The Favourite - A 2018 Film Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos- Starring Emma Stone, Olivia Coleman and Rachel Weisz
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
The Favourite - A 2018 Film Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos- Starring Emma Stone, Olivia Coleman and Rachel Weisz
The Favourite - A 2018 Film Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos- Starring Emma Stone, Olivia Coleman and Rachel Weisz
Monday, March 18, 2024
"Fire Starter" - A Short Story by Alan McCormick - 2022 - An Irish Short Story Month XIII Work
Irish Short Story Month XIII
Friday, March 15, 2024
"The Big River" - A Short Story by Desmond Hogan - 2017 - An Irish Short Story Month XIii Post
Irish Short Story Month XI
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Poor Things - A 2023 Film Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos - Starring Emma Stone (winner 2024 Academy Award for Best Actress), William Defoe and Mark Ruffalo
Poor Things - A 2023 Film Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos - Starring Emma Stone (winner 2024 Academy Award for Best Actress), William Defoe and Mark Ruffalo
Academy Award 2024 - Best Actress in Leading Role
Academy Award 2024 - Best Production Design
Academy Award 2024 - Best Costume Design
Academy Award 2024 - Best Makeup and Hair Styling
I totally love Poor Things. It is incredibly beautiful with a masterful use of colour. Emna Stone is truly magical as Bella Baxter. Poor Things is Hilarious, Magical, Sensuous, Sexuality Enthalling and Scary, Cinema as High Art.
The story follows Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman in Victorian London who is brought back to life via brain transplant by an eccentric scientist, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Dafoe). She is eager to learn about the world and soon finds herself on an adventure with a roguish lawyer named Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo).
The movie has settings in London, looking very Gothic Horror Movies style in Black and White, in Paris, Lisbon, Alexandria and abroad a ship. I especially liked how Bella became an avid reader of philosophy mixed in with some furious jumping.
With a bit of tounge in cheek Poor Thing is kind of a menage of Frankenstein, My Fair Lady, A Beautiful Mind and Debbie Does Dallas.
Bella Baxter, not unlike the Buddha, leaves her safe environment to discover the real world. Poor Things, as in Don Quixote, depicts an innocent in a corrupt world. Going back to the start of Western Literature, Bella would have enjoyed furious jumping with Gilgamesh, probably exhausting him, and cruising with Odysseus.
Mel Ulm
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
"Fictive Dreams" - A Short Story by Brian Kirk - August 2017. Iish Short Story Month XIII
Irish Short Story Month - XIII
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
"Words" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - Included in The Collected Stories of Carol Shields- 2004
This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.
The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.
Buriedinprint.com
"Words", four pages, is the tenth story by Carol Shields I have so far read,
"Words" is a fascinating story about global warming seen through a marriage that originated in a conference, spanning ten years. They met as delegates to a global conference.
"WHEN THE WORLD FIRST STARTED HEATING UP, an international conference was held in Rome to discuss ways of dealing with the situation. Ian’s small northern country—small in terms of population, that is, not in size—sent him to the meetings as a junior observer, and it was there he met Isobel, who was representing her country as full-fledged delegate....They played truant, missing half the study sessions, the two of them lingering instead over tall, cool drinks in the café they found...The second International Conference was held ten years later. The situation had become grave. One could use the word crisis and not be embarrassed. Ian—by then married to Isobel, who was at home with the children—attended every session, and he listened attentively to the position papers of various physicists, engineers, geographers and linguists from all parts of the world. It was a solemn but distinguished assembly; many eminent men and women took their places at the lectern, including the spidery old Scottish demographer who years earlier had made the first correlation between substrata temperatures and highly verbalized societies. In every case, these speakers presented their concerns with admirable brevity, each word weighted and frugally chosen, and not one of them exceeded the two-minute time limitation. For by now no one really doubted that it was the extravagance and proliferation of language that had caused the temperature of the earth’s crust to rise, and in places—California, Japan, London—to crack open"
The story forces through the theories advanced to ponder or look for a meaningful conclusion as the climate crisis becomes worse every month..
The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography
https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html
Monday, March 11, 2024
The Zone of Interest - Directed by Jonathan Glazer - Starring Christian Friedel as Rudolf Höss -'Sandra Hüller as Hedwig Höss - 2024 Academy Award Winner for Best International Picture and Best Sound Design
The Zone of Interest - Directed by Jonathan Glazer - Starring Christian Friedel as Rudolf Höss -'Sandra Hüller as Hedwig Höss - 2024 Academy Award Winner for Best International Picture and Best Sound Design
One Hour 46 Minutes
Available for Purchase on YouTube and Amazon Prime
Among the numerous print reviews of The Zone of Interest I found that of the Los Angeles Times particularly perceptive.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-12-14/the-zone-of-interest-review-jonathan-glazer-drama-auschwitz-holocaust-wwii
The film focuses on the Hosses as they strive to build a dream life for their family in a house in zone of interest next to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. A wall separates their property from the camp.They have five children. Hoss is a dedicated father, reading stories to his children.
When the mother of Mrs Hoss visits she tells her daughter she has done very well. They have a beautiful garden, the household staff are a mixture of prisoners and Poles. Hoss seems to be a Nazi for career purposes more than ideology,
We never see directly the horrors of Auschwitz but there are sounds of gun shots and screams. The smoke from the ovens is always visible and the ashes of the murdered get into everything.
. The Zone of Interest premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2023 to acclaim, winning both the Grand Prix and FIPRESCI Prize, and was named one of the top-five international films of 2023 by the National Board of Review. It won three BAFTAs (including Film not in the English Language), two Academy Awards (Best International Feature and Best Sound), and three Golden Globe Awards.
In his acceptance speech at the Oscars the director Jonathan Glazer he hoped the film would make people think about the walls the set up to allow us to ignore the Middle East War.
The Zone of Interest is High Art. Along with Schindler's List and The Pianist it is essential viewing