I'm having such a good time...

Just got back from Bohemian Rhapsody and I'm exhausted! I feel like I was just at Wembley and actually there for Live Aid instead of what really happened, watching it on telly in our living room back in 1985. I am also so, so grateful they didn't play the credits out with either The Show Must Go On or Who Wants to Live Forever, because I'm choked up enough as it is. Either of those two songs would have reduced me to an ugly sobbing mess.

Suffice it to say - if you like Queen's music even a little bit, this was frigging excellent. If you like Queen a lot you will LOVE this film.

I mentioned this the other day but forgot to say why it was so, so good.
Here's one of the trailers to give you a taster, but it really doesn't do the film justice. It's so beautiful to look at, as well as full of gentle humour, pathos and emotion.

I admit, it took me a little while to adjust to the faces - they use a very angular, sharp-featured template for the human characters that I found a bit weird. But the stop animation is fantastic, the colours and visuals so engaging, and the story is absorbing. I loved the mixture of magic and real life, the fact that Kubo is basically his mother's carer and such a strong character that we have to be reminded occsaionally that he's only a little boy. The ending was both uplifting and heartbreaking, and it's well worth sitting through the credits to see the fabulous art work behind the constructions and creatures in the film itself.

Gah. Now I'm kicking myself that I didn't go and see it again while it was on at our cinema.

Finally got to see the Frankenstein play at the cinema, after a little mix up over tickets (all my fault!). We saw the version with Jonny Lee Miller as the Monster and Benedict Cumberbatch as Frankenstein.

The sets and lighting were amazing, especially the inverted pyramid myriad of lights that hung over the stage and were used to great effect for the lightning, creating ice, and pulses of electricity in the brain… But blimey, this was a dreadfully slow starter of a play. it couldn’t seem to decide at the beginning if it wanted to be a modern dance version of Frankenstein, or maybe a musical, or perhaps a recreation of some of the Industrial Revolution scenes from the Olympics’ opening ceremony in 2012. It must have been at least half an hour, if not longer, before we got any dialogue or character building worth having, and I was getting worried the whole two hours was going to be – quite frankly – boring.

However, after the poor monster burned the one person who’d been kind to him, plus the pregnant woman and her husband who had admittedly been quite unkind, the play finally got going. And after that I was engaged throughout, though not really feeling much sympathy for any of the characters apart from Frankenstein’s fiancé, Elizabeth.

Visually and intellectually the ending was very satisfying, and maybe I’d feel more empathy for the monster after a period of reflection, but that isn’t really what a play should do – I’d expected it to give me more feels, and it didn’t quite succeed. I’m sure it would have been very spectacular to watch in the theatre though.

Originally posted by ash48 at Dean's Movie Meme