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| marantzo |
 Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 5:56 pm |
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Marj, what are you going to try in another year. I went back to my most recent posts and I don't know what you are referring to.
Quote: Gary, as I said, I thought Everybody Says I Love You was some kind of aboriginal for me.
Is there a meaning of aboriginal that I'm unfamiliar with? I don't know what you mean by that. The rest of the statement makes it clear that you really liked it. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 6:29 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Quote: Gary, as I said, I thought Everybody Says I Love You was some kind of aboriginal for me.
Probably an original.
Nowadays typos are largely a thing of the past, replaced by correctly spelled but wrongly chosen words suggested by spell-check. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 6:42 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| I thought HOUSE OF GAMES was quite good. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 7:30 pm |
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| I looked up Mamet and I've actually seen few of his movies. Things Change was the only one he directed, I think, and I enjoyed that. The others that he wrote or co-wrote or did the screen play, The Untouchables I liked a lot, Glengarry Glen Ross was just too grim for me, Ronin I liked and Heist I liked quite a bit. I remember not liking something about Heist, but I can't remember what it was. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 7:35 pm |
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gromit wrote: Quote: Gary, as I said, I thought Everybody Says I Love You was some kind of aboriginal for me.
Probably an original.
Nowadays typos are largely a thing of the past, replaced by correctly spelled but wrongly chosen words suggested by spell-check.
Yeah the 'b' is right beside the 'n'. That's probably it, compounded by not hitting the space bar. Glad to know that Marj wasn't just messing with my mind.  |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 11:24 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Manhattan
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| Oh, but I am Gary. And I always will. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 3:31 am |
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| I didn't know Marj was Gary! |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 6:30 am |
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Glengarry Glen Ross was a great play and a terrific movie, but was, not coincidentally, not directed by Mamet himself.
House of Games, as Marj said, is worth watching. IMO it's Mamet's only watchable self-directed film.
Things Change, despite Gary, was hard going.
The Spanish Prisoner started fascinating but became trying.
Heist was genuinely unwatchable--talky, pretentious, boring, the list goes on ad infinitum. Ditto Homicide.
Haven't chanced The Winslow Boy. I like the original too much to mess with the memory by taking a flyer on Mamet.
Oh, and Rebecca Pidgeon (not unimportantly Mrs. David Mamet) is the luckiest no-talent actress since Demi Moore. She stinks up anything she gets close to, and she's been getting close to almost every recent Mamet project. Talk about an actor with no subtext!
Mamet may have had personal problems with Wife #1, Lindsay Crouse, but he traded down in talent second time around. Crouse nailed the lead in House of Games to the wall. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 6:45 am |
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| Yeah, that's what bothered me about Heist, Rebecca Pidgeon. I did know it was Mamet's wife. I found out after I'd seen the movie and understood why she was in it. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 6:53 am |
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marantzo wrote: Yeah, that's what bothered me about Heist, Rebecca Pidgeon. I did know it was Mamet's wife. I found out after I'd seen the movie and understood why she was in it.
To be completely fair, IMO Pidgeon was only one of many, many things wrong with Heist, which begins and finally ends with Mamet's unnuanced and heavy-handed direction of a going-nowhere screenplay. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:17 am |
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| House of Games is one of my favorite movies. Things Change is pretty good, too. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:19 am |
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| Edward was off-putting. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 7:38 am |
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Location: New York City
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| Saw The Mist, a Stephen King story filmed by Frank Darabont, director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. This one is more of an outright horror flick, with superb special effects and truly scary, very gross monsters. It's well acted by Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden. It has an unnecessary downer of an ending, but otherwise it's pretty good of its type. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:49 pm |
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Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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| On Syd's recommendation, I saw Chop Shop, and, in turn, I would advise all here to rent it. Two young PR siblings in Jamaica, NY, do whatever they have to to survive. That excludes school, or even child play. That they don't become hardened even while they are being exploited makes this an uplifting story in the midst of desperate circumstances. |
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That was great for you. How was it for me? |
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| daffy |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 3:02 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1939
Location: Wall Street
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Switching this over from The Lobby:
The one thing that can be said about Gibson's Hamlet (as opposed to Zeffirelli's Hamlet) is that it's the first time the character has been portrayed as a kinesthetic person. Otherwise, that Hamlet/Hamlet was such a snooze that I barely remember it.
Both Branagh's movie and his portrayal of the character had moments of absolute brilliance and sheer amateurish crap. His stunt casting is unforgivable (as always) in the first place because it takes the audience out of the world of the movie, but that sin is compounded by the fact that he then does nothing memorable with those actors: Jack Lemmon is fine but boring (and the oldest soldier in the history of the service). Robin Williams is boring. Gérard Depardieu is terrible. Billy Crystal is both terrible and boring. Why does Branagh insist on doing this? The scene where Hamlet meets the Ghost is nearly incomprehensible. The excellent Richard Briers is pretty much a waste as Polonius. Some of the special effects are horrible. The "How all occasions do inform against me" soliloquy seems thrown together at the last minute (even though Branagh had played the role on stage). And the swordfight is so overdone one has to think he was simply trying to outdo Olivier's (which isn't possible). Branagh himself seems at times to take Hamlet's 'trippingly on the tongue' advice to the Players too seriously, flying through certain lines as if he were in a bad Coward production.
On the other hand, he does manage to give Hamlet a lot of passion, which is too often neglected in the name of hesitation, and doing the entire script shows just how critical scenes are that are usually left out. The sense of palace intrigue he imbues through the hidden passageways and hall of mirrors is wonderful and the play-within-a-play scene is enthralling. Kate Winslet is easily the best Ophelia I’ve ever seen, and Michael Maloney makes about as much of the thankless role of Laertes as is possible. Derek Jacobi is terrific as Claudius. And Charlton Heston is fabulous as the First Player; this is one piece of stunt casting that was inspired.
Olivier's version is flat as a piece of paper. He forces the Oedipal interpretation down our throats and it doesn't work. He cuts far too much, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which is unforgivable. The King is practically a cardboard cutout with a black hat on. There is nobody in the movie who is remotely Hamlet's match; there is no suspense whatsoever. Doing a soliloquy in voice-over is a nice try, but it doesn't work. The sword fight, however, is terrific. Sorry, Kenneth.
The best Hamlet I've ever seen remains, to this day, the BBC version that came out in 1979 or '80. It has some limitations in that it was shot on old-style video in a TV studio, with a low budget and low production values but it has very few faults, otherwise. Shot with a sensibility somewhere between cinema and theater, the director sets things up and then steps back out of the way to let the actors do the rest. There is no attempt to stamp it with a new interpretation; they do nearly the entire script and it's all done very straightforward. Remarkably, with actors who can handle it, it's far more interesting this way (old Will knew what he was doing). Derek Jacobi is superb as the prince, funny and touching and heartbreaking. Claire Bloom as Gertrude is fabulous. The Gravediggers are terrific. Eric Porter plays Polonius and for once the character seems like he is capable of all his roles as royal adviser, father, and meddler; he’s perfect (funny, too). And Patrick Stewart is an amazing Claudius. He is every inch a king; you get the feeling that he really is a better king than the Old Hamlet, but had the misfortune to be born second. The only problem is the way he got the throne and his queen. It was the first time I ever saw Stewart and I've never forgotten it. |
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