David Lowe – Behind the Proscenium

Ginger & Rosa

With Wit, Reviewed By Kimmo Mustonenen

What the hell?!?

I am sent to see the independently filmed “Ginger & Rosa.”

I have depression, for it is no “Olympus is Falling Over!”

That would have been the shit.

But no.

“Ginger & Rosa.”

Then my disappointment was to disappear – like hangover pain after a good bong load.

I see on the screen something almost not possible.

But is.

There are two Fannings now.

My mind is blow up. I already knew this, but this new one is now more formed.

There was once one Fanning – cute, with oozing talent, charm. Like young Drew Barrymore with less drugs.

Then she started with the dirty in “The Runaways.”

Pretty soon, 18 and naked – please (this is not a bad thing and my fingers are crossed).

So the Dakota parents make a clone.

This clone is not perfect – less a twin and more like a little sister.

She is very serious. And in “8mm” the only actor who acted.

Now she is very, very serious. Red hair serious.

Plot? Not so much.

Atmosphere? Totally.

Early 1960s England is a very cold place with nuclear bomb fear stuck on everybody. There is nothing to do but have bomb fear (Angry Birds is still 100 years into the future and texting even further away).

So schoolgirl friends, the smart Ginger (Elle Fanning) and increasingly horny Rosa (Alice Englert), have no time for nothing but smoking crappy cigarettes and looking at the sea.

And hanging out, while looking at the sea.

Then, there is more sea looking.

Ginger’s father Roland (Alessandro Nivola) is of the art-type, and a pussy when war was a thing to do.

He is a pre-hippy.

With a boat.

There is a lot of hanging out and smoking (and sea looking).

There are gay guys who aren’t gay at all.

Annette Bening is for no reason. Cuba then has a crisis.

SPOILER ALERT! SERIOUSLY!

Finally, some plot. Or not. Ginger goes all anti-bomb death – Rosa goes all “I need me some daddy time” – Roland goes all “I need me some teenage [censored by editor]”.

Can friendship survive worst screen father in Cuban Crisis history?

Will Christina Hendricks (as Ginger’s big boobed Mom) ever show off her amazing chest puppies?

Will someone explain why Annette Bening is on the screen?

END SPOILERS!!!

I can’t help but to be in the liking of this movie.

None of my thumbs scream skyward, yet none of them are too droopy as well.

I partook of the sweet, sweet smoke. I drank Kossu before sitting at this typing computer.

Maybe see it for free. Time is not too wasted (unlike me, Kimmo, who is totally wasted).

Elle Fanning will some day be a star. Until she, too, has to be dirty and third Fanning (second clone) will be unleashed. The count down to 18 has begun…

Kimmo Mustonenen – (Kimmo On Kino) – Behind The Proscenium

P.S. “The Voice” is coming back, but no Xtina! I hope Shakira wears little clothes. And Blake Shelton accepts my invitation to drink until Kossu madness is achieved. And they have now an asshole (and Justin Bieber enabler) instead of the cool dwarf. I hope there is no hate in my heart and head for the new.

Midnight In Paris

With Wit, Reviewed By Kimmo Mustonenen

Gil and Ines, a young American couple on vacation in Paris.

Although their marriage is expected to fall, they are constantly disagreeing on everything – he thinking “it would be good living in the French capital to write novels”, as she swears by their future home in Malibu.

He likes to roam the streets and soaking up their history (like crusty bread), while she thinks only run wine tasting dinner parties (no blame here).

One evening when Ines decides to follow friends to go dancing, Gil tries to return to their hotel alone and lost his way. The stroke of midnight rang in the city, a strange car stops in front of him.

Absorbing!

The new Woody Allen film opens on a generic rather unusual, reviewing dozens of places in Paris like so many postcards – bucolic.

There, I said it.

But make no mistake: it is true that it shows the face of tourism in the French capital, Midnight in Paris is less a tribute to the city – a cry of love for art and artists that it was born in it. What?

Putting aside some of his recurrent obsessions, death, psychoanalysis, hypochondria – making them anecdotal, Woody Allen returns to the story and delivers an enchanting story about the magnificence of the past (although not the future, tense).

Gil (excellent Owen Wilson), uncomfortable in her present life, took refuge after the twelve strokes of midnight sounded in an era that has never known but it was nostalgic.

Drawing on the feeling quite mundane (who never dreamed of being born in another time? Lady Gaga?)

A spring fertile screenplay, Allen is fun and brings to life a fantasy totally impractical: the cross of his idols and dead girl (?!?) to blend in an ideal society where love and art would be kings and/or Prime Ministers – but probably kings.

Unafraid to play the card background contrasts between Paris the day (bling bling, superficial) and Paris by night (mysterious, intoxicating, wine), delivering a purely imaginary, Woody Allen creates the desire and inclination to follow Gil in its temporal incursions, which do meet, among other personalities, his literary idols.

He also leans on it for a casting weight, composed of both French and American stars (no Ginnifer Goodwin), including successive appearances are as many surprises as moments of pure delight (it is interesting to note the terms with Woody Allen chooses which his interpreters, who are both rising stars of American values and secure the French film, just to ride the wave [hang ten!] and attracting a wide audience).

Faced with so many fantasies (we had more cerebral Woody – get it?), one can not help thinking of the magic of The Purple Rose of Cairo or minor film but jubilant, the Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

For if the sauce is so good, it’s also because Woody Allen has not waived, for once, the ingredients sacred romance, tense and winks moviegoers, in that order.

Add to that some beautiful scenes where, once is not habit, the comedy situation exceeds that of the word (the scene of the “spoiler removed” is in that already mythical), and you obtain one of the films in greatness.

What?

Woody? The most charming of the last ten years!

Kimmo Mustonenen – Behind The Proscenium
Follow @KimmoMustonenen

Tag: David Lowe

Ginger & Rosa [REVIEW]

Midnight In Paris [REVIEW]