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| Marj |
 Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:20 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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| In that case, Pineapple Express goes on my list. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:24 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marj wrote: In that case, Pineapple Express goes on my list.
Some Like It Hot meets Pulp Fiction at a Three Stooges convention. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 12:15 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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According to IMDb trivia on Sleeper:
Quote:
Woody Allen originally intended the film to be three hours long, and in two parts. The first part would have him in the present day, coping with life, until his illness. And the second half, would be the futuristic part. But, United Artists rejected this concept.
Would have been pretty cool if the movie took a sudden detour into the future, and the second half of the film was Sleeper.
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Also,
Quote: Allen originally conceived the story (in which people in the future are forbidden to talk) as a plausible way of making a modern silent film.
Which is probably why there is a lot of visual gags, music, and not much dialogue in the early parts of the film. And we can argue about whether it's more Chaplin or Keaton influenced. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 2:47 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Red Cliff is a Chinese language epic about the Battle of Red Cliff from the Three Kingdoms period. In Chinese, the whole thing runs more than four hours and has been split into two films, the second of which will be coming out next spring. The version that will be released in the States will be one two-and-a-half hour movie. I got the first film of the Chinese on DVD from http://shop.hkdvdstore.com/. There's certainly some room for editing, but really, this epic needs room to breathe, and I really appreciated that they took the time to do it right. A bigger problem is that they didn't really find a convenient breaking point, so it seems to come to several false endings.
This is really meant for as big a screen as possible; letterboxed on a television doesn't cut it. Unfortunately, the subtitles are on the movie itself, which makes them too small to read easily on a DVD, especially when there's a white background.
Acting is just fine, with Takeshi Kaneshiro standing out as the legendary military strategist Zhuge Liang, and Tony Leung Chiu Wai as the Wu general Zhou Yu. Although this movie is based on The Romance of Three Kingdoms, the writers apparently also used the Wu records as well, where Zhou Yu is much more central and sympathetic. You have also the Romance heroes Zhao Yun (who was the main character in Three Kingdoms: The Resurrection of the Dragon which I reviewed earlier this year), Guan Yu (a legendary general who later was worshipped as a war god), Zhang Fei, and Liu Bei, the warlord who eventually founded the Shu Han dynasty. All these characters are well drawn and tend to overshadow the Northern warlord and villain Cao Cao, who is trying to unite China with him as prime minister and possible emperor. His chief problem is that, although he's a very successful general, he's also ruthless, ambitious, and doesn't make friends easily--or really, not at all.
For this part, the story begins with Cao Cao leading his army to the south, forcing a hundred thousand refugees to flee before him. Liu Bei is vastly outnumbered, but fights a holding action to help the refugees get away. Hampered by the battle conditions, he is badly defeated and his wife dies, although Zhao Yun manages to rescue his heir. (This episode is also a major scene in the other Three Kingdoms movie.) Straits are dire enough that Zhuge Liang suggests an alliance with the third of the great warlords, Sun Quan, who rules the southeast, a rich, peaceful and populous land.
The movie falls naturally into several parts (1) the initial defeat and flight of the refugees, (2) Zhuge Liang's mission to Sun Quan's domain, where he convinces them that Cao Cao's huge army is ultimately aimed at the Wu Domains, (3) forging the alliance, (4) a huge battle scene (NOT Red Cliff), and (5) a lot of anticlimactic scenes and false endings, with a foreshadowing of the incineration of Cao Cao's army. The main battle and its aftermath are volume 2.
One big distraction in the big battle scene is that we have to break off to see Zhang Fei, Guan Yu, Zhao Yun and Zhou Yu take on tons of opponents single-handed. That tends to add a cartoonish element to what is otherwise a pretty well-rendered battle. The battle itself goes beyond the point of satiation.
Still, the move is genuinely spectacular and may be a candidate for Foreign Film at the Oscars, though they may wait until the second half comes out and they can see whether it all worked out. But be sure to read at least an outline of the story so you can tell the characters apart. I had no problem, but I'm familiar with the source material, and that familiarity is taken for granted. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 3:16 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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There are two actors named Tony Leung; Tony Leung Chiu Wai, the one in Red Cliff, is the one from Hero, In the Mood for Love, 2046, Infernal Affairs I-III,
Takeshi Kaneshiro played Jin, the undercover infiltrator in House of Flying Daggers. Chen Chang, who plays Sun Quan, was Zhang Ziyi's bandit lover in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 11:30 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 1:30 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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lady wakasa wrote: Takeshi Kaneshiro was also in the lesser-known but very intriguing Perhaps Love (2005), the first mainland Chinese musical in ~35 years. Here be the trailer for that.
Looks interesting. Seems to be a hat film. BTW, hkdvdstore.com has it.
And so does Netflix. (My queue's not getting any shorter.) |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 1:49 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Norman, OK
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| According to IMDB, the second half of Red Cliff has been completed. |
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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 2:34 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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In the Land of the War Canoes aka In the Land of the Headhunters is a 1914 fictionalized documentary of the Kwakiutl Indians of the north end of Vancouver Island. It has not survived especially well, the storytelling is pretty primitive, and the acting pretty much non-existent, but that's not really the point. This was the first full length film whose cast was entirely Native Americans (eight years before the second, Nanook of the North), and it's important as a window into a way of life which was already mostly dead and on its way to being forgotten. Edward S. Curtis had to have a longhouse constructed because the current ones had windows in them, and had to have war canoes made for the film. Some, but not all, of the rituals are real, the costumes are authentic, the chants are real, and the reconstructions are apparently accurate. The version I saw has a ten-minute short attached narrated (proclaimed, really) by anthropologists in 1979, with an interview with one of the surviving cast members.
This film was selected to the National Film Registry in 1999. It's available form Netflix, which is where Nancy found it.
PS: This is the film they're watching in film class in the Doors. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 3:06 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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| Ah, yes ~ there was a mention of that last spring; I was wondering when it would be officially out. |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 3:10 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Norman, OK
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| I found out that additional footage (some of it tinted) from In the Land of the Headhunters has been found, along with some of the recordings Curtis made of the Kwakiutl language. This was used to restore the film again (though it may not have been edited by anthropologists this time) and make the version I missed seeing when it played one weekend at a museum in Oklahoma City a couple of months ago. Obviously, this is the version I need to purchase after it comes out on DVD. For more info: http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu/index.php |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 3:12 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Norman, OK
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lady wakasa wrote: Ah, yes ~ there was a mention of that last spring; I was wondering when it would be officially out.
It's being shown at various locations around the country. See the URL I listed above for info on screenings. |
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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 3:14 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| That's good news. I was looking at the description of the film from when it came out, and it sounds like the story got garbled due to the lost footage. What you have has title cards which tells you what you are about to see. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:16 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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Syd wrote: That's good news. I was looking at the description of the film from when it came out, and it sounds like the story got garbled due to the lost footage. What you have has title cards which tells you what you are about to see.
Apparently the title cards were changed (and made less "sensational") for the 1979 version. I think the original ones were restored for the recent release. |
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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:22 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
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Marj wrote: In that case, Pineapple Express goes on my list.
Mine too. Too bad it won't be out on DVD till January. |
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