Electrick Children (2011)

What a weird but enjoyable little film. Rented purely 'cause I wanted to see what Rory Culkin had grown into (another good actor, but Kieran's probably still the most promising). A mormon girl listens to a cassette tape, hears music for the first time and suddenly becomes pregnant. Her parents don't believe her immaculate conception story so they throw her brother out believing he raped her. They run away to Las Vegas, him wanting her to confess on the tape to who really raped her so he can go home and clear his name, she wants to find the voice on the tape, believing him to be her baby's father and the man she must marry.
A good culture shock film with everything you wanted to happen, the brother gets drunk and high and makes out with girls and swears and has a great time, the sister falls in love with a loser skaterboy and they escape the weird religious oppression of the commune. Hooray!

Up (2009)

I thought I'd write a little bit about Up here because when watching it with my mum in the middle of the night I said as Russell and Mr Fredrickson went into that storm "What if they actually died at this point and the rest is them just in limbo trying to find heaven?" which freaked my mum out and she said "It's Paradise Lost!"
I think she meant Paradise Regained, Paradise Lost is just Adam and Eve. Paradise Regained, as far as my understanding is, is Jesus wandering in the wilderness and being tempted by the devil. That's Up, init?
But what I reckon what mum actually meant was it's the Divine Comedy. Hey, all these things were written in rhyme way back when! But when mum was drawing comparisons she was drawing them to the Divine Comedy not Paradise Lost or Regained! Plus they're all about the same sort of stuff; heaven and hell!
Dante is guided by Beatrice, his ideal woman, the one he met as a kid, through Heaven. Then he falls and so Virgil, his poet guide, rescues him and guides him through hell and then into a sort of limbo, there's a load of lost souls there and he has to think about what's important and let go of some stuff. Once he lets go he is able to understand god and he is happy.
Now that is Up. And if you were wondering Virgil is Russell and the lost souls are all those dogs who have human voices.

27 (Edinburgh Lyceum)

I actually saw a play the night before I went to see this play in York put on by a little group of local actors, I can't remember what it was called but it was about this girl who had an imaginary friend who she played sex games with, it was really weird and ticked every cliche in the book but the set design and the costumes were good.
Then I went on a day trip and saw 27 up in Edinburgh, my main memory from seeing it was that the set looked SO dangerous. There was a huge steep staircase, open on one side and the older actors who played the nuns kept running up and down it, I was on edge and uncomfortable watching it. Nuns vs Scientists. Not my cup of tea really, seemed more suited to being a Radio 4 play as nothing was said that needed to use that giant staircase, in fact I might have been more able to concentrate on it if the distraction of the idea of Maureen Beattie plunging to her death of the edge hadn't been there! Can see why Nick le Prevost was cast as the American, he's sort of old Holywood in his looks, not as camp as Cary Grant but almost.