Kasaba (The Small Town)

After falling in love with Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Uzak (2002) and Climates (2006) and in my excitement about his forthcoming Three Monkeys, I rented Artificial Eye's "Early Works" DVD.

This film, made in 1997, reveals the Ceylan sensibilities to already be a fully formed aesthetic style. The long, almost drowsy takes, the picking out of exquisite, minute details, the lingering on faces. Shot in black and white, it is essentially a documentary, a portrait of the small town of the title through the eyes of its children. There is a wonderful sequence at the beginning, in the depths of a snowy winter, as the children come to school for the day. One of their group arrives late, being spotted running down a hill at the far end of the town, runs into the room soaked from head to foot, a big grin on his face. Throughout the scene, his drying socks over the stove and a feather floating around the classroom provide a steady, slow rythmn:

Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal)

Fourth part of Truffaut's Doinel tetralogy just as good as part three! Oh it's great!

Rachel Getting Married

Thanks should be given for the big queue at the Cineworld that led us to abandon an attempt to see Revolutionary Road and hotfoot it to the GFT to see this instead.

It was absolutely fantastic, both on silly "wow, that's a really cool wedding" way (there was a samba troop, loads of musicians sitting around, Sister Carol) and in a "wow, Anne Hathaway is an amazingly good actor" way. She is really, really good; the whole 2 hours are spent inwardly fighting the equally dominant feelings of love and hate you have for her character, Kym. She walks the tightrope perfectly. In almost every scene you want to hug her and shout at her, which, incidentally is what the family do most of the time!

This is what Noah Baumbach's disappointing "Margot at the Wedding" should have been.

Film of the year so far. Hope she gets the Oscar.