The man with the fedora - in 3 languages

Sunday we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie.

We had done our homework and went to a cinema that showed the original version (version originale) and not a dubbed French one (version française). So we were of course expecting French subtitles but a little puzzled that they ALSO ran German subtitles.

It is a good thing that they didn't show all four official languages because then we doubt we could have seen any of the beautifully aging Indy in action.

Into the WILD!

As mentioned we watched ‘Into the Wild’ Wednesday night. Apparently we hadn’t done our home work for just while we were watching the introductory actor presentations, the names of two Danish actors (‘Thure Lindhardt’ and ‘Signe Egholm Olsen’) appeared! None of us had heard anything about Danish participation so we were quite surprised.

Surprised is also the right word when the scene with Thure and Signe appeared for besides being a rupture with the atmosphere of the movie, all stereotypes regarding Danish people were put on the table: silly, frivolous types that danced, jumped around, and spoke Danish and silly-English while topless (Signe) and with long blond hair (Thure). Well, apparently that was ‘Mads and Sonja from Copenhagen’ (on IMDB they are actually listed as 'Thomas' and 'Thomas’ girlfriend', but we are some out here that understood what was said)!
Weeeelllll… … great! We’re not sure that the college girls in the seats behind us, who thought the scene was incredibly funny, would believe that Thure is one of Denmark’s more serious actors.

Now – and because our curiosity was raised by other things in the movie that surprised positively in other ways – we have to consult the book because John couldn’t remember any passages with Danish people and we certainly don’t hope that Sean Penn have added that scene without it being part of the original novel.

Well, go see the movie for yourself if you haven’t done so yet and let us know how this scene strikes you if you like.

Great movies

With the Oscar ceremony coming up pretty soon we would like to sum up some of our most recent movie experiences. After a somewhat dull autumn, the cinemas were almost flooded with promising films in December and we made an effort to actually go and see some while they were still showing. There is pretty quick rotation here - unless of course we’re taking blockbusters like ‘Spiderman 3’ or ‘The Kite Runner’ – so one should not hesitate too much. For instance, we completely missed ‘Margot at the Wedding’ since it only showed one (1!) week despite prominent actresses such as Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Now we hope to catch it via Netflix before we move.

The excellent movie season was sneakly initiated in October with a special showing of ‘Eastern Promises’ at the university followed by a session with David Cronenberg. Very interesting and despite expectations he was a very funny man.
When Lisbeth afterwards sought information on the movie, she discovered that when the movie opened on the Film Festival in Toronto, Viggo Mortensen had chosen to wear a red DBU sweatshirt (DBU is the Danish Football Association for you English readers) sweat shirt. Classy, hey?

The Coen brothers pleased by returning to earlier greatness in their ‘No Country for Old Men’ which is incredibly well casted, has very beautiful cinematography and is extremely thrilling (according to Tue it resembles ‘Blood Simple’). We had to swing by the local micro brewery for a beer or two before biking home in the dark.

The day before Christmas we had a lovely all-round cinema experience when we caught the bus up to a little art cinema in the part of Santa Barbara that kind of crawls op the mountain sides. We were to watch ‘The Savages’ starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, which in its own was a lovely movie. Highly recommended.

Since we had driven up into the heights in daylight on the last bus of the day, it was an extra pleasing element of the experience to leave the dark of the cinema and view Santa Barbara below covered in the light of the full moon. We also had to walk down which was very nice since a lot of the houses had Christmas decorations and happy people walked the streets.

Now that the winter quarter has commenced, the film clubs at the university are also starting again. Wednesday we watched ‘Into the Wild’ and later follows ‘Michael Clayton’ and ‘American Gangster’ which means that by the time the Oscar’s is up we should be able to have an opinion on most of the nominated movies.

Andy made fame famous

As the blog illustration here is hinting at we went to an Andy Warhol event at the university last night. As a prelude to the opening Warhol exhibition at the university art museum there was a double feature in the shape of 'Superstar' and 'I shot Andy Warhol'. Watching two movies about Warhol - even if one is a documentary while the other is a dramatization - right after one another is a bit much. We're certainly well aware now of the fact that his 'Factory' was frequented by beautiful people and that a lot of them were on drugs!
We'll probably wait a few weeks before getting 'Factory Girl' from Netflix...

Shortage of new ideas in Hollywood?

The last few years must have been tough for the script writers in Hollywood. Recently, there was a week when our local cinema only had sequels to sequels on the program: Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Oceans 13, Spiderman 3 og Shrek 3. But there is some variation, in the form of sequels to sequels to sequels: Die Hard (with the humble title: Live free or DIE HARD) and of course TMNT IV.

And guess what's opening this coming Wednesday: Harry Potter 5!

Netfreaks - Netfilms - Netflix

In our new apartment we don't have a tv and since we don't plan on getting one either, we have joined the great invention of Netflix.

It can be compared to our childhoods' bubblegum chain letters, however with a few modifications: 1) the actual reception of the promised items (here: dvd's), 2) you get to decide on flavour (read: titles) yourself, and 3) you receive emails telling you when you can expect to find something in the mail box. Of course we also have to pay 14 dollars for the favour then, but we love the concept!

In more practical terms the procedure is that when we have seen a movie, we return it in the enclosed prepaid envelope, and two days later we receive the next movie from our internet-list that we can keep updated and change the order of ourselves. The result is: no rented out movies, no pick-up or delievery, and thus also no fines. In addition to the mailed movies we can also watch 14 hours of online movies - although from a more limited selection - so you have no risk of being without entertainment if you haven't managed your two dvd's in order to always have an unseen movie at home. We haven't tried out this part of the agreement yet, though.

Snazzy! - and besides movies you can also get whole seasons of tv-series. Lisbeth is for instance looking forward to watch a more coherent course of 'Six Feet Under', since this wonderful serie was only shown very late at night on Danish TV.