We Need to Talk About... a really amazing film!

Right so it's been a long long time - or at least many days - since I've done any blogging. The reason for this absence is not that I no longer love blogging or reading but that I have moved to: another job in another industry, another city and another country. Quite a bit of change in one go. So at the moment focus is on settling in, getting to know my way around etc. etc.

Last weekend after a rather tough week in new position in a new department, my boyfriend took me to the cinema and even let me choose the film so we went for "We Need to Talk About Kevin". I read the book by Lionel Shriver a year or so ago and loved it so I was quite worried about the film actually. Would they be able to tell this horrible story without resorting to overdramatizing or focusing too much on Kevin and too little on the family. The book is so special. Even though it is all about Kevin, he is hardly in it. A minor character that the entire plot centers around. And the narrator, Eva, is unable to see outside of her own context at all which means that the reader has to do his/her bit to understand what is at play here. It is a difficult book to translate into a movie.

When we left the cinema, I was more or less stunned by the fact that the director had managed what I had in no way expected: to make the film a natural extension of the book. A lot of this is down to the incredible Tilda Swinton, who is probably the only actress on earth able to rightly portray Eva. Distressed, broken Eva whose life has been taken from her and left her with a shattered existence as an outcast. Much of story is not told outright but by her actions, her facial expressions and she takes this movie to another level - it is not sensational or cliche or over-emotional as one could have feared. It is silently strong, it made me physically uncomfortable in the best possible sense because it is so obvious that this is a family doomed to tragedy. Ezra Miller as Kevin is beyond amazing. A great career awaits this actor, I am sure, because he does a great job of portraying a range of emotions from sadness to a burning rage.

If you are wondering what to do next weekend, going to the cinema to watch "We Need to Talk About Kevin" would definitely be my suggestion.

I wish it was a book!

Right so I've written a couple of posts about books that have been made into films - but there are also a bunch of films that I really really wish was based on books. And maybe they are and I just haven't noticed. Anyway. There are quite a few films that I would love to read:



Juno. Script written by the cool, clever, imaginative and brave Diablo Cody who is never afraid of tackling difficult issues (teenage pregnancy in Juno, mental illness in United States of Tara). Would love to have her over for dinner and talk to her about screenwriting.



Adventureland Starring a rather cute guy and Twilight-girl Kristen Stewart this is a far cry from sparkling, moody vampires. This is all about a rich kid whose parents go bankrupt forcing him to work at the local adventureland (read: freak show) during his summer vacation. It would work really well as a coming-of-age book, I think.



Easy Virtue with Colin Flirt and Jessica Biel. I've mentioned this one before. It is set in the thirties and full of bright young things and fantastic music. The story of an English aristocrat who marries an American nobody to the extreme displeasure of his mother. It would be a classic - reminds me of "The Edwardians" by Vita Sackville-West.

Music to make you misbehave!

Have you seen the movie "Easy Virtue"? An adaption of a Noël Coward play, it stars Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes and Colin Firth in a story about an English gentry family and the young American woman who marries the heir. It is a comedy with great music and I loved it. The music is amazing as well so here is a little number to make your Sunday swing: