Meade's Ball
Well-known member
A couple of days with a pesky cough and cold may have kept me from work, but not the cinema. Masked and wheezing i've been through a brace of pics. The first of the 2, Hope, was best. A Norwegian family drama spoken heartfully as a memory from the director. 6 children in a range of ages, but it's the relationship of the parents that comes under fierce scrutiny when the mother is diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour, having a year before overcome lung cancer. It's christmas and clinics are temporarily closed, meaning they can only administer medication whilst consultations and scans are briefly on hold for 5 days or so. Each day that follows is filled with stress of such news, working out how and when to tell the children, and increasing resentment toward a husband who centred on his career for so long. Scathingly honest lines are thrust and accepted, with 2 decades of time spent half-together, kept as an occasional one for the children. Such dysfunction, but lovingly and enforcedly true.
Andrea Hovig is amazing in it, determined and motherly and disappointed, and Stellan Skarsgard is a little doughy and ancient, but deft in his performance. Quite moving and striking, overall, with the snippets of time in a family that can be crushing and revealing and a general part of conversation as if normal.
And today i went to West Side Story. I can't say i have strong memories of the original, but this seemed to be quite loyal to it, in terms of setting and time. The songs were great, and a couple of the dance sequences rich in rhythm and colour, but it didn't seem to adapt itself to now at all, and had a male lead who couldn't seem to dance all that well. Some lovely shots, but the unquenchable love didn't ring true and the message seemed unclear. I didn't really know why it was remade. A loving ode perhaps.
Andrea Hovig is amazing in it, determined and motherly and disappointed, and Stellan Skarsgard is a little doughy and ancient, but deft in his performance. Quite moving and striking, overall, with the snippets of time in a family that can be crushing and revealing and a general part of conversation as if normal.
And today i went to West Side Story. I can't say i have strong memories of the original, but this seemed to be quite loyal to it, in terms of setting and time. The songs were great, and a couple of the dance sequences rich in rhythm and colour, but it didn't seem to adapt itself to now at all, and had a male lead who couldn't seem to dance all that well. Some lovely shots, but the unquenchable love didn't ring true and the message seemed unclear. I didn't really know why it was remade. A loving ode perhaps.
