73. Hable con ella (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002).

My favourite actors ever.

This post is in participation with Piper’s Bizarro blogathon at Lazy Eye Theatre. If you believe any of what I am about to write, then, well, you haven’t been reading this blog often enough. I’m not serious, OK?!?!?

I really admire Sylvester Stallone as an actor. Rocky Balboa was one of the best film characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of having witnessed, and I’m delighted that he continued to make twelve others. Each sequel is as good as the last. Rocky rocks!

So, Hilary Duff. She’s like, so perfect. She can sing, dance, but best of all, her acting! I really don’t know which of her performances I like the most, for she was incredible in Cheaper by the Dozen and A Cinderella Story. But I gotta say, it’s Lizzie McGuire that was her deepest, most profound performance. Her honest, convincing portrayal of everyday girl Lizzie was like, so utterly inspiring! I want to go to Rome and become a singer like she did! Anyway, Hilary totally rocks.

An actress I like even more than “Hil” is the British Goddess that is Emma Watson. Honest to God, I can’t think of a better girl to play Hermione. As Hermione, she’s not at all annoying, and she is obviously so much better than Rupert Grint! People who say she merely acts with her eyebrows don’t know a damn thing about acting, she’s the Lee Strasberg of the 21st century, I tell ya!
… But I would turn down a friendship with Emma, point blank, if it meant I could meet my all-time idol, Scarlett Johansson. Honestly, could you get any more beautiful and talented than that girl? Her face never looks contorted, and her pouting is so beautiful. And her BAFTA win for Lost in Translation was immensely deserved, nobody does sitting around and looking cool than Miss Johansson! Oh, and that shag-in-the-lift episode with Benicio del Toro just shows how utterly classy she is; she’s such a Goddess!

Wow, I'd been in quite a bad mood today, but that really cheered me up! I suggest you lot all participate in this blogathon and make hate love and love hate. Go on!

Film review: ATONEMENT (Joe Wright, 2007)

Britain’s bestselling author Ian McEwan is a wonderfully rich and articulate writer, but he has often struck me (and I know I'm probably alone here) as a man of too many words. Enduring Love, despite its unique and gripping plot, was overly descriptive, and even his recent novella, On Chesil Beach, could have done with being 50 pages shorter. I felt exactly the same way about Atonement when I first started reading it, there were too many “rhymes”, too many adjectives, to a point where it almost seem to obsess with the minutiae and try to hold the story back.

Then I realised that this time, it was intentional. Bringing the surprising turn of events that served the book so well onto the big screen was a huge challenge, but Joe Wright, who’s 2005 effort Pride & Prejudice ranked amongst one of the loveliest films of that year, was more than apt a man to do it: talented, engaging with his actors, focused and precise, he has given Atonement the big-screen fare, and more.

74. Offside (Jafar Panahi, 2006).

Go Hitchcock, it's your birthday, we're gonna party like it's your birthday.

So he is dead, but I just can't resist dedicating another post to my favourite director of all time. This is, after all, a man, so important, that he got an entire google logo dedicated to him:


My top 5 Alfred Hitchcock films:
01. Rear Window
02. Rebecca
03. Rope
04. Vertigo
05. Dial M for Murder

Best 5 Hitchcock films:
01. Vertigo
02. Rear Window
03. Psycho
04. North by Northwest
05. The Lady Vanishes

Favourite Hitchcock leading man/character? James Stewart, particularly as LB Jeffries in Rear Window. In the movie, he's a world-class action photographer with a broken leg, suffering the heat of the hottest time of the year, so hot that his neighbours keep their blinds and shades up day. He's been in his apartment for six weeks and has one more to go before the cast is removed. Utterly bored with everything, he looks through his telescope at his neighbours, which ranges from the pitch-perfect vibratto of the one-time opera singer practicing on the third floor; the trills of a flautist; and maybe even a murder...

Favourite Hitchcock blonde: Of all time, It’s a tie for me between Ingrid Bergman (Spellbound, Notorious, Under Capricorn) and Grace Kelly (Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief), but I’d definitely give Joan Fontaine a mention, simply for giving one of the best female performances of all time, in Rebecca.
















favourite Hitchcock cameo: In Marnie where he enters from the left of the hotel corridor after Tippi Hedren passes by.

Some of Hitchcock’s best scenes:

75. Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)