'Serenity'
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.
This question:
4) Favorite Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger movie
from the quiz MADE me rewatch "A Matter of Life and Death" last night. Oh the hardship. Was the young David Niven ever more charming? And that's saying something.
It's was SO's first P&P movie. His comment: "abgefahren", which translates as cool, spacy, way-out, wicked. Yeah, he gets it.
His comment: "abgefahren", which translates as cool, spacy, way-out, wicked. Yeah, he gets it.
You should do Black Narcissus next--talk about abgefahren. That PP question was so hard, just cause I love them all.
Abgefahren = "Far out, man!" :-)
Anti-littering PSA from David Lynch: [link]
I just got back from the international film fest showing of Almodovar's All About my Mother. SO happy that I waited to see this on the big screen for the full immersion experience. Cecilia Roth just blew me away - I think that's the best performance by an actress I've seen in the past year.
Movie quiz stuff:
1) Repo Man (didn't really love it on first pass; soon become most quoted movie in then recent memory)
2) Grapes of Wrath
3) John Hurt's cameo in SPACEBALLS (double your reference, double your fun)
4) Damn, I've only seen PEEPING TOM which is post-Pressburger. Oh well, it's a great movie.
5) Trey and Matt showing up in drag and tripping.
6) Guy Pearce. For RAVENOUS if nothing else (and there is more).
7) Amarcord
8) THE NAKED KISS
9) Monica all the way, bay-bee!
10) GROUNDHOG DAY / THE FULL MONTY / NORTH BY NORTHWEST
11) PATCH ADAMS
12) HOPE AND GLORY
13) Warren, though I do love Bruce.
14) The correct one.
15) I think Quentin Tarantino's movies utterly reflect his personality, and that's just the first one I thought of. I think both Wes and Paul Thomas Anderson are also in that category. And definitely Sofia Coppola.
16) Aguirre.
17) THE FLY (Cronenberg version)
18) Sandra, for getting to torture Jerry Lewis on camera.
19) Favorite: the jaded hero(ine) who rediscovers their reasons / Least: Wacky misunderstandings that two sentances would have cleared up.
20) Nes.
21) BIGGER THAN LIFE (scary ass shit and could have qualified for question 17); my wise-ass response would be THE AMERICAN FRIEND
22) I'm going with famous "bombs" that were underrated: POPEYE, HUDSON HAWK & LONG KISS GOODNIGHT.
23) VIDEODROME
24) Bruno!
25) HEARTS OF DARKNESS
26) Michael Palin throwing out "but I didn't have the salmon mousse" at the last second in MEANING OF LIFE. In a non-movie context, Bob from TWIN PEAKS showing up by accident in a shot a Lynch and company running with it.
27) WINGS OF DESIRE
28) Pena, for LONE STAR if nothing else (and there is more)
29) BLACK SHEEP: Get ready for the violence of the lambs!!!!
30) Whatever Pauline Kael did, that's what I loves the most.
Bonus: Yes, because they matter to me.
Also, a massive pbpbpbbbblllttt!!!! to Hec for his 2001 crack.
So I just watched the Manchurian Candidate remake.
How did they take an exciting thriller and make it so damn boring ?
I feel like it was ineptly made, or I just hated all the directorial choices. Like the fact that half the shots were the character right in the middle of the frame, facing the camera. Often talking to the camera in the process of addressing a character. There were a couple times where it seemed intentional, for effect, but it happened so many times for no apparent reason that it felt like Demme had never made a movie before or something. Plus, the constant fade-outs were weird. It's like the movie had zero momentum. It was sort of a mess. I don't get it. I remember being really impressed with how good the original was.
Some alternative marketing for 300. I cracked up at the visual the creator chose for the first chorus.
Pena, for LONE STAR if nothing else (and there is more)
God do I love that movie! Now that I've actually been to that part of Texas, I should probably see it again.
Finally saw PAN'S LABYRINTH and I loved, Loved, LOVED it. Put me squarely in the camp that feels that everything that Ofelia saw really happened and the ending is a happy one. Even if there weren't two things I'd consider tells, I'd feel that way - it certainly seems more unambiguously a happy ending than CHILDREN OF MEN. But both her brief escape from Vidal in the labyrinth via the walls (though you could make a case that he was lagging due to the drugged drink), and, more tellingly, how else could she get out of her locked room in the first place. This is similar to THE SHINING (Kubrick version) in that almost everything COULD just be Jack going crazy and taking his family with him, except for who let him out of the storage locker. And even the chalk is almost a tell - where did she get the chalk if the faun didn't give it to her?
Anyway, loved it.