I just got back from the cinema with Seana and Matt, we went to see "Stranger than Fiction" with Emma Thompson and Will Ferrell. Now, I feel it's important to note, I am generally not enamoured with Will Ferrell in any sense. Yes, sometimes I find him quite funny, but I definatly have not been sucked into his ineffable cult of personality. However, I was incredibly impressed with this particular film, and him in particular.
The story follows a writer [Thompson] who is suffering from writer's block as she attempts to complete her current book. However, as she is sitting at her type-writer, in her pyjamas and smoking endless ciggarettes, narrating the life of her main character, Harold Crick [Ferrell] we begin to see him being able to hear her narrate his life. I feel like it's important to mention that Thompson is utterly fantastic, granted I've rarely seen her in a film where she isn't a terse and serious woman, [see, "Emma", "Love, Actually" etc.] but she is a fantastic actress. Her mannerisms as Karyn Effiel were almost frighteningly realistic. She ambles around this sparse, high ceilinged apartment, smoking ciggarettes "I don't need nicotine patches, I smoke ciggarettes." and stubbing them out on tissues she's spat into, this is a wonderful smoker's habit my mother actually has. She wears her over-sized blue and white striped pyjamas and a black cardigan throughout most of the film, and has a vairety of excellent tricks to "research her work", including sitting the rain fantasizing about car accidents, hanging around emergency rooms, "I wonder if there's a way for me to see the one's that are sure to die..." and contemplating leaping of off buildings. She is so isolated and so irratible that she's a completely believable writer.
Will Ferrell is pleasent to watch as the pedantic Harold Crick, the kind of man who counts his steps, times things and does math very quickly in his head. He's very unlike the kind of characters we're all so familiar with. Also, there are moments where he seems profoundly genuine. I also enjoy it when one sees a film where a really common actor gets to play a role which is quite extraordinary. This is a pretty extraordinary film.
The other thing I really enjoyed about this movie was the typical university professor Harold seeks out to help him with his problem, of being someone's character. Dustin Hoffman makes an utterly convincing literary professor. He sits around a spacious, but disorganized office, making inane lists, writing inane letters to authors, and watching television. He does revolting things like pours his undrunk coffee back into the pot, and rarely wears shoes. [The appearance of a bare foot caused an unexpected gasp in the cinema, not that bare feet are particuarly revolting.] However, he is so typical, the appearance of his space, the speed at which he changes his mind, and the seriousness with which he considers literary matters, especially those of comedy and tragedy. "If it's a tragedy - you die, if it's a comedy - you get hitched." [This is completely true...and that highly technical method is really the one we use, tragedies are stories where basically decent characters die, or at least have really bad luck, either for no reason, or because they have one small, and probably ironic flaw.]
Anyway, I would say there are three fucking gret moments in this movie, and one of them involves Hoffman asking a series of very serious questions to Harold to identify what narratives he is not stuck in.
"Have you been made up of things before, lime, stone, wood, corpses? What's your favourite word? [interger] Are you king of anything, say, King of the Lanes at the Bowling Alley? Do you have magic powers?"
All perfectly seriously, because people who study literature think seriously about these sorts of things.
"Well, I've established you're not in a Greek or Roman myth, about 7 fairy tales, most Chinese folk stories, you're not Frankenstein's creature, or a Gollum, or indeed Hamlet...aren't you glad you aren't a Gollum?"
Another one of the more brilliant moments involves Emma Thompson and Queen Latifah at the ER...it's well worth it...
Excellent.
The story follows a writer [Thompson] who is suffering from writer's block as she attempts to complete her current book. However, as she is sitting at her type-writer, in her pyjamas and smoking endless ciggarettes, narrating the life of her main character, Harold Crick [Ferrell] we begin to see him being able to hear her narrate his life. I feel like it's important to mention that Thompson is utterly fantastic, granted I've rarely seen her in a film where she isn't a terse and serious woman, [see, "Emma", "Love, Actually" etc.] but she is a fantastic actress. Her mannerisms as Karyn Effiel were almost frighteningly realistic. She ambles around this sparse, high ceilinged apartment, smoking ciggarettes "I don't need nicotine patches, I smoke ciggarettes." and stubbing them out on tissues she's spat into, this is a wonderful smoker's habit my mother actually has. She wears her over-sized blue and white striped pyjamas and a black cardigan throughout most of the film, and has a vairety of excellent tricks to "research her work", including sitting the rain fantasizing about car accidents, hanging around emergency rooms, "I wonder if there's a way for me to see the one's that are sure to die..." and contemplating leaping of off buildings. She is so isolated and so irratible that she's a completely believable writer.
Will Ferrell is pleasent to watch as the pedantic Harold Crick, the kind of man who counts his steps, times things and does math very quickly in his head. He's very unlike the kind of characters we're all so familiar with. Also, there are moments where he seems profoundly genuine. I also enjoy it when one sees a film where a really common actor gets to play a role which is quite extraordinary. This is a pretty extraordinary film.
The other thing I really enjoyed about this movie was the typical university professor Harold seeks out to help him with his problem, of being someone's character. Dustin Hoffman makes an utterly convincing literary professor. He sits around a spacious, but disorganized office, making inane lists, writing inane letters to authors, and watching television. He does revolting things like pours his undrunk coffee back into the pot, and rarely wears shoes. [The appearance of a bare foot caused an unexpected gasp in the cinema, not that bare feet are particuarly revolting.] However, he is so typical, the appearance of his space, the speed at which he changes his mind, and the seriousness with which he considers literary matters, especially those of comedy and tragedy. "If it's a tragedy - you die, if it's a comedy - you get hitched." [This is completely true...and that highly technical method is really the one we use, tragedies are stories where basically decent characters die, or at least have really bad luck, either for no reason, or because they have one small, and probably ironic flaw.]
Anyway, I would say there are three fucking gret moments in this movie, and one of them involves Hoffman asking a series of very serious questions to Harold to identify what narratives he is not stuck in.
"Have you been made up of things before, lime, stone, wood, corpses? What's your favourite word? [interger] Are you king of anything, say, King of the Lanes at the Bowling Alley? Do you have magic powers?"
All perfectly seriously, because people who study literature think seriously about these sorts of things.
"Well, I've established you're not in a Greek or Roman myth, about 7 fairy tales, most Chinese folk stories, you're not Frankenstein's creature, or a Gollum, or indeed Hamlet...aren't you glad you aren't a Gollum?"
Another one of the more brilliant moments involves Emma Thompson and Queen Latifah at the ER...it's well worth it...
Excellent.