This was the first trailer in a while that made me want to go to the cinema. And the trailer didn’t promise too much, I really enjoyed watching The Kids Are All Right. But then you can’t really go wrong with a movie that has Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo as the lead characters.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a gay couple with two kids. When their daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska) turns 18 her brother (Josh Hutcherson) urges her to contact their biological father (Mark Ruffalo) who then turns the whole family upside down.

You can definitely see that this movie was made by a woman (Lisa Cholodenko), it’s incredibly sweet and sensitive. A bit too much crying for my taste but otherwise really well told. The relationship between mothers and kids is very cute and funny. I guess it goes without saying that the acting was incredible. Especially Julianne Moore created a very real and amusing character. I have to say, I did love all the locations used, they really made me want to move to California.

Overall a great summery movie that will charm your day!

I don’t think I have ever done this before, but I just have to share this trailer with you. Because it SUCKS. It must be the worst trailer I have seen in a long time. I even thought about running out of the cinema or screaming “Boooo!”. Everything about it is awful and I am really angry at the directors that I’m never gonna get those two and a half minutes of my life back. How can they possibly make this kind of crap??? Sorry, had to vent. And also sorry if I am offending anyone who loves this trailer but if there is anyone out there who does, then please explain to me why! Thanks.

My housemate organized tickets for us to go and see the new Sex and the City movie at what turned out to be the New York Cinema featured in the film, the Ziegfield (I swear, I didn’t know!). They were giving out virgin Cosmos and popcorn and the audience was definitely excited to watch this movie.

It might have been the best location to watch this movie because I’m not sure the movie itself was very good but I enjoyed myself immensely. Everyone, except for us, was really dolled up Carrie style which was kind of fun and people were screaming and gasping and applauding and it was just fun to be there.

Carrie and Mr. Big have been married for two years now and Carrie is scared that they are becoming a boring couple who only watch TV and order take-out so she tries to get him to go out more. Everyone else is pretty much where we left off the in the last movie. But to make things interesting, Samantha gets an invitation to take her girls to Abu-Dhabi to “test” a hotel that she is supposed to be promoting. Most of the film takes place there.

The film was quite different to the original series. The series the is mostly about the characters and the stories and the fashion is just sort of happens but it’s not the focus. The movie is all about the fashion and the characters and stories are a bit in the background. I don’t know how many times they changed clothes but personally i thought it was too many. Who gets changed every two hours? It felt like the entire movie was simply about glamour and sparkle and labels. I was really missing the conversations and discussions the girls always had which made them so relatable. Every girl can see something of themselves in at least one of the characters which is kind of the appeal of the show. But the four girls (who are actually very mature women by now) are so rich and fabulous now that they couldn’t have less in common with the average SATC fan. And on top of their own incredible wealth they get invited to a first class everything included vacation where they are staying at a palace and each of them has their own butler. It’s really too much!

Having said all that I did like the movie, probably even more then the first one, and would recommend it to fans of the show. And even though I said I didn’t like that they change outfits every two seconds (and I will stand by my word) but the dresses were pretty amazing. What did you think?

I was looking forward to seeing Iron Man 2 since I quite enjoyed the first one. In the sequel, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is openly admitting to being Iron Man, the government is considering the suit to be a weapon and therefore a threat to the country. Tony is saying that nobody else in the world has the technology to build a similar suit, at least not in the next ten years. When the Russian Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) shows up with a weapon that has the same technology as the Iron Man suit, Tony has to act fast…

Iron Man 2 is, unfortunately, nowhere as good as the first one. It is less funny and feels more like a bridge to a possible third film then a movie that stands by itself. If you hadn’t seen the first film, you probably wouldn’t know what was going on in the second one.

There is really not that much to say about it: the movie didn’t affect me in any way. It was entertaining but it was a bit caught up in the look of it rather then the story. I wouldn’t say that I was bored watching it but I didn’t get anything out of watching Iron Man 2 other then a good looking film with good looking stars. What a pity, I had much higher hopes for this one!

I have to thank The Mad Hatter for writing a review that inspired me to watch this movie. The trailer didn’t get my attention at all. It made it look like a somewhat cute kids movie but nothing special. But it is quite the opposite: How to Train Your Dragon is in fact the first new movie to make it onto my “!Must See!” list since A Single Man (which I saw in January).

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what makes this movie so special and I think it is the writing: it’s a very funny script. I found myself laughing quite a lot, usually at the little side lines. The story itself is not that new: boy is trying to fit into society but just can’t until he finds his own way and becomes the hero. We’ve all seen that one before. But How to Train Your Dragon is told in such a sweet way that it feels like it’s the first time to see this story told. It’s just so damn cute that you have to love it. The animation is really well done and it’s a great use of 3D. It feels a bit like you are flying on a dragon yourself. The dragons are surprisingly cute, especially the main dragon Toothless is adorable. They are very cat-like and I really wish I could get one.

It is a real adventure story and I didn’t feel bored for one second. The characters are very likable. I loved the cranky Viking father (Gerad Butler, I’m sure RTM will agree with me on this). The main character, Hiccup, was nerdy enough to be likable and at the same time he wasn’t a cliché. His love interest, Astrid, was also very cute and wearing an awesome outfit with little sculls on her skirt. I highly recommend watching this film, especially in 3D. It’s the first film in a long time that really entertained me.

Since I can’t find anything wrong with this movie, I simply have to give it a perfect rating:

A little note upfront : I haven’t read any reviews of this film because I didn’t want to know whether you thought it was good or bad. That means I might repeat something that you have already said on your blogs…

I finally managed to watch Alice in 3D. It’s a fun film, visually stunning, beautiful costumes and great visual effects but its not a Tim Burton movie. I got the feeling that Tim sold his soul to the Devil (the Devil being Disney) for a very large sum of money because that is what is lacking in Alice in Wonderland: Tim Burton’s soul. The movie is perfectly well made and I’m sure a lot of people enjoy it because it is obviously made “for the masses”. I just don’t understand why Tim had the urge to make a Blockbuster. He just doesn’t strike me as the type of person to do something simply for money or to make a film to please people.

The star ensemble was impressive but none of the actors had enough time to really establish their characters. Maybe its not necessary because we know the characters from the book. Strangely enough, I wasn’t impressed with Johnny Depp’s performance. It felt a bit like he was trying too hard. I did like the girl who played Alice (Mia Wasikowska), though, even though she is young and blonde and thin. she had the right look for the role and played “innocence” very well. Anne Hathaway was adorable but seemed to have stolen her character from Enchanted.

It feels like I’m being too negative because I did have a good time watching Alice in Wonderland. Underland has come to life with a real beauty and I also didn’t think the story was bad at all. But it was too polished to be a great movie. I was expecting it to be darker and with more of an edge to it. It also felt rushed, but I might just be used to super-long movies by now. It’s a strange contradiction that I thought the movie was rushed but individual scenes seemed quite long because the editing was fairly slow. The ending didn’t work for me at all. It was too Disney-perfect. The costumes were absolutely stunning. It felt a bit random that Alice was wearing a new dress every few minutes but they were all gorgeous. The costume and set designers should get Oscars for this.

Overall I just expected more from Tim Burton and his cast because as beautiful as the movie is and as much as I wanted to, I just couldn’t fall in love with it. It did have a Burton-esque look but not feel to it. The end gave the impression that a sequel could be happening.

I just got home from watching The Graduate at the Lincoln Film Center. They are having a few Anne Bancroft days and Mike Nichols (the director) was there afterwards for a Q&A. I love New York.

The film is obviously pure genius and it was nice to see it on the big screen for once. The Q&A was absolutely hilarious. Mike Nichols is a very funny and quite humble guy. He was full of stories about the casting and shooting of The Graduate. He basically said that they had absolutely no idea about anything at the time. It was only his second movie and he had just gotten to L.A. and was awestruck by everything and everyone. So cute! He said that Ava Gardner (who he loved) was really interested in the role and called him so that she could play the part but insisted that he would say that he called her. But she just wasn’t right for the role.

Of course there were questions about the music. As far as I know, this was the first movie to use popular music instead of a classical score (at least that’s what I remember learning at film school, I could be wrong). Nichols said that his brother had given him a Simon & Garfunkel CD as a present and that he was listening to it everyday while shooting the film. At one point he just thought “this is perfect!” Apparently they needed one last song for the scene where Ben (Dustin Hoffmann) breaks into the Robinson’s house and Nichols didn’t like the stuff that S&G came up with. He asked if they had anything else and after a little bit they came back with the famous song “Mrs. Robinson” which they had originally written as “Mrs. Roosevelt.”

There was one question from the audience about if it was intentional that Dustin Hoffmann is jewish and Anne Bancroft isn’t but Nichols said it wasn’t. The only thing that was intentional about it was that he had to be different from the normal Beverly Hills boys.

Well that was my evening and I thought, I’d share it with you guys.

I know I am slightly behind with this post…sorry!

We had a blast watching the Oscars though. As I have said before, we don’t have a TV so we went to a screening at a cinema in Chelsea. If you don’t know, Chelsea is an area in NYC where lots of gay people live. There was a drag queen commenting (or bitching) about everyone and everything that was going on, which was hilarious. The audience was in a really good mood, cheering and booing. It was fun sitting in cinema chairs because it felt a bit like we were in the last rows of the Academy Awards theatre.

The Oscars went fairly smoothly this year, I’d say. No huge surprises. I thought the hosts played it very safe which I didn’t expect. I thought that Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin would be more fun but to be fair, “hosts” is a bit of a stretch of the word anyway because they were barely ever on stage.

What was up with the woman who won Best Costume Design? “I already have two of these at home, so…” BITCH! She is not gonna get another one after that speech!

And poor little Kristen Stewart was so nervous that she had to cough…awww…how embarrassing. I wonder whether she is the sort of actress that will be famous for a couple of years and then just disappear again or whether she will grow out of her Twilight image and actually become a serious actress.

Ok, so where were Angelina and Brad? And Nicole Kidman? Well, I guess you get tired of the whole thing after a few years.

No one was as nervous as Kathryn Bigelow. It was quite charming how real she was. That’s the problem with actors and actresses. They quite often put on a persona for their speeches. But Kathryn was alarmingly close to passing out.

About the dresses: They seemed less crazy this year which I liked. Although there wasn’t one that I really loved. I often like the dresses of the lesser famous people most, because they are not trying so hard. I did like Sandra Bullocks and Rachel McAdams (who is she?) dresses. I did not like Jennifer Lopez dress. Bubble wrap alert!

Was it the short film category where the woman suddenly jumped onto the stage and took over the microphone? So funny!

I was not pleased with Sandra Bullock’s win. I haven’t seen the Blind Side (and probably never will) but to me she will always be Miss Congeniality. Fun but that’s all.

I really wanted Colin Firth to win!!! Jeff Bridges is great and I’m sure he gave a wonderful performance in Crazy heart but I’ve been madly in love with Colin for so long and plus he did give an amazing performance!

That’s all I can remember right now…I might add more to this list later. What did you guys think?

Before I write about  Avatar, I wanted to officially thank RTM over at Flixchatter who was kind enough to award me a second Kreativ Blogger award. This is very exciting since I just recently got to know her blog and already love it. So if you don’t know her fabulous blog yet, go and check it out!

Now, I finally managed to see Avatar. We wanted to see it in IMAX 3D which was constantly sold out, so it took a while. It was actually sold out again and even though we arrived at the cinema at 9pm and the movie was supposed to start at 9.45pm, we were already in the continuing  waiting line. After a while, they even stopped the escalator from running so that people started queueing down the stairs, two flights down the stairs to be exact. It was crazy! This movie has been out for weeks! I know that the visiter numbers have gone down in normal 3D and I don’t know who would even watch it without any 3D but I think it will stay in the IMAX cinemas for a while longer.

So, why all this madness? Well, the movie is extremely well made. No question about it. The world of Pandora is so gorgeous, I wish I could go there on my next vacation. Screw it, I want to move there! The glowing colors, all the animals, the flying mountains, all of it is so well thought out and stunning that it is a joy to be a part of this foreign world for almost three hours. Even though the natives look a bit like fish and their faces are not really human like, they are still very gorgeous and attractive. Who wouldn’t want to glow in the dark?

I had been warned (read this, it’s so funny) that the story is like Pocahontas but I guess I didn’t quite believe it. I thought they would at least change it a bit. I was wrong. It is exactly the same story, not only as Pocahontas but as so many films that I have seen before. It was absolutely predictable to the last little detail. I am hoping that now that they took this giant step into a new world of filmmaking, that they can be bothered to also come up with a unique script. Having said all that, the setting of the film is very unique. As I said, Pandora is gorgeous.

As beautiful as this film was, I didn’t fall in love with it as everyone else did. While watching it, I was thoroughly entertained but when the credits came up the feeling didn’t stick. The end song is so much like “My heart will go on” from Titanic that all I could think about was how unoriginal James Cameron really is. He knows how to make a block buster but doesn’t actually come up with his own ideas. And even though I am not criticizing the way that the movie was made, I don’t think I will ever see it again and I also don’t think that many people will buy it on DVD because it really only works in 3D. I mean, it was a very special sensation (especially in IMAX) to almost be flying on my own dragon along with Jake and Neytiri but on a small TV it just won’t work the same way.

Since this movie is very difficult for me to rate, I will split the rating up:

The Look: 5 MovieStars + The Story: 2 MovieStars = Over all:

It happens very rarely that I absolutely fall in love with a movie but tonight was one of these scarce occasions. I have literally just come home from the cinema so I am still completely “in” the film and haven’t really processed it. But I thought just this once I want to write a review that is completely subjective.

Normally I only feel that connected to films if they somehow remind me of my life or myself which really isn’t the case with A Single Man. In fact it couldn’t be further away from me. I am obviously not a gay middle-aged man who has lost the love of his life and is about to commit suicide and has some sort of sexual interest in my student. But there was something deeper then the visible story that I connected with. It had a lot to do with Colin Firth’s excellent performance as George. I thought it was an extraordinary moment when he picked up the phone and gets the news of his lovers death. The camera stayed so close (too close, really) on Firth that there was no way to fake the emotion. I am very aware of the fact that for some people it is very easy to cry on command but that is not what Firth was doing. He wasn’t just crying, he was truly but quietly suffering. One of my teachers (George Loros (The Sopranos)) always says that we shouldn’t show all of the emotion that we are feeling and that holding back tears can be more powerful then completely braking down (which he calls emotional masturbation). And for this movie that is absolutely true. This moment (others as well but this in particular) made the character so real to me and I think that is what I could connect with.

A big part of A Single Man is its beauty. It is just unbelievably gorgeous. Like one photograph next to another. Or maybe it is a bit like looking at Vogue Magazine (which I thoroughly enjoy doing, they have stunning photos). But it wasn’t just beautifully framed, the really interesting aspect of it was the saturation of the color. The more pain George feels, the less saturation the picture has and the happier he is, the fuller the color gets. It is done in a very subtle way, not “in your face,” some people might not even notice it and that makes it perfect. Obviously the fashion in this movie is perfect. Firth is wearing gorgeous suits all through the film, Moore gets to wear a truly fabulous dress and even though Hoult is wearing a slightly outrageous outfit, it still looks great. It was always obvious in his Fashion that Tom Ford (who directed this movie) has a real eye for beauty but it is still very surprising that his first film is that stunning. I hope he will continue making films.

The title really does explain the movie. It can not only be read as a single man (instead of being in a couple) but the film is actually about one single man. Everyone else is a side character. I am not even sure what Julianne Moore is doing on the film poster. She doesn’t have a bigger role then anybody else. She is just more famous than Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult. (Hoult is really making it by the way. I just remember him as the boy in About a Boy but we just finished watching the British TV-series Skins and he has a major role in it. I am sure we will see more of him soon!)

I could easily go back to the cinema now and watch the movie again. Or maybe just dress up to the nines with lots of make-up, light up a cigarette and have some gin or whiskey (even though I don’t smoke and don’t really drink gin or whiskey and come to think of it, I don’t even normally wear make-up or fancy clothes) and just listen to a record and enjoy the rest of the evening. Because even though the film is ultimately very sad I went away with a happy feeling. The feeling of having fallen in love with a movie. It happens…once in a while.