love more dangerous than war?

The Edge of Love is loosely based around the marriage of Dylan Thomas' to Catilin Thomas. Sienna Miller stars as the fiesty and flirtatious Catilin opposite Vera (Dylan's childhood sweetheart) played by Keira Knightly. One of my favourite actors plays Vera's husband, Cillian Murphy. So an excellent cast and an excellent script. I loved the intensity between Vera and Dylan as well as the intensity between best friends Catilin and Vera. It was such a good film, set in Wales and London, I would say that it had similarities to Atonement however Knightley's welsh accent was fantastic.
One thing I did note was how brilliantly Miller played her role. I have not actually seen her in anything substantial and here I though she was strong and beaming with attitude. I liked this film a lot, it shows that true love is not only between men and women but also between friends. And true love lasts a lifetime.

All We Have Are The Choice We Make

Last night I watched The Adjustment Bureau starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.
It got me thinking about fate and chance. Are there higher forces/beings/spirits whatever you want to call them that make the choices for us only allowing us to believe that we make them by ourselves. The film goes along the fact that say for instance we spill our coffee on ourselves before we go to work. We would of course change our clothes and therefore making us a little late for work. Would this be classed as fate or chance? It was fate in the film that Matt Damon in the film ran into Emily Blunt which then inspired him to make one of the most compelling and moving speeches of his political career. However it was chance that brought them together again, twice.
We are told to believe that free will is available to us, yet is it really?! I've never really though about this sort of thing before but just think, the world is kept in order by people who make the decisions for us. By a higher being that keeps us all in check, so next time I spill a cup of coffee or run into some Matt Damon lookalike I will be asking myself, is this fate or is it chance?

One Day

So I have decided to read One Day by David Nicholls, so far it is a very very good book. Well written, quirky and quite funny. Switching from the perspective of Dex and Em so we get what both men and women are thinking when they are entering a relationship. This book is unusual as it is set over twenty years with these two characters meeting up of the 15th July of every year. I am unsure whether this set up works yet or not, we'll see?! So far though, I am enjoying it very much!

Charlie St Cloud

The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud is a really easy going book! It has a good story and loveable characters, I can imagine the film to be the same! I really liked the twist in the book and it was very addictive. I wouldn't say it was the best book I've ever read but if ever you are looking a light-hearted sweet story then this is for you! I am in two minds about my next read, whether I go classic and read a Jane Austen novel or to read the highly praised One Day. Watch this space...

Three Different Eras. Three Different Women. Each Connected by the Lies They Tell.

Meryl Streep for a long time has been my favourite actress and here is why. Whatever role she goes into, she gives it such ambition and such passion that it becomes reality. Her performance in The Hours is one I will never forget. She is a woman in 2001 who is in love with her best friend, dying of AIDS and who just wants to give up. Julianne Moore is in 1951 reading Mrs. Dalloway and realising how the life she is living is not hers to live. Nicole Kidman is Virginia Woolf, struggling with her sexuality as well as life itself, having tried to commit suicide twice whilst writing Mrs Dalloway she is a tormented woman who believes that death is the path for her. The film is told through one day in each of their lives and how this one day changes the lives they lead forever.
I found Julianne Moore's performance irritating and pathetic, Kidman won an Oscar for her performance and although fantastic it is nothing in comparison to Streep's.
Woolf questions her life in this film, how did she end up in Richmond? Why is she living this life? Do at some point we all sit back and think how did this happen? Is this the life you had planned? Woolf believes that her life had been stolen from her, that this life she is living is not hers at all,  but what she was given. Are we given a life or do we make our own choices? Does one bad choice lead to a life we no longer wish to live? Isn't it funny to think that one day you will look over your life and wonder if there was anything you would have changed? Regret is a terrible thing yet if you do not regret, are you being honest with yourself? Nobody can be happy with every part of their life, there is always that desire or desperation to achieve more. Or is there such a thing as a perfect existence?
This film is brilliant, telling the story of a woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.
I do believe that Woolf loved her husband, he was only after her best interests but after two sucide attempts , he didn't trust that she knew what was best for her. But Woolf is like a the wind, she can never be captured, she is and always should be free. As 'how can you find peace by avoiding life?'
When Virginia Woolf killed herself she wrote to her husband saying that she does not believe that anyone could have been happier than they have been together. She also wrote: 'Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.'

Nothing More Powerful Than A Man Who Has Everything To Lose

Our lives are defined by moments, especially the ones we never see coming.

The Next Three Days is a film about Lara Brennan (Elizabeth Banks) who is taken into jail after murdering her boss. However her husband, John (Russel Crowe) believes she is innocent and after three years in prison, and with their son failing to recognise her on visits, John decides its time to escape.
So with the help of escape artist Liam Neeson, John spends months working out an escape route for him and his wife and their son.
This film is very tense and literally does have you on the edge of your seat at times, you feel for John, his wife in prison, his son growing up without a mother, financial difficulties, everybody believing that Lara did kill her boss. So yes there is nothing more powerful than a man who has everything to lose if his escape plan goes wrong.

Crowe normally is quite one dimensional in films, he is the same character in Gladiator as he was in Robin Hood but this film was different, he was determined, he was scared and ready at the same time. A brilliant film, one which I would go and see again in an instant!

Cloud Nine

I have now begun reading The Life and Death of Charlie St. Cloud which many of you may know has recently been made into a film starring Zac Efron. I have not yet seen the film and though I would read the book as it was talked about a lot during the summer. So far I am rapidly making my way through it, it is a lovely story which I feel will have that happy ending we all love. I like the character Charlie, you feel guilty for accidentally killing his younger brother Sam in a car crash and so hasn't gone on to live his life but instead works at the graveyard where Sam is buried. Charlie also experiences hallucinations with Sam's body, he plays catch with him every day at twilight, yet he cannot experience these hallucinations anywhere else apart from the graveyard. Usually these types of stories would put me off reading them but this one is written in such a way which does not seem un-real. I like this book so far but we'll see what happens when Charlie falls for sailor Tess...