FILM 2006: BLOOD DIAMOND

FILM 2006: BLOOD DIAMOND 

TRIVIA: Colonel Coatzee is named for the Nobel Prize-winning South African author and anti-apartheid campaigner.

Solomon's son's name is Dia, which means "expensive" in Krio, the adapted language of Sierra Leone.

Colonel Coetzee has several lines of dialogue in Afrikaans, Arnold Vosloo's first language.

BOOK 180: JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT: LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE

LITERARY STYLE: Céline's first novel is probably most remarkable for its style. Céline makes extensive use of ellipsisand hyperbole. His writing has the flow of natural speech patterns and uses the vernacular, while also employing more erudite elements. This has influenced French literature considerably. The novel enjoyed popular success and a fair amount of critical acclaim when it was published in October 1932. Albert Thibaudet, perhaps the greatest of the entre-deux-guerres critics, said that in January 1933 it was still a common topic of conversation at dinner parties in Paris.

INFLUENCE AND LEGACY: Paolo Sorrentino's 2013 film The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) opens with a quote from Journey to the End of the Night. The film concludes with a visual of the last paragraph of the book, passing under bridges, arches, and locks along the city's river.

Will Self has written that Journey to the End of the Night "is the novel, perhaps more than any other, that inspired me to write fiction".

The song "End of the Night" by The Doors references this book, as it had a great influence on the work of Jim Morrison.

Charles Bukowski makes reference to Journey in a number of his novels and short stories, and employs prose techniques borrowed from Céline. Bukowski wrote in Notes of a Dirty Old Man that "Céline was the greatest writer of 2000 years".

Céline's literary style greatly influenced Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

In Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 dystopian science fiction film Alphaville, protagonist Lemmy Caution dismisses a taxi driver's offer of route options to his destination by stating that he is on "a journey to the end of the night". The film depicts the use of poetry as a weapon against a sentient computer system.

MY VERDICT:

I can understand why this is cited as a great novel, however I did not enjoy it at all. This book probably, of all the books I’ve ever read, took me the longest to complete. The only reason I can give, is because of the disheartening subject matter that although travelling around the world to many different situations almost each one was more, or as, depressing as the last. There is no hope is this book, no humour, no let up, and because of that I found it difficult to get through. The protagonist is more unlikable the longer the story progresses and I found it hard to sympathize with him even when he was in sympathetic situations. I can see that it is well written, I believe there’s no argument on that part, but above all I want to be able to enjoy reading a book and I did not enjoy one part of this.

FILM 1572: BLENDED

TRIVIA: Jim mentions that he manages a Dick's Sporting Goods store in Ridgefield. Ridgefield was the name of the town that The Wedding Singer (1998) was set in.

This is the third Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore film, the first being The Wedding Singer (1998) and the second being 50 First Dates (2004).

The name ESPN for Adam Sandler's character's daughter in the movie came from Adam's visit to a BBQ restaurant in Boca Raton. The owner had pictures of his kids up, and one of their names was Espn. Adam thought it was a really fun name and asked the owner if he could use it in his new movie for one of his kids. Obviously the owner was happy to oblige.

The band that sings backup for Terry Crews is Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Alexis Arquette's final film.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/33585319/Travel-photography-Morocco?utm_medium=email&utm_source=transactional&utm_campaign=project-published

FILM 1149: THE AFRICAN QUEEN

TRIVIA: Sources claimed that everyone in the cast and crew got sick, except Humphrey Bogart and John Huston, who said they avoided illness by essentially living on imported Scotch. Bogart later said, "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus, and Scotch whisky. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead."

To show her disgust with the amount of alcohol that John Huston and Humphrey Bogart consumed during filming, Katharine Hepburn drank only water. As a result, she suffered a severe bout of dysentery.

The water scenes shot through a telephoto lens of the boat going down the rapids was actually a model about eight feet long. This miniature of the original boat is now displayed inside a restaurant at a Marriott Waterfront hotel at 80 Compromise Street in Annapolis, Maryland. It is at the restaurant entrance.

This is the role that won Humphrey Bogart the only Oscar of his career.

Because the boat used in the film was too small to carry cameras and equipment, portions of the boat were reproduced on a large raft, in order to shoot close-ups of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. Interior and water-tank scenes were filmed in London, as were most of the scenes containing secondary characters. Robert Morley shot all of his scenes in London, including footage of him preaching, which was edited together with shots of the natives praying, which was filmed in Africa.

Lauren Bacall famously ventured along for the filming in Africa to be with husband Humphrey Bogart. She played den mother during the trip, making camp and cooking. This also marked the beginning of her life-long friendship with Katharine Hepburn.

Walt Disney used this film as the basis for the Disneyland's "Jungle Cruise" attraction.

The scenes in the reed-filled riverbank were filmed in Dalyan, Turkey.