Greetings to whoever held out hope on checking this blog again! It's Zatarra again, posting on a whim based on a new obsession of mine and the memory of this feeble little blog that hasn't been touched since June, with my attempt on creating a "Cinemablographer" series of movie reviews. Which might still happen. ...Eventually.
Anyway, I recently stumbled upon the London-based indie-folk group, Mumford & Sons. And, oh my God. I downloaded every song I could find; all of their album, Sigh No More, and a few more, I think. The band consists of four men who all play a multitude of instruments and alternate on various songs within the album. Hints of keyboard, mandolin, accordion, banjo, upright bass, guitar and so on shine through to various degrees depending on the mood of each song. The album alternates between loaded silence and serenity, very simply arranged, to a full, gallivanting orchestra, so fast-paced and lively I can just see myself twirling through gold-tinted fields in a Polaroid snapshot.
Some of the harmonization reminds me of that of the Soggy-Bottom Boys in O Brother, Where Art Thou, but only for an instant. I also occasionally get impressions reminiscent of Flogging Molly with its rousing bouts of fast-strumming banjo, or The Goo Goo Dolls, one of my favorite bands, with its similar showcases of twinkling mandolin that seems to brighten any song it's featured in. Mumford & Sons have their own distinct style and voice, however. Marcus Mumford, the lead singer (no, the other members of the band aren't his sons), has a very distinct voice and, as I was fascinated with seeing while viewing music videos on YouTube (who needs MTV anymore?), that he also plays the bass drum and tambourine with foot pedals in the video for Little Lion Man, one of my favorite, most rousing and field-twirling-worthy singles on the album.
Little Lion Man is amazing. The cinematography and stylization in the video itself is great, and I love the whole idea of playing for the empty theater. Not to mention the pianist's coat is full of awesome.
I agree with a costume designer friend of mine who I worked with this summer, as she observed when this song played off her iPod that singing curses seems to make the song so much more powerful and raw. I can listen to this and any other Mumford & Sons song on endless repeat to try to fully appreciate the lyrics, harmonization, and complicated layers of so many different rhythms and styles played at once. Though they don't have a musician on drum set, Mumford & Sons' music is not lacking in upbeat tempo and conviction, which seems harder to do the more acoustic a band gets.
I am still a new listener to Mumford & Sons but I'm not stopping anytime soon. Go out and listen to some more! I recommend The Cave, Winter Winds, Dust Bowl Dance, and White Blank Page. Enjoy!
So, after much pressure and thought, I've decided to do a series of movie reviews for this blog. For loving cinema so much, I'm actually really underexposed to those films that changed the industry to what it is today. I thought this should change...I work at the theater, after all! So with that, I begin my Cinemablographer series of reviews with one of my all-time favorites...Amélie.
The film's tagline is "One person can change your life forever." The plot focuses on a storybook-like timeline structure; it begins detailing a day in the 1970s in France, when Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) is conceived. Her parents, like many other main characters, are introduced in a very straightforward way, detailing their likes and dislikes. The Poulains are made out to be very uptight, orderly people. Amélie's demeanor and incredible imagination are a product of her parents' failure to emotionally nurture her. Her father--a doctor--for example, only touched her when performing her routine checkups. The abnormality of physical contact between the two led to her heart racing when that rare contact was made, leading her parents to think she had a heart defect. Her parents then sacrificed their wish to travel the world to homeschool Amélie, who occupied herself with her imagination.
Flash forward twenty years later to 1997, where the rest of the movie takes place. Amélie lives a simple, quiet life on her own, working as a waitress in a bar called the Two Windmills, never getting very close to anyone. When surprising news about Princess Diana airs, a perfume lid slips out of Amélie's hand and dislodges a tile from the bathroom wall, revealing a young boy's box of favorite pictures and toys looking to be from the '50s.
When Amélie sets out to return the box to its owner, she resolves that if the man is happy to get the box back, she'll become a regular do-gooder. Despite her crippling shyness and never interacting with the man herself, Amélie succeeds in her goal and sets out to better the lives of people in need in clever, subtle ways. However, when she finds a kindred spirit in Nino Quincampoix(Matieu Kassovitz), an eccentric young man who she frequently encounters at the subway station's photo booths, scrounging in trash cans and under cracks for ripped and forgotten portraits, Amélie is faced with the decision of remaining to keep to herself and not take risks, or to grant herself the happiness she has given others.
It is an absolutely beautiful, simple yet intricate story that I would recommend to anyone (despite the sometimes rather explicit sexual content). The soundtrack by Yann Tiersen stands alone without falter. Every time one of the quaint piano/toy piano, accordion, and violin tracks begins playing on my iPod, I have to listen to it. Having watched the movie again last night and listened to the soundtrack almost nonstop since I first saw Amélie four months ago, I am a bit disappointed how much was cut out of each track for the film; a theme here, a few chimes resounding there. The nostalgia, tranquility, and exhileration of each of Tiersen's movements were interesting to see matched to their accompanying scenes, however; one instance that comes to mind is the pairing of one of my favorite songs on the album, La Noyee, with a fast paced rush as Amélie helps a blind man to the subway station, simultaneously describing everything around them in incredible detail.
The one thing that saddens me about this film is that it is foreign. Don't get me wrong, the French was beautiful to listen to, but I know that subtitles only summarize what is actually said. English-speaking viewers get a condensed, slightly warped version of the dialogue, and are subject to what the translator deems important enough to transcribe for us. Background conversations and atmosphere are lost on anyone who is unable to understand it themselves. The relevance of word choice is lost on us, as even the same words in different languages have different connotations. The pronunciation problems one character has do not have the same impact on American moviegoers as they would on the French audiences. That particular character is supposedly particularly slow; how am I supposed to know? His French sounds good to me, but that's what I get for studying Spanish.
The director Jean-Pierre Jeunet paid particular attention to the photography of the film. Every single shot's angle, sweeping arc of the camera, and color scheme are utter works of art. The saturation actually is personally reminiscent to the cancelled television show, Pushing Daisies, another thing I love about it. And despite the aforementioned language barriers, Amélie is conducted very much like a silent movie in many ways; there are several scenes in which there is little to no dialogue, but the fundamental attraction between Amélie and Nino doesn't need any translation.
All in all, Amélie is quirky, suspenseful, torrential, and beautiful in every way. Audrey is adorable, and Matieu is a perfect match to play opposite her. I would recommend this movie to anyone; even if you (yes, YOU!) aren't a particularly big fan of reading subtitles, this film is definitely worth it. Just watch out for the kiddies; Amélie is rated R for a reason.
"Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's."
I'm so so so so sorry I haven't updated. Not that it really matters. There's only one follower and they probably don't even read very often....
Anywho, it's been busy and hectic, what with spring quarter sucking my life and free time, my dog dying, and my two partners in crime NOT POSTING ANYTHING AT ALL.
If they read this, then they should know that I'm making an unhappy face at them.
It looks like this: >:(
That said, I had a wonderful church convention that left me feeling refreshed. My mom came to visit, so we went out to dinner and then we saw Prince of Persia. And that particular FAIL of a movie is the topic of my rant.
First of all, let's just look at a couple screencaps of the characters from this movie.
See that guy up there? That's Jake Gyllenhaal. He's very American and very white. WHY THE HECK IS HE A PRINCE OF PERSIA WITH A BRITISH ACCENT?
SPOILER ALERT: Ben Kingsley is the bad guy.
Then again, you can probably figure that out by the way he's dressed and pointing ominously at the camera. He was probably the best and most legit actor in the entire movie. Not only is his accent REAL, but he's also part Indian, so he's a heck of a lot closer to being Persian than Jake Gyllenhaal is. >_>
Now, since this is the ONLY female lead in the ENTIRE movie, I can't really say she's the best actress in there....but she is rather pretty, so there's that. AND her accent is real, too, so that's a plus. Oh, and her name is Gemma Arterton, by the way. Almost forgot that. She was in Clash of the Titans as another willful female lead, but the acting there is pretty much the same acting she did here. And - go figure - both characters sacrifice their lives for the good of mankind. Seeing a trend, here....
Anywho...so my biggest problem with the movie was that it was wayyyy too Disney. And I know that's hardly a bad thing to some people - and usually it's not to me, either, but in this case, I have to say something.
WHEN THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END, YOU DON'T STOP FOR AN ALMOST-KISS SCENE. OK? OK.
There. I said it. Seriously. Spoiler alert: the world is literally about to end and the two leads STOP EVERYTHING to kiss. That totally killed it for me. But I'm a cynic, so maybe that's just me. That's why I'd rather call this movie Prince of FAIL.
It's a rainy, rainy day, folks (hence Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street, A Rainy Day"). [Side note: don't you love that painting? I do.] I'm going to apologize in advance for not updating in awhile. It's going to be like that for the next week or so. And my two new counterparts have yet to post anything, so I'm considering putting a one-update-a-week requirement on it. That way at least one of us will be updating at some point.
At the moment, I'm listening to Deerhunter's "Little Kids" as I read Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Oh, the soundtrack to my Gender Issues class will be an interesting one, especially if I continue to leave iTunes shuffling through my Recently Added playlist. (In the last half hour, I've gone from Ke$ha's "Take It Off," to Immediate Music's "Rising Empire," to Vedera's "Satisfy Me," then Mark & Alex's "Rush," Miley Cyrus' "See You Again" - (I know, I know, I usually condemn anything that comes from the Hannah Montana girl, but I heard that song first via Breathe Carolina [an excellent rock/pop band you should definitely check out] and though they did it better, I wanted the original) - Seawolf's "The Violet Hour," then to White Denim's "I Start to Run," then of course to Deerhunter, and now it's changed to Vijay Kishore's "Neverends." Oops, actually it's "Shooting the Moon" from Ok Go.
Random collection of music, now that I look at it, but I suppose you could say that it's not so different from my usual playlist. Oh well. Back to reading. Have a fantastic day, everyone. Sorry I don't have anything new for you.
Uhm. Ok. So for those of you who wondered why the hell all the girls on Facebook last night had colors as their statuses, you can rest easy.
Basically, they were posting the colors of their bras in "support" of breast cancer.
Let me just call BS right now. Again.
In what world is posting the color of your bra a kind of support for breast cancer? Now, it's one thing if you're like "Pink! BREAST CANCER AWARENESS FTW!" as your status. But that's not what these people were doing. Instead, someone decided to start a flirty trend that others mindlessly joined in on. Most didn't stop and think about what they were doing; they just posted the color of their bra.
And when I called BS on one of my friends, and mentioned how ridiculous it was to just post the color of your bra "in support" of something, I was called a killjoy and wet blanket.
Let me just say, "thank goodness for Mary Carmichael." In her blog on Newsweek, she lambasted the "pointless" trend and pretty much said everything that I did. THANK YOU, MARY. I'm glad another woman actually thought about what she was doing before just jumping on the "proclaim your bra color to the world" bandwagon. Telling your Facebook friends the color of your bra does not necessarily correlate to Breast Cancer UNLESS you stick the words "Breast" and "Cancer" in there somewhere. Or maybe all you need is "cancer." If you're just like "Blue!" then people might passingly glance at it as they scroll through the page, shrug, and not think much more of it. That's certainly what I did. And when I found out why people were needlessly talking about their underwear, I was actually sort of surprised (and a little disgusted) that so many intelligent people hadn't actually thought about why they were doing this.
The one good thing that came from this was an idea for a psychology experiment. You know those ones where they have a sign up that just tells you to do something ridiculous and people mindlessly obey without questioning? Those.
Now....here's a real attempt at spreading breast cancer awareness. Except it's mainly for men. I don't completely approve of using sexism to draw men into the fight against breast cancer, but apparently it works.
(On another note, what does that say about our society, I wonder? Hmm..... >_> )
Quick note: I've invited a few friends who love music as much as I do to author this blog with me. They will be known as Jesrah and Zatarra. You can call me Purple.
Anywho, I found this band while wasting time on my iTouch and playing TapTap Revolution 3. I love the message in this song. The chorus especially speaks to me. I listened to some of their other stuff, and I quite like it. They've played with Rage Against the Machine and other politically active bands, so if you want music with a political message, then this is your band. They're reggae-rock and lately I've really liked the rhythms incorporated in that style of music.
