Crystal Fairy Film Review

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Daniel McCarthy

A young American in a foreign land, ignorant to the culture and the language, at the crossroads of life, in search cheap booze and an ecstatic high. At first impressions, Crystal Fairy seems depressingly familiar. I’ve personally seen enough dopey nonsense about Americans running amok overseas to last a lifetime. Thankfully such thoughts are quickly dismissed in this unpolished original, made as a small off the cuff project next to psychological thriller Magic Magic by writer and Sebastian Silva. Shot in a largely improvised manner, the film centres on Jamie (Michael Cera, also star of Magic Magic), an obnoxious and self centred young man travelling across Chile with a group of local friends. Drunk at a party, he runs into a fellow American going by ‘Crystal Fairy’ (Gaby Hoffmann), an incredibly enthusiastic mystic willing to see the good in everyone and everything. He inadvertently invites her along with his friends to the north coast where they plan to sample the famed San Pedro cactus juice, known for it’s potent hallucinogenic effects. It’s an idea he immediately regrets as her easy going charm rubs his selfish impulses the wrong way and the group gravitate far more towards her than him. Perhaps losing their heads together may be the only way to get on with one another…

In a set up that seems painfully familiar, Crystal Fairy’s primary success is finding a fresh vitality in the worn material. Part of this is down to the beautiful photography of the film. From the urgency of the cityscape to the desolate yet hauntingly beautiful Atacama Desert, the handheld camerawork gives a woozy vibrancy to the films look that matches up with the story tone perfectly. The camera is constantly roving to find detail from the rhythms of everyday local life to fleeting gestures that betray the characters inner thoughts and motives. Its a style that best suits the semi improvisational tone of the writing and characterization. While there is a sense of narrative drift that some viewers may not have the patience for, if they do they will be rewarded by a deviation from the norms you expect from the set up. Jamie and Crystal sound on paper like incredibly two dimensional characters; the ignorant jerk and the manic pixie dream girl. Yet in the midst of the bleak landscape, wry humour and refreshing honesty they come to life in a believable manner that fleshes both of them out.

This characterization is further complimented by the excellent performances of both Cera and Hoffman. Cera’s presence could have potentially drawn more unwelcome parallels with thestereotypical fool abroad trope. Having made his name in nebbish, exasperated roles from Arrested Development onward some would argue that he has acted his way into a typecast corner. It’s refreshing to see him not only acting in such a niche project but also that he embraces such an unlikeable character. Jamie is spiky, attention seeking and outwardly hostile to pretty much everyone he crosses paths with. It’s a credit to Cera that his naive charm manages to overcome Jamie’s imperfections and make the inevitable softening of his edges work. Hoffmann pretty much steals the show, her eccentric energy lightening up the screen in pretty much every appearance and avoiding the pitfalls of annoyance that similar characters have fallen into. Together they see through a film that thankfully sidesteps convention and offers up a telling glimpse of young fears, desires and potential hope.

Crystal Fairy [DVD]

The Wolf Of Wall Street Review

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Frostie

Greed, riches, drugs, naked women, sex…The Wolf Of Wall Street certainly is debauched, based on the memoirs of convicted stock market trader Jordan Belfort, a man who makes Gordon Gekko seem like a sweet office boy, the film certainly gives the financial industry a bad name- something that the friend I saw it with (a financial analyst) was non to pleased about.

In truth Jordan Belfort is a different animal all together. He starts off with a wife and no intention to drink or do drugs. How hard he falls indeed. After losing his job at L.F Rothschild he gets a job trading penny stocks, from there he starts up his own business, the Stratton Oakmont brokerage firm (which was the inspiration for the 2000 film Boiler Room) with the help of friend Donnie Azoff, (played by Johan Hill who famously did the role for $60,000; which was less than $10,000 per the 10 month work), they steal from poor people and then work their way up to stealing from rich people. They do more than their own body weight in drugs and they sleep with so many women it is hard to believe their penis didn’t fall off.

It is hard to go wrong with a Scorsese film and DiCaprio and Scorsese make quite a team. DiCaprio deserves an Oscar for his performance. There were times he was so into his character I didn’t even recognise DiCaprio anywhere. He was once so good he was the De Niro of our generation. Now he is just the DiCaprio of our generation: an actor so good he is on a level all by himself. Johan Hill also gives an Oscar-worthy performance. His comic timing is perfect. He can deliver any line in the world and make it funny. This film shows his true potential. Hill has always been under-rated.

It is not necessarily the movies fault but this is a terrible film for women. Few women get to keep their clothes on and the rest do full-blown, full-frontal nudity with shaved ‘private areas’. Ahem. Even the lead, Margot Robbie who plays DiCaprio’s second wife, who insisted she didn’t mind. Hmm. But despite all of this sex and the actual orgies the only real male nudity is a fake and flaccid fake penis and a from-the-back nude scene of DiCaprio (twice) and, yes, it was really him. Few women are more than window dressing, naked window dressing, and even one of the ‘original 20’ stockbrokers who is female, Kimmie Belzer, doesn’t even get a mention until the end of the movie. Another gets her head shaved for $10,000. An uncomfortable scene. All of the nudity is too much and embarrassing. It is supposed to be adult and decadent but is, actually, just sad and adolescent. I was depressed by the misogyny in the film. It’s 2014. Women deserve more than this.

The Wolf of Wall Street is an enjoyable movie (barring the nudity and I didn’t really get all the drug talk. I felt it was romanticised too much. Drugs actually aren’t cool kids), in fact it is more than enjoyable. It is nearly three hours long and it went by fast and was entertaining. However, Jordan Belfort is possibly one of the least likeable (real-life!) characters in movie history. He has absolutely no redeeming features. He is a complete bastard. Despite this, because he is played so brilliantly by DiCaprio he is also likable in a very weird way. You end up caring what happens to him but you resent yourself for it. These aren’t nice people and you will find yourself hoping Agent Patrick Denham nails them to the wall.

If you go and see The Wolf of Wall Street you will be entertained but you will also be left with a feeling of sexism, shallowness and emptiness.

A Boombox Speaker For Your iPhone? Hell Yeah!

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Frostie

Us Frosties love this: A speaker for mp3 players and phones that is a wireless boombox.

This is the new ultra-modern take on the classic Boombox! No more jack leads, power cables or heavy docking stations, as here is the must-have Wireless Touch Speaker BoomBox.

There’s no need to plug in your phone or mp3 player to boost music anymore. This powerful gadget will amplify your sounds by simply touching it against your phone or mp3 player!

Sleek, lightweight and without wires it’s certain to be the first thing you take in your bag. It’s amazing battery lasts an a stunning 10+ hours before it will need charging again. Now if you can party for 10 hours we applaud you!

The Wireless Touch Speaker BoomBox costs £24.95 from www.prezzybox.com.

Features:

Compatible with most smart phones and MP3 players with external speakers
Built-in rechargeable battery: charge via micro USB cable (included)
10 hours play time per recharge
Optional 3.5mm jack input (cable not included)
Speaker: 4 Ω/3W
Rating output: 100Hz-20KHz
Charging voltage: DC 5V
Battery Spec: 3.7V 850mAh lithium ion battery

Kristin Scott Thomas Retires From Film

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Frostie

After 20 years and nearly 80 credits Kristin Scott Thomas has announced she is done with making films and has decided to quit.

“I just suddenly thought, I cannot cope with another film, I realised I’ve done the things I know how to do so many times in different languages, and I just suddenly thought, I can’t do it any more. I’m bored by it. So I’m stopping.” She told The Guardian.

Scott Thomas has said it is partly due to be treated like an “aging actress.” She is sick of playing the “sad middle-aged woman”.

“[I’m] asked to do the same things over and over, because people know you can do that, so they want you to do that. But I just don’t want to pretend to be unhappy anymore — and it is mostly unhappy.”

“I’m often asked to do something because I’m going to be a sort of weight to their otherwise flimsy production. They need me for production purposes, basically. So they give me a little role in something where they know I’m going to be able to turn up, know what to do, cry in the right place. I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds, but I keep doing these things for other people, and last year I just decided life’s too short. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

There might be a small surfeit of roles for elderly actresses like Maggie Smith and Judi Dench (who never seem to stop working, thank goodness), but the film industry has little need for women in their fifties, except to play moms. I’m sort of, as the French would say, ‘stuck between two chairs’, because I’m no longer 40 and sort of a seductress, and I’m not yet a granny.”

On studio films she says; “I can’t bear all the kind of rubbish that goes on on those big films. I just can’t stand sitting around for hours in a great big luxury trailer, waiting, bored out of my head. I used to do a lot of tapestry. Yes, I had a lot of cushions around.” On Confessions of a Shopaholic, she says, “I thought it would be quite good fun. But I spent my entire time waiting. I hated it, hated it, hated it, and I said that I wouldn’t do another one.”

She won’t be doing TV either; “I can’t do miniseries. Once you’ve got the characters, once you know who they are, they’re going to repeat themselves, aren’t they, for the next five years? It just goes on and on and on. I get terribly bored. Series bore me.”

However, you can still find her on stage; “When you are acting in a film, you’re giving the director the raw material to make the film,” she says. “But when you’re acting on stage, that’s it. And that’s when you discover that you can really do it. It’s this word ‘trust’ that keeps coming to me. It’s not a question of whether one person is conning you into thinking you can do it, saying, ‘Oh, it was beautiful.’ On stage, if it works, it works.”

Lone Survivor – Film Review

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Junior Smart

Now I might be a man – actually scratch that. Now I might be an alpha male, no, scratch that again. I am an alpha male but call it what you will I have had my full of all those macho ‘Saving Private Ryan’ type flicks. The sort where everyone just dies in front of you and the director just relishes putting you in the thick heart of brutal battle. It is little wonder then that I was more than a little pessimistic about this film; let’s face it the title says it all.

However this Peter Berg film; director of blockbuster movie Battleship, in which the US Navy drove off an alien invasion opened with a much different kind of flavour than I was used to. Lone Survivor, opens by focussing on the inner endurance battles of these men as they go through training and the bonding they forge as a team, a brotherhood. In the opening montage we see them taught to handle pain, inhospitable conditions (sometimes naked), what’s more we see many people quit. It comes across as an insatiable drive to reconnect the audience with reality. It is this understanding and a mixture of top class acting and proficient story-telling that makes this film different to the run of the mill films we have seen.

It is little wonder actually, the film’s plot comes from the real life account of Marcus Luttrell, a former US Navy SEAL, and describes an operation in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2005, in which four American soldiers found themselves caught on the prongs of a moral dilemma.

Sent to assassinate a Taliban warlord, they unexpectedly encounter three goat herds; an elderly man, a young boy and a scowling teenager. They have three choices, each one with its own type of consequence. They can kill them, tie them up or let them go. After a lengthy discussion about the ethics and morals as well as what could happen to them they decide they are not animals and decide on the latter and that is where things go wrong.
The Taliban are as merciless as you would expect, and in as many ways as some may argue we are led to believe but what they don’t lack is in numbers and resources.

Where this film really succeeds is bringing the reality and the injustice of war to your eyes. The Marines, played by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster carry the film well and although the film becomes very frantic it remains coherent in its set up; we know who the men are, who’s married, who has kids and what each man stands to lose. I thought it was very brave too that the soldiers were not portrayed as superheroes. In one scene, cornered by the enemy they decide to fling themselves down a cliff to escape and we see their bodies smashed and ground by both rocks and bullets. It was very unnerving to see such a common scene shown for the reality it is.

The film doesn’t let up even at the last chapter and although some scenes are clichéd, based on the reality it is founded upon is something you can forgive. There are some real touching scenes there too which are executed very well.

So, how does one rate this film, do you rate it on the entertainment, the quality of the action and acting? do you rate the reality or just the horror of it? I guess I will praise it for the account it portrays about the men and women who put themselves in the position where such an account could be wrote. As a film it is not exceptional and is far from stylish, but I don’t think it was meant to be. However, the story it tells is certainly worthy.

Girl Most Likely | Film Review

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Catherine Balavage

I should probably start this review with the fact that I love Kristen Wiig. She is just an amazing actress and this film is no exception to her talent.

The film has great performances, a brilliant and funny storyline and great characters. After Imogene, played by Wiig, gets dumped by her high-society boyfriend, and then also loses her job as she crashes into despair, Imogene fakes a suicide bid to try and win back her boyfriend. This goes wrong when her friend (using the word loosely!) comes instead and her mother is called instead and comes to get her and take her home.

Her relationship with her mother is strained at best. Hilarity ensues. This is a great film, and I love Annette Bening as the mother who does her best, even when it is getting her daughter arrested for borrowing her car because her CIA lover (Matt Dillon on top form) tells her that the best way to find a person is to accuse them of a crime. This is a great romantic comedy with a twist, but also a great comedy about family.

Girl Most Likely is a smart and funny romantic comedy starring Wiig as Imogene, a once promising New York playwright whose meteoric rise has fizzled out, thanks to a crisis of confidence. Also heavily in denial about being dumped by her high society boyfriend, Imogene uses her flair for drama to stage an elaborate meltdown as an appeal for his sympathy. But her attempt backfires when she’s put into the custody of Zelda, her estranged gambling addict mother (Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right) in Jersey Shore.

Desperate to get back on top, Imogene will need the help of her family, including her slightly odd younger brother (Christopher Fitzgerald, Revolutionary Road), Zelda’s new boyfriend The Bousche (Matt Dillon, You, Me and Dupree), and the hot new lodger (Darren Criss, Glee). Things can only go up from here, and they do in this wildly quirky rom-com about family, life and love.

Starring Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids, Anchorman 2, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right), Matt Dillon (Me, You and Dupree, There’s Something About Mary), Darren Criss (TV’s Glee) and Christopher Fitzgerald (Revolutionary Road),

Girl Most Likely can be bought here

GIRL MOST LIKELY… DVD/BD Information:
Release:                     3^rd Feb 2014
Number of discs:       1
RRP:                            £17.99/£21.99
Certificate:                 12
Sound:                        Dolby Digital Surround 5.1
Running time:            99/103 Minutes Approx.

Miley Cyrus Almost Unrecognisable On W Cover: Pictures And Quotes

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Frostie

Miley Cyrus looks almost unrecognisable on the cover of W Magazine. Miley is on the cover of the March 2014 issue.

Shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot exclusively for W, the pictures are very high fashion and show a different side to 21-year-old Miley, with bleached eyebrows and a blonde bob.

Inside Miley is interviewed by Ronan Farrow. Here are the top quotes.

On her parents: “I never had, like, a nanny that took care of me. My mom always fed me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My dad, like, he’s the most trusting human in the world. He trusts everybody, basically, until they fu*k him over. And my mom, too, holds no grudges. She’ll let someone, like, fu*k her over twice, and then she’ll let it go, and then she kind of forgets about it. And I used to be like that. And now I just keep it in the back of my mind.”

On the haters: “I don’t give a sh*t. I’m not Disney, where they have, like, an Asian girl, a black girl, and a white girl, to be politically correct, and, like, everyone has bright-coloured T-shirts. You know, it’s like, I’m not making any kind of statement. Anyone that hates on you is always below you, because they’re just jealous of what you have.”

On Godmother Dolly Parton: “What I love about Dolly is she says hi to the person that’s doing the catering on set before she goes and says hi to the cast.”

On her upbringing: “We never were inside, and we never wore shoes. I think it’s why I like wearing no clothes so much and I’m always naked.”

On why her reluctance to trust has made her stop dating: “Guys watch too much porn. Those girls don’t exist. They’re not real girls. And that’s like us watching romance movies. That’s girl porn, because, like, those guys do not exist. The kind that do exist just try too hard with me, and it’s just like, ‘I don’t need you to impress me. I don’t want you to, like, take me to fancy restaurants.’ I hate sitting down for dinner! You don’t have to do that to me! You don’t have to take me on trips! I literally just want to chill here! That’s why I’m, like, not trying to jump into a relationship…I love my music so much, and I love what I’m doing so much that that has become my other half—rather than another person. And so, yeah, I feel like I had to be able to be 100 percent”

The full article is here.

What do you think?

Limited Edition BAFTA Timepiece | Fashion

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Frostie

Swiss watchmaker 88 RUE DU RHONE has launched its first limited edition BAFTA timepiece collection at retail in partnership with WatchShop.com, who will sell a limited number of pieces to celebrate the brand’s partnership with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) where it holds the title of Official Watch & Timing Partner.

The limited edition BAFTA timepieces will be sold with two complimentary tickets to a private viewing of Andy Gotts MBE ‘BEHIND THE MASK’ exhibition at BAFTA’s headquarters 195 Piccadilly, London. Photographer Andy Gotts MBE will personally meet proud owners of the 88 RUE DU RHONE limited edition BAFTA timepieces at the exhibition. ‘BEHIND THE MASK’ is a stunning collection of more than 100 photographs of actors and actresses from around the globe that have been nominated for a BAFTA Film Award in the last 60 years.

The 88 RUE DU RHONE Limited Edition BAFTA timepiece features a unique engraving of the EE British Academy of Film and Television Awards logo on the watch’s case back. The limited edition BAFTA timepiece collection will be presented to winners, citation readers and attendees over the BAFTA weekend.

The gent’s timepiece features a sleek, stylish 45mm black PVD case, with black dial, date display and chronograph functions framed by silver sub dials. This watch is based upon a classic style that incorporates contemporary signatures such as silver trim indexes and a unique 88 RUE DU RHONE engraving on the side of the watchcase. The timepiece is finished with a black padded calf-leather alligator grain strap with ardillon buckle. The price of the gent’s BAFTA Limited Edition is £495.

The ladies chronograph has been designed using a 35mm black PVD case that houses a black patterned dial featuring 6 diamonds integrated within the rose gold Roman numerals. The hands, crown and buttons are finished with rose gold that provides an elegant contrast to the black PVD case and gloss black padded calf leather strap with alligator grain. The price of the ladies’ BAFTA Limited Edition is £550. Both available from WatchShop.com,

“We are delighted to be partnering with the Watchshop to launch the BAFTA limited editions at retail. This will be the first time that we have retailed a limited edition collection for 88 RUE DU RHONE and we are looking forward to seeing the results.“ – Says Craig Leach, UK Brand Director – 88 RUE DU RHONE.

The EE British Academy Film Awards take place on Sunday 16 February 2014 at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London and will be hosted by Stephen Fry. The ceremony will broadcast live on BBC One.

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