It has been a pleasure to have the opportunity to improve my skills by means of this marvellous blog during these two years. We know that nothing lasts forever however happy you may feel and despite all the unforgettable experiences lived during such time. Now, I must “leave the floor” and let new students like you enjoy it.
And thank you to Carmen Peredo and her sister, Marta, for offering us the means to reach the sky when learning the language is concerned.
The film starts at 8.10, but we´ll meet ten minutes before so that we enter together, ok??
Have a look:
And…
http://multimedia.decine21.com/Multimedia/Entrevista/Nunca-es-tarde-para-enamorarse-Entrevista-con-Dustin-Hoffman–VOSE-1144.asp?Id=1144
Considered as being one of the most important films into noir genre, The woman in the window is another masterpiece you must not miss.
Out of Africa having been released in 1985 and now on the big screen again, not many times in life such an opportunity is granted to a film buff. Therefore, I recommend you to join us were you willing to enjoy so beautiful a film.
This is the film which has won more awards last Sunday. So, we must see it!! And remember, tell us if you are coming at least the day before, ok??
This is a thread created so that you can post everything related to cinema such as comments about films you have seen recently, the film you like it most, soundtracks or whatever.
We are looking forward to reading your opinions.
As you know, nominations for the 81st Annual Academy Awards have been already announced and we think it entertaining to organize a contest. We need your preferences and predictions about what film will win the chief categories (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H).
The winner will be rewarded with two tickets to see the film getting the most number of statuettes.
Give your vote (e.g. 1A, 1B, 4C, 3D, 2E, 1F, 5G, 5H), your name and your class and when the ceremony should take place (February the 22nd) we will post the winner on this blog, the reading club, the theatre club and also on the department’s board.
Thank you for participating and Good luck!
Easy Virtue is a social comedy based on Noël Coward’s play of the same name. The play was previously made into the silent movie Easy Virtue (1928) by Alfred Hitchcock. This version is directed by Stephan Elliott, written by Elliott and Sheridan Jobbins, and stars Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, and Kristin Scott Thomas.
The film has been selected to screen at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s also scheduled for the Rio Film Festival, MEIFF, | Rome Film Festival and London Film Festival[1] prior to its November 7th release by Pathé in the UK. Jessica will also be making her musical debut singing two tracks which will be featured on the upcoming soundtrack to the film set to be released on the 3 November 2008.[2]
Plot
A glamorous American widow, Larita, marries a young Englishman, John, in the South of France. On the spur of the moment, they go to England to meet his parents; his mother, Veronica takes a strong dislike to their new daughter-in-law, while his father, Jim, finds something of a kindred spirit in Larita. A battle of wits ensues.[3]
Review
Easy Virtue is a very liberal adaptation of Noel Coward’s play. Director Stephan Elliot (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) has tried to make the film more contemporary and very distinct from the Merchant-Ivory school of film.
The story is set in the roaring twenties where John (Ben Barnes) from an aristocratic English family marries Larita (Jessica Biel), an American race driver, after a whirlwind romance in France. However his mother Veronica (Kristin Scott Thomas) is none too pleased while John’s father Jim (colin Firth) finds a soul mate in Larita. These relationships, including those with John’s sisters, make for a very intriguing and entertaining hour and a half, The acting, as could be expected from such a cast is uniformly excellent with perhaps Jessica Biel standing out a little more.
One of Stephan Elliot’s nice touches is an anachronistic use of such songs as Car Wash and Sex Bomb, done in a very twenties style. The addition of a hilarious “dog scene” is another nice touch. Fans of Noel Coward (and even Merchant-Ivory) won’t be disappointed.
See a more detailed review in www.futuremovies.co.uk/review.asp?ID=950
1. This is a thread created to encourage you to post comments about EVERYTHING you want to express related with films. Please, join us!
2. RESERVOIR DOGS. Some times I get surprised when listening people say that they don’t like Quentin Tarantino’s films, mainly because they associate his films with violence. However, all his films are full of gorgeous songs, dialogues, sequences, thrill, humour, and everything a good film should embrace to be considered a good one. Here you have a little example of his talent: the main titles of his first film as director, showing a perfect song, a perfect introduction, and a perfect tempo, thus, pure cinema.
If you have seen it, post your comments!!
When will we go? January the 14th??
Casino Royal introduced us to a new James Bond, perfectly performed by Daniel Craig and showing a film much closer to Fleming’s vision.
His name is Bond, James Bond: just don’t expect him to introduce himself. For the first time in his 22 screen outings, Britain’s best- known secret agent will not utter the words of introduction that have thrilled fans and appalled master criminals for 46 years. Nor in his new adventure, does 007 utters the other classic one-liner – “shaken not stirred” – when ordering his martini, according to the director, Marc Forster.
Gone were the unfeasible gadgets on which he could always rely in a tight spot. The boffin who created them in the basement of the MI6 building, Q, played in the past by Desmond Llewellyn and John Cleese, was also therefore eliminated, along with Miss Moneypenny and her flirtatious banter. Bond even briefly abandoned his high-performance motor to drive a Ford Mondeo before reverting to an Aston Martin.
Every one loving cinema has to see this film. Besides, you will listen to British accent.
Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel of love and the British class system has been given a polished screen adaptation in this film version from director Julian Jarrold. Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) was raised in a middle-class household and though he’s never known want and is fortunate enough to have been accepted into Oxford, the life of the upper class is foreign to him. While serving in the British Army during the waning days of World War II, Charles is assigned to a temporary base set up on the estate of the wealthy and aristocratic Flyte family, where he strikes up a friendship with twentysomething Lord Sebastian (Ben Whishaw). Sebastian enjoys the pleasures his privileged life has afforded him, but he also senses that something is missing, and he tries to drown his frequent episodes of depression in alcohol. Charles is captivated by the splendor of Sebastian’s life, and he finds himself drawn into a web of decadent comfort, while also developing an infatuation with Sebastian’s sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell), even as Charles senses his relationship with Sebastian is something deeper than simple friendship. The idyllic days at the Flyte estate come to an end with the arrival of Sebastian’s mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), a fierce Catholic who objects to her son’s free and easy life and has become increasingly bitter since her husband, Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon), has left her to live in Italy with the lovely Cara (Greta Scacchi). This was the first cinema adaptation of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, though it was the basis of an acclaimed miniseries produced for British television in 1981.
I strongly recommend you this beautiful story. The film not being good enough, in some moment the plot goes slowly, the book must be much better, for sure. That´s why I recommend you a “story” and not a film. I´ll try to find it to read it, though I don´t like to know the end… My advise: Read it before watching it.
Atonement, by British writer Ian McEwan, tells the story of Briony Tallis’s terrible mistake and how it changes her, Cecilia Tallis’s and Robbie Turner’s life’s forever, and consequentially her effort to find atonement.
At last we may enjoy the new film of Woody Allen’s.
We are meeting next Wednesday (24th) at Renoir Cuatro Caminos Cinema. I have chosen this time, 20:00 so that we might have a chat after watching the film in order to keep improving our speaking.
Please, be punctual.
20-year-old Sophie (Seyfried) is preparing to marry her boyfriend Sky (Cooper) at her mother’s hotel on an island in Greece. She seemingly has it all -a carefree life, a loving fiance, and happy friends- but one thing has been missing all her life: a father.
Her only wish now is to be given away by her dad at her wedding. By reading her mother’s diary she discovers that she has three possible fathers. Sophie then secretly invites all three men to the wedding in a desperate bid to discover which of them is her father before the wedding bells start to chime!
But not all goes according to plan: old loves are re-kindled, new loves are formed, and Sophie risks everything to discover the true identity of her father.
Featuring the songs of ABBA, and based on the world’s number one musical comedy which has people dancing in the aisles every night, this movie is sure to be the hit of Summer 2008!
M E R Y L M E R Y L !!!!!!!!!
Kill bill is my favourite action film and I want you to watch this scene, it being a very good example of the statement I have just written. If you have not seen it yet (I can not believe it!), the story is about this girl betrayed by her boss. She is thought to be dead, but she is alive, actually. In this sequence she is going out a coma.
Perfect mixture of music, shooting and tempo.
PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO FULLY!!
I think “Last chance” (traducida por “La asesina”, para desgracia de la humanidad hispanohablante!) is the only Action Movie I absolutely love. I watched this movie on TV ages ago, but lately I’ve seen they’ve created a TV series, Nikita, based on this movie, or something like that. The problem is, I’ve looked for it on the Net, and it’s NOWHERE TO BE FOUND! Another movie, about single people I think, comes out in its place!!! Isn’t it weird???
Anyway, in case you find it (it’s an FBI movie, about a girl who is sentenced to death after killing her mum I think, and then wakes up in a secret operations place), I have to clarify something important – the movie has a French version, but – it might surprise you – the French version has no trace of the poetry of the US American version (it’s a typical action movie, no interest!), which is absolutely poetic and moving and beautiful. This is because of Nina Simone’s (music) role, because of the main character’s solitude, including some childhood memories of a barefoot girl riding a horse (if I remember correctly) and her beautiful feel of what freedom is about, of how beautiful it is, and a bit because of the relationship – above all of understanding, eventually – with the main actor. But it’s an action movie, with tons of undercover operations!
Emotional Arithmetic tells the story of three people who formed a life-long bond while housed at a detention camp during World War II that are reunited some 35 years later after being separated from one another. Jakob Bronski, a young Jewish man, took a shine to two youngsters, Melanie and Christopher, while they were interred, by the Nazis, at Drancy, a housing complex on the outskirts of Paris that was used as a detention camp for Jews. Drancy operated as a way station; once there, having your name put on the wrong list meant relocation to a death camp. Their separation inflicts deep emotional wounds that grossly impact their lives in differing ways in the years leading up to their life-altering reunion. Now a beautiful woman in her 50’s, Melanie Lansing Winters, wife of David Winters, balances her precarious emotional state with an innate sharp, deprecating wit. Jakob, now a senior citizen, is a heroic dissident and veteran of a Soviet psychiatric hospital. And her childhood friend, Christopher Lewis, a British novelist who has long carried a torch for Melanie, is haunted by the eternal question survivors ask themselves – “Why was I saved?” Melanie invites Jakob to stay with her at her home in Canada. Christopher accompanies Jakob there. With Melanie’s marriage to David in shambles due to his compulsive infidelity, the pair’s presence in the Winters’ home revitalizes Melanie, but arouses unexpected reserves of jealousy in David, who is estranged from his and Melanie’s grown son, Benjamin, a father himself to a young son, Timmy. On a balmy summer evening, the past explodes into the present in an unexpected and tender love story and its fatal consequences. The ‘emotional arithmetic’ of the title refers to the characters’ struggle to face the past and move on.
I’m not a film critic, but I like a lot this movie and I decide that may be a good idea write about it because you won’t watch it on commercial cinemas. It is a north American production but it has the special taste that only independent films gave. There aren’t big scenarios, but a good plot support an interesting comedy. Really, I’m not sure if that film is a comedy or a drama. It was all the time crossing a fine line that seems to have between comedy and drama, between laughter and tears. You are smiling about the situation and a moment after you feel sad. The difference in this film is that you feel like the characters and believe their situations rather than laugh at them. That is the key to this smart film.
So what’s it about? Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is a not so much socially man who spends his days in a cubicle at work and his nights hiding out in the garage (turned apartment) he calls home. Ryan’s sister-in-law, Karin (Emily Mortimer), is worried about him, but Lars’ big brother, Gus (Paul Schneider), doesn’t think it’s something to be worried about. He changes his mind when Lars brings home a girlfriend. For Karin and Gus was a shock when they “meet” her. She’s Bianca, a life-sized and anatomically correct sex doll. Lars treats her exactly as he would a real woman, although that she doesn’t speak much English, is in a wheelchair, and is shy. Dr. Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), the local psychologist, believes that the best approach to Lars’ delusion is to play along with it. Soon, the entire town is treating Bianca with respect, including Margo (Kelli Garner), a girl who is hoping Lars will dump Bianca for her…..The rest, it’s better you would go to see the film.
Only a curiosity. I don’t know who built the doll for the movie, but I went to www.realdoll.com to find her (you have to be 18 to go to that site…..), and the best I could come up with is that she’s something like a cross between the “Stephanie” and the “Stacy”.
Here’s a movie I watched the other night on digital channel. I think we can’t get it in a European format, though. The main character is the main actor in “Becker”, one of my favorite TV series! (a grumpy doctor too, like Dr. House, but different, as usual! – at least he’s a smoker! hahahah – I’m saying that because there are tons of grumpy doctors on TV series… Wonder why!). Let me copy a movie review on this one, so we get some extra practice! It’ll be the first message we post on this thread. Enjoy!
Here’s the beginning of the review I’m posting below: “Under-funded schools with a large percentage of poverty-ridden students often find it difficult to provide a high quality education, but sometimes it just takes one special teacher to spark the interests and intellects of an entire classroom of children.”
I´ve had to watch this documental about how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, have been running a “race to the bottom” in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public’s right to know.
We’re starting this thread on behalf of Lady Silence. Lady Silence, you already appear as an Author (well done! you followed the instructions of the email you got, didn’t you?), so you should be able to start threads too. The “Edit” link is a different matter. It’s just to modify existing posts and it comes at the end of that post. To start a thread, you should sign in (username and password at wordpress.com) and on your dashboard (or control panel) you should look for “Write Post“, or something like that. After typing the info, you need to click on “Publish“. Hope this is useful!
By the way, congratulations for your Film Review!
“RABBIT-PROOF FENCE” is the name of a film, I has watched recently, whose plot and photography really caught me.
It’s a 2002 Australian drama film diected by Phillip Noyce and filmed by Christopher Doyle both Australian.
It was filmed on location in Australia and stars for Aboriginal actresses.
It’s based on a book written by Doris Pilikintong Garimara. It’s about the author’s mother and two other young Aboriginals girls, who ran away from a native settlement to return to their Aboriginal families, after being placed there in 1931.
The film follows the girls as they walk for nine weeks a long 1.500 miles of the Australian rabbit-proof fence (a pest-exclusion fence, constructed between 1901-1903 to keep the rabbits pest of Western of Australian pastoral areas), to return to their community while being tracked by a white authority figure, the protector of Aborigines responsble for removing the girls from their families, and a black tracker.
The film formed a part of a major debate in contemporary Australia over the stolen generations, where Aboriginals children separated from their parents by the State were taken to residencial schools, forced to learn English languange and then compelled to work for white families like slaves.
The soundtrack was composed by Peter Gabriel and called it “Long Walk Home”
On the 13th of February 2008 Australian government offered a fomal apology to the stolen generations.
This is probably the best film shot by the Marx brothers. With no more than one hour in length, it is full of comical scenes, they being absurd most of the time and making us laugh on account of the lack of manners and scruples they show towards everyone.
Summing up the story, it tells how two countries next to each other keep quarrelling and by choosing Groucho as the governor everything turns worse. Chico y Harpo develop the role of spies under the service of Groucho’s command.
Let’s enjoy it!
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=lMjQOKS3zdI
Welcome María! Good to have you with us! 
María, an Intermetiate 1 student, sent a wonderful Film Review. Well done! We corrected some minor mistakes, so read it all again!
María’s film review:
I’ve seen several films this year but nohing really fantastic. So I have chosen one of them because it is my favourite one.
The film is called Into the Wild. It is directed by Sean Pen and the main actor is Emile Hirch. It is set in California, Dakota and Alaska (three different places), and it was filmed in the real places, not in a studio, and the actor originally spoke in English.
The film is based ON a real story.
The plot is about a good student who finished his degree and everybody thought that he would have a brilliant future but he decided to leave his comfortable life and he went to look for adventure.
He gave away all his money to charity. He wanted to be free and he wished to know the wild. Then he travelled a lot over the prairies and deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. In his trip he met lots of people who didn’t agree with the society of the USA.
In the end he goes into Alaska where he dies of hunger. This scene made me cry but I really enjoyed the whole film.
I hope everybody enjoys this film like I did!
This is one of my all-time favorite novels (written by Harper Lee in the sixties), and I do think the movie is an awesome version (very literal, not experimental, but that’s fine with me in this case!). Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer, and Scout (Mary Badham) is his smallest daughter. Then there’s Jem, her elder brother, and a little friend who visits in the summer (inspired in writer Truman Capote). They go on lots of adventures together, and the 120 first pages of the book (Part I) is absolutely wonderful, on chilhood. The second part deals with The South and its racism. Tom Robinson, a Black man is accused of raping a white woman, and Atticus decides to defend him. Well, imagine. They get into a lot of trouble.
One of the most powerful scenes is one where the mob wants to drag Tom out of prison to lynch him and hang him, and Atticus stands in front of them, trying to talk them out of it. And then, the kids get in the way, and… Scout addresses one of the men who were wanting to lynch the prisoner… (You’ve got that scene in the TP link above).
I was looking for stuff on YouTube, and I found a little video dedicated to the main character: Scout, a girl played by Mary Bantham. The music playing in this video is a version of one of the most beautiful songs by Stevie Wonder, “Isn’t She Lovely?”, which was dedicated to his baby daughter, or something.
“Smoke Signals is the first feature film written, directed, and co-produced by Indians to ever receive a major distrituion deal.
There have been many other Indian filmmakers, our elders, who made wonderful films taht have been wrongfully ignored or dismissed.”
(Smoke Signals. A Screenplay, by Sherman Alexie, 1998)
On my blog, Dakota in Spain, there’s more info on this movie, in case you are interested, plus links to some YouTube videos with bits of the movie.
On the TP forum, I just started a thread on this too. The more places that mention it, the more chances more people may learn about its existence!
A hurray for independent movie makers!
The director of the Academy Award-winning 2006 crime drama Tsotsi returns to the helm with this tale of a Middle East CIA operative who begins to have doubts about his latest assignment after witnessing the interrogation of a suspected suicide bomber by secret police. When Egyptian-born chemical engineer Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwalli) mysteriously vanishes on a routine flight from South Africa to Washington, his wife Isabella (Reece Witherspoon) embarks on a frantic international search for her missing husband. At the same time, a CIA analyst (Jake Gyllenhaal) arrives at a clandestine detention facility outside of United States. As the interrogation of El-Ibrahimi gets underway, the CIA analyst is profoundly shaken by the unorthodox methods used by the man’s captors, and quickly begins to reevaluate his assignment. Peter Sarsgaard, Meryl Streep, and Alan Arkin co-star in a topical political thriller penned by Kelley Sane and produced by Steve Golin.
Perhaps you want speak about some film you don’t find in our threads. Please do it here. You can do it in English or in Spanish, it is the same, the only important thing is having your opinions and speaking about them. You can make a review or simply tell us whatever you want about a film.
Quizá quieras hablar sobre alguna película que no está en nuestros hilos. Por favor hazlo aquí. Puedes hacerlo en ingles o en español, es lo mismo, lo único importante es tener tus opiniones y poder hablar sobre ellas. Puedes hacer una crítica o sencillamente contarnos lo que quieras de la película.
To post a comment you don’t need to write in the box website.
Para publicar un comentario no necesitas escribir en la casilla en que te pide la página web.
Espero leeros pronto.
Year 2006 / running time 124 minutes / Director: Jonh Curran
Cast:
Edwuard Norton / Naomi Wats / Live Schreiber / Toby Jones
Plot: Walter Fane is a bacteriologist working in Shanghai. On leave in England he falls in love with Kitty, the daughter of a rich family. Although she does not return his feelings, she agrees to marry him to get away from her mother. In China, to relieve the boredom she starts an affair with the British vice Consul, Charlie Townsend. When Walter discovers her infidelity he decides to punish her and offers her a choice: a divorce with the inevitable public scandal or accompanying him to a remote village where there is an outbreak of cholera. When Charlie shows that he has no intention of leaving his wife, her only option is to go with Walter.
Commentary: The title, a quotation from Shelley, “lift not the painted veil which those who love call life”, refers to the journey of self-discovery made by the two central characters, particularly Kitty. As Norton says, “she is a person who has never really looked at the world outside the narrow confines of herself and her social circle. China blows her vision of the world wide open and forces her to get engaged in things that are bigger than she is”.
The backdrop is the countryside in the south, whit its peculiar hump-backed mountains. There is an ironic contrast between the lush green landscape and the terrible epidemic with its repulsive symptoms. Of course, it is not only the landscape that has been included; the film tells us about the political struggles going on in China at the time and makes a neat job of conveying the fragile balance between tradition and modernity, the struggle against ignorance and reaction , the power of the local warlords and the weight of foreign interference.
Stuart Dryburgh’s cinematography is beautiful, not only as it takes in the gorgeous landscapes but also in its clever lighting of the interiors. Curran’s direction and Nyswaner’s script provide the material the actors need and they take full advantage of it. IV Schreiber is excellent as the smooth-talking Charlie, the classic opportunist who takes what he wants from life and dodges the consequences. Toby Jones is particularly good as the other kind of expat, speaking the language and living with a Chinese woman, the one who really tries to hold everything together. And full credit to the leads, who keep us interested in two not very likeable characters.
A thread suggested by Ana Otto! We’re pasting her text here:
Has anyone seen “This is England”? I was amazed to learn about skinheads in the 80’s. I mean, today racism, neo-nazism and all the other forms of anti-social behaviour associated with skins have become the snap-judgements most people make but it wasn’t always like that. I was also touched by the protagonist, Shaun, whose need to find someone or something to believe in leads him into violent adulthood.
Soooooooo happy to see we have great people volunteering for the new blog! Congratulations!
My husband and I went to see “The Band’s visit”. The film is in three different languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English (with a strong accent). It is supposed to be a comedy but, in spite of having some funny moments, it isn’t really funny. We had heard good reviews about the film and as a result, we were a little disappointed. Both of us expected “more”. Neither the music, nor the photography is anything special. When the film finished I asked myself: What has happened? because the point is that nothing happens. The plot is about some Egyptian musician who goes to Israel to give a concert but they get the wrong village. We saw the film in V.O. and sometimes I wasn’t able to distinguish when they were speaking in their native languages or in English, because of their strong accent. Nevertheless, it’s not very difficult English. I don’t want to tell you more about the plot or the locations just in case you are going to see the film.
A new film by Isabel Coixet. Will this film be the next we see? It would be good!! Post your opinions babies!
Our first film:
Last week we watched The Family Savages, starred by LAura Linney and Hoffman (I don´t remember the full name, but he won the Oscar two years ago for his role of Truman Capote). I watching the film, two actors made me remember king Lear´s story but a little changed. Laura and Hoffman are brothers and his father went ill. They moved away from their father, but their “must”, as sons as they are, made them join themselves, in spite of thinking of their lives and loving their father in a completely different way… I could tell you more details, but it would be better you watch the film before. So, in these wet afternoons you alredy know what to do!
Supposing you cannot start a thread yourself, you can post here your proposals. Then we will start a thread on that and you can paste your comment or comment there. Do you agree with this system, or is there any other idea to deal with this?
Chico, Harpo and Groucho in… ”A Night at the Opera” (1935)
You tube video here…
You are currently browsing the archives for the 2 - Films category.
 | maría on DOUBT – Tuesday, 10th Fe… |
 | Daddy47 on DOUBT – Tuesday, 10th Fe… |
 | carmen on |
 | María on |
 | Rosa on Your Films |
 | robertodeza on Your Films |
| Rosa on Your Films |
| robertodeza on Your Films |
| Rosa on Your Films |
| María on June the 21st, 19.30 Cine Doré… |
| robertodeza on June the 21st, 19.30 Cine Doré… |
| María on June the 21st, 19.30 Cine Doré… |
 | mamen on June the 21st, 19.30 Cine Doré… |
 | Elena Gil - 5ºB on June the 21st, 19.30 Cine Doré… |
| robertodeza on June the 21st, 19.30 Cine Doré… |
