The One Where You Did Not Know What To Expect And It Did Not Got Clearer

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Having watched the trailer I could not imagine what that film could be.
Having watched the movie I still do not know what it really is...

Hushpuppy is a six-year-old who lives with her father in the Bathtub, a community at the edge of the world. Although they do not have much, they cherish every moment they are given to spend together. They do not know how much time they have got left - Hushpuppy's dad gets ill; the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs and flooding the Bathtub; the people from beyond the dike try to help by forcing mandatory evacuation.
Two aspects particularly caught my attention. First: a complicated relation between Hushpuppy and her father, who tries to prepare his daughter for a time when he's no longer there to protect her. Second: a different than usual perspective on a group of people who experienced some terrible events - instead of wallow and despair or fight and destroy, they share what they have, they help each other, they care.
Beautiful music combined with some oneiric scenes leaves you wondering whether what you saw was real or even plausible or it was just meant to be a metaphor, or... I do not know, I keep wondering.



Stay tuned.

The One Where It Is Good To Have Friends

Friends do have a right to ask questions.
(You can recognise a friend by how much you want to answer their question, no matter what the subject is).

Friends do understand not getting answers.
(They are not there to get answers - they are there for you).

Stay tuned.

The One With Two Masters Of Cinematography

Paris Manhattan

A romantic comedy, centred on Alice, a Woody Allen-obsessed pharmacist; plus her would-be lover and eccentric family, including: troubled mother; father, whose sole purpose in life is to marry Alice off; sister and her marriage-and-children affairs.
Alice has imaginary conversation with her idol every time she feels insecure, unsure, or when she needs a piece of advice on her or others life. She heals her clients the way she believes works for her: to every prescribed drug she encloses the selection of Woody Allen movies she thinks appropriate.
The film is colourful, contains some funny scenes. In the end, however, it turns out to be just a simple romantic comedy, so obvious, so predictable, so disappointing, with no logic, too many coincidents, and a happy ending forced on every thread of every character.
I thought that if Woody Allen himself had agreed to star in that film, it meant the movie had some value, other than countless quotes from his filmography. Well, I was wrong. Instead of Allen, you could put any nameless idol there and it would not make the slightest difference - which is what hurts most while watching Paris Manhattan.

Three Ages

As a child I had a pretty good taste in movies.I remember watching all the black-and-white classics, all the musicals. Among others, I distinctly remember various Charlie Chaplin's silent movies. At the same time, I cannot recall any film by Buster Keaton. So I wonder whether the reason is that they made no impression on the young me, or the public television did not care to broadcast them, they only showed those most well-known and the easiest to process.
Three Ages is a classic love story in three enactments: there is the Stone Age version, the Roman Age, and the Modern Age (i.e. contemporary with the beginning of the 20th century). Each part tells exactly the same story of The Beauty (and her parents), The Suitor, The Other Guy in a funny, clever, entertaining way.
Buster Keaton's style clearly differs from what Charlie Chaplin is known for. I would say there is less slapstick and more absurd. And despite all the simplification and exaggerations, it seems more real.

Stay tuned.

The One Where You Go Up And Down, And Up, And Down, And Again, And Again, And Again...

• Hilarious: a trail run in the centre of a big city like Kraków; the route was great, though, and certainly deserved its name.
• Ridiculous: We do not have any - the answer I got when I asked for a shirt of size S while collecting my participant packet.
• Intriguing: a barefoot runner at the starting line.
• Foolish: all those bodacious road hogs, running down the hill, sliding in the mud, pushing their way through the crowd.
• Demotivating: a 2m-high man, whose pace was relatively slower than mine, but who outran me anyway, since he was 2m high.
• Surprising: the water point that nobody had told you about; seriously, there was no mention anywhere there was going to be any thing like that to expect.
• Superior: how you feel when you are still able to run up the hill, while the others gave up and started walking.
• Instructive: I finally learnt where the Piłsudski's Mound is (the correct answer: at the finish line of the Three Mounds' Run).

Time: 01:12:50.
Speed: 10.71 km/h
Pace: 05.36 min/km (aaa!)
Ranking: 666/1369 (open), 53/224 (K), 19/78 (K20).

Stay tuned.

The One Where The Theme Song Sounds Right At Last

Most of the James Bond series films have some thing in common: when I think of Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me or Goldeneye, the theme song from each movie immediately springs to my mind. As much as I love all 007 films though - both the old ones, based on the books by Ian Fleming, and the new ones, which are pure screenwriters' imagination - I can't help but wonder why lately the accompanying songs have got so... ordinary? bad? not distinctive?
However! Things are changing - and they are changing for better, as you can hear:



Let's hope the movie will live up to the expectations as well.

Stay tuned.

The One With The Favourite Movie

Lost in Translation

For a long, long time I had thought I could never be able to tell I had this one favourite film. When someone asked me I just always started listing titles, one after another, very quickly, in a random order. Up until the day I watched Lost in Translation.
And then I watched it again.
And again.
And then I went abroad and watched it after having been living in CPH for a few months.
And then I watched it after I had come back from Denmark.
And then I watched it while living in the Netherlands.
And then I watched it after having come back to Poland.
And today, for the first time, I watched it in a movie theatre.
And every time it left me speechless - every time for more and more reasons.
So, yes, I believe now I can say there is this one film for me that I can call my absolutely favourite.

Great score and soundtrack: music by Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine, Brian Reitzell, Air, and many more.
(Try listening after a sleepless night, when the Sun has not yet risen, but you can already see a hint of the dawn breaking.)

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First time in a really long time I went out with a group of friends where I actually lowered the age average. Recently, it has usually been the other way around...

Stay tuned.