Black Swan

#49 at time of writing.

(Not the 1942 swashbuckler...)

This film left me shaking.

A fragile but technically brilliant dancer in a New York ballet company is selected for the lead role in a production of Swan Lake. As she rehearses, the pressures mount from all directions - from her sinister mentor, her overbearing mother, her jealous friends and her dismayingly carefree rival.

The main character, played heroically by Natalie Portman, teeters on the brink of nervous breakdown and a catastrophic fall from innocence. The upshot is an alarmingly effective psychological thriller that had me crying with empathy, cringing at the body horror, and squirming with anguish on her behalf.

Portman clearly poured her heart and soul into this role. She had previously trained in ballet (as a child), and resumed her training a year before filming began - so much of the dancing is genuinely her own performance (including the painful-looking en pointe). The role was obviously physically challenging; she suffered a dislocated rib and a concussion while filming the dance scenes. One can imagine that she brought some of the stress and strain of preparing for her demanding performance into the role itself.

The supporting roles are also masterfully acted. Vincent Cassel is chilling. Barbara Hershey is monstrous and tragic. Mila Kunis has come a long way since voicing Meg Griffin on Family Guy.

Darren Aronofsky - having directed Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and now this - has earned a place as one of my favourite directors of all time.

This has been a great month for films. I hope The King's Speech doesn't steal all the Oscars; Black Swan deserves the very highest recognition.

Click here to read the script.

Movie Posters

Recently I got a big payrise at work. And I spent it all on film posters.

There are some great films with terribly mediocre posters. Either they just have mugshots of the top-billed actors on them, or they try and crowd too much stuff on. Or both (see Lord of the Rings).

And there are some excellent posters for awful films. For example...



I tried to find the happy medium, whilst avoiding the too-popular choices (Pulp Fiction) and avoiding posters that my wife would never let me put up (Phase IV).

So, several hundred pounds later (framing is expensive!), our lounge sports these:







Our hallway features:





The spare bedroom has:









And a Bilinsky in our bathroom:

Requiem for a Dream

#58 at time of writing.

This film made a massive impact on me. It haunted me for days afterwards. It's about four likeable, ambitious people whose addictions eventually get the better of them and ruin their lives. Gradually. Insidiously. Tragically. Brutally.

I was blown away by the pace and style of this film - and left stunned by its forceful message. I find myself craving to watch it again.

Darren Aronofsky's previous film, Pi, was just as menacing and mysterious, but more of a fantasy, a fairytale.

Requiem for a Dream is no fairytale.

Ellen Burstyn in particular deserved an Oscar for her role as elderly telly addict Sara Goldfarb, but unfortunately she lost out to Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich.

During Burstyn's impassioned monologue about how it feels to be old, the cinematographer Matthew Libatique accidentally let the camera drift off-target. When the director called "cut" and confronted him about it, he realized the reason Libatique had let the camera drift was because he had been crying during the take and fogged up the camera's eyepiece. That's how sad and brilliant this film is.