Senna, Up, the Stanley Cup and other musings

As a young pretentious British lad, one thing I feel very guilty about is my inability to speak any language other than English.  Believe me, I've tried.  I'm just not good at them.  I did three years of Russian, a GCSE in German (my worse result) and a couple of Japanese classes, but for some reason it never sinks into my head.  After living in fear of being that tourist (you know, the loud, obnoxious, slow talking one), I'm giving language another go.  So I'm going an hour of German every week on a Thursday morning through work.  At the minute, we're studying past tense and we're using our work email calendar thingys as examples.  Looking back at the past week, I realised that I could use the sentence "Ich bin ins Kino gegangen" to describe three separate days.  This sets up nicely the sort of content this blog will contain.  Lots and lots of movies.

Of the three films I saw, the only one that would stand up to any critique longer than a couple of sentences was Senna, a documentary about the villainous French Formula 1 driver, Alain Prost.  Of course, any documentary about Ayrton Senna (the actual subject of the documentary; the conclusion to the previous sentence was of course a joke) has to touch on the fierce and thrilling rivalry between these two competitive drivers and I would love to see this subject explored in more detail as it is truly deserving of its own documentary.  Unfortunately, in making a film focused on only one of these drivers, the filmmakers have to fit so much in that, what is possibly the greatest rivalry in the entirety of sport (hyperbole much?), is reduced to a mere trifle more akin to watching pantomime.  

Fortunately though, if one is not too familiar with the stories, Asif Kapadia has weaved a compelling, if simplistic narrative with the footage available to him, and truly some of the footage is incredible.  One of the defining sequences of the film features Ayrton walking out to the scene of an awful crash at Jerez to face the constant danger of motor racing head on.  We watch as Ayrton looks on at the wreckage of Martin Donnelly's Lotus, which has been torn to pieces, launching Donnelly onto the track.  Donnelly's body is positioned in impossible angles.  This, of course, is very difficult viewing because of moments like this.  During this period, although they were becoming rarer, serious and fatal accidents were still very real.  It is this reality that makes the final twenty minutes of this film both spellbinding and explicitly tense.  The only real flaw of this documentary is that the subject is merely too big for a single film.  

When I'm not at the cinema, I'm taking full advantage of my LoveFilm subscription (unlimited streaming + 1 disc rental).  The latest offering was Pixar's Up, which I hadn't seen before.  It's now my favourite Pixar film (sorry Wall-E).  If only they could have got rid of the Alpha squeaky voice jokes and the flying dogs and I would have happily declared it a perfect film.  

Obviously the first montage sequence has attracted a lot of deserved attention and praise.  Many people had warned me that I should prepare a box of tissues for this sequence, but there was one other moment during the film that affected me more (yes, I cry at a lot of movies).  The sequence in question (skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to read any spoilers) features Carl removing most of his possessions from his house to make it light enough to float.  There is much symbolism used previously to associate the house to his wife and this is what gets me most.  Without the house, the only record and testament to Carl and Ellie's love is his memories, and when he departs, there'll be nothing.  Grim.

I have a bet going on with on of my housemates.  I'm a big ice hockey fan (New Jersey), so we've bet on the outcome of the Stanley Cup playoffs.  At the start, we picked a team each from each conference (me: Vancouver/Washington, Rob: San Jose/Boston).  Whoever got a team furthest, wins a steak from the other player.  I am one win away from a nice steak.  

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Other musings

Briefly on the two other films I saw last week.  First up was X-Men First Class.  The opening twenty minutes are thrilling, fun, generally everything you'd want from a (pre) Summer blockbuster.  Unfortunately, it loses a lot of momentum by hanging around the poorly developed younger characters.  There's some terrible/offensive editing involving "slavery" and an African-American character.  The finale is ridiculous and completely without tension/sense.  January Jones is awful.  More Fassbender would be appreciated.  Ok?  Thanks.

Last Night has an interesting premise behind it (emotional fidelity versus physical fidelity) and is well edited and sufficiently directed.  Unfortunately, during the making of this film, no one stopped, took a step back and realised that there were no characters or truth in this film.  Merely single celled organisms reacting merely to what is occurring around them instinctively.   

Tonight I shall be watching the Canadian Grand Prix with a chilled bottle of red wine (yes, I'm odd, get over it).

My top five F1 drivers:

1) Jim Clark

2) Gilles Villeneuve

3) Alain Prost/Ayrton Senna

5) Michael Schumacher

Work is busy at the minute.  Over/under on 45 hours this week.  

I've been shopping today.  Picked up a pair of nice shirts, some black khakis and Diplomacy (the board game).   

Blue Valentine is coming from LoveFilm next.  Really appreciated, seeing as I missed it at the cinema earlier this year.  

My brother has just flown to Japan for his medical elective.  He should be wrapped up in bed right now.

Maybe I'll re-edit this later and put some nice pictures on it.  Anyone want a job to do this?