Boatmen

They catch little fish here using nets. Traffic zoom past on a motorway 10 yards away.

This wide horizontal format is increasingly interesting to me: the way the eye becomes obliged to read horizontally across the image (in this case, Islamic style from right to left). I think i shall play with this more: makes me think of Ivon Hitchens somewhat (an artist whose work I always found somewhat facile).

Pleasantvile (1998): review- 9/10

A boy and his sister are magically transported from the 1990s into a TV soap from 1958 where they question the orthodoxies of the time.

An intelligent film that challenges sweetly, with excellent acting and beautiful art direction.

One From the Heart (1982): review- 1/10

Unhappy suburbanites make for a rudderless film with weak, uninteresting characters, whose meagre plot is suffocated by the set design.

Not even Tom Waits's music or Nastassja Kinksi in suspenders can save it.

All the Pretty Horses (2000): review- 3/10

Two Texan youths ride to Mexico to seek work. On the way they are joined by a third, a fugitive.

They work on a horse ranch: one of the Texans makes the mistake of falling for the wealthy ranch-owner's daughter, played by tiresome Penelope pucker-lips Cruz.

If the film has central themes, they are "friendship" or "foreignness": however, it is too blandly directed to excite.

In Bruges (2008): review- 7/10

Two Irish contract killers are sent to Bruges, where they stay in a hotel, awaiting further instructions from their chief

The film begins as a comic double act- later more characters become involved: a love interest, a dwarf and other hoodlums.

It is often very funny: there are appropriately weird "Belgian" elements and is often beautifully shot.

However, the film suffers from an awkwardness of tempo, suffering from occasional languors.

Land and Freedom (1995): review- 3/10

A girl discovers letters and clippings among the posessions of her recently deceased grandfather. These tell the story of his involvement, as a young communist, with the fight against Fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War and his increasing sense of disillusion.

At the heart of the film is a lengthy political debate among villagers and combatants: this is little more than an exchange of slogans. Indeed, the whole film suffers from naivity and fails to examine the issues behind the Spanish Civil War or to show why a young working-class Liverpudlian with no Spanish or combat experience would take the extraordinary step of going to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

As so often in Loach films, the acting is often weak, and the film fails as a simple character study.

The Mysterious Cat

*

The Mysterious Cat

It's been a poor few days creatively: I've been too tired, mainly from work, to make anything much. So I've been watching films, writing little reviews and cogitating.

I don't feel unhappy about this: it's important to "recharge batteries". The difficulty is in knowing when they really need recharging, and when one is simply being lazy. This cat probably knows the difference: cats seem to know everything.