It’s tough to watch at times, but ultimately I’m glad that I watched it. Hard Candy is built around terrific and ambiguous performances by Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson. The film is very manipulative which destabilizes our emotions and sympathy as the story unfolds.
It begins in a chat room with a screen filled only with text as some flirting happens and a meeting is arranged. Things become much more harrowing from that point on as a man in his 30s meets a girl who is 14. Things do not go well for him after that point in a story that plays on our fears and expectations in surprising ways.
It may be too intense for some people and the entire film often stays on very difficult edge as it spins us around and horrifies us. It’s definitely a film that will provoke discussion and many parts of the film are open to interpretation.

We felt sad. It wasn’t the movie of our dreams. It wasn’t that total film we carried inside ourselves. That film we have liked to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, the film we wanted to live.

With Masculin Féminin Godard follows the template of many of his later films in mixing documentary, stylized dialogue and acting, humour, philosophy, cinema, music, imagery, etc, etc, etc. together to create something that at first seems a bit confusing, but somehow starts to make more sense as it goes. Ultimately it results in some powerful combinations and meditations about youth, politics and life. At the core of Masculin Féminin is the division and fascination between politics and the personal, between men and women, between popular and high culture, and between movies and cinema.
Godard’s films don’t exist outside of a cinematic context and while there is an intellectual framework, it still works within a world of love for cinema that I share. Fun, thoughtful, occasionally frustrating, and ultimately rewarding (as most films by Godard are).

Henry Darger created a massive 15,000 page novel along with huge paintings and incredible details for a world where sisters battled evil to free child slaves. It wasn’t seen or discovered until after he died. Jessica Yu creates a film that interweaves the distinctive drawings with animation and excerpts from Darger’s diaries and interviews with his neighbours to paint a fascinating portrait of a man who was a janitor by day and a secret artist at night.

The opening credits of Spider-Man 3 conveniently feature images of the main actors as well as the main plot points of the first two films to remind us of the context of the film that we’re watching. It’s a neat way to set up the film and prepare us for what we’re about to see. Overall it’s quite enjoyable with quite a clever balance between the big and loud special effects and some good scenes with solid acting between the characters. What distinguishes Sam Raimi from many other directors is that he never seems to lose site of the characters, which is what we really should be interested in with any film.
I liked the characters and the situations, was impressed with the action and I got sucked into the story. We follow Peter Parker as he goes from the top to the bottom and realizes what is important. Who wouldn’t listen to Aunt May or fall in love with Mary Jane? The morality is simple and the film is fun and it’s a very nice way to kick off the summer movie season.

The title of Steven Soderbergh’s semi-experimental Bubble means a few different things to me. I think of a bubble that forms and how it doesn’t last. It is fragile and beautiful and somehow Soderbergh captures that in the ordinary details of life.
Beautifully photographed on HD by Soderbergh under his pseudonym Peter Andrews, it features non-professional actors telling a story with details from their own lives, in their own town. It’s hard to describe, but is a fascinating glimpse of of ordinary life which moves from the ordinary to the extraordinary. The images and sound are crisp and precise, as is the editing.
It may not be for everyone, but it is a fairly unique film and it almost doesn’t seem possible for it to have worked so well. It has a similar look and feeling to Soderbergh’s Solaris, but in a radically different context. I think that it is a film that rewards patience and attention.

One of the pleasures of genre films is seeing filmmakers work within a set of rules and play with conventions. The usual strategy for a parody is to choose a film or set of films and then make fun of the absurdity of the situation. With Hot Fuzz the approach could be to take a few cop / action films and then show the absurdity of the situations, but the team of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg (along with actor Nick Frost) do a lot more.
I first became a fan of the team when by accident a few years ago I caught the series Spaced which briefly aired on a channel in Canada and then seemed to disappear. Luckily I was able to find out more about the series from the fan web site. Spaced is a unique sitcom that has usual sitcom conventions, but is filled with elaborate references to science fiction films, video games and other elements of popular culture. I instantly loved it have been a fan ever since.
Following up Shaun of the Dead with Hot Fuzz had me excited as with the earlier film they created a wonderful, but respectful reworking of the zombie film that embraced and poked fun at the conventions of the genre. In Hot Fuzz they build the film around characters and situations that work within the rules of the genre while having fun with them. What is great about the film is that it doesn’t ever become patronizing or insult the intelligence of the audience. The jokes grow out of the plot and characters and there are some wonderful surprises and action sequences. Beautifully structured and never straying outside the well-defined lines of the cop movie, it manages to lovingly embrace the genre while having fun with it. It’s solid, intelligent and funny.

I heard the song “God Knows” by El Perro del Mar and was intrigued. It sounded like something from the Phil Spector wall of sound days. Then I found out that El Perro del Mar consists of Sarah Assbring (from Gothenburg, Sweden) playing the instruments, writing the music and lyrics as well as singing. With a sound like a huge band, but with an almost child-like voice, it’s intriguing and catchy. Oddly enough it’s the second artist that I’ve found recently from Gothenburg.

You make me want to measure stars in the backyard with a calculator and a ruler, baby.

With three women with beautiful voices and three keyboards, The Bird of Music by Au Revoir Simone is a great album that I’m enjoying a lot. With harmonies and complex arrangements it’s music with lyrics that aren’t always happy, but the music and voices always cheer me up.

I stumbled upon the latest release by Harvey Danger through a story about them releasing their new album for free on the Internet. I went to their site, downloaded the track and listened and loved it. So I sent a contribution to them via PayPal. It’s the way that things should be. It would have been a lot harder to find them if they didn’t have their site and I love the leap of faith in releasing tracks that way as well as the implicit faith in humanity within the act.
It’s solid indie rock that is catchy and it has been rotating through my iPod on a regular basis. Great music that is easily available, what a great idea.

It begins with a picnic that is interrupted by a balloon coming to land and a rescue attempt. The peaceful moment is interrupted and everything changes. Daniel Craig and Samantha Morton give solid performances as Craig’s character is haunted by the decisions that he has made and a fellow rescuer who begins following him. The film is all about the nature love or lack of love and how the assumptions that we make change our relationships and how we feel.
It’s a haunting film that is emotional and intellectual with some thriller elements thrown in as well. A fascinating and disturbing look at what love does to us.