Monika’s Pensieve

I’m holding my breath for an announcement about when A Single Man will be released in Poland. It’s kind of odd - I think it’s the first time I’m this excited for something quite that art house. Usually, it’s only the big publicity machines that generate quite this amount of excitement from me ;)
Anyway, now [...]

{FILM DIARY}
Surrogates (USA, 2009)
Seen: Friday, 30th October 2009 (cinema)
Runtime: 88′
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Cast: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, James Cromwell
Production House: Touchstone Pictures, Mandeville Films, Lanoue Film Arts, Road Rebel, Top Shelf Productions, Wintergreen Productions
Plot: (from imdb)
Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop (Willis) is [...]

{FILM DIARY}
Galerianki (Poland, 2009)
Seen: Wednesday, 28th October 2009 (cinema)
Runtime: 82′
Director: Katarzyna Roslaniec
Cast: Anna Karczmarczyk, Dagmara Krasowska, Dominika Gwit, Franciszek Przybylski
Production House: Monolith Films
Plot: The story of a couple of teenage girls, who have sex in exchange for money and expensive items.
Trailer

Impressions In Short
Some good performances and unusually developed characters considering this is a Polish film [...]

{FILM DIARY}
Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi (USA, 2009)
Seen: Sunday, 18th October 2009 (cinema, WFF)
Runtime: 84′
Director: Ian Olds
Plot: (from imdb)
In 2007, the Taliban kidnapped 24-year-old Ajmal Naqshbandi and an Italian journalist. Naqshbandi was one of Afghanistan’s best “fixers” — someone hired by foreign journalists to facilitate, translate, and gain access for their stories.
Trailer

Impressions In Short
There [...]

{FILM DIARY}
The Girlfriend Experience (USA, 2009)
Seen: Saturday, 17th October 2009 (cinema, WFF)
Runtime: 77′
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Sasha Grey
Production House: 2929 Productions, Extension 765, HDNet Films
Plot: The story of a sophisticated escort, who gives men a “girlfriend experience” - as in an evening out during which she behaves exactly like their girlfriend rather than a girl they [...]

Before I get to the spotting part of the post, I wanted to recommend Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. It’s coming in on the 13th of November 2009. I saw it at the Planete Doc Review and reviewed it here. It’s even more poignant now after Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland.
{FILM SPOTTING}
The Tibetan Book of the [...]

{FILM DIARY}
Mammoth (Sweden/Denmark/Germany, 2009)
Seen: Friday, 16th October 2009 (cinema, WFF)
Runtime: 125′
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Marife Necesito, Jan David G. Nicdao, Sophie Nyweide, Martin Delos Santos, Natthamonkarn Srinikornchot, Michelle Williams
Production House: Memfis Film, Film i Väst, Pain Unlimited GmbH Filmproduktion, Sveriges Television (SVT), TV2 Danmark, Zentropa Entertainments, Zentropa International Berlin
Plot: (from imdb)
While on a [...]

{FILM DIARY}
Love Actually (UK/USA, 2003)
Seen: Tuesday, 13th October 2009 (VHS, repeat viewing)
Runtime: 135′
Director: Richard Curtis
Cast: Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Hugh Grant, Laura Linney, Thomas Sangster, Alan Rickman, Lúcia Moniz, Billy Bob Thornton, Rowan Atkinson, Olivia Olson
Production House: Universal Pictures, Studio Canal, Working Title Films, DNA Films
Plot: (from imdb)
Follows the [...]

{FILM DIARY}
Bridget Jones's Diary (UK/France, 2001)
Seen: Tuesday, 29th September 2009 (VHS, repeat viewing)
Runtime: 97′
Director: Sharon Maguire
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Gemma Jones, Jim Broadbent, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Shirley Henderson
Production House: Little Bird, Studio Canal, Working Title Films
Plot: (from imdb)
A British woman is determined to improve herself while she looks for love in a year in which [...]

I think this is the first one I actually find relatively enticing, though the special effects still look appalling IMO :]
The nice thing about this trailer is that it’s not quite as choppy. The first Twilight film was as “unchoppy” as Hollywood editing gets these days and that was a lot of its charm for [...]