Priceless

Director Pierre Salvadori delivers a sexy and easy romantic comedy with such a feel good none cheesy factor that you just have to give into it.

Jean is a waiter in a grand hotel played by Gad Elmaleh (The Valet), who Irene, played by Audrey Tautou (Amelie, Dirty Pretty Things, mistakes for a rich man. But when this cold manipulative gold digger finds out that he is just as penniless as the average person, she leaves him. Love struck Jean decides to follow her to apologise hoping to win her heart. But as comedies go, he somehow gets involved in her world and becomes a gigolo and her apprentice into the art of scrounging out of old rich people who should really be dating someone a bit older than their grandchildren.

Once you manage to stop laughing (and I dare you to try) you might realise that the plot is not particularly great. But who cares when you have the beautiful French coast and a pair like puppy green eyed Elmaleh and the super sexy Tautou charm to carry you through. With this wonderful cast choice it feels like Salvadori picked up where Breakfast at Tiffany’s left off and gave us that special thing that only movies like this can, which is somehow turn prostitution into a way too cool and glamorous skill.

out in cinemas across the UK 13 June 2008.

For BigCityRedNeck

The Escapist

The Escapist follows the story of Frank Perry (Brian Cox) as a lifer in prison that receives news that his daughter is dying and so he decides to escape to see her one last time. To achieve his goal Frank gathers a small team: Lenny Drake (Joseph Fiennes), a man of immense physical strength, capable of breaking through walls; Brodie (Liam Cunningham), Frank‘s friend that used to work in the sewers and therefore the ideal candidate to guide them through their escape route; and Viv Baptista (Seu Jorge), the prison’s dope cook.

What seems like an easy enough plan, becomes complicated with the arrival of James Lacey (Dominic Cooper), who comes to share a cell with Frank. Lacey gets the attention of Tony (Steven Macintosh), a drug addicted, sadistic who fancies him, and brother of the prison’s ‘king’ - Rizza (Damien Lewis).

The cast performances are overall brilliant when they’re given the chance of talking at all. But despite Joseph Fiennes muscled body, it is at some points difficult not to think of the rough Lenny as someone who had a bit of a posh education going on. And it’s a real disappointment to have this as the first British movie in which a Brazilian artist performs. Especially Seu Jorge who is such an iconic politically outspoken Brazilian music figure and starred in Wes Anderson’s excellent The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

It’s an overall outstanding cast for such a bad… average… too, too average movie. Director Rupert Wyatt wrote an over tried and tested plot: man wants to escape prison, man gathers team to help him escape, man gets caught/escapes. And did nothing new or interesting with it.

What he did was play about with time and space in the film in order to try and salvage such a repetitive and boring picture. Did it work? Well if despite what I’m writing here you still go and see it, you are bound to leave not sure of what really happened thanks to the little twist at the end (the only bit of the film worthwhile). But will you care enough to even talk about it after the movie - I know I didn’t. But hey, not all is grey. With such a poorly developed plot, credit must given to the editing team who managed to fill in the gaps, the lack of dialogue and action with realistic sketches of the escape route. That is unless you count the one where they thought they were being clever by showing an air vent with the lights on. Yes, you are right, air vents have no lights! But again I repeat - the acting performances are overall truly brilliant.

out in cinemas across the UK June 20th.

For BigCityRedNeck

Under the bombs

Already with a few awards up its sleeve from the Venice Film Festival, the Dubai International Film Festival and a Human Rights Film Award, this brilliantly crafted movie deserves an Oscar of some kind, or a few for that matter.

Shot 10 days after the war in Lebanon began on July 2006, the film follows the story of Zeina, an upper class Lebanese Shiite who lives in Dubai played by Nada Abou Farhat, and Tony, a Christian taxi driver who lives in Beirut played by Georges Khabbaz. Zeina has left her son with her sister in Kherbet Selem while she tries to sort out a messy divorce. As soon as the war breaks out she travels back to Lebanon, arriving at the Beirut port looking for someone to take her across the country. There the only person willing to do so is driver Tony. The two are launched into a road trip like no other made up to date across a devastated country in search of Zeina’s lost son. And despite their different backgrounds they have no choice but to become close in the face of so much loss and suffering.

Directed by Franco-Lebanese director Philippe Aractingi who’s known for his documentaries and BOSTA, the country’s first post war musical and chosen piece to represent Lebanon at the 2006 Oscars and written by French American Michel Leviant, TV and cinema screen writer (Le Prix du Silence, Pardaillan, D’Artagnan’s daughter). The audacious move to make a movie with only two actors and all the extras playing themselves has definitely paid off. Despite Aractingi’s affirmation: “In my film, I avoided showing dead bodies, we’ve seen too many of them”, we can’t help but to feel the heavy presence of those unseen bodies in the tears and the real life accounts from the extras.

To be released 21 March in the UK, this is not just a masterpiece but also a refreshing take on film making that shouldn’t be missed.

For BigCityRedNeck

Interview with Ira Cohen

It was suppose to be an interview, but meeting the legendary Ira Cohen ended up feeling a bit like a surreal cup of tea with a friend. The “father of Mylar photography”, the poet, film maker and photographer is a charismatic man, a natural story teller who loves people. A passionate multi-talented artist at the forefront of the Trance movement that has taken pictures of the likes of Jimmy Hendrix and Angus MacLise. He’s photos have also been used as album covers for Hendrix, John Mclaughlin and Pharaoh Sanders.

Jimi Hendrix

Ira Cohen: It’s very nice to meet you, where do you want to sit?

BCR: It’s nice to meet you too.

IC: Did you have a look at the exhibition?

BCR: Yes, I really loved everything. From the black and white work around this room, my favourite has to be the Johnny Dolphin pictures.

IC: Yeah that’s three shots of him dancing, I sort of like that one a lot too.

BCR: It feels like there’s movement in it, like a little clip of someone.

IC: And he’s also a guy that you don’t see dancing, but he’s also a dancer. He’s got a lot of personality. He’s actually behind this gallery, and the whole October movement, Theatre of all Possibilities, and Eco Technique. I started to have contact with the group from the first time I meet Johnny. I used to come to his plays and was into the plays, then I’d see Johnny and we would go somewhere, then one thing led to another. And of course this show is the result of those and other meetings and I had other shows here before. You know this gallery is really quite wonderful, and it’s lovely for me that it is in London, cause as you know I’m a hot shot New Yorker so London seems very sexy to me. In this gallery I am always at home. Right now it just feels very comfortable ‘cause I don’t live in the surroundings of my photographs on the walls of my cluttered apartment.

BCR: You have travelled a lot, so you probably do feel at home in many places now.

IC: Oh yeah, I mean compared to real travellers I probably haven’t travelled at all. But I’m old enough.

BCR: What do you mean compared to real travellers? You seem to have been everywhere?

IC: I mean compared to someone that is really travelling and that is constantly going places. They can go to 10 times as many places I’ve gone in a year, compared to 10 years in which I’ve travelled. I have travelled a lot, but I am not a consistent traveller. Though over the years I’ve gone places and I lived in places for years, like Morocco and Nepal. Mostly in Morocco and Nepal A year or so at a time and I’ve went back on many occasions. I feel very much at home at those places. As wonderful as they are, it is also possible to have shows there and I have done that. But it’s not a place where I think of so much as of having a show, but to make things, and then I can do the show somewhere else.

Julian Beck

BCR: You’ve done your ‘Starstream’ series of poetry during your time with the native craftsman in the Himalayas…

IC: I did the ‘Starstream Poetry’ series and several of my own books in there, Angus MacLise was a good friend and poet who lived there and a great drummer with the Velvet Underground and by himself. He would always be playing with his own hands on a suitcase and it could be mesmerising and he was really so good. So all that time I spent in Nepal and Morocco affected me very, very strongly and entered into my work life.

BCR: So it’s all about experience and inspiration.

IC: Definitely.

BCR: You went to the largest spiritual festival in the world, the Great Kumbh Mela Festival in India…

IC: The Kumbh Mela is the male of Aquarius, so it comes in Aquarium period. So it’s like every twelve years in 4 different places, which means that it happens every year in that place. But the twelve year one is really the big one, but there’s also a six year one, a three year one. And in between there’s a regular thing that happens in those places, so some people come and attend and do their regular rituals and worships.

BCR: Do you usually get involved or do you just watch?

IC: I do get involved in some way, ‘cause I have contact with certain people. I mean I could claim ‘yes I am a Naga’. What does that mean? I think it’s a false claim. But in some other more spiritual and personal level I do feel like I am a Naga. I have real roots in their beliefs and in what they think and feel and they are from the personality point of view in my work even if I’m an artist. Though being an artist is nothing to do with being a Naga.

BCR: Why do you say that? Is being an artist so wrong from a Naga perspective?

IC: It’s not a thing for artists or writers or something like that. It’s a certain spiritual discipline and whatever else you might be doing, if you are doing that thing, that’s what you doing. And because I am a poet, a photographer, and kind of take photographs of it, I’m kind of a cross over the boundaries of what that means. A real Naga has a certain absence and commitment to that way of life. I may consider that I’m expressing that discipline some way spiritually or in mind, or when I’m thinking about what I’m trying to accomplish today I kind of cover it with some Naga-hood. But I am not doing it with all the other personal things that it involves; the disciplines and the affairs that are part of it.

BCR: So you just follow the philosophy?

IC: Yeah, very much so.

Dr Mabuse

BCR: And do you take from other religions and spiritual beliefs?

IC: Yeah because they are all over the place and it’s very attractive whenever you come into contact with someone that is enlightened in those countries. You find there’s a lot in Muslim countries, so I have carried over from those experiences and from different Muslim practises or ways of life that have affected me. And I would say that is true in general. Those are the most inspiring situations you can be in.

BCR: Ok, so let‘s go on to your work here in the gallery, the famous Mylar pictures…

IC: I started the Mylar images, which are probably the most dominant aspect of my work that you see here and for me, myself, that I undertook doing that was simple. It didn’t require spiritual experiences or some connection in that way. I had a good friend during the expansion of the Psychedelic Movement who started to develop a business of selling items that pertain to that movement. Which meant making and selling posters that were done in the sort of thing that responded to black lights and black lights themselves. So he discovered Mylar as a reflective material that could be used in all kinds of ways in advertisement and decoration and used them in another way that related to these other things. He would always give me samples of it ‘cause he thought that I was a person who could actually make use of these things in my work. I was not a serious photographer, I was a poet. But he knew that I had worked with people who made films, and so he thought that I would use it some way in film making. Which I did. And then I shot a lot of these pictures which are the most important part of my photographic work for me and attracted the most attention.

You see that picture there of me is actually a figure break of someone who worked for me. I directed by posing a lot. It was a luxury that I had to be in the pictures as well as taking the pictures, which I did a lot of both. So there’s a picture of me coming out of my head, and my head again growing out of my head. But then there’s also a reverse image of that of that head going out of the head going into another fore image. Those are just interesting images that are doing fine. They come out naturally because of that bendable mirror the picture was taken in. I found that very exciting and just put more of my energies towards making sessions on a regular basis. When I posed myself I enjoyed that as well as I enjoyed taking pictures of other people. I have pictures of all kinds of people and sometimes they create an atmosphere of some kind and I can put them together in a story. I love those pictures! People still look at them and think they are so contemporary and can’t believe that I did them twenty years ago.

BCR: The chance of doing these pictures with all these people must have been quite overwhelming.

IC: Yes and that’s how I worked out the ins of photography. And then much later if I had a camera with me I would take pictures and would do a conserved, much more normal sense and not set up a Mylar mirror and get someone to pose or dress up for it. If I wanted to take a picture of someone I might have pulled a top of hat out of the closet and put it on their head and use certain props that are around that I kind of collect.

Brion Gysen and Ornette Coleman

BCR: From the film making?

IC: Yeah. Otherwise I just like to take photographs, any kind of photographs.

BCR: So the Mylar was your way of experimenting and with that you became a photographer.

IC: Someone who works here, Jessie, is a good friend for many years. He says the Mylar pictures are here because they are exciting and that they are interesting for who the people were. Then the black and white pictures that are up are actually here to show that I am a real photographer. So the black and white will convey that, even though you don’t need any gimmicks around it and you are just taking a picture of someone in front of you. If I had my camera and my bag than I would take a picture of you. It would be nice to do that all the time with people that I spend some time with, sometimes they turn out to be particularly good and I am glad I took those pictures. Usually the people that I have been photographing in my life are very close people to me and people I care about. I think pictures are also invested with their spirits. Some of them were famous or relatively famous like Julian Beck great founder of the Living Theatre and his wife Judith Malina who’s a great actor and poet, they can do everything. And that’s Brion Gysin with his plaster foot which I made. I was making masks of people; you can see Terry Wilson holding a mask made of a mould of his face. Brion didn’t want his face done so I did his foot. It turned out he had a foot with four toes on, so he said ‘I give you my foot, but best of all I give my four toe foot’. It was just an interesting idea of doing his plastic foot, rather than his face. There he is again with Ornette Coleman both smoking cigarettes, just a natural photograph.

BCR: So you started out as poet, and you became a photographer, did movies, and contributed to several magazines around the world…

IC: I was talking to Johnny Allen who’s over there (pointing at the picture) I mean Johnny Dolphin as he is known. He was saying ‘When you do something well’ and he can say that because he does things well. You know he has written novels and other kinds of books, poems, on top of other things besides being the head of this all establishment sort of speak. ‘If you can do one thing well, you can probably do some other thing equally as well. You know if you put your head into doing something else.’ I feel that’s very true. I did a lot of different things and somehow it feels the same. But there are things that are first and most important to me and that’s the poetry and the photography that come very naturally to me.

BCR: So tell me about the magazine Gnaoua, which is one more of those things you seem to have done quite well.

Allen Ginsberg

IC: Gnaoua is the name of a brotherhood in Morocco, a Muslim brotherhood. It means Black, and it refers to certain kind of Black Muslim brotherhood in Africa. I was very affected by meeting them so I invited them to my house. They would come to where I lived and they would perform and I invited other people to come as well. So we would have an entire evening of their music, dancing and whatever came with it. Of course that’s what they do amongst themselves, Moroccans and so forth. Though slightly different than when in my place. ‘Cause though they were still playing the same music, we were not making the same contribution exactly because we were not familiar with the style of the dancing. But I myself would get up and be dancing with them. And other people who came took part in these rituals even though they were new to them. So yeah, I was very excited by the Gnaoua and there were also other groups. But the Gnaoua I knew best. It was the first group I was involved with and that I brought them over as friends and they came in my house where there was enough space for them to do their thing. So of course because of how much I like them, when I did the magazine I just called it Gnaoua. The idea was that it was kind of a transformative explosion like their music and their rituals. I put together what it was that interested me, which touched on the life that I was living in Morocco. It was written mainly by people who either were in Morocco or had been in Morocco at that time and were writing with that inspiration.

BCR: All the work you do is it mainly inspired by experience with people in a spiritual level.

IC: I was thinking about that recently. The most transformative of experiences, the most exciting, the mind altering experiences that I encountered are my main source of inspiration. For example the experience of the Living Theatre had that affect on me. So I ended up making a movie about the Living Theatre called ‘Paradise Now’ which was basically made from various performances, from different pieces that were called Paradise Now. It was made between the audience and the Theatre in such a way that they became indivisible. They break down the wall between the audience and the theatre and instead of people watching something happen, they become part of the action. You know it was very, very exciting, every performance of that would be very different depending on the audience reactions. There were things pretty much in common between all of them, but there were differences. So I got together with a friend who‘s no longer alive, who was a movie camera man which I didn’t consider myself. I was still just doing still photographs and I had a movie camera, it was a Bolex movie camera and I lent it to him. We got some film, a lot of it was used film or old film that the NBC had and we got for nothing. Some of it turned out to be quite grainy and at the end of the film we were like ‘what is all that grain doing in there?’ But then we accepted it and now that’s a nasty part of the style of the film that is so gritty. And it has just recently been put together for a DVD, and is coming out with Arthur Magazine. They put out another movie of mine that I did in the 60s called ‘The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda’ which is a very experimental, mostly in colour and is shot in bendable mirrors like the Mylar, that somehow whatever I did came out as stories to me. Not conventional stories, but a very poetic and kind of complex story and allegory.

BCR: You say you have been inspired by mind altering experiences, so you must have done some mind altering drugs that influenced your work.

William Burroughs

IC: I was just reading an article in some magazine that came out here. I can’t remember the name, I think it’s Culture, but it is published inside some other much larger well known British press. I was reading the article the other day and they said a lot about geniuses and a lot about films. They also said I spent a lot of time with wackos and funny other kinds of things. Instead of just talking about the work itself and about me as an artist they dragged in all these other things and they said I must have been on LSD when I made the film and the costume person must have been on angel dust and the actors must have been on…

BCR: So they claim to know exactly what kind of drugs were going around…

IC: That’s the reaction and in one way that’s sort of irritating cause I’m really presenting the work and not talking about anything else that they might think I’m doing. Or that I am doing, and I can’t deny that I have experimented with all those things and they must have affected me like everything would affect me.

BCR: But that doesn’t mean you still wouldn’t have been able to create and do your work…

IC: Yeah that’s what I am saying. I can’t determine how it would have come out, there’s no doubt that it’s affected me and my position and my attitude towards visionary realities that I like to deal with. But it’s not like I am somebody taking a lot of drugs and then I go and start shooting something. As you can see that’s not the case. Smoking might be happening any time when I’m doing anything. In fact I don’t even have any on me now. But I have been smoking for so many years that I’m just prominently affected by that feeling. But I am not in any way looking for it, pursuing it, buying it, having it, anything else like that. And it doesn’t matter to me, except that when I do have it I share it and smoke it with somebody else that has offered it to me, I suddenly get a good reaction. I suddenly realise something and I go ‘Oh yeah I forgot.’ It can actually still provide me with some kind of enthusiasm and inspiration. It’s an experience I have and it’s different from a person who never had those experiences or is afraid of them or that never got anything out of them because a lot of times I did get lot.

BCR: Still it’s just like saying without the drugs there wouldn’t be art and the artist.

IC: Yeah, they just made this point so much that they started to talk about other people like Picasso and that he must have been on angel dust.

BCR: You are the artist director of Universal Mutant, Inc…

IC: Well you can make everything sound like that.

BCR: So you’re not?

IC: I used that title because I put out several things. And I used Universal Mutant Repertory Company as a name on a film. And I continue using it from time to time. Just as I will continue using Gnaoua press for something like that or certain other names. Because it’s a publishing company and I did a lot of self publishing and sometimes I publish something someone else has done and I put a lot in print.

BCR: do you see yourself as publisher as well?

IC: I could have been more of a publisher but I am more interested in getting my own books out there. I was just publishing a lot of books, but here and there you just get inspired by certain work and its right in your hands and I like to publish it rather then wonder how it’s going to be published.

for Big City Red Neck

legends and lessons of fear and tradition.

I heard a story of a man that keeps good company with beasts. I heard of a
wild bull that bleed for the entertainment of rational kind creatures. It
was the woman inside the tree that told me the story. It went a bit
something like this:

‘My child hear here from the eternal one, from the one that moves in a
different sphere where ghosts find warmth. Hear the story of those you
are made of, those you are, those you can never escape being
build upon.

‘A man that finds comfort in the company of beasts has knowledge beyond
the knowledge that can be told. His words sound of madness
and his wisdom is more than other man can understand. He
will leave the veil of reality and move through reality itself. He will
become a forgotten legend, a bedtime story fear. He will be the reason
for real madness if you understand what real means.

‘A bull that has the comfort of living a good life, of having the best of the
kindness of man, will taste bitter death in confusion. It’s all very
rational in the world that you live. It’s the way of those trapped in the
veil of reality, those who probably never pass on to the other side,
those who will never understand true knowledge. The bull will bleed
and the people will applaud. Tradition my dear, they call it an
important part of a man’s life. To watch a scared creature being
stabbed over and over stumbling upon a closed arena struggling for
the next step.’

I heard the stories of the bull and the man in more detail, as she went on
telling me of their birth, families and death. The fear of moving into
reality trembled within. Oh what safety it’s the thin veil over someone’s
eyes. I learned of the difficulties of those who leave and the reasons of
those who refuse to move. The lady inside the tree burned with the
light of dawn, “the book of revelations“, she said, “has never been lost. Is
yet to be read by many.” “But will they understand?”, I shouted at the
morning light. “Did you understand!?”, came a faded voice melting into
the sky.

Reality is has reality does in the mind of those who are left in the real of
that that they believe to see, to feel, to be. Reality never expands it
simply remains, but the reality perceived is forever in change. Reality
plays and reality is fear, and reality stays even when eyes are
asleep or simply closed. Reality hurts and reality loves. Reality is as
much alive as the lives we hold. Reality keeps and reality falls. Reality
never stops for moving thoughts. Reality will go on when there’s
no one left to touch, reality will build new from the old, and
reality will always remain.

For Exposed East Literature Ezine

World wide mass suicide

 

We know about the big black hole.
We heard about grey days and Chernobyl babies.
We are aware of the fragile system.
We know it’s cruelty that puts meat on our tables.
We wear products that have been tested on puppies and monkeys eye balls.
We spend more time in the mirror than reading the paper.
We let the light switch on knowing it eats away our oxygen.
We drink Cola that dirties our water; makes grease melt and kills our brothers.
We want big diamond engagement rings that slave nations and support wars.
We love air conditioning; towel heaters and more electric wonders that crush our lungs and will burn our children.
We don’t care to complain or protest about the new nuclear power stations being build.
We don’t even know what bottom trolling means.
We don’t think whaling is our problem.
We like our sea mercury delicacies and we pay good money for it.
We drink and feed our babies milk filled with pus, painkillers and antibiotics.
We spend our evenings pumping TV, alcohol, amphetamines, ecstasy, coca and take-away.
We drive poison machines everywhere and spend our savings on fitness programs.
We build more new roads; new houses; new streets and let old bricks became needle disease containers.
We travel inside aeroplanes that burn our sky line.
We transform oxygen making beings into paper and sell it cheaper than recycled.
We wear leather shoes, sheep skin jackets and rabbit scarves.
We are more worried about how good it looks than how many children did it.
We are not ignorant.
We just don’t care.

For Flash in the Pan magazine 2nd issue

The Mexicolas @ the Bull & Gate

For those of you out there that think that all good music comes from the capital, let me introduce you to the Birmingham rock trio The Mexicolas. They are lead singer and guitarist Jamie (who a few years back toured with the likes of Alice Cooper and Deaf Leopard with his previous band), base player Del, and drummer Tim. They came down to Smoke City to headline at The Bull & Gate in Kentish Town. The evening was promising as everyone in the crowd (mostly female myspace addicts) kept on reminding me that these guys were the next best thing to hit the planet. Once the show started (apart from Jamie’s good looks) I did get what the hype was all about, The Mexicolas played radio friendly rock without sounding boring or even Poppy. There was a bit of Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters’ vocals, guitar sounds from The Falling and a musical sense from Green Day. Their set was truly great with songs like “Easy Smile”, “Sticks & Stones”, and my personal favourite “Come Clean”, seemingly more than ready to hit the singles charts. With all said and done you could expect a bunch of pretentious boys, but The Mexicolas are just simple guys with a fresh sense of humour and a warm welcoming stage presence. And thats why its such a shame that Hollyoaks airplayed them first.

For BigCityRedNeck.co.uk

Big Note presents live music evening @ The Red Room 20 Feb 06

On February the 20th Big Note presented a very cool night of live music at The Red Room. International assembled band Trackter headlined the evening with amazing Brazilian inspired drum beats, and an odd shy guitar player who performed with his back to the audience hiding in a corner between amplifiers. Playing also was the comic talent of acoustic musician Dave Easter, who string of songs criticized everything from girlfriends to the world, being tree hugging woman one to look out for in future gigs; to contrast his light hearted feel, were the aggressive strings and cleaver use of vocals of Genna Marabese that manage to hold the audience’s breath, specially with the sexy sounds of Mental Problems. While, unfortunately, the romantic feel of good looking duo Munro Fox (despite having a very good set of songs) failed to hold anyone’s attention, going a little unnoticed amongst the other acts.
Anyone who missed this really cool night in the comfort of the Red Room should look for more information at bignote.co.uk to find out about future events. The busy team has at least five events a week in different venues around London, so there is no excuse not to go and see the new talent around.

For Dave Easter website

http://www.daveeaster.moonfruit.com/

 

 

4 Moths, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

4 Months , 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a strong movie about the raw reality of illegal abortions in a communist Romania of the 90s. The film has won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Festival; best film of the year at the FIPRESCI’s Grand Prix 2007; amongst other industry awards. The furthest you can get from an Hollywood grandiose style, this small budget movie is a back to basics, strong simple plot without the need of any sort of embellishments (soundtrack, very sexy actors) to make it more interesting.

“A comment I received after the first informal screening of the movie was also the best compliment for me so far: (…) if you listen to the characters in the film from another room, they sound like people talking in home videos.” - Cristian Mungiu (Director)

The acting is so realistic, that it almost makes you believe that you are watching a documentary, rather than a movie. Mr Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), the doctor who performs the illegal abortion is the most interesting character, the one that makes it all worth while. The struggling Otilia, played beautifully by Anamaria Marinca, goes through to protect her friend Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) and is the most touching and humble display of human emotions portrayed in the cinema for a very long time.

The beginning feels just a bit too long with many still scenes depicting the daily life of the characters, and that may put some viewers used to the fast paced movies off. At times it comes across as a student film, with the camera work just a bit too shaky. It is the kind of movie a family can go and watch together with their teenage children, since the visceral abortion scene will be enough to make any person think twice about unprotected sex.

This one definitely gets a thumbs up from me, though if you’re the kind who loves action, and thinks Hollywood movies are the best in the world, then this is not for you.

For Big City Red Neck

Pan’s Labyrinth

Under the subtitle of An Adult Fairytale this is a coming of age movie for director Guillermo Del Toro (other works include Hell Boy, Blade II and The Devil’s Backbone). Set during the times of the Spanish Post War it’s a beautifully crafted with violently explicit and poetic graphics gothic story. A little girl named Ofelia who loves fairytales and her mother move to a remote countryside location with her stepfather Capitan Vidal. We follow Ofelia through the real violence of Franco’s Spain, and through the violence of her own enchanted world where she is a lost princess trying to return home. In her journey we meet the most scary characters of our childhood nightmares, and those of our adult fears. Don’t let the fact that it’s a subtitled movie put you off, (stop being lazy), it is a must see that should be watched in a large cinema room. For those of you movie fanatics watch out for the gifted young Spanish actress Ivana Baquero who plays Ofelia, I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more of her in the future.

And here’s a note of caution: if you are easily impressed than you should consider closing you eyes during some of the first scenes - don’t say you weren’t warned.

For Flash in The Pan issue 3