Sex and the City? 2

SATC2 has already received its fair share of negative reviews, so I'll keep this brief. It's not just that the film is too long, incredibly insensitive, and that the characters are so annoying we don't care whatever happens to them. My main problem here is that in Sex and the City, there's hardly any sex, and barely a glimpse of (New York) City.

A few notes: Trying to be educative about the Middle East and Arabic language doesn't work if you end it all with "F... the New Middle East." Also, SATC was a lot more feminist when it wasn't trying to be preachy about feminism, and have the girls sing "I'm a Woman." And the funniest thing in the movie has become their clothes, not their lines. Sad.

Arvo Part in Istanbul

Sitting in the middle. Premiere of Adam's Lament starting soon.

Antichrist

In the prologue of Lars von Trier's Antichrist, a married couple is having sex in their bathroom while their little child walks over the edge of an open window to his death. It all goes downhill from there.

The prologue is shot beautifully in black/white, in slow motion, and set to Haendel's 'Lascia Ch'io Pianga'. For the 45 minutes after that, I could hardly stay awake. And for the next 45 minutes, I wished I were still asleep. The film is divided into four chapters (in addition to the prologue and the epilogue). After the child's death, she (the mother, a fantastic Charlotte Gainsbourg) slides into a depression, and he (the father, a much too old Willem Dafoe, who seems to have been selected mainly because he has played Christ before) tries to get her out of it. He is a very successful therapist apparently, and while he knows all the rules (never treat your family, never have sex with your client), he can't quite abide by them. Long story short, he tries to cure her, she pays back by lengthily torturing him. That's women for ya!

Walking into a von Trier film, I expect misogyny (much as he denies it), but I also expect to be cinematically shaken up. None such after the prologue. It is excellently directed, I just am not impressed by the direction it takes.

My office view

This is probably one of the things that gets me out of bed and out the door in the morning.

40s apartments

My street was full of these, but they're all being torn down to build semi-identical hotels. This is probably next to go.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

OK, I like a non-sensical historical action flick as much as anyone. But this is Hollywood drivel in its most derogatory sense. Its historic Middle East is a land of Orientalist myths, the casting of its leads (especially in the case of Gemma Arterton - remember Strawberry Fields?) is ridiculous, but most importantly, it's boring! There's a magical dagger that gets tossed around so many times between the good guys and the bad guys, no one cares anymore after the umpteenth time it changes hands. Even my favorite game -let's spot the blatant analogies- becomes tiresome. Persians attack Alamut on suspicions of WMD, but there are none! Alas, Alamut sits on an extremely valuable natural resource: magical sand! Whatever.

It's an annoyingly bad movie, with a $ 150 million price tag.

Robbin’ in the Hood

(still behind in festival reports, but had to get this in)

Disclaimer: I love the Scott Brothers, and am positively biased towards all of their work. (Yes, that includes Black Hawk Down and Domino.)

While there have been quite a few Robin Hoods before, this one tells the story of Robin Longstride becoming Robin Hood. In that sense, it’s rather misfortunate that it stars the oldest Hood to date. At 45, Russel Crowe looks his age, despite the star charisma and all. But if one is determined to enjoy the movie (as I was), I would suggest to imagine that people in Middle Ages (particularly soldiers who have spent the last 10 years walking from England to Palestine and back) tend to age faster. All the familiar faces are there, Big John, the chubby priest, and the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. And Marian of course, in the shape of the gorgeous Cate Blanchett. She’s probably also to old for her role, but that’s ok as she’s an Elf.

At 140 minutes, the film is long, yet it doesn’t drag on. One of my pet peeves is that in Hollywood pictures, everyone on earth in any age speaks English, so I was delighted by the fact that the French actually speak French here (and they're all evil). And great work on production design: everything is rather grimy, as things probably were back then. While the whole subplot about Robin’s father, and the subsequent “freedom and liberty” bit seems rather forced, ultimately I really enjoyed it as a historical adventure. There’s only one bit of robbing though, the rest is left conveniently to a possible sequel (Robin Hood and his Arthritis).