tenpastmidnight blog
Making hay while the sun shines
» Tuesday, September 16, 2003 «
It's film time...
On Saturday I saw Blackball, a British made comedy about, of all things, lawn-bowls - the stuff retired people play, especially in Worthing. It follows a guy from a local housing estate as he becomes the 'bad boy of bowls,' acts like a complete twonk, and... well, you can either guess the rest or go and see the film. I recommend going and seeing it, it's certainly the funniest film I've seen this year, and it doesn't hurt to support the British film industry either.
Tonight I met up with my mate Alex (one of my many mates called Alex) and saw the bizarre French film Belleville Rendezvous at the Duke of York cinema. It's a cartoon, and has hardly any dialogue, and most of what there is isn't really dialogue, it's more the muttering sounds people make to each other or themselves. But, it's full of great characters, a fantastic visual style where absolutely everything is a caricature, from the fat Statue of Liberty (holding a hamburger) to the stretch 2CVs. It has an extremely odd storyline involving bike racing, the mafia, a trio of singers and a very determined old lady. If you see the film - that woman is just like one of my grandmothers, except mine's even more of a battleaxe!
I've seen plenty of films this year, all the biggies... Tomb Raider II, Charles Angels II, Matrix Reloaded, Hulk, etc etc. Both of these small, non-Hollywood films are better than the multi-million Pound films I've been seeing over the rest of the year. When a film about an odd French family with five lines of dialogue has more style and a better story than your $100 million sequel, maybe it's time to start thinking seriously about changing how you're going about making films.
On Saturday I saw Blackball, a British made comedy about, of all things, lawn-bowls - the stuff retired people play, especially in Worthing. It follows a guy from a local housing estate as he becomes the 'bad boy of bowls,' acts like a complete twonk, and... well, you can either guess the rest or go and see the film. I recommend going and seeing it, it's certainly the funniest film I've seen this year, and it doesn't hurt to support the British film industry either.
Tonight I met up with my mate Alex (one of my many mates called Alex) and saw the bizarre French film Belleville Rendezvous at the Duke of York cinema. It's a cartoon, and has hardly any dialogue, and most of what there is isn't really dialogue, it's more the muttering sounds people make to each other or themselves. But, it's full of great characters, a fantastic visual style where absolutely everything is a caricature, from the fat Statue of Liberty (holding a hamburger) to the stretch 2CVs. It has an extremely odd storyline involving bike racing, the mafia, a trio of singers and a very determined old lady. If you see the film - that woman is just like one of my grandmothers, except mine's even more of a battleaxe!
I've seen plenty of films this year, all the biggies... Tomb Raider II, Charles Angels II, Matrix Reloaded, Hulk, etc etc. Both of these small, non-Hollywood films are better than the multi-million Pound films I've been seeing over the rest of the year. When a film about an odd French family with five lines of dialogue has more style and a better story than your $100 million sequel, maybe it's time to start thinking seriously about changing how you're going about making films.
