movies

I got a bike earlier this month called BOO!!. BOO!! has given me a new sence of freedom in dublin and a much better sence of dublin geography. One of the things I now am able to do is go rent movies. There is a video store called Laser that is kind of like Queen Video, and to get there before would be a huge friggn pain in the arse. For those who know Dublin (mud) the bus system is insane. All buses lead to the centre of the city, so if you want to get across the city at all you have to go into town and get on another bus back out of town. Not only is it crazy time consuming and a pain you also have to pay a full fare again. grrrr BUT now I can bike there in 15 mins or less.

A few nights ago I got "Rosmaries Baby", this is one of those movies that I was embrassed to say I hadn't seen yet. People just expected me to have already seen it. I had seen bits and parts but never from start to finish. Especially after my stepford wives obsession it was finally time to see this film. And my responce. well it is part of my top ten I think. It was great, deffinately one of the best films I have seen in a long time. One of those horror movies that mess with you head and don't go for the cheap trills. Except you have to wonder about the last sceen when the old women sticks out her tongue at Mia Farrow and the random japenese tourist. It was as if we suddenly were watching the directors cut. ready and I looked at each other giggling wondering if that really just happened. I'm sure most people already know the story line and I know I have a habit of telling too much of a movie so I will stop here, but if you are like me and enjoy these kinds of films GO RENT IT!!!

I was so excited about my new found freedom of the bike and movies that the next day after returning the film and reading in a random coffee shop for hours I went back to laser to get another film. Ok I know I said it is like Queen Video but what a really mean is that it is realitivley better and more artsy adn alternative then the mainstream video store but that does not mean that it has what you are looking for. I'm sure Blockbuster has everything that this one has. well maybe not, there is a gay film section and I don't think blockbuster has that. But the problem is I couldn't find anything that I wanted to watch, since I only have the DVD player on my computer my choices were even more limited.

I ended up renting alice in wonderland. The BBC black and white version. I know that the movie is bizarre to begin with but this verson really cuts the cake. First of all they removed all of the animal characters, the cards and much of the vision bizareness of the movie. It was a strange combination of realism in the absurd. It was slow paced and alice was this straight faced straight talking very calm girl. She never looked at anyone just stared into space as she engaged in diaglogue with these odd acting characters. The way it was done was very clear that this was not part of her engaging reality - her lack of eye contact and the lack of emotion and straight forwardness was in such contrast with everything that was happening around her. I can't say that I enjoyed it, I suppose I'm part of the video game generation where I want colour, action, humour something to grab me. I was ready to go on this trip with alice but she refused to have fun in her trip adn really I don't think I will smoke with her again ;)

I just looked up a review for this version and it seems I'm not allone in my interpretation of this film

Unfortunately, the film itself is a letdown. In the accompanying audio commentary, Jonathan Miller sets out his conception of this production. He attempted to make a film that stayed true to Carroll's dialogue (he discouraged any ad-libbing from the cast, with a couple of exceptions). He set the action during the Victorian era of the book's publication (the Queen of Hearts character is based on Queen Victoria). He didn't want his famous actors hidden behind animal-heads or playing-card costumes, so they are all dressed as Victorian men and women. In order to cast Alice, he placed a newspaper ad, and received hundreds of pictures of perky little girls. Only one girl's picture perfectly fit his conception of Alice as a somber, old-fashioned, stone-faced Victorian girl, so 11-year-old Anne-Marie Mallik was hired (this will sound odd, but her face reminds me of the half-naked pubescent girl from Blind Faith's 1969 record album). Though the BBC may have thought it was paying for a children's production, the film that resulted is geared more towards adults (it's simply too boring for most children—and many grown-ups, I fear).

That's not to say that the film has no positive qualities. It has the creepy, perverse, hyperreal atmosphere of a dream. The deep-focus, black and white photography is excellent, as is Ravi Shankar's sitar music (which Miller chose because it reminded him of the droning quality of insects on a hot summer's day). In fact, the film looks and sounds like an un-psychedelic, '60s-era head-trip. What little comedy there is relies more on Lewis Carroll's illogical riddles and puns than on character or shtick. I enjoyed the interchanges between Gielgud's Mock Turtle and Muggeridge's Gryphon, Peter Cook's Mad Hatter, and Leo McKern's drag-Duchess, but Peter Sellers is mostly wasted as the King.