Glory ,'Potential'
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.
Harrison Bergeron
My personal favorite.
And, like Johnny Got His Gun, the book that single-handedly set me on my path to become a professional peace activist, Bergeron has fueled my work and my philosophy greatly.
I have carefully avoided seeing either movie. (Sean Astin as Harrison? The Hell?)
Sparky, another film that might qualify for that list of films on International Law is Mother Night with Nick Nolte, about an American spy in Germany during WWII who winds up getting a gig doing Nazi propaganda broadcasts on the radio, then later gets arrested and carted off to Nuremburg to stand trial for war crimes. Good, based on a Vonnegut story, and very depressing. Also deal with themes of identity and responsibility.
This may have been mentioned before...and may not even fit the bill, but I immediately thought of Closet Land, Amnesty International's film with Alan Rickman and Madeline Stowe. Psychological torture and stripping away of personal rights...like whoa.
"Andrew? Are you going to bring me my lemon or do I have to squeeze it from my hat?"
I don't know why it didn't occur to me until now, but international law is the backdrop for the protagonist's web of lies in Time Out, which is smart, left-leaning, and French.
Did The Third Man get mentioned in this context?
Emmett's watching A Series of Unfortunate Events and it is like an unceasing itch that everything is perfect. The production design is fantastic. The costumes are gorgeous. The look and feel, amazing. The children and and all the supporting actors are perfectly cast except... Jim Carrey. Who is not perfect.
But damn it looks great. And all of Violet's inventive escapes are perfectly put together and thought out. And the script is well made and Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep are great.
But...Jim Carrey.
And you just want to move into each and every set they show - that's how perfect they are. Even Olaf's ratty house has ratty gothic splendor.
And yet.
Sadly, I've still never seen Escape from New York.
But, but...you're missing Chef/Audrey II as the Duke of New York!
ITA with FKB's comments on the Carpenter score. And with Hec's comments on A Series of Unfortunate Casting Choices, Or Just the One, Really.
We're batting about .250. PotC 2 Friday night, which was not good. Pretty, in parts. Art Direction after my own heart, but it's always embarrassing when somebody bruckheimers all over the place like that.
Tonight, Monster House. What a pointless waste of celluloid. It's kind of a Stephen King story, is the best I can say about it. And great particle effects in the animation.
But...Jim Carrey.
Exactly. Even he would have been tolerable if there had been less of him and if he hadn't over-acted quite so much. Those were beautiful sets and it felt like he tried to eat all of them.
Not related to Carrey, but I have to give "Nashville" another shot when it is not so late that I am passing out. But it held my attention surprisingly well considering I'd like the music better if it were "Chicago" or "Detroit"