So I finally managed to track down Irma Vep. Now I'm aware there are only probably a few dozen people in the world who have ever uttered that sentence, but it was a long wait for me. Maggie Cheung is a wonderful actress yet she claims she is only proud of three films she's been in - Clean, In the Mood for Love, and Irma Vep. In this film she plays, quite literally, herself.

The set up of the film is an aging French director (Jean-Pierre Léaud) has agreed to remake the classic silent serial Les Vampires, casting Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung (Maggie Cheung ) in the lead role even though she speaks no French (which shouldn't be a problem as he's remaking it as a silent film, ). So the film is Cheung's coming onto this nightmare of a disorganised set full with back-biting, envy and disillusionment.

It's a very funny film, it takes shots at French cinema liberally, but it's so outrageously stylish and funny throughout. Be it Cheung being interviewed by an art film-hating journalist or her costume designer's crush on her or Léaud's meltdown, it all works. Another very rare one I saw was a 70s Catherine Deneuve comedy called Le Sauvage. It's physical comedy and it's amusing throughout. This is a character Deneuve has personally identified with labelling the similarity being that (I paraphrase) she's kind of an annoying bitch, in a good way. Deneuve has to piss off the guys and occasionally take off her top. I won't bother with plot outlines or anything because it's so hard to find but Rappeneau has fashioned a fun farce for French film fans (go alliteration! ).

Sadly that's where the good ends and I still have three films to go. The first is the only real disappointment. I was a big fan of Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times (which I did a 250 mile round trip to see in the cinema) starring Shu Qi and have since found it has gotten better with every viewing. I will never watch Millennium Mambo (Shu's breakthrough role with Hou) again. It's so interminably dull it beggars belief.

Shu plays Vicky, a young woman who is going out with a crap boyfriend. The boyfriend is always being annoying, sifting through her purse, being jealous and making her feel like crap. If that sounds like the set up, I sodding wish, that's the first 80 (yes, eighty) minutes of the film...  I won't "spoil" what happens after that, but because I show the film more respect than it shows its audience. The film is gorgeously shot but it's completely hollow. The writing is appalling, zero characterisation whatsoever, only Shu's performance injects *some* life into her paper-thin character, but it's not just poor characterisation - there's no semblance of plot or character development (her situation changes, that's it) and to top it off the narration throughout switches from giving you the information before seeing the scenes when it's unneccessary and then hides stuff from you and tells you *after* you've seen it when it would have been more beneficial to know that beforehand. It's completely unispired cruising and snoozing from Hou and aside from "finding" Shu Qi as an actress with potential there's nothing of any real value as drama or entertainment.

So the clunky? Scripts. Bobby and Signs and Wonders. There's a scene in Bobby where having alerted other people to the fact he's on an acid trip, Shia LaBoeuf asks his best friend "Was I that obvious?" - Oh that Emilio Estevez had asked himself that very same question about his script. It's a cast of characters all working in the hotel Robert F. Kennedy was shot in in the late 60s (I cannot be bothered to look up the exact date for the sake of accuracy) and every one of them is "a situation" rather than a character. For example we meet Lindsay Lohan who is marrying Elijah Wood to prevent him from being sent to Vietnam (incidentally the most interesting part of the film)... and doesn't Estevez make sure we don't forget that fact, she mentions it in practically every scene she's in. It's a common theme throughout this risibly poor piece of writing that everthing is hammered over your head just in case you weren't paying attention. They should have got Ron Howard to direct, that's the only way it could be even more condescending.

The big thing I think of having seen it though is Sharon Stone. She was never a great actress and always relied heavily on her looks as being the primary a/ reason she got roles and b/ interest for her audience. So when she hits a certain age she has so much plastic surgery done to halt the ageing process it renders her completely unable to convey even the most natural of emotions. Someone who didn't go that route was Charlotte Rampling and her career has benefitted so much from keeping her natural looks as she ages as she has gotten some excellent roles this decade and has been doing sterling work in them. But then Rampling was always a good actress who was also a sexy woman rather than Stone who was very sexy woman who was also an actress.

Signs and Wonders kick-started the most fantastic run of performances for Rampling (she has a performance in a top ten of mine in every year from 2000-2006), but the film is let down by a very clunky script. She plays the wife of Stellan Skarsgård, who gets cheated on by him twice with Deborah Kara Unger. He's a naturalised American trader working in Greece who lives his life under the influence of signs and coincidences. Rampling nails what she has out of the park and Stellan is good but the situation is tired, not intelligently fleshed out and goes in a direction which is neither interesting nor satisfactory. Only watch if you like Charlotte Rampling or have a passion for all things Greek. Otherwise stay away.

Usually for the older films I see I've been bunching them together so as to draw a distinction between "new" films and just films I see. This though I feel has to have a whole entry devoted to it, or more accurately devoted to her. I knew of Liv Ullmann's multi-award winning/nominated turn in this film for years. In fact that was one of the main reasons I wanted to see it. This film turned into a bit of an obsession for me - it's not available in this country, not on online rental or even in the dozens of films included in a recent Bergman box set - I tried to buy it on ebay once but problems with paypal made me lose it. Why such an interest? It's been described as the finest performance ever captured on camera.

Cutting to the chase, I agree with that sentiment and amazingly, it's not even close. I watched this last night (I found it online and it's the first thing I've ever downloaded - I don't like the idea of that but it's not as if I'm cheating anyone because it's unavailable here and I'd happily buy it if I could) and I lay in bed afterwards racking my brain trying to go through all of the performances I think are perfect and I couldn't think of a single one that's even in the same league, the closest would maybe be Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve, but I'll explain later how this eclipses even that due to the role.

The plot set up is that Ullmann is a psychiatrist who slowly, but surely begins to unravel when her husband is in America for a conference and she moves back in with her Grandparents while covering a doctor who is away for two months. I'm very glad I didn't read reviews of this because they detail the *plot* beyond the pivotal halfway point because they want to talk about the situations Ullmann is placed in. I won't do that as I think it much more effective to let the story flow so I'll just mention moments.

Roles like this don't get written very often. The Madness of King George is probably the closest *role* I can think of that approaches it, but it basically requires Liv to run the gamate. Her first incredible scene is with a beautifully restrained Erland Josephson where having taken a couple of sleeping pills she begins to cackle, quickly it turns to sobs and then she's breaking down completely. It's an unsettlingly real moment that hardly any actress could do without looking like she's "acting". Later on she is screaming at Josephson flitting from herself as a child to her grandmother with every sentence, it's literally unbelievable how she pulls this off so completely convincingly.

The latter is where the distinction is drawn between her performance and Woodward's, for example, because she can "be" different "people" from sentence to sentence, but Woodward's were always self contained and separated, Bergman has written something much more demanding for Ullmann and she goes above and beyond what one could ever hope for. There's just nothing to touch it, she has created a character that not only goes through this (and is perfectly realised), through her performance she elicits emotions in the audience of real sympathy because you see this woman going through it and just want to comfort her. It's utterly remarkable, I've only had one experience like it in *real life* and she transported me back to the emotions I felt at that time.

I have to stop talking about Liv because I could be here literally all day waxing lyrical about the sheer brilliance of her performance. The film, I thought, was excellent. It's really interesting, Bergman has a few Rosemary's Baby ish dream moments and while it ends up not being very ambiguous at all, it works as it puts you in her self-referential state. I would also say the climax (not the very end) is a *little* fast, but I realise this was cut down from a much larger (200 minutes) piece intended for television.

Sometimes the hype of something is too much to bear. This performance though, rather like Lena Endre's in Faithless, is almost impossible to  overhype. The role of a lifetime created for the greatest dramatic actress in cinema history - it's essential viewing.

This was a very nice little film. The basic set up is a police band from Egypt has been invited to play at the opening of a cultural centre in a town in Isreal. When the 8-Man band (replete with powder blue uniforms) arrive at the Airport there's nobody to meet them, they get the bus and consequently get lost. They happen apon a small diner and rely on the hospitality of it's owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) and friends for the night.

Sasson Gabai plays the leader of the band, Tawfiq - he is quite wonderfully restrained and subtle. It is he and eternal womanising Haled (a very smooth Saleh Bakri) who are the two staying with Dina and provide the bulk of the story. Haled senses Dina likes Tawfiq so he tags along with some youngsters out in town while the others go out for dinner.

Gabai and Elkabetz quite simply *are* this film. She gives a beautifully natural performance as the straightforward, frustrated woman in a small town and she slowly chinks away at his armour all night long. It is also a very funny film, especially seeing 3 other band members being taken back to interrupt the host's wife's birthday. The highlight of the film (and one of the scenes of the year) takes place in a roller disco with Haled instructing his shy new friend on how to go about interacting with his date ("the cousin"), it starts off amusing and just ends up flat out hilarious, it's a fantastic scene which I will not spoil in the slightest.

This is a crowd-pleaser, but at its heart there are a lot of lonely characters dealing with this in different ways. Debut writer-director Eran Kolirin never judges his characters and that pays dividends towards the end. He creates lots of  visual jokes with the men in their uniforms standing out like sore thumbs, but he also creates very amusing situations for his characters to be put in and then to top it off he has lots of one-liners too. Just writing that now and thinking about it makes me realise how truly excellent the writing is, it's one of, if not *the* best screenplays of the year.

Recommended? To anyone. See this film. It's lovely.

This'll be my most random entry to date I think. I've no idea why I'm starting to write this at a quarter to one in the morning when I plan on getting up at 8.30am to watch the Australian Open final (yes, amazingly my interest is still there even though my beloved Danka lost a few days ago). Anyway, I just finished watching the pilot of The Closer - I've no idea if it's a repeat or if we've only just got it now but I've liked Kyra Sedgwick ever since Singles and I can see why she gets nominated for everything every year in tv-land in America.

This wasn't the only bit of "proper" tv I watched today, lovefilm sent me the BBC's 70s version of Anna Karenina and I had no idea it was going to be 10 50 minute episodes - maybe this is finally a version I can truly admire (I know there's no chance at all I'll ever find the Russian 60s Tatiana Samojlova film). Nicola Pagett seems very interesting (obviously, I would have preferred someone like Charlotte Rampling but one never knows what kind of place she was in at the time) and the two men are cast well. Not too sure about Kitty but I'm willing to change my mind. Only saw 1 episode but looks very good.

What wasn't very good was Hong Kong's submission for this year's foreign language oscar - Johhny To's Exiled. I deliberately missed this when it was released and I was very smart to do so because it's just not a good film. Anthony Wong (from The Painted Veil, Infernal Affairs) is the only member of the cast to emerge with any credit. Simon Yam (who was the only good thing about To's Election) has had everything interesting about him as an actor stripped away by his 2D character.

This film is all attempted style and no substance whatsoever. The cinematography is a hackneyed Chris Doyle rip-off (it's as if To wanted to do an action film like Wong Kar-Wai but neglected to watch As Tears Go By to see how Wong used to do it), the plot virtually non-existant (it's basically lots of shoot-outs every 10-15 minutes strung together flimsily), even less characterisation making it impossible to care about the people in said shootouts (so he's not been watching Leone then), it's just a really limp, lazy effort.

Even limper and even more mad a choice to send to the oscars for foreign language was Cronos, which I suppose we should all now watch because Pan's Labyrinth made a lot of money. It's atrocious. Such poor acting (Ron Perlman may rival Orlando Bloom for being the most incompetently wooden actor I've ever seen), the screenplay is just horrific, the characterisation utterly risible, it's just awful.

Getting back and saving it though is the Sophia Loren/Marcello Mastroianni/Vittorio De Sica film, Sunflower. I've been unfortunate to be born in a country where these people's collaberations are extremely difficult to get hold of but lovefilm had this (and A Special Day, which along with Wong's segment of Eros remains the only thing I've ever attempted to watch without subtitles - I even found this year's Polish entry Katyn, which I've been looking forward to for months because it's Wajda and looked quite baity, but haven't watched it because there are no subtitles and I can't find any to download) so I rented it.

It starts off rather slowly, the basic storyline is Marcello is missing on the Russian Front and Sophia is trying to find him. The limp part of the film is the flashback to how they were but when Loren gets to Russia the acting all round (and consequently, the film as a whole) really picks up. By the end, this simple situation the characters find themselves in is an acting goldmine. Loren in particular nails her role and goes above and beyond (she doesn't have the broadest range of any actress I've seen, but what she can do she's just magnificent at) and it truly makes the film, which started off decidedly averagely (except for that gorgeous Henry Mancini score) but ends up being really quite good. The dvd quality is sub par and it does hurt the visuals (which look like they were very nice), but it's more than worth tolerating.

Anyway, got to be up in about 7 hours for Djokovic/Tsonga, best thing about it is I couldn't give a toss who wins, so I'm just hoping for a great contest to crown the first new man to win a grand slam in over three and a half years.

So as some of you who've been reading this blog (apparantly there are a few dozen of you ) may already know, Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favourite actors around right now. What I haven't really got into before is just how much I like Laura Linney. Ever since seeing her in You Can Count On Me I've been a bona fide fan and since then she just always seems to put good performance after good performance in. This film, The Savages, is if not her best work then right up there with her oscar nominated turn in 2000.

The set up of this film is aspiring playwrite Linney and Brecht scholar Hoffman are thrown back into their absentee-father's life after his girlfriend dies and he starts exhibiting signs of dementia. While they set about finding a nursing home for their elusive father (who abandoned them) Linney must juggle her affair with a married man and The Hoff's Polish girlfriend is leaving due to an expired visa.

Viscount Hoffman is good, but Linney is *great*. Now, "great" is a very over-used word, but she's just exceptional here. She is such a wonderfully natural actress anyway but this is her at her very finest - she seems effortless, you don't see her "acting", she's just being the character and knocking it out of the park whether it be in simple scenes or extremely emotional ones. I'm very pleased she got some acclaim (in the form of an oscar nomination) for this performance because she's *so* much better than most of the women getting nominations left and right for lesser work.

I hate the word with a passion, but this is a "dramedy" - it's serious, but I found consistently funny throughout. Even the most serious conversations or rows have humourous one liners or a context to make it ridiculous. Tamara Jenkins is not afraid of differing types of humour (be it Linney explaining to her confused father that while Big Phil is a doctor it's of "philosophy ... drama ... theatre of social unrest", or visual moments like Hoffman rehabbing a sports injury), creates very natural and realistic moments and is even quite daring at times with some situations she creates that don't make her siblings come off that well.

But then it's not that type of film. While yes this is a comedy, it's not something to go to on a Friday night that will entertain the masses. It's also got a very serious situation at the heart of the film (dealing with the mental and physical decline of a parent). This isn't a film that panders to the audience and demands your love of the characters, it merely places them in front of you and hopes you can at least relate to them. It is also not going to make light of the situation even though it's portrayed amusingly.

Overall, this is a really good film. It's not moving enough in the dramatic parts or so relentlessly funny so that I'd say it was a brilliant film, but it's one of the best of 2007. The Hoff in the middle of a banner year, Linney on top form, interestingly intelligent writing and nicely told - it didn't feel almost 2 hours long, which only speaks to the economy of the measured direction. I don't particularly care for the ending, but by that point it seems almost churlish to suggest that we leave their futures completely in the balance, it's just I'd have personally preferred to end the story with the shot on the bed (which doesn't spoiler anything, don't worry) with their futures not so clearly (and rather expectedly) defined. Small thing though, this is a good one, find it if you can.

More lovefilm efforts to pour over. I'll do the two Garbos then get on to the rest. I saw Anna Christie and Mata Hari. The former is a very stagey adaptation of a play and a very early sound film (Garbo's first). It takes about 5-10 minutes to get used to the accents (a very unusual American one and a thick Swedish one) then Garbo enters. She was a little disappointing at first but by the time the plot swings round to the final half hour she really comes into her own. She falls back on silent techniques at times but ends up a good performance. The film isn't anything special.

Mata Hari was better, Garbo was excellent, very entertaining as the cold spy using men every which way (this, like Queen Christina, bares scant relation to the actual historical figure but ... it's classic hollywood ). The film's decent, borderline good but it's really the Garbo show and the film is only as good as her performance.

Now, this may seem like I'm doing this on purpose but I have to whine about Cannes again...  To get things into perspective I do like some Cannes films, some films I only watch because of Cannes and love them (like Underground just this month), but 2006's Grand Prix winner (Flanders) was a very dodgy choice - Wong Kar-Wai may be one of the best filmmakers on the planet but either he has very bad taste or his jury let him down badly.

The film starts off really well. Beautifully shot and effortlessly visual we see a farmer who has got his papers through and is going off to war. The girl on the next farm gives him a fare-thee-well shag (which lasts 30 seconds then he's done - when will films ever be realistic about sex?) but not before being all over another guy who's going into the same regiment.

It starts off mood-wise reminding me of the French film Innocence but very disappointingly it ends up in more Beau Travail (which I was not a fan of at all) territory. What basically happens is the farmer goes to war and becomes a complete moral bankrupt (every cliche you can think about what soldiers "do under the stresses of war" he jumps into with both feet) and the slut next door suddenly goes mental. Then what happens after the war is just inexplicable and neither poignant nor intelligent.

I feel so bad about being harsh on this movie because Bruno Dumont is obviously such a talented director. His pacing is slow but rhythmical, his visuals extremely accomplished, but he leaves so much to be desired as a writer it shackles his talents as a filmmaker. A film which was very interesting and showed extreme promise for an hour then let it all go to pot in the third act. Such a waste.

Okay, the oscar nominations came out today and as per usual there's the "HOW DID THIS GET IN?!?!?" and "HOW DID THIS MISS OUT?!?!?" comments left and right. Any award ceremony ostensibly is there to reward the films and performances with the most artistic merit. Now of course when you have the average age of an Oscar voter being approaching retirement then once you realise the oscars don't speak for you it's a lot easier just to enjoy them. But I thought I'd take this opportunity on nomination day to show how my thoughts on what was the best of last year gets distilled by going through the oscar process.

At the moment (as these things always change the more films you see) my top 5s from 2007 in the main 6 categories are as follows :

Picture : The Hottest State, Ratatouille, Les Témoins, Control and Once.
Actor : Nebojsa Glogovac - Klopka, Benicio Del Toro - Things We Lost in the Fire, Casey Affleck & Brad Pitt - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Casey Affleck - Gone Baby Gone.
Actress : Jeon Do-yeon - Secret Sunshine, Park Ji-a - Soom, Jodie Foster - The Brave One, Belén Rueda - The Orphanage and Tang Wei - Lust, Caution.
Supp. Actor : Philip Seymour Hoffman - Charlie Wilson's War, Sami Bouajila - Les Témoins, Tony Kebbell - Control, Peter O'Toole - Ratatouille, Steve Zahn - Rescue Dawn.
Supp. Actress : Vanessa Redgrave - Atonement, Natasa Ninkovic & Anica Dobra - Klopka, Charlotte Gainsbourg - I'm Not There, Laura Linney - The Hottest State.
Director : Andrew Dominik - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Srdjan Golubovic - Klopka, Werner Herzog - Rescue Dawn, André Téchiné - Les Témoins, Danny Boyle - Sunshine.

Now, that is 30 nominations. All of the blue ones (so 9 of the 30) were not eligible for the oscars because they weren't released in America and on the reminder list of eligible releases so if I were an oscar voter I wouldn't be able to vote for them. Now, also, if I were the average oscar voter, I wouldn't be going to the cinema all the time and I'd be relying on dvd screeners at the end of the year to see the relevant films. Were I an oscar voter, I would not have received the films in purple and probably wouldn't have seen those either, that's another 6 out of the 30. Then consider you can only nom a performer once in one category and that is over half of my nominations which AMPAS could not or would not go for. So you can see, there isn't one category where my opinion wouldn't be shaped by the system and it decimates my choices. So what would my ballot look like if I only chose from those films actually screenered for AMPAS?

Picture : Ratatouille, Control, Once, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and The Orphanage.
Actor :  Benicio Del Toro - Things We Lost in the Fire, Casey Affleck & Brad Pitt - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Sam Riley - Control and Gordon Pinsent - Away From Her.
Actress : Belén Rueda - The Orphanage, Tang Wei - Lust, Caution, Anamaria Marinca - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Ashley Judd - Bug and Helena Bonham Carter - Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Supp. Actor : Philip Seymour Hoffman - Charlie Wilson's War, Tony Kebbell - Control, Peter O'Toole - Ratatouille, Hal Holbrook - Into the Wild and Sasha Baron Cohen - Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Supp. Actress : Vanessa Redgrave - Atonement, Charlotte Gainsbourg - I'm Not There, Amy Ryan - Gone Baby Gone, Adrienne Shelly - Waitress and Cate Blanchett - I'm Not There.
Director : Andrew Dominik - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Anton Corbijn - Control, Juan Antonio Bayona - The Orphanage, Michael WInterbottom - A Mighty Heart and Brad Bird - Ratatouille.

So immediately my Best Picture, Actor and Actress are all unavailable, it's almost impossible to care after that. You also see films and performances I've not been *that* praising of (e.g. Blanchett, the Sweeney people, etc.) getting in the top 5s that way and films like The Orphanage getting BP/Director when I don't think they should. The system would make me reward the less deserving (everything in red) and it can't be good when you're supposedly trying to reward the best in the year. Not really, you're rewarding the best in the year that the producers bothered to fill in the paperwork and could afford to send us the film. The oscars are basically a glorified free-dvd club and that's why today there was almost nothing I really got behind and wanted to win.

So why do I care? Because I love films and I like to see what different people in different parts of the world think the best films are. I actually think the Cannes Film Festival does the absolute worst job with the films they take into consideration, year in, year out and I seldom agree with them but every year (except this year for reasons of Wongness ) I check out all the reviews and it sets what I'm looking forward to for the rest of the year. I probably wasn't going to check out In the Valley of Elah this week when it comes out but now with Tommy Lee Jones's nom I probably will find the time and make the effort - on the other hand I was always going to see The Savages whether Laura Linney got nominated or not so they're not the be-all and end-all.

So now that's over how have I done prediction wise?
BP - I never waivered over Atonement but I succumbed to the guild love for Into the Wild over the commercial success of Juno. That won't happen again.
Actor - I had Jones until  the SAG, note to self go with gut instinct. Did not believe in Depp at all.
Actress - For Linney see Jones. Lesson learned. Worth shouting out that I had Page getting nominated in my first set of predictions in early October and always had her in. Check me out...
S. Actor - Had all 5 in early december.
S. Actress - FInally dumped Rednose (that was a heartbreaker) but did so for Keener, again belief in Into the Wild over Dee, who is surely the worst nominee of the last 30 years. I don't know what they were thinking.
Director - Called Schnabel as the lone nom from the first round of critics, always said Penn wouldn't get in for ITW (thank Christ) but didn't count on Juno and the BP and had Wright instead (although I'm pleased he didn't get in, his direction, coupled with the script, stopped the film being as good as it could have been)

So a terrible year results in some very predictable (I had 24/30 noms in place after the Globe nominations) choices and a poor collection of films that don't represent the best of the year. But then the latter part was never what the oscars are about and the system, as shown, is utterly to blame for that. The rich get richer, we only see it if you can pay for it, in a town where everything is about money the awards (even when they choose the "little" films too) almost naturally follow suit.

I traditionally am in disagreement with the choices made by the ever-changing juries at the Cannes Film Festival. I can only think of 2 occasions in the past 10 years the palme d'Or winner would be something I'd even consider for the prize given the films they have to choose from. This year, unusually, the winner (this film) has received praise across the board from the critics on both sides of the atlantic, yet sadly this film represents yet another year where Cannes have rewarded a film I find completely undeserving.

The set up is, 2 roomates in late-80s communist Romania are scraping money together for something. Gabita has 2,700 Lei and Otilia gets another 300 from her guilt-tripping boyfriend who demands she come to a family gathering despite Otila's claims she can't make it. We see Otilia booking a hotel room and meeting a man and after about half an hour or so of the film (even though the title should make it obvious what the film is about) the word "abortion" is finally uttered.

There are a couple of huge problems with this film. The first is what I'd call Babel-syndrome in that all the "drama" (or more accurately "situation", I'll get onto that later) is created through the stupidity of one of the characters - it's so unsatisfactory dramatically when you are subjected to a static 6 minute scene with Anamaria Marinca (Otila) asking "why did you do this?" and "why did you do that?" and the answer to everything is the utterly moronic Laura Vasiliu (who in Gabita has surely created one of the most annoying, whiny characters put on film in this fledgling century) saying she didn't think.

The other problem is that while the extended sequence with the two women and their abortionist in the hotel room is extremely unsettling due to the very nature of what happens, it's not tense. There is no real "drama" afterwards or during or before because the characters are so thinly drawn it's impossible to care about them and all it is is these women put into this situation ... because one of them is stupid. Coupled with this, there's no tension, the style of shooting (long takes, gritty handheld style) only drags the thing out and kills any interest (a 7+ minute scene of Marinca at her boyfriend's dinner table listening to his family yap on about nothing is utterly overdone - we get it, the character doesn't want to be there, but it's so interminably dull that the audience doesn't either ).

The ending was not worth the wait (I could tell what was going to have happened when Marinca got back in the room) and it only prompts more following Marinca around, it's just relentless - this would have been a good 40 minute short but they've extended it and dragged it out and sucked any interest out of it.

What saves the film is the acting, which is in the main good. Marinca is nicely subtle and it's a natural performance but she never is able to embue her character with that bit extra because she doesn't have enough to work with on the page. Vlad Ivanov does a good job as the abortionist too, he's very convincing. Sadly though Marinca isn't good enough to make the film successful, it's disappointingly lightweight, not a good piece of writing and the filming style does it no favours either. Overall it's a glorified performance piece but Marinca is no Jeon Do-yeon and as such it's not as good as that film was.

There has been recent outcry that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days didn't make the shortlist for the oscars in Foreign Language film this year (as if it wasn't completely expected to miss out just because of the shooting style, my god some people don't know how to use their brains), I've only seen 6 of the submitted films and it's the weakest of the lot. It's okay overall because the acting's good but there's very little else to write home about and add in that Romania has been so good recently on social comment with the likes of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, this is a doubly disappointing effort.

I'll keep this relatively brief after yesterdays mammoth entry, I was just so behind on writing about what I've been watching. Anyway, went to an advance preview of the new Tim Burton film, which my friend Jamie was part of the crew for (he went around London photographing Victorian buildings, which got used to create the CGI backdrops and was on set too) and it's very Tim Burton.

Basic plot is London barber Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) has his wife and child "stolen" from him by an evil judge (Alan Rickman) who imprisons him on a bogus charge. 15 years later Barker returns to London as the eponymous character hell-bent on revenge. He goes to his old residence to find Mrs. Lovett (a very fun Helena Bonham Carter) and her pie shop (although this is no Pushing Daisies Pie Hole, they're the "worst pies in London") who informs Sweeney that his wife poisoned herself and the judge adopted the daughter.

All of this is through the medium of song, it's based on the musical and to be honest, it's not my kind of thing musically. Sitting here typing this I can barely remember two tunes, it's not especially memorable. And the singing is ... not great. Helena's fine I suppose as her little voice suits the character but Depp is not a good singer, he just about manages it and you do get used to it, but his singing is being kind "just about passable" and being more realistic "pretty dodgy". When you're doing a musical and the music isn't anything to write home about and you don't have talented singers, you're on an uphill struggle.

Yet somehow the film is quite good. It's funny throughout and it's very dark, beautifully shot and extremely violent. It's a mix of genres really, it's a gothic horror musical with its tongue firmly in cheek for vast portions. This means if nothing else, it's entertaining. The cast are all good (especially a very amusing Sacha Baron Cohen playing a rival barber and Depp's first victim) but the subplot with Depp's daughter and a young seaman is limp and certain things lack tension (Rickman going for a shave halfway through the film - you know there's no way Depp will get his revenge then no matter how frenetic the score gets, there's still an hour left!). Bonham Carter steals the show in this fun, gory, muscial which does well and entertains but never gets into anything much beyond that into the realms of being great.

Well, a few nights ago I saw The Painted Veil. Not the Greta Garbo 1934 version, I doubt I'll be able to find that anywhere, but the Naomi Watts/Ed Norton version from last year. The basic plot set up is Naomi and Ed enter into a loveless marriage and following Naomi's inevitable infidelity Norton (a bacteriologist in China) in a not-very-thinly-veiled act of revenge volunteers himself and his wife to go inland into the heart of a cholera epidemic to help the villagers combat the disease.

I don't see much need to delve more into the plot, this is a film for the senses. It is gorgeously shot, the music is absolutely sublime, it ebbs and flows and never overpowers but always supplements the images. The star of the show is Watts, she is utterly divine. Her emotions seem almost effortlessly conveyed, she never looks for a second like she is acting, it is a visceral portrayal of this woman's journey and may well be the finest work this actress has done. It's less showy than Mulholland Dr., it's not the oscarbait of 21 Grams, but it takes her finest moments from those films and combines it with the incredible ability she showed in King Kong to go above and beyond what is on the page. Her role is a very good one but she nails this out of the park so quietly and beautifully it is truly a joy to behold.

Overall I liked the film, a nice change of pace for Toby Jones in support, Norton's accent wasn't as bad as it sounded in the trailer, you can sense a little where the story is going and it's a little long, but that's not too much of a problem. It's funnier than I expected with some lovely Somerset Maugham-isms (it's based on his novel), but I think some might not like the relationship explored between the characters and they're not really fleshed out. That's where the acting comes in, Watts imbues her character with such real emotion she makes you care when it's not there on paper and she's good enough to recommend the film.

Coincidentally, the day after seeing Naomi reprise Garbo's 1934 role, I saw Greta's previous film, Queen Christina. All I can say is ... what a classic. Story is Christina becomes Queen of Sweden at a very young age in the middle of a 30 years war. We then cut to Christina in her early 20s when Sweden is on the verge of victory and she is being pressured to marry a national hero. Spain sends an ambassador to ask for Christina's hand in marriage but the ambassador and Christina fall for each other.

Garbo is so good I could be here all night writing and I don't think I'd even begin to scratch the surface of how brilliant she is in this film. It's the best performance from the 1930s I've seen, male or female. Now, while I do not claim to have seen anywhere near the amount of films from that decade to put too much weight behind that statement, I've seen a fair few of the top rated ones and nothing touches Garbo in this film. She does a range of emotions, she seamlessly flits between her role as dominant Queen dealing with issues of state and human lover and everything that goes with that. Her eyes, so effortlessly and completely expressive convey the soul of her character in a way that just cannot be taught or replicated.

This film is everything Elizabeth : The Golden Age should have been. It's fun, it's unpretentious, it doesn't bask in its own merits, it throws historical accuracy to the wind but does so in favour of telling you a romanticised possibility. The techs are exceptional for the time, the supporting players all good, the script jam packed with cracking lines and it rattles along at a pace. Yet it is the moments when the film rests that make it so sublime. The scene recalled by Bertolucci in The Dreamers where Garbo takes a couple of minutes to take in the surroundings in her moment of bliss, uttering "I have been memoriiiizing this roooooom - in the fuuuuture, in my memoryyyy, I shall live a great deeeeal in this rooooom", is just magical.

While it does get a tad predictable this film is just a bona fide classic. A performance for the ages, a film that should never be forgotten even though the oscars completely passed it over. Sadly I cannot say the same for one the oscars did go for, namely Cousin, Cousine. It was a lamentably weak year in the middle of the wasteland of a decade that was the 1970s (when the leads of Carrie and Rocky get nominated, you know it's an appalling year) and AMPAS must have been desperate - Barrault didn't even get awards attention in *France* for the role.

It's a comedy about two couples. One of the wives dances with one of the husbands at the wedding of a mutual cousin by marriage while their spouses are off somewhere having sex. Despite it going no further than that and the errant husband ending *all* of his affairs in an attack of guilt, the wife strikes up a friendship with the cuckolded husband she danced with to the chagrin of both guilty partners. It's amusing, but it's not exactly intelligent or witty. Even being just over an hour and a half it feels overlong and padded out and slow in places and none of the characters are drawn well enough to fully engage the audience. It's alright, but nothing special.

The same can very much be said for the delightfully titled Curiosity Kills The Cat. I got this free from yesasia.com for buying 3 chinese dvds off them and I selected it because I knew Carina Lau had received attention for it in Hong Kong. This is the sort of thing they should be submitting for the oscars rather than dreck like The Banquet or an endless succession of action films which stand no chance of a nomination (even if the remakes eventually win Best Picture despite not being as good as the original ... ).

Not to say it's so good it should be submitted, it's just something different that they'd be more likely to go for. Lau is good, but this fragmented tale which peels back on itself giving different aspects of the same situation from differing viewpoints doesn't exactly work. The basic premise is a man is cheating on Carina Lau with the local hairdresser and we find he is being stalked with red paint posing as blood being found on cars, chucked on his wife, etc.

If that sounds even mildly interesting I've probably been too kind to it. It's a very average film, totally run of the mill and Carina is a nicely done beacon of class in the proceedings but the script isn't as clever or compelling as it could or should be and there's no reason to go out of your way to find this, even though it's not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.

I stayed up to watch Hantuchova last night but it got rained off (how is it raining in Australia ... in summer?) - to my delight/dismay the two seeds above her in her quarter both dropped out and while I should be happy, Danka never does well when it's easy and on seeding she is "expected" to now get to the semifinals. She has her delayed third round match tonight and if she wins that she gets Maria Kirilenko, who she lost to the last time she played. She also has a doubles match - I bought the Eurosport player for the week and it logs all the matches so I can watch anything from the main 6 courts whenever I want, for 2.90 Euros that's insane so I'm loving it. Dani's up first and the only way I could have seen her is via this player so I'm so glad I signed up. ONE MATCH AT A TIME, DANKA! GO SLOVAKIA!!!