lightning strikes twice

One of my favourite indulgences is reading “The Sartorialist”. I just love his photography of fashion on the streets. This recent post on wearing pants at the waist and not the hips caught my attention, particularly this part:

If you are taller, check out old photos of Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck – all tall and still wearing their pants at their waist (with very successful results)

So, I’ve tracked down some photos of these gentlemen:

Black Book – Story of a Dutch Jewish woman who is trying to escape from a German occupied Holland. After her family is slaughtered she joins the resistance, but she finds that in war, and even after war, there are no real heroes. Well acted and shot, it gets a little absurd in the last third of the film, but not enough to ruin the experience. 7/10

Knocked Up – Excellent film about family, love, kids and life. Really, really, really funny, but also sweet and poignant. The writing is amazing — at no point does it take the “easy” route and descend into cliche just to get laughs. The bouncer scene And its funnier and more memorable because of it. 9/10

The Simpsons Movie – I’m a big Simpsons fan, but this was boring, and not very funny. The jokes felt very “telegraphed”. The cleverest part of the movie was in the first ten seconds, with the scene in the cinema, and Homer’s rant about seeing something for free on TV. 5/10

Munich – Pretty solid. Good performance from Eric Bana. This is such a tough topic, because outside of WWII treatments, there hasn’t been many films about Jewish conflict. Spielberg kept it very focused and clinical, and the cold and calculating angle versus the human element was a reasonable approach. 7/10

Kinsey – Really interesting look into this scientific pioneer’s life as he researched the sexual behaviour of people in the United States.  Fascinating and very well acted.  8/10

Excellent!

Borat – Incredibly silly, but sort of funny, and structured well too. 7/10

The Holiday – you know what, this was not the worst romantic comedy I’ve ever seen — by no means awesome, but not as bad as I expected.  I really liked the old folk in this flick.  6/10

The Good German – confusing, badly cast, poorly acted.  This was not engaging in any way (I watched half on a friday night, then some the next morning just to finish it off) 5/10

Lightning Over Water – good to see Wim Wenders in action, even if he was a little self indulgent.  A little bit hard hitting because of the very visual aspect of the slow cancerous death of his friend Nicholas Ray.