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Yeah, that's a great movie! And it has a wonderful Morricone score as well. I like it better than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Jason Robards is great in it, and of course Claudia Cardinale is a goddess.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I had to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory last night, in memory of Gene Wilder.
A Fistful of Dynamite (Sergio Leone, 1971) aka Duck, You Sucker!
The last of the Leone films I had not seen before, and for all the trademarks -the whistling theme tune as a motif for fate, the sweaty faces peering out under hats, the cynical realist counterposed to the doubting idealist- the film is probably half an hour or even an hour too long. The film with its Mexican revolutionaries and criminal underclass bears some comparison with Damiani's A Bullet for the General (1968) which is a darker, meaner film than Leone's, but one admires -or dislikes- the slow pace of Leone's films, his near obsession with the contrast between landscape and close-ups, and the way he tries to unravel moral arguments in situations where they either do not exist, or ought to. Unusually I think are the scenes of mass murder in the film, and quite uncommon in westerns.
Cannot add a positive word on Gene Wilder, as The Producers was so wretched an experience Wilder became an actor to avoid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fitzcarraldo
Wow , surprised to see your comment on Wilder ,Stavros.
For me , there are a few actors and comedians I just cannot watch. It is usually because of something about their personal style I just find annoying .
I can understand why some people might find Wilder's style hackneyed , but those Mel Brooks comedies never seem to get stale for me.
However ,I respect your apparent reluctance to speak unkindly of the recently deceased .
Janis: Little Girl Blue (Amy Berg, 2015)
This biographical film about the singer Janis Joplin aired on the BBC last night, and offered an insight into what it was that both motivated Janis Joplin and ultimately killed her. From a middle class home in Port Arthur in Texas, Janis was ridiculed and abused in school to the extent that one year she was voted 'the ugliest man', a devastating judgement for a teenager, and one that may have haunted her for years thereafter. In addition to her 'tomboy' looks she was a rebel and graduated naturally to the folk-bues-rock scene that was emerging in Austin at the time, an era coincident with the growth of the 'counter-culture' that became the expression of the first generation to have been born during or after the Second World War. It became evident too that Janis had a natural blues voice, and she moved from Austin to San Francisco where in addition to feeling she was in a different world and growing into the music scene that led to her first group -Big Brother and the Holding Company- she was turned on to heroin by a boyfriend. She found love of a sort in the adulation of the public she played to, and needed both that and the intensity of live performance to feel fulfilled, albeit temporarily, but after the excitement of a live gig with no means of 'coming down' heroin became the means of doing so. There were times when she managed to get off the habit, and she found an all-consuming love with a man she met in Brazil in the last year of her life, but their commitments took them apart. What the film does not explore is what impact Janis Joplin's death had on her family, notably her parents who were both happy that she had found something she was good and successful at, but probably appalled by her behaviour and reputation. What the film does provide is an example of a voice that in its prime was thrilling in its raw intensity, a core sound from the 1960s as vital as the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, Cream and Hendrix. Indeed, and even though the genre might be different, it is hard to think of a better singer emerging from the US since the 1960s, as most of the female singers since then have been bland, safe, and in many cases not even real singers, the exception being Alison Krauss. I would go so far as to say that the sound of Janis Joplin resembles a firework display of raw emotion, where the sound of Adele or Beyonce resembles a pile of shit.
Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)
I saw this worthless garbage on the red eye from Toronto, in the murky hours before midnight. A revenge drama in which a posse of real American Trumps who discard the law in favour of 'direct action' against the drug cartels heads down to See-You-Dad Whore-ez, where they shoot up a couple of cars full of tattooed gun-slinging cartelinos (no complaint from Mexican government of course) and then head off to a tunnel in Arizona while elsewhere the 'man of mystery' (not-so Benicio del Toro) obliterates the cartel hombre who murdered his wife and daughter. Into this risible crap the English actor with a Merry Can accent, Emily Blunt, is plunged to offer a moral compass- or come, pass (because she is FBI who are, in this case, literally pussies) which has no relevance as there are no morals in this film at any time. DJ Trump must love this film, which replaces law with action, even though, or because the Gosh! Brolin character admits that until Merry Cans stop shoving white powder up their nose, the trade and its war will go on, and on, and on. This does rather beg the question -who is good, who is evil? Without an answer. Had I not been 35,000 feet over the Atlantic at 11pm, I would have been inclined to leave before the end. Reader, I stayed.
Attachment 969449
Interesting insight into the true story of the blacklisting of Hollywood screenwriters in the late 1940's.
This topic has been tried before with Guilty By Suspicion, an Irwin Winkler film from 1991 with Robert de Niro that to me was a bit too righteous and lacking in both a good script and drama.Quote:
Originally Posted by hardiron4u
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101984/...nm_flmg_act_74
Sully.
Red Corner
Attachment 969984
A interesting story about criminal justice in China involving an American lawyer accused of murder. Be careful who you pick-up when thinking with the wrong head!!!!!
Manchurian Candidate (original).
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Locke (Steven Knight, 2013)
I watched this film on tv last night. Apart from some panoramic scenes of a motorway at night most of this film is shot inside a car that is taking Construction Engineer Ivan Locke from the Midlands to London roughly between 8-10pm and consists almost entirely of telephone conversations, other than the imaginary chats Locke has with his absent father. Although this is a film, it ought really to be a radio play, though I doubt this would improve it. I give it 2/10.
Takers (John Luessenhop, 2011)
As in 'taken to the cleaners' or 'taken for a ride'. This confusing film tries hard to merge Tarantino with Michael Mann and ends up making one wonder if there is a reason why some films are put on tv late at night which is where I saw it.
One wonders what the police in Los Angeles are doing while two gangs wage world war three (to romantic music!) in a hotel not far from police HQ...and is anyone else fatigued with the tendency these days to make every really really bad drug dealing, bank robbing crooks Russians? Or is this part of the new cold war?
Where have you been the past 50 years! Hollywood bad guys run in cycles dependent on who is making big news in the mainstream American media. In the 70s it was Arabs - because of the energy crisis. In the 80's we had the Japanese and Russians as bad guys - the Russians were obvious but the Japanese were bad because they were threatening American jobs by producing desirable products much cheaper. In the 90s it was Jamaicans and Colombians because they were 'flooding' America with drugs, and pimps, and gang violence. In the 2000s we were back to Russians but not for political reasons - now freed from Communism they were invading with guns, gangs, human trafficking, and extreme violence. More recently its been the Chinese and again for threatening American jobs. Throughout that time, the most constant enemy has been Muslims and 'urban' African-Americans who pose everyday threats to the goodness of America (read: White America)Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Patient 7, a horror anthology set in a mental institution, kind of meh but it did have Michael Ironside.
If referring to light-weight, flimsy action films which have no real story you might be right, but consider my argument from a different perspective. I would argue that the best action/drama films out of the US endure over time and stand up to repeated viewing because, amongst other things, the good guys are as interesting as the bad guys, and in almost every case, 'the enemy within' has dominated. This is true of the gangster classics of the 1930s shaped by issue such as prohibition and the depression; the films noir of the 1940s and 1950s where Americans who fail to realise their 'American Dream' take it out on other Americans, or the films from the 1960s where institutional corruption often shapes the plot. Even in a classic like The French Connection the French villain is working with American villains; in The Godfather the enemy is within in the sense that much of the drama is shaped by the conflict between and within the Mafia families. In Dirty Harry, a Conservative critique of liberal law, namely Miranda, the bad guy is that all-too familiar American -the madman with a gun.Quote:
Originally Posted by runningdownthatdream
There have been divergent examples, in Blade Runner the 'bad guys' are Replicants; in the Matrix trilogy laid low by its Messiah-complex, the enemy is a computer system and then its virus. But look again at Tarantino's queer fantasies -not only are the villains American, they are all male, and in The Usual Suspects, the arch-villain Keyser Soze is...American, surely? In fact, it seems that it is when the action/drama film relies on foreign intruder stereotypes that they fail, at the level of drama, and rely on an orgy of killing to replace the plot.
The one case where the villain is truly problematic is the American woman, as in dire films such as Basic Instinct, Presumed Innocent and Fatal Attraction, with the worst being the abysmal sample of a man dressed as a woman Dressed to Kill. What was Michael Caine thinking of, other than the pay cheque?
Other than the examples of misogyny, I hope you see my point.
Sausage Party
Agree with all of your points. But that still means there's been a lot of cheap stereotyping in Hollywood movies simply because so many are poorly done. No surprise that when a screenwriter or director relies on a national or cultural stereotype instead of character development, the other aspects of the film are not well executed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Small point is that in the flashback Keyser Soze is revealed as a Turkish man whose family is killed. In this case, probably not a stereotype, but just a way of connecting a mysterious name with a culture. Certainly Kevin Spacey's character had no trace of a Turkish accent and the back story was told as something of a rumor or legend.
Let me help you here: Keyser or Qaysar is Turkish for Emperor/Caesar; Soze means Speech, thus: Keyser Soze = Caesar/Emperor of Speech = the man who talks his way out of police custody. Maybe Roger 'Verbal' Kint has had dealings with Turkish drug dealers...Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
You know nothing, John Snow...
Amazing. Thank God you speak Turkish or we'd have never figured that out. Screenwriter thinks he's so clever using everyday Turkish words for names. What's next. Someone thinking they can sneak an Icelandic subjunctive verb into a film...just kidding everyone knows Icelandic doesn't make heavy use of the subjunctive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Agreed........a film like Takers surely falls into the category of lightweight.....it stars Chris Brown AND Hayden Christensen FFS. Such films are made for a certain type of movie-goer.......the type who enjoys WWE-style 'pro' wrestling for example.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
The better action/dramas like those you mentioned usually keel to a deeper meaning. And likewise the pseudo-intellectual films that you mentioned are all silk-covered manure which DIDN'T seem to be quite that at the time they were released. I recently watched 'The Killing of a Chinese Bookie' as well as 'The Long Goodbye'. Both were hailed as brilliant when released but seeing them now for the first time I find them to be just pretentious and transparent, lacking honesty and depth. Unlike let's say 'The French Connection' and 'Blade Runner'.
I think I get your point here and I agree. There was no need for the stupid name - it was a cheap trick.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
Arrival (Denis Vileneuve, 2016)
Given the choice between peace and war, we should always choose peace.
This film, which presents itself as a palindrome, is about language and time, and how, if we only learn how to communicate with each other, we can live in peace and harmony, and how we entertain the illusion that we can move through time through memory, but in fact are condemned to live it in only one direction. If there is a major flaw in the film, which has a few (the voice over; and the 12 apostles arrive, they remain, they communicate, and then they...), it is the failure to link the audience to Louise Banks' ability to understand the language of the extra-terrestrials -we can see what is happening, but there is no child-like explanation for a dim audience, which is what you would get, say, in a Spielberg film. Nevertheless, on a scale of 7/10 this is a well-made film that is worth seeing, with a choice of lighting that helps, as it were, to illuminate the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMo3UJ4B4g
:Bowdown:Fucking amazing , I always wondered about that !Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I just finished reading John Le Carre's ( real name David Cornwall) newest book ,The Pigeon Tunnel : Stories From My Life
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts...7d4a5f19b0b149
So I decided it was time to rewatch The Third Man , Orson Wells (1949) . That film never gets old for me , I'm so lucky to have a stunning black and white Criterion Collection edition because I see it's no longer available at Amazon.I also never tire of the wonderful zither sound track by zither virtuoso Anton Kares.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9yyDEDGlr0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8jN1treRKQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7bInqjmEN4
Also decided to watch The Spy Who Came In From the Cold , Richard Burton (1965).I had read the book but never saw the movie. I see that's available on Youtube , plan to watch it tonight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI4Ca1Dic2w
I once considered watching The Third Man just to count the number of times that damn zither plays the theme tune. It was going to be part of a superficial study into the abuse of music in films. I would also have had to sit through Bo Widerberg's Elvira Madigan (1967) to count the number of times one passage from the andante of Mozart's Piano concerto k467 is played, ditto Visconti's film Death in Venice (1971) in which the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony is massacred so many times I think I stopped listening to the symphony for years thereafter, and it is still my least favourite Mahler.Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
Why would anyone play one portion of a piece of music 100 times in succession, and then stick it in a film -to drive the audience mad?
Karas plucked the theme tune from a guitar practice book and far from enhancing it, gives The Third Man a layer of irritation to add to the cynical plot with its glaring hole -why does Lime invite Holly to Vienna when Lime is making money from crime, the kind of activity Holly frowns upon? I guess Lime doesn't know his friend very well.
The film is contrived and cut from cardboard. Graham Greene based Lime on Kim Philby, which doesn't really chime in with the crime element. You may also want to check your running times as the British version is 11 minutes longer than the US version which also has a voice-over at the beginning to explain that Vienna is divided into four zones controlled by the Russians, the Americans, the French and the British, though the thought of an extra 11 minutes with that damn tune is more than I could bear.
There is also a scene in Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004) in which the contract killer justifies his job on the basis that life has no meaning. It is actually a better scene than the one on the Ferris wheel in the Prater given that Switzerland has in fact produced more than the Cuckoo Clock, and Michael Mann is usually better at making films than Carol Reed.
The Third Man -a film for the dustbin of history.
"Rules Don't Apply" at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, with a Q&A with Warren Beatty afterwards.
Very interesting and amusing comments Stavros , thanks . Yes ,I am familiar with the British version.
I was hoping to hear your take in the Burton "Spy" movie.
Have only seen it once many years ago and cannot recall much of it. I don't rate Burton as an actor- too much ham- but willing to see it again, though I do think it is one of Le Carre's better books.Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
I have spent the last week on the Planet of the Apes box set of seven films from the original Planet of the Apes of 1968 through Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the 2001 remake or new version of Planet of the Apes, and the most recent offer Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Look at it this way, the box set cost me £7 and was over-priced by about £6 as the original film is at least original with a stunning ending. The rest are either poorly made tv shows similar in production values to The Love Boat, or in the case of Tim Burton's 're-make of the original', a bizarre 'future-sci-fi' with the permanently confused Mark Wahlberg and an hilarious ending at the feet of Ape Lincoln. The last one Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the best made, with the best script and acting, but reliant on the rebel as hero motif. This film is regularly shown on tv
And i don't even like monkeys, having once been bitten by one. Never again.
You never know what you're going to read on an internet message board. Case in point, the aforementioned statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
LOL, you must be going ape shit !
Sadly ,I never saw any of them as I found the absurdity of folks running around in ape suits too distracting . Thus , I have missed all the references to "Planet of the Apes " in all my favorite cartoon shows , in which dogs who can talk and drive a Prius and babies with football shaped heads who build time machines are not absurdly distracting.
http://www.moddb.com/members/apornas...es-in-cartoons
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Attachment 984557
I try to keep an open mind on films and if I am going to see a new release will not read any reviews beforehand. I also wanted to see if this 'franchise' had maintained the quality of the original which though dated now has a well-written script closer to the Pierre Boule novel. Unfortunately, I think the franchise film market is made up of second-rate trash, from the execrable Bond to Star Trek and Star Wars, films empty of content even story, overloaded with cartoon characters and fight scenes poached from every other fight scene ever shot. The three Bourne films work, as does Mission:Impossible, but I can't think of any others. Contrast this with the emergence on TV of the drama serial and the ones like The Wire and Game of Thrones which manage to maintain their quality year after year. Indeed, with the TV market producing such a better product, we may be seeing the end of the Marvel rubbish and to really dream the dream the end of Bond and Stars Trek and War.Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
Speaking of comics , I see that youtube has the entire movie Crumb which I enjoyed but found somewhat disturbing when it came out in 1994 . David Lynch , whose work I enjoy very much , was an associate producer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumb_(film)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXVX24JoOB8
The Big Short, parts of it were pretty good, but overall I had a hard time staying awake.
My first thought was of George Crumb the composer but no relation to Robert whose work is of no interest to me. In my late teens I lived in a house where a student upstairs had a cartoon of his on the wall that would probably be illegal today. I used to have a Nonesuch album of George Crumb's works like Black Angels, and Ancient Voices of Children which Christopher Bruce choreographed for the Ballet Rambert in 1975.Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvpuiI3fGeU
Looking forward to watching "Rare Exports : A Christmas Tale " around the holiday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tFsbESxaC0
Soon to be released and widely acclaimed as the best film of 2016 , the German comedy Toni Erdmann.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0uwi5EPnpA
http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/movie...i-erdmann.html
I saw this quite awhile back and loved it. Think it was on Netflix, but not 100% sure anymore. A good Christmas selection sukumvit boy!Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy