Marion Cotillard Appreciation

Marion Cotillard 

30 September 1975, Paris, France

Soundtrack Wednesday - Pulp Fiction

Track: Bullwinkle, part 2

Artist: The Centurians

Movie: Pulp Fiction

Moonrise Kingdom

I'm not a fan of Wes Anderson's work. I think he tries too hard to make his movies cute and quirky and in the effect they never feel effortless. They just seem pretentious and are clear examples of style over substance. That said, there are some of his movies I actually enjoyed and found to be quite charming like The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Rushmore. I really wanted to like Moonrise Kingdom, but I ended up strongly disliking it. In fact, if the movie didn't have beautiful cinematography it would probably be around 30-40 points. It has everything that could have worked beautifully - it is set in New England - magical place. It takes place in the 60's - magical time. And it has music composed by Alexandre Desplat - composer of magical scores. But you can't have true magic without strong story.

For me the most important thing in a movie are the characters. They don't necessarily have to be likable, but they should be interesting. Even if the movie is awful, if there is a single character you love watching you won't hate the movie. The problem with Moonrise Kingdom is that it only has two characters I genuinely liked - Edward Norton's Scout Master Ward and Bruce Willis's Captain Sharp - and they are not featured enough in this movie. Instead, we follow lifeless and boring adventures of two kids " in love".

Scene of the Week - True Romance

You gotta a lot of heart, kid

directed by Tony Scott

The scene: Tony Scott's True Romance, based on a screenplay written by Quentin Tarantino, is like a perfect cinematic mosaic of outstanding individual scenes. In this one a gangster named Virgil (James Gandolfini, acting a lot like he will in the Sopranos) visits Alabama and Clarence's hotel room - he is searching for the drugs that Clarence stole. Clarence is not there, though, so Virgil decides to interrogate Alabama. After a cute chit-chat he punches her repeatedly, while she continues to stay silent about where the drugs are. Then she finds a corkscrew and finally nods that the drugs are under the bed. She then shows Virgil what she has in her hand and he, impressed by how much courage she has, gives shaken girl a chance to take a stab. She stabs shim in his foot and then a ferocious and violent fight occurs - Alabama uses sculptures, hair spray and whatever she can find until Virgil catches on fire. After that Alabama - who is ridiculously cute, fun and joyful person - keeps stabbing him with a corkscrew, grabs a shotgun, shoots him several times and then starts hitting him with a said shotgun, after which she collapses on the ground with a wild scream.

Saturday TV Special: Six Feet Under

"All that lives, lives forever. Only the shell, the perishable passes away. The spirit is without end… Eternal… Deathless…"
Plot: The series follows Fisher family who is running a funeral home. In the first episode the father of the family dies in an car accident, leaving his two sons, one daughter and wife Ruth to deal with his death and the business. When older son Nate returns home for Christmas he finds out the news about his father's passing, but that comes after he has sex with mysterious Brenda, the woman he met on the plane who will continue to be a prominent part of his life. Nate decides to stay home to bring some consolation to Ruth and his brother David, who now has to run the business on his own. There is also Claire - Nate and David's teenage sister who has terrible taste in men and who experiments with drugs, which leads her to many troubles. As the series progresses we see those people trying to cope with their loneliness, trying to find happiness in their love lives, handling the family business and finding their own way and purpose in life.