I love the genre of film loosely termed ‘American Indie’ From Mumblecore to
Rom Com these low budget, dialogue driven films regularly portray the lives of slightly lost 30 something creative. These remind me of my life and those of many I know, people not sure what they want in life but sure they don’t want an office job and so for now have social jobs in bars, cafés and cinemas; working on something creative on the side and never fully committing to a future goal or the idea of being a grown up. People who are really decent and intelligent but just a little lost. This is me at 25. Read More »
Category Archives: Review
I’m in the process of selling my house and everything I own, the hundreds of 
meaningless possessions, including my DVD collection of circa 500 titles. The number of items I own which actually have any emotional attachment are very few and of all my DVD’s I have narrowed it down to ten which I have the desire to watch numerous times again for various nostalgic reasons rather than them being films I like based purely on quality, hence there being no foreign language films. These are the shortlisted films, with a reason, in no particular order.
After watching both of these films in the space of a few days there seemed some definite links for compare and contrast. Neither amazed me but both were worth my time and consideration.
As a standard working to middle class person I find it hard to associate with the ‘hotel living’ celebrity lifestyle in Somewhere and couldn’t help myself seeing it as a pretentious rip off of Californication, which, with a little more humour and less lingering shots it would undoubtedly be. However, I do realise that due to Coppola’s upbringing this is probably what she believes everyday life to be like…. Read More »
When that time of year arrives when all the highly polished Academy Award 
hopefuls are released onto the big screen one feels the need to compare them and make up one’s own decision on the deserved winner.
Judging by media speculation, nominations and similar award ceremonies all heads are looking towards The King’s Speech and The Social Network. I will be skipping over The Social Network a bit in this article as it was seen months ago and isn’t particularly fresh in my mind. I remember it being very enjoyable, having a good score and feeling like the sort of business drama that may well win awards. Classical in many ways but taking on a modern issue and making many people aware of a phenomenon they may well have been oblivious to beforehand.
Jonas Cuaron’s debut Writer/Director offering to the big screen is both sweet
and unique. After taking photographs of every aspect of life for a year Cuaron edited them all together and provided a narrative voiced over the pictures. After getting used to this style it really works and thinking back to it it feels like a standard 24 frames a second. Some research has been done as to whether our memory works in moving images or in stills and I believe this film is addressing that concept.
Another subject that is tackled within the feature, in a Linklater-esque encounter in a coffee shop is the relevance of photography to art and vise versa. Read More »
