The Sleeping Beauty

A little background on my blog writing process: Sometimes I post about movies that I haven't seen but want to or about movies that I haven't seen & don't want to. Sometimes I post about movies that I have seen & that I think that you (general you) should want to see. Generally I try to blog about films that I not only think sound interesting, but I think a sizable portion of the population would agree with me on. Today, however, I'm posting about a movie that I've just seen & loved & I want you all to see it & love it too but it's a very unusual film & not only that, but it's in French which, ( as I mentioned earlier,) seems to deter some people from checking out some of the best stuff out there right now. The film is Catherine Breillat's ("Blue Beard" 2009) "The Sleeping Beauty" & a more visually stunning film you won't find this year. (Not to be confused with Julia Leigh's "Sleeping Beauty", about a beautiful college student who becomes a prostitute for men who prefer their partners drugged into deep sleep, which also comes out this fall.)

I loved the film for its embrace of fantasy & fairytale in an unscrubbed form. We are used to getting our fairytales in happily ever after format & the ghoulish originals have been stuffed away in favor of tidy happily ever afters that come after some predictable social lessons about the close relationship between happiness, virtue & beauty. Princesses are mirrors of society's vision of the perfect woman & the results are somewhere between cute & horrid. The princess in Breillat's version of the tale is also somewhere between cute & horrid but in a delightfully human way and the film is definitely not suitable for children. She's a spunky, willful child who loves alarm clocks & dictionaries. She falls out of trees while imagining herself to be Vladimir, a rough & tumble boy. When at age 6 the enchantment takes place & she enters her 100 years of sleep, she marches through her dreamworld with a self assurance that is both delightfully naive & sophisticated.

On her dream journey she travels to exotic places on a ghost train, meets a surprising cast of fairytale-esque characters, encounters love, desire & danger, & discovers puberty. The colors are vibrant & the scenery is exquisite. The enchanted world feels real. Waking into adolescence, she meets characters from her dreamworld & struggles to come to terms with reality, adulthood & the passage of time. Childhood is a dream that we all awake from at some point & there is a poignance to that experience for all of us. Watching Princess Anastasia go through it in such an exaggerated way is thrilling.

I hope people can overcome their fear of subtitles to come out and enjoy this exquisite film.

Watch the trailer Here

Read the New York Times review Here

Oh the Possibilities!

Earlier this week I thought, "Hmmm, there are so many movies we're looking into that I should really pick one or two to blog about..." but then I got stuck trying to pick one and ended up, as with many things in life, just sort of letting the thought drift out of my head without acting on it. However today I realized that it wasn't necessary to pick just one or two; the exciting thing about having a ton of great movies we're looking into is that there are a ton of them & they're great.

Here are a few of them (there are plenty more good ones that I'll cover later, don't worry!):

Newcomer J.C. Chandor's financial thriller "Margin Call" staring Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany & Jeremy Irons is on our radar. Financial thrillers are close to home for many of us at the moment as we continue to feel the effect of the economy's roller coaster lurch a few years ago. This film captures that moment when the financial institutions were on the cusp of that lurch.

Another film is Jeff Nichols's psycho drama "Take Shelter" about a father who is either going crazy or predicting a devastating storm. The film stars Michael Shannon who does crazy eyes like nobody's business & seems to be reprising his role in the Herzog/Lynch film "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done."

We're also keeping our eyes on David Cronenberg's new film, "A Dangerous Method" staring Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender & Keira Knightley about the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and psychiatry in the early days of psychiatry. Sounds cerebral & potentially boring but go ahead & Watch the Trailer Here... Oh wait, it also has hot kinky sex between hot people in period costumes? Awesome! Sign me up!

In a similar vein, we're also intrigued by Pedro Almodóvar's new film "The Skin I Live In", staring Antonio Banderas, about a plastic surgeon who works mad scientist style to create an impenetrable skin after his wife was badly burned. There appears to be plenty more twisted sexy sexness as well as a good dose of classic twisted Almodóvar. Watch the trailer here

Then there's Steve James's (Hoop Dreams) well reviewed documentary "The Interrupters" about the struggle of a small group of ex-offenders who work to protect their community from violence. It's a courageous project & the reviews are excellent.

For the life crisis that is somewhere between

early & mid, there's Miranda July's (Me and You and Everyone We Know) new film "The Future" about a couple whose decision to adopt a cat forces them to think about the future. It's getting good reviews & looks great.

There's also Jacob Tierney's film "Good Neighbors" which I will absolutely never ever watch because I value my ability to sleep at

night, however, I know there are several intrepid movie goers who frequent Cinema 16:9 who don't suffer from that worry. This is a film for them.

There's Rob Minkoff's "Flypaper" staring Patrick Dempsey & Ashley Judd which is a new twist on the classic light-hearted bank-robing farce. It's about two gangs who accidentally attempt to rob the same bank. Looks like fun. Maybe not high art, but fun and I'm all for fun.

Then there are some wild cards like Sheldon Larry's "Leave it On the Floor" & Mathew Bate's "Shut Up Little Man." "Leave it On the Floor" is about a newcomer who stumbles into Los Angeles ball culture. (For those like me who had to look it up, here's what wikipedia has to

say about Ball culture) A niche film for sure, but check out all the great dancing! "Shut Up Little Man" is a part of a burgeoning new documentary sub-genre; the cursing middle aged man whose rants were captured by a now outdated recording device & distributed virally before viral was cool & then resurrected for a chance to gaze deep into the navel of viral character assassination through a lens of nostalgia. (Check out last summer's "Winnebago Man" for another example.)

Do any of these look good? Great? Awesome Dull? Lame? What else should we be looking into?

Who Wants to Live Forever?

I just watched the movie How to Live Forever & enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. Now, I should admit that I'm not a person who thinks a lot about immortality or life extending elixirs all that often. Death has always seemed comfortably far off, a nice distance on the horizon but not something I need to bother myself with on a day to day basis. Someday it'll be here but why bother with worrying about it now?

Anyway, the movie was a lot more entertaining & enlightening than I'd feared. Living forever may be impossible, but the various routes to a long, fulfilling life are encouraging rather than laborious, enjoyable rather than drudgery. Actually, as I just said goodbye to my 31st birthday & firmly entered my early 30s (mid-adulthood, non-youth, the age when you start getting all excited when carded at the liquor

or store restaurant on the rare occasions work & family allow for such things...) it's a real joy to see the variety & joy available ahead. Botox, shmotox, someday I'm getting into kite building!