Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Beautiful Visuals




Over the weekend, Smithy and I had an 'accidental' Lee Pace mini film festival. That means that I picked out two movies, without realizing that he was in both of them. Lucky me!

Anyway, even though not all critics were kind, I highly recommend The Fall. Lee Pace (of TV's Pushing Daisies) is hospitalized in 1920's California after an accident. He befriends an immigrant girl who is also a patient at the hospital, and he weaves and elaborate story about 5 epic heroes for her. As often happens in movies, reality and fiction begin to blur - that's all I'll say.

Pace and the girl, a Romanian newcomer, both do a great job, but if nothing else appeals to you, see it for the visuals alone. They're amazing, and the location scenes were shot over a 4 year period in something like 18 different countries. For example, the Taj Majal and the Alhambra, and maybe Hagia Sofia were among just a few of the settings for the film. The following are just a few of the production photos from the movie.

Movie number two was Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, of which much has already been written. Frances McDormand plays the title character, and she is fantastic - funny and full of dignity at the same time. I rented the movie as much for the Art Deco scenery as for Miss McDormand. It was an added bonus that handsome Lee Pace has a smaller role as one of Amy Adams' suitors. Please see this one too, if you haven't already. Seriously, it has a fantastic Art Deco apartment and night club, beautiful 1930's outfits, Frances McDormand, Amy Adams as a perfectly delightful ditzy blond, Lee Pace in a tux and playing piano, and the craggy-but-handsome Ciaran Hinds (who will always be Ceasar from HBO's Rome to me.) Not a heavy hitter, but pure fun.

6 comments:

Miss Janey said...

Great selection of pictures. MIss J LOVED Ciaren Hinds in Rome. And everthign else since. She will HAVE to see this.

David Thompson said...

Agree wholeheartedly with your summation Miss P... certainly wouldn't want to think too hard about it but the art deco locations are fantastic.
From memory the apartment is in part made up from some of the rooms at Eltham Palace, the train station was the Freemasons HQ in London and I'm trying to see in the nightclub picture whether they used the Strand Palace foyer which is currently on exhibiton at the NGV Art Deco show in Melbourne but is usually in the V&A in London.

Southern Louisiana Horticulturist said...

I bought the BlueRay DVD of THE FALL.
It is beautiful and stunning.

The saturated colors are incredible.

The story is great and the little girl is so adorable.

Great photos to display.

The Woodshedder said...

Thanks gang, and thanks for stopping by Nature Jockk. I bet The Fall looks especially great on BlueRay. It's such a gorgeous movie. I'm genuinely surprised that critics were so, well, critical of it.

ArchitectDesign™ said...

I blogged about both of these movies when I first saw them - I loved them both! Lee Pace is SUCH a hottie too -he's reason enough to watch ANYTHING!

The Woodshedder said...

Be the Change, yes to Lee Pace! I'm going to have to start watching Pushing Daisies on TV to get a regular dose of him.