[Severian]

Has anyone else seen that other thinly propaganda film for "horror-zealot" extremist scare tactic evangelism (also starring Nicholas Cage) called KNOWING?

It's kind of a "Rapture-as-apocalyptic-alien-takeover" film. It *really* tried to pass itself off as just another action-adventure-conspiracy-disaster catch all Hollywood blockbuster. Which makes the absurdity of its eventual unmasking as an ultraviolent Old Testament kind of no nonsense smack down all the more disquieting (though still unbelievably hilarious).

What happened to Nicholas Cage? He was in Leaving Las Vegas for Christ's sake! And Raising Arizona. And... probably a few other films that were not completely terrible.

Now he's pushing his *seriously insane* dark ages fire and brimstone shit, stealthily, into the public semi-consciousness. That is, when he's not playing a daredevil motorcyclist who sells his soul to the devil for a mullet made of fire and a prenenially dated but damn sturdy leather jacket...

I will take Tom Cruise's weird but harmless off-screen Scientology over this creepy shit any day. Cage is absolutely trying to recruit motherfuckers here, and I thank God above that nobody watches his movies because they're so bad and he is so bad in them. It's the little things, after all

[h8kurdt]

 

I'm so bored of the usual type of music biopic that this was a total breath of fresh air. Both Paul Dano and John Cusack were just brilliant. For me, it's one of those films that I found myself thinking about for days afterwards, and that can never be a bad thing.

[!@#$%!]

the other day i watched "the imitation game"

it was semi-interesting but it was marred by the silly repetition of "the lesson". you know, when hollywood wants to teach you a bit of stupid morality they make sure to repeat it 3 times at key moments in the movie (or have the protagonist explain it at the end of a tv episode). here it was "the people who do things no one can imagine bla bla bla". triple-cringe. ugh with "the lesson".

i was also mistyfied by everyone getting "fired' or threatening to "get fired." i thought the english gave each other the sack. made me think this show was linguistically bowdlerized for 'merica. especially in 30s lingo. yes? no?

[Toilet & Bowels]

 

Rewatched Palookaville this evening with a couple of friends who'd never seen it. It's one of my favourite of the mid/late 90s batch of American indie films, my friends enjoyed it too,

[Severian]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

the other day i watched "the imitation game"

it was semi-interesting but it was marred by the silly repetition of "the lesson". you know, when hollywood wants to teach you a bit of stupid morality they make sure to repeat it 3 times at key moments in the movie (or have the protagonist explain it at the end of a tv episode). here it was "the people who do things no one can imagine bla bla bla". triple-cringe. ugh with "the lesson".

i was also mistyfied by everyone getting "fired' or threatening to "get fired." i thought the english gave each other the sack. made me think this show was linguistically bowdlerized for 'merica. especially in 30s lingo. yes? no?

Mmmm... Yeah, Brits do say "got the sack" or "sacked", especially, I think, when talking either in the first of third person. But I don't know if that necessarily means that "fired" isn't a phrase over there.

It's hard to imagine a Colonel walking into a top secret code-breaking room during war time and saying "'t'sit Turing, I'm sackin' ya!"

Also, I'm not sure about this, but I think "the sack" is more like "being laid off"... And it also is probably associated with a certain dialect... there are so many fooking dialects and accents and social/class related linguistic traits in Britain. And for some reason I feel like "the sack" might be a bit too working class for the likes of world-renowned mathematicians, cryptographers, military higher-ups and decorated scholars/academics.

But I'm really not sure. I loved the movie. It was fantastic. But I've always been fascinated by Dr. Turing's life and work. I was pleased to see that the film was clearly striving for greatness on all levels.

[Severian]

I just watched this:

 

Better than I expected. I'm not sure why I didn't expect much, since Fincher usually nails it, and the scores provided by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross have really taken his films to another level.

I just never got wrapped up in the hype surrounding the book, and I don't much like Ben Affleck, and I thought Reese Witherspoon was going to play Amy.... I am not really a fan of Mrs. Witherspoon, but she can act when she has to, and I found Rosamund Pike to be quite dry and dull and crappy especially for the first half of the film.

Overall, it was a good story, and it really does kind of rope you in... but I would have cast Brad Pitt in the lead role. Brad Pitt and Reese Whitherspoon. Then it probably would have been Oscar candy.

Fucking amazing score, of course. Makes me want Reznor and Ross to start composing for David Lynch. what an excellent match that would be!

3 stars (out of 5)

[!@#$%!]

^^ yeah i did like a lot about the turing movie, enough to feel irritated by "the lesson" which i take for granted in lesser movies. here it was like "hey, great movie..!. oh no, here comes the fucking lesson..."

i think frumious bandersnatch was fantastic as usual. i think the whole subplot of why the machine is named christopher was sad and sweet. the period reconstruction was good, etc. the structure with 3 timelines worked for me-- not at the beginning but soon it made good sense. i also never tire of keira knightley's strange but beautiful face. so there was a lot to like.

the fired vs sacked wasn't really a problem, just a question i had that momentarily ceased suspension of disbelief--- what i really hated was the fucking lesson. not that it was there, or the meaning of it-- but how it was so on-the-nose. a concession to the general public i suppose. things one has to live with in mass entertainment.

[!@#$%!]

a few great things lately

--> ALL IS LOST. a movie without dialogue that adds a few unnecessary lines at the beginning when it doesn't really have to. i hate concessions to the stupids. but fantastically great job!!

--> THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. starts great, then gets a bit rambling for my taste, but still, great movie about... alcoholism (or something). i don't know why it works but it's great, and bowie is great in it, and the way the science fiction is done without much... what... spacey shit. really good, and enough meat in it to analyze and interpret for a long time.

--> MAD MAX (1979 original). this is another movie you could watch without dialogue and totally get everything. it does exactly what it promises. as good as indie/low-budget gets. and it opened an era i think that peaked more or less in 1984 with the terminator.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

I think i watched Edge of Tomorrow which i found much better the second time and Money Train yesterday.. early Woody Harrelson is just terrible, good thing Wesley Snipes was in it with some J-Lo eye candy

[tw2113]

The Blue Lagoon.

[Severian]

Re: Keira Knightley

YES.

I used to think Winona Ryder was the most beautiful woman in the world (well, you know... The most beautiful "fake" woman), but Keira, partly by virtue of her looking a bit like Winona Ryder, has quite officially taken her place at this point.

Ever seen Atonement? Classiest sex scene ever. No nudity. But DAMN.

[!@#$%!]

i haven't seen it-- but i will now i guess

she was really fucking great in that jung/freud movie cronenberg made--made the ugliest possible twitchy grimaces. she can really act.

[tw2113]

Followup from last night, I watched "The Girl Next Door" after The Blue Lagoon.

[RdTv]

Solaris (1972, Tarkovsky)

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

 

INHERENT VICE (PTA, 2014)
- mostly it was very funny, with a twinge of paranoia and some minor brutality. i hand't realized where the movie was sourced, so i thought i was a great movie detective when i thought to myself "this reminds me of the crying of lot 49", which pony had just been reading, and i thought i'd bring it up in the book thread, and at the end i spot that it was based on a book by thomas pynchon ha ha ha. but i liked this movie better than i like pynchon (sorry fans). in any case beautifully shot. great cast and all. good paranoid plot. enjoyable all the way, except for a cringeworthy spanking scene and maybe the very end which i was like-- eh! it's not a better movie than there will be blood but i enjoyed it more than the master and i forget what else. watch it in a good screen.

Originally Posted by Severian

Opposite response here. I'm familiar with the book, and I was really looking forward to this, although I (like many) did kind of wonder how the hell a film adaptation of this thing was going to turnout. It's about as adaptable as Catcher in the Rye or Finnegan's Wake. But I saw the previews and liked what I saw, and I think PTA is one of the best directors out there.

But I thought it dragged and stuttered and was an overall disappointment. I think Jaquin Phoenix did a mostly great job as doc: his walk, his presence etc. but something about his delivery was offbeat in a literal way. Like, out of synch somehow. It got aggravating. Joanna Newsom was the best part. Brolin was ok, but there were some missed would-be great moments for his Bigfoot.

All in all, it probably shouldn't have been made. I did not dig.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

yeah, whenever someone tries to make a movie about a book i love it's a massive disappointment. or almost-- i know there are exceptions but i can't recall what they are at the moment.

but since i don't really love pynchon, i saw this purely as a film-- and as such, it works really well. i do not worship in the cult of PTA, so i have no positive bias towards him, but i agree with most critics this is a very good movie--81% favorable on metacritic is no small feat, even in the face of marketing machineries. i don't mean to make an appeal to authority as a valid argument, but it has to count for something as in "i don't think i'm totally off the mark here."

though i get your personal view as well-- you already had pictures in your mind the movie had to live up to, and books are made of words, no movie can live up to that to that challenge.

i thought joaquín is pretty great, don't know what out of sync means. as for moments brolin missed, i suppose you mean abridgements in the plot-- but those are indispensable in film adaptations.

serial formats like TV are best to bring novels to the screen, whereas feature films are closer in structure to the short story or at most the novella. that is the one fundamental problem of book adaptations to feature films-- extreme time compression requires major butchery.

Finally watched it. Hadn't read the book but generally felt a bit non-plussed. There were some good moments, it looked great and Joaquin Phoenix is obviously brilliant, but it didn't really hang together as a movie for me. I am a big PTA fan so maybe hoped for too much.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by RdTv

Solaris (1972, Tarkovsky)

an incredible beauty

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Finally watched it. Hadn't read the book but generally felt a bit non-plussed. There were some good moments, it looked great and Joaquin Phoenix is obviously brilliant, but it didn't really hang together as a movie for me. I am a big PTA fan so maybe hoped for too much.

i know you've mentioned im as scorsese's potential successor in the "intensity" department, so this one is not like that at all--this one has the pynchon paranoia but also its goofiness. in spite of the crime and all the drama, it's definitely a comedy-- both in the way it looks at people and in the classic happy ending form. [SORRY SPOILERS]

now i'm curious about something-- i know you favor horror (it's not really my thing, save some great exceptions). but how do you feel about the comedies in general?

[Rob Instigator]

Inherent Vice - pointless forgettable useless waste of everything ever. I hated this film more than I hate anything I have ever watched other than Pedro Almodova's bullshit.

I walked out of the theater 40 minutes into Inherent Vice and wanted to shove my feces in the face of everyone associated with the fucking theater. what a horrible horrible horrible experience.

[demonrail666]

I like some comedies but not the 'goofy' ones so much. I like Manhattan-period Woody Allen, that kind of thing, oh and I'm a massive WC Fields fan, but I generally don't watch many out and out comedies. Funnily enough (ahem) a lot of the films that've made me laugh out loud the most wouldn't really qualify as comedies at all. Bits of Goodfellas I find hilarious. Same with Robert Downey Jnr in Iron Man. Iron Man isn't a comedy but some of the lines in it are far funnier than what I've heard in most films that supposedly are. If that makes sense.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Inherent Vice - pointless forgettable useless waste of everything ever. I hated this film more than I hate anything I have ever watched other than Pedro Almodova's bullshit.

I walked out of the theater 40 minutes into Inherent Vice and wanted to shove my feces in the face of everyone associated with the fucking theater. what a horrible horrible horrible experience.

Hahaha!!! I was honestly thinking, when I wrote that post about it, if you'd seen it and the potential amount of hatred you'd feel towards it if you did.

[Rob Instigator]

I like my comedies to be self-consistent, yet not try to tell me melodrama crap.

I loved like 1/2 of Pineapple Express.

ha!