L’Age d’Or

You know the feeling, you’re trying to plan a party, deciding whether to have six singers in front of a microphone or 60 singers 10 kilometres away, when you go upstairs and there’s a cow in your bed. Just an everyday occurrence, I know, but still a little annoying. And then during your party, the man you so desperately want to be with (seemingly John Lithgow doing a Dick Dastardly impersonation) is prevented from being with you, by a woman who spills his drink of him and a man shooting a small boy several times outside. Finally, the two of you are able to sneak off and suck each other’s hand whilst rolling around in the gravel, but all he seems interested in is a statue’s foot, so obviously when he’s called away to scream at the Minister of the Interior, you suck said stony appendage until he returns, when you rejoice about having killed your children. And of course, when the orchestra conductor interrupts you while clutching at his head, your man storms off to shred your pillows, and throw them, along with a burning tree, various items of furniture including a full scale wooden giraffe, and possibly the Pope out of a window.
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Second Chance: The Bodyguard

Previously, I only knew of The Bodyguard as the Kevin Costner-Whitney Houston film, one of my Dad’s guilty pleasures that he can almost quote word for word. I’d never had much desire to see it, as I’m not a huge fan of either of the stars, and thought that the plot seemed incredibly straightforward and obvious. Man-with-a-past (Costner) is forced by circumstances to guard woman-with-a-diva-complex (Houston). Initially, the pair hate one another, until he saves her life and she shows him who she is inside. Eventually, they fall in love, possibly after someone dies. I was not disappointed.

The film mostly annoyed me for how blatantly it is trying to set up an acting career for Houston. Her character, Rachel Marron, is a famous actress, trying to launch a music career by singing in a film, just as Houston is trying to launch an acting career by appearing in a film in which she performs most of the soundtrack. The main drawback to the launching of Houston’s film career though, is that in the Bodyguard she does no acting, whatsoever, as the ‘character’ she plays is herself, the diva with the overstuffed ego, blissfully unaware of anyone but herself.
Choose life 3/10