Sunday, October 21, 2007

159: The Pianist

This is one I started watching before but bailed out on some time ago. Its not the kind of movie thats gonna cheer you up! Based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman about his own survival in German occupied Poland through WWII.

This is a war movie without the war, Its filmed in such a way that we see everything from Szpilmans point of view as he movies from safehouse to safehouse avoiding the S.S and meeting people who are in hiding like himself and members of the polish resistance.

Adrien Brody is fantastic as the reticent and eccentric Szpilman. He conveys his state of fear and sheer incomprehension at the atrocities he sees everyday brilliantly. It's very easy to see why the film won its 3 Oscars. Its extremely well put together . Given the subject matter it probably goes without saying but it is pretty tough going in places, there are a couple of brutal on screen executions . This movie reminds me of Schindlers list , its brilliant but emotionally draining.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Synchronous tunes.

I've noticed a lot of the traffic coming here is for people searching for 'synchronicity'. Since my movie related ramblings are probably not what people are looking for I thought I'd offer something to cater for those folks.

Well kind of , it's actually something I've been thinking of putting together for a while and was just looking for an excuse to do so.

Basically this is a list of music tracks that have the same title but by different artists and are not cover versions. It could be argued that that is a synchronous event! (Of course given that most of them are one word titles maybe thats pushing it).

One Love by Bob Marley,The Prodigy and Massive Attack.

I have a little bit of trivia on this one. Marleys video features Paul McCartney and Suggs from Madness. I have also read in an biography of the band that the prodigy used to sing U2s 'One' on the way home after a night out. I'm guessing thats where their title came from.

One by U2, Metallica,Lamb


Ok this is cheating really.. There is a plethora of songs entitled 'one' so moving on..

Rise by PIL, Primal Scream and by Gabrielle!

lets be clear here I'm no Gabrielle fan, shes' purely here because the song titles are the same, but I think its pretty safe to say neither stole the title from the other!.

Religion by Front 242, Philip Glass


I like the contrast in these two.

Wandering Star by Portishead, Lee Marvin


Wandering Star is one of my favorite songs ( no not the lee marvin version!)

Collision by Faith No More, Front Line Assembly also Front 242 (but I can't find a audio or video link.)


Fire It Up by Busta Rhymes and Modest Mouse


Busta Rhymes has a lot to answer for .. defiling the Knight Rider theme tut tut tut.
Modest Mouse on the other hand

Weirdly enough, I've been listening to Nouvelle Vague for the last couple of days. I knew all the original versions of the songs except for one 'This is not a love song' , I wasn't looking for it but while looking for links for this article I came across the video for 'This is not a love song' by PIL. Maybe I'm looking too hard but I thought that was synchronous.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Mountains of Madness news

There has been some wonderful news.
Guillermo Del Toro has bumped Mountains of Madness up his priority
list, looks like he'll be starting after Hellboy wraps up (which I believe
will be in the next couple of months).

for those who have never read it the text can be found here.

The next question I guess is casting, professor Dyer, Danforth and to a lesser extent professor Lake are the central characters to the story.

I'm thinking unknowns would be best but maybe someone like Alfred Molina could handle on of the professors. I think it is likely Doug Jones will be involved somehow.

Any ideas?