What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[Stavros]

"Mandela" - Idris Elba cruising for an Oscar. Will post more tomorrow.

Perhaps you can find time to justify it; 'biopics' are usually a disaster.

[trish]

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.

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.)

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.

Next: how many transgendered people having invested in the physical alterations of their body are psychologically/emotionally satisfied with the results

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?

I can see we'll probably have to agree to disagree on our assessment of Blade Runner's value as a film. Good night.

[Prospero]

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.

[Stavros]

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.)

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.

I can see we'll probably have to agree to disagree on our assessment of Blade Runner's value as a film. Good night.

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.

[Stavros]

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.

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.

[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

[Jimmy W]

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.

[Stavros]

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.

[Jericho]

2012...That was a bit of a let down!

[Prospero]

2013 is the follow-up... have you seen that one yet, Jericho?