Movie Questions

1. My absolute favorite movie of all time is:- I'm not really big on the idea of favourite movies. I have so many that I love in different ways!

2. My favorite movie as a child was probably either Home Alone or Anne Of Green Gables!

3. The best movie quote ever is:

Norah: There's this part of Judaism that I really like. Tikun Olam. It says that the world is broken into pieces and everyone has to find them and put them back together.

Nick: Maybe we don't have to find the pieces. Maybe we are the pieces.

4. My favorite actress is hmm... so many:- Amber Tamblyn, Kat Dennings, Kristen Vangness, Bette Davis, Gene Tierney, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Kristen Wiig.....lots of favourites!

5. The movie I could watch over and over is Empire Records.

6. My favorite movie genre is I guess a mix of things, mainly drama, independently produced and coming of age movies.

7. A movie I'd like to watch this weekend is Taking Woodstock

From Belen's lovely blog - here

http://kingsheepblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/halloween-destination-woodstock/

Blue Wind

I haven't posted in so long and I'm sorry about that. I've mentioned before my issues in the past with depression and most of the time I feel that it IS in the past. Sometimes, however, it creeps back in; all the bad feelings and thoughts. It is all I can do to try and keep them from consuming the ground that I have won from it. It's been a .....dark couple of weeks but the slipping feeling is getting less and less.

Also in the mean time one the things that has happened was me turning into something of a Gleek! I never really watched the first part of the season but the back nine episodes have got me tuning in and it has nothing whatsoever to do with this guy...... honest!

(or the fact that these two are very cute on the show and off it)
All pictures from here
http://fuckyeahjonathangroff.tumblr.com/

Plus they got me addicted to listening to this:-




1. http://www.umass.edu/rso/guild/spring%20awakening.jpg
2. http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q286/punbandhu/SAwallpaper2.jpg

Spotlight Saturday

Joe Anderson

Born 26th March, 1982, this English actor is probably best know for his portrayal of Max Carrigan in Across The Universe.

His first major role was in the odd but interesting film Silence Becomes You with Alicia Silverstone and Sienna Guillory, This is a very pretty, if overly attempting mystical story of two sisters brought up in almost isolatation, lost in the world their father created for them and the stranger they bring into the house with a clear purpose that gets muddled along the way. Then came playing Jane Austen's brother in Becoming Jane and Peter Hook in the wonderful film Control, which is about Ian Curtis and Joy Division. Anton Corbjin's film is wonderful, sad, intense and haunting with stand out performances by Sam Reily and Samantha Morton and the director's history as a still photographer results in some the most beautiful representations of Macclesfield. The black and white format adds the bleakness of the lives being lead and at the same time captures perfectly the grace and beauty which makes their music so enduring.
Across The Universe by contrast is a colour explosion and Joe portrays the enthusiam and chaos of Max who is part of the generation who embraced the freedom and insanity of the 60's while showing the price paid by those who were enlisted to the Vietnam War. It is Max and Jude's relationship that stands out in the film to me, the friendship that springs naturally and means so much to both of them. Since then Mr Anderson (yes, I had to say it) has done horror movies, The Ruins and The Crazies, the Hilary Swank bio-pic Amelia, a heist move High Life, an action-comedy Rogues Gallery with Ellen Barkin, Zach Galifianakis and Emilie de Ravin and a road movie called The 27 club about a rock star whose best friend and lead singer has just committed suicide and who goes on a road trip with a checkout boy and a fan in order to reach the funeral. He is currently filming Flutter with Billy Zane and Laura Fraser.

Also possibly working on being a director? :-

JA - I’m a big fan (of the horror genre), but I’ve also of late been getting really annoyed with the whole genre – why am I not being disturbed? I’m being disgusted a lot of the time, and I cringe a little bit, but I’m not really deeply being affected by what I’m seeing. So consequently I’ve set out to write my own psychologically disturbing thing for myself. It’s sort of a pet project that spawned out of doing research for things like The Crazies – just watching horror movie after horror movie, and asking “how I can change this and get back to where we were?” It’s such a great medium for a first time director as well because you can have a human aspect to it and use the cinematic medium to tell a story, but you have to get it right or there won’t be any jumps or anything. Also, it’s very easy to shoot something on a video camera and do a sort of Paranormal Activity type movie, but I think the genre deserves a little more respect than that to a certain degree. It’s an exciting challenge.

quote from here, an excellent recent interview with Joe by Michael Holder









1. http://www.last.fm/music/Joe+Anderson/+images/2339433
2. http://www.brandimills.com/blog/tag/the-big-lebowski/
5. http://www.screenrush.co.uk/film/galerievignette_gen_cfilm=136101&cmediafichier=19178791.html
The rest are of unknown source. If you know or can claim them then please let me know so I can credit you.

Spotlight Saturday

As a big film/reading/all round geek I often find myself saying how great certain people are and seeing blank looks. Not that these people are obscure, often I'll find forums, tumblrs and facebook pages dedicated to their wonderful selves. Anyway, I have a great deal of enthusiasm for certain people's work and would like to use my little piece of the internet to celebrate them. So:-

Amber Tamblyn

Amber Rose Tamblyn was born May 14, 1983 in Santa Monica, California. She is the daughter of actor Russ Tamblyn, and her mother, Bonnie Tamblyn, is a singer and artist. Russ Tamblyn was a childhood love of mine, especially as Gideon in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, so when I got dragged into seeing The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants by my Alexis Bledel-loving friend I made the connection to her.
She is a wonderful actress, she grew up working on the TV show General Hospital but after acting in a few movies (including the Wim Wenders segment of a short film compilation Ten Minutes Old: The Trumpet) she landed the lead role in Joan of Arcadia. The show follows Joan as she comes to term with the fact that God is taking a rather more direct interest in her life than most, and grumbles her way through it. The show is very much written by people who like science and questions, and it benefits from that, along with the genuine affectionate bonds the family group seemed to have. After JOA was cancelled and S of T P came out, Amber starred in the movie Stephanie Daley, a difficult look at a court case involving a teenage girl whose baby died immediately after birth and whether it was murder and the events running up to it. The movie is brilliant, sensitive and harrowing and wonderfully acted by Amber, Tilda Swinton and Timothy Hutton who play the pregnant criminal psychologist and her husband. After that she worked in The Grudge 2, S of the T P 2 and a number of films which I haven't had chance to see yet. Recently she has been playing Casey Shraeger on The Unusals which also starred Oscar nominated Jeremy Renner, playing a young cop out to prove herself in the bizarre dept handling the more unusual aspects of New York law enforcement.

Amber is also a writer with two books of poetry out published, a co-founder of Write Now which fundraises for quality poetry programming and supports poetry communities who also put together an annual show in LA to showcase poets living and writing in the US. I have both her books, and they are wonderful. When I was little I tried to learn all my favourite poems and passages of books to recite to myself because replaying people's beautiful words stopped me from being lonely; I grew out of it but began again when I read some of Amber's poems from Free Stallion. This Christmas I got Bang Ditto and love that just as much, her words are sharp but not vicious, angry without being vindicitve, introspective without being to self-involved and passionate while remaining involving. She talks about politcial issues she feels strongly about, about personal relationships, how she feels about herself and the world.

From the poem ROLE RESEARCH:

"1.

“Jumpers” he calls them, pushing a picture

under my dried tabloid-puke eyes.

The homicide detective at New York’s 19th precinct

sits across from me, the mascara maven.

Role research. He has no eyelids left,

just crumpled Polaroids. Murders, suicides,

robberies, kidnapping: seen one 36-year-old

Caucasian male impaled on a pole after

plummeting the length of New Jersey,

seen ’em all..."

All photos are from Amber's Facebook page
The section of Role Research is from here

10 Things

For the past three hours the alarm in my office has been going off. Very, very loudly. So as a result everyone has a headache and we have learnt the teamwork of calling to get it fixed and to use storage bags and sellotape to muffle the sounds. I woke up this morning in a pretty good mood and in an effort to regain it here is a list of things that are currently making me smile!

1. The fact that my best friend, Violet, is driving here tonight to celebrate her birthday with me for the weekend, and with a big group of us tomorrow night in town.
2. The sun is shining, even if the sky isn't exactly blue and we are closer now to summer than we were yesterday.
3. The two volcano-spot monsters that have been parked on my chin for the past fortnight have cleared up.
4. I have with, one lunchtime of exception, been vegan for 2 weeks and 3 days. I am trying it for Lent and so far am enjoying it. (On reflection, I wonder if this may have been a contributing cause of number three happpening)
5. Alice In Wonderland is released today! I'm not going until next week with friends so will be dodging spoilers and too much discussion until then.
6. The prospect of getting actual mail. I just found out about and joined Postcrossing and I am looking forward sending and receiving postcards all around the world!
7. Matthew Gray Gubler's episode of Criminal Minds. It was perfect, it fit with the story-telling method that we are used to with the show but at the same time he put his aesthetic and emotional imprint on the episode. Plus it had Beth Grant, Amy Cusack and Bud Cort in it, there were lots of little homages to horror movies and Harold and Maude and there was an element of Carnivale in there too. There was even a cast member, Felix 'Stumpy' Dreyfuss himself (otherwise know as Toby Huss)! The Gube, what a guy x
8. Since we are on the subject, Carnivale makes me happy...in a melancholy, tragic involving way.
9. Strawberries, especially free ones! (They were offered round at work) Makes me long for summer when I can go to the farm near my parents house and do the whole pick-your-own thing. Fresh, juicy and warmed by the sun strawberries, mmmmmmmnn,
10. Did I mention I am getting to see the most awesome woman in the world this weekend?
Hope you all (by which I mean anyone who happens to come by this, my little fraction of the internet) have fantastic weekends whatever your plans may be! I'd love to hear about them :-)

Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky

I have a habit of becoming fans of specific actors/actresses and finding all of their work I can, this method has lead to some almighty duds believe me; however not tonight. Bryan Dick is an English actor whose most well know projects have been Master and Commander and Blood and Chocolate, but as a British TV watcher I saw him in Earthfasts as a child, then Blackpool, an episode of Torchwood, the lovely All The Small Things and most recently an episode of Being Human.
Tonight the marvelous Cinema Paradiso enabled me to curl up and watch Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky and it was wonderful. The colour drained pallet of London in the 30's draws you into the world of Bob, Jenny and Ella; whose three overlapping but separately told stories make palpable the slow breaking of their hopes, love and ambition. There is a fantastic synopsis and review here so I won't even attempt but it got me thinking about things.
About how many small but passionate lives go on, how each person is screaming with their own story no matter how cliched or boring it may seem from the outside and that we may presume to get to know people or a situation but that it is probable we may never know anyone truly. How the small moments of happiness linger and how what is settling for one person may be heel-clicking, heart stopping love for the person on the other side of the relationship. How we are all living our own stories overlapping with others.
It also got me thinking about now, about all the blogs I read and why starting this was important to me; the lives portrayed in the programme were all quiet, a waiter, a prostitute, a barmaid living in a time we now paint with nostalgia. It came from a book by Patrick Hamilton and was heavily autobiographical, and yet it feels timeless, not necessarily the situation but the emotion behind it, commit to another human and run the risk of being hurt, trust someone again and again because you love them and want that to be enough, watch someone you want to want you want someone else. It made me wonder about the life I am living, what I want it to be and the people around me. Stuck in this body of perception, I want to know how and why others choose how to live, and how we try to break the barriers to tell our stories and what we choose to keep quiet.
Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky is a quiet period drama but it made my method worth the madness. My favourite plot was Ella's but I can't find a good picture of just her.


1 http://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/twenty-thousand-streets-under-the-sky-%C2%BD/
2 Ibid
3 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/dec/08/classic-novel-new-york-review