Kitty's Corner

Why Home Alone wouldn't be possible today:

Once upon a time it was quite popular to include children in horror movies. I expect it's because it intensifies the horror, seeing someone who looks all pure and innocent act like the devil himself.

Here's a few kids who acted in horror movies. I thought it would be fun to see what they looked like then, and what they look like now.

First we have Drew Barrymore. She was in the Stephen King film "Firestarter" in 1984 when she was only 9 years old. This is how she looked then and how she looks now.



Next one in line is Linda Blair. She was playing the possessed child Regan MacNeil in "The Exorcist" in 1973.



Here's Alex Vincent. He played Andy, the owner of the horrible doll Chucky in Child's play 1 and 2, in 1988 and in 1990.



Danny Lloyd played Danny in "The Shining" in 1980. The Shining also brilliantly starred Jack Nicholson as the dad, who gets more and more insane as the film progresses. Some will might remember the quote "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". Well, that quote comes from this movie.

Here's Danny then and now:



The Shining also starred a couple of other kids, namely Lisa and Louise Burns. They played the Grady twins, the ones that wanted Danny to come play with them "for ever and ever and ever"...



Last one in line is Miko Hughes, who played the adorable little child Cage in another Stephen King movie, namely Pet Sematary in 1989.

As I wrote in the previous movie post, we went to see two movies last Sunday. "Friends with Benefits" was the other one we saw - you may or may not be surprised to learn that this is the one I chose.

They translated the title into "Bollevenner" in Danish. That means "Fuckfriends". Not the best translation of a movie title I've ever heard, but anyway...

The movie is about Jamie (Mila Kunis) and Dylan (Justin Timberlake) who've recently both been ditched by their respective partners. After the break ups, they are both determined to stay away from anything that tastes of real feelings and possible disappointments. They meet each other when Jamie, who is working as a corporate headhunter, tries to get Dylan to accept a job offer with one of her clients. She succeeds, and Dylan moves from Los Angeles on the West Coast to New York. Dylan is new in the Big Apple, and he begins to spend a lot of time with Jamie, who voluntarily takes on the role of guide for the newbie. There is (of course) chemistry between the two, and they quickly develop a friendship.

One night they get really drunk and realize that they both have physical needs, but that neither of them needs all the feelings, emotions and strings that will surely follow. Of course the evening ends in the bedroom, and Jamie and Dylan add a very watchable and entertaining sexual dimension to their friendship, while promising to stay 'just friends'.

I liked the interaction between Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. I really liked the many funny remarks that made me laugh out loud (and sometimes also the loudest, which was a little bit embarrassing. Ahem...). Justin Timberlake is a pretty good actor - I don't know why I'm a little surprised at that.....and Mila Kunis is also quite natural - they work well together.



The best actor in the movie though was Woody Harrelson. He plays a flamboyantly gay sports editor who goes from making sexual advances to Dylan, to offering him some pearls of wisdom with his (love) life. He was hilariously funny! Great casting

The movie has an interesting and engaging cast, and a pretty sharp script although despite a couple of interesting little side stories going on, is generally a bit predictable. But hey, what do you expect from a romantic comedy, really. It's got all the right elements - friendship, love, sex, humour, a little drama, break-up, make-up.....a pretty good RomCom in my opinion.

out of 6.

We went to see the new Martin Scorsese's documentary "George Harrison - Living in the Material world". George Harrison is also known as "The quiet Beatle".

I might as well say right away that I'm not a Beatles fan. I don't know the story about the Beatles. I know that John Lennon got shot, and that Paul McCartney has a little "Sir" in front of his first name. That's about how much I know. I am only telling you this because people who know the story better or who are fans, might get more out of the documentary than I did. I know my Dad was a Rolling Stones fan, not a Beatles fan - that's kinda how it is.

Anyway : The documentary tells the story about George Harrison from when he entered the Beatles in 1962 until his death in 2001. It's told by means of interviews with old friends and archive material.

First problem with it was that Scorsese takes it for granted that everybody knows who was related to the Beatles, and how. There were interviews with people who's identity I still haven't got the faintest idea about. Scorsese didn't even bother putting a little name tag on each of them when we saw them first. This bothered me because it's very hard to get the speaker's comments into context if you don't know who's actually talking - school friend, brother-in-law, fellow musician - it can make quite a difference to the intended meaning of the words.

Next big problem is that it was assumed you knew the story, and so timelines seemed to be simply ignored. There wasn't a good flow in this - no narrator could have made an interesting journey out of these bits and pieces, they weren't cohesively put together. It just seemed like it was bits of stuff, footage and interviews, stuck together in an order only the director understood. Perhaps lots of fans *did* understand it and perhaps it *did* flow for them, but it didn't work for me - and believe me I tried to stay up with the play, even asking Flarin "who's that" on a number of occasions, until he started his own little narration for me ("guy on the left - Jimi Hendrix...guy in the middle - Brian Epstein...guy on the right - George"). Unfortunately of course, I had no idea who Brian Epstein was. And there were interviews with people talking about 'Stuart' and 'Pete'. Who? There was no explanation for those of us with no intimate knowledge of the subject.

Last but not least, there's the length of the documentary. We sat in that fucking cinema for more than four (Read my Lips: FOUR!!) hours! Admittedly, there was a half hour break in the middle, but still, three and a half hours is too fucking long. I am proud of myself to have survived that and not leave in the break!!

The second half was better than the first one, but still not good enough to really catch my interest. I did come out of it liking Ringo Starr - he's quite an amusingly cool old dude and obviously doesn't take himself too seriously, and I don't like Paul McCartney much. It is weird to think though that The Beatles were such a huge phenomena, such huge cultural icons that there is still really only 'John, Paul, George and Ringo' in people's minds, even though there's only been 2 left for the last 10 years, and there were only 3 since 1980.

I think this might have been a bit of a wasted opportunity, this film - it was in the end *just* a very long and tiring documentary about an obviously well liked musician. For some reason I was expecting more.

out of 6.

Johnny English has been banished from the British spy agency MI7 after having messed up his previous mission in Mozambique. He now lives with monks in a monastery, training Kung Fu and regaining both physical and mental strength. But Johnny is called back to England because a terror group, Vortex, has threatened to assassinate the Chinese prime minister. And then a very special adventure begins for our hero, trying to prevent the assassination and identify the high ranking members of the secret terror organisation.

It's not often I laugh my way through an entire movie, but the funny scenes in this film were definitely the laugh out loud type. At some point, after around an hour, I found myself a little bit "bored", you know, enough is enough, but that only lasted for a moment. Then Rowan Atkinson was back in good style with an excellent sense of humour.

Reborn relies more on visual gags than the first "Johnny English" movie did, and I really liked that, because that's one of the things that Rowan Aktinson does best.

If you like the trailer, you're going to love the movie!



If you're expecting a deep plot and clever dialogue, you've come to the wrong place. Expect funny scenes, a hilarious Rowan Atkinson and lots of English slapstick humour.

out of 6.