The Maiden Heist

Last night I was watching the 2000 film Requiem for a Dream, directed by Darren Aronofsky, and based on the 1978 novel by Hubert Selby Jr. The story revolves around four people in Brooklyn, New York. Harry Goldfarb (played by Jared Leto), his girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly) and his friend Tyrone Love (Marlon Wayans) are heroin addicts, who dream about making the one big drug deal that will set them up for life, while Marion's ambition is to be a top fashion designer. Harry's mother, Sarah (Ellen Burstyn) spends her time watching TV, especially a kind of infomercial-game show. One day she gets a call inviting her to be a contestant on TV. Sarah fixes on losing weight so she can fit into her favourite red dress and look good on TV. She goes to a doctor who prescribes her diet pills, to which she becomes increasingly addicted. Before long each of the characters find the dreams that sustain them, becoming increasingly sour and warped as they fall into their own personal addictions and demons. It is an unrelentingly bleak film, and very stylish. It is very faithful to the original novel.

Today I was up pretty sharply in order to get out and meet my Dad. We had to go up to the building society in order to do some banking business. Then we went out for breakfast at Cafe Rouge. I had sausage, bacon, poached egg, mushrooms, tomato and toast, with a cappuccino. Then we had a look around the shops before going our seperate ways. I went along to a jewellers to get my watchstrap fixed. It broke sometime last week, and I had to repair it with sticky tape. It worked for a few days. The strap took half an hour to fix and so I spent the time browsing in one of the book-shops. I didn't buy anything, becasue I'm trying to save money for moving to Canada, so that was kind of annoying, because there was a lot of stuff there that I really wanted.

This evening I went out to the Cineworld cinema to see The Maiden Heist, directed by Peter Hewitt. The movie is set in Boston and revolves around Roger Barlow (played by Christopher Walken) who works as a security guard in an art museum. He spends most of his time staring at his favourite painting, called "The Lonely Maiden". Roger is shocked when he discovers that "The Lonely Maiden" is one of a number of the museum's collection that is being sent to Denmark. Then he discovers two other museum security guards, Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and George (William H. Macy) are both equally obsessed by other artworks, which are also being sent away. The three decide to plot an audacious scheme to steal their three paintings, so that they can keep them. It's a very likeable, gentle comedy, and it is consistently funny. That is the last film that I have booked for this year at the Film Festival (it is the last day of the Film Festival tomorrow).

Of course there is a lot about Michael Jackson on TV tonight. I was never a fan, but of course I remember when his music was everywhere, and he was very talented. I really liked that song "Thriller" (which did have one of the coolest music videos and Vincent Price) and "Man in the Mirror".