the Fockers

Meet the Fockers is a comedy directed by Jay Roach in 2004. It is the sequel of another film called Meet the Parents, where the happy couple, meet Pam’s parents creating a lot a funny situations. This film has a very good cast with very well-known actors like Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand or Ben Stiller.

Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo) are still planning their future engagement and in this film they are going to meet Greg’s parents, an atypical couple who live in Florida. Greg’s mother, Roz (Barbra Streisand), is a sexual therapist, while his father, Bernie (Dustin Hoffman), is a househusband who gave up working as a lawyer when Greg was born.

Pam’s family are going to visit them there in a caravan and they will take their cat with them, what will be a problem because the Focker family own a sex obsessed dog. Because of those animals they will live very funny situations. Those families are very different and that is why they will have such quantity of problems. The Focker family is very proud of their son, and they have always given him a lot of love and they even have built a wall for Greg’s trophies. However, the Byrne family, especially Jack (Robert De Niro), think that the best way to bring up a child is by talking to him as if he were an adult and being hard and severe.

To sum up, I have to say that I have enjoyed this film very much because it is a very funny comedy which has made me laugh a lot. This film is in my opinion a bit better than the first and I will recommend it to everybody who wants to a have a good time watching a good comedy.

« Previous Entries