What a wonderful topic to come back to after a few weeks’ absence from Friday 5! The thought-provokers have to be my favourite genre of film.  I can appreciate a mindless chick flick, I don’t mind a gun-slinging action fest and hell, I could probably watch the entire Disney backcatalogue in one sitting.  But my absolute favourite type of film is the one that makes me think.  And while some films make us think in the sense that they raise important historical or contemporary issues to the fore, my ultimate definition of a thought-provoking film is one that makes me question. Question life itself, or reality, or space, or time, or even my own mind. So while I’ve seen, thought about and greatly appreciated films like Blood Diamond, The Hurt Locker and The Shawshank Redemption (the list goes on, and on), these escape my compendium of favourite thought-provoking films, simply because they don’t carry this latter quality, that of really lodging themselves within my psyche and forcing me to ask questions. So with that in mind, here are my five…

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine is a beautifully constructed story about life, love and the significance of memory. What do our memories do to us and where, or who, would we be without them?  If we could have our memories, or at least our bad memories, deleted, would we really be happy?  Would the sun really shine in the spotless mind?  This is such a poignant, bittersweet, beautiful film, and definitely worth a concentrated watch if you haven’t seen it already. The acting is also fantastic – this film convinced me that Jim Carrey is an extremely talented actor, and not just a lunatic with a rubber face. Epic.

Inception

I’ve already seen Inception twice at the cinema, and I really wouldn’t need much persuading to go a third time either (it was even better the second time, I thought). Let me just make it clear, this film is BRILLIANT. Not only does it have exactly the right balance of ingredients for a ‘pin you to your chair and compel you to lose yourself’ blockbuster – great cast, fantastic acting, ingenious plot and amazing soundtrack – but it’s also furiously provocative. It has made me think repeatedly about the significance of sleep, of dreams and their role and also about the ether of the subconscious mind.  My boyfriend and I discussed it for the entire walk home from the cinema both times and I’ve discussed it at length with other people as well.  Pure brain joy, that’s all I can say really.

Sliding Doors

Sliding Doors is, at one level anyway, a simple, pretty, romantic comedy. At another level, it’s a well-constructed foray into ideas of fate, (mis)fortune and the courses our lives take based on the simplest things we do. Could an ostensibly nondescript, mundane event like the catching or the missing of a train really hold the power to change our lives both fundamentally and irrevocably? I’m not a strong believer in the whole ‘everything happens (or doesn’t happen) for a reason’ adage (I tend to think of this as either a cop out or a really thin justification), but at the same time I don’t entirely refute the idea that fate has something of a role, however small, to play in each of our stories. I’m always left turning these ideas over in my mind when I watch Sliding Doors. A lovely film, with a subtle but nevertheless weirdly powerful message to send.

The Truman Show

Again, The Truman Show is a deceptive one. It could, on one level, be taken as simple, light-hearted entertainment. But it’s also so much more than that. This is the kind of film that makes you (or me) question your own reality. What if your life, everyone you know and everything you’ve ever come to believe, were fictional? What if your entire existence was someone else’s story, and everyone knew it but you? What is “reality” anyway, and who’s to define it? This film is not only incredibly, beautifully bittersweet, but it also has the capacity to turn me into a squirming bag of rabid paranoia and begin to accuse everyone around me of acting in the show of my life (egocentric a touch?!). It is brilliant, nonetheless. If you haven’t seen it, get it sorted.

Love, Actually

Finally, we come to Love, Actually. Paradigmatic chick flick, everyone’s favourite feel-good Christmas romp, the world is a great big jolly bundle of hugs, let’s break out the unicorns, yada yada yada. No, Love, Actually is on my list because I actually (ho ho) do consider it a provocative film. It’s a film about the tapestries formed by human lives. About how they intertwine, how the people we pass in the street, or encounter on the tube or the bus each have their own stories, their own families, friends, lovers, problems, worries, thoughts and opinions. Love Actually never fails to remind me that the world revolves around every one of us, and not simply me. Rarely a bad lesson to learn!

Check out the other Friday Fives if you get the chance – I’m slightly out of the loop and have shamefully little idea of who’s involved these days!  Start with Caroline, check out Holly and Laura (I think Kat‘s away this week) and follow any links you find!

Image above from Flickr.

I was never not going to go and see the second Sex and the City film, although I had my reservations almost as soon as I heard it was being made. I was a huge fan of the TV series and I also really enjoyed the first film which I found entertaining, touching and extremely heartwarming. I forgave it its excessive cheesiness and its obsession with money, materialism and Manolo Blahnik because it made me laugh, it was entertaining and I actually thought the story at its heart was a good one.

The reason I was dubious about a second film was that every loose end left lying seemed to be tied up well and tightly the last time. Carrie and Big finally married; Miranda and Steve resolved their fidelity problems; Charlotte’s fertility woes disappeared and Samantha and Smith parted ways in an ultra-civilised manner, she returning to her sassy, single self and he, well, disappearing into the ether of ex-boyfriend-dom, presumably never to be mentioned again. And that seemed to be that. So when I heard there was a sequel in the making I was instantly wary: where could the story could go next without dismantling that nicely wrapped up parcel?

Well, to Abu Dhabi it seems.  But before we get into that, let’s catch up with the “fabulous” (I can’t take the word ‘fabulous’ seriously anymore, sorry) foursome.  What have they been doing since we left them two years ago, toasting cosmopolitans to Samantha as she turned 50?  Well, Carrie Preston-but-still-sometimes-Bradshaw (not sure what’s going on there) has been married to John, a.k.a Mr Big (I want to refer to him as ‘The Artist, formerly known as Prince” for some reason), for two years, and seems to have spent most of that time lavishing money on their ultra-sleek new apartment while continuously berating him for sometimes wanting to watch television and put his feet up on the couch (she somehow didn’t know this about him before she married him, of course). Gone, sadly, are the days of Carrie’s cramped but charming rent-controlled apartment with its bulging wardrobe and its two bathroom doors. Gone too, seem to be the days of her happy-go-lucky disposition and her cute one-liners. Carrie is no fun in 2010. She moans a lot and she seems to have abandoned every personality trait that once made her so endearing. “Is this because I’m a bitch wife who nags you?”, she wails at Big. Well yes, Carrie, yes it bloody well is!

Samantha meanwhile, is menopausal. But rather than embrace it, flaunt it and somehow make it sexy in the way I would have expected her to, we find that she’s knocking back 50 pills every morning to try and trick her body into thinking itself younger. Uh, WHAT? What the hell happened to the woman who was more than happy with her body, and her life?  And what kind of message does that send to the rest of us?  Samantha is now more obsessed with herself than she ever was before, and her chronic insecurity about the prospect of growing older seemed to combine with her obscene vanity to make her appear as little more than really rather pathetic. What I used to love about Samantha was that she was confident, secure within herself and fiercely, ferociously independent. But her vapid obsession with reigniting her youth has kissed a fond goodbye to all of that. She’s not funny anymore. She’s tragic.

And Charlotte. Charlotte ‘I-can’t-cope-even-though-I-have-no-financial-worries-whatsoever-and-mountains-of-paid-help’ York-Goldenblatt. My God was she annoying in this film. In case anyone has forgotten, it was Charlotte who spent the entire six series of the TV show lusting after her Disney-based fantasy of marrying Prince Charming, having his adorable children and giving up work to stay at home and bake cookies all day. And this all happened in the end when Harry (who somewhat weirdly manages to be an ass-kicking, hard-as-nails lawyer by day, yet a drooling, docile puppy-type by night) and their two children turned up. So you’d be forgiven for feeling surprised when it’s revealed that, despite having everything she ever wanted and then some, poor old Charlotte still isn’t happy. Because now she’s started fretting about Harry’s fidelity. Is he having it off with the gorgeous, bra-less, twenty-something Nanny? Are sparks flying while Nanny and Harry bathe Charlotte‘s children while Charlotte herself preens remorselessly infront of the mirror while draping herself in vintage Dior?  Well no, they’re not. The Nanny is a lesbian, naturally. But if she wasn’t, oh Charlotte, you’d  in big trouble. Because despite never having put a single foot wrong, Harry must be a cheater at heart, right?  He is a man after all, heaven forbid.  Dangle a young woman with a decent cupsize infront of him and off he’ll go into the sunset, wife and children duly abandoned.  Is it just me or does anyone else smell a sexist cliché?

Miranda seemed to be the only one of the four who I didn’t want to grab by the hair approximately once every two minutes throughout the whole film. While time seems to have mellowed her sarcastic rejoinders a touch, her ball-busting personality is still very much there, and I was thankful for that.  The only thing that disappointed me is that Miranda doesn’t get much of a storyline. The perma-dramas of the other three (TV-watching husband, advancing age and bra-less nanny in case you’d forgotton) seem to have put well and truly paid to that, which is a shame, given that she was by far and away the least annoying character in the entire movie.

So after we are treated to the most painstakingly circus-like wedding there’s ever been (of Stanford and Anthony – wait a minute, don’t they hate each other?), which includes Liza Minnelli performing a rendition of Beyoncé’s Single Ladies that I would only ever have expected to see in a nightmare, the four girls are whisked off to Abu Dhabi on the back of some PR gig Samantha is involved in.  It’s a tenuous excuse for several hundred thousand shots of the four walking in a horizontal line (why do they insist on doing that?) across the Arabian desert, clothed head to toe in designer togs.  The entire movie is tenuous (or is that tedious?) though, so we’ll just have to get over it.

It wasn’t even the ridiculousness of the hotel, nor the fact that each girl had her own driver, her own manservant and her own cubic metre of deep-conditioned, vanilla-scented, rose petal-scattered air in which to breathe that annoyed me the most (although those things did annoy me A LOT).  It was the fact that they seemed so blatantly ignorant of everything that wasn’t shoes, or clothes, or sex-related.  Have these women really managed to get to their forties (their fifties, even!) without forming a more concrete impression of the Middle East than one based solely on Disney’s Aladdin?  Have they really been that shockingly self-absorbed for such a lengthy period of time?  Don’t they ever watch the news?  Or read a book?  Or feel embarrassingly ignorant at dinner parties and thus resolve to actually learn stuff?  I could not get over the fact that these supposedly independent, opinionated, sassy, sexy women were so completely and unutterably dumb when it came to anything other than one of their two specialist subjects: sex and whining.  The message that sends to millions of women worldwide!  ‘Oh it’s OK to know nothing about other cultures and foreign affairs ladies!  As long as you can walk in high heels and you give good head you’ll be absolutely FINE!’.

And the ignorance was so pervasive that it tarnished the entire film.  They came across as a bunch of completely vacuous airheads for the entire two and half hours.  And disrespectful as well.  Samantha flaunting her bare body left, right and centre, having sex on the beach and waving her condom collection around in the marketplace for all to see. Carrie leaving money for her poor Indian servant to fly home to see his wife after he makes her some warm milk.  All four girls being so completely overwhelmed by the idea of covering themselves up in public that they essentially make spectacles of themselves time and time again.  I couldn’t stand it.  And then there was the Aidan thing. WOW, these poor, unfortunate women can’t even fly halfway across the world without some huge, ground-shaking volcano of a drama involving an ex-lover erupting unto one of them can they?  Someone get these poor, war-torn shoe addicts a cold flannel and a foot massage, they really do have a tough time of it.

The whole ignorance thing wasn’t just frustrating – it implied a nasty, arrogant superiority as well.  The girls seemed to think that anything un-American a) was wrong and b) should be changed.  The worst scene in the entire film for me came when a group of burka-clad muslim women revealed themselves to be Luis Vuitton-devotees JUST like Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte (‘hurrah we’re all the same, that religion thing, it’s just an act really’).  It made such a complete mockery of Middle Eastern culture and thought that I almost had to get up and leave.

Now you might think I’m just one of those SATC haters who will use any excuse to give the show a good old bashing.  But I’m not.  I really wanted this film to be a success, and to prove every single sequel sceptic out there (including myself) wrong.  I absolutely loved Sex and the City as a TV show, AND a first movie, and I defended it time and time again to its detractors in the face of many a barrage of criticism.  I brushed off its vanity, the fact that it can at times be little more than an advert for clothing designers and also the fact that it sends a whole host of really quite crap messages to women (and men) across the globe on average fifty times an hour.  I used to think that it was just entertainment, and if you were wise enough not to actually believe that you could be Carrie Bradshaw, then you could take it for what it’s meant to be, and just have fun with it.  But this second film took every one of those negatives far too far, at the expense of all of the show’s many positive attributes.  Blatant disregard for the rest of the world, a host of ignorant, self-absorbed characters and a sinister underlying tone of Western imperialism combined to make me feel ashamed to be in the cinema watching it.  It genuinely worries me that scores of young girls and women around the world lap this rubbish up and walk home from the cinema thinking “I want to be that”.  Sex and the City will never be the same for me again, and I really, genuinely wish I’d never seen this film.  My many happy memories of a great TV show are forever tainted because of a desire on the part of those involved to flog the SATC cash cow into the ground.  If you are still planning on seeing it, make sure you take a stiff gin with you to the cinema.  And have it to hand throughout.

As part of a post-Lent celebration (which also involved spending £3 on an *amazing* vintage-style tea tray in my favourite charity shop) I finally saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on Saturday and I have to say, contrary to the views of almost everyone I’ve spoken to, that I absolutely loved it.  It was a complete feast for the eyes – the setting, the costumes (drool, drool and more drool) and the make-up were all totally incredible and the acting wasn’t half bad either.  I particularly enjoyed Helena Bonham Carter who portrayed a hilarious yet simultaneously pretty darn scary Red Queen.

What disappointed me about the evening had nothing to do with the film itself, but with the price of the cinema experience (there’s a surprise).  The movie has been out for a while now, which meant that my boyfriend and I had to clench our teeth, tighten our fists and grudgingly enter the hallowed halls of one of Edinburgh’s big multiplex cinemas to see it.  In terms of costs I was by no means expecting miracles but it nevertheless came as quite a shock to be hit with a single ticket price of £10.60.  I mean, seriously, just where do they get off!?  Ponder, if you will, the sheer pulse of human traffic throbbing across the threshold of these places up and down the country on a typical Saturday evening.  If each person pays, as we did, around £10, the profits accruing to those at the top of the picture house tree completely escape my imagination.  Even the thought makes my blood boil, especially when there are so many small, independent cinemas visibly struggling to get by at the moment (if you are ever in the Edinburgh vicinity do please visit the Dominion cinema in Morningside – leather couches, reclining seats and a jolly barman with a *bow tie*, all on the cheap).  I would without question have gone to one of these over the big branch, but sadly it wasn’t an option on Saturday.  I instead paid the snotty, poloshirt-clad cashier with gritted teeth and spent most of the trailer time inwardly huffing about how ridiculous an expense the cinema has become.

It’s true when you think about it.  When I was a student, the cinema was a cheap and cheerful alternative to a night out at the weekends.  The cost of a ticket was roughly the same as that of two drinks, and if you didn’t buy any snacks the whole evening would set you back less than a fiver.  With the incessant hiking in prices, however, it’s probably a lot cheaper nowadays to get ingloriously drunk than it is to see a new film (something about typing that sentence just made me feel queasy).  What a great message to send to young people – ‘oh don’t worry about expanding your horizons kids, better to buy some cheap cider and get off your faces instead’.  It’s my guess that the cinema is just a no-go zone for many people these days, and I wince at the thought of how much it costs for a family of four or five.  After my experience on Saturday I can’t say that I’m overly enthusiastic about the idea of rushing back there this weekend myself.  It’s so painfully disappointing to witness what was once a completely affordable means of entertainment become so inaccessible that I almost can’t watch anymore.  I’m just glad that this time I enjoyed the film – paying £10.60 for two hours of dark room boredom would have left a particularly sour taste in my mouth.

Image above courtesy of Flickr – Wahlander.

I saw another good film last night, courtesy of exploiting Orange’s fantastic 241 offer (Orange are actually giving away free SIM cards at the moment -- enter your details here and cheap cinema tickets will magically be yours).  In terms of what’s on, there seem to be a few worthwhile watches around at the moment, although I guess that’s probably down to the fact that the awards season has well and truly kicked off.

Last night’s offering, ‘Up In The Air’ is the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) who, in pursuit of his career as a professional ‘firer’ (seriously, he just flies around America sacking the employees of people who are too scared to do it themselves) spends his life either on a plane, in the terminal bar, or in an airport hotel.  Having ostracized himself from pretty much everyone and everything around him, Bingham only ever feels at home ‘on the road’.  The cracking of his spotless exterior begins when he meets his high-flying female equivalent Alex (Vera Farmiga), and is helped along when he is charged with the task of training his company’s latest protogeé, Natalie (the brilliantly-cast Anna Kendrick).

The film is no blockbuster, but the story is extremely clever, and the dialogue brilliant.  There are also many more laughs along the way than I had expected.  I’m not a huge George Clooney fan, but his performance here, coupled with his appearance in the superb ‘Burn After Reading’ have made me begin to slowly doubt that.  If you’re in the mood for some light, witty entertainment, ‘Up In The Air’ is just the (plane) ticket.  I was both surprised and delighted this morning to see that it has been nominated for six baftas.  Jolly good it is too!

It’s a while away yet, but I’ve been thinking recently about what I should give up for Lent this year.  I’m not religious, but I always piggyback on Lent, mainly because I think the idea of sacrificing something you like, or something you are dependent on for a few weeks is a great one.  On a personal level, Lent reminds me to be grateful for the things I have, and to be a more appreciative person in general.  Also, I just like a bloody good challenge from time to time.

I read a book a few months ago called ‘Not Buying It’, where writer Judith Levine gave up shopping, except for absolute essentials for an entire year.  I loved the idea (and the book), and have been intrigued ever since as to how I would fare were I to undergo a similar project.  I would hate to think of myself as in any way dependent on ‘luxuries’, but I’ve never really put that to the test.  I’m also intrigued to find out where I really stand in relation to all the reading I’ve been doing of late on consumerism and downshifting.  It’s one thing to read the literature and be inspired by the ideas, but quite another to put those ideas into some form of practice.

With this in mind, for Lent this year I’ve decided to give up (‘Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be’)…surplus consumerism.

Put more bluntly, buying stuff I don’t need.

To make matters easier both for me and for others who might be intrigued by the process, I’ve drawn up a list of almost everything I imagine I might buy in February or March, and classified each item under ‘banned’ or ‘allowed’ (more creative category names escape me at this early stage, my bad).  The ‘allowed’ list comprises essentials such as food, basic toiletries, cleaning products, stamps and pressing repairs.  On the ‘banned’ list, we have pretty much everything else.  This includes clothes, shoes, meals out, cinema, take-away coffee, books, magazines, toiletries which can’t be considered essential, fabric, sewing accessories and bits and bobs for the flat.

Lent begins on 17th February, and I plan to keep a diary of the challenge here on the blog, so if you are interested you can follow along.

In the meantime, here’s the list…

ALLOWED

Food (the only restrictions are on eating out)
Rent
Household bills
Shampoo/conditioner
Deodourant
Moisturiser
Facewash
Shower gel
Toothpaste/toothbrush
Foundation/Mascara

BANNED

Clothes/shoes/accessories
Books
Cinema/gigs/entry tickets
Electrical equipment
Meals out/fast food
Coffees/teas out
Newspapers/magazines
All makeup except foundation and mascara (my essentials)
Perfume
Hairspray/miscellaneous hair products
Fabric/sewing accessories
Stationery (excepting essentials – postage stamps etc)
Ornaments/decorations/things for the flat

As you can see, I could have been more strict about what I consider to be ‘essential’ – I do realise that mascara, for example is by no means instrumental to basic human survival, but that’s not really the point of the challenge.  It’s not about staying alive and living off the land eating bugs and whatnot, it’s simply about abstaining from buying things that I don’t need or won’t use on a daily basis.  Also, I will have to go to work every day for the duration of the challenge, and while the dress code isn’t hugely strict, I don’t think that turning up looking like the bogey monster is really acceptable.

If anyone has any suggestions for additions to the list, or if anyone has comment to make about some of the things I’ve put on it, I really would be very interested to hear about it!

More to come as of 17th Feb!

Stop Sign image courtesy of Flickr: ladybeames.