Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus.

Released in 2006 and directed by Steven Shainberg this film was a TOTAL find for me! I only picked this up because it had Robert Downey Jr and it suggested nudity. I shamefully have to admit that I didn't care about the story or who it was based on before a pressed the PLAY button on my laptop, but as the film played on I realised it was about thee Diane Arbus, the photographer. She famously took photographs of the weird, the fascinating and the wonderful.Anyway, this film shows a fictional portrait of her and what inspired her to become

a photographer. This film is about image, sexuality and acceptance.

This beautifully shot piece paints the image of a housewife (Nicole Kidman), restricted by social conformity, who tries to break out and find herself.

Her realisation is helped by her new neighbor, an ex circus performer (played

by RDJ) who suffers from a condition in which hair grows on every part of his body.

The film delightfully makes a strange comparison with what's 'normal' and what isn't, commenting on the surface value of society by breaking it down; placing hand-in-hand love and acceptance.

The Death of The American Dream

"People are afraid to merge."

Less Than Zero (1987, dir Marek Kanievska) is an abomination! If you have read the book by Bret Easton Ellis you will hatethe film. For one thing they got the protagonist, Clay, all wrong- the film made him clean and caring, when in the book he's hooked on cocaine and doesn't really care very much about anything. (One thing that irritated me the most was that he was always snacking on sweets.)
They only focused in on Blair, Clay and Julian. Doing that missed a lot of significant sub-stories out like the land slide, or the mutilated dog, Clay's family and his past, the pornography, the corpse in the alley... Incredibly frustrating. I know people always say the book is better than the film, but the film was just totally different from the book. Oh and they missed out epic and significant quotes like "Is he for sale?" and "People are afraid to merge." and "Disappear Here." The only quote from the book that they did put in (the wrong place and time) was "Julian gives great head. And is dead."


The only character who was wonderful in the film was Julian (played by Robert Downey Jr). I LOVE Robert Downey Jr (he makes an excellent Tony Stark) but he was just perfect for this role. Julian was witty, sad, withdrawn and helpless. It saddened me when I heard that playing this role helped fuel Robert Downey Jr's old drug addiction. I'm pleased that he got out of that.

"Nothing is permanent, not even death."

Last night I finally got to watch The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus starring Heath Ledger, Lily Cole, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits and Andrew Garfield. It was a lot of something... A lot of oddness really. Our main characters- Tony, Doctor Parnassus and the Devil- surprised me in the end, in particular Tony (I guessed there was something more to him considering how his face changed whenever he went into the Imaginarium).


I won't give too much away:
The story is about Doctor Parnassus (played by Christopher Plummer) and his deal with the Devil. The Devil (played by Tom Waits) made him immortal but at a price- any child Parnassus has will belong to the Devil when they turn sixteen. At the beginning of the film Parnassus' daughter, Valentina (played by Lily Cole), is three days away from turning sixteen but of course the Devil is too tempted to make a deal so he promises Parnassus that he can keep his daughter is he collects five souls before he. That brings me to the beautiful travelling show!
The travelling show to the naked eye looks like a typical Victorian travelling show- something you might see with a circus or at a carnival but if you were to pay the doctor a small price you would be able to slip through the onstage mirror and into a world filled with your own imagination. In this world the customer is faced with a choice...

After making this deal with the Devil about collecting the souls Anton (a young man who helps out with the travelling show, played by Andrew Garfield) and Valentina find a man hanging from a bridge. This man, Tony (played by Heath Ledger), is alive but without memory so he stays on the travelling show. Doctor Parnassus believes he was sent to help him. But Anton begins to question whether or not Tony can be trusted considering whenever he goes into the imaginarium his face changes. In the imaginarium Tony is played by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell.


So as you can tell this is quite a story line (and what I've said isn't even half of it). Over-all the film was complicated (and I LOVE complicated), a little intense and a visual masterpiece. I thoroughly recommend it!