'Objects In Space'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
RE: Pirates - I loved the muddling up of the characters. And, I know it was kind of bloated but so was the first one. It was all good by me.
A friend at work thought the ending was abrupt, but I thought it was just right. I liked the way familiar characters kept popping up in unexpected places.
I saw both Scoop and Monster House today, and was quite surprised that I liked Scoop much, much, MUCH more than MH. MH is probably the better-made film, but it takes a turn in the third act that would have made me walk out if I'd been there alone. (As I had no interest in sitting out in the hall waiting for DH, I stuck it out, but it never redeemed itself.)
Scoop was the only Woody Allen comedy I've really liked since probably Deconstructing Harry. (Sweet & Lowdown and Match Point not being straight comedies.) It's not great by any stretch of the imagination, but it's pleasantly diverting, and Woody himself is funnier than he's been in years. The jokes are mostly recycled material from his older, better (early, funny) movies, but they're well-told and fun to watch. The main problem here is that he's obvious going deaf, and so the timing of the dialogue is all about half a beat slower than it should be.
I can't really talk about my issues with Monster House without spoiling it, so I won't. In the third act, something is revealed that changes the film's entire worldview in a way I found unforgiveably offensive. I'm sure it was unintentional, but that just makes it condescending rather than malicious. Like I said above, the only reason I didn't walk out was because I didn't want to spend the last half-hour of the movie sitting in the hallway waiting.
Incidentally, my current theory about Pirates is that it was a movie designed for fandom. It spent a lot of time on world-building and lore and triangulating the relationships and making the characters murkier. All fandom fodder.
I agree. I think that they knew the audience this time around and really played up those things that they thought that audience would like. I still need to see it again.
Scorsese's The Departed, the American remake of Infernal Affairs
The interesting thing about that movie, based on the trailer, is that Scorsese cast two Boston actors on purpose, because even academy award-winning actors cannot reproduce the accent to save their lives. Jeepers. (What's more, Damon's, which is studied, is in tiny ways going to sound different from Wahlberg's, which is not studied. But that probably won't be as obvious as the awkward blatting of all the other actors.)
And no, of course Leonardo DiCaprio cannot do soul like Tony Leung can do soul. Also, he towers over Matt Damon. The confrontation scenes are going to be interesting.
I stayed for the scene at the end of PotC2. It wasn't worth it, mostly because I knew that was going to happen when I saw the dog get left behind. As we were leaving, the kid behind me was talking about it to his dad, and I turned and said, "You know that means they're going to eat him," and the kid went whoa. My not!boyfriend told me I was evil, and I said like you didn't know that already. The kid thought it was cool, though.
I'm not going to decide if I liked Potc2 until I see PotC3. Kind of like how I withheld judgment of Matrix2 until the story was wrapped up in Matrix3, at which point I decided they were both crap. I hope that doesn't happen this time. In any case, nothing will kill my love for the first ones.
The interesting thing about that movie, based on the trailer, is that Scorsese cast two Boston actors on purpose, because even academy award-winning actors cannot reproduce the accent to save their lives. Jeepers.
Yeah, I really hope Nicholson is playing someone from away, because otherwise that's going to be uglier than Robin Williams in GOOD WILL HUNTING, I bet. Williams at least could get the "wickid hammahed" out without mangling it too much.
The irony for me is I always thought that DiCaprio and Damon looked so much alike that they needed to be cast as brothers (much as I love Jude Law in the movie, DiCaprio would have been more a plausible looks-kinda-like in RIPLEY for Damon to pass himself off as). Not quite up there with David Boreanaz/Josh Brolin/Craig Scheffer, but close.
The people I was with (who were driving) when I saw PotC2 wanted to leave when the credits started. Would someone mind posting (in whitefont) what happened in the bit after the credits?
Anne, it just showed that the dog had become king of the cannibals. It wasn't as good as the last movie's scene, but I liked it because I had been wondering what had happened to the dog.
Thanks, P-C!
I'm with P-C on the dog.
"You know that means they're going to eat him,"Now, you see...I totally lalala'ed this to mean the cannibals would assume that the dog has already been freed from his human body and therefore, would be uneatable.
Silly me and my naivete.