Showing posts with label Christian Bale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Bale. Show all posts

Monday, December 12, 2022

††† - Sensation

 

Really digging this new ††† PERMANENT.RADIANT EP, especially of late, opening track Sensation. The chorus has an epic slamming that kind of marries a slow, sensual plod ala When the Levee Breaks (not quite, but ballpark) to what sounds like the fanfare of some futuristic stadium rock. Add onto that all the swirling keys, guitars, and some cool vox FX on Chino, and you get a fantastic album-opener and lead-in to that brilliant first single, Vivien




Watch:

Since it was only in the theatres for about a week, we missed David O. Russell's Amsterdam on the big screen but finally caught it on HBO Max last night.

 

This is the film that failed so hard at the box office - undeservedly so, in my opinion - that I've heard titterings about it being the death knell for anything that could be called an "adult drama" rolling out big and wide at theatres. If that's true, it sucks. I'll be sure to be more diligent about getting out to see those films on their first weekend because that might be all we get while Marvel and their clones - some of which I also am a fan of - further strengthen their stranglehold on every big screen in the major movie houses.

I think back to Autumn/Winter 2007. I'd been in L.A. a little over a year, and the Regal Cinema at the Rolling Hills Terrace on Deep Valley Drive was my perpetual weekend spot, primarily because they had a killer Soundsystem and were not afraid to turn it LOUD. That year, I saw so many great films - none of which were, if I remember correctly - genre. No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Charlie Wilson's War, spring immediately to mind. I can't help wondering if we'll ever see a roll-out of non-franchise films like that again. 2019 was a brief return to form; however, the pandemic may have been the real death knell for non-event films, the kind where two adults go to see a film unattached to properties or characters they are familiar with. And there's nothing wrong with big-budget, superhero blockbusters - I just hope that's not all there is to choose from on the big screen. Because I love seeing quiet, contemplative films like The Banshees of Inisherin at the theatre as much as I do whatever the next Avengers or whatever.

But I totally side-stepped my own set-up with my maudlin reverie. How was Amsterdam? Pretty damn good. I'll specifically say that Christian Bale is fantastic, as are all the performances. The script is a bit overly ambitious and the plot suffers from that, so there were moments where I was a little annoyed at what began to feel unmanageably dense, but those performances really anchored the film for me. 




Playlist:

Metallica - Kill 'Em All
Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct
Zeal and Ardor - Firewake (single)
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous
Lustmord - Dark Matter
SQÜRL and Jozef Van Wissem - Only Lovers Left Alive OST




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


It will require an effort of Will to make the breakthrough that will move me into the next phase of a project. 

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Woody Harrelson & Christian Bale in Out of the Furnace (via Latino Review)



Latino Review is BY FAR the best movie news site around and it is to their page I gleefully redirect you  now to learn more about this film, Out of the Furnace, which appears will be a high-level Oscar contender this year. I love a lot of different kinds of movies, but truth be told Oscar season, which we are now in the earliest weeks of, is my favorite. November and December - when a year is good and not suffering from Hollywood carrying tentpole seasons on for prolonged profit as they did in what I think was 2010 (or was it 2011? One year recently all we had was tentpoles up through years end if I remember correctly, with hardly an h'oeuvres tray worth of serious cinema) these are the months where my local cinema truly becomes a cathedral for me. Anyway, thus far we have12 Years a Slave, Captain Phillips, Gravity and All is Lost and then here comes news of this, a serious film with performances by two actors I really like but do not always appear in A level work. Just from this clip we see both Woody Harrelson and Christian Bale have a sort of gravity to their performance that registers as "this movie means business" - or at least it appears to by the clip. I'm intrigued and this may be the first film of 2013's Oscar season that I am really looking forward too.