'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
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.
It shouldn't be funny on paper, but it is, in a very simple way.
Oh, I know! I thought it was brilliant, because for us it worked exactly the way they must have thought it would -- funny, then WTF, get this over, then wow, they're still doing it, which was hysterical.
For a minute, I had to stop and wonder if I'd gotten high and forgotten about it.
OMG, I just read a description of the plot to Battleship. (Yep, the movie based on the game.)
I'm not going to bother to describe the plot, except to mention one word: aliens. And yet, based on a board game of ships on a grid....
I recall how skeptical I was of a film based on a Disney lame-ass Disneyland ride.
Because there are lots of forty odd second snippets out there, but none seem rake-related.
I had a minute long theremin-related Simpsons clip on YouTube for maybe a year before the Fox lawyers caught up to it.
(the one where Homer finds Artie Ziff in the attic)
Erm. You say that like... because he kind of *is*... wait, what?
I was kind of WTF about that as well.
When I saw one of the Simpsons producers giving a schpiel on the show, he did say that the rake scene came about because they were short. And they just wanted to see what would happen if they extended the one joke. As bon notes, (and Amy verifies) it exhausts the joke and then it comes around again. Somehow. Humor is mysterious and all about the beats.
According to wikipedia, they extended the couch scene and added an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon but it was still too short hence the rakes.
Now we're watching High Society gosh I love Grace Kelly. I wish I didn't know what I know about Bing.
- my she was yar
- so was your granddaughter
On a completely other topic, I have a (spoilerfonted) question about Atonement.
If you've read the book... I knew Robbie was dead when he dreamed about walking through the field of poppies. Was there such an indication in the book or was it supposed to be a surprise when Briony revealed it at the end ?
Re: the AV Club lists, so happy to see Mysterious Skin getting some attention from someone. That movie was harrowing and beautiful and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was amazing in it. Also enjoyed the American Splendor nods. Others I agree with include Mulholland Drive, Pan's Labyrinth, Kill Bill Vol. 1, In the Mood for Love, and Spirited Away (of course).
I would have put Almodovar's Volver on the list rather than Talk To Her, though. TTH creeped me right the fuck out, and not in a good way. You want me to sympathize with a rapist? I don't think so, Pedro.
So, Sherlock Holmes wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't really very good. The acting and dialogue are great, but the plot and action scenes and set design were very meh. It's kind of going for a steampunk look, but it winds up feeling more like a cheap b-movie - there's just no texture to any of the CGI backgrounds.
Still, RDJ is excellent and has a good rapport with Jude Law, and their scenes together are fun to watch. (And it was a huge relief to me to watch a movie with a skeptical ending after the travesty that was Men Who Stare At Goats. The final scene bought a large amount of goodwill from me, since it so easily could have gone the other way.)