"pedestrian"; "flâneur"; a "gentleman stroller of city streets"; "lounger"; "saunterer"; "loafer"; a "person who walks the city in order to experience it"; an "idle man-about-town"; a "complete philosophical way of living and thinking".
The walls are the desk against which he presses his notebooks; newsstands are his libraries and the terraces of cafés are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work is done. -Walter Benjamin,"The Flâneur"
BEN BRYNMOR FOWLER
Currently living in Ebisu, Tokyo. A lover of city living & city walking, cinema, music, fiction, currently writing a PhD on contemporary theatre in Britain and Germany, and developing an intense relationship with apple gadgets.
OTHER HOMES:
http://www.scoop.it/t/british-and-german-theatre-today
Instagram username: IBKHOV
“Do you know why we called him Daffy?”
A quick review of J.Edgar. I’m aware most people haven’t seen it yet, so no spoilers…
Essentially, it’s the tragedy of PSYCHO, narrowly averted by the redemptive power of love.
In my view, some of the scenes need re-ordering (which would make the point stronger).
Dame Dench is scarier in this movie than even in NOTES ON A SCANDAL mode.
I liked it a lot. I watched this film last night at the gorgeous GDR relic, KINO INTERNATIONAL on Karl-Marx-Allee. It was a resounding setting for the political argument of the film, and the audience tittered when a wire tap on Kennedy discovered him in a basement with an East German Communist. I also didn’t realise until I got there that the monday night previews are called MONGAY. So I was surrounded by over 200 men. Gay men. A particularly fascinating test audience for this film. You even get to see Shirley Temple, which sent me into spirals of ecstacy. However, the film veers into the sentimental once too often - and smooths over some of the nastier bits of Hoover’s biography. The last 20 mins could be pared back. And tinkling piano music should be banned from biopics, especially in ‘touching’ moments. It’s lethal.
The biggest problem the film battles against is the comedy of prosthetic ageing. DiCaprio (who is a fine - nay, great - actor) ALMOST gets away with it. He certainly comes off the best - thank goodness, as he spends about half the film as an old man. But the texture, colour, weight, movement, moisture of real skin just seems to ellude the special effects department. This may as well be CGI. In the opening credits you see a death mask in a cabinet, and that’s the outcome these monstrous rubber prosthetics have on the actor beneath - they rob the face of the breath of life. The contrast is especially comedic when REAL old people act alongside the aged-up trio at the heart of the film. But poor Armie Hammer - when he eventually appears as his septuagenarian equivalent, I thought that the projectionist had spliced in the wrong spool and we were suddenly watching HALLOWEEN H20….
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