was i being over cynical while watching 'ben hur' that made the tedious and pompous biblical epic inot a thinly veiled homoerotic tale. the loving looks that messala and ben hur exchange, the strange relationship between the older roman and the perpetually half naked charlton heston and his mother obsession and asexuality. besides this, i kept seeing phallic symbols everywhere. and then i read that this was all intended by a very naughty gore
vidal who wrote the script and by william wyler. fantastic horse raceing scene- but everyone knows that. homoerotic period pieces cant get much better than derek jarman's edward ii. shakespeare through the wringer as staged scenes conflate contemporary gay rights protests with medieval politics. fantastic.
'delhi belly' would have been funny i it was not so self consciously cool. the lines seemed funny enough, but everyone was so busy soaking in the "cutting edge" of the film- its casual profanity and potty humour- that the film ended up being a string of plodding incidents strung together for the sake of a plot. the aamir khan guest appearance as a disco fighter at the end merely exaggerated the hatred these film makers feel for bollywood, but what they give us in return is a film that caters to the most juvenile desires of the multiplex crowd. maybe it is a young people film and i am too old.
hollywood animation was always predictable and the creation of a central odd character is supposed to suddenly make these films adult-friendly. in this case it is johnny depp and rango. but really it was only a typical coming of age drama full of references to westerns of sergio leone.
johnny depp again in the really dreadful 'the tourist'. angelina jolie pouts through the whole film in exotic europe. a spy film whose silliness was grating. for good bad hollywood must be the queen latifah romantic drama comedy 'just wright'. more power to the black girl who gets her man away from the hot godsister in spite of being a tracksuit clad trainer. only for in flight brain drain. in spite of jennifer aniston and adam sandler, two actors whose incessant sweetness can annoy the hell out of me, i was all right with 'just go with it'. the story was really that of 'maine pyar kyu kiya' where the doctors secretary pretends to be the ex-wife. but some of the one liners were funny enough. cant imagine watching it on screen though.
if the 'delhi belly' filmmakers want to be super cool they need to really get quentin tarantino. the chilling opening of this mad comedy where the jews beat the chit out of the nazis was terrific fun. irreverant cinephilia that makes many peoples fantasies come true. we won the war- at least on screen.
'the beginning of the great revival' is a recent chinese film about the birth of the communist party sponsored by the state and is a spot-the-star festival. chow yun fat, john woo and a slew of canto pop stars flow in and out of the film playing characters from history. set up as a series of conversations in rooms, the film had really no dramatic tension to hold it together. instead if the giggles and squeals of the shanghai mall audience were anything to go by, it was not much more that standing on the edge of a red carpet watching stars walk by in period costume.
but the worst film of the past two weeks must be the godawful 'total eclipse' which tells the story of the relationship between french poets verlaine and rimbaud. leonardo decaprio plays rimbaud with an irritating swagger and the script is so bad it makes you scream in pain.
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