muvies

Dirty Pretty Things

Stephen Frears, to me, has been lost in the woods for a while - a time that included such awful movies as "Hero" and "High Fidelity". I think there might have been a few good ones, but let's forget about them. THIS one deserves to have been the next one after "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid" which were my orgasmic introduction to so many awesome things British when i was a Masshole teen.

"Dirty Pretty Things" is about yet another London underworld - that of grey illegals given great color just by pure film storytelling, but also wonderful story, which I won't give away. A plot that reveals a complicated theme, teaches about politics and economics, and lets us get closer and closer to three characters you can't get enough of, including a charming bad guy (named Sneaky).

Audrey Tatou annoyed me enormously in that dumb French movie whose name I forget about an autistic little Montmartre bitch. Wait, was it called "Audrey?" Whatever, it was retarded. ANYHOO in this one she shows herself to be an actress capable of really revealing herself, and yet manifesting the shell of a character that must be quite foreign to her - from the accent (sounded convincing to me, what do I know), to the shards of wildness, ashamedness and giddy love coursing through a native muslim traditionalism whose relevance was fading before her eyes. The best thing about her character, and one of the best things about the movie, was it showed us a world where love between two beautiful young people would be something of a luxury compared to other things like dealing with urgent citizenship concerns, being returned to a country where your life would be unbearable, etc.

Had a real thump thump thrum of nighttime steetlevel foreboding rhythms - like people in the background in some scenes in "Lost In Translation" perhaps.

Jeez I just imdb'd Mr. Frears and He hasn't really made a good film since SARGL, until now. No, wait, "The Snapper" was good and I didn't see "The Van". Snapper was damn underrated.

Anyway, loved this movie, love Britain, thanks Britain!

Craig just had this bit on about the Gorilla that escaped from Franklin Park Zoo yesterday (can't be bothered to link, google it yerself) and had a fake 911 call transcript of a Bostonian with a typical boston accent calling in a sighting of it. The joke was about the Boston accent ("This is a wickedly lodge unit dude", etc.) It amazes me how well-known the Boston accent is. Perhaps I just notice it more, but it seems that other regions with distinctive accents (aside from NYC, of course) - New Orleans, Wisconsin/Minnesota (please weigh in on the difference between the two), Philedelphia (right?), Baltimore (right?) - don't have quite the recognition factor. Why is that? Boston is a SMALL place - the city itself only has 600,000 or so and the immediate metro area isn't much more than 1 million or so. Maybe just age, history, maybe since it's a college town so many people have lived there for at least a few years?