Review - Precious

Welcome To The Doll House

Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire

Score: 9,5

Once I heard about Precious, during the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Audience award, I got interested, but it was eclipsed by Tarantino’s new movie, which I enjoyed until a determined moment, and by Michael Haneke’s movie, that won the Palm D’Or and has been nominated for awards in the Foreign Language categories. But Precious actually premiered at Sundance, where it won awards for best picture, the audience award and a special acting prize for Mo’Nique. Then it received distribution support from Oprah and Tyler Perry. The movie is an adaptation of the novel Push, a best-seller in the 90’s, and directed by Lee Daniels, who produced Monster’s Ball, which earned Halle Berry’s Oscar.

Sapphire, in the movie is called Miss Blu Rain, is the author of the book, and a teacher for students on Harlem, and wrote the book based on the experiences she lived through her students during this time. The story is about Claireece Precious Jones, played by Gabourey Sidibe, a 17 year-old who’s sexually abused by her father since her childhood, she has a daughter and gets pregnant for the second time. Her mother, played by Mo’Nique, is jealous due to her boyfriend’s preference and tortures her daughter physically and psychologically.

Just through this plot you can tell that it’s a pretty tough movie. The cast also has two famous singers: Mariah Carey, who was devastated by critics in her first movie, Glitter, and even though I’m a fan I must admit that it’s a really lame movie. But she did so much better in her next movies. She is really good in this one, and she looks physically older, without fancy make up or other beauty enhancements. Maybe this would be her appearance if she wasn’t famous. She plays a social worker who takes care of Precious. The rocker Lenny Kravitz plays the nurse in the hospital when Precious gives birth.

As I said, the film won the audience award in Cannes, and everybody was crying in the theatre when I watched it. Slumdog Millionaire won the Oscar this year, but Precious shows people from the same social class and their problems without appealing to the fantastic or fantasy, proving that fairy tales only exist in book pages. Reality is always different. One is a nice fable, the other is a beautiful picture, the kind of movie that make us dedicate a few hours a week giving soup to the poor or teaching Geography in alternative schools, instead of hoping that they win the lottery or a big prize on TV.

The whole cast, even though it’s not big, it’s superb. Specially the two leading ladies, who could easily win Academy Awards. And they deserve it. But it would be easier for Mo’Nique to win (what I’m actually hoping for so far), because Sidibe has serious competition: Meryl Streep, who won for the last time 27 years ago, has been nominated 15 times and deserves another one for a long time, and Sandra Bullock, who finally showed her power after all this time. But just imagining Sidibe winning, I think even Meryl wouldn’t mind waiting a year or two more to get another one.

Above all, Precious is a film about life, about most of the people that live in this planet, which only celebrates the richness of 5% percent of its people, and Hollywood studios definitely represents that, always investing in the life of the rich and famous or juvenile sci-fi movies disguised as philosophy. But there’s always a small independent feature that shows what the Veuve Clicquot glasses in the movie theatre screens obfuscate from our sight.

Review - Everybody's Fine

The Lost Link

Everybody's Fine

Score: 9,0

In September or October Robert DeNiro won na award for this movie, but He hás been forgotten by the main awards ever since. The same thing happened to Hillary Swank for Amelia. I liked it a lot when I did some research about it later I found out that it’s a Kirk Jones’s remake of a homonymous Italian movie by Giuseppe Tornatore (director of Malena and Cinema Paradiso that I love and desperately need to watch again) from the early 90’s with Marcello Mastroianni in the leading role. My score dropped half a point after this.

Well, the story is about a man who recently lost his wife and gets his place ready to receive his kids for the Thanksgiving Holiday, but he only gets cancellation calls. So he decides to surprise them and visit them all in New York, Chicago, Denver and Las Vegas.

His “kids” are Robert, played by Sam Rockwell (Frost/Nixon), who’s part of the Denver’s symphonic orchestra, Amy, portrayed by Kate Beckinsale (Pearl Harbor, Van Helsing, Click), who owns an advertisement agency in Chicago, Rosie, Drew Barrymore (no presentation required), the sweet Vegas dancer, and the mysterious David, a fine artist who lives in NY.

The essence of the story is to show a relationship among father and children Who Love each other, but can’t communicate. And it’s very natural. Normally children spend more time with their mother, and after her death, who used to establish their connection, they don’t know how to make an approach anymore. The father had a distant relationship with his kids, never exchanged experiences with them, and now he wants to recover the lost time.

Anyway, it’s a beautiful story, with its tearful moments, and the ending is different than the original Italian movie, at least! The Italian is more sarcastic, ironic, while this one is more sentimental. I just think the last scene, with Paul McCartney’s song, very cliché. And corny. It could have been a beautiful movie for all seasons, but it turned out to be just another Holiday’s movie to be shown on TV on Christmas Eve, as we can see in the poster.

Review - New Moon

Moonstruck: Who's Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Score: 5,5

As Money moves mountains and there are several books continuing the story (badly as it seems…), the studios couldn’t lose the opportunity to take money away from the pocket of fanatic teenagers that can’t distinguish art from business, and people like me who pay just to have arguments to trash it. Because, let’s be honest, the plot from the first one, that is apparently less loyal to the book, which I didn’t read and never will, is way better. It just fails when that whole biting, blood, poison, battle of good and evil, greyskull sword bullshit starts. And that’s practically the whole thing in this new production. The few parts that differ from it and resemble the first movie are not convincing. Mainly because all the characters change their behaviors.

After the happy ending from the first one, it continues on Bella’s birthday. She cuts herself with wrapping paper and causes a commotion in the glitter-vampire’s (who glows like Priscilla in the desert) place. Then he notices that this relationship is inappropriate and dumps her alone in the woods. She should have prepared a Bloody Mary to this people ages ago… With chicken’s blood, they would never notice. Then she leaves the strong and independent Julia Roberts girls she used to be behind and becomes sort of a Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, without the Latin furor. She gets hysteric and totally out of control. Doing shit non-stopping. Screaming like crazy into the night because of a silly dream. The feminist became a helpless fairy tail princess. I would have thrown her at the Girl, Interrupted’s mental institution along with Angelina Jolie. It would all go away in a snap.

Kristen reminds me of Jodie Foster each day more. In all aspects, if you know what I mean… And being paired with Robert Pattinson, who’s fake even in the make-up muscles, it’s even harder do understand the reason of all this enchantment. Can you imagine the terrible horse blood breath he must have? In the first film it was acceptable, but this time he’s got competition. And it’s disloyal. So there’s no way to take this teenage romance. And they’re teenagers (she is, he probably saw Joan of Arc being burned in the fire), they change opinions as they change clothes.

After being abandoned, she “tries to forget” the Sparkling glitter boy by rebuilding an old bike with Jacob’s help, played by Taylor Lautner, the long haired guy from the first picture, and a new moon rises. And then the movie exceeds its fantasy share. When a half-naked tanned bodybuilder appears in a 17 year-old room, and clearly they’re attracted to each other, what would happen? But nothing happens here! It’s way too much pureness than my human nature can take... Even Sarah Palin’s daughter in Alaska couldn’t resist it (probably for much worse than that), and then what would you obviously say about these two?

But she then finds out that her new fling is a werewolf. Seriously, this chick is a weirdness magnet. The next movie will show Santa Claus and the Easter bunny’s meeting. Big foot, mummy, Frankenstein, Casper, they’re all on the line to appear on it too. One of these days she will also find the smurfs, because she’s no Little Red Riding Hood but loves to get lost in the woods. And all she found so far was vampires and werewolves. Just throw her in the Amazon. If she can face vampires and werewolves, anacondas and jaguars are just a breeze.

The other movie was a low budget production, and after its sudden success, it got more resources for its sequels. They changed the director and brought the guy from The Golden Compass, expanded the cast and hired Dakota Fanning, who was adorable in I Am Sam, but now she’s growing up and reminding me of the Olsen twins, and Michael Sheen, from Frost/Nixon and The Queen, but the special effects are still lame. None of the werewolves look real. The seem like videogame characters. And when Bella takes a picture of her friends, what they did on the camera’s screen is just terrible. The make up improved just a little bit.

The screenplay didn’t help either. There are some atrocious dialogues and some nonsense scenes. That scene where Bella’s depressed and just stands still in here room while time flies before her eyes was already done (and better done) 10 years ago in Notting Hill, with Hugh Grant passing by a street fair while the seasons change. There was also Ronan Keating singing “When You Say Nothing At All” as soundtrack, to make it more poetic. Or it is “Ain’t No Sunshine”, I don’t remember quite well. It was ten years ago after all… One other thing that I don’t understand is why in every movie that someone is running away, they always end up in Rio. It’s probably Hollywood’s official hiding-place. At least this kind of movie is perfect to make jokes out of it. I’ll keep on watching its sequels anyway, so I can still have much mockery to do.

Review - Girl, Interrupted

Rebel Without A Cause

Girl, Interrupted

Score: 9,5

This pictures is from 10 years ago but I still like it as much as I did when I first watched it. In the late 80's and early 90's Winona Ryder was becoming one of the most promising actresses in Hollywood, making successful movies such as Mermaids, Edward Scissor Hands, The Age of Innocence, Dracula and Little Women. Winona herself produced this movie supposedly (apparently…) as a way to after all establish herself in the industry as one of its most important stars and get the Academy Award that she was so close to get a few years before, but they handed it to Anna Paquin.

But there was Angelina Jolie along the way, who stole all the attention. And the Oscar… After this she got involved with that robbery stuff and her career went down the drain… I believe that if she really wanted awards for this picture, she should've sticked to Lisa's role, played by Jolie, who's by far the best character in the picture, even though it's a supporting character. At least she added a good movie to her resumé.

Sometimes I try to figure out what's her memorable scene in the movie, but I can’t just pick one. They’re all great. The one with the puppet, the one in the isolated room, the one they sing Downtown, the two ones in the ice-cream shop, and several others. The one they showed during the announcement of the nominees in the Oscar is quite good, but they picked a boring part of it. Probably because she curses in all of them. And curse words on television (or body parts like nipples) are pretty much like the end of the world. But violence, war and torture are family-friendly subjects…

Girl, Interrupted is based in an autobiographic book written by Susanna Kaysen, about the time she spent in a mental institution. After trying to commit suicide, Susanna, played by Ryder (extremely skinny), is sent to a psychiatric hospital and diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (nothing to do with Madonna’s song…). She reacts well to the treatment until she befriends Lisa, played by Jolie, a sociopath who’s been there for 8 years.

The cast also includes Brittany Murphy, in one of few moments when she’s not playing comedies, as a sexually abused girl who cuts herself, Jared Leto as Winona’s boyfriend just about to leave to Vietnam, Vanessa Redgrave as the hospital’s psychiatrist and Whoopi Goldberg as the head nurse. It is directed by James Mangold, who did later Kate & Leopold and Walk The Line, two movies that I really like too.

This film also was kind of an end of a phase for Angelina She was in the peek of her “crazy” moment, she had done acclaimed roles in a row, like George Wallace and Gia, that gave her several awards, she married Billy Bob Thornton and excelled in the eccentricities and became an easy target for gossip magazines and websites. After that she just shot lame movies, like Tomb Raider, Alexander and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, that I find very entertaining, a good metaphor for marriage, but it is actually more famous for other reasons.

She’s now getting back on track. She did Changeling and A Mighty Heart (that I really dislike, but it’s a clear evolution), became a humanitarian, adopting needy children, following Mia Farrow’s footsteps. I hope Zahara (or Maddox, as things are going…) don’t steal Brad from her. Terrible comment, I know… Now she replaced Tom Cruise in the police thriller Salt. The script was redone so she could fit in. It will be released in the Summer of 2010.

Anyway, the movie flows very well, it keeps you interested all the time, the cast is very good, even though Angelina has all the great moments, and the soundtrack from the 60’s is like a breeze for the ears, with hits from Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas & The Papas, Jefferson Airplane, The Band and specially End of The World byt Skeeter Davis and Downtown by Petula Clark. The main subject is one of my favorites. I guess it really brings good discussions and great acting moments. And even with all my enthusiasm, the movie didn't get the best reception. The author of the book hated it, and called it melodramatic because the script includes facts that never actually happened and don't appear in the book. I totally understand her, because she lived the real situation, but not us, so we couldn't exactly know what is accurate or not in the plot. But I really enjoyed what I saw in the screen.

Review - Whatever Works

A Simple Twist of Fate

Whatever Works

Score: 9,0

We can recognize Woody Allen’s movies just checking out the initial credits. The black background, white Benguiat typeface and old songs playing, that I believe are from the 1920’s until the 1950’s. Besides, of course, the neurotic annoying talkative person that when he acts in his own movies he usually plays. I now believe that that’s how he is, and these characters are a way for him to see himself in a new reality, living different situations and doing things he wouldn’t, so he satisfies himself this need through his pictures.

Well, the annoying neurotic person this time is Larry David, who has already been an annoying neurotic (and inappropriate) person in Curb Your Enthusiasm for a while, so he definitely knew what he was doing. In the picture he tells his story, how his first marriage didn’t work and how the unexpected happened to him. The unexpected is called Evan Rachel Wood, gorgeous as usual, playing a young girl from Mississippi, with a very characteristic (and strong) accent. I like Evan. Since Thirteen and Running With Scissors and could tell that she was a good actress. Such a good actress that we could never tell that she is crazy enough to date Marilyn Manson. I just haven’t seen her doing comedies.

Evan shows up in his door (in NY). She ran away from home and has no place to go, starving and looking for shelter, and she finds rescue in Larry. She is naïve and is treated like the personification of the universal stupidity by him, who’s such a pain in the ass, negative, grumpy and hypochondriac. Totally folkloric, you can’t take him seriously. And she gets up fascinated by the genius he self-proclaims to be, and by his supposed intelligence and he enjoys transmitting his knowledge to her. And they learn to live with each other and their relationship grows.

The cast has some other people that just appear later and I won’t spoil details from the script telling exactly what they do. Patricia Clarkson (who worked in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and was nominated for an Academy Award for Pieces of April - which I really enjoyed) as Evan’s mother, Ed Begley Jr. as her father, and there’s always the heartthrob, to make the annoying guy (once the universe evolves around him) feel inferior (what’s one more neurosis for someone who has so many?), function taken by Henry Cavill, from The Tudors, and a few years ago was considered the most unlucky man in Hollywood for losing 2 roles for Robert Pattinson, in Twilight and Harry Potter, Superman Returns for Brandon Routh and James Bond to Daniel Craig. I wouldn’t exactly consider that bad luck, except for Twilight. But losing work to all that dramatic eloquence that comes from Pattinson must be really frustrating…

Woody Allen might have won the Best Comedy Picture Golden Globe early this year for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but in my opinion this one is way better. There are jokes even in billboards, like when Evan goes to a rock concert. And the story just grows through time. The beginning may be a little difficult because it’s hard to stand the annoying guy, but when Evan comes up everything changes. She’s got almost all the jokes, and she should be at least be nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a comedy role, because we all know the winner is gonna be Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia. Patricia Clarkson also adds so much to the story, Henry comes to provide some sighs, and Ed is just the cherry on the top.

At least Allen’s given a break to Scarlet Johansson. I doubt she would do it as good as Evan did. And it’s nice to see Woody coming back to NY after shooting in Europe for a while, once he couldn’t raise funds in the US. But even so this was limited release. Very few people have seen it. One curious thing about the production is that this script was written in the 1970’s, but he filed it. He decided to produce it during the screenwriters strike, back in 2008, and just had to change a few references to make it more current. It’s amazing to see how the criticisms to the religious morals (Christianity in this case) are still valid nowadays. They probably will always be…

Review - Love Happens

Chances Are…

Love Happens

Score: 6,0

When I saw the trailer I loved it. Maybe because of the song. “Better Days” by Goo Goo Dolls. I love the song, the band, etc. But it doesn’t actually play in the movie. I missed it. Anyway, putting all this aside, the picture is directed by Brandon Camp and the screenplay is by Mike Thompson. Nice to meet you… Another attractive feature to me was the cast. I love Jennifer Aniston since Friends’ first episode. I’m still waiting the day she establishes herself in the movie business. She only had 2 or 3 good roles so far. Aaron Eckhart also has my admiration since Thanks For Smoking, The Dark Night, No Reservations and so on. There’s also Judy Greer that generally does movies I like, such as Elizabethtown and 27 Dresses. We just ignore 13 Going on 30...

Eckhart plays this widower who turns the loss of his wife in a kind of diary and then is convinced by his agent to publish it. Then he becomes this sort of celebrity guru, just like a less flamboyant version of Walter Mercado (I don’t know if he is known in the US…) helping people to overcome their problems, spilling all those corny quotes and selling solutions just as those fake religions do. Writing about it I just realized how this could be a great movie. Quackery, religions, lying for oneself, etc. Yeah, it could be really good…

And then comes Jennifer Aniston as the florist working in the hotel he’s promoting a workshop and he makes a move. And then love happens, just as title suggests. But the whole image of strong person he sold is all a lie because he never faced his loss and is not ready to get involved with anyone until he solves his own problems. Hmm… Actually the story is not as interesting as it sounds. Don’t fool yourself.

The problem with love stories like that is that the formula was way done and redone several times. It’s really hard to come up with something new. The common place, the obvious and clichés are what happens to 95% of all these pictures. We can just say what’s about to happen all the time. Nothing surprises us. All the actors are really good but the scrip doesn’t allow them to grow. We can tell a great difference between Judy’s work here and in 27 Dresses. The character is the same, the best friend of the blonde main character. In the other one she was full of life, but here she has nothing to do. There’s also Martin Sheen (from Apocalypse Now, The Departed and The West Wing), father of Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen and the whole bunch… He’s Eckhart’s father-in-law.

It’s a clear case of how edition makes you or breaks you in this business. You can arrange everything however you prefer and turn into an awesome trailer when it’s definitely not a big deal. Or you can chance the subject and turn into something completely different, such as people do on YouTube. I remember this video where Ferris Bueller’s Day Off becomes a gay romance just by doing a recut. I hate this movie by the way. Ferris is such a crook, the kind of person that grows up to become a criminal. I was totally compassionate about his sister. There are another examples of these recut videos here. It’s fun to check out.

Review - Fame (2009)

When Will I Be Famous?
(I Can’t Answer That…)

Fame

Score: 5,5

When I heard that Fame was being redone, I just didn’t have a clue about what to expect from it. But I knew that it would be almost impossible for it to be as good as the first version. And I got it right. I love musicals, so I just couldn't miss it, even without having high expectations. But it has its highpoints of course. I just didn’t find them... Just kidding! I can list some good things about it, but there are plenty more bad things, which are extremely more explicit, and there’s no way to watch it without comparing it to the original one. So let’s get it started.

The Alan Parker’s version shows the life of a group of students from the New York School of Performing Arts. This one follows the same plot but changed the stories, what can actually have several consequences. To redo all scenes could be risky and changing them sounds smart, but they can better or not than the older ones. Comparison is unavoidable. It’s a lost cause. If I had the Power to make decisions in studios, remakes would be strictly forbidden, with rare exceptions. Because until we get one film such as “The Departed”, we would have to take thousands of Psychos or Fames first.

In the first film we witness young artists struggling. Just ordinary kids full of hopes and dreams, with their personal issues and their own charms. Here it’s more like a TV series for teenagers. Everybody is gorgeous. That surreal world that only exists in model agencies catalogues. And they’re inexpressive. Apparently they’re less talented than the kids from the older version. Back then there was no such technological resources. You got it or you don’t. Nowadays on the screen anyone can be a great singer. Special effects can make you dance. Everything is so industrial, artificial.

Even though there’s a difference of almost 30 years between them, the remake is so conservative. They don’t have sex, there’s no gay people, no taboos, no drugs. I’m not advertising drugs, but we all know that all theses things are extremely common in the artistic community. It definitely doesn’t show reality. The characters are shallow and badly drawn. They all have the same issues. Their parents don’t want them to be artists. Just like Sister Act 2. And they all they face is failure all the time, in extremely cliché scenes. We just can’t stop thinking they all suck. So why are we watching it? We end up not even putting faith on the talented ones.

Recreated some classic scenes like the Hot Lunch sequence, the graduation and Irene Cara’s performance of "Out Here On My Own" (the videoclip with several scenes from the original movie here and just the scene here). I just couldn’t stop reminiscing the original scenes, where even the songs are better. The girl that reprises Irene’s scene is the Best thing from the picture. She’s pretty, sings Ok, but there’s no emotion at all in the scene. At least they didn’t try to retake the title song scene, with the students dancing in the streets. They used the new version of the song for the end credits.

Awarded actors like Kelsey Grammer (Frasier) and Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) are lost in a script that don’t allow them to grow. At least Kelsey’s got the best line in the film when a student complains about having to play classic music on the piano. Megan was given a singing sequence but I found it annoying. Her singing works when she’s doing comedy like when she played Karen, which gave her 2 Emmys and 3 SAG awards. I loved when she sang Unforgettable on Will & Grace Finale. Out of this perspective, I don’t find it interesting. The good side about it is that these kids have the chance to get to the spotlight and try better things from now on. But next time don’t do remakes. Don’t even think about Footloose! Something bad is coming from that… Unless they change the focus just like they did with Hairspray. Just a little advice…

Loggerheads Review

Things We Lose Along The Way

Loggerheads

Score: 9,5

Lately I haven’t had any time for anything and I have barely watched movies. That’s why I haven’t posted here for a long time. School is driving me crazy and consuming all my time and my sleep hours. I hope I have some time to go to the movies this weekend and have more things to talk about here. I had some free time recently and I watched this one that I always wanted to I see and now I had the chance. This kind of independent films always reminds me like uncompromised cinema is better. They are far away from the obvious clichés from money-seekers.

The cast has some known faces too like Kip Pardue that did The Rules of Attraction, Thirteen, and did a small role in another independent movie I love called Imaginary Heroes. There’s Bonnie Hunt, famous for her TV work and also for films like Beethoven, Jumanji, Jerry Maguire and The Green Mile. Chris Sarandon, Susan Sarandon’s first husband, from A Dog Day Afternoon, and Tess Harper, who has been severely punished twice in her life: She was part of Ishtar, that terrible Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty movie, and she was married to Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men.

Well, the movie shows three different stories that happen in different times, just like The Hours, but they’re not so distant from each other in time. Bonnie is a car rental agency attendant who lives with her mother, quit her job and tries to find her son, that she was forced to give to adoption when she was 17. Kip is a homeless drifter obsessed with loggerhead turtles (that’s where its title comes from) who meets George, a motel owner who offers him a place to stay. Tess is a preacher’s wife torn between doing what her husband, or God, wants her to do and following her heart.

This is a 2005 film from director/writer Tim Kirkman, that I never heard about before but IMDB told me that this is his last picture and is based in a true story. The movie premiered in the Sundance Festival winning the public choice award and several other prizes in other festival throughout the world. It was shot in 2004 in Wilmington, NC, the same place Dawson’s Creek used to be shot. Almost everyone who knows me know that I love Dawson’s Creek. At least I did 10 years ago.

It’s such a shame that movies like this don’t get their deserved recognition in the major award ceremonies, with very few exceptions, and have no room in movie theaters. In the meantime we have transformers, mutants, witches and hobbits, GI joes, interplanetary trips, guns, blood and unintelligent comedies occupying these spaces all year long. The ones who enjoy all I listed above will definitely not enjoy this picture once they have completely different timings. And there are no explosions. Just dialogues, expressions, looks and feelings.

Stephen Gately

Most of the things I remember when I was growing up are from the 90's. I was born in 1985, and in the 90's I went from a child to an annoying teenager. In pop music this a period also known for the syrupy singing groups known as boybands and girlbands, such as Wilson Phillipps, New Kids On The Block, in the late 80's and early 90's, and then Backstreet Boys, 98 degrees, LFO and ‘N Sync. But my favorites from this kind of groups come from the other side of the ocean. They're from Britain or Ireland. They were Take That, Spice Girls, and specially Westlife and Boyzone. I always thought they were less about (that ridiculous stereotyped) image than the others, and more about melody and music. They had better songs.

Most of these groups vanished and then came back together recently. So did Boyzone. They were 5 Irish singers, but only two of them used to actually sing the songs: Ronan Keating, who also has a very successful solo career overseas, and Stephen Gately. The other 3 were more like backing vocals. After getting back together and toured during the Summer, Stephen went on vacation and passed away. The cause is yet a mystery.

I didn’t know much about them because the media back then, at least in my country, wasn’t as intrusive as today and I got acquainted to internet only in 2000, when they split. His death is something extremely sad. These circumstances always make me think how ephemeral life is. This year so many mainstream celebrities left us, like Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett (who died in my birthday) and Patrick Swayze. Stephen was very young, only 33. But still he had a successful life and there will always be people who will remember him. I will. I have 3 of their albums at home. Every now and then I used to listen to their music and I'll probably keep on doing it.

Rest in peace.