Review of "Blue Is the Warmest Colour"

"Blue is the Warmest Colour"  is a movie you will either love or hate, it raised some controversy over it's topic which is a love between two women and over depicting sex scenes in a very graphic way. But labelling this movie as 'gay' clouds peoples perception, no matter what your sexual orientation is you can find yourself in it because above all this is a story about self discovery and first love experiences we all have.

Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) is a young french girl who loves literature, she starts dating boys, but accidental kiss with a girl makes her question hers sexual orientation, one day she sees a blue-haired girl walking with her girlfriend, their eyes meet and you can witness the instant connection, but the girl walks away. From that day Adele looks for the blue haired girl and finally finds her in a gay club, the girls name is Emma (Lea Seydoux) and she is a painter, they start seeing each other, their relationship platonic at first when Adele tries to make sense of what she is feeling, turns in time into sensual and sexual passion bordering on Adele's side to obsession. Yes the sex scenes are very realistic but they are in the movie for a purpose, they show that passion between those two girls is the main bonding force in their relationship, their interests, temperaments and characters are quite different but the love at first sight and sexual magnetism brings them together. Unfortunately quite often especially in the case of first love feelings for each other and passion are not enough, when  you merge yourself  with another person and become addicted to them you loose yourself and demand of them to be your only source of happiness, but no one can take that kind of responsibility. In Adele's case she realises that Emma has a passion outside the relationship and it is her art and that she doesn't quite fit with all the quirky people Emma hangs around, this is particularly visible in the party scene when Adele plays hostess and doesn't really partake in the arty conversations, Emma notices this too and tries to encourage Adele to pursue her literary ambitions but she refuses claiming that becoming a teacher and being a homebody is what she really wants, they grow further apart as Adele feels showed away from Emma's world.
The main message for me from this movie is that for love to work aside the initial feeling and attraction we need to be able to balance independence with togetherness: still be ourselves have our own interest and passions be responsible for our own happiness but also although opposites may attract there need to be some similarities that would be a  base for understanding.

Both actresses are absolutely perfect but it is Adele Exarchopoulos that I find mesmerising to watch her eyes show every emotion, for me this whole movie is based on her performance, she can truly touch your heart, I'm straight but thanks to her truthfulness in depicting the beauty and drama of love I could easily find myself in her character. I think we all have been there during our lives regardless of our sex, race or sexual orientation we've sometimes been like Adele to attached and sometimes like Emma.
This is a beautiful movie watch it, think about it, your conclusions might be totally different than mine but one thing I can guarantee it will not leave you indifferent.

Review of "Strangers on a Train" at Gielgud Theatre

Originally Strangers on a Train was an American psychological crime thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith.
Gielguld's adaptation is closer to the novel than to the movie, however some elements are different from both, so if you think you know how the story will unfold you will be in for a surprise.

 Architect Guy Haines (played by Laurence Fox) wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam, in order to marry the woman he loves, Anne Faulkner. While on a train on the way to discuss the divorce with his wife, he meets Charles Anthony Bruno (fantastic Jack Huston), a spoilt, rich, mentally unstable man with 'daddy' and 'mummy' issues,  who proposes an idea to "exchange murders": Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno's father; neither of them will have a motive and no one will know that they ever met, so the police will have no reason to suspect either of them. Guy does not take Bruno seriously, but Bruno kills Guy's wife while Guy is away and then blackmails Guy to fulfil his end of the 'bargain'.
A bit of a spoiler !
Guy succumbs to the pressure, but  after the deed is done Bruno doesn't want to leave him alone and continues showing up disrupting his life. From observing Bruno's very unhealthy almost sensual relationship with his mother Elsie (great Imogen Stubbs) and the way he acts around Guy (jealous of his wife, possessive and obsessed) we can deduce that he is gay and in love with him, this love is the reason the 'perfect murder scheme' falls apart. When we first meet Bruno on the train he is a bit like Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment convinced of his god-like right to decide the fate of others and backing his theories with pseudo philosophical gibberish, as the story unfolds he changes, yes he is still a psychopath but he realises that the driving force of the world is in fact love, however unlike in Crime and Punishment love in Strangers on the Train does not bring redemption.

Acting is really good, but it is Jack Huston's mad and damaged Bruno that steals every scene, he gives this rather unlikable character depth and human vulnerability that makes us feel pity for him, his equal partner is Imogen Stubbs playing his mother, their scenes together are the highlights of this adaptation. Laurence Fox gives a good performance as a mild mannered and tortured by guilt Guy, Miranda Raison plays Guy's wife Anne with combination of  warmth and passion.

The set is amazing, stylish and lavish (at one point it transforms into a fully working merry go round), rotating part of the stage has been divided into sections one showing and others being prepared outside our view, it is done with such speed and precision that I wished I could go behind and have a sneak peak of how it works, my sincere kudos to all involved.

In conclusion  Strangers on the Train is definitely worth watching especially now when you can get a good deal on tickets, go and see it for yourself.


                                          

'Secretary' (2002) - a slightly different love story

Before E.L Jamese's '50 Shades of Gray' became a bestseller (and I must admit that I gave up after around 30 pages, not my cup of tea) there was a different Mr Gray although with similar fetish (S&M), and he is one of the main characters in wonderfully funny, dark and saucy movie 'Secretary'.

The story begins when a young woman Lee Holloway  (played superbly by Maggie Gyllenhaal) leaves a mental hospital, she has a history of depression and self-harm caused by living in dysfunctional family with: alcoholic father, weak and obsessive mother and 'perfect' sister.  To become more independent Lee takes up a type writing course and finds a job as a secretary of a domineering perfectionist Mr E. Edward Gray (played by James Spader). Edward refuses to use a computer and makes Lee type all the documents on an old fashioned typewriter, at first their relationship is strictly professional but the eagerness and dedication with which Lee fulfils all of his commands and her apparent vulnerability starts to grow on him. Scared of his feelings he tries to scare her of by abusing her every time she makes a mistake, this has an unexpected result due to the fact that Lee is in fact a masochist and secretly enjoys the intensity of what's happening between them. And thus a sensual, intense and incredibly entertaining to watch game begins.
The love story between the main characters is not a typical submission-domination relationship, in many ways Lee is stronger then Edward, when she realises his feelings for her she is the one to provoke him, lead him and finally to persuade him it's worth to be in a relationship.
Both leading actors are magnificent, Gyllenhaal's portrayal of neurotic and damaged Lee is pitch perfect, Spader is a great mixture of restraint and underlying tension, spiced up with moments of  real warmth and emotional sensitivity.

You will either love or hate this movie and I really love it, it's one of my all time favourites because underneath the kinky concept of S&M hides a beautiful love story about two somewhat weird,lonely and damaged human beings discovering themselves and finding their kindred spirit.

Every time I watch 'Secretary' this quote quote from Robert Fulghum (although made famous by Dr. Seuss) pops into my head :

“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.”

Frank Capra's wonderful comedy 'Arsenic and old Lace' (1944)

Most of the now days comedies makes me cringe, they lack charm and intelligence, bad taste jokes about bodily functions and most intimate situations are overwhelming. The other thing that annoys me is how dim witted most of the characters in those movies are, maybe I'm strange but I don't find stupidity funny, I personally fear stupid and get really embarrassed seeing what people are willing to do for cheap laughs. Finding a funny movie that doesn't make your brain want to commit suicide is tricky, therefore I often go back to the golden years of cinema, to the times when scripts were witty and sharp, when the acting was so superb that you didn't have to use sex and bad language to lure people to watch a movie, when people still had imagination and could do without all the flashy sets and computer generated visual images.

One of my favourite comedies from that era is 'Arsenic and Old Lace' ", it was first a successful stage play on Broadway written by Joseph Kisserling, in 1944 it was adapted to screen by Julius and Philip Epstein team and directed by great Frank Capra. The plot is deliciously crazy: Mortimer Brewster (excellent Cary Grant, it's amazing how someone so handsome can be so extremely funny at the same time) a newspaperman gets married, when he goes to inform his beloved aunts Martha and Abby about his nuptials, he discovers a body in the window seat and finds out that dear old ladies have a rather peculiar hobby: they poison old lonely men and consider it an act of charity. The situation gets even more bizarre when Mortimer's long lost, mad brother Jonathan (looking very much like Frankenstein's monster) shows up. The hilarity ensues.

Gary Grant is brilliant, his facial expressions are priceless, apparently later in life he disliked his performance claiming it was over the top, but I absolutely love it. Josephine Hull and Jean Adair are fantastic as homicidal but good hearted and lovable aunts, the rest of the cast is also exceptionally good.
The whole movie works perfectly and is a true joy to watch, so if you are tired of the bubblegum for eyes shown on TV and crave for something of quality to watch go for 'Arsenic and Old Lace'.

 

Review of Steve McQueens movies 'Hunger' (2008) and 'Shame' (2011)

In anticipation of tomorrow's premiere of 12 Years as a Slave I wanted to write about Steve McQueens earlier movies Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011).  A word of warning, those movies are difficult, emotionally exhausting and brutally explicit in recreating the plot, there are moments that are almost unbearable to watch (especially in Hunger), so if you are depressed or very emotional steer clear from them. I personally love them both and thus can't wait to see 12 Years a Slave. Some spoilers ahead.

Hunger (2008) is a movie about Irish hunger strike that happened in 1981, a bit of history background first : The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners, the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days. Movie focuses on the second hunger strike which took place in 1981, its starts of with arrival of new prisoner Davy Gillen and by observing his treatment we find out about the conditions of living in the prison and about the way guards treat the inmates, violence, humiliation and total dehumanization are the daily elements of life and  McQueen shows them in great detail . Later focus shifts and we meet Bobby Sands played by truly mesmerizing Michael Fassbender, Bobby is the leader among the prisoners, when the negotiations with British Government fail and he and and his fellow prisoners get brutally beaten for refusing to wear clothes he decides to start a hunger strike. There is a long sequence showing Bobby meeting with Father Dominc Moran (Rory Mullen), discussing morality of the strike and tracing sources of his conviction to his experiences as a child, the whole scene is a showpiece of Fassbender's amazing acting skills.
The transformation that Fassbender undergoes to show  how body changes when you are starving yourself  to death is truly horrifying, he looks like a skeleton covered with skin that rips in places forming blisters and sores, it makes you want  to cry, by the end his character is so frail they have to put a frame over his body before they cover him with a sheet. During his last days Bobby Sands was elected as a Member of Parliament, prompting media interest from around the world. The strike was called off after ten prisoners had starved themselves to death—including Sands.Shortly afterwards, the British government conceded in one form or another virtually all of the prisoners' demands despite never officially granting political status.
When you watch this movie you can't believe that the situation it shows happened only 30 years ago, because the treatment of the prisoners looks like something from long before the European Convention on Human Rights (1953), the sad thing is that in many prisons around the world this still the norm. The different way guards behaved inside ad outside the prison walls got me thinking about the Stanford experiment( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_experiment ) so if you want to see where it could of led if it hadn't been stopped watch Hunger.

In Shame (2012) McQueen again reaches for a difficult topic this time it's sexual addiction, but this is only the surface because underneath this is a movie about alienation, loneliness and inability to sustain normal human relations which seems to be the plague of the modern world. Michael Fssbender plays Brandon seemingly successful, modern 30 something man living in New York, but from the first look at him we know somethings wrong, he watches women with the tension and obsession, his apartment is cold and sterile, there is nothing personal except of his laptop, later we see him with prostitute and find out that he is in fact a sex addict. His life is totally taken over by the need to release tension, he exist from one orgasm to another and is slowly loosing control battle with his addiction, the whole situation spirals out of control when his equally damaged and emotionally needy sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) comes to visit, her presence disrupts his almost ritualistic sexual routine and brings back some bad memories. There is nothing erotic about sex in this movie, no emotion, no closeness, Brandon tries to build a relationship with his coworker but  when they are intimate together he cant perform which leaves him in a state of distress, he realizes that his integral human bonding abilities for intimacy are severely damaged if not nonexistent. McQueen's movies don't have much dialogue they base on actors abilities to show emotions with their body language and facial expressions and Fassbender is absolutely fantastic at this, Carey Mulligan is also very good. Shame doesn't have a definite ending it leaves you wondering what will become of the two main characters.

                                         

The Hollow Crown - BBC 2012

The Hollow Crown is BBC's  excellent filming of the Shakespeare's second Henriad (Richard II with Henry IV's rise to power, Henry IV, parts I and II, and Henry V). This production manages to stay true to Shakespeare's spirit while making it accessible to modern audience, people who used to hate Bard's work might find themselves converted. The cast is really superb consisting of the young stars like Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear, Michelle Dockery, Tom Hiddleston and true legends like Patrick Stewart, David Suchet, Geraldine Chaplin, Julie Walters, John Hurt and Simon Russell Beale.

Out of four episodes first one - Richard II, although really good is my least favorite, the reason for that is Ben Whishaw's mannerism, his portrayal of the king's gentleness, vulnerability and androgyny is sometimes to over the top for my taste. Fortunately the rest of the cast is doing magnificent job, Rory Kinnear is particularly good  as Bolingbroke and provides a great counterbalance for ethereal Whishaw.

The rest of the episodes are for me flawless. Jeremy Irons is convincing and  moving as ailing, guilt ridden Henry IV, to whom his eldest son and heir Hal is giving a lot of grief and worry with his reckless and improper actions. Hal the future Henry V is played brilliantly by Tom Hiddleston, in his portrayal of the young prince he gives him true humanity and warmth, thus Hal's progression from rebellious youth to a hero and leader who can inspire his people is very believable. After seeing Coriolanus and The Hollow Crown I think that Tom Hiddleston has an amazing potential and range as an actor and I hope Hollywood won't suck him in and stop him from doing theatre because it would be a great loss.

Another great performance in The Hollow Crown is delivered by Simon Russell Beale, his Falstaff is not just a comical figure, he is flawed, vain and greedy but also very pitiable and pathetic, you can't help but feel sorry for him.

This is not a high budget, sugary, CGI packed production in here it's all about the acting and acting is first class, get the DVD and see it for yourself.

How to Steal a Million with Peter O'Toole

The end of last year was marked by death of one of the greatest actors in the world Peter O'Toole, he became famous  playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. He received seven further Oscar nominations for: Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982) and Venus (2006).

Those are all amazing movies, however my favorite is and always will be How to Steal a Million (1966), this comedy/crime/romance mix in which Peter O'Toole teams up with wonderful Audrey Hepburn is a true delight, charming, witty and intelligent. The chemistry between dashingly handsome O'Toole (those blue eyes) and  gorgeous Hepburn is really great (equaled only by Audrey Hepburn pairing with Cary Grant in Charade, another favorite of mine).
 
The plot is a joyous romp: famous art collector who is actually art forger, Charles Bonnet lends a statue of  Venus to a museum in Paris, claiming it was sculpted by Cellini, when in fact it's a fake (just like everything else in his collection). Museum wants to insure the priceless piece of art but to do that the statue needs to be first tested by an expert to confirm it's authenticity. To prevent the ruin of the family, which would be imminent in the event of forgery being discovered, Bonnet's daughter Nicole (Audrey Hepburn) decides to steal the statue from the heavy guarded museum before the tests can be carried out, to do this she enlists the help of a mysterious burglar Simon Drermott (O'Toole).

I hope you will enjoy this movie as much as I do and remember one of the finest actors that ever lived.

National Theatre: 50 years on stage.

On the 2nd of November 2013 National Theatre celebrated it's 50th birthday with a very special performance called 50 Years on Stage.

The National Theatre first opened its doors in 1963 at the Old Vic under Laurence Olivier, work on the site where the National Theatre resides now (South Bank) started on 3 November 1969, The Queen officially opened the building on 25 October 1976. More then eight hundred productions later National Theatre marked it's fifth decade by remembering the best plays and amazing actors that graced it's stage.

50 Years on Stage is a true gem it consists of recreations of the most memorable scenes from the great plays that were staged by National Theatre, mixed with interviews with  actors and some archive footage from the original performances.

Among the cast you have young actors whose stars are on the rise including: Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic Cooper, Andrew Scott and Rory Kinnear and true legends of stage like: Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Joan Plowright, Deborah Findlay, Ralph Fiennes and Simon Russell Beale (who is going to play King Lear in forthcoming adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/king-lear).

Each segment is a treat, wonderfully directed and superbly acted which makes it really difficult to choose the best, I particularly enjoyed hilarious Ralph Fiennes in Pravda and brilliant and equally funny Sir Derek Jacobi in No Man's Land, the other favourite of mine was mesmerizing Helen Mirren  as unfaithful and murderous wife in Mourning Becomes Electra.
I also absolutely loved  the fragment from1964 production of Hay Fever starring Maggie Smith, I'm really desperate to watch the whole play if I can get my hands on it.

To find more information about 50 Years on Stage visit the official website

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/discover-more/welcome-to-the-national-theatre/50th-anniversary-website

Coriolanus at Donmar Warehouse London

Coriolanus is Shakespeare's last tragedy and fourth of his Roman plays. Donmar's adaptation directed by Josie Rourke has truly stellar cast including: Tom Hiddleston, Mark Gatiss, Hadley Fraser and Deborah Findlay. Because of this it's completely sod out, getting tickets requires incredible luck   (Barclays Front Row tickets released every Monday) or paying arm and leg on one of the ticket trading websites, I payed and I do not regret it, seeing this marvelous production was worth every penny (I got ticket for the evening of the 1st day of 2014, my seat was right beside the stage giving a fantastic view of the performance).

Acting of all the cast was superb, but it was Tom Hiddleston (Coriolanus) and Deborah Findlay (Volumnia - mother of Coriolanus) who kept me mesmerized. Tom Hiddleston commands the stage with passion and purpose, giving a fantastic performance as Coriolanus a man consumed by pride and obsessed with honor, but it is when you see his mother you know exactly where it all came from, Deborah Findlay's Volumnia has the voice and presence that makes you shiver, no wonder Coriolanus can't refuse her demands, this is a woman who would rather see her only child dead than dishonored and yet in the final scenes (pleading with her son for the sake of Rome) she shows true feeling and vulnerability.  Mark Gatiss does a great job too, his Menenius is a warm, moving and witty voice of reason to gentle to get through, ultimately rejected, heartbroken and cast away.

The set is really minimalistic but very suggestive (Donmar is a very intimate theatre with 250 seats).
Special effects were adding to the grimness and brutality of the play,  swords were clashing, smoke, soil and dust filled the air, rose petals were falling and blood was spilling on the floor.

Underneath it all Coriolanus is a play about the way politics and power work, about the price you have to pay for staying true to your values (whatever they might be) and not flattering the masses to gain popularity.

Coriolanus will be broadcasted by National Theatre Live in cinemas on 30th of January 2014.

http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/ntlout5-coriolanus

12 Angry Men at Garrick Theatre London

Juror #8: "It's always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth."

"12 Angry Men " (Sidney Lumet's adaptation from 1957 starring Henry Fonda) is one of my favorite movies, surprisingly although it received excellent reviews and three Academy Award nominations  it was not a box office hit, only after being broadcasted on TV it began to win the audience and now is perceived as a must see classic.
Therefore I was a bit anxious to see a stage adaptation at Garrick Theater, starring Martin Shaw, Jeff Fahey, Nick Moran and Robert Vaughn. Did it live up to the movie?

The answer is a definite Yes. Actors are absolutely fantastic, I especially enjoyed Miles Richardson playing Juror 10 a disgusting, angry, racist, his every word dripped with hate, made me feel very uncomfortable and that's for me what true art is about - evoking the feelings within a spectator. Martin Shaw and Robert Vaughn show true class, Jeff Fahey makes a rather unsympathetic character believable and moving (spoiler alert!!) the last scene when his character brakes down and cries for a length of time that seems like an eternity is a true display of his acting abilities, it was so heart-wrenching that I just wanted to climb on stage and give him a hug.
Long after the play was finished I was wondering how do you do this, how do you build yourself up to be able to display this level of emotional intensity?
Are you so empathic and in tune with character you're playing, or are you reaching for one of your life's sad experiences? And how are you able to do it twice a day in front of hundreds of people?
This is a true magic of theater.

"12 Angry Men" is still on at Garrick Theater go and see it for yourself, I truly recommend it.  http://www.garrick-theatre.co.uk/Twelve-Angry-Men.html

Michael Haneke's "Amour"

  Amour means love, and that's what Michael Haneke's movie is about' but it's not pop culture type of love: sugar coated, fast, fleeting, feeble, reserved to young and beautiful, disposable and shallow, No, "Amour" is about real love, unconditional, lasting, faithful and true to the end, the kind of love each and single one of us yearns for.
 The story about elderly couple- beautifully portrayed by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva- is almost unbearable to watch mainly because our culture shies away from showing aging and declining health, we have no problem with violent death, tortures and brutality but we are afraid of  natural course of life, of what often awaits us at the end of our journey: loss of independence, vitality, dignity and mental regress, but pretending it's not there doesn't make it go away and sooner or later we all going to be where the main characters are and one can only wish that we will take it with the same degree of dignity and love as they did .
  Despite the brutal honesty in portrayal of aging and dying this movie leaves us with hope that true love never dies.

When I was writing this post this song by Leonard Cohen came to my mind, enjoy:

“What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?                             
Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath
such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 


Today I've watched again Kenneth Branagh's 'Much Ado About Nothing' and couldn't help but compare it with the adaptation that I've seen two months ago at The Old Vic(starring Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones). Branagh's take on Shakespeare's comedy is a triumph of joy, laughter, charming verbal fencing and great acting, tension between main characters is sizzling and you can clearly see that actors are truly enjoying themselves.

 The Old Vic's version was completely different, the only word that I find suitable to describe it would be 'claustrophobic',  the action has been transferred to the time of World War II  set in an English village with Don Pedro and his men stationed at a US air-base nearby (during the play you could hear the sounds of  bomber air-crafts that made you think more about running for cover than love and romance), gigantic, dark, brown, table-like structure in the middle of the tage, around which the action took place only added to grim impression (it also distorted the sound). Redgrave and Jones are both great actors their age didn't bother me, however what did, was the fact that the rest of the cast looked really bleak in comparison to them.

The same play such a different feel but a great lesson on what happens if you try to hard to be original and innovative.