During 2011,
I watched about 259 movies and TV productions, of which some were multiple
episodes and seasons. All were watched on my home movie setup, with my only
sources non-premium cable TV, Netflix steaming year long, Netflix mailing
through the summer and a few from the library. I’ll add these to my lists of
movies rated (alpha and from high to low) and post a comment here when that is
done.
With such
limited sources I cannot really offer my list of best movies of 2011. The few I
did watch were not very good and the only new TV productions I rated fairly
high were from PBS, Prohibition and
the new Upstairs Downstairs.
A year late
I can offer my list of the best 2010 productions I watched in 2011. Here they
are in roughly diminishing order:
Downton Abbey – PBS Masterpiece about rich people
and servants
Fair Game – about the outing of CIA agent
Valerie Plame Wilson.
The Fighter- quirky boxing family
The King’s Speech – working on the impediment
Inside Job – documentary about the financial
crisis
The Pacific – Series like Band of Brothers on
land and sea
Treme (Season one) – series about New Orleans musicians
after Katrina
Marwencol –brain damaged man creates WWII 1/6
scale village in his back yard [this one was on PBS in April and I gave it 3.1,
but did not write it up in this blog]
The Social Network – the birth of Facebook
The Tillman Story – cover-up of friendly fire death
Rabbit Hole – grief and guilt over death of
child
Expanding
the range of movie dates, here is a list of the 10 best of what I watched in
2011, again in roughly diminishing order:
The Wire (Five seasons)– 2003-2007 series
about crime in Baltimore
The Duchess of York Street – 1976 PBS series about hotelier
consort of King
Prayers for Bobby – 2009 about religious mother of gay
son
Downton Abbey – 2010 from Masterpiece
Cautiva – 2005 Argentine girl’s parents were
among “disappeared”
Emma- 2009 version
Stand by Me – 1986 classic
Scenes from a Marriage – 1973 theatrical version of Ingmar
Bergman production
Twin Sisters – 2002 Dutch - twins separated in youth
Fair Game – 2010 Valerie Plame Wilson CIA
agent outed
City Island – 2009 – son of no-show Dad suddenly
turns up
Wild China – 2008 documentary
Under the Same Moon – 2007 Spanish - illegal immigrants
from Mexico
Bertie and Elizabeth – 2002 bio of parents of Elizabeth
II
Amreeka – 2009 Arabic – Palestinian
immigrants in US after 9/11
South of the Border – 2009 documentary about Latin
American politics
For My Father – 2008 Israeli - drama about
conflicts with settlers
The Country Teacher – 2008 Czech – big city teacher
relocates to village
Friday Night Lights (Multi season) – Texas high school
football and families
Elephant Man – 1980 classic
Jan and I watched "Out of Africa", a 27 year old film. We watched it because we went on a safari to Kenya and Tanzania last October. I bought the book "Out of Africa" for $5 used off the intenet a few months before our trip, but I didn't get around to reading it until we were in Africa. I finished it after I returned to the US, and I enjoyed the book very much. That made me want to see again the movie "Out of Africa" which we saw way back in 1985 when it was released starring Robert Redford and Meryl Sstreep.
ReplyDeleteThe book has little in common with the book. Isak Dinesen wrote a book of vignettes of her time in Africa, not about her failed marriage or the love affair she had with an
African safari leader.
The movie adds little to my understanding or appreciaition of Africa at the time but its attempt to explain how people in the US felt about the African continent at that time waa well done.
I saw Out of Africa in the theater when it came out, but haven’t seen it since. I remember it as being stylish but a bit slow and long. I gave it three stars at Netflix based on memory. The book, about which Wikipedia has a good article, sounds quite interesting, and as you say it is not really the same as the movie, which is more of a biography of the woman than a memoir of the country and the people. The PBS series Flame Trees of Thika based on the memoirs of Elspeth Huxley about her days as a young girl on a plantation in Kenya about the same time, was very good. It was on TV in the 1980s. A while back I got it from the library in hopes that I could enjoy it with Susan and Anna, but the timing never worked out.
ReplyDelete