I… uh… sort of hate
I… uh… sort of hate watching movies with beautiful stories. Not because I don’t like such movies, but because it might be quite embarassing. They can just make me cry. Almost, at least. Even if the theme or the premise was supposed to be something beautiful.
Love Actually was one. The thing that made me quite emotional was the parts that showed how some of them really put an effort to show their partners their… ‘love’… And how their partners reacted to that…
How the guy tried to talk to his maid, who doesn’t speak English at all… (and how the conversations went)…
How the kid ran past security guards to get to “the love of his life”…
The flashcards scene…
And how some people can find out about the partner’s affair, and still live through that… For the sake of the children? (except maybe the sex god scene, which kinda spoils the movie a little)
So please pardon me when you see me fidgeting during such movies. I have something in my eyes, which I don’t want anyone else to notice.
I watched ‘Meet Joe Black’ on TV a few days ago… It tells a story of Death, who was on holiday on earth. He went into the body of this guy who was just killed by a freak road accident. Death was supposed to observe how life on earth was, using Bill Parish, a media tycoon, as a guide, in exchange of a postponement to his imminent death. He was about to celebrate his 65th birthday in a few days’ time.
The body belonged to a ’stranger in the bar’ who fell in love with Bill’s daughter, Susan, ina coffeeshop moments before the accident. Susan, too, fell in love with him. So imagine her reaction when the ’stranger’ appeared in the house. To make matters worse, Bill was not supposed to tell anyone who Death really was, so he introduced Death as ‘Joe Black’. Sparks flew and Death began to develop certain interest in life on earth as well as in Susan, who had no clue who she was flirting with.
Meanwhile, a greedy employee took advantage of the situation where Joe Black wasn’t able to leave Bill, and ousted Bill as the chairman of the company. He wanted to break up the company and keep the profit.
Death decided he will take Bill after the birthday celebration. But at the same time, he didn’t want to leave Susan, and Susan too, didn’t want to leave ‘Joe Black’. Death wanted to change the agreement he had with Bill, and intended to take Susan with him too. But Bill managed to convince Death that this would not be ‘love’ anymore, but already developed into greed. Death, luckily, understood it, albeit not without sacrificing his feelings.
So what happened next was that Bill settled his problems on earth, the party went on, and Death was just watching from afar, probably not wanting to be tempted to take Susan with him again. Bill was there through the party, and when the fireworks started, he walked over to join Death, and walked away.
A while later the ’stranger in the bar’ returned and met Susan. At first, she saw him as a different person from the one she grew used to. But she realised too that this was the actual ’stranger’ she met in the coffeeshop. So, one more time, sparks flew and she once again fell in love with the ’stranger’.
No, no, i didn’t cry because it was very late so by the time the movie ended I was half dead. But I thought the movie was very good. It was built on an interesting storyline (imagine Death falling in love with a human!), and the actors and actresses look good too. (I think Brad Pitt looked kinda… cool in the movie)…
Speaking about movies, I don’t really like Indonesian movies. The comedies tend to be towards slapstick kinda thing. And sometimes they just forced the slapstick too much. Maybe something like purposely laughing damn loudly with a weird tone. And the way they acted are just not funny. Let’s say if they fall, it is very obvious that they actually acted it. You can tell this from how the limbs move as the person falls, and how the actor then says “Ouch, I fall” in that not-painful tone.
Oh, by the way, my brother and I noticed these methods of shooting an Indonesian drama movie (we call it ’sinetron’, short of ’sinema elektronik’ or ‘electronic cinema’), which are already very cliché. You can easily tell who the antagonist is, because she will wear a certain kind of eyeshadow in a certain way. And when she’s planning a way to, say, get rid of someone, the camera will zoom in real slowly towards the person’s face, and she will start contorting her face with her mouth shut as if she’s in deep thought (which actually looks real funny instead), and she will start narrating her thoughts for the viewers.
The second one would be when two people met when they are not supposed to meet each other (eg. arch rivals). The camera will alternate between the two people, and each time they will zoom in (this time quite quickly) towards the face of whoever is in the frame. And this time, they will drop the frame rate quite significantly, while maintaining the same length of scene. So in the end the zooming in is actually quite jerky. The reason behind the choice of this effect is quite Greek to me. And until now I still have no idea why they keep doing this over and over again in the different movies… If anyone know, please let me know.
Oh well, time to stop…