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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 2:08 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Joe--You and I are really on the same page tonight. I feel exactly--but exactly--the same way you do about Scarlett Johannson. And though I liked her in Ghost World like you did, I still can't understand why she and not Thora Birch was the breakout star from that movie.
Haven't seen Scoop--was actively avoiding it, in fact, because of Johannson and Woody in funny-old-man mode. But now I guess I'll give it a shot. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:07 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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billyweeds wrote: Joe--You and I are really on the same page tonight.
Tonight?!?!? |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:38 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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Billy,
I hope you do rent Scoop, I'd like to know what you think. Like I said, it reminded me a lot of Manhattan Murder Mystery, which I lot of people didn't like, but I enjoyed. That also means it's a movie which doesn't try to examine life or comment on it in any way. Strictly for entertainment. I have no problem with that.
What got me to rent it, by the way, was Earl's response. |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:45 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Not sure if this belongs here or in The Lobby, but will someone answer a question about HDTV televisions? I was really bothered over the Christmas break when I was at a friend's house and The Women was playing on his HDTV set, which stretched the image to the widescreen proportions. Everyone looked like an early Charles Shultz character. Is there any way to fix these sets so that Acadamy-sized movie images can be seen in their orginal, more-or-less square dimensions? |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 5:13 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| your friend obviously doesn't know how to control his own tv. UGH |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 5:14 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| so fucking trivial |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:26 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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I'm guessing then the answer is "yes, you can"?
This isn't by any means the only instance where I've seen a square image stretched out on a widescreen t.v., so it must be a common problem.
How is worrying about not seeing a movie in it's proper format trivial? |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:07 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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ehle64 wrote: billyweeds wrote: Joe--You and I are really on the same page tonight.
Yeah, tonight. Check us out on the political scene. Yes, I do often agree with Joe's taste in movies. I also often agree with yours, dude. We seem to be the only two so far who have nominated Little Children as Best Movie. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:10 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Joe--Just noticed ehle's astonishingly uncivil response to your reasonable request for info about HDTV. Maybe our boy went partying last night...
(That's known as giving him the benefit of the doubt.) |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:11 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Joe Vitus wrote: Billy,
I hope you do rent Scoop, I'd like to know what you think. Like I said, it reminded me a lot of Manhattan Murder Mystery, which I lot of people didn't like, but I enjoyed.
MMM was the last Woody Allen movie I found really entertaining. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:12 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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billyweeds wrote: Check us out on the political scene.
LOL. That's exactly what I was thinking about. And we've diverged in opinion on the occasional musical, too. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 9:06 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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i have absolutely no idea what yuou two idolaters are talking about
whatevs |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:01 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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I just finished watching Reds for the first time (or, as Paul Morrissey so memorably labelled it,"Commie Dearest"). It's a very impressive, rigorous, and intelligent film, better and more important than most things that even get a crack at Oscar these days. Warren Beatty worked his ass off for this film - he does so on screen, and clearly did so behind it - and he brings a depth of intent and purpose to the whole thing that cannot be bought. And yet he fails in subtle and un-obvious ways. Compare it to, say, the pulsing life of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America, and the vividness of its recreation of the same period, or the anarchic joy of Ken Russell's bohemian fantasy Savage Messiah, or Boxcar Bertha portraying grass roots activism, and you may begin to understand what seems to lacking from Reds; despite being about radicals, commies, the working masses, a time of upheaval, we actually don't see much of that. It is, in fact, about pretty self-appointed saviors getting it on.
So we are treated to scene after scene of John Reed and Louise Bryant as feuding fiery lovers arguing in rooms, fucking in rooms, occasionally going up to sit in Provincetown rooms, then fighting with Zinoviev in Russian rooms. Beatty's concept for Reed alarmingly renders him looking like a self-involved blathering know-it-all who fights for ideals ungrounded in the world, which is fair enough - Beatty scarcely escapes identifying himself as a self-involved know-it-all fighting to make a movie about one. If I was Zinoviev I might have kicked him out too. The style of the romantic scenes was properly condemned as seeming to be based more in Hollywoodese - Beatty seems to be doing a Cary Grant klutz impression in some lightly screwball scenes - than in historical radical-bohemia, complete with wise-ass cracks from Elaine May. For a bit of Lean sweep, Beatty makes up Bryant trudging across the snow. Vittorio Storaro's photography is remarkable - he crisply encapsulates every shot as a classic of hand-spun craft and honesty, and Beatty's firm touch with contruction makes it flow and be tremendously watchable, especially in one great montage set to the Internationale. But I can't favourably compare his direction - Oscar-winning - with other work of 1981, say, Spielberg's from Raiders of the Lost Ark or Cimino's deliriously painterly Heaven's Gate, or even Hugh Hudson's deftly sophisticated work with Chariots of Fire, a far more retrograde movie than this in substance but more imaginitive in style.
And yet, it's still an excellent and entertaining film, fired chiefly by superb acting. If Beatty is never anything but Beatty, and Diane Keaton is never anything but Keaton, they still take over their roles completely. Jack Nicholson comes close to walking off with it in his sublime interpretation of misanthropic, subtly tortured Eugene O'Neill, and Maureen Stapelton gives us the earth mother Emma Goldman we got in the novel of Ragtime and should have gotten in the film. Of course, the Witness interviews are brilliant and fascinating - old warhorse Henry Miller particularly joyous in his easy humanism and social cynicism. |
Last edited by Rod on Mon Feb 12, 2007 7:16 am; edited 2 times in total
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:07 am |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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I just read the whole THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA discussion. The TV show "Ugly Betty" seems to owe a lot to that movie. In many ways it is the same plot but includes many other elements (Betty's family) that make it much richer than TDWP.
I was surprised when I learned that "Ugly Betty" is based on a telenovela from Colombia that has been adapted in many other countries. |
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| chillywilly |
| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:11 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8251
Location: Salt Lake City
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Joe Vitus wrote: Not sure if this belongs here or in The Lobby, but will someone answer a question about HDTV televisions? I was really bothered over the Christmas break when I was at a friend's house and The Women was playing on his HDTV set, which stretched the image to the widescreen proportions. Everyone looked like an early Charles Shultz character. Is there any way to fix these sets so that Acadamy-sized movie images can be seen in their orginal, more-or-less square dimensions?
Doing a lot lately in knowing more about HDTVs (getting ready to buy one this year), there are multiple formats that HDTVs support. Given the show that was on, it's highly possible your friend had forced the screen to be in widescreen mode so that every show fit the entire screen. For a TV show, which is in the 4:3 aspect ratio, it would be stretched beyond reasonable viewing pleasure on a 16:9 TV.
Most standard analog or digital broadcasts should be viewed on an HDTV with black bars on both sides of the screen, making the TV view the show in 4:3 ratio. |
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Chilly
"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend" |
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