Easter Holidays

The Easter Holidays seem to have brought with them a somewhat ample amount of material for me to post about. This is most likely because instead of tackling the mountain of homework and revision for my ever closer looming A- levels I have been spending the majority of my time watching films! I therefore have many which I could discuss and don’t really know where to begin so I shall give a sort of brief overview of each one I have watched so far!

Firstly, I have been to the cinema once as I took advantage of the KidsAM offer at vue where you can see a film for one pound and took my sister with my friend and her little sister to see Tangled. The twist on the traditional Rapunzel fairy tale was actually very enjoyable and it was nice to have an original Disney Princess classic once again. The animation was stunning especially the scene with all the floating lanterns. It really was beautiful and I felt myself along with all the younger children in the cinema gaping in awe at the screen! Tangled also appealed to the more modern audience in a manner possibly quite similar to that done by Shrek by lacing a traditional fairy tale with humour which to be fair many films fail at but this attempt was in my opinion very successful.

I have also recently taken great advantage of Sky Anytime using it to watch both Whip It! and Cemetery Junction. Neither was spectacular but they were both watchable and fairly enjoyable. Both debuts of supposed new directorial talent Whip It seeing Drew Barrymore’s first attempt and Cemetery Junction that of Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant. Whip It follows the story of a teenager who discovers her talent for roller derby. Starring Ellen Page it most definitely falls into the same genre of indie retro films as Juno or Adventureland and has a look and soundtrack to back this up. It was pretty good though, funny in places and easy to watch – just a nice and quite fun film! Also I was surprised by Cemetery Junction, although I am not a fan of Ricky Gervais and didn’t understand really what the need for his small cameo role was, but I found the film itself reasonably funny and just a sweet story too which I didn’t think Gervais would be capable of. The 70s setting came across well and the sets and costumes were very well chosen. I also thought that the acting was good and that the three main characters especially Christian Cooke were particularly good. So generally I was pleasantly surprised!

Also I have finally had the opportunity to read and watch The Time Traveler’s Wife. The book was absolutely amazing, I loved it and it has definitely become one of my favourites. Also despite the film not living up to the book as so many adaptations don’t I did like it and this was probably partially down to Erica Bana and Rachel MacAdams who were very good. It wasn’t how I had imagined the book but good as the same.

Then the final film which I watched just this morning is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time which I loved! It was a proper action adventure film like Indiana Jones or even the Mummy which we haven’t seen for a long time! It was really good and Jake Gyenhaall and Gemma Arterton were brilliant and I was very impressed by Gyenhaall’s English accent. However the actor who stole the show was Alfred Molina whose tax dodging ostrich race organiser was really very funny. It was just generally a very well made film and I enjoyed the adventure film nature of it.

Hopefully I will get round to doing some work this holiday but I am also looking forward to a week of more film watching ahead, especially a cinema trip to see Scre4m which I can’t wait for!