This post is part of Lexa Cain's blog hop, Celebrate the small things. Head on over there to sign up!
What am I celebrating this week?
I got more work done on the book I ripped apart last week. After thinking I'd got it all wrong, I figured it out and went back to what I started doing last week. I think it will work from here. Think, being the operative word...
The film festival has started! Always my favourite time of the year. I have two weeks of movie-going paradise ahead of me and have already seen my first two films:
Maiden - a documentary about the first all-woman crew doing the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. This was the gala opening night film and it didn't sound that appealing to me. But I actually enjoyed it very much. The film is well made, exciting, the women interviewed are interesting and articulate and the filmmakers used the limited amount of archive footage available to good effect. I came out inspired to do something way outside my comfort zone - but definitely not being at sea for over 150 days!
You Don't Nomi - another doco, this time about Paul Verhoeven's much maligned film, Showgirls. It was again, very interesting, asking the question about whether this film is actually just terrible, or if it's a kind of satire of terrible that's actually quite wonderful. It positions the film within the entire catalogue of Verhoeven's films and shows how the same themes and motifs appear throughout. It talks about how Elizabeth Berkley's career was basically destroyed by doing the film, and how it has become something of a cult film now, especially amongst the drag community who have wildly popular live performances based on the film. I'm not convinced the film isn't just terrible - I remember it being horrible - but I would certainly be willing to go back and take another look at it after seeing this doco.
More films this weekend, so I will tell you about them on Monday.
What are you celebrating this week?
I hope you got it figured out this time. =)
ReplyDeleteGood news on the book! I can't believe there was a documentary on Showgirls. Wow. So bad it's famous.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen Showgirls, but I always suspected that the reaction to it was owed in part to Demi Moore's Striptease, released around the same time, and if Moore couldn't carry a vehicle about strippers, there's no way anyone else could, certainly not someone previously best known for an ensemble TV series. And Striptease, by the way, more or less killed Moore's career, too. Cursed movie topic indeed.
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