Results tagged “film” from Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog

Personally I loved the Sex and the City movie, I thought it was a great mix of comedy and heartache with enough fashion to keep everyone happy, but I appreciate the mixed reviews and do feel they played it safe, if a little forced and silly. But that is beside the point because I don't know any woman who hasn't been, or will soon go, to see it. It's created a certain presence in theatres...

Even while at the bus stop on Friday night there were crowds of girls and women in strapless dresses and stilettos with coiffed hair and bright lipstick; this isn't just a film, it's an event! Cocktail bars surrounding the cinema complex were stuffed with Cosmopolitan clasping ladies and many dabbed their eyes once leaving the theatre and swanned back into the bar.

The show's main pull was the fashion and it's almost a treat to dress up to the nines and make a true girls-night-out of going, leading to a box office smash. I know many people who have gone even before ever seeing a single episode. It may be an aspiration to be as constantly glamorous as the characters or an ode to the show's style admiration. I find groups of office girls more intimidating than a crew of hoodies so if you're planning on catching the new Indiana Jones flick, be prepared for hoards of females in their best, it's quite a sight to see!

Kenneth Wolstenholme is best remembered for uttering "they think it's all over", but the line he intended for 1966 immortality was one he'd practised: "it's twelve inches high, it's made of solid gold and it means that England are World Champions". He'd never get away with it now, as a nation our minds are far too dirty, but that's not my point. A year earlier when The Rotunda was completed, that wouldn't really turn out how architect James Roberts intended either, but for Brummies it became something just as iconic.

Yesterday I attended a screening of Nic Gaunt's film 'Rotunda: 21 Stories', a film ostensibly about the building that stands, er, 21 storeys tall at the bottom of New Street. But, while the film radiates from the Rotunda at its central core, it pushes far beyond that to be a film about identity, family, and how the built environment can help shape the way we feel.

Apart from possibly being the cinematic work that contains the word "round" most often, the film takes time to talk about how Birmingham has been shaped by its architecture and by using only the voices of Brummies and those involved in the building means that it's thankfully free of theories, instead focusing on emotion.

The 21 stories range from the base and James Roberts, with tales of how the building grew taller almost on a whim, to the top, restoration, and a young carpenter who's too scared to work alone in the basement. In between are a host of people talking about, confessing almost, their relationship with a huge pile of concrete and glass and by extension their lives.

What with various ailments of family members keeping me close to base this week, it's been time to catch up on some films.

A strange phenomenon has emerged from my DVD sessions. I seem to be watching more and more films which, in theory, are interesting, quirky and out of the ordinary, in other words, worthy of the attentions of a cultural commentator.

They turn out to be well crafted but ultimately annoying because the narrative just doesn't ring true. They seem to be coming out of some film factory specialising in interesting, quirky and out of the ordinary movies. They are simply trying too hard. Which ends up as plain trying.

Let's cut to the chase. The trio of movies watched in a row which brought me to this frustrating conclusion were Hallam Foe, Brick Lane and Edmond. The first two are based on books, the third is a version of a David Mamet stage play.

The really annoying thing is that all of them feature terrific performances - from Jamie Bell (above), Tannistha Chatterjee (above) and Satish Kaushik and William H Macy respectively. Writers and directors seem to be letting down indie film audiences while the actors are giving us a reason to watch.

Notes on a Scandal is another example which springs to mind. I want to see great movies, not just great performances.

Am I being unreasonable? Anyone agree with me?

All but his most hardened fans may have given up waiting for a return to his "funny ones", but no-one mythologises a city like Woody. If you take a trip to New York there's a scene from a film at every intersection, but it's Woody's Manhattan that uses the city as a character, the narration making it okay to be "too romantic" about what's really just some bricks and some people.

London is casually used as a backdrop and there now seems to be a whole industry in making films about late seventies Manchester, but not it seems Birmingham.

Supposed worst film ever The Sex Lives of the Potato Men was set, but not filmed, in Brum, Cliff Richard sang and bargee-d around the canals in Take Me High, but these are not the stuff myths are made of. The closest we come to a classic is The Italian Job, the drain the Minis race down is actually the Birmingham-Coventry Tithebarn main sewer and even that was up the Coventry end.