I watched the French action film District B-13 last weekend, and though I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, it was extremely entertaining eye candy. The story is basically that a futuristic Paris has been divided into different districts, with varying levels of lawlessness. District B-13 is the worst, to the point where what’s left of the government builds a huge wall around it and keeps anyone from entering or leaving it. Inside, it’s run by a vicious crime lord and his gang. Then a cop who wants to try to clean up the district teams up with a B-13 resident currently in jail on the outside. And it goes on from there. But yeah. Story shmory. The action set pieces are totally worth the rental, if you’re into that sort of thing. Here’s my favorite, which I just had to share. This is pretty much the first sequence in the film, where the B-13 insider is trying to escape the crime lord’s thugs, and does a dazzling bit of parkour. (Parkour is basically city-running, and it’s awesome. There’s also a good parkour sequence at the beginning of Casino Royale.) The dialogue here is in English, because when I encoded the video, it took the English language track instead of the French one. Watch out for that, too, if you rent it…it defaults to English, but you want to switch it to French with English subtitles. It’s much better, trust me. Also, coarse language warning at about 1:17.
Category: Film
Animated Bayeux Tapestry
This is the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen. Okay, it’s the most awesome thing I’ve seen today. The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the more famous medieval artworks, depicting the Norman Invasion of England. This video animates it and adds appropriate music.
Trailer Watch – Opening March 30
Meant to post this Thursday. Forgot. That’s what I get for writing it early and leaving it in draft status…ah well.
This week’s trailers. My pick for one I’d go see: The Lookout. My pick for top box office of this group: Blades of Glory. The art film of the week is Denmark’s After the Wedding, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, but it’s only in New York and LA. I looked up the theatre listings for New York the other day just for kicks, and almost packed up my belongings to move there that instant. But then I reminded myself that by the time I paid the rent, I wouldn’t be able to afford the movie tickets. Or the parking. Or the cab fare. Or food. So I decided to wait for more opportune circumstances to avail myself of the incredible New York filmgoing scene.
Trailers and commentary after the jump.
January 2007 Reading/Watching Recap
This isn’t late at all, is it? Nope, not at all. Moving on now. Reactions to Rain Man, Children of Men, Pan’s Labyrinth, Curse of the Golden Flower, Possession: A Romance, The Emperor Jones and more after the jump. And the next time I need to procrastinate, maybe I can get February’s done. ;)
Trailer Watch – Highly Anticipated by Me (as of 3/20/07)
Here are some of the films I’m looking forward to in the next…year. I haven’t kept up on trailer watching, so these are mostly big releases and many of them are duhs. Oh well.
Embedded trailers and my reactions after the jump. Warning: VERY LONG.