Friday, November 19, 2021

Celebrate the Small Things 19-11-21

 


It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small things...

What am I celebrating this week?

I'm still celebrating the film festival and enjoying immersing myself in the experience.

This week I've seen a very charming Belgian film called Playground.  It was about a six-year-old girl starting school and discovering the older brother she'd always idolised was not quite the hero she believed he was.  It is very cleverly shot so everything is seen through this child's eyes.  Adults are not seen above mid-chest height unless they are sitting or bent over to speak directly to a child.  Anything that is not relevant to this child is a blur in the background.  It's very clever and immersive and I enjoyed it very much.

The other film I've seen so far this week is called My Salinger Year and it's kind of literary Devil Wears Prada.  A young woman moves to New York to pursue a career as a writer and is hired as an assistant to a literary agent who represents J D Salinger.  The agent isn't nearly as scary or overbearing as the editor in the Devil Wears Prada - she's more stuck in the past and unwilling to move with the times.  She's played by Sigourney Weaver and manages to be both steely and vulnerable at the same time.  I didn't think this was a great film - it meandered a bit and lost focus on the core story often - but it was very charming and had some wonderful laugh-out-loud moments.  The main character was almost exactly the same age as i would have been in its 1995 setting, so I totally identified with her and the journey she was on.  God, she could have been me!

I have six more films to see over the weekend, so will report back on those on Monday.  Very much looking forward to re-seeing one of Douglas Sirk's sumptuous 1950s melodramas on Sunday morning!

What are you celebrating this week?

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