Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.


September 2007 activity

Total Log Entries: 31

Total Comments: 3


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Bend It Like Beckham / UK / 2002

I knew this one was going to be pretty lame- a sort of Brit-culture Mighty Ducks- but I was quite unprepared for just how awful. Largely at fault is the script, which piles cliché upon coincidence to produce a messy mélange of other, better films. The acting, too, is dire- Keira Knightly was young and inexperienced, but Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has no such excuse, he’s simply wooden. Parminder Nagra can certainly act- she’s proven that since- but here she’s hamstrung by the aforementioned godawful script. The direction is flat and featureless, the music utterly harrowing.

But the real question is why a director like Chadha (and a number of other British Indian filmmakers) feel so comfortable perpetuating their own tedious, overfamiliar cultural stereotypes, and with so little subtlety: a character actually says the line “What family would want a daughter-in-law who can run around kicking football all day but can’t make round chapattis?”. ‘By the numbers’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

by Tom Huddleston | Source: BBC2
17 Sep 2007 12:51 PM | Submit Comment


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