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| lissa |
 Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 5:11 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: my computer
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Gary you continue to bring up my role as mother as though it's something "lesser than". I believe my kids to be the best of my life and proudly put "mother" above any other role I play in my life.
If I state my opinion (which I'm starting to doubt I will anymore), it isn't anything more than what y'all do in your own ways. You can interpret it as mothering - but you've said that all to often for it to be taken as anything but a patronizing compartmentalization. Don't you have a new wife to spend time with?
Whatever. |
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Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarfs aren't happy. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 5:31 pm |
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| Lissa, telling Billy that everyone is entitled to their opinion is something you tell your children, not a member of this forum who is not exactly inexperienced in the field of exchanging opinions. From what I have read from you, I think you are a very dedicated and accomplished mother. I am not criticizing that, I am criticizing some of the points you make with the grown ups on this forum. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 5:33 pm |
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My wife is sleeping on the sofa now, so I am stuck with you guys.  |
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| Earl |
| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 6:04 pm |
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Joined: 09 Jun 2004
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Location: Houston
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marantzo wrote: My wife is sleeping on the sofa now, so I am stuck with you guys.
She already can't stand you, huh? That was fast. |
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"I have a suspicion that you are all mad," said Dr. Renard, smiling sociably; "but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt friendship." |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 6:44 pm |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 6:54 pm |
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marantzo wrote: My wife is sleeping on the sofa now, so I am stuck with you guys.
She's got a "couch with a real view"...of you. No wonder she's got her eyes closed. |
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| lissa |
| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:17 pm |
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Quote: Lissa, telling Billy that everyone is entitled to their opinion is something you tell your children, not a member of this forum
And correcting peoples' spelling, grammar and punctuation isn't something a parent does to a child? Yet we see those posts all the time. I even stopped doing them for fear of insulting others!
I won't belabor the point. But in any given day I could count the number of condescending and attack posts we see in here. I don't think pointing fingers is productive.
(and I'll stop here lest I get chastised for not taking it to a non-film section) |
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Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarfs aren't happy. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:44 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
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Location: Lithgow, Australia
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| I tolerated Frost/Nixon. Peter Morgan's dramaturgy is spurious, the first third is cartoonish, but the filmmaking is Howard's most efficient since Apollo 13, things pick up considerably once Sam Rockwell enters the film, and Michael Sheen's characterization galvanizes. |
Last edited by Rod on Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:54 pm; edited 1 time 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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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:52 pm |
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| Lissa, you have no idea of what I was saying. It is no use trying to explain it to you. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 11:27 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12894
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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As opposed to Fitzcarraldo, which I was expecting to turn into Heart of Darkness but is really a pleasant (and excellent) motion picture, Aguirre the Wrath of God does turn into Heart of Darkness. This is a fiction about Lope de Aguirre, who really did journey into the Amazon, seize control of an expedition, and revolt against the King of Spain with aims of creating his own empire.
Some of the incidents are real, a lot made up, and it combines events and people from Gonzalo Pizarro's 1541 expedition and the actual 1560 expedition with Aguirre. Pizarro's expedition is the one where he sent Francisco de Orellana to scout downstream; Orellana found the current too strong to return so he and his crew went all the way down the Amazon and returned to Spain. (Pizarro made it home and was pissed when he found out what Orellana had done.) Orellana died on his second trip to the Amazon and some of the things found by Aguirre's expedition are references to that--although Orellana's name is left out of the movie. Gaspar de Caraval, who is a character in Aguirre, actually chronicled the 1541 expedition and lived to a ripe old age. Putting him on this one gives us a narrator. However, Ursúa, Inez, Don Fernando de Guzman and Florés de Aguirre (actually Elvira) were really on Aguirre's expedition.
Anyway, this is a visual striking film that I found chiefly marred by Klaus Kinski beginning to radiate madness the moment we see him, which makes it hard to believe anyone would follow him, at least in the beginning. But the film often has scenes of genius. The best one is at the very beginning, when you see a mountainside in mist and see a group of people descending the mountain single-file, down what seems to be a stairway cut in the mountainside. We follow them down. The line of people seems endless--soldiers in armor and breastplates (into what has to be 85 degree heat), indians in chains, and two sedan chairs (!!!) bearing women. We follow this for five minutes, no words, all single file. It's one of the greatest openings in cinema. (The end sequence is almost as striking and has monkeys. Lots and lots of them.) You get a lot of wonderful river footage (the Ucayali doubling for the Amazon) that makes you think this could be a really pleasant voyage if it wasn't led by a homicidal lunatic and the jungle wasn't populated by hostile cannibals with blow darts and fashionable long arrows.
Werner Herzog must be fascinated by the Amazon. In addition to Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, he also did a documentary,The White Diamond, about balloonists in the Amazon canopy.
The real Aguirre, by the way, was actually even nastier than the one in the movie, and ended up murdering his daughter (so she wouldn't be sullied by other men) and getting chopped into pieces as an example. |
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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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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 8:23 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| I wasted 1.5 hours of my life on that dreadful Role Models -- Paul Rudd, Sean Williams Scott's ass, nor Jane Lynch could save it for me. I might have chuckled once throughout the whole stupid mess. |
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| lissa |
| Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 7:11 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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| Who was the one who saw Wendy and Lucy? It's coming out on Tuesday and I'm wondering if I should rent it... |
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Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarfs aren't happy. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 5:45 am |
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ehle64 wrote: I wasted 1.5 hours of my life on that dreadful Role Models -- Paul Rudd, Sean Williams Scott's ass, nor Jane Lynch could save it for me. I might have chuckled once throughout the whole stupid mess.
Disagree. As previously noted. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 5:59 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Several recent viewings:
Standard Operating Proecedure is Errol Morris's devastating documentary about Abu Ghraib. Using his trademark reenactment and slo-mo techniques and an excellent musical score by Danny Elfman, he makes the horrific story compulsively watchable, which is quite a feat. I had to take frequent breaks as it is, but the quintessential Abu Ghraib story is must-see viewing and Morris's finest achievement since his career peak The Thin Blue Line. I think it's ironic that The Fog of War (arguably one of his dullest works) is the one that won the Oscar. SOP is brilliant beyond words.
I've Loved You So Long is the soapy but effective Kristin Scott Thomas vehicle about a woman rejoining her family after many years in prison. The movie is bit overlong and Thomas (or is it "Scott Thomas"?) is a skilled but somewhat over-intellectual performer, like Meryl Streep in French Lieutenant's Woman/Out of Africa mode, but the overall effect is pretty good. A must for fans of The English Patient and worth a look for many others.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is unbearably cutesy-poo as a repressed au pair type is hired by a ditzy starlet in (I think) the 1930s. Featuring a rare inept turn by Amy Adams as the starlet (she's completely miscast as a clueless slut), the movie has only one worthwhile feature, the performance of the title role by Frances McDormand.
Hotel for Dogs is not remotely watchable. I rented it as a dog lover, a Lisa Kudrow fan, and a Don Cheadle/Kevin Dillon admirer, and wound up a dog lover. Kudrow, Cheadle, and Dillon will survive it, but ooh, oof, ook, will I ever look at them the same way again? Well, probably, but the jury is still out. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 6:17 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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New on DVD and available from Netflix is the very recent documentary American Swing, whch documents the rise and fall of famed 1970s-80s NYC sex club Plato's Retreat and its founder Larry Levenson. Directed by my very close buddy Jon Hart (with Mathew Kaufman), this movie is riveting--funny, sad, and many stops in between. I would recommend it even if it weren't directed by a friend. The brilliant Hart is a gonzo journalist making his film debut. Hart was much younger than Larry Levenson (not to mention yours truly), but they met while Jon was doing a feature article and bonded immediately, a relationship which ultimately culminated in this film.
There are some sexually graphic images in the movie, but overall it's rather discreet...and mightily effective. |
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