Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

I’ve been really excited about Me and Earl and the Dying Girl since the beginning and a couple days ago I finally had a chance to watch it. The film was said to be smart and funny and original so my expectations were quite high – and I didn’t need to be disappointed! Based on Jesse Andrews’ novel (and screenplay) Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directed the movie whose work I was familiar with from American Horror Story. This film was quite different from that of course but it had the same really strong atmosphere as his other directorial works.

The movie is about the friendship of three high schoolers – although Greg only starts to hang out with Rachel because his mum is making him when they learn that she’s been diagnosed with leukemia. But then they become real friends and that is when their story gets doomed. It is kind of a coming-of-age story but more than that – luckily most adolescents don’t have to face sad and serious situations like this.

The film is narrated by Greg who makes movies with his friend or – how he prefers to call Earl – co-worker and though we see everything from his viewpoint we learn quite a lot about him throughout the story. Things that he doesn’t want to recognize or admit and wants to cover with never-ending smart and witty comments. He keeps talking about what would happen if this was a touching romantic story, but then he always reminds us that this is not. Which I think is just half the truth – because it is touching. Not in the original, you’ll-cry-yourself-to-sleep way, but in a more bittersweet, unique way.

I love how independent cinema doesn’t feel the need to tell you constantly exactly what is happening, what are the characters feeling in every moment. It makes stories much more real for me. I’ve been lucky enough to not have to fear for my friend’s life but as I was watching this movie I could tell that my reactions and feelings would be like Greg’s.

SPOILERS!

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There is a scene where Rachel tells Greg about her decision to stop treatment which I found amazingly powerful. There’s no music and no movement, just two kids and their feelings. I especially loved the setting – seeing Rachel’s crying face in the front and hearing Greg’s anger (and fear) while he stays in the back of the frame. It made me feel the distance in that moment between them. And made me think about how selfish we are when it comes to our loved ones. If we could turn off our feelings we could see that they are in pain, that they are just making logical decisions. But it hurts too much and we can’t think with their heads, we just want to save ourselves from suffering.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl also made me realize that I can still be quite naive. When Greg told us Rachel will get better, he promised she won’t die, I believed him. Even when she was really sick I wanted to believe him. Which was naive of me but maybe it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I prefer to think of it as hopefulness which I think is really important in tough times. I wasn’t surprised by the ending though, but it was still sad.

SPOILERS END!

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All in all I found Me and Earl and the Dying Girl a great coming-of-age movie which can teach us a lot about ourselves. About feelings, tough decisions in a really honest, true, powerful way. It is sad naturally, but at the same time it was able to remain funny and kind with lovely settings and music and had a quite feelgood atmosphere. And with amazing performances – especially from Thomas Mann (Greg) and Olivia Cooke (Rachel). Definately recommended to everyone who doesn’t mind an emotional but not at all cheesy movie!

And this is the part where my writing ends

Musical Obsession – Chet Faker

One of my most favourite musicians is australian Chet Faker. His style is really unique and quite hard to categorize, he uses a lot of electronic elements but often sings his songs while only playing the piano. He does every part of the music and you can feel in each segment that it is truly his own. If I want to describe what it is that I absolutely love about his music – whether it’s electronic or acoustic – it’s that it is so chill, I love how it makes me feel. Furthermore I think his voice and music overall is one of the sexiest things ever.. :)

He did a cover of Blackstreet’s No Diggity a couple years ago, uploaded it online and nothing happened at first. But some time later it blew up and got him the recognition he deserves. I heard him talking about it in an interview once, how surprised he was when people started listening to his music, how surreal the whole thing seemed to him. Oh and he named himself after jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, feeling like he was only pretending to be a musician :)

Here are a couple of my favourite songs from him – it was hard to choose though, I love them all so much! He often works together with Flume and this song Drop the Game is one of their joint projects.

Talk is cheap is one of those songs that Chet is often playing only on piano and this version is quite magical – I love how the audience is singing with him and the way he smiles because of that :) And the lyrics is beautiful as well!

“I wanna make you move with confidence, I wanna be with you alone”

1998 is my favourite Chet Faker song I think. I can’t explain why – I’m usually not able to choose a favourite of anything – but I love this one just a tiny bit more than the others. I love how he loses himself in the music and the way he moves :)

And besides the fantastic music, he really seems like a smart, interesting person. I’ve only seen a couple interviews with him but he seems to be funny and humble. Go listen to him (some more) and be warned – you’ll quite likely get obsessed :)

A day-trip to Brighton

It was a Bank Holiday weekend in England, so we decided to take a trip somewhere near London on Saturday. Since I’ve never been to Brighton before, it was our first choice. (There are so many interesting places near London, can’t wait to have enough time to visit them all!)

We took a train quite early so even the seaside wasn’t crowded when we got there. In the morning it seemed that we will need our raincoats and many layers of clothing, but luckily the weatherforcast was mistaken and we had really nice weather :) It was a fun, relaxing day – we spent some time on the pier, walked around in the city, chilled on the seaside and took lots of photos! That’s me on one of the pictures, thanks to my sister for the shot :)

Cobain: Montage of Heck

The first word that came to my mind while watching this amazing documentary was intimate. And now, a couple of days later I still find it the most fitting descripition – the often brutal ways of honesty gave this incredible intimacy to the story which have stayed with me since.

Cobain: Montage of Heck is the documentary about the unfortunately short life of Kurt Cobain – whose tragedy, I think, everybody knows about. He is one of those people who you can’t really avoid, he was too enigmatic and played an enormous role in the music industry; thousands of people are still talking about him day after day.
I wasn’t a huge fan and didn’t really keep tabs on the plotting theories about his death, but I liked him and Nirvana and was interested in his mind, the reasons behind his erratic behaviour. This documentary really helps us understanding – not necessarily his choices but his emotions, why he became the way he was.

Brett Morgen’s film isn’t the first one about Kurt Cobain, but it is the first that was made with the consent and cooperation of Kurt’s family – her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain was one of the executive producers. Besides the interviews with Kurt’s mother, father, step-mother, sister, girlfriend, bandmate and Courtney Love, we see a lot of archive footage – homevideos from Kurt’s childhood, unheard songs, artworks. Read out journal entries, sometimes visualized with animation, sometimes just with his handwriting shown on the screen. Videos he and Courtney made after the born of their daughter – I loved the parallel between these scenes and the ones with the baby Kurt.

    

For me one of the movie’s strengths is that it’s not judgemental in the least. Nobody’s pointing fingers, they are just talking about what they saw, what they thought, mentioning their own faults and imperfections just as much as Kurt’s. The whole documentary became really honest and intimate with these interviews. The scenes inbetween are often too bright and loud compared to the storytelling parts, almost hurting our ears and eyes but I think it is a great way to make the viewers feel the hectic, erratic and crazy ways of Kurt’s mind. And we feel his pain all along, his fear of rejection and humiliation, his anxieties and his infinite unhappiness – the whole story is so upsettingly sad.

The very next day I felt I should rewatch the film – which is quite rare for me since my watchlist is always too long and though I love a lot of movies I always decide to watch new ones instead of the same ones over and over again. But in a documentary like this, you’re always missing something at the first sight (note to self: I should watch more documentaries!), and I want to know every little detail about people.

Overall I think Cobain: Montage of Heck is a great documentation of a really interesting person. There is a lot of mystery around Kurt Cobain and this film helps you to get a clearer picture. Not only the story but the realization is amazing, every fiber of it is heartbreaking – even when we see these people happy, we are left with sorrow somehow. At last here’s Scala & Kolacny Brothers’ cover of Smells like teen spirit which is featured in the movie – in a scene what’s the most memorable and powerful in my opinion.

Hampstead Heath

Saturday was probably the last true summer day this year in England – so we decided to use it wisely and take a trip to Hampstead Heath. It was a bit too hot for walking around for hours but it was worth it! Not just the park, but the neighbourhood is wonderful – I really like the english architecture, the way they always use white and green with brick.

We started our walk in the North End and it was quite magical how deserted the woods were! It was almost like a jungle in the middle of the city.

The place is huge, I think we walked for about 5 hours and didn’t even see everything. All kinds of people can find what they are looking for here – you can wander around quiet woods, sit down with your friends in the meadows, take pictures, eat some lovely food, swim in ponds, play sports – there are tennis courts and athletic fields or you can just play quidditch wherever :)

And the colours are amazing, I don’t think any shade of green can be greener than these trees and lawn! So if you have time and want to spend a relaxing day without leaving the city, then go ahead and visit Hampstead Heath :)

A day out in London

Yesterday I had a day-off – normally I’m working full time but I had to run some errands – and I decided to spend my day wandering through the city. I looked around for some fun programs the day before and I had some plans but nothing too concrete. I had an appointment at 11:30 so I didn’t have the whole day for myself and the weather wasn’t really nice (I got soaked a couple times) but it was truly wonderful all in all :)

My first destination was Notting Hill which is one of my favourite neighbourhoods in London (so far). I love the duality of the always busy and eclectic Portobello Road and the quiet little streets with the beautiful houses. When I first visited there I said to my sister that maybe I should hang around with a Will you marry me? placard in my hands :D Joke aside I wouldn’t say no to living in Notting Hill :)

  

The one thing I knew for certain was that I want to visit an exhibition near Embankment but since it was still early when I left Notting Hill and it was on my way I decided to go to South Kensington to see another exhibition as well. And how amazing a decision it proved to be! It was the Travel Photographer of the Year exhibition held by the Royal Geographic Society – although I’m quite a fan of photography I wasn’t particulary enthusiastic on my way to this one. I turned the wrong way and got lost for a bit and it started to rain so my 30-instead of-10 minute walk got me wet and my back started to hurt so I was grouchy by the time I found the place.

I went in and started to look around and soon enough the difficulties were forgotten – though at first I got a bit scared because I’d only seen a small room of pictures and was afraid that’s the whole exhibition. But it wasn’t, most of the photographs were placed in the garden :) I know it doesn’t sound so much fun in the rain but the Geographic Society had huge yellow umbrellas anybody could use to defend themselves and it certainly had a strange, kind of magical feeling to it. Furthermore it wasn’t too crowded due to the weather which was nice as well :)

I can easily get mesmerized by photos and here almost all the pictures got my attention immidiately, I spent long minutes standing before all of them :) I especially loved that we could read the stories behind the photos and tiny segments about the artists – it gives so much more meaning to them for me. They even had tiny maps to show us where the photographs were taken. You can check out the winners here but do yourselves a favour and go see them in actual size!

Oh and the Royal Geographic Society’s garden is worth a visit as well – I haven’t seen the whole of it but they have boards with names and distances of cities and famous places on them :) Inside, there were maps for the visitors to mark where they came from – and although I wasn’t the first from Hungary, they mainly were from the capital, Budapest – where I’ve lived for 5 years before I moved to London – I was proud to mark my hometown as the first – and possibly the only – visitor from Nagykanizsa.

  

I continued my journey to Embankment to visit the State of the Art Cinema exhibition at The Strand Gallery which celebrates film posters and behind the scenes photographs from this year’s movies. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures there so all the more reason to see for yourselves :) The place is tiny and I was the only one there all along – it was a bit weird but I loved that I didn’t need to pay attention to other people.

The gallery was next to Charing Cross so I wandered through the streets there and in Covent Garden and in the Soho for a while before going home. Sometimes I like to do just that – walking around and listening to the voices and noisies and watching the faces and places around me. I was physically very tired by the time I got to the tube but my mind was happy and spent the way home trying to process everything I’ve seen :)

Overall it was a truly great day despite the weather and my aching back – I wish I had more time to do things like this, starting off in the city without a concrete plan and just exploring on my own :) And the photography exhibition is something I’m absolutely glad I got a chance to see – and since it is open until the 5th of September I will try to visit it at least one more time!

Dior and I

I love fashion. I mean I don’t keep up with all the designers and new collections but I’ve always been fascinated by it. I love clothes – it doesn’t matter for me if they are from a second-hand shop or designer pieces, they can be so beautiful and they can be combined in so many ways. Planning my outfits is something I like spending time with, finding the right shoes, bags or other accessories can calm me and make me happy :)

I am an observer by nature which shows when it comes to arts. I’m a really enhusiastic recipient and I love talking about arts with other people because while at first it’s just me and the picture, movie, music, etc., afterwards my curious nature kicks in. I want to know what my friends and strangers think about something – the ways we can be similar and completely different from each other is quite interesting to me. And of course I’d like to know what the artists see in their work, why are they doing what they’re doing.

I adored Dior and I for these exact reasons. When I first heard about the film I thought it will be about Christian Dior’s life – which would have been absolutely fine by me, I liked watching movies about Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent earlier. But this was so much more than that!

Dior and I is Frederic Tcheng’s documentary about how Raf Simons’ first haute couture collection for Dior came to life. Simons became the house’s creative director in 2012 and had only eight weeks to produce a collection that usually takes four-six month. Tcheng had been there for the whole process so he had the chance to gave us a true insider look about how these things work – which is something I’ve never seen in a movie before.

Raf Simons was not a fan of the idea of being filmed for eight weeks at first but after a short test-period he gave his permission. So we got to see him meeting the atelier for the first time and bringing his revolutionary visualization to Dior; using Sterling Ruby’s paintings on fabric and creating an incredible showroom with more than a million freshly cut flowers. If someone keeps tabs on the fashion world they can know the outcome of this collection, but that doesn’t take away the beauty and excitement of the film. The emotions are all real, just like the people who were working together – sometimes day and night – to make sure everything is in order at the premier.

In a sense the whole movie is behind the scenes and this is what makes it special. It is a documentary, so everybody from the tailors and the models to Raf is commenting on what are they doing and what are they feeling along the way. There are scenes that are accompanied with Christian Dior’s own thoughts – he seemed to be thinking about the same things as Raf before his own first show.

  

I don’t think you need to be generally interested in fashion to enjoy this movie. It surely is exciting for somebody who likes keeping an eye on designers and houses like Dior but it can be just as fascinating for someone who knows nothing about fashion. This is a world that we never see from the inside – we see gorgeous models in splendid creations, we see the glamour of the shows but not the people behind it all. The people who can be just as shy and anxious as everybody else. Christian Dior and Raf Simons are geniuses in our eyes but they are also humans who are afraid that they’re gonna faint if they have to do the catwalk :)

Tune of the day – 6

David Bowie’s Space Oddity is featured in one of my favourite movies, Jean-Marc Vallée’s C.R.A.Z.Y. :) The scene that contains this song is one that stays with you for a long time after watching the film – you can check it out here.

Billy & Billie

I used to be a pretty bad case of a series junkie. There were times when I was following more than 10 (or 15?) shows a week, I spent days with binge-watching old, and catching up on new series during school breaks. Over the last couple of months though it had faded somehow. I forgot to watch the new episodes and I didn’t even miss a lot of them so it was a rather fortunate natural selection :)

Besides, movies started to take over a while ago now. When I was at the uni and had several courses per day it was so much easier to just watch 20 or 40 minute long episodes, I rarely watched any films then. But the tables have turned, I watch movies all the time – and haven’t seen one episode in 1,5 months. That certainly doesn’t mean that I’m done with series, I still have favourites I’m gonna follow when the season (and the midseason!!) starts :)

Hence I’m not really watching anything now I am not as up-to-date with new series as I used to be. So when one of my best friends mentioned Neil LaBute’s Billy & Billie I had no idea what was it about, but when she told me that Adam Brody plays the leading role and that it’s really awkward I knew I had to look it up :) (You can see the trailer below – I haven’t seen it before I started the show but after watching the season I don’t think it’s giving us an accurate picture on what we can expect from the series. But it seems feelgood and lovely so go ahead and take a look if you like – just keep in mind that the show’s not gonna be this cute but rather uncomfortable!)

So in the first episode we see Adam Brody (Billy) waking up next to Lisa Joyce (Billie) after a seemingly drunken hook-up and then not leaving while she’s sleeping. I think this one sentence already gives us a feeling of the awkwardness but it is nothing compared to what really happens. The whole series is just hilariously uncomfortable – I always find weird and awkward stuff funny and this show does everything to make people like me happy :) The scenes are way too long compared to a “normal” series or movie, the conversations don’t end when they should…

It’s clear from the first moment that Billy and Billie know each other but we don’t know how (if we haven’t seen the trailer and the poster) till the end of the first episode.

SPOILERS!

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They are step-siblings – so not only the realization is weird but the whole situation is pretty awkward. The show is about their difficulties – a new relationship comes with difficulties that can be funny, but in this case they have quite big problems before they can even talk about a relationship. I loved how they didn’t over-dramatize the question though.

Both Lisa Joyce and Adam Brody were great in their roles and if that wouldn’t be enough there’s the eyecandy factor in each case :) (Adam Brody is one of my great loves since The O.C. – Seth Cohen used to be the ultimate ideal guy for me, right next to Jess Mariano from Gilmore Girls.) I liked how the characters have their flaws, but neither those nor their good qualities are over-emphasized. I found the supporting cast great as well, especially Drew’s character – she seemed a bit irritating at first but this feeling was gone by the end of the pilot episode and later on I loved the dynamics of hers and Billie’s friendship. I am not a terribly emotional person, I don’t like big gestures and cheesy conversations about feelings, I’m more of the (socially) awkward type – probably that’s why I loved these 10 episodes that much :) Anyways if you’re anything like me you’re gonna love it too!

What’s interesting as well is the title’s of the episodes – cause they are all named after a Nirvana song. I don’t know anything about the reason behind this but I found it special and surprisingly fitting to the storylines. Oh I found an interview where Neil LaBute has been talking about it!

I know I’ve already written a lot about the awkwardness but I have to say one more thing about it :) The way characters are ignored at restaurants is a quite obvious source of laughs but the continuity of it and the fact that this was never the core of the scene but was always a part of it – it’s gotten more and more funny over time!

There are still no news about wether the show will have a second season or not – I certainly hope that it will! I wasn’t a huge fan of the cliffhanger though, simply because I hadn’t consider it such a big question; but I had found the scene funny so after all it was a nice way to end the season. :) And I would like to see more of the awkward lives of these weird but absolutely loveable people!

Tune of the day – 5

We heard this song at work a couple of days ago, talked about it a bit and it has stayed with me since. I really love the chill vibes of Hiatus Kaiyote :)