Cactus Jump's Day Off

Called in sick today. I have an upset stomach, feeling exhausted and my eye is all swollen and watery. Have promised myself that I will rest, laze around and watch TV and not think of anything stressful. Will maybe make a relaxed trip to the market in the evening to buy cat food.
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Bride and Prejudice

So I finally did see ‘Bride and Prejudice’ last night.

I hate it when a movie has been all built up and you are unable to see it before you hear everyone’s opinion on it and have seen all the reviews. It is difficult to see the movie for what it is then, and while watching it, you are under the pressure of knowing that you are going to be milked for your opinion later.

Sigh. Anyway, I wasn’t blown by the film. I didn’t hate it either as everyone has.

I don’t quite agree with boss woman that it is ground-breaking and achieves a poetic balance. She has achieved quite a balance between the western and Bollywood styles of film making but at times the balance tips and makes the film look like a bad spoof – like when the lifeguards run down on to the beach singing an alaap. The songs were terrible, the music was awful and the lyrics were totally bland. I kind of liked the Grease-like number with the girls in their pj’s. I would have thought Farhan Akhtar would have done a better job of the lyrics, I was so in awe of him after Dil Chahta Hai. And then so let down with the unintelligent Paki-bashing Lakshya, and now these terrible lyrics.

I don’t see what the big fuss is about Santosh Sivan’s camera work either. His cinematography was much more interesting in Dil Se and Fiza. Boss woman’s says he must have studied Sense and Sensibility very carefully because he has matched the framing of that film. But I don’t see why that is a big deal either.

I didn’t think Aishwarya Rai was as bad as everyone has been making out. True, she couldn’t infuse much warmth into her character, but she wasn’t all that plasticy either.

In fact I’m getting pretty bored with this whole Aishwarya-bashing that everyone is so into these days. Someone even said that the only thing they liked about the film was that she saw Aishwarya’s fat arms and double chin. That is so malicious to my mind. She isn’t fabulously talented, but thanks to her looks if she is getting a chance, and is doing the best that she can, what’s so wrong with that?
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Dogville

Now this film is pure poetry! Watched it over the weekend on DVD.

The weird map-like set with no buildings irks at first, but it soon grows on you and you no longer even notice it. The starkness of it adds to the grim tale of morality that he tells. Very different from Dancer in the Dark. Von Trier is a true experimenter. Wish I could get hold of one of his Dogma films.

And the beautiful and talented Ms. Kidman is brilliant as usual. It’s strange how not only can she perform different characters with ease, but how her face changes to suit each character. Sure she had the help of a prosthetic nose in The Hours, but if you notice her eyes – in The Hours her eyes shine with intellect, in Dogville there is hurt and confusion at the bestiality of the human race, and in that B-grade movie, the one where she orchestrates a murder to get a TV job, they are chillingly cold. But besides the eyes, her entire face can look so different. Yeah sure makeup helps, but it seems tome that she has a paranormal ability to actually rearrange her facial features!
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The Hours

Another great passage from The Hours:

This particular novel concerns a serene, intelligent woman of painfully susceptible sensibilities who once was ill but has now recovered; who is preparing for the season in London, where she will give and attend parties, write in the mornings and read in the afternoons, lunch with friends, dress perfectly. There is true art in it, this command of tea and dinner tables; this animating correctness. Men may congratulate themselves for writing truly and passionately about the movements of nations; they may consider war and the search for God to be great literature’s only subjects; but if men’s standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed.

---- The Hours, Michael Cunningham

Aaah, yes!