finally watched World War Z
It was pretty good
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finally watched World War Z
It was pretty good
Paths of Glory is based on true events and a book written by a US veteran of the First World War. In real life the families of the executed men sued after the war, and two were awarded the sum of One Franc in compensation. Kubrick shot most of the film in Germany and the singer in the cafe at the end became his third wife (Christiane Harlan I think). Paths of Glory was also an example of Kubrick's mania for taking take after take after take driving both Adolphe Menjou and Kirk Douglas into paroxysms of verbal fury. Although the finest of Kubrick's films when seen in isolation from the rest, it does begin Kubrick's obnoxious repetition of his negative view on life which he labours throughout the rest of his ouevre, films in which there is no sense of love among people, no sense of fellowship or community, but where love is false, if it exists at all, and people are motivated by selfishness, aggression and hate. One part of reality, but not the whole part.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
Coppola either did not understand Conrad's Heart of Darkness, or Conrad's astonishing tale is simply too complex to film, as it contains at least three layers of narrative in which the actual heart of the darkness referred to may be right there on the Thames where it begins and ends, rather than in Africa. Apocalypse Now is not about Vietnam anyway, but it might be about the US experience in Vietnam, which is not the same thing.
I think I read in one of the few interviews Kubrick gave that he believed many viewers came to the theaters requiring a positive ending to feel fulfilled by a movie and that providing the opposite was more true to life. The problem with this fetish is that it is just as reductive as providing a positive ending each time, and becomes a cliché of its own eventually. I agree with the rest of what you say.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Kubrick was from what I've read a family man, although his daughter Vivian split around the time of his death and became a scientologist, never to be seen again. Disappointing that he was unable to demonstrate any of that empathy in his character's interactions. He wrote his daughter a 40 page letter to win her back to the family when she began her estrangement; though showing his trademark obsessiveness, it sounds to me like a very sentimental act. However, probably for misguided ideological reasons, none of that human love ever made its way into his films.
On the one hand it might be said there aren't that many lovable people laughs in Bergman's films, but there is love in many of them, particularly in the 1950s, and he approaches his films from within the conflicts in his own life between the austere Christian discipline of his childhood, the escape into theatre, and the less-discussed issue of ambiguous sexuality -there aren't that many such complexities in Kubrick. I think he enjoyed the technology of making films more than the stories.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
I might go for the 'All-new final cut' but I am not buying every version, that's OTT.Quote:
Originally Posted by bluesoul
Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971)
I did not see the film when it was released, and I think I have the uncut version, not that it matters, I didn't miss much in the intervening years, and what I did wasn't worth seeing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
The "Final Cut" version is supposedly Ridley Scott's final, definitive version of the film. The 1982 US theatrical version is the one where Scott had to cave to pressure from the studio. They insisted on voice-over narration by Harrison Ford because they believed the movie would be too confusing to audiences without it, and it has a more upbeat, less ambiguous ending. It's interesting to compare them. I think at this point, any Blade Runner DVD/Blu-Ray that you find will contain multiple versions of the film in the package. You don't have to get the aluminum case, though.
I've only seen the Seventh Seal and the message was at times stark and at other times uplifting. When Max Van Sydow is sitting there eating the milk and strawberries with the young family and talking about how that moment made his reprieve worthwhile, we get a sense of how human love can be a great comfort in moments of existential despair. I haven't seen any other Bergman films besides the Seventh Seal but there was sort of bittersweet ethos, emanating between despair and optimism.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
With the exception of maybe Barry Lyndon, Kubrick hardly dealt with normal human interaction at all. This is clearly a shortcoming in his ability to develop a story; both in his choice of subject matter, and his evident inability to show the lighter side of humanity.
I have to admit I was not awed by Bladerunner. I was interested for forty minutes and then became bored. It seemed like an interesting portrayal of the future and a relevant concept with the machines knowing their expiration date and trying to find their creator. I guess I just don't have the temperament for science fiction.
prometheus: a bunch of lunckhead scientist types go to a planet to meet a giant christianxxx then get killed. really bad.
goodfellas: ray liotta joins the mob. really fun film. scorsese killed it (then nailed it to the wall) did anyone notice debra mazar was liotta's fucktoy? yummy!
hitchcock: okay. remember when you were in school and someone did an impression of someone else and you thought "yep. that's him" but they didn't do it for too long because it wasn't a good enough impression? well- this movie is that- except it's like 2hrs long. embarrassingly bad. but helen mirren is gorgeous. i actually masturbated to her at one point during this film
Cat People - the 1981 remake of the 1942 pic by the same name. The David Bowie song was there first, before it hit Inglorious Basterds or however it's spelled. Nastassja Kinski was really very good in it, and Malcolm McDowell was also a bit more sympathetic than usual. A bit too subdued, but still a good watch.
Cloud Atlas (Tykwer, Wachowski & Wachowski 2012)
Fantastic production of the book which does not amount to a drop of water in the ocean. The one cute device in a film part-directed by Lana Wachowski is the use of the same actor in multiple roles and particularly trans-gendering, not that it makes it any more interesting to watch. Ben Whishaw a compelling actor. Is it just me or is Tom Hanks improving as he gets older?
Cloud Atlas Extended Trailer #1 (2012) - Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Wachowski Movie HD - YouTube
Completely agree and great movie indeed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
For the protocol - Just made my first attempt to start watching this Breaking bad series.
Watched the 1st episode last night, will see... :)
Regards,
K.
I am watching, at great leisure, Friday Night Lights. It simply does not make me any more interested in American football (for football as you Americans prefer to call it0 Give me soccer any day - and i don't even enjoy that!
Next up - sometime in 2014 - Breaking Bad
Boris Karloff's "Black Sabbath" last night. It was terrible!! But, so creepy. I loved it!
The Counselor (director Ridley Scott and screenplay by Cormac McCarthy).
You have to listen to this movie. Wonderful lines, dialog and monologs...some delivered by even the most minor characters. (NPR complained the dialog was realistic, that no one would say those things in those ways. I agree. But that doesn't detract from Shakespeare, nor does it detract from McCarthy.)
oops! NPR complained the dialog was NOT realistic. (Why oh why can't we edit our posts???)
Prometheus. Made virtually no sense. And I LOVE the Alien movies.
Prometheus was utter crud, wasn't it.
The White House Down and The call both brilliant movies.
Blade Runner -the Final Cut
An improvement on the original release, but there isn't much to it once you see the same skyline over and over again, and the crowded, rainy streets. The acting is wooden, the content slight -replicants designed to be useful have become a menace, merely another version of Frankenstein- and the lead character may even be a replicant himself. Even Rutger Hauer fails to match the deliciously wild persona that he presented so well in The Hitcher. The film is set in 2019 which is now too close, maybe 2219 would be more appropriate but surely the sun will shine brighter then? I wonder if Ridley Scott has a problem with science and rationality?
On Blade Runner (beware of spoilers):
It does raise the issue of whether some sort of Turing Test is an adequate measure of a sort of generalized “humanity.” The test Deckard uses requires over a hundred questions before he can be confident that Rachael is a replicant. Will distinguishing human from replicant eventually become intractable? If so, what will that mean? Rachael asks if Deckard ever terminated a human by mistake. He doesn’t answer. At one point in the movie, a replicant (Pris) poses as an automaton to avoid detection; an example of an artificial human actually attempting to fail the Turing Test and failing to fail as her act seems to raise Deckard’s suspicions. We don’t even know in the end whether Deckard himself is artificial or not. He dreams of a unicorn. If it’s a dream and not an implant, why did Gaff leave an origami unicorn in his apartment?
Of course the film has it’s flaws. If the replicants can withstand extreme heat and extreme cold (plunging their hands into boiling water and liquid nitrogen) wouldn’t there be easier ways to detect them? The film avoids this question precisely because it wants to focus on the notion of the Turing Test.
Explorations of morality what a creation owes its maker are explored in the characters of Tyrell and Sebastian.
Besides the exquisitely depicted dark dystopian future, the movie has some good lines.
From the “I want more life, fucker” to the Roy’s death speech at the movie's climax.
I give it a thumbs up.
Hmmmm...I didn't see it from your point of view not knowing anything about the Turing Test, although that again raises the question of Scott's interest in, or antipathy to science and rationality -is he saying you can't use science to ascertain the truth of a person? After all Deckard tends to kill rather than reason, with one exception, albeit a 'woman', and then it is love/lust rather than reason that takes over. Also there is the theme of the rebel, which I assume is meant to cast Deckard as the hero. I can't agree that anything much is explored in the characters of either Tyrell or Sebastian, it also seems odd that a man so rich in so violent a world as Tyrell lives in would be so accessible to strangers. Even though I understand the play on identity -the photos in Deckard's apartment are surely from a different century?- it doesn't go deep enough for me, but I don't think Scott is a deep thinker anyway so maybe this is as good as it gets.
To paraphrase Turing (perhaps to the point of distortion, for the purpose of discussion) if an artificial intelligence could pass as a human, then we should regard it as a truly intelligent being.(my parenthesis). Or perhaps Scott and Phillip K Dick are saying that the alleged moral borders demarcating artificial minds from real minds are conventional, questionable and perhaps too intractably difficult to delineate. Maybe at some point there is no border.Quote:
is he saying you can't use science to ascertain the truth of a person?
I admit to being imprecise. Rather than the character of the characters it's the symbolism of those characters and their relationship to their creations. Sebastian reminds me of the Angel in Mark Twain's The Stranger. His creations are mangled and foolish, but he's sees no moral dilemma in that whatsoever. Tyrell is murdered by his creation. Aren't we supposed to honor our father and mother, and most of all our Creator? Roy is very much a Nietschean character.Quote:
I can't agree that anything much is explored in the characters of either Tyrell or Sebastian
You're right. The film could go deeper. But, for me at least, it's an invitation to delve. Thanks for your response.
Addendum:
I always took the Frankenstein films to be saying that there are questions we should never ask and knowledge we'd be better off not knowing. We should not seek how to create life and we shouldn't create Frankenstein monsters. In my mind this interpretation goes hand in hand with the age in which the Frankenstein films were most popular; though the first was made in the early thirties it was screened over and over again in the 50's and 60's...the height of the cold war and our fear of atomic self-immolation. On the other hand, Blade Runner seems, to me, to say the opposite. The Nexus androids are not pitiful creatures better off never having existed. They are beautiful, intelligent and they know that slavery is wrong. Sebastian is Frankenstein. His creatures are monsters. But Tyrell is God.Quote:
merely another version of Frankenstein-
I saw the Counselor. I didn't enjoy it at all. I thought the dialogue was over-wrought and at times inappropriate for the medium. There were some interesting insights, but it seemed the point of every conversation was to impart them rather than advance the storyline. Some good scenes as well (don't want to give spoiler), but certain things came across as embarrassingly contrived and needing editing.
E.g. the Cameron Diaz hump the car scene and accompanying description, the conversation with the drug boss and Fassbender, Cameron Diaz in the confessional...this last one was a good idea because it showed how brazen she was, but it was not developed into anything compelling as the priest simply walked out before she could make him really uncomfortable.
The Counselor reminds me of John Gardner's Grendel. The characters are dragons, monsters and Viking heroes. There can be no natural dialogue. Instead there are monologues. Their point is indeed to offer insights and advice ("collect gold...and hoard it"). Personally I love those moments (in any media) where a character essentially stops all action to deliberate upon a choice, or pontificate on the world from her perspective; i.e. to deliver a monologue (as in the scene with Fassbender and the drug boss; or those scenes in Deadwood where Swearengen would be delivered of his monologue by the hooker working on his pecker. However, I agree, it's not natural, realistic or typical to come across a conversation where the participants are spewing McCarthyesque dialogue.
"Mandela" - Idris Elba cruising for an Oscar. Will post more tomorrow.
Mary Shelley's book is part of the romantic anti-capitalism which failed to come to terms with 'infernal machines' and which went to the 'next step' ie the creation of mechanical humans with no soul -a warning of unlimited development, and yes there is an analogy with the creation of nuclear devices which can destroy us all, but the context is different. The idea that the replicants in their 'natural' state are 'beautiful, intelligent' doesn't explain why they rebel and become so violent and of course become aware that they are not real. I haven't read Dick's story so I don't know how different it is from the film, but future worlds which are fiercely regimented and provoke rebellion seem common yet the film-makers are not radicals but conservative, as if the regimented society was pseudo-communist and rebellion a spark of individual justice seeking freedom even though in some cases, eg Blade Runner and Cloud Atlas, the 'masses' are sold on an extreme form of capitalism that provides everything, all rather confusing. I think as with Alien(s) and Predator Scott is contrasting modernisation with naturalism preferring the latter to the former even though the former enables him to make films. Wagner had this problem in the Ring -human love discarded for material gain destroys the world-fine; but to present it on stage Wagner needed, indeed, desired modern stage technology and, of course, money to put it all on. He never could square the contradiction, or anxious relationship between his need for material things and his worship of nature; it's one of the reasons his work continues to excite and challenge. As is also the case with Shelley. Next: how many transgendered people having invested in the physical alterations of their body are psychologically/emotionally satisfied with the results? (Even if they are not self-made Frankensteins!! -well, not all of them...)Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
Perhaps you can find time to justify it; 'biopics' are usually a disaster.Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
No, but the idea that they are designed to be slaves with a four year lifespan might go some ways toward explaining their violent behavior. (I presume the off-world replicants are told from the get go that they are replicants and slaves.)Quote:
The idea that the replicants in their 'natural' state are 'beautiful, intelligent' doesn't explain why they rebel and become so violent and of course become aware that they are not real.
The question that first struck me while watching Alien for the first time was, "To what sort of evolutionary pressures must a creature respond in order to survive in the vacuum of space while drifting from one world it just conquered to another that it must conquer?" I think the film questions nature as much as modernization, which is after all a result of evolutionary forces as well. The film, I think, draws a parallel between evolution by natural selection and evolution of corporate entities through market selection. The results of either can be vicious.
Who among us is ever happy with our bodies? Perhaps it's different in the UK, but here we're always working to modify our bodies. Weight loss programs. Exercise routines. Diets. Liposuction. Tattoos. Electric razors. Electrolysis. Cosmetics. Collagen injections. Botox. Surgery. Surgery's not just for the transgender you know. In the US a girl under twelve without pierced ears is a rarity. I'm even less happy with my mind. I'm always listening to new music, reading new stories, learning new theories, trying different interpretations. Would we be human if we weren't doing these things?Quote:
Next: how many transgendered people having invested in the physical alterations of their body are psychologically/emotionally satisfied with the results
I can see we'll probably have to agree to disagree on our assessment of Blade Runner's value as a film. Good night.
I agree regarding biopics, Stavros. Biopics invariably require a simplification. (Though I do not have to "justify" anything.)
So then "Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom" which opens in the UK in January. Making a film about Nelson Mandela was surely going to present a film maker with a huge challenge - especially making one that emerges with the help and approval of the family. Mandela is probably the most revered public figure alive today. An objective and critical stance on him is a hard thing to achieve.
So true or simply good cinema? It cannot be just the latter. This man is, rightly, considered a giant of our time. True? Well - I do not have the background knowledge to assess it properly in that respect. But I think with the simplifications inherent in telling the story of a long and complex and controversial life in two hours and twenty minutes this is a bold and considerably successful venture.
Warts and all? To an extent, yes. The Mandela that emerges from this film is a man of depth and judgement and clearly a giant on the stage of African politics. That I think is a fact that cannot be denied even if history's judgement presents us with a more nuanced and critical view in the decades to come.
So emerging after this long epic I was impressed to find that I did not feel i had endured a simple hagiography, but one that I actually found moving and that did not ignore the earlier and darker sides to this man. So we see his bad treatment of his first wife, his womanising and his early approval of violence in the cause of the struggle for freedom (and the injustices that prompted this peaceable man to advocate violence for a time). . We also see the transformation of Winnie from loving wife and mother to cruel and intolerant demagogue. But we are also shown the reason that she became so case hardened.
That Mandela with the cruelties, humiliations and injustices did not become embittered and vengeful is already historical fact. The director Justin Chadwick and Idris Elba as Mandela doe justice to our vision of this man and offer an insightful portrayal of his complexities.
Elba especially inhabits the role with brilliance. That is what I meant with my remark about the Oscar. But I suspect any black actor would have given hi eye teeth for this role.
There is a cartoonish element to the film. The white South Africans are presented as, primarily, boorish Boers, bullies, brutes and rather one dimensional (with the exception of F W de Klerk and the deep and utterly intolerable day to day existence of the Black majority of South Africans under the cruelty of Apartheid is almost taken as something the audience already well understands. But the long history is mapped well and the film cuts well between the personal, the political and historical.
Africa is bathed in a gold light in the film - especially the opening in the Xhosa community from which Mandela emerged to become a young and eloquent lawyer. It is a bit too poetic. But it then gets into its stride and is absorbing.
As a portrait of a hero of our times it is as good a stab at the challenge as we are likely to get in a Hollywood film aiming at a mass audience.
Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Idris Elba, Naomie Harris Movie HD - YouTube
Good morning, Trish. An eloquent reply as usual with some interesting points. By coincidence Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) was on tv last night, not an advance on Scott's first film (Alien, 1979 -hard to believe it was that long ago but then Sigourney Weaver is older than me) but what I noticed for the first time is that the Aliens, which I used to think of as looking like insects close to locusts, actually resemble dragons. Just thought I would throw that in.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
Why do the trailers to films always have that soundtrack of military music with choirs singing ascending chords and punctuations caused by a crashing sound? Is there just one company producing this stuff? I don't know what to make of it, Elba has attempted the accent, but I wonder how far the film goes into the role played the Communists in the development of the ANC, which is important as by the 1980s the cold warriors were depicting the ANC as a front organisation of the South African Communist Party and a victory for the ANC would have been seen as Moscow extending its influence in Southern Africa from Angola and Mozambique through Zimbabwe to the biggest prize. Indeed, this 'Us or them' was part of the Total Strategy Doctine which Magnus Malan created to persuade politicians like Margaret Thatcher to support them rather than campaign for Mandela's release and the unbanning of the ANC. I guess the film is more about the man than the politics. I liked Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose (I like her in almost anything) but the film barely scratched the surface of Edith Piaf's extraordinary life, not least her war record, but as you suggest, these films are short circuits I don't suppose they will ever amount to much as far as the historical record goes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
Stavros... i did say it was a Hollywood film,.... so the hardcore political dimension was not explored What mention would be a great documentary but hardly the stuff of mainstream drama for a mass audience. Entertainment not art or historical investigation. These things can co-exist for instance The Lives Of Others. But seldom from Hollywood
I watched an hour of that Johnny Depp shit stain called 'The Lone Ranger'. Me...Tonto....You...Kemosabe...Me also Hunter S Thompson but me not Keith Richards in this movie. What a hunk of shit.
Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
I could not remember why I didn't like this film when it was released in its first censored version, and saw it on sale for £1.50 -the uncut version so watched it after an absence of 40 years. There is a sort of story -older man meets young woman while viewing an apartment in Paris (Rue d 'Alboni, at the Passy end of the Pont de Bir-Hakeim) -they start to have sex and he insists they know nothing about each other. When she is not with him, the girl is being filmed by her boyfriend who wants to know everything about her. By the end of the film, the boyfriend has 'sucked her life out of her' and they part, while the older man, whose wife has recently killed herself, decides he cannot part from the younger woman and now wants to know everything about her. Unfortunately, by this time it doesn't matter as the film is characterised by poor dialogue, poor acting, poor music, and is possibly one of the worst films ever made; the sex, which was supposed to be 'realistic' and of course 'shocking!' at the time, seems pretty tame these days. Brando looks bored throughout, as if it had started out as a good idea and fizzled into nothing. Maria Schneider is (to me) unattractive, and was a naive 19 year old at the time -Brando persuaded her to improvise the 'controversial' scene with the butter he uses for anal sex and although simulated she hated the scene and her cries of pain she claims were real -she never spoke to Bertolucci again (she died in 2011) although it seems she didn't blame Brando for the fiasco. The dance hall in which the couple disrupt a tango competition is the old Salle Wagram but otherwise the relevance of tango is not clear, in fact it doesn't matter. The only interesting point to consider is that it is claimed Bertolucci originally wanted the couple to be male. Bertolucci made the film after The Conformist (1970) and Spider's Stratagem (1970), two outstanding movies; but went on to make this rubbish as well as the unbelievably bad 1900 and La Luna, and many more disasters. Something went wrong somewhere, this man's talent was wasted and he never succeeded in making a watchable film after Spider's Strategem.
2012...That was a bit of a let down!
2013 is the follow-up... have you seen that one yet, Jericho?