Queenie would like to congratulate the D.I.F.F. on a very good festival this year. A good time was had by her, even though she never did get the timing right and always ended up a little too close to the screen, generally beside the elderly person who ate his sandwiches out of a loud greaseproof paper bag during the film. Bless them. Queenie will be old one day so she tries to be compassionate. But sometimes it's hard.
Best flick for her had to be Mysterious Skin, by Gregg Araki. It was great to see Elizabeth Shue in a good film again and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is really good as her gay hustler son. The film, which is about the impact of paedophilia on the lives of two young boys, dealt very sensitively with a difficult topic. Queenie didn't do so well, when the elderly man next to her started to cry during a very intense moment in the film. Should she have patted him on the arm or something? She doesn't know.
Other great movies she saw were Garden State , written, starring and directed by Zack Braff. Nathalie Portman is a FINE actress. She carries the film, which is funny but a bit slight. But it is worth seeing (why do people go to see ninety minutes of film and then whinge about how it doesn't plumb the depths of every bit of the story. I repeat 90 minutes). Peter Sarsgaard is just FINE. Queenie is seriously thinking of slinging Clive Owen out of the mancupboard to make room for him. Also the soundtrack is worth checking out.
Queenie also went to see The King's Game, a Danish political thriller. At first, she thought that was a bit of an oxymoron, quiet little Denmark and all that, but then she remembered that the greatest political thriller of all time is set in Denmark.
King's Game is the adaptation of a novel written by a Danish spin doctor who based it on his experience of an internal struggle for power in his party. Queenie thinks she might have met this spin doctor during her years as a spinette. She certainly remembers that internal power struggle as being particularly nasty and the fall out - the coming to power of the right, an increasingly isolationist and racist Denmark - is still with us. Queenie has to have a think about European politics one of the days - maybe tonight after the Theo VanGogh documentary. I'm sure you're all creaming yourself at the thought of the nuggets of wisdom that will unearth.
Finally, Queenie recommends The Republic of Love, based on Carol Shield's novel (another great writer who died recently), directed by Deepa Mehta. Very funny take on singledom, frustration, desperation, love, fucking it up, pulling it off, and a really funny sex scene that showed a woman reaching orgasm from having her toe sucked.
Queenie would be so lucky.
Work commitments prevented Melinda and Melinda and Private from being viewed, even with tickets bought. Grrrrrrrrrr.
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