Just got back from Ju-on (The Grudge). I thought it was totally silly. It had suspense and some creepy images but overall, silliness. And I scare easily. The entire audience was laughing at certain parts that I'm sure weren't supposed to be humorous. I'll still see the SMG remake cause I want SMG to keep getting roles but now I'm not really looking forward to it.

I'm with you on Touch of Evil, JZ. I think Orson Welles is brilliant.

That best-ever-in-the-history-of-anything long, long opening shot!

You mean the shot that goes accross the border into Tiajuana? Wasn't that shot in Venice, or does it just look like it?

Just got back from Ju-on (The Grudge). I thought it was totally silly. It had suspense and some creepy images but overall, silliness.

Oh, GC. I loved it. I thought the movie was very effective for its microscopic budget, and creepy as all fuck. We'll have to compare notes when we see each other next, and you can tell me what you like in your horror movies.

Wasn't that shot in Venice, or does it just look like it?

Yep, although the sequence of the shot is it comes from Tiajuana into Venice.

I don't understand people who liked Cube. It seemed to me like a pretty typical gory horror movie. Also, don't watch the second one.

Your hotness update: Orlando Bloom: hot. Christian Bale: hot.

I'm probably the last Buffista in the free world to see Spiderman 2 and I know the conversation has moved on, but saw it, loved it. I will now forever hear the Spiderman song as sung by the plucky violin woman. And I don't find JF hot, but I did find TM hot in this movie which is a little disturbing because he's always creeped me out a bit in the past. The astronaut patsy that KD was going to marry. . . now he was hot.

So what's supposed to be so damn good about The Triplets of Belleville? I just watched it and I'm pretty meh about it. Also meh on Touch of Evil

I just saw Cube, which finally broke my streak of meh.

It's like he's speaking English, and yet I can't seem to make out the meaning.

DH and I saw Vanity Fair last night. I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on it as an adaptation. As a movie, it's a very well-made bit of fluff, but I wanted more substance. (It also felt very rushed in places, almost as if they were trying to cram 900+ pages of text into 2 hours and 20 minutes of film. Oh, wait...)

It just struck me as yet another corrupt cop story

This is so. The appeal of the movie, if you're to find any, is in the baroque grossness of the world -- outraged Charlton Heston, bloated Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich being old and cynical, Mercedes McCambridge as a baby dyke. I tend to prefer my noir lean and understated, so Touch of Evil isn't especially high on my list. On balance, I'll almost always choose something from the beginning of the noir cycle over something from the end of it.

That best-ever-in-the-history-of-anything long, long opening shot!

I'll also agree with P-C that the opening shot suffers from Forrest Gump-itis, which is a shot more interesting for its technical ability than for its content. While I can appreciate form, it's the content that matters to me. (Also, I think it was an invitation to generations of film students who thereafter never met a trick shot they couldn't indulge.)

It also may help to look at Touch of Evil as a B movie-- it's often said it was the best B movie ever made. It's pretty campy in parts.

I think the opening shot of Halloween is fair competition.

But would the opening shot of Halloween even exist without Touch of Evil ? And the mundane-ness of the opening shot totally works for me -- the swoopy but aimless wandering about, nothing going on, nothing happening, cars crawling through a checkpoint, half-heard conversations, barely-glimpsed couples out for an evening walk, the gritty grubby uneventfulness of it all, capped off with a big old tawdry cheesy B-movie explosion. It's totally a B movie, and it revels in its own cheese and dirt and grime.