I am discovering a new (or is it rediscovering old?) pleasure in watching foreign films. (foreign being defined as movies not made in the USA - this from a South African... weird...)
It started unintentionally with free tickets to watch The Girl Who Played with Fire with The Lindt Fairy. and because it was a pretty well told story, I went to very next night and watched The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
This was then followed with A Boyfriend for my Wife (Un novio para mi mujer) at the Latin America and Caribbean film fest.
I think what is so refreshing is seeing the mechanisms of story telling of other countries/cultures. The Swedes have no problems with nekkid people or with showing the glaring harshness of violence against women.
The Argentinians based a majority of their humour on the speed of the conversation. And the women ALL wear short skirts. and not even in a sell-beautiful-people way.
A little while ago I watched Departures which won the Oscar for best foreign film. This movie I found especially poetic in it's description of Japanese culture around funerals and death.
And so I am keeping my eye on the film festival adverts at my local cinema... and do my delight! there is a Japanese film festival later this month.
Yippee!!
This was a short lived joy as I then discovered in my research about A Boyfriend for my Wife that Hollywood is doing a remake with Steve Carrell... what a trade down! what a cop out! We might as well start asking for McDonalds gourmet food. We might as well let the journalists of The Daily Sun take over the writing of the Mail &Guardian. We might as well ask the pop rock teeny boppers to take over writing music for U2 and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Third Day and the Rolling Stones.
I will certainly not be attending that movie…
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