screencapspam: tyttö sinä olet tähti.
Today is Suomalaisuuden päivä - the day of Finnishness, so it makes sense that I'd post a picspam of a Finnish movie. At the slim chance that any of you could ever manage to track down the Region 2 DVD of a really cool Finnish movie, here is Tyttö sinä olet tähti (internation title: Beauty & the Bastard, translation of actual title: Girl you are a star).
It's not that all Finnish movies suck, but I don't typically go for art movies and thus don't care for the various serious drama movies of recent years, and most of the popular productions I don't want to waste my money on. TSOT, however, was a very well-made, entertaining movie that takes an age-old premise (Romeo & Juliet) into a modern environment and actually makes it well worth watching.
These screencaps are couple-centric as um, it's a romantic comedy and the leads are awfully pretty. Do the other people really matter? :P
To quote myself, the premise; The story is a Romeo&Juliet set-up where the girl, Nelli, is from an extremely well-off family and the boy, Sune (pronounced "Soo-neh"), from a poorer, more dysfunctional one. What brings them together is their equal passion for music, though even there they are worlds apart - Nelli admires commercial r'n'b singers whereas Sune produces underground hiphop and considers r'n'b closer to disease than music.
This is really a walkthrough with pictures, so spoilers for the movie. I'm doing this because I find it unlikely that a lot of you will ever get to see it. SADLY so, I don't think it's available outside Finland.
Title shot - Nelli singing at a choir.
First meeting - Nelli tries to convince a record executive of her talent and runs into Sune at the record company. She asks if he could help her make a demo tape and he makes a brilliant (in his mind anyway) joke about r'n'b being a disease that should be rid of the world. This guy isn't good with women.
Nelli cuteness.
Long story short, he has to proof he's not completely hopeless with the ladies (which he is) to his friends and he makes a bet with them that he can get Nelli into bed and then uses her demo tape request for help as an excuse to get her to come to his place. The winner of the bet would get a bottle of cognac.
Further future dramatic tension - when they meet at the bar and he asks for her number (so they can work on the demo), Nelli's boyfriend brings her a drink and as an offhand comment to Sune, Nelli calls him her big brother.. So Sune doesn't find out she's actually taken.
He is awkward.
..and looks down at her cleavage. Roffle.
Eventually they begin to actually work on her demo tape.
Though there a bumps in the collaboration as he continues not to know how to treat women.
The commercial vs noncommercial music angle shows in a scene where they listen to her demo and she worries about how it sounds, "Is this awful?" and he tells her that she should trust her own judgment and stop thinking about what other people might think about it so much. "If you try to hear it with other people's ears, you become deaf."
Subtle product placement and OTP cuteness, a scene where she starts to realize what his way of life is more about and they discuss parental pressures and the future.
Graffiti painting scene - further Nelli-in-Sune's-world scenes.
He loves her omg.
Tension - a party for two.
Almooost..
The movie's really not radically amazing or anything but what makes it so good is the fact that the director's not ashamed of making a romantic movie so the way the romance is developed makes sense and is done on the characters' conditions. It also contains some of the most naturalistic Finnish movie dialogue I've ever heard - it actually sounds like the sort of Finnish people the characters' ages might use. The whole undeground hiphop thing is also pretty well show-cased and realistic-seeming - and the film actually features a ton of Finnish rap artists in cameo roles. The music is good, too.
I think it should be mentioned that the movie was a graduation work of the director from the University of Art & Design so it's really a movie made by young filmmakers for the young viewers.
She wants to call off their collaboration as she has bad feelings about nearly cheating on her boyfriend.
He insists they go to her house to listen to the demo on some good stereo system, ("Can you remember what kind of stereos you have?" "No, but at least they were expensive"). He meets her dad.
Her family isn't evil or anything, but they'd rather she pursuit a "sensible" career like being a doctor.. Hence they're not enormously fond of her r'n'b demo.
A touching scene at her house. "At first I thought you were an awful snob.. But then I realized you're a normal girl." (This sounds better in Finnish, something like, "Ensin mä pidin sua ihan hirveenä snobina. Mut sähän oot ihan tavallinen tyttö..")
And she replies, "Toi on kaunein asia mikä kukaan on mulle koskaan sanonu." ("That's the most beautiful thing anybody has ever told me", though the English subs said something like, "That's the nicest thing I've ever been told".)
Just get together!
The ultimate tension scene - they're having dinner of some spaghetti in the middle of recording.. He makes a comment about the food, "It's hot" and she jokes, "So take off your shirt" and thus he takes off his shirt ..and so does she.
And then her boyfriend rings the door bell. The timing, dammit.
Her best friend shows up at his place to let Sune know Nelli has a boyfriend she's been with for ages.
So he angsts and gets drunk and wakes up to this sight.
In a heart-breaking scene, he pretends he has no feelings for her whatsoever and reveals the original bet with his friends to Nelli.
The pain of separation...
She lands a record deal with the demo and he shows up at her place to ask for forgiveness, though as he's not exactly the smoothest player around, he starts by stuttering something about maybe working on some new songs with her. She brings up the bet again, and challenges him into winning his bottle of cognac by making a tape of them having sex. He looks defeated and leaves.
She shoots for her first single cover.
Whoah, slut much? Thanks for this, record label.
"Tee se niin" is the title of the first song they worked on together and means, "do it that way".. The full lyrics goes "tee se niin / että sun takia vaivun transsiin" - do it so that I will go into trance because of you. Yep, suggestive r'n'b lyrics. ;)
He hears her song on the radio. Ouch.
This movie has a lot of very amusing scenes that completely poke fun at the music industry. One example are two scenes where the record label people completely mess up the mixing of good songs and turn them into utter crap. So the song that gets played on radio is a messed up version of the original good version Sune made.
She shows up backstage to his group's gig to "return some cd's".
Instead of being all, "I love you and want to be together with you", he messes up and they end up promising to be friends in the future.
She hugs him and leaves, saying, "Näkyillään!" ("Let's see each other around!"). He asks his friends whether it's better this way and they agree with "plenty of fish in the sea" type comments. Until silence falls and then his friends call him idiot. "Do we need tattoo it on your forehead when you have to go after a girl?"
Friggin' finally. Love confession, "Mä tykkään sust niin paljon, ettei siin oo mitään järkee." ("I like you so much it makes no sense.")
Trivia time! The director initially wanted the love confession to be, "Mä tykkään susta iha vitusti" - "I like you a huge fucking lot" but the writer talked him out of it. :D
She looks at him tearfully. Awww.
Trivia time! Next to her is her boyfriend who is bleeding from the earlier scene where the director in a cameo role beats him up because he tried to cut the line to the club Nelli went to (to find Sune).
She leaves her boyfriend ("I'm sorry.") and goes to him.
Yayyyy.
A kiss! Finally. Yes. One of the things I love love love about this movie is that there is only a kiss when everybody in the audience is really really hoping for one. So when it happens, it REALLY feels so good and necessary and perfect. It's the perfect climax for the story.
Happy ending, she performs at the gig a little and they kiss more on-stage. ♥
That's it. Hauskaa suomalaisuuden päivää!
It's not that all Finnish movies suck, but I don't typically go for art movies and thus don't care for the various serious drama movies of recent years, and most of the popular productions I don't want to waste my money on. TSOT, however, was a very well-made, entertaining movie that takes an age-old premise (Romeo & Juliet) into a modern environment and actually makes it well worth watching.
These screencaps are couple-centric as um, it's a romantic comedy and the leads are awfully pretty. Do the other people really matter? :P
To quote myself, the premise; The story is a Romeo&Juliet set-up where the girl, Nelli, is from an extremely well-off family and the boy, Sune (pronounced "Soo-neh"), from a poorer, more dysfunctional one. What brings them together is their equal passion for music, though even there they are worlds apart - Nelli admires commercial r'n'b singers whereas Sune produces underground hiphop and considers r'n'b closer to disease than music.
This is really a walkthrough with pictures, so spoilers for the movie. I'm doing this because I find it unlikely that a lot of you will ever get to see it. SADLY so, I don't think it's available outside Finland.
Title shot - Nelli singing at a choir.
First meeting - Nelli tries to convince a record executive of her talent and runs into Sune at the record company. She asks if he could help her make a demo tape and he makes a brilliant (in his mind anyway) joke about r'n'b being a disease that should be rid of the world. This guy isn't good with women.
Nelli cuteness.
Long story short, he has to proof he's not completely hopeless with the ladies (which he is) to his friends and he makes a bet with them that he can get Nelli into bed and then uses her demo tape request for help as an excuse to get her to come to his place. The winner of the bet would get a bottle of cognac.
Further future dramatic tension - when they meet at the bar and he asks for her number (so they can work on the demo), Nelli's boyfriend brings her a drink and as an offhand comment to Sune, Nelli calls him her big brother.. So Sune doesn't find out she's actually taken.
He is awkward.
..and looks down at her cleavage. Roffle.
Eventually they begin to actually work on her demo tape.
Though there a bumps in the collaboration as he continues not to know how to treat women.
The commercial vs noncommercial music angle shows in a scene where they listen to her demo and she worries about how it sounds, "Is this awful?" and he tells her that she should trust her own judgment and stop thinking about what other people might think about it so much. "If you try to hear it with other people's ears, you become deaf."
Subtle product placement and OTP cuteness, a scene where she starts to realize what his way of life is more about and they discuss parental pressures and the future.
Graffiti painting scene - further Nelli-in-Sune's-world scenes.
He loves her omg.
Tension - a party for two.
Almooost..
The movie's really not radically amazing or anything but what makes it so good is the fact that the director's not ashamed of making a romantic movie so the way the romance is developed makes sense and is done on the characters' conditions. It also contains some of the most naturalistic Finnish movie dialogue I've ever heard - it actually sounds like the sort of Finnish people the characters' ages might use. The whole undeground hiphop thing is also pretty well show-cased and realistic-seeming - and the film actually features a ton of Finnish rap artists in cameo roles. The music is good, too.
I think it should be mentioned that the movie was a graduation work of the director from the University of Art & Design so it's really a movie made by young filmmakers for the young viewers.
She wants to call off their collaboration as she has bad feelings about nearly cheating on her boyfriend.
He insists they go to her house to listen to the demo on some good stereo system, ("Can you remember what kind of stereos you have?" "No, but at least they were expensive"). He meets her dad.
Her family isn't evil or anything, but they'd rather she pursuit a "sensible" career like being a doctor.. Hence they're not enormously fond of her r'n'b demo.
A touching scene at her house. "At first I thought you were an awful snob.. But then I realized you're a normal girl." (This sounds better in Finnish, something like, "Ensin mä pidin sua ihan hirveenä snobina. Mut sähän oot ihan tavallinen tyttö..")
And she replies, "Toi on kaunein asia mikä kukaan on mulle koskaan sanonu." ("That's the most beautiful thing anybody has ever told me", though the English subs said something like, "That's the nicest thing I've ever been told".)
Just get together!
The ultimate tension scene - they're having dinner of some spaghetti in the middle of recording.. He makes a comment about the food, "It's hot" and she jokes, "So take off your shirt" and thus he takes off his shirt ..and so does she.
And then her boyfriend rings the door bell. The timing, dammit.
Her best friend shows up at his place to let Sune know Nelli has a boyfriend she's been with for ages.
So he angsts and gets drunk and wakes up to this sight.
In a heart-breaking scene, he pretends he has no feelings for her whatsoever and reveals the original bet with his friends to Nelli.
The pain of separation...
She lands a record deal with the demo and he shows up at her place to ask for forgiveness, though as he's not exactly the smoothest player around, he starts by stuttering something about maybe working on some new songs with her. She brings up the bet again, and challenges him into winning his bottle of cognac by making a tape of them having sex. He looks defeated and leaves.
She shoots for her first single cover.
Whoah, slut much? Thanks for this, record label.
"Tee se niin" is the title of the first song they worked on together and means, "do it that way".. The full lyrics goes "tee se niin / että sun takia vaivun transsiin" - do it so that I will go into trance because of you. Yep, suggestive r'n'b lyrics. ;)
He hears her song on the radio. Ouch.
This movie has a lot of very amusing scenes that completely poke fun at the music industry. One example are two scenes where the record label people completely mess up the mixing of good songs and turn them into utter crap. So the song that gets played on radio is a messed up version of the original good version Sune made.
She shows up backstage to his group's gig to "return some cd's".
Instead of being all, "I love you and want to be together with you", he messes up and they end up promising to be friends in the future.
She hugs him and leaves, saying, "Näkyillään!" ("Let's see each other around!"). He asks his friends whether it's better this way and they agree with "plenty of fish in the sea" type comments. Until silence falls and then his friends call him idiot. "Do we need tattoo it on your forehead when you have to go after a girl?"
Friggin' finally. Love confession, "Mä tykkään sust niin paljon, ettei siin oo mitään järkee." ("I like you so much it makes no sense.")
Trivia time! The director initially wanted the love confession to be, "Mä tykkään susta iha vitusti" - "I like you a huge fucking lot" but the writer talked him out of it. :D
She looks at him tearfully. Awww.
Trivia time! Next to her is her boyfriend who is bleeding from the earlier scene where the director in a cameo role beats him up because he tried to cut the line to the club Nelli went to (to find Sune).
She leaves her boyfriend ("I'm sorry.") and goes to him.
Yayyyy.
A kiss! Finally. Yes. One of the things I love love love about this movie is that there is only a kiss when everybody in the audience is really really hoping for one. So when it happens, it REALLY feels so good and necessary and perfect. It's the perfect climax for the story.
Happy ending, she performs at the gig a little and they kiss more on-stage. ♥
That's it. Hauskaa suomalaisuuden päivää!