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Monday again...
So, I happened to watch a TV advert yesterday. This is something I don't do often: I actively avoid channels with ads, using catch-up or on demand instead, or I watch on DVD. But yesterday I watched an advert.
This featured a naked woman in a field, dreamy filters on the camera and slow shots of different parts of her body to make it clear that she is, for whatever unfathomable reason, standing there naked. Kinda like a racier version of those Flake ads, you know? Although in the Flake ads the woman is usually clothed while giving her chocolate that blowjob.
What was this 40-second long porn movie attempting to sell? Well, I'll tell ya. It was toothpaste. No, I am not kidding. Toothpaste now with added porn.
So glad it wasn't my brand.
*
Talk about crappy reporting, this article in the Guardian is hilariously bad. Apparently some new study has shown that being overweight when elderly is a good thing. But get this:
They couldn't possibly be muddling up cause and effect here, could they? I've lost a lot of elderly relatives in my life and the one common factor is when people get sick and quit looking after themselves properly, they lose weight. Both my grandmothers were overweight most of their lives - that post-childbirth thing in an age when the media didn't make women feel like shit for having curves - and both dropped to less than six stone before they died. Because they were sick.
I'm the first to decry the whole being-fat-is-bad-for-you thing, but I really doubt it's protection from death!
Here's another choice quote:
So there you have it, girls. The secret of immortality! If you exercise you're half as likely to die!
Seriously?
*
My thoughts on a few of the movies I've seen recently...
You know how I'm always saying romantic comedies are neither romantic nor funny? Well, a week or two ago I finally found one that's both. It's Complicated stars Meryl Streep as Jane, a divorced woman whose youngest child is about ready to fly the nest, freeing her to enjoy life as a single woman. Or something like that. The only problem is her ex-husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin), is still around, popping up every place she goes with his young and lovely trophy wife and their obnoxious brat of a son. Through a series of family events, Jane and Jake embark on an affair, which certainly does make life complicated as keeping it from adult children proves quite a challenge.
I read some dreadful reviews of this movie but you know what? I really loved it. Part of it is the unashamed casting of Meryl Streep in a sexy role and not one that tries to make her seem younger than she is; it's so wonderful to find a movie that acknowledges women can still enjoy sex after 30. Part of it is how realistic the story felt: although Jane's implied money worries seemed out of place given the size of her house and business, the human relationships in the story felt like these were real people. A mother who cares about her kids and is both sad and happy that the last one is leaving. A woman who has women friends and who gets along with her ex but is still bothered by having his (apparent) happiness shoved in her face. The whole thing of how hard it is to put yourself out there after a certain age, but how great it is when you connect with someone new. And the relationship/affair between the central couple felt very real: she's carried away with it, but her head is slamming on the brakes, while he's too damn pushy and just doesn't get it.
There were some genuinely funny moments: in once sequence Jane's daughter is meeting her fiance at a hotel to go over their wedding plans and it happens to be the same hotel where Jane is having a lunchtime liaison with her ex-husband. The fiance sees them both and cottons on, and his attempts to find out what's going on when a doctor is summoned to their room while simultaneously keeping the daughter in the dark is really funny. Then there's the scene were Meryl is webcam-chatting with the other man in her life, giving him advice about clothing and the ex-husband thinks this is a good time to...well, I wouldn't want to spoil that surprise :) It's one of those disasters that it utterly predictable but no less hilarious for it. And the mom-gets-stoned scene is brilliant: it's all too easy to overdo a scene like that, but I found it just on the mark.
And the ending is just right - a little cliche, but romantic and beautifully understated.
*
On the same day as that, I also saw Precious, a much-hyped movie about poverty and abuse. This is the story of a girl who pretty much has nothing: she's fifteen, she's overweight, she's pregnant with her second child as a result of rape by her father, she's illiterate, her abusive mother lives on benefits and she doesn't even have her own child, because her grandmother looks after her. A more depressing start is hard to imagine.
And the hits keep on coming. Although I suspect the reality of that level of poverty is far worse than this film managed to portray, what we see on screen is bad enough in terms of the living conditions and abuse Precious has to live with. Throughout the movie we watch her struggle to get somewhere, to make something out of her life, and her ambitions are so small, so reasonable (a GED and a the chance to be a better mom than she's had) and the barriers in her way seem so impossibly high. But she seizes the chance that comes her way, and manages to get at least some of what she's looking for. The end of the film acheives an uplifting, optimistic note while being shocking at the same time.
This is not an easy film to watch. What I liked most was that although the primary abuse seems to come from Precious' mother (the abuse from her father is sexual and that's not minimised, but he's barely present in her life; the mother is there constantly), to an extent it's possible to see her, too, as a victim, while never sliding into sympathy with what she's done to her daughter. That's a really difficult balance to strike: in other movies that have tried to show the abuser's humanity, they tend to cross the line into sympathy, as if whatever happened to them makes their own actions less horrible (e.g. the 2006 film Little Children). Precious makes you wonder, makes you question, but the final revelations of the film sweep away any possibility of lessening the blame for her. Similarly, there are elements of her situation for which Precious is truly to blame - her unwillingness to tell social services what's happening, for example - and the film doesn't shy away from that, but she remains essentially a captive of her circumstances, and when given a chance she has the courage to grab it and hold on.
I left the theatre feeling like I'd been though a major emotional wringer, but glad I had.
*
This week I saw A Single Man, a film set in the 1960s starring Colin Firth as a gay man who, following the death of his long-term partner, is planning to commit suicide. The movie follows him through what he intends to be the last day of his life, with flashbacks to past events which explain what's going on.
I would say this is not a movie to watch if you're depressed, but I didn't find it depressing. Rather, it portrays a man who has come to what he sees as a logical decision: life without his partner is not something he wants to continue, and an early flashback to the moment he received the news of his partner's death makes it very clear why. So he sets his affairs in order, cleans out his desk at work, visits his closest friend and makes a new one - and it's that new friendship which offers a ray of hope in amongst all the depression.
Colin Firth's performance is really good. In some ways it's a typical role for him: English college professor, very stiff-upper-lip, but he plays it with a depth I'm not used to seeing from him. Mostly my impression of Firth is he's trying to be Hugh Grant without the sense of humour. But that isn't enough to carry a movie and this film is so tightly in his character's POV that the whole thing would fall apart if his performance wasn't up to it. But it is: he's really come into his own.
The cinematography of this film is gorgeous. Much of the time the colours are desaturated, but warm - the colour pallete is browns and beiges. But occasional scenes subtlely get colourful: flashbacks to happy times, his meetings with people who touch him, albeit briefly. It's a slow-paced film, but not plodding and the build up to the end of the day is quite heartbreaking. There's a "will-he, won't-he?" element to it all, but I was never in any doubt that he would, which made the final scenes all the more poignant for me. I won't give it away.
Watch it...but not on a day when you're miserable.
This featured a naked woman in a field, dreamy filters on the camera and slow shots of different parts of her body to make it clear that she is, for whatever unfathomable reason, standing there naked. Kinda like a racier version of those Flake ads, you know? Although in the Flake ads the woman is usually clothed while giving her chocolate that blowjob.
What was this 40-second long porn movie attempting to sell? Well, I'll tell ya. It was toothpaste. No, I am not kidding. Toothpaste now with added porn.
So glad it wasn't my brand.
*
Talk about crappy reporting, this article in the Guardian is hilariously bad. Apparently some new study has shown that being overweight when elderly is a good thing. But get this:
This study has demonstrated that, for people who have survived to the age of 70, the risk of death is lowest among those with a BMI [body mass index] classified as overweight.
They couldn't possibly be muddling up cause and effect here, could they? I've lost a lot of elderly relatives in my life and the one common factor is when people get sick and quit looking after themselves properly, they lose weight. Both my grandmothers were overweight most of their lives - that post-childbirth thing in an age when the media didn't make women feel like shit for having curves - and both dropped to less than six stone before they died. Because they were sick.
I'm the first to decry the whole being-fat-is-bad-for-you thing, but I really doubt it's protection from death!
Here's another choice quote:
Women who do not take exercise are twice as likely to die as women who get regular exercise, regardless of their BMI.
So there you have it, girls. The secret of immortality! If you exercise you're half as likely to die!
Seriously?
*
My thoughts on a few of the movies I've seen recently...
You know how I'm always saying romantic comedies are neither romantic nor funny? Well, a week or two ago I finally found one that's both. It's Complicated stars Meryl Streep as Jane, a divorced woman whose youngest child is about ready to fly the nest, freeing her to enjoy life as a single woman. Or something like that. The only problem is her ex-husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin), is still around, popping up every place she goes with his young and lovely trophy wife and their obnoxious brat of a son. Through a series of family events, Jane and Jake embark on an affair, which certainly does make life complicated as keeping it from adult children proves quite a challenge.
I read some dreadful reviews of this movie but you know what? I really loved it. Part of it is the unashamed casting of Meryl Streep in a sexy role and not one that tries to make her seem younger than she is; it's so wonderful to find a movie that acknowledges women can still enjoy sex after 30. Part of it is how realistic the story felt: although Jane's implied money worries seemed out of place given the size of her house and business, the human relationships in the story felt like these were real people. A mother who cares about her kids and is both sad and happy that the last one is leaving. A woman who has women friends and who gets along with her ex but is still bothered by having his (apparent) happiness shoved in her face. The whole thing of how hard it is to put yourself out there after a certain age, but how great it is when you connect with someone new. And the relationship/affair between the central couple felt very real: she's carried away with it, but her head is slamming on the brakes, while he's too damn pushy and just doesn't get it.
There were some genuinely funny moments: in once sequence Jane's daughter is meeting her fiance at a hotel to go over their wedding plans and it happens to be the same hotel where Jane is having a lunchtime liaison with her ex-husband. The fiance sees them both and cottons on, and his attempts to find out what's going on when a doctor is summoned to their room while simultaneously keeping the daughter in the dark is really funny. Then there's the scene were Meryl is webcam-chatting with the other man in her life, giving him advice about clothing and the ex-husband thinks this is a good time to...well, I wouldn't want to spoil that surprise :) It's one of those disasters that it utterly predictable but no less hilarious for it. And the mom-gets-stoned scene is brilliant: it's all too easy to overdo a scene like that, but I found it just on the mark.
And the ending is just right - a little cliche, but romantic and beautifully understated.
*
On the same day as that, I also saw Precious, a much-hyped movie about poverty and abuse. This is the story of a girl who pretty much has nothing: she's fifteen, she's overweight, she's pregnant with her second child as a result of rape by her father, she's illiterate, her abusive mother lives on benefits and she doesn't even have her own child, because her grandmother looks after her. A more depressing start is hard to imagine.
And the hits keep on coming. Although I suspect the reality of that level of poverty is far worse than this film managed to portray, what we see on screen is bad enough in terms of the living conditions and abuse Precious has to live with. Throughout the movie we watch her struggle to get somewhere, to make something out of her life, and her ambitions are so small, so reasonable (a GED and a the chance to be a better mom than she's had) and the barriers in her way seem so impossibly high. But she seizes the chance that comes her way, and manages to get at least some of what she's looking for. The end of the film acheives an uplifting, optimistic note while being shocking at the same time.
This is not an easy film to watch. What I liked most was that although the primary abuse seems to come from Precious' mother (the abuse from her father is sexual and that's not minimised, but he's barely present in her life; the mother is there constantly), to an extent it's possible to see her, too, as a victim, while never sliding into sympathy with what she's done to her daughter. That's a really difficult balance to strike: in other movies that have tried to show the abuser's humanity, they tend to cross the line into sympathy, as if whatever happened to them makes their own actions less horrible (e.g. the 2006 film Little Children). Precious makes you wonder, makes you question, but the final revelations of the film sweep away any possibility of lessening the blame for her. Similarly, there are elements of her situation for which Precious is truly to blame - her unwillingness to tell social services what's happening, for example - and the film doesn't shy away from that, but she remains essentially a captive of her circumstances, and when given a chance she has the courage to grab it and hold on.
I left the theatre feeling like I'd been though a major emotional wringer, but glad I had.
*
This week I saw A Single Man, a film set in the 1960s starring Colin Firth as a gay man who, following the death of his long-term partner, is planning to commit suicide. The movie follows him through what he intends to be the last day of his life, with flashbacks to past events which explain what's going on.
I would say this is not a movie to watch if you're depressed, but I didn't find it depressing. Rather, it portrays a man who has come to what he sees as a logical decision: life without his partner is not something he wants to continue, and an early flashback to the moment he received the news of his partner's death makes it very clear why. So he sets his affairs in order, cleans out his desk at work, visits his closest friend and makes a new one - and it's that new friendship which offers a ray of hope in amongst all the depression.
Colin Firth's performance is really good. In some ways it's a typical role for him: English college professor, very stiff-upper-lip, but he plays it with a depth I'm not used to seeing from him. Mostly my impression of Firth is he's trying to be Hugh Grant without the sense of humour. But that isn't enough to carry a movie and this film is so tightly in his character's POV that the whole thing would fall apart if his performance wasn't up to it. But it is: he's really come into his own.
The cinematography of this film is gorgeous. Much of the time the colours are desaturated, but warm - the colour pallete is browns and beiges. But occasional scenes subtlely get colourful: flashbacks to happy times, his meetings with people who touch him, albeit briefly. It's a slow-paced film, but not plodding and the build up to the end of the day is quite heartbreaking. There's a "will-he, won't-he?" element to it all, but I was never in any doubt that he would, which made the final scenes all the more poignant for me. I won't give it away.
Watch it...but not on a day when you're miserable.