The dreaded Advertising:
Following recent issues here and your helpful comments, and as part of finding a solution I've decided to allow some carefully chosen advertising within the main site. Some may be commercial, while some will be to do with personal convictions or charities I support, but I believe these will ultimately benefit you readers and enable this site to keep functioning freely by incorporating some much needed features.
I tried to shy away from adverts after being put-off by them being (mis)used elsewhere. But if it is used properly, I think it will work for both the advertiser and the site. Rest assured none of the advertising that'll appear here would be invasive or pornographic.
Web development help needed:
I'm looking for an up-to-date Wordpress specialist who could implement some much needed changes to the site for a fee. I don't have a big budget to work with, but it will be reasonable, because the work involved also isn't extensive.
Those interested can get in touch and I will brief them individually and in confidence.
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Monday, 27 February 2012
Sunday, 26 February 2012
Aina Clotet in "Elisa K" [2010 Spain]
Before "Elisa K", I'd seen only one other film of veteran Catalan writer-director Jordi Cadena (from the 'destape' years, starring a young Ana Belén). For this film however, the directorial credits are shared with Judith Colell whose filmography I'm totally unaware of. The film can also be divided into two parts. The first, substantial part that covers two thirds of the film is shot in monochrome - events relating to the past. The final part is set in present day Barcelona.
Storyline:
Elisa visits her dad ever other weekend along with her brother and sister - her parents are divorced. Her father would take them out along with his jeweller-friend and children. When she's twelve, something terrible happens during one of the visits, events which her mind will block from memory. Until after more than ten years, as a carefree and ambitious university student, painful memories come flooding back one day and it is time to face up to and come to terms with what actually happened. Since both the parts' respective timelines are linear, we are privy to events as they happen. The rest of the film is a study in the manner in which Elisa shields herself by failing to register what happened, and the pain and suffering later in life when she remembers the day, and her quest for a 'closure' of sorts, to put this behind her and move on...
Catalan cinema is fascinating to watch as it often has a different way of looking at and showing things, bolder and edgier than its Castillian cousin. The first part of the film, substantial as it is, can actually even stand as the main film, with the second part acting as an epilogue. The cinematography, pace and direction in the first part is simply enchanting, and you if briefly would wish it had ended with that, because the second part is its opposite, even if it is just as well made and the performance by Aina Clotet, who plays the adult Elisa, heartfelt and intense - the jarring images and Elisa's pain put you ill-at-ease. It is nevertheless a compelling piece of cinema and therefore, Recommended Viewing..!
Amazon DVD Link
Scene: Aina Clotet
The first two minutes or so has no nudity but I felt it necessary to show Elisa's reaction gradually taking shape due to a sudden vague recollection. Elisa is played by a beautiful, talented, and totally immersed-in-character Aina Clotet. It requires 'balls' to appear in front of the camera totally unglamorous, unkempt and utterly defenceless - Srta. Clotet sure has them in good measure..!
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Storyline:
Elisa visits her dad ever other weekend along with her brother and sister - her parents are divorced. Her father would take them out along with his jeweller-friend and children. When she's twelve, something terrible happens during one of the visits, events which her mind will block from memory. Until after more than ten years, as a carefree and ambitious university student, painful memories come flooding back one day and it is time to face up to and come to terms with what actually happened. Since both the parts' respective timelines are linear, we are privy to events as they happen. The rest of the film is a study in the manner in which Elisa shields herself by failing to register what happened, and the pain and suffering later in life when she remembers the day, and her quest for a 'closure' of sorts, to put this behind her and move on...
Catalan cinema is fascinating to watch as it often has a different way of looking at and showing things, bolder and edgier than its Castillian cousin. The first part of the film, substantial as it is, can actually even stand as the main film, with the second part acting as an epilogue. The cinematography, pace and direction in the first part is simply enchanting, and you if briefly would wish it had ended with that, because the second part is its opposite, even if it is just as well made and the performance by Aina Clotet, who plays the adult Elisa, heartfelt and intense - the jarring images and Elisa's pain put you ill-at-ease. It is nevertheless a compelling piece of cinema and therefore, Recommended Viewing..!
Amazon DVD Link
Scene: Aina Clotet
The first two minutes or so has no nudity but I felt it necessary to show Elisa's reaction gradually taking shape due to a sudden vague recollection. Elisa is played by a beautiful, talented, and totally immersed-in-character Aina Clotet. It requires 'balls' to appear in front of the camera totally unglamorous, unkempt and utterly defenceless - Srta. Clotet sure has them in good measure..!
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Thursday, 23 February 2012
Carice van Houten & co in "Komt een vrouw bij de dokter" BR720 [Netherlands 2009]
Reinout Oerlemans' romantic drama, "Komt een vrouw bij de dokter - Een ode aan de liefde" [Eng. Title: A Woman Goes to the Doctor - An Ode to Love, aka Stricken] is your typical mainstream film that touches on a cocktail of issues without getting too deep - issues like unconditional love, infidelity, cancer, and euthanasia are largely examined skin-deep in this heady melodrama filled with beautiful people.
Even if I knew what the film was about, I bought the DVD without too much expectations, it was bought purely for the beautiful Carice van Houten. In that respect, I haven't been disappointed. The cinematography is also pleasing to the eye (even more so in blu-ray), and while the soundtrack is a bit hit and miss bordering on the cheesy at times, you have some decent performance by the main cast which makes it worthwhile sitting through. While the screenplay too leaves you with mixed emotions - it is not easy to dismiss the film altogether, but this is definitely one for van Houten fans..!
Amazon DVD Link
Storyline:
Playboy Stijn meets and falls in love with colleague at work Carmen, they immediately marry and start a family. But despite his marriage, Stijn couldn't help sleeping around at any given opportunity. Carmen tolerates his infidelity - according to him, as though it were a bad habit, like picking nose. Carmen is diagnosed for breast cancer and had to go through painful chemotherapy sessions before eventually getting one of her breasts removed. Just when she seemed to have conquered the disease, it returns with a vengeance, spreading to the liver. Unable to bear Carmen's pain, Stijn resorts to having an affair with Roos, which almost ends in divorce. But Carmen accepts him back (rather too easily, me thinks) and they stick together until her health deteriorates to the extent that it renders her immobile with no control over her body. The film culminates in Carmen ending it all through assisted suicide, which perhaps is the most moving scene in the film.
Compilation: Carice van Houten, Anna Drijver, and others
While I own the DVD with the original audio, I made the compilation using a German-dubbed version from blu-ray, mainly for its visual appeal...
Scene Guide:
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Even if I knew what the film was about, I bought the DVD without too much expectations, it was bought purely for the beautiful Carice van Houten. In that respect, I haven't been disappointed. The cinematography is also pleasing to the eye (even more so in blu-ray), and while the soundtrack is a bit hit and miss bordering on the cheesy at times, you have some decent performance by the main cast which makes it worthwhile sitting through. While the screenplay too leaves you with mixed emotions - it is not easy to dismiss the film altogether, but this is definitely one for van Houten fans..!
Amazon DVD Link
Storyline:
Playboy Stijn meets and falls in love with colleague at work Carmen, they immediately marry and start a family. But despite his marriage, Stijn couldn't help sleeping around at any given opportunity. Carmen tolerates his infidelity - according to him, as though it were a bad habit, like picking nose. Carmen is diagnosed for breast cancer and had to go through painful chemotherapy sessions before eventually getting one of her breasts removed. Just when she seemed to have conquered the disease, it returns with a vengeance, spreading to the liver. Unable to bear Carmen's pain, Stijn resorts to having an affair with Roos, which almost ends in divorce. But Carmen accepts him back (rather too easily, me thinks) and they stick together until her health deteriorates to the extent that it renders her immobile with no control over her body. The film culminates in Carmen ending it all through assisted suicide, which perhaps is the most moving scene in the film.
Compilation: Carice van Houten, Anna Drijver, and others
While I own the DVD with the original audio, I made the compilation using a German-dubbed version from blu-ray, mainly for its visual appeal...
Scene Guide:
- First date - Carmen invites Stijn for a nightcap. Carmen of course is played by the beautiful Carice van Houten. They get married.
- Stijn fooling around with some girls during a business trip.
- Carmen and Stijn spend time in the field after they're informed she has cancer.
- Getting ready for, and then undergoing chemotherapy.
- And the immediate aftermath...
- While Carmen is in another chemotherapy session, Stijn is having it with Esther at a club, played by Anne Marie Michels.
- Stijn in bed caressing Carmen's bruised left breast - it is about to be amputated soon. She feels sorry for him because he's after all a 'tits' man..!
- A weird imagined scene where a dancing girl rips off one of her breasts. :-(
- Carmen examining her scar, post-operation...
- Stijn had been eyeing painter Roos for a while - he finally succeeds, and couldn't wait for even the elevator to take them to their floor in this hot scene. Roos is played by the rather sultry looking Anna Drijver.
- Another one of their meetings and we get an 'artistic' view through Drijver's shirt. :)
- After being declared free from cancer, Carmen and Stijn try to rejuvenate their relationship at an exotic island getaway. Darkly lit scene with brief nudity.
- When they discover Carmen had developed cancer again, Stijn in desperation comes looking for Roos. Possibly the most charged sex scene in the film.
- Followed by a mutual body-painting session - nice..!
- Another pretty looking post-coital chat scene of Stijn and Roos in bed.
- Last fleeting glimpse of Roos dancing in the nude.
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Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Antigoni Amanitou from Nikos Koundouros' "1922" [Greece 1978]
In "1922", Nikos Koundouros recreates events from the little known Greek genocide towards the end of the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-1922 where, within the single province of Anatolia alone (present day Turkey), about a third of a million civilian Greeks were systematically eliminated through pogroms, officially sanctioned death marches and starvation. This crime against humanity was conducted under the guise of a Turkey - successor state to the Ottoman Empire asserting its credentials in the region.
I've had this DVD for a while, but postponed writing about it because it came without English subtitles, and I've been looking for separate subtitles for it since. But I feel it is the right moment to post this film even with my present diminished ability to absorb its profoundness. To explain why, I need to digress from the blog's topic for a moment.
Current events in Greece have been upsetting to say the least. Here we have the European cradle of civilisation being told how to conduct its own affairs by northern neighbours who owe so much of their own success to ideas and thoughts that emanated here. And following their instructions apparently is the only way that the people who invented the very idea of 'Europe' could even stay within its union. I'm no economist, but judging by my own affairs, it's pretty evident that these so-called austerity measures will if anything only worsen its economy and make it more indebted in the medium term. Just as we can't expect 'neighbourly' hard-nosed economies to show any gratitude to a people for everything they've borrowed over millennia including coinage itself, we can't prevent ambitious neighbours from riding roughshod whenever they feel their time has come. Greece had been unduly trampled upon during the course of its recent history, it is again today. And Nikos Koundouros' "1922" can be seen allegorically to describe Greece's predicament.
About the film:
We follow, through the main characters' experiences the horror of the genocide, as Turkish troops and Muslim mercenaries round up the Greek and mainly non-muslim population living in Anatolia - a region they claim, to indulge in indiscriminate slaughter, rape and lead the surviving ones to their death in the desert. The film is relentless in the manner in which it drives you down, you can plainly see that there is no hope for the doomed group. The only relief on their way is from the Red Cross, too late for many to be of any help - as they only end up collecting and documenting carcasses left in the death march trail. Even if the film doesn't depict violent scenes, a lot of the horror is implied through what we see before they happen, and its aftermath. Dialogues peter out as the film approaches its end, and what we see are some truly heart-rending scenes which capture the utter despair of the victims and the total ambivalence of their captors, who while not being outright barbaric, show what it means to be enforcers of a nation's fascist agenda.
The director succeeds magnificently in narrating a story using assorted events, turning his audience into a bystander bearing witness to the unfolding tragedy - everything we see is at eye level. Contrasting scenes are also allowed to overlap to capture the irony behind all this, and Koundouros studiously attempts to stay away from propaganda. He succeeds there too. The cinematography is rich and the magnificent landscape is made to contrast with events happening on the ground. The soundtrack is magical, enhancing the drama in each scene, even through its silent moments. The performances by all the main characters are very good, and some are exceptionally heart-felt. On many an occasion, characters break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, it's a shame I cannot write anything about it for obvious reasons. But despite me able to savour only about half of what the film intended, it is amply evident that this is another superlative gem from a Greek master whose filmography I've so thoroughly come to enjoy. Highly Recommended Viewing..!
ebay DVD Link
Compilation: Antigoni Amanitou and others
Some scenes do not contain nudity and the ones that do aren't the least erotic. They are disturbing nevertheless, so view at your own discretion.
Scene Guide:
.
I've had this DVD for a while, but postponed writing about it because it came without English subtitles, and I've been looking for separate subtitles for it since. But I feel it is the right moment to post this film even with my present diminished ability to absorb its profoundness. To explain why, I need to digress from the blog's topic for a moment.
Current events in Greece have been upsetting to say the least. Here we have the European cradle of civilisation being told how to conduct its own affairs by northern neighbours who owe so much of their own success to ideas and thoughts that emanated here. And following their instructions apparently is the only way that the people who invented the very idea of 'Europe' could even stay within its union. I'm no economist, but judging by my own affairs, it's pretty evident that these so-called austerity measures will if anything only worsen its economy and make it more indebted in the medium term. Just as we can't expect 'neighbourly' hard-nosed economies to show any gratitude to a people for everything they've borrowed over millennia including coinage itself, we can't prevent ambitious neighbours from riding roughshod whenever they feel their time has come. Greece had been unduly trampled upon during the course of its recent history, it is again today. And Nikos Koundouros' "1922" can be seen allegorically to describe Greece's predicament.
About the film:
We follow, through the main characters' experiences the horror of the genocide, as Turkish troops and Muslim mercenaries round up the Greek and mainly non-muslim population living in Anatolia - a region they claim, to indulge in indiscriminate slaughter, rape and lead the surviving ones to their death in the desert. The film is relentless in the manner in which it drives you down, you can plainly see that there is no hope for the doomed group. The only relief on their way is from the Red Cross, too late for many to be of any help - as they only end up collecting and documenting carcasses left in the death march trail. Even if the film doesn't depict violent scenes, a lot of the horror is implied through what we see before they happen, and its aftermath. Dialogues peter out as the film approaches its end, and what we see are some truly heart-rending scenes which capture the utter despair of the victims and the total ambivalence of their captors, who while not being outright barbaric, show what it means to be enforcers of a nation's fascist agenda.
The director succeeds magnificently in narrating a story using assorted events, turning his audience into a bystander bearing witness to the unfolding tragedy - everything we see is at eye level. Contrasting scenes are also allowed to overlap to capture the irony behind all this, and Koundouros studiously attempts to stay away from propaganda. He succeeds there too. The cinematography is rich and the magnificent landscape is made to contrast with events happening on the ground. The soundtrack is magical, enhancing the drama in each scene, even through its silent moments. The performances by all the main characters are very good, and some are exceptionally heart-felt. On many an occasion, characters break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, it's a shame I cannot write anything about it for obvious reasons. But despite me able to savour only about half of what the film intended, it is amply evident that this is another superlative gem from a Greek master whose filmography I've so thoroughly come to enjoy. Highly Recommended Viewing..!
ebay DVD Link
Compilation: Antigoni Amanitou and others
Some scenes do not contain nudity and the ones that do aren't the least erotic. They are disturbing nevertheless, so view at your own discretion.
Scene Guide:
- No nudity but I felt it necessary to show the context of this film, as Turkish troops summon residents to come outside, only to massacre the entire family afterwards.
- A young Greek soldier enters a home to find its entire occupants dead.
- A passing shot of what looks like a humiliated priest and his family.
- Lucia is separated from her husband and taken turns by soldiers to be raped. Lucia is played by Antigoni Amanitou. I've also inserted in between a monologue by the character played by Eleonora Stathopoulou as I think it is an important scene, and would be grateful if someone who knows Greek could translate it for us.
- After killing the rapist, a hysterical Lucia cuts off her hair, presumably wanting to make herself less desirable.
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Friday, 17 February 2012
Silvia Navarro & Diana García in "Labios Rojos" [2011 Mexico]
Rafael Lara's "Labios Rojos" [Eng. Title: Red Lips] is your stereotypical mainstream comedy about marital woes (predominantly sexual) where the characters are usually caricatures and ridden with cliché. This film might as well have been churned out twenty years ago if you can take away their mobile phones. I suppose there's always a market for such escapist films which is why they get made. But I believe Lara is a better director than this effort might suggest, and I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Apart from the subject though, it surprisingly has high production values and at times looks as glossy as a Hollywood film. But I have to admit some scenes are positively hilarious even if we can see the gags coming from a mile away. The other virtues of course are the fine and sexy actresses who feature in it - Diana García and Silvia Navarro - together they more than make up for what is otherwise a pretty average film.
Amazon DVD Link
Storyline:
Ricardo and Blanca are blissfully married, and in love. Until Ricardo takes up a new job as an executive at a leading advertising agency. The stress takes its toll when Ricardo discovers his erectile dysfunction, which leads to him giving Blanca excuses for not having sex. Blanca however suspects he may be having an affair and tries all kinds of methods to woo him back, including using the services of a shaman. Ricardo becomes obsessed with sex and thanks to his lecherous pal, he even considers an affair with the horny and very available Violeta, a colleague at work. Will Blanca win Ricardo back before its too late, that's what the film's about.
Compilation: Silvia Navarro, Diana García, Adriana Olivera and others
Scene Guide:
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Amazon DVD Link
Storyline:
Ricardo and Blanca are blissfully married, and in love. Until Ricardo takes up a new job as an executive at a leading advertising agency. The stress takes its toll when Ricardo discovers his erectile dysfunction, which leads to him giving Blanca excuses for not having sex. Blanca however suspects he may be having an affair and tries all kinds of methods to woo him back, including using the services of a shaman. Ricardo becomes obsessed with sex and thanks to his lecherous pal, he even considers an affair with the horny and very available Violeta, a colleague at work. Will Blanca win Ricardo back before its too late, that's what the film's about.
Compilation: Silvia Navarro, Diana García, Adriana Olivera and others
Scene Guide:
- A brief fantasy scene of a young Ricardo in the bathroom. The object of his fantasy is played by Virginia Salazar.
- All grown up, Ricardo falls in love and get married to Blanca, played by the very easy on the eye Silvia Navarro.
- Ricardo withdraws into his shell when he couldn't get going with Blanca in bed.
- No nudity but nice - two rather dishy lingerie girls are introduced as models for a client's forthcoming campaign, played by Sol Soria and Leticia Urtusuastegui - I wish we were given more than a fleeting glimpse of these well formed creatures though.
- Ricardo for a moment imagines the entire office staff are 'at it'. His secretary Martha is played by Adriana Olivera.
- New arrival at the office Violeta wastes no time in catching the attention of Ricardo. Violeta of course is played by mamacita caliente Diana García, and I don't know why, but I'm already in love with her nose..! :-)
- A call from a worried Blanca brings Ricardo back to his senses.
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