I finally got around to seeing The Lives of Others. Or rather, The Lives of Others finally arrived in my town. It was amazing, so well acted and very moving. I think it's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.

I watched Stranger Than Fiction yesterday. While I wasn't as thrilled with it as I'd hoped I would be, I did find it entertaining. And Maggie Gyllenhaal (or however you spell her name) can be my girlfriend any day of the week.

Don't ask me how.

I suspect Blazing Saddles played a big part.

As do I.

I don't remember what they do. I saw it years ago.

I LOVE Treasure of Sierra Madre. You're right that it is a theme we've seen again and again, but for me the value of the film is the characters and the the myriad different ways they all fall apart and how they interact with each other as they devolve. Great stuff.

I just like "We don't need no stinkin' badges," I'm not sure that I've ever seen all of it.

Just saw Children of Men. Wow, wow, wow. That is an *incredible* movie. I was duly impressed with all the long shots (the person I saw it with was certain that they must have been edited together from multiple takes, until we watched the extras and saw them talking about how those shots were put together), but what was equally impressive was the sense of place, how real and how lived-in that world was, how grim but also how vibrant it was. The best thing about those famous long shots was how they enhanced that sense of reality, so you could really feel the tension mounting & the situation unfolding in each scene in real time. It's just incredible.

Saw Hot Fuzz tonight, and was underwhelmed. It got a few chuckles from me, but most of my reactions were "Ah, I recognize that" or "Hmm, clever," or "Ah, tricky." I found it much less funny and far more gory than Shaun of the Dead. On the drive home, I was kinda wishing I had rented that instead.

Unfortunately, I've got to go with dcp on this one. We watched Shaun of the Dead before going to see Hot Fuzz, and the former was much funnier. Hot Fuzz was good fun, but it was not the OMG AWESOME I was expecting from everyone else's reactions. I sort of expected the whole movie to be like the last twenty minutes, where they exploit all the action-movie cliches.

See, P-C, whereas I wouldn't have minded if those last twenty minutes with all the shooting & explosions had been cut down to ten. Not that I don't love shooting & explosions (and I wouldn't have cut a second of the fight in the model village!) but that's kind of a one-note joke after a while. I just loved everything about Nicholas moving to Sandford, being introduced to all the townspeople, meeting Danny (okay, so the bromance was my favorite part), and beginning to piece the mystery together. I thought it was much funnier than Shaun of the Dead, actually!