Have A Think #8: Property Is Theft

Films affect us in various ways, and they also broaden our minds. And often they bring a challenge - or at least a question or two. For example, what is a Jacobean tragedy? (It has violence, to start with; "Every mode of violent death available to Renaissance man, including a lye pit, land mines, a trained falcon with envenom'd talons, is employed," to quote Pynchon.)

Or maybe, waiting for a coming Chris Eccleston project, you might have just found yourself with a 'G.I. Joe' comic - Watching a Katrina hurricane documentary (Spike Lee's for example) - Reading about Amelia Earhart (Chiclit's current pastime) - Perusing Askwith's book (like Alex).

In other words, if you prepare for a film, how? What about further studies? Do you prefer one to another?

2009-09-10

5 comments:

Rick Sanchez C154 said...

If I have time, I like to at least do some internet research on topics I am not familiar with, or if there is a book involved, I like to have a read through, if I have time before the film is released.

I don't recognize the photo with this post. What is it from?

Alex said...

The photo is a screencap from 'With or Without You' extras (filming the scene where Vincent is running up the dune).

Rick Sanchez C154 said...

Ah. I haven't rewatched that in a while as I can only get it in Region 2 and my copy has German subtitles and Menus.

Alex said...

Ah, not the new one, then.

Some pics for these topics are from the extras, the more obscure ones - from the films.

Anonymous said...

Much as I appreciate television and film drama that captures raw emotion I love the spoken word too.

Christopher's voice has crisp articulation and annociation of words that I forget at times that it's him narrating on thought provoking documentaries or reading from classic literature.

In October 2007, Christopher was at the Purcell Rooms with Francesca Annis, Simon Armitage and Tom Paul reading letters and poetry by the late poet Ted Hughes.

I had come across Ted Hughes over twenty-five years before having to study and read aloud "The Iron Man".

The whole evening filled me with imagined windswept and sheeted rain of the Pennines and beautiful correspondence to various institutions and media he wrote during the latter part of his life. Romantic notions of his childhood to his adulthood catching fish.

I just had to go to Charing Cross Road the next day to purchase a second hand copy of a collection of his poems.