Archives For nicole kidman

The other day I caught a rerun of Moulin Rouge! on tv, and this is the first time I’ve lived it — I not only sing out loud, but recite as well as cry during the whole show… so, yeah~ I LIVE IT — since I started watching Indian films. The only thing that would make that movie better is to have had Urmila in there for the Chamma Chamma [clip] sample.

You can’t really get any more Indian -near masala levels- than this, and of course my mind had to have a Battle of the Courtesans between Satine, The Sparkling Diamond and Chandramukhi. It’s a visual battle between Baz Lurhman and Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a flawless duel between Nicole Kidman and Madhuri Dixit, and a fight for the dramatic between Moulin Rouge! and Devdas.

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On one side, you got the courtesan manipulated to stay that falls in love with the mistaken penniless writer, until she finds out the evil duke will kill her loved one- oh, and she’s dying of tuberculosis. On the other, the courtesan lives in a mysteriously super posh and luxurious whorehouse, and is the most sought after until she falls in love with the rich lawyer who’s suffering of a broken heart and likes to get drunk to forget his sorrows… that is, of course, until he dies of liver failure after a long period of continuous intoxication.

Jesus, Chandramukhi. Forget, Devdas, and elope with Christian.

This is the first time in my movie-counting life that I’ve seen over 50 movies by the middle of the year. As a general number, I picked 48 a year, to make sure I -at least- watched one film a week for my end of the year list.

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There’s a LOT of bad and meh movies so far, but there’s also a decent Top10. Not unbelievable, but decent. It’s a working one that would do for a Dec.31 or Jan.01 publishing date. LOL

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Too much awesomeness into one.

What made it to the list and where it placed? Some of my biggest biases placed lower than expected, and some that I don’t want to be my bias placed high on there~

Head over there and do your thing~

I was finally doing some room cleaning, and ran into this plastic bag that had a whole bunch of the tickets of movies I caught while living/staying in Van. The results? Of course, I spent over two hours trying to make out some of the fade tickets, arranged them and put them in order of attendance.

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The first movie that I caught there was Hulk at what used to be Tinseltown Cinemark. The first two columns cover my first year of studies. My maximum number of movies a month was 9 flicks in January 2004 (Cold Mountain, Big Fish, Peter Pan, 21 Grams, Along Came Polly, Monster, Butterfly Effect, The Cooler and Ginger Snaps 2), April 2004 (Hellboy, The Delicate Art of Parking, Kill Bill, Connie and Carla, Home on the Range, The Punisher, Dogville (twice) and Man on Fire), followed by July 2006 (Devil Wears PradaThe Omen,The Lake HouseThe King, PotC 2Lady in the Water, Strangers with Candy, and an unidentified movie that’s already faded) with 8 flicks.

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I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!

A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.

The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.

Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.

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1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies

I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.

I don’t know how this didn’t come to me before this photo.

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After her collaboration with Bong Joon-ho, and that she so wanted to work with Wong Kar-wai — it only makes sense that she wouldn’t mind working with Ang Lee, after all~ he’s won two Oscars for director. He hasn’t actually made his actors win anything, even though Heath Ledger should’ve won for Brokeback Mountain as Best Actor instead of Supporting for Batman.

Kidman has a great selection of director’s on her filmography. One of the very few with really REALLY interesting choices [1].

I’ve got some pretty nice recommendations to share.

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I never thought I would see the day when Nicole Kidman would USAGI [1]. On a red carpet… posing for hundreds of red carpet photographers and for all of us to see. I LOVE IT.

Nicole Kidman + Tom Hooper at SAG Awards 2013

Hmph! Have you seen this video of the international poster for Park Chan-wook’s English-debut, Stoker? I mean, it’s not enough that it’s Park Chan-wook, but it’s also got Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska, with a bunch of other good people. There’s this poster~~~

With the trailer edited with the making of the poster, weaving in and giving links to bits and pieces of the story, all layered on top with Emily Wells’ Becomes the Color. Any ideas on who designed/illustrated this?

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Though, still working out those kinks.

I’m considering changing some plugins…