K: Kothbiro

It seems we're back to films. Soundtracks anyway.

I own the CD of the soundtrack to the film, "The Constant Gardner". The film itself hurts, but that's what a good story, well told, should do - reach in and touch you.

And it does. The story ends well, but not everyone gets out alive. And the audience feels right along with the main character. Of course, it never hurts to have your main character played by Ralph Fiennes. :) Rachel Weisz is no slouch either.

If you do visit the Amazon page for the soundtrack - play the piece of track 13, Kothbiro, found there. It's one of the more atmospheric and poignant melodies I've ever heard.

Three movies and a novel...

Yes, that should about do it and then I can...

Oh, this is a blog entry, not that little fantasy I have. Well now, where was I?

Three movies seen recently, "Avatar" being the first. It swept the world, even if it did cause concern in some higher ecclesiastical circles. I believe it was even called "bland" and "rather harmless". I suppose you could take that view.

I mean, it's the standard hero journey, with some romance and a little of the Pinocchio story thrown in. And no small number of explosions.

This really serves to underscore a thought I have, that there are about six good ideas in the world. Ah, but it's the telling of the tale where the art lies. And to this, far from humble one regrets to say, viewer's eye, this tale was told well.

The characters, as envisioned by the director, as rendered by the, really rather cool, technology, as given life by the actors (Sigourney Weaver - I mean, how can you go wrong?), created a story that I had little difficulty becoming lost in. Bland? I beg to differ.

Staying with an ecclesiastical theme, in some small way, we viewed "Into Temptation" recently. Again, we are dealing here with my fondness for artists - and so we have Kristin Chenoweth. Few lines. None of them "zingers" - other than one of the early ones. The rest - acted, silently and deeply. A powerfully told story.

"The Other Man". Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, Antonio Banderas. Need I say more? Whether I need to or not, I will. This and the previous movie are worth studying from the perspective of storytelling. They are carefully constructed plots, well-built, designed to take viewer through the experience without spoonfeeding them. And it's just a blast to watch people, good at what they do, doing it.

The novel? "Songs of Distant Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke. I found it in a second-hand bookstore in Kansas City, over Christmas. That and several others.

Elegiac is the word that comes to mind for me. But then, I have a substantial dose of Celtic melancholy about me. This would explain the appeal - of the book. The last and greatest starship of Earth, stopping off at one of the first "seed colonies" before going on its way, bringing the last humans ever to spring from our solar system to a new home.

Hard science fiction because Clarke, as he mentions in an "Author's Note", did not believe we would "warp factor n" our way around the galaxy. Ah but, again, it's what the storyteller does with the ideas that's of importance. And Clarke is a favorite storyteller of mine.

Ah yes, I remember it well...

While there is no intention to turn this into a series of film reviews, I have to comment on Goldfish Memory - a delightful film set in my native Dublin. The city herself has a starring role in the file - at least to this, quite biased, eye anyway.

What is the matter? - as Polonius was heard to ask Hamlet. In the case of the film, love. Love and the "frailties that flesh is heir to". Dear me, it seems I am on something of a Hamlet kick.

The film - simplicity itself. Take just short of a dozen people and shuffle them. Shuffle them without much regard to gender pairings, generational pairings, even religious pairings as it turns out. Leave much unsaid, or say too much, or not enough. Stir - wildly - and serve 85 minutes of entertainment - with sensual portuguese songs to leaven the batch.

A warning. It may be necessary to see the film more than once - to allow you to keep track of everyone. But that might just be me.

"How did it get so late so early?" - a quote stolen from the book

We saw a film today, oh boy. Well, not actually today. A little while ago. We had seen a preview of it on some DVD or other. "Gotta see that" was the immediate, shared thought.

All hail NetFlix.

Frank Langella in a performance made up of the tiniest details. A quiet film. Not a car chase to be seen. And, given it deals with writing, writers and their milieu, of much interest.

I caught sight of the "based on..." information and very soon afterward ordered the book, and have now finished reading it.

The same quietness. Some elements more explored, more detailed, than film allows for. But the essence caught by the screen writers, the director, and the actors. The enfolded stories fitting together more neatly in the film, because the audience has less time to devote to that medium.

I have always liked Frank Langella as an actor. This is a performance I will never forget - and, as is often the case, cannot imagine anyone else in this role.

"Starting Out in the Evening" - a powerful and subtle hymn to life. Nice work by the author, Brian Morton.

Into Great Silence

Last year we went to see the movie "Into Great Silence", a documentary about the lives of Carthusian monks. A film quite out of the ordinary about lives lived quite out of the ordinary.

I had promised myself that, when released on DVD, I would buy this movie. It has been and I have. A two-DVD set, one the film, the other the "special features".

We enjoy the additional material available these days for so many movies. A glimpse behind the curtain at how the images we see came about. Very often these glimpses serve to underscore the "magic of the movies". How such disparate pieces can be brought together into the finished illusion seen on the screen remains incomprehensible.

The special features on the second disk of "Into Great Silence" were different to those for any other movie we have watched. Fitting, I suppose. The movie itself is different from any other we have seen.

The special feature disk had the same sense, feeling, texture that the film itself had. A different sense of time than we are used to. A different sense of what is important, what should be focused upon, where our interest should lie.

Much like the lives of the monks themselves.