Archive for September, 2009

Coco Avant Chanel

Coco Avant Chanel, Anne Fontaine’s gorgeous film about the early years of famed Fashion Designer Coco Chanel charts an unusual course as biographical films go. There are no famous people, struggles with addictions, few tragic events and none such biographical directions that films in a similar genre like Capote and Pollock take.

While Capote and Pollock showed how those respective artists gained famed and notoriety, both succumbing to the excesses of creativity, Coco Avant Chanel portrays a strong personality, a woman who was way ahead of her time in terms of vision and conception.  She was the French version of Queen Elizabeth I, beholden to no one except her own ideals and determination and while she wasn’t royalty, Coco Chanel’s enormous influence on style and design can still be seen a century later.

Frivolous Fashions

Dismissing the frivolous fashions of the early 20th century when French fashions were limited to the silky and often too feminine designed of court designer Charles Frederick Worth – Chanel aspired towards simplicity in a masculine world which sought to minimise women’s power and their ability to succeed. What made Chanel an international brand was the 1920s and 1930’s when due to the depression and post World War I economic restrictions placed in Europe made simplicity and practicality key not to mention stylish and more affordable. Gone were the big hats with feathers, strings of pearls and corsets, Chanel changed women’s fashions and their perceptions forever.

Stylish even in her Sleepwear….

Any devout fashionista will revel in the beauty of Fontaine’s film, so rush and see the sumptuous Coco Avant Chanel and watch Audrey Tatou dazzle…

Don’t get me wrong,  both films were worthy of some merit, but what is interesting is why a New Zealand produced, South African set Sci-Fiction Film, District 9 beat GI Joe at the US Box Office – one word – ORIGINALITY!!!

District 9 directed by Neill Blomkamp was so original in its concept and form and turned the blockbuster Independence Day on its head and reversed all the usual ingredients of a sci-fi Aliens landing film. Brilliantly shot in a dusty, mine-dumped surroundings of the one of the largest African metropolises, Johannesburg, one almost feels that the city is as much a character in the film as the wonderfully funny South African cast who take on the slippery alien Prawns as they are left stranded on earth! Not going to give away too much more, suffice is to say, go and see an original and cleverly shot film! Worth watching for its genre-defying satire.

*****

Rise of Cobra or the Return of the Spies who loved each other…

GI Joe, Rise of Cobra directed by Stephen Sommers follows the classic James Bond narrative of hero’s battling villains with a seemingly dangerous damsel who oscillates between the enemy and the GOOD  side and with an ending out of The Spy Who Loves Me, swopping the Mediterranean for the Polar Ice Caps, it was glossy, slick but nothing exceptionally different. Saving grace of the film was the great chemistry between Channing Tatum’s Duke and Sienna Miller’s sexy Baronness. Great viewing for a Sunday afternoon, but don’t expect anything unusual in terms of plot and storyline, just the establishment of another CGI-filled, location jumping and action-orientated film trilogy based on toys politely following in the Transformers tradition. GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra also stars Dennis Quaid, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as The Doctor and Christopher Eccleston as Destro.