Various Movies..

Movies, movies, movies. We lose count of the number we have seen over the years, certainly on TV in the early years, on VHS and now on DVD rental or purchase; even more recently we have come to the point of being able to download movies from the Internet, even though this side of the distribution has always historically been illegal, various efforts are being made to legalise if possible. Although the cat may be out of the bag, some say that the distributors have to make more of an effort to deal with the new media distribution that so far they have failed to make any real progress on. Whilst Napster was just for music, we have Bittorrent for movies and also the usenet.

But there has been, in the last ten years or so, another way of seeing movies which has been becoming more popular as time goes on; that is the cinema. We are blessed with 3 cinemas in Cambridge where I live; 1 of them is a Cineworld, another is a Vue and the third is an independent arts cinema, which does show the blockbusters from time to time. Whilst the Vue cinema is variable in quality and seems to be staffed by and attended by the small chav population, the Cineworld and the arts cinema tend to attract a higher intellectual quality of people.

One movie which I saw at the Arts cinema which made an impression on me was a movie called "Mugabe and the White African". The movie was a real life documentary about the struggles of a while South African family, who owned a farm in Zimbabwe and who struggled against the might of Robert Mugabe's goverment. Mugabe's people seem to rule the country by the rule of war and in a number of cases as included within the movie, their actions are very similar to the Nazis during World War II, despite being condemned by most if not all of the civilized world today.

Cambridge Arts Cinema, as part of the Picturehouse chain, do tend to give their best when it comes to showing movies, as a result of this screening, the director and the casting director also were present and gave a short talk to explain how the movie was made and the difficulties they experienced whilst filming. This was rather interesting, even though there was a sad story behind the movie. I do seriously recommend you to see it, if it is released on DVD or Blu/Ray in the near future, which I hope it will. This kind of movie lives on well on those formats, like they did on VHS back in the day.

Although I personally didn't get to see it, they showed, back in 2002/3, movies such as "Rabbit Proof Fence", "The Magdalene Sisters" (which I eventually saw later on), and the relatively new release about Charles Simeon, called, incidentally, "Simeon: A Life". Simeon himself preached at my church in Cambridge, Holy Trinity, back in the day and I hope to see the movie as soon as I can. Like Joanna Pacula's movies from over the years, they tend not to be released that widely on DVD or whichever format, so they can be difficult to see.

The advent of the Internet, like it or not, and particularly sites such as Twitter and Facebook, have meant that we can get a lot closer to our favourite actors from the movies. In the UK, a company called Showmasters have organised events called "Collectormania" which are held at Milton Keynes and feature a lot of actors and actresses from the real world of movies. Back at Collectormania 2, they had the Dutch actor, Rutger Hauer, doing autographs in person; it was a joy to meet him for the first time in the flesh. He got most of the visitors at that time to the event as it was the first ever time he had done a personal signing event in the UK at an event like that. Hopefully he will be back soon.

Although she and I haven't yet met in person (though again, I hope that will be at some point soon), my fave actress from the last number of years, Meredith Salenger, has become active on the web in a fantastic way. She regularly posts on Twitter under her own name ... minus the 'i' in her first name and regularly answers posts on the site relating to her life during filming her numerous movies & life since then. I honestly wish a lot more stars would follow her example; it is mainly because of sites such as mine about her that she got online in the first place.

We've had a couple of deaths which have unfortunately occurred in the last few months, firstly, the director of Dream A Little Dream, Marc Rocco, died suddenly & also on March 10th, 2010 we heard of the very untimely and shocking death of Corey Haim, Meredith's costar from Dream A Little Dream. The Haimster's death was unexpected and was rather frightening for myself, when I first heard about it on the day itself, a little after lunchtime on the day it happened and it hurt more for me because I had met the guy some years ago when he appeared with Feldog (Corey Feldman) at Collectormania, again at Milton Keynes.

My memories of the meeting with both Coreys are hazy now, but it was a fantastic time & both guys were very popular with the general public. A lot of people came to see them which was a good thing & I think this gave Feldog the faith that no matter what he did, fans in the UK were willing to see his most recent material. I personally wish him well and would hope to see him again at appropriate times.

No recent article on movies will have ignored James Cameron's latest release, Avatar, which also made it to DVD and BluRay too. I had the chance to see the 3D version of the movie at the local Cineworld & even though I personally was not quite sure what to make before seeing Avatar; I was actually pleased that I did have the chance to see it. The back story is a little confusing when it first starts but gets clearer as the film progresses. Most of the cast in Avatar are largely unknowns who are breaking through into the big time but who I feel will make it well. The one name which I recognised was that of Sigourney Weaver who readers will be familiar with through her work on the 'Alien' movie franchise and also 'Gorillas in the Mist' which was another highscoring piece of work from her. Though she has been involved with a number of TV and movies since I have not had much of a chance to see them for whatever reason.

A female star who had one of the leading roles in Avatar (Neytiri) is definitely one to watch. She is Zoe Saldana & while she's a fairly recent newcomer to movies, she's had 2 big hits so far, the other being the reboot of Star Trek; as directed by Lost's JJ Abrams. She brought the character of Neytiri to life rather well and it came over to me as being real. Most guys I know who saw Avatar fell in love with Neytiri and I guess I'm personally no exception; she was a strong character and leader on the planet of Pandora, where she and the tribes lived. To keep in touch with Zoe's work, check out her site at http://www.zoesaldana.com.

Most actors and actresses are also on Facebook, which also helps a lot.

Felice.

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