the relation between movies and actors

ACTORS
Here's some of my favorites. I just love their personality in real life, or the characters they chose.  




I love the freedom that emanates from James Dean. In movies he was faithful to his true image. It's all about authenticity. He wouldn't have been able to play a role too different.


Marilyn Monroe is simply too beautiful. But of course it's not all there is about her. It's more about the beauty and passion that she express and her spontaneity. Her way to talk, look, move, think. -







Sandrine Bonnaire is a lovely, beautiful and intelligent French actress.








Now Juliette Lewis is quite different form the others above ! or the actress here that ressemble most to her is Marilyn. With Juliette, it's all about innocence. She's crazy and innocent as a child. She's probably not the most brillant of girls on the planet, but she's very special, energic, outrageous, and I just find her cute. Provocative with class. She often plays roles of a simple minded girl, or just a simple and lovely girl like in "What's eating Gilbert Grape?". And she's like that in real life too. That rule applies to most good actors. I guess it's a way to be even more credible. While of course some actors can play very different roles from their real life and from a movie to another, like Marlon Brando for instance.

MOVIES
Of course, the movies these actors chose to play in is an important factor of their quality of acting. Despite the most horrible screenplay or directing, even the best of all actors cannot do miracles and the overall acpects of the movie will greatly harm the performance of the actor. But, the fact that those actors chose to play in those excellent movies stems from the fact that they are great artists, and this results from being great human beings. That is what we call being an Artist of Life. Or simply someone that masters his life and destiny... there's no destiny, the person creates it herself everyday.
Finally, the relation between the movie and the actor, or the director and actor. Both work together to unite and form a piece of art. One needs the other, otherwise the film sucks.
The movie is good for the career of the director and the actor too. That is why actors need to chose their projects wisely and trusting their instinct sometimes, and also why directors need to chose the right actors.


I used to have a huge collection of movies, a large selection of bought or copied DVD's and VHS. But events in my life have made that I got rid of most of them. I still own a few, and there's still a few I want to own. The minimum. I don't want to carry too many objects and attach to them.
Those are the ultimates -- to me. I know some of them are really not considered as masterpiece or classic. It's just that I love the themes or the actors. Eventhough the technical aspects may not always be perfect or mastered, it is because it wasn't that important for the story or that film in particular, and it doesn't matter when the movie speaks to me.

See a more complete list of my fetish movies.

-2001 a space odyssey
-taxi driver
-the fly (cronnenberg)
-crash ('94)
-rebel without a cause (a few other james dean movies)
-seven
-Koyaanisqatsi (and powaqqatsi, baraka and other films with beautiful music and landscapes)
-the tenant (polanski)
-the fountain
-bruce lee movies
-blade runner

online videos and movies

After I posted something controversial, another forum member suggested me to watch that movie Here Be Dragons. While the sub-title seemed interesting : An Introduction to Critical Thinking, I found the movie itself don't concerned me at all. I'm not one of those victims of nutritional supplements, astrology, etc. I don't know what that person was insinuating but whatever. I'm someone who's aware of this pseudo-science since many years. I used to be a less skeptical person long time ago, too naive. But not anymore. 


  Here's some websites for better movies than this Here Be Dragons thing:

First, Google Video. Will give you videos from all different websites.


Youtube of course. Here's the occasion to see good documentaries like  The World According to Monsanto, the worst company ever, that created the Agent Orange that was used to spray over Vietnam during the war, and now this company recreates our food with their patented GMO corn, soy, etc and their chemicals used as pesticides and insecticides. 
See other movies on my utube playlists.  

 Some good films on freedocumentaries.org. 

 Other documentaries on ted.com

Movie previews (independant and Hollywood blockbusters) http://www.apple.com/trailers/ -

videos of music, film, video games, entertainment, martial arts and sports, etc on Spike TV.

Videos of all kinds (movies, news, music...) on this French website Divertis.com

movies saw

I've been working in a rental video store for about 3 months and was bringing about a dozen of movies 2 see at home each week. I guess I must have seen over 200 movies lately. Here's some of the ones I enjoyed the most:   

Klimt: Ruiz film about the painter, for people who love arts and unconventional filmmaking.
Giant : the classic with James Dean, already saw it before of course.
Strings: animation movie with puppets. Didn't really like it but it's different from most movies.

Manufactured Landscapes: awesome documentary. "Photographer Edward Burtynsky travels the world observing changes in landscapes due to industrial work and manufacturing".

Edmund : wow, this is an incredible movie. Violent, crazy, but lots to think about and wonderful actors. Written by David Mamet.

The Host: Korean movie about a monster in a river. I liked it, good action scenes and funny moments, and even a subtile critique/metaphor about USA!

La Brunante : French-Canadian movie, I doubt you can find this one distributed near you, but good actresses, it was a good drama about life, friendship, death.

Vitus: movie from Switzerland. The first part, it's just another movie about a kid who's a genius. But then, a surprising twist. Really good.

Once: incredible music ! 2 scenes espescially. Won an Oscar for best song. Eventhough I'm not really into music creation, I liked it very much. Well done with low budget. It feels real.

Before sunrise: I prefered this one than it's sequel Before Sunset. Eventhough I don't really like Ethan Hawke, especially in Before Sunrise, Julie Delpy is so amazing, samething with the screenplay, long shots, etc... -Communion : '80's movie with Christopher Walken, best alien movie I've ever seen

-Pirates : by Roman Polanski. Not so good but funny and I like Polanski's work

-The Great Debaters : Denzel Washington's second effort as a director, about racism, KKK, black students and white universities... really good.

-Enlightenment Guaranteed (English title): this was so funny, a social satire showing how pathetic our society is, people are so materialist, with their cell phones, and eating Big Macs. Not different in Japan, where two German brothers go for a trip to visit a buddhist zen monastry and end up begging in the streets and sleeping in a tent near trains.                               The Tattooist : ok drama-thriller with supernatural phenomenons, spirits, etc. Good movie if you love tattoos.
10 000 B.C : better than what I thought
Immortal : nice French animation movie
Savage Planet: be careful don't watch this one it is of the worst movie I ever saw. Really bad, especially the cheap special effects made on computer.
Shiri: kind of korean Nikita
Colour me Kubrick: this was so funny. John Malkovich portraying a crazy guy that make believe he's filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. Based on a true story.
King of California: reading the synospis I thought it would have been better
Be Kind Rewind: So funny and lots of creativity. It was shot in a small American town and the people in the movie are the real citizens. I love Michel Gondry, a French director that made lots of beautiful music videos such as Bjork's. He made good movies such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep.
The Other Boley Girl: good drama about the rivality between two sisters for the king of England. One of them gave birth to Queen Elizabeth I.
Rambo IV: I liked it even if it's really violent. I have nothing against violence in movies, it's better to have a dose of fictional violence than causing real violence. Catharsis effect. It's the same story than before, but Stallone adds another dimension as a director director, samething with his latest Rocky. He adds some humanity in a subtile way to old characters.
The Bucket List: comedy with Jack Nicholson. Conventional, academic but still good,
The Take: very good thriller with nice pursuits, actions scenes and drama.
The Contract: not bad. Good thriller in nature.
Tideland: Terry Gilliam movie but Canadian production lol. It's like Alice in Wonderland but more mature, with some junkies, etc. I found it a bit boring, like his other movie about childhood: Munchasen
Toi: a French Canadian movie about sex, love, relationships and separation. Good
The Undisputed I & II: first one : When heavyweight champion James 'Iceman' Chambers lands in prison, the resident gangster arranges a boxing match with the reigning prison champ (played by Wesley Snipes). it wasn't, the actors are doing a good job. But second one was better: this times is with mixed martial arts and in a prison located in Russia. All the actors are great and perform the stunts themselves. Great fight scenes even if over the top.
Normal and Waiter : two awesome foreign movies (England and German I think) Great screenplay. City of Men, sort of sequel to City of God, about the gangs war in Rio de Janeiro.
Awesome movie. The shooting scenes with over 50 kids with guns in the streets are impressive. The Snake... not very good but it was OK. A L'Interieur (Inside):That was hardcore. Pure carnage. blood everywhere. Truly disturbing scenes. It's feminine horror, gore, with scissors and all kinds of strange weapons. Arielle Dombasle is pure evil in this; her voice, her look... Even if sometimes it was a bit over the top, it's still pretty realistic. I suggest it to those who love this genre of cinema.

"Season of the Superhero"

I like this article/essay. I fully agree. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/features/usaid/story.html?id=490dd6b5-bbcc-4659-aae7-276c8b9bb6a3 The new Batman movie (The Dark Knight)  is breaking box-office records, grossing out 200 millions during the first days of exploitation. Will probably do around 500 millions profit.   written by Kate Heartfield, Canwest News Service
Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2008::: "Trends happen. " "When the people seem to like something, they're bound to get more of it, until most of them get sick of it. There was that weird penguin fascination a little while back. One summer, it might be wizards; the next, pirates. It's obvious from the children's section in bookstores these days that somebody just figured out, again, that little girls like fairies." "Young people and storytellers have always liked rogues and heroes, and they always will."  "It does not take a lot of imagination to see the new Batman movie that is setting box office records, The Dark Knight, as something of a commentary on the war on terror," blogged the editorial board of The New York Times last week. " "Some reviewers of The Dark Knight and Hancock say we're a culture that's sick of heroes and mistrustful of easy answers. Other commentators say the opposite: That the superhero trend shows that North American society is scared of terrorists or global warming - even of the future of the economy - and is hoping for rescue. According to that analysis, we yearn for the days (probably imaginary) when there were good guys.
It's foolish to read too much cultural meaning into the release date of a movie. Remember when everyone was reading The Fellowship of the Ring as a comment on Sept. 11, 2001 and its aftermath? Not only did the film version come out a mere three months later, which would make Peter Jackson more impressive than Nostradamus, but it was, of course, based on a book published a half-century ago."                                                                                                                              I always found that there were too many movies made out of comic books lately. All those superhero movies, and then movies to make fun of those movies... I hate all trends. Like the Lord of the Ring trend. Like the Harry Potter trend. Then  all the animation movies with pinguins, pigs and chickens that dance and sing. People who go see this are like : "oh he's so cute!" while they're eating their butter popcorn that is made with the fat of the milk of slavery cow who's gonna be slaughtered later, and after the movie they're gonna go eat a BBQ chicken.  All those movies are for kids. We see how mature adults nowadays are.