Random Thoughts on Movies

My latest movie has pretty much consumed all of my thinking time of late, so as you can imagine, I've spent a lot of time thinking about movies.

So my history with French movies is pretty much this:

My parents must have left the TV on SBS, and I walked past and looked at what was on. There were two people having sex, and the guy said, "French people are only good for three things: food, wine and sex". I think he also had AIDS. That was about all I saw of the movie, because as a kid, watching "nudie" movies was forbidden. Still, my literal mind took those words to heart, and so when I finally met a French person, I asked him if it was true. He looked at me strangely. Then he told me he is from Canada, but he said French movies tend to have lots of nudity in them.

A few years later, Pharmacist told me that I'm a lot like the main character in Amélie, and I was scared at first, because the name made me think it was a porno, so I didn't watch it or look it up for ages. I finally did, and now it's one of my favourite movies.

As you can imagine, I really didn't know what to expect when I got myself to see some movies at the French film festival.

After the bizarre experience that was Slack Bay, I asked Michael whether you would use "mon Billie" to describe your son, or not. He said French people wouldn't normally use that phrase to describe a loved one, i.e. neither mon nor ma . He then said that French comedies are different in the sense that sometimes they just don't make sense.

I've now seen three movies at the film festival, and none of them were what they said on the tin, and all of them ended quite abruptly. Michael agreed that that was just a feature of French cinema - the movie is left open-ended, so you are free to come to your own conclusions about what happens next. They rarely follow the pattern of hero appears, heroes go to battle against the big guys, hero gets the girl, everyone lives happily ever after.

I can see it being a different kind of enjoyment. These are not movies that you'd have playing in the background while doing daily quests in World of Warcraft. To reference another Every Frame A Painting video about Marvel music, these movies aren't formulaic or safe (or at least I haven't seen enough of them to figure out the formula yet). In the video, the narrator talks about how there are iconic movie sound tracks (Star Wars, James Bond, Harry Potter) but most people can't think of a single Marvel movie theme song off the top of their head. He proposes that the reason is because many of the songs are "safe" choices. I know it sounds hipster, but I feel that way about a lot of movies and TV shows, which is there are a lot that I watch in the background while doing other things, and I've never felt lost during the movie.

That being said, I think there's there's good qualities about both types of movies, and it probably depends on what mood you are in when you go to watch them.

Michael also added that the types of movies that you'd see at a film festival are probably more of the "artsy" type movies, and less-so the blockbuster-style movies. I don't think that was the case at the Japanese film festival, but maybe Japan's idea of "artsy" is different. Anyway, I have discovered that I can watch a heap of movies for free through SBS on demand, so I'm going to try and broaden my  horizons a bit more. I love that you can filter by language, so I can also see what other cinematic techniques are used in different parts of the world.

Meanwhile, my own movie is progressing slowly, as I think forcing myself to do this has drained all passion out of the project, and I'm really starting to worry that it's going to be a flop. There's just so much hype built up after my last three movies, and it's really hard to keep meeting expectations.