Dir:  Fernando Meirelles
Released:  28th November 2008

Based on Jose Saramago’s Nobel-prize winning novel, Blindness opened the Cannes festival with a chaotic impression of what would happen were the human race to lose its sight. After City of God (2002) and The Constant Gardner (2005), it seemed natural to keep an eye out for director Fernando Meirelles’ new release, but as the inexplicable ocular contagion gradually spreads on screen, it becomes clear that blind faith is easily misplaced.

In spite of its impressive cast (which includes Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover) and the literary acclaim of Saramago’s novel, Blindness has neither the bite that characterised City of God nor the passion that distinguished The Constant Gardner. Its 120 minutes are painfully long, and Meirelles’ repetitive use of stagy light effects to mimic the onset of the infection quickly become irksome.

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Staring out of the window while trying to revise for exams, some delightfully quirky Indie films came into our minds.  A good old Indie flick may be just the procrastination-instigator needed to clear away the rainy, revision blues.  Go on, take a break, watch one of these…

Rushmore
The 1998 film is about first love (and loss) as seen through the bitter sweet eye-quirk of Wes Anderson.  Max Fischer, played by Jason Schwartzman, is the teenage protagonist who befriends Billy Murray’s Herman Blume; they both love elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross.  Comedy ensues and a satisfying ending is promised.

The Good Girl
A potentially bleak tale shot with humour (phew!).  Set in Texas, Jennifer Aniston’s character, Justine leads a dull life.  Luckily for the normally good (and married) girl, Jake Gyllenhaal, in the form of Holden Worther, comes into town and they embark on an affair.  The plot takes a twist and some of the more twisted characters reveal themselves but, eventually, Justine comes to terms with being ‘good’. 

Juno
A feel-good film with romance, profundity and lots of laughs, it sees the feisty teenager, Juno, played by Ellen Page, come to terms with her unplanned pregnancy.  Her family and friends rally round to support her during her pregnancy and she decides to have her unborn baby adopted.  As the months pass and Juno’s pregnancy develops, all the characters seem to grow and the film ends hopefully with a song…

Little Miss Sunshine
A ray of sunlight shone on a truly dysfunctional family and their Volkswagen T2 Microbus as they journey to California so that the seven-year-old, Olive can take part in the ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ beauty pageant.  A problematic but humorous road-trip takes place with all sorts of obstacles (and catastrophes).  On reaching California, the pageant is just as eventful as the journey to get there and they leave in a similar manner in which they arrived. 

Donnie Darko
A cryptic and dark film with a science fiction slant that follows the bright but disturbed teenager, Donnie Darko, as he has a series of cryptic dreams and hallucinations.  He hears the voice of Frank (a man in a creepy rabbit suit) tell him that the world will end soon and then tells him to take certain actions which lead Donnie into further trouble.  The film ends rather chillingly but almost as enigmatically as it begins…

Jean Paul Gaultier’s provocative Autumn/Winter collection, unveiled during Paris Fashion Week recently, reignited an age-old debate. Combining Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ track with animal call sounds, models repeatedly strutted down the runway in fox pelts, long trains of fur and animal heads atop their own as finishing accessories. The use of fur in fashion collections has long been the domain of high-end designer franchise, marred with controversy as a distinctly luxury item- the reliable winter income for fashion houses conscious of the profit margins. Gaultier’s collection used a tried and tested fashion formula, though his particularly extensive exploitation of animal skin means ethical dimensions of the fashion industry are no longer glossed over in catwalk reports – fur is firmly in the limelight once more.

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Orson Welles once said that making a film was “the biggest electric train-set a boy ever had!” Dr. Uwe Boll is definitely among the pantheon of the great auteurs, the directors who took control of their films and made every aspect of production their own.

Boll (his first name should be pronounced ‘you-vaaa’) started out of film school directing thrillers but he made his name adapting videogames, starting with the arcade shoot-em-up, House Of The Dead in 2003; a bright and silly rip-off of every zombie movie you’ve ever heard of but with more teens and bullets. He followed this adaptation with Alone In The Dark in 2005, a broad bastard of H.P. Lovecraft, Aliens and Tara Reid.

Both films got execrable reviews, one reviewer going so far as to say that he serves as a benchmark for all purveyors of bad cinema.  Certainly popular opinion is damning: four of his films currently grace the Internet Movie Database’s mythic ‘Bottom 100’ list, a stratified voting chart of exactly how far below the bottom of the barrel it’s possible to scrape.  And yet, there is so much to love about the man they call The Master of Error. 

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