Movie Monday - Cyrano Agency

I'm on a Korean movie buzz at the moment, and must confess that I LOVED this silly caper from last year. Yay for Netflix and its brood, making such random and hard-to-find items accessible for people like me!

Quirky, cute fun, with a clever concept and very cool actors. Go see!

Movie Monday - Norwegian Wood

I am a big fan of Murakami Haruki. (Who isn't?)

Very excited about the pending release of his three volume novel 1Q84, which is due, in English translation, in October of this year.

Tiding us over until then, this month saw the release of a new film version of one of his most popular novels, Norwegian Wood, by the Vietnamese director Anh Hung Tran.

Obviously any transfer between media insists on compromises and changes to the source material, and I think this adaptation is commendable for its depiction of a mood, a moment, a memory. The acting is all superb, as is the soundtrack, provided by the impossibly cool Jonny Greenwood - as well as an appearance by the eponymous Beatles song.

I think what I loved the most were the subtle references to life in Tokyo at the time - several scenes featured the protagonist walking through and around Waseda University during the enormous student revolts in Tokyo in the late 1960s. This ex-Waseda student can happily report, too, that scenes really were filmed in the drama department of Waseda!!!

Pleasing accuracies aside, however, the film is rather hard work. Its rhythms are hypnotic and disruptive in equal measure, and its emphasis is substantially different from the book, as are some of the characters. But I didn't go to the cinema to 'see' the book, so that's alright.

Movie Monday - Downton Abbey (Skit)

Ok, so this isn't quite a movie. But it' s brilliant! After the tremendous - and thoroughly deserved - success of Downton Abbey this winter, it's probably no surprise that Comic Relief set their twinkling eyes on it for a big skit this year. With a cast even more stellar than the original it lampoons, it is one of the funniest things I've seen in ages.

Joanna Lumley is beyond brilliant. And Victoria Wood's 'gaffe' will have you giggling for days :)

If by any chance you haven't managed to see the original yet, it's really worth a look - the best costume drama that has emerged in several years.

Movie Monday - Le Grand Chef (1 AND 2!)

After two rather dark and depressing films in recent weeks, I'm happy instead to be bringing you a pair of fun ones, very appropriate to this blog. They are Le Grand Chef, and its sequel, Le Grand Chef 2 - Battle Kimchi. I saw the first one on a plane to or from Japan, probably in 2008 or so. It's all about a Korean competition wherein guys wind up cooking blowfish, to predictably dramatic and hilarious results. The sequel, rather wonderfully, is all about kimchi and what the idea of 'Korean' food might be.

Needless to say, both are filled with great humour, warmth, exuberance and charm - just like the majority of Korean people I know!

Trailers below :)

Movie Monday - Biutiful

I didn't really 'get' the trailer for this (although I loved the Alexandre Desplat music that it stole from 'Lust Caution' - but it was Iñárritu, and Bardem, so I was very glad to hear that it was finally playing at Laemmle's in Santa Monica.

What a dark, quiet, devastating film it is. Bardem plays a father, in contemporary Barcelona, who is down on his luck and working multiple schemes to support his children and the various underdogs and victims he cares for in the shady side of city life. Oh, and he can also speak to the dead. To say any more might give things away, but suffice to say it is a must-see. Bardem is among the most interesting actors we have today - and how great that he continues to stretch himself and take on challenging, difficult roles.

Movie Monday - The Illusionist

This movie has much to recommend it - beautiful animation, oodles of French wit, clever and surprising imagery, and perhaps the loveliest cinematic representation of Edinburgh ever. But it's so depressing. SO depressing. Gorgeous, but devastating. It probably didn't help that the night we saw it was horrendously rainy - but by god, it was miserable!!!

Movie Monday - Valentine's Day

I didn't get a chance to see any movies today. I'm busy. But I saw this at a thoroughly inappropriate time last year and really should have seen it today.

Have you seen it? It's not bad. And has far more surprises than would have imagined it would. The Julia Roberts storyline is absolutely my favourite.

Movie Monday - Don Giovanni

OK, so this isn't strictly a 'movie', but the only thing longer than a YouTube video that I've had time to watch of late is Peter Sellars' production of Don Giovanni, featuring a pair of identical twin brothers as Giovanni and Leporello. As ever, there is much probity to the interrogation of the text - the champagne aria, for instance, becomes a paean to heroin - and P.S. does a blistering job of breathing a comtemporary life into the libretto and the score. Marvellous stuff - and the casting of the Perry twins really heightens the analysis of the connection between the two men. Go Peter!

He's also on the cover of Opera News this month, in recognition of the arrival, at last, of Nixon in China at the Met. And I am going to see it on Saturday! So it's a very Peter week.

And here's the man himself, on the importance of financing culture.

Movie Monday - Babette's Feast

I had seen the cover of Babette's Feast for many years in the World Cinema section of HMV in Grafton Street (which I am terrified will close soon) but it was only at the insistence of one of my directing professors at UCLA that I finally found time to see it.

It's a strange, dark, magical little film - about a maid who cooks the most impossibly extravagant dinner imaginable for the village she lives in. Of course the philosophical perspective of the piece is a discussion of how the artist sacrifices everything for their work, and how everything is sublimated in deference to the moment of presentation. I found it extremely profound, and the ideas it stimulates resonated very long after I saw it.

Oh, and it won the Best Foreign Film Oscar. So you know it's good! ;)

Movie Monday - The King's Speech

I saw this ages ago, I know, but it's splendid. Costumes, lighting, scenography, script - splendid acting - and really brilliant music. Oscars for everybody!

The nominations came out this morning, and I'm not particularly impressed or interested. So you can see the full listing elsewhere ;)

Monday Movie - Il Conformista

This week's movie is ultra-cool. For a design class I'm taking at the moment we were advised to watch 'Il Conformista', Bertolucci's quiet but hair-raising take on Mussolini's Italy. It's incredibly beautifully shot, as you might expect, and the way that he interacts between Italian style past and present really makes Julie Taymor look like a total amateur. (I love her 'Titus', with ITS interactions between ideas of Rome, but she doesn't have a hope of competing with the imagery in this film. It's pretty astonishing stuff…)

Speaking of Julie - anyone seen Spiderman?!

Movie Monday: A Touch of Spice

I must confess that much of my interest in spices - and particularly their emotional and physiological effects - came about from a Greek film called 'A Touch of Spice'. It's not particularly new, but it might be new for some of you readers. And it's my Movie Monday choice for the week!

It's a story of a Greek family who were forced to leave their home in Constantinople when the Greeks were all deported from the city. The Greek-language title of the film is 'Politiki Kouzina' (πολίτικη κουζίνα), which is quite a nuanced play on words - it could simply mean 'political kitchen' or 'cookery', but in Greek the word 'politikos' or politiki' always implies THE city, Constantinople. Indeed, it still bugs many modern Greeks that the name of the city is now Istanbul.

Throughout the film, it is food, cooking, spices and shared broken bread that brings and keeps families and relationships together. It's very beautifully observed, with great acting, and a beautiful score by Evanthia Reboutsika.

Here's a trailer:

Movie Monday - PARADE

As a pretty random afterthought in early December, I wound up watching this recent Japanese movie - based on a novel by Yoshida Shuichi. Given all the work I'm doing on 'Pains of Youth' I suppose it made sense - it being, like the Viennese play, a tale of a bunch of co-ed young people living in the same place and navigated through their disaffected experience of the world.

It is one of the best Japanese movies I've seen for a long time - dark, surprising, very funny in places, and with some superb acting. Yukisada Isao (who also made Year One in the North and the movie adaptation of Mishima's Spring Snow) does a really clean job of adapting this complicated story, without showing the tricks up his directorial sleeves. Kudos!

There's a trailer here!

A New Look!

Well Hello!

I'm sorry I didn't make it into 2011 with a blogpost, but I managed to pick up a cold between 8pm and midnight on New Year's Eve (or possibly a strong allergic reaction to cats, but I doubt that) and so I've spent much of the year so far in bed, medicated.

Regardless, I am HERE, and happy to announce that, as one of my New Year Resolutions, I have decided to blog every single day for 2011. Even if it means that I wind up posting digests if/when I'm away from computer access. Just a little something every day.

In the hope of focusing my posts this year, I'm proud to be telling y'all that every day will have a different 'theme' this year, and they're gonna be something like this...

Spice Sundays

In my new career as a foodie, I'll be trying out a new spice every week - or re-examining one - and trying to cook something with it. Mild to wild...!

Movie Mondays

I watch a lot of movies. Some of them are so weird you may never have heard of them, but I'll be happily introducing what wonders I come across as we go through the fifty-two weeks of this new year.

Tune Tuesdays

Likewise I go through a bunch of music. Maybe it'll be an album, a song, a piece of classical music or maybe even an artist that I wanna talk about.

Wild Card Wednesdays

Just you wait and see!

30-Mad-Thursdays

I'm going to turn 30 on July 11, a little less than 200 days from now. As has become quite a popular blogger meme, I have put together my list of '30 before 30' - admittedly later in the game than some enterprising souls! Stay tuned as every week I let you know how I'm progressing. (Although I am cagey about posting the whole list. It's handwritten and posted on my wall above my desk - I'm gonna do it, but I probably won't post it until the big day!)

Foodie Fridays

As well as my own experiments and adventures in the kitchen, I'll be sharing food adventures and tastings in Los Angeles. Despite my status as a cash-starved graduate student, I manage to get around a bit here in LA, and there are lots of fun places I've discovered that I'm gonna tell y'all about. (And failing that I'll just comment on whatever madness is going on on the Food Network....!)

Seasonal Saturdays

This blog's title comes from the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, who wrote so many pithy entries documenting life in the Japanese court. Another favourite of mine is Liza Dalby's truly beautiful 'East Wind Melts the Ice' (buy it here) - a book that guides through the seasons of the Japanese (and, indeed, Northern Californian) year. As an homage, I am hoping, every week, to note something special - or note-worthy - of the time of the year, so that the daily beauty, the ordinary plenty, of 2011 does not go unnoticed.

Are you excited?

Stay tuned, add me to your RSS feed, leave comments, get in touch, let me know if even one single soul out there is reading any more!

(I'm gonna be posting regardless. But I hope you'll be coming along for the ride!)