Randomness II

Look.
Do you notice.
Can't you see?
It's not what you say.
Actions speak.
Intention.
What you do.
Don't you know?
You say what you mean.
No cheap words.
Connection.
Lone wanderer.
Do you care?
Not afraid to touch.
Healing hands.
Devotion.
Who we are.
Where are you now?
The same wavelength.
Sounding boards.
Emotion.
What's inside.
How does it feel?
Strength and weakness.
Rock solid.

All these things are true.

Randomness

Sometimes two steps forward, three steps back.
Mostly one step back.
Settle.
Composure.
Need perspective.
Want calm, serene, divine.
Can't always have what you want.
Desire.
Forbidden.
Reluctance.
Don't ruin it.
Observations.
Words.
I love you.
You too.
Meaningful.
Strong.
Impulsive.
Mortal.
Outrageous.
Nothing to gain.
Enough to lose.
I like to win.
We all want what we can't have.
Impact.
Positive vibes.
Less than arm's length.
Secure.

Greenberg

My theory that comedians doing serious films is like rock bands doing ballads - i.e. it never fails - has taken its first hit with the Ben Stiller vehicle Greenberg .

Maybe my expectations were a bit too high.

First up, the story. Stiller plays Roger Greenberg, a 40 year old carpenter who has been recently released from a mental home following a nervous breakdown. It's not clear why he had the breakdown. If it was in there it wasn't obvious.

He house sits for his brother and his family when they go to Vietnam for a holiday.

Greenberg doesn't drive, doesn't swim and spends a lot of his time writing letters of complaint to companies he has only moderate experiences with.

(His letter to Starbucks was pretty funny).

He leans on the family's assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig) quite a lot and they strike up a confusing relationship.

I don't know whether it was the script or Stiller's casting or a combination but I left feeling like there was a good movie in there, but it wasn't realised. Stiller didn't look like he was relishing a more serious role but at the same time he wasn't given enough to work with at times. Importantly, Greenberg's mental state wasn't properly addressed, I found it hard to understand why he is how he is.

He tries to reconnect with people from his past, a former flame Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and ex-bandmate Ivan (Rhys Ifans) but winds up alienating them.

I so wanted to like Greenberg a lot more but a severe lack of character development and a really abrupt ending made the job tough. It felt like 10 minutes was cut off at the end.

I can't go higher than 6.5 out of 10. Disappointed.

Inception

Involved isn't a strong enough word to describe the new Christopher Nolan thriller Inception .

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, an expert dream extractor who is tasked with planting an idea in the mind of Fischer (Cillian Murphy) the heir to a powerful businessman who is monopolising the electricity industry.

The process is called Inception, and involves creating layers of a person's dream to penetrate their subconscious.

As we find out the practice comes with plenty of risks.
Along for the ride are Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy as Cobb's team and Marion Cotillard is his wife who keeps penetrating his dreams. Michael Caine also has his obligatory appearance in a Nolan film.

This is a hard film to review because I'm not 100 per cent sure I get it.

It is certainly not a movie to see if you're not prepared to concentrate on what's happening. That said it is very entertaining, particularly the many dream sequences.

Nolan has created a world that is mind-boggling to say the least.

Then there's the ending.

After watching The Movie Show on Wednesday night I was somewhat prepared for a clanger of a finale and they weren't wrong. In many ways I'm still spinning and it really does make you think hard about what you have just seen.

Rating this is difficult. I'm going 8.5 out of 10 and if I decide to see it again that could go higher because this is definitely a film that isn't done justice on one viewing.

Willpower

Sometimes I think I'm expending all of my willpower in the wrong places.
Trying to deny yourself certain things isn't always a good move, whether it's something harmless or potentially addictive it doesn't matter.
For those who think they know what I'm talking about, you're wrong.
There's one part of life at the moment that has increasingly become a weakness and I think I must direct some of my willpower into curbing that weakness.
It just makes so much sense.

The Hedgehog (le Herisson)

People will always surprise you.
We spend so much time judging people by their covers there's no time left to discover who they really are.
This is at the heart of The Hedgehog , one of the most captivating films of the year.
A sign of a good foreign film is when you stop noticing the subtitles. Now, I didn't suddenly gain an intimate understanding of French halfway through the film but I was drawn into the story.
Renee (Josiane Balasko) is a widowed, 54-year-old janitor for a swanky apartment building. She's grumpy and generally unappealing.
That is, until someone takes the time to look inside.
Almost against her will Renee is befriended by 11-year-old Paloma, an intelligent girl who has decided she's ending her life on her 12th birthday, and a kindly Japanese widower Kakuru (Togo Igawa).
Paloma sums her up best when she says Renee is like a Hedgehog. Prickly and protective on the outside but an elegant creature on the inside. It's just that nobody took the time to look.
The worst thing is that Renee believes she deserves nothing more than her lonely life with her cat and her books and to be ignored by everyone else.
This hits home when she is finally coaxed out by Kakuru for dinner and passes one of the ladies who resides in the building. The lady greets her because she is elegantly dressed and doesn't recognise her as the janitor.
''She didn't recognise me'', Renee exclaims. ''That's because she's never seen you before'' is Kakuru's wise reply.
This film, which doesn't really have a storyline, is pure magic. The performances from the three main actors are perfect and they needed to be to keep you investing in them.
It's heartwarming, heartbreaking and funny and teaches us that everybody has value regardless of their station in life.
I'm really glad I decided to see this film, one of the best of the year. A 9 out of 10.

Treat me good

Look around you.
There's always someone who is in a worse situation than yourself but we never see that, all we see is our own predicaments.
That's something I am guilty of, even as recently as today.
A friend told me a while back that if you go looking for something wrong with you then you will find it. That's something you know for sure.
I'm good at finding things wrong with myself and it is something that must stop.
Of all the things you can do that are bad for you, I'd argue that high on the list is treating yourself poorly. By that I mean not thinking constructively, positively, and not dwelling too much on things you can't control.
I want so much to change the way that I think. I have come a part of the journey towards achieving that, I have to allow myself that small win, but there's still a way to go.
Sometimes the biggest battle you will have is with yourself.

Toy Story 3

I'm sure I wrote recently that it's hard to watch a film objectively when it has been given universal praise.

Toy Story 3 is one such film. I'm a big fan of the Pixar guys and, seriously, they haven't made a bad movie - Up was my number one film of last year.

So they return to the Toy Story franchise and I have to say, a shade disappointingly, that the third instalment felt a bit like a retread.

I'm not saying I didn't like it, enjoy it, etc, but it didn't feel like a new movie really, even with the introduction of some new characters.

The basic story is that Andy is heading off to college and as he packs up his room his beloved toys, what's left of them anyway, end up being thrown out as trash.

They avoid the garbage truck and stow away in a box of donated toys to Sunnyside day care centre, where they'll be played with by any number of kids.

Woody (Tom Hanks) was saved from the trash by being chosen to go to college with Andy but, like any animated toy should, he sets out to save his friends.

The day care centre is run by the seemingly cuddly Lotso Hugs bear (Ned Beatty) who ships the new arrivals off to be tortured by kids who aren't age appropriate.

Woody must get them back to Andy before it's too late.

Now, the story is all well and good but again I just felt like it's all been done before. The new characters weren't that great aside from Lotso and a Ken 'I'm not a girl's toy' doll.

Despite feeling a bit stale there were still some excellent moments and great laughs, but it's now time to say farewell to Toy Story. An 8 out of 10, which is still a good score, but it's not a movie of the year contender like I thought it would be.

What the Fraggle?

Fraggle Rock the movie is in the planning stages, apparently.
While the show was, and still kinda is, fun do we really need an 'adults only' version of a beloved children's show.
Their definition of 'adults only' is probably not what you're thinking. When they get around to agreeing on how to define what 'edgy' is then that's the definition we should run with.
Seriously, have we run out of ideas?
Is that a question that actually needs to be asked?

Angels Cry

Mariah Carey cops a bit of flak sometimes but she can produce a corker of a song.
One such song is the ballad (she just doesn't get the ballads wrong) Angels Cry from the Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel album.
That album was a bit patchy but there are four or five excellent songs there. She's not as consistent as she used to be. I really think she needs to go back and listen to her Music Box, Daydream and Butterfly albums and go back to the future a bit.
This version of Angels Cry features Ne-Yo but it doesn't detract from the awesomeness of the song and perhaps adds a bit.

The Twilight Saga:Eclipse

There was a bit of pressure, for mine, on Eclipse , the third in the Twilight series.

I'd always thought it would translate best to the screen and it certainly lived up to that expectation and in many ways exceeded my hopes.

There are times when the makers have taken a bit of licence, like when they show you how Riley (Xavier Samuel) is created at the beginning.

If I have a criticism it is that they tended to rush things in the first 20 minutes. I thought they could have taken a bit more time to get to the realisation that Victoria was back and hunting Bella again.

It's also a shade disappointing that Alice didn't get to kidnap Bella, get her yellow Porsche and have Rosalie tell Bella her story in the right context. Her story was told well, I thought, but the context was wrong.

They don't take anything away from the film as a whole but as someone who has read the book it stood out quite a bit.

In Eclipse, Bella (Kristen Stewart) is caught in the tug of war between Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) until the two sides have to come to an uneasy truce in order to protect her from Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard, horribly miscast but what can you do) who is bent on avenging her mate's death.

She creates an army of newborn vampires to do her bidding so that Alice can't see when she's going to strike.

All this leads to a number of very well done scenes from the book, such as when the vampires and werewolves are chasing Victoria between their two territories, when Jasper is showing the wolves how to battle newborns and the fight scenes when they eventually attack.

Eclipse also features a number very excellently placed comic lines, including one crack by Edward aimed at Jacob (''don't you own a shirt''), and one back the other way (''I'm hotter than you'').

In all I thought this was easily the best of the three so far and now the 12 month or so wait until part one of Breaking Dawn begins.

They're going to have to be careful in making Breaking Dawn. There's some pretty controversial (for want of a better word) stuff in that book and they are right in splitting it in half. Anyway, an 8.5 out of 10 for Eclipse - but it's still preferred if you're a fan.

Ups and downs

Things have been a bit mixed of late.
I'm sure it is in large part due to the reduction I've undertaken in the medication department.
I certainly don't like it. I don't like feeling flat a lot of the time.
It takes me back a few years to when things were pretty awful and I really don't want to go back there either.
Being more positive is good in theory and I do try it, I guess I'm not as persistent as I need to be.
The best way to describe how things are overall is that when I feel like that, flat and not necessarily entirely happy, I'm an easy target.
Little things that you brush off I notice, whether it is an internal feeling or a reaction to an external event, something a friend says or just a random event.
I will admit I've taken a hit or two this week. As to what it was I think it's best to just leave it at that. Confessing to thinking things I shouldn't (just about disappointments really) aren't going to get me anywhere.
I just hope this acknowledgement is a start towards getting over this speed bump that is starting to look more like a crest.