Heaven

The film reminded me that good art is not artificial. Great art heightens our awareness of reality. Heaven fails because it feels contrived and artificial. Cate Blanchett has one scene in which she unleashes her full acting ability. But she cannot make up for a week script written by Krzysztof Kieslowski, who I image [Read More]

Miss Potter

Miss Potter portrays the life of the best-selling British children’s book author Beatrix Potter. Many authors invent fantastic stories while leading relatively boring lives. Mrs. Potter falls into this category. A film about her life has very little drama to work with. Not much happens on the screen. This is the image [Read More]

Happy Feet

This musical on ice cannot compete with Pixar’s animated films as far as plot is concerned. But some if its Southpole animations can rival what Pixar pulled off in Finding Nemo. The film initially covers similar territory as The March of Penguins but then turns into a fantasy about singing Penguins. One Penguin image [Read More]

Justin Timberlake’s Reflection on Singlehood

In a recent interview, Justin Timberlake, who in January split with Cameron Diaz (his costar in Shrek pictured on the right, who also attended the press day), said being single has its ups and downs: “The advantages are that you don’t get in as many arguments, and the disadvantage is that you’re talking to yourself.” Apparantly, image image [Read More]

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

  i]Good Bye Lenin[/i] turned the collapse of the German “Democratic” Republic into a comedy. There is not a single moment in The Lives of Others you feel like laughing. The film chronicles how an estimated 91,000 full-time employees and 300,000 informants recruited by Ministry for State Security (Stasi) helped the communist party to keep image [Read More]

Elizabeth

In search of one Cate Blanchett’s great performances, I rented the historical drama Elizabeth. Blanchett received an Oscar nomination for the role but lost out to Gweneth Paltrow who played the object of William Shakespeare’s desire in Shakespeare in Love. I suspect that Paltrow won not because she was more in love than Elizabeth. image [Read More]