Being ill and unable to do all that much (it's such a hard life) I've been confined to watching films, so you're going to get my film rant. Old favorites have been dusted down, and being such a geek I've watched all the special features too, except for the making of Jurassic Park, where the introduction "I'm James Earl Jones, and let me take you on a wonderful adventure through a film 65 million years in the making...." put me off. Likewise, Se7en, one of my very favorite films of all time and incidentally a dvd that is packed with special features and 3 separate sets of commentaries, features the droning and dull Morgan Freeman who rattles on about how a hat put him in the right frame of mind for the character of Sommerset and how he wants to bring to the forefront scripts written by all different kinds of Americans; Afro-Americans, Asian Americans... as long as they are American he doesn't care. Which is why he worked on Se7en, written by a Caucasian American script writer, even there are too many of those about all telling the same story.
The Counterfeiters
For something completely different however try the 2007 film 'The Counterfeiters', written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, starring Karl Markovics, Devid Streisow and August Deihl.
It's a fascinating slice of forgotten World War Two history -Operation Bernhard: a Nazi plan to destabilise the UK and US economy. Concentration camp forced labour was used to fake £134,610,810 in practically perfect bank notes to help resupply the German war effort: it remains the world's largest counterfeiting operation. The film is based in part on the memories of a survivor of this operation Adolf Burger, and catalogues the men's differing reactions to being used as part of the Nazi war effort - in helping to prop up the weakened German state they guarantee good treatment for themselves, but they are still Jews, still in prison and are unable to escape the morality of their situation; upon arrival at Sachsenhausen they are treated with cordiality but in a macabre twist given the clothes of Auschwitz prisoners to wear. Understandably there's a lot of conscience wrangling going on. It's a gorgeous looking piece of cinema, really grimy and understated, the characters all have depth and complexity and it is certainly a window into a thought provoking situation. Apologies about the pun but there's nothing flashy or false about The Counterfeiters; it really is a decent film- 8/10
I hate to be grumpy but the reason I'm watching really old films, The Counterfeiters excepted, is that I maintain that there hasn't been a decent period of film making since 2000; although there are one or two gems that shine through (like the wonderful Sideways, or The Prestige) studios are producing less material and generally it does seem to be generic, safe, and now with a disturbing trend to produce 'chick flicks' aimed at a slightly older but apparently no wiser female audience. So, later I'll be watching... well I'd love to watch the Usual Suspects but unfortunately some bloody hobbit has my copy of it, so it's going to be The Silence of the Lambs, which I'll be doing Hannibal impressions to; "I ate his liver with fava beans a nice lemsip".
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