Archive for the ‘Filmspanarna’ Category
Are grown-ups stealing movies from the children?
It was 1 PM a Saturday afternoon – a timeslot you’d normally believe theatres reserve for a younger audience.
But something must have gone wrong this time. There wasn’t a single child within sight when my eyes swept over the audience as we were waiting for the afternoon screening of The Muppets to start. In fact I don’t think anyone was under 30 years old. What were we? Big children? Muppets? Ageless adults?
There isn’t any clear border between movies for grown-ups and movies for children anymore. When we engage in discussions whether Brave or Wreck-It Ralph should have won the Oscar award, it’s not from the perspective of a parent speaking on behalf of their children. We speak as the target audience.
If you ask me, I’m very happy with this development. I think we overstate the importance of physical age and understate the mental. Besides it’s very fluid, isn’t it? One day I have the mental age of an 80 year old. The next day I’m ten. Most of the time I’m 17, regardless of what the passport claims. My inner child doesn’t give a crap about labelling. A good film is a good film.
Snatching toys
But not everyone approves of this development. Sometimes you hear people criticizing movies that give nods to the older audience. The idea is the adult jokes and references take away something of the experience of the little ones. I think this goes back to that it’s considered rude to have conversations that the third party, in this case a kid, doesn’t understand.
Here’s an example of this in Jim Lane’s review of Horton hears a Who!:
They also trot out a lot of pop-culture in-jokes that no one under 30 will get, giving amusement to grown-ups but only squirms and confusion to the kids who are supposed to be the good Dr.’s audience. It amounts to making entertainment for adults by hijacking a story intended for kids—and despite the gleaming animation and all-star voices, it’s unseemly, like a playground bully snatching the best toys from helpless toddlers.”
Since I haven’t seen the movie myself, I can’t tell if Lane is right or not. Is this film indeed hijacked? Or is it possible that there’s enough left for the kids to have fun movie experience nevertheless? I think it is and I’m going to explain why.
Different routes
Recently I tried an activity called “bouldering” – a form of climbing where you don’t use any rope. The climbing took place inside a hall where they had covered the walls with handles in all sorts of shapes and colours, so called “problems”. You could choose whatever route you wanted to climb the wall. Each colour meant a different level of difficulty. You could also ignore the colours altogether and come up with your own way to the top. Thanks to this flexible system, the same wall could cater to a five year old as well as a 25 year old or a 75 year old. They could all climb I, but they’d come up with different solutions.
And this is how I think of a movie like Toy Story 3. I don’t think a child and an adult will respond to the same things and think of it in exactly the same way. Their routes to the top will be different. But the way up will be enjoyable to both, they’ll have the same lovely view from the top and when the movie is finished, they’ll have a great conversation about the wall they just climbed.
To include some jokes in a movie that make it more palatable to the parents isn’t stealing. It’s a strategy to encourage grown-ups to join their children and watch the movie with them, rather than using the theatre as a babysitter. You create a common playground where you can meet as equals and have fun together, regardless of age. And this, my friends, can never be a bad thing.
This post is a part of a blogathon run by the Swedish film blogging network Filmspanarna. The theme was “childhood”. Here’s a list of links to the other participants (all other posts in Swedish):
Addepladde
Except fear
Fiffis filmtajm
Filmitch
Filmparadset
Filmr
Fripps filmrevyer
Jojjenito
Mode + Film
Moving landscapes
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
My favorite road movie of all time
I love road movies.
It’s a film concept that works for me every time. The ingredients are always the same: one character (or a couple at the most), one road and a bunch of people to meet on the way. Plenty of sceneries. All neatly assembled into two parallel journeys: the physical in the world and the internal in the psyche as the character changes and grows throughout the trip. It’s a reflection of life, only I a smaller scale.
There’s no doubt that road movies also serve as a substitute for my own unfulfilled travel dreams. They play into some vague idea I have about breaking up from all duties, heading out for the big adventures, being present and taking the day as it comes. Not now of course, but at some point in the future, after retirement perhaps? I still live in the delusion that I have some backpacker material inside me (while I know for a fact that I’m more of a squishy who likes to travel, but in the end prefers a comfortable hotel room to a low budget bedbug infested youth hostel).
My favourite road movie
There many road movies that I love, but if I have to pick just one, there’s no hesitation about which one I’ll choose: Into the Wild. I’ve seen it several times since it came out and I know I will keep retuning to it in the future. I don’t normally rewatch films a lot, but this one has become like a companion to me.
When I saw it the first time, at a theatre when it came out in 2007, I was already familiar with the story after reading Jon Krakauer’s book about Chris McCandless. He was a special young man who broke up from an ordinary student life to go hitchhiking and living like a tramp for two years and then set off to Alaska to spend some time alone in the wilderness. Sadly it turned out that he wasn’t as prepared for such a life as he needed to be and he did some mistakes, which eventually led to his death.
I was prepared for a disappointment. That’s what you often get when you read the book before you watch the film adaptation. Since you’ve already made up all those images in your head, it’s hard to match those images on the screen. But Into the Wild never disappointed me. It was even the oppoiste: it turned out that I preferred the film to the book.
I loved the cinematography with the gorgeous shots from national parks. I loved the casting of Emile Hirsch as the main character. He’s young, innocent, energetic, as headless as he’s wise, a little bit cocky and vulnerable at the same time – a perfect choice. And of course I loved the the music by Eddie Vedder, so beautiful, so melancholic, exactly capturing the mood of being on the road. It’s one of the very few albums of film music I’ve ever bought and it’s my favourite.
A balanced view
When you look at the comments of Into the Wild at IMDb, there’s some very harsh criticism against it. There are complaints about Penn idealizing a reckless behaviour, making a hero out of someone who doesn’t deserve it. I couldn’t disagree more. On the contrary I think the film is very balanced in its view. It shows how Chris made a difference to the people he met on his road trip and it conveys his non materialistic, love preaching philosophy. But it also shows his shortcomings and realization that no one – not even he – could live and thrive on his own. His death is not the death of a martyr or hero. There’s no question about it being sad, pointless and unnecessary.
Every time I watch Into the Wild I bring something new with me from it: a perspective, an idea or a sentiment. I know it’s not the movie that has changed. It’s me, as I’m cruising through time on my one-way trip through life with death as my final destination.
Wherever I’ll go, wherever life will take me, Into the Wild will always be a companion on my journey.
Into the Wild (Sean Penn, US 2007) My rating: 5/5
This post is a part of a blogathon run by the Swedish film blogging network Filmspanarna. The theme was “on the road”. Here’s a list of links to the other participants:
Addepladde
Except fear
Fiffis filmtajm
Filmitch
Filmparadiset
Flmr Filmblogg
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den
Jojjenito
Mode + Film
Moving Landscapes
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
Gangster Squad – the good, the bad and the ugly
My relationship with Gangster Squad was over in two hours. Well, to be honest I’m not sure there ever was a relationship. We barely had a fling.
During the time we spent together in the theatre we went through several phases.
At first I have to admit that I was a little bit taken by its pretty face. It looked attractive. Then we got to know each other a little better and realized we didn’t have much in common.
Were we ever in love? That would be a stretch to say. Whatever we may have had was mostly based on Ryan Gosling’s star quality. It was a pleasure to see his soft smile and kind eyes after being absent from the film screen for the entire 2012. But in the end, not even Ryan Gosling’s presence could compensate for the fact that Gangster Squad isn’t a particularly good movie.
The Good
Let’s begin on the bright side. What made me like it a little to begin with? Well, as I said before, it’s got a nice exterior.
What especially caught my attention were the beautiful hats, always worn with elegance – the right size, the perfect angle on the head. I couldn’t stop admiring them, as well as the costumes and the overall look of it. I wouldn’t say that it looks authentic, but it looks like th end of the 40s in my imagination.
The cast is also pretty great. Seducing. Apart from Gosling there’s Josh Brolin, Sean Penn and Emma Stone, who all do their best trying to breathe some life into the script, sadly an impossible task, which brings us over to the next part: the bad.
The Bad
Gangster Squad is anything but original. This is not necessarily a bad thing; sometimes all you want is a leisure cruise through familiar landscapes. Painting-by-numbers movies have an advantage: you can count on that people “get it”. After all they’ve seen this film dozens of times before and they know the drill. There’s no need for guidance. In this case however it seems as if the screenwriters have forgotten this completely. They have absolutely no confidence in the intelligence of the audience. Everything needs to be explained, right on your nose. People talk in a way that nobody talks, in order to provide information to the viewer. Characters are introduced, plans and motives are shared. It feels out of place and it makes me cringe.
The Ugly
Despite the lacking writing, it seemed for a while as if the movie and I could, if not become lovers, at least learn tolerate each other. I said to myself that after all it was mildly entertaining. I could imagine it as a piece of aircraft in-flight entertainment, provided that you make a few cuts to take the edge of the excessive violence. You don’t want people to lose their appetite after all.
But all of this changed in the final five or ten minutes. All of a sudden someone burst out in a patriotic speech in honour of the LA police department. I don’t mind the LA cops, I’m sure they’re doing a fine job, but this was out of place, cheesy and made me wonder what kind of a sponsor deal they have. I actually ended up laughing, since it seemed to me like a parody of American film. But I don’t think it was intended as such.
The farewell
We had come to the end of the film and it was time to take farewell and finish whatever had been between the two of us.
“Gangster Squad”, I said with a firm voice. “’I’m sure there are a lot of nice people who have been involved in your creation, people who mean well and love what they do and tried their best to make you into a good film. But the chemistry between you and me just isn’t there. You may have the beautiful eyes of Ryan Gosling, but the rest of you is appalling to me. I don’t want to see you ever again.”
And I closed the door maybe a little too loudly.
Gangster Squad (Ruben Fleischer, US 2012) My rating: 2/5
Some of my colleagues in the Swedish network Filmspanarna also watched Gangster Squad. Here’s what they made of it (in Swedish):
Fiffis Filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Jojjenito
Mode + film
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
Syndare i filmparadiset
My favorite snow movie of all time
As you’re reading this, the first big snowfall of the season is about to hit Sweden. It’s almost too good to be true.
Not only is this exactly what we need this time of the year when we start to suffer badly from the light deficiency. It also happened to be the theme our network of film bloggers agreed on writing about this month: snow.
The question was how to handle the topic. For a while I thought about making a list. After all there’s no lack of movies with a lot of snow in them, and when I threw a glance at the list of movies I’ve written about previously, it seemed as if wintery landscapes has a certain attraction to me. Touching the Void, Alive, Frozen River and The Flight of the Eagle all had a ton of snow and ice in them. The Way Back had at least one blizzard. I tried to remember if there was any snow in Winter’s Bone but couldn’t recall it. It was probably just cold.
But then I realized that I shouldn’t make any list, because in the end there is one movie that stands out above all others. Groundhog Day is my favorite snow movie of all time.
In my view a good snow movie shouldn’t only provide snow as a pretty background: it also needs to have an essential part in the story. And you could safely say that Groundhog Day wouldn’t be the film it is if it wasn’t for the blizzard which forces a TV team to stay one more night in a village where they’ve on job, at the dismay of Bill Murray’s arrogant, unlikable weatherman.
Never growing tired
I’ve probably seen Groundhog Day more times than any other movie, but it seems as if I’ll never grow tired of it. Every time I watch it I’m pulled into it.
I enjoy watching Bill Murray’s repeated suicides (this looks weird as I write it down, but it’s not as bad as it sounds). I give out little sighs of delight as he’s getting more and more romantic with Andie MacDowell. And I get a warm and fuzzy feeling in my stomach as I see him slowly, after hundreds or thousands of iterations of the same day evolve into a better, more likeable person.
How cheesy it may sound it always reminds me of how much of the misery we experience in life that actually is self imposed. I’m convinced that we can become happier persons if we start to think a little more about other people and a little less about ourselves, and if we change our view on life from being half empty to half full.
I think one of the reasons why I love Groundhog Day so much and why it still holds up so well also is that it doesn’t waste time on explaining itself in terms of science and logic. It tosses out the question “what if…?” and rightfully it puts its trust into that the viewers have enough of imagination and curiosity to be able to suspend their disbeliefs and just enjoy the ride.
Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, US 1993) My rating: 5/5
This post is a part of a blogathon run by the Swedish film blogging network Filmspanarna. The theme was “snow” Here’s a list of links to the other participants:
Except Fear
Fiffis filmtajm
Filmitch
Flmr filmblogg
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den
Have you forgotten
Jojjenito
Mode+film
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
The most obscure movie of 2012
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
I hate dreams. Especially the ones of other people. It’s so dull that I want to claw my eyes out whenever someone starts to share them with me. And it’s the same as with people who just have become parents. They genuinely believe that you’re interested in seeing photos of their little darling and you can’t come up with some tactful way telling them that you’re really not interested.
I’ll do anything in my power to avoid listening to the endless recounts from people’s adventures in the dream world.
If someone at my job tries to initiate a conversation by the coffee machine about their imaginary visions from last night, I’ll suddenly remember an urgent phone call I needed to make and take off in a hurry.
If there’s a sequence in a book I’m reading, I’ll just browse through the pages, looking out for when the story gets back to the real world again, either it’s the world as we know it or an imagined science fiction world. All I ask for is that it’s a world where the actions of the main character matter and won’t just evaporate in thin air as soon as they wake up.
And if I’m watching a movie at home, the perfect moment to grab a cup of coffee or have a quick bio break is when the characters have fallen asleep and my dream radar sense that there’s a nonsense scene incoming. “No darling, you don’t need to stop the movie, just go on, I’ll catch up when I come back!”
Obviously there are exceptions. I love Inception and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of my favorite movies. But as a general rule I find dreams in art unbearably boring, mostly because they’re completely impossible to connect to at an emotional level. The more surrealistic they are, the less do I care.
Filmed art installations
Coming from this, it would be hard for Holy Motors to catch my heart. And the odds weren’t improved by the circumstances. This was the third film in one day that I watched at the film festival in Stockholm. The first two movies had been of the experimental kind – void of anything resembling to a plot I could engage with or characters that I could relate and care about. After this warm-up I could have needed something a little more easily digested.
What I got was exactly the opposite: the most obscure film I’ve seen in a very long time. The Tree of Life seemed like a miracle of clarity and accessibility in comparison. The film consists of a number of scenes, or I should rather say “filmed art installations” not to deceive you. There’s nothing such as a character that you follow, motivations, stakes or narration. The jury is still out discussing what the film is “about” and I doubt they’ll ever agree on it considering the amount of available interpretations from film critics. But what we see is a man who spends the day in the backseat of a limousine driving around in Paris.
Throughout the day he is given assignments where he is required to put on a costume to impersonate someone else. It starts in a small case where he pretends to be a begging lady in a street, but then it movies on into stranger territories. In one scene he puts on a motion caption suit and has Cirque de Soleil style sex with a woman in a similar suit. In another scene he’s sent out to murder someone who looks like himself. And then there’s the one where he’s married to a chimp.
My favorite scene is the one where he assumes the identity of a madman, runs into a photo session in a graveyard, eats all flowers he can get hold of as well as some fingers that come in his way, hijacks the model and runs away with her into a cave, changes her dress into a niqab and then lies in her knee with his manhood (or a rubber-version that was supposed to look like the real thing) ready-to-go.
Anarchistic humor
There’s an anarchistic, absurd humor in it that has a kinship with filmmakers like Terry Gilliam and Roy Andersson. However those brief moments of enjoyment weren’t enough to compensate for the fact that I found myself completely distanced from this movie. I wasn’t pulled into it, I wasn’t living, breathing, feeling the movie. I looked at it from a distance like you watch a piece of modern art. And while there’s nothing wrong about art watching, it’s not what I want from movies. I can watch a painting for ten minutes contemplating what it means and what associations it provokes. I don’t stare at the same painting for two hours as in this case. My impatience grew as the film went on and I ended up being so bored that I checked my wristwatch once every five minutes or so. When Kylie Minogue started to sing a lullaby song on the screen towards the end of the film, I started to pick my worn out strap band into pieces, hoping that the physical activity would help me remain awake. (I had had enough of slapping and pinching myself by then.)
People who are smarter than me seem to appreciate Holy Motors a great deal more, claiming it to be one of the best films of the year. They obviously see a lot of things in it that I don’t. One of the reoccurring theories for instance is that this film is a commentary on the development of cinema and they say that there’s a whole bunch of references to other movies to back it up. I have to trust those film buffs on their word, because personally I didn’t recognize a single reference. It was all far above my head.
Warmer feelings
As I left the theatre I was asking myself if this might have been the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It honestly felt like it at that very moment. It was as if the entire day had been an endless descent into obscurity, where I had become more and more miserable over time. What terrible cinematic sin had I committed to deserve this punishment of movies without meaning? I swear – I never download anything!
But after a couple of days my feelings towards Holy Motors have become a little warmer. Just a tiny little bit. Mind you, I still didn’t enjoy watching it. But I have to admit that it stands out in my memory pretty vividly, and that must count for something. It lingers in my mind, either I like it or not.
It’s possible – or even likely – that if I read a bunch of essays about the movie and then rewatched it, I might if not love it – at least respect it more. However I doubt that I’ll ever be able to bring myself to do that.
If I want to see beauty and mystery there’s an abundance of it in the world as it is. I don’t need to go to the dream world to look for it.
The Guide and I into that hidden road
Now entered, to return to the bright world;
And without care of having any restWe mounted up, he first and I the second,
Till I beheld through a round aperture
Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.
Holy Motors (Leos Carax, FR 2012) My rating: 2/5
Some of my colleagues in the Swedish network Filmspanarna also watched Holy Motors. Here’s what they made of it (in Swedish):
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
Jojjenito
Fiffis Filmtajm
Har du inte sett den
Fripps filmrevyer
The best movies about food are those where there is none
Let’s talk about film food. And no, it’s not another rant about how much we all hate popcorn. It’s about what’s on the screen. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about food in movies.
For me it’s THAT scene at the restaurant in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. I don’t think you want me to talk about it, so we’re stop there.
Number two to pop up in my mind is La Grande Bouffe, where Marcello Mastroianni and his friends purposely and as far as I recall successfully eat themselves to death.
And then my mind drifts off to the futuristic cannibalism of Delicatessen. And cannibalism in turn opens up to a field of choices, ranging from The Silence of the Lambs to Alive!
Yes, I’m a sick, sick person.
In an attempt to appear as a normal person, I should obviously speak about good, uncontroversial food related movies, such as Sideways, Dinner Rush or Babette’s Feast.
I’m not going to do that though. It doesn’t raise my appetite to watch people helping themselves at lavish dinner tables such as the one in Marie Antoinette. If anything it makes me disgusted. But show me someone who is hungry for real, someone who is on the verge of starving to death – and I’ll think about food in a new way. After watching such a movie, a meal that I’d normally consider trivial, like having an apple or a sandwich, turns into a luxury.
The Road
The best movies about food are those where you don’t see much of it. It’s present as a dream. In this post I’m going to talk about one of them, The Road from 2009, which I recently paid a revisit. Do you remember it? If you’ve seen it, I bet you do. The image of the man-without-a-name and his son, walking through a world in ruins after an undefined disaster, with all their possessions in a shopping cart, doesn’t go away anytime soon. They’re sick, they’re freezing, they fear for their lives every second, afraid to become victims to cannibals.
I didn’t read movie blogs when it came out, so it was only later that I found out that it wasn’t overly well received. The film is based on a praised novel, and those who have read it claim that the adaption is inferior. To me it’s a non issue, since I’ve only seen the movie.
Some people accused it of being too much of a crowd pleaser, not dark enough, out of fear of scaring away the audience. Then there were others who claimed the opposite, thinking it was unbearably gloomy.
Unaware of the criticism, I loved it without any reservations when it came out and on my rewatch I found that it was just as good as I remembered it. It’s the harshest – and at the same time most believable – picture of the final days of mankind I’ve seen. And it’s so much more than just a survival story set in the future. It brings up all those questions – about ethics, about what it means to be human, about where our boundaries go and what makes life worth living at all. Would we or wouldn’t we eat other people if our survival depended on it? Even if we consider ourselves “good” people, is there a point where the survival instinct will take the overhand and lead us in a different direction? Is suicide ever justifiable? Each one of us will have a different answer to those questions, but in the end it’s all just speculation. We don’t know where we really stand until we’ve been in those shoes ourselves.
The Coke can scene
Back to the food again. While we don’t see much of it, it’s right there in the middle of The Road. When you strip your life from everything non-essential, it’s what it’s all about. Bread and water. Or a can of Coke. One day the father finds it, stuck in a vending machine and he insists on his son to have it. Judging from his reaction it might be the first he’s ever had, being born after the point when the world fell apart. The shared soda becomes a bubble of, if not happiness, at least temporary relief from everything that plagues them. Living in a world where people buy soft drinks in two liter bottles, I can’t help wondering if this abundance has made our senses numb. We don’t feel the taste from the drink anymore. We just drink it anyway, not enjoying it particularly much and aware of that it doesn’t do us any good.
Another memorable scene is when they find a shelter full of canned food. For the first time in the movie they have a real meal. It’s food that we normally would sneer at, but in this context it becomes an extraordinary dinner.
Put in that light, today’s dinner of macaroni and some fried sausages doesn’t appear all that bad.
And that’s why I watch movies in the first place: to challenge my perspective on life. It’s like with a snow globe. It needs a little shake-up once in a while to remain beautiful.
This post is a part of a blogathon run by the Swedish film blogging network Filmspanarna. The theme was “food”. Here’s a list of links to the other participants.
I watch the people I meet in the street differently thanks to this film
I fell in love with Bill Cunningham at first sight.
Or wait, that might have come out badly. I don’t want to cause any family drama, so let’s just say that I’ve got a little crush on him.
Unless you live in New York or are very interested in fashion, chances are that you’ve never heard of the guy. But let me introduce you to him.
Bill spends his days taking pictures of fashion. He’s a columnist at New York Times and his photos have appeared in a number of glossy magazines. His eye for fashion is famous; the experts say about him that he doesn’t just identify and report the trends – he creates them. Two times a year he heads to Paris to attend the shows of the big fashion houses.
Can you see him in front of you? I bet you imagine a young, elegant man, dressed in a tuxedo, a glass of champagne in one hand and the other wrapped around the waist of a gorgeous model.
But you’re wrong. Completely wrong. And that’s what makes Bill Cunningham such an interesting person and a worthy topic of a full-length documentary, Bill Cunningham New York.
Defying laws of aging
Bill is 82 years old. Yes, 82. But his grasp about contemporary fashion seems to be just as good as the latest young fashion blogger on everyone’s lips and he connects as easily to teenage boys he meets in the street as with senior celebrities at charity events. And he makes me think about how arbitrary the number on our birth certificate is and how little it says about us as persons. Always smiling, never tiring, so passionate about his work, living the dream – probably not everyone’s dream, but his own dream – he’s defying the laws of aging we’ve put up to ourselves.
In some ways you could say that he’s a rebel. He doesn’t only ditch the tuxedo, sticking to a simple blue color jacket, with the argument that the cameras he’s always carrying around will wear it out anyway. He also eats in the cheapest cafés he can find, he refuses to get paid for his job since he think it could come in the way of his freedom, and he lives in what I’d call a storage room.
Like Thoreau in Walden, or a monk (which isn’t too farfetched, since he turns out to be a faithful catholic, attending church every week), he is utterly uninterested in the pursuit of social status and physical belongings. But yet I think he consider himself rich as he spots and devours the beauty of the streets of New York.
Would I want to live his life? Probably not. I prefer to have a traditional family to be married to my job, as he apparently has been. However it appears to me as if he is pretty happy with the life he lives and the choices that have led him there, even if there is a scene that hints that there is a dark stroke in his life too. I guess nobody goes completely free.
A changed view
As I left the theatre and looked at the people outside in the street, I knew something had happened with me. The film had changed me, as the best ones tend to do, and the world would never be the same again.
I’ve never been interested in fashion and rather than paying attention to people I meet, I walk on autopilot. I focus on how to get to my destination as quickly as possible, I listen to podcasts or I brood over stuff that’s on my mind. I don’t usually look at people, even less at what they wear.
And here I was, all of a sudden staring at shoes and bags and dresses, seeing those exotic birds that Bill had talked about. I knew exactly what he meant.
Finally, to my fellow blogger who insisted on that Bill Cunningham suffers from some kind of medical condition, such as Asberger’s syndrom: I still don’t agree with you.
It’s not your fault; Sweden nowadays is obsessed with sorting people into all those diagnose boxes. I understand that a diagnosis can be of great value to some people who have suffered from feeling “different”, but nevertheless I think it’s regrettable. The window for what is considered “normal” gets smaller and smaller and it gets harder to be accepted if you choose a different lifestyle than the majority.
There’s nothing wrong with Bill Cunningham. If anything he’s a genius. Though I suspect he’d object vehemently if he knew I had said it, because that’s the way he is.
Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press, US, 2010) My rating: 4,5/5
My colleagues in the Swedish network Filmspanarna also watched Bill Cunningham New York. Here’s what they made of it (in Swedish):
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den
Jojjenito
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
The Velvet Café 