Word: taling
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...Fast Food Nation, based on the Eric Schlosser nonfiction best seller about the health hazards in the preparation and consumption of Big Macs and Whoppers, should have been a documentary; instead, it fruitlessly created fictional characters who never brought themselves - or the story - to life. Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, widely considered the flop of the festival, imagines a U.S. of the near future in which the government snoops on everyone and a gang of unattractive rebels wreak desultory havoc. Those last two words apply to the film as well. But we come not to bury the bad films...
...much of the film, Ofelia's fairy-tale quest is secondary to the power vectors at work in the house. Tensions bubble between the Captain and Ofelia's weak mother, and especially the Captain and the housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verd?). These are two marvelous characters. She has a quiet ferocity to match her cunning, which makes her a splendid revolutionary heroine. He is the real monster of the story, with a sadism bred in him by his own soldier father, and a macho theatricality that makes him a great movie villain. López (who has played memorably creepy types...
...Sorrentino's inspiration is the Grimm tale of Rumpelstiltskin, the dwarf whose skill as a tailor (he could spin straw into gold) ensnared a greedy miller and his beautiful young daughter. Here the miller is a middle-class man over hid head in debts for the wedding of his daughter Rosalba (glamorous, poised Laura Chiatti). Geremia lends the family more money than they can afford to pay and then, on the wedding day, extracts from Rosalba his own predatory pound-of-flesh interest on the loan...
...16th and 17th century, full of darkness and also culture and beauty, is the explanation of many things now," he says. "To understand all that is an interesting exercise. And useful." Pérez-Reverte's latest book, El Pintor de Batallas (The Painter of Battles), a historical tale in the mode of his novels The Dumas Club and The Fencing Master, was published in Spain last February. He is soon to start work on the sixth Alatriste installment, but for now he would rather talk about other people's books. "I was brought up with the Greek and Latin...
...There might be a way to infuse cinematic juice into the tale, and Howard has a couple of jolting images: of Silas whacking a nun, and of the car crash that killed Sophie's parents and brother. He also manages an exemplarily creepy exchange between Tautou and Bettany, which for a moment raises the stakes to the level of personal affront. But these signs of violent life are rare. The flashbacks to the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages (shot in desaturated color) look both expensive and perfunctory - words that sum up the film...