Monika’s Pensieve

Daniel Radcliffe is really pushing the envelope *grin* We’ve got him specifying at what age he lost his virginity in this interview in Esquire. And the Guardian profile goes even further - he admits to an interest in cross-dressing lol I’ve been wondering whether he would own up to being a smoker if he was asked and it looks like he’s done that too!

Below is an adorable interview with Emma Watson from the Jonathan Ross show:

She talks quite a bit about her kiss with Rupert Grint and it’s really funny. Actually that generally seems to be one of the main talking points of the Half-Blood Prince publicity even though the kiss isn’t due until the 8th film or so. Daniel Radcliffe talked about the kiss in the Guardian interview as well:

“(…)But I have to say, today I saw playback of Ron and Hermione’s kiss [from the final book], and it is easily, from what we’ve filmed so far, the biggest moment in all the films. It is,” he says approvingly, “a great kiss.”

There’s also a nice interview with Mathew Lewis and this one with David Yates is a good read too.

Last, but not least, there have been some new clips and stills released. One of them (the library scene) aired during the Jonathan Ross interview, but there’s also the attack on the Burrow scene (a scene that’s not in the book, but I think I’m getting why they felt they needed it in the film), a short clip of Quidditch and a scene between Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny in the common room. The new stills are awesome. I particularly loved the two stills from the Spinner’s End scene - see here and here. Also Lavender is looking great on those pics. And why on Earth is Neville a waiter at the Slug Club Christmas party? lol

{FILM DIARY}

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (USA, 2008)

Seen: Wednesday, 1st July 2009 (cinema)
Runtime: 101′
Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Craig Robinson, Jason Mewes, Jeff Anderson, Traci Lords, Katie Morgan, Ricky Mabe, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Brandon Routh, Justin Long
Production House: Blue Askew, View Askew Productions, The Weinstein Company
Plot: Zack and Miri are broke, so they decide to make a porn film. During the course of making it they discover they have deeper feelings for each other than they thought.

Scene From the Film

Impressions In Short
I guess the surprise of the movie is that despite being rather vulgar, it’s actually a very sweet love story. It was a lot of fun :)

More About the Film
There’s not that much to say about it to be honest. It’s just lots of fun and silliness.
Me, Kin and Ewelina were all a little surprised that the porn scenes went as far as they did. I think we were expecting most of it to happen off screen and that was not the case. We even got a hilarious full frontal from Jason Mewes. Though at the same time we all felt that since they *did* go that far, it was a bit weird that the sex between Zack and Miri was so prudish. I know it was supposed to be soppy and everything, but it felt like it was from a different movie almost.
The cast was excellent. I like it when comedy’s done like that… Regardless of whether it was a comic scene or a more emotional one, they were all always in character and playing it earnestly. I loved that :)

Recommended?
Yes, if you’re in the mood for a comedy and don’t mind the humour being rather vulgar :)

In the report below, Al Jazeera interviewed people in Beirut about their city and about their views on many issues. It looks like a fascinating place :)

The publicity for the upcoming Harry Potter movie is really moving now. Here’s a small selection…

So firstly, there’s a new scene from the film available now. It’s a scene between Dumbledore and Harry.
The clip has me convinced of two things… One - we’re going to get a lot of Dumbledore in this movie. Two - I’m going to have very similar impressions about the 6th film as I had about the 5th ;-P I think it’s going to have some good performances (perhaps even better than in the 5th - they always seem to get the performances better with every film) and some interesting moments, but on the whole it’s going to be full of Hollywood clichés :] The music and some of the crane shots on that clip are painfully Hollywoodish *sigh* (the performances look great though)

There’s also a totally random TV spot making the rounds, which I thought was fun. They usually have a pretty conventional way of doing publicity and this was unusually creative ;-P

Interviews, featurettes and all that are coming out en masse too of course. What I find particularly amusing is how the Trio are suddenly all freely talking about their love lives ;)
Anyway, you can check out this interview with Emma Watson, which is pretty good. She says some cute things about Helena Bonham-Carter in that.
This is a rather good interview with Rupert Grint. It’s interesting to hear him talking about acting and how he sees his career. One rarely gets anything quite that coherent out of him about it ;)
Oh and both Rupert and Emma talk about the kiss - apparently they did it recently during the Deathly Hallows shoot.
This one with Daniel Radcliffe is relatively good, but he was at his best in this one ;) I think my favourite bit in that was when he talked about the challenges of adapting the Harry Potter books to film:

Also, we’ve sort of screwed ourselves up a bit. We haven’t had Dobby in the movies since, I think, the second. So, we’ve now got to re-establish a character and then have it mean something when he dies. So we need time to do that. Maybe I should have a line when he pops up: “Dobby! I haven’t seen you since 2003!”

Finally, I wanted to link to this also. The article caught my interest mainly because it’s the first time I’ve heard about Warner Bros putting their foot down on something the director wanted to do:

According to everyone I speak to at Leavesden, Warners has been remarkably hands off. It’s only when Yates started to get a bit arty on The Half-Blood Prince that the studio had something to say. “The only major run-in we’ve had since I came on board is regarding the look of this film. We had a fairly major negotiation about its look. Bruno Delbonnel, who was also cinematographer on Amelie, made it look very distinct and different to the previous Potters by using all these monochromatic washes. The studio wanted more colour added to it and we obliged. And actually it’s no less artful with the new grade; it looks more beautiful, more inviting. When you’re sending 28,000 prints around the world to goodness knows how many cultures, you need a show that pulls you in.”

{FILM SPOTTING}

July is clearly Hollywood blockbuster month for me *grin* (I’ll have the ENH festival at the end of the month to recuperate by watching loads of art house movies ;-P)

Brüno (USA, 2009)

Release Date (worldwide): 8th July 2009
Release Date (Poland): 10th July 2009

I originally “spotted” this here.

Public Enemies (USA, 2009)

Release Date (worldwide): 1st July 2009
Release Date (Poland): 17th July 2009
Runtime: 140′
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard
Production House: Universal Pictures, Relativity Media, Forward Pass, Misher Films, Tribeca Productions, Appian Way
Plot: (from imdb)

The Feds try to take down notorious American gangsters John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd during a booming crime wave in the 1930s.

Trailer

The sceptical part of me thinks that…
The story and trailer aren’t all that enticing.

The excited part of me thinks that…
It stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale - that should be enticing enough ;-P And also Depp tends to choose interesting films nowadays so…

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (USA/UK, 2009)

Release Date (worldwide): 15th July 2009
Release Date (Poland): 24th July 2009

Probably my most awaited movie of the year ;) I originally “spotted” this here.

Below is a report on how the statistics from Guantanamo have been skewed by the media. It gives a whole new perspective on statistics like “1 in 7 of the prisoners released from Guantanamo have returned to terrorism” :]

The building of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land has been in the media for a while now, but personally I found the coverage on it confusing and never really understood what was going on. Below is an excellent video report on the problem, I really recommend it - it’s a great way to finally start getting one’s head round the Palestinian conflict, as the Israeli settlements are a central part of it.

{FILM DIARY}

Hagetaka: Road to Rebirth (Japan, 2007)

Finished Watching: Thursday, 25th June 2009
Runtime: 6 episodes (60min. each)
Director: Kentaro Horikirizono, Tsuyoshi Inoue, Keishi Ohtomo
Cast: Nao Omori, Kyohei Shibata, Ryuhei Matsuda, Chiaki Kuriyama
TV Network: NHK
Plot: A story about the mid-90s recession in Japan when Japanese companies were going bankrupt and were being bought out dirt cheap by foreign companies.

Scene From the Film
I really loved this scene - it sets up everything so beautifully (and with almost no dialogue too *grin*). It’s set in a ryokan - the ryokan is a family business. It used to be run (very cleverly) by the grandfather, but after he fell ill it was taken over by the father. The father is a bad manager and so when the recession came the business fell to pieces. The son knows the father is no good at business and has tried to make the father aware of it, which just leads to tensions in the family rather than anything getting resolved.
The scene below takes place right after the father has had a meeting in town and has finally lost the property and business. The son is in the ryokan taking care of the grandfather (who doesn’t really understand what’s happening around him). The father leaves voice mail (there are no subs, so the line is “Should I have left it to you?”).

I thought this scene was very special *grin* (I somehow anticipate very few people will feel the same way, but oh well ;-P)
If you want the trailer (which I hated ;-P) then it’s here.

Impressions In Short
Not amazing, but sort of intriguing…

More About the Series
It’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of J-drama. It was much more quiet and restrained than the Japanese TV stuff I’ve seen until now. In fact even the format is different - 6 episodes rather than 10-12 and each episode has a duration of 60min. rather than 45min.
It was interesting to see something so centred on the world of business - parts were a little difficult to follow for me because my understanding of funds, stocks etc. is very poor (I should rectify that really). I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film which took an approach like this to tell a corporate world sort of story and that in itself was rather intriguing.
The two main characters are businessmen - one works for an American company and is trying to buy out Japanese companies dirt cheap, the other is trying to somehow save Japanese companies from this sort of fate by restructuring them and changing management policies. Then there are two supporting characters that don’t have all that much screen time, but have a significant impact on the plot. One is a female journalist who reports on Japanese economy and has a painful past connected with those two men. And then there’s the already mentioned son from the ryokan.
One thing that bothered me was that the two supporting characters had somewhat unresolved stories. Most of the companies in the story had a family aspect and so family relations were rather important to the plot. Yet after quickly introducing those two characters’ families, the families are practically forgotten thereafter. This is particularly true for the riyokan family - after the son leaves we never even learn whether his mother sees him again or not (I assume yes, but in the last scene in which she’s in she says she hasn’t heard from him).
On the whole, the series is a bit uneven. It does get corny, but on the other hand it has something pretty serious to say too. It was very interesting how traditional Japanese values kept being pitched against aggressive capitalist values from the West. That was sort of what threw all those company managers - the way they used to operate just suddenly became obsolete. It was portrayed really well.
And as for my reason to see it (has anyone noticed who has dominated my film watching lately? ;-P), Ryuhei was terrific… most of the time that is ;) He averaged about two scenes per episode, but there were some very striking and intense ones. I felt it got worse whenever he was dressed up in a suit ;) Whenever he was in a suit he automatically seemed to go into playing the emotionless corporate kind of stereotype, which I didn’t like. Though one could argue that was correct as that would probably be what the character wanted to project to others at that point in time. As long as he was out of the suit I thought he was absolutely top notch, however *grin* The part really played into his strengths. Even the style of cinematography they chose for the series (it was quite stylish) enhanced the kind of acting he’s best at. It was beautifully understated and he got all the tension and sarcasm out very effectively. There were quite a few scenes I could write about, but I’ll restrain myself and stick to his final scene. The way it’s written it would have normally have come off as very soppy and corny. But the way he did it he managed to do it really raw, it was fab *grin*

Recommended?
Er… maybe ;) For Ryuhei definitely - as long as you don’t mind that he has little screen time that is. Perhaps it’s worth seeing for the novelty factor (if, like me, you’ve never seen a business drama).
Otherwise maybe not…

Here’s the story of one of the men in the chilling South African rape statistics that I mentioned before. I think it sheds some light on why rape happens in the RSA so often.

Interesting I think…