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| Syd |
 Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2009 2:22 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Defoe is fine as the rat who has obviously seen West Side Story one too many times in Fantastic Mr. Fox.
I really think Wes Anderson is better at animation than he ever was at live action. |
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| Earl |
| Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2009 3:51 pm |
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Joined: 09 Jun 2004
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Location: Houston
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whiskeypriest wrote: Earl wrote: billyweeds wrote: After the largely negative reviews for Pirate Radio, I am hearing nothing but raves from people who have seen it. This may have to be checked out. I also asked those who saw it about the chronological inaccuracies of the songs involved. At least one person says the inaccurate songs are "on the soundtrack" rather than being the ones played in the story line. (Does this make sense to you? I know I haven't phrased it clearly.)
This is a good point. I hadn't considered the distinction between "Source" music and "Soundtrack" music. Maybe within those definitions, Richard Curtis got it right. I'm really not sure. I suspect that if you are watching the movie and thinking, "Hey, didn't that song not come out until 1973?" the movie is already failing to work for you on a couple of other levels.
Fair enough. But last night the thought didn't occur to me until the closing credits were running the very long list of sountrack songs. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 12:12 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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Caught The Blind Side tonight, which was good, funny, touching, but not great. A big part of the problem is Sandra Bullock's character, written as a woman with a deadpan line for everything, and a way of swishing in, taking charge, and always being right. It's good camp but bad characterization. I enjoyed her even I recognized the mechanlical nature of the performance Quenton Aaron is good as Michael, which isn't easy when a character has to be as passive as he generally is. Most of the cast if good, even the boy playing Bullock's young son, though he starts off seeming obnoxious and untalented (I mean the actor, not the character).
I wonder what critics who put down shows like Diff'rent Strokes and Webster will have to say about this movie, which has essentially the same concept: black kid saved by the rich, white family who scoops him up from the ghetto. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 2:52 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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Two things about the movie bothered me. One little, one big.
SPOILERS
The little thing was that the other kid who started at the school just disappeared. It was odd that he and Aaron not only never had another conversation after that first scene, but that the kid was only once more referred to (and that by the teachers in the early conference). As the two outcasts, and probably the only two black kids at the school, wouldn't they have some sort of desire to talk to each other?
The big thing was the message moment when Bullock asked Aaron how he escaped the crackhead life, and he said his mom taught him to close his eyes through the bad stuff and then let it go before he opened his eyes. Bullock says, as if it were all so simple, "You just closed your eyes." And that's clearly meant to be a lesson to the kids in the audience. But come on, that may have saved him from joining a gang or doing drugs, but it isn't what really saved him. What really saved him was being completely extricated from the environment. His life would have been hopeless (if probably one lived with dignity) had it not been for the dad, the teacher early on who pressured the others to give him a chance, and Bullock.
As a side note, I thought the scene in the crack den, and the way those characters were written, was more like something out of a procedural drama script than a realistic depiction of the life. Not that it didn't tear my heart out when we suddenly see the crib and the baby. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 2:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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billyweeds wrote: After the largely negative reviews for Pirate Radio, I am hearing nothing but raves from people who have seen it. This may have to be checked out. I also asked those who saw it about the chronological inaccuracies of the songs involved. At least one person says the inaccurate songs are "on the soundtrack" rather than being the ones played in the story line. (Does this make sense to you? I know I haven't phrased it clearly.)
Yes. The movie looked dreadful and somewhere along the way I've aquired a distaste for Philip Seymour Hoffman.
I think what irks me is that the pirate radio phenomenon is an important event of the era in Britain that should have been covered long before now and deserves more than what looks like the movie Quadrophenia than the movie Losin' It .
But Earl's enthusiasm makes me second guess writing it off. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:00 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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billyweeds wrote: Marc wrote: Willem Dafoe is typically underwhelming, a black hole of an actor.
Bravo. It seems that to fail to praise Dafoe one risks the label of Philistine, but he's never done much for me, except in a very funny episode of Fishing with John, the television series in which John Lurie ( Stranger Than Paradise) goes fishing with other cult actors. Dafoe and Lurie go ice fishing and end up deep in Samuel Beckett territory. Hilarious. Otherwise, I take a pass Dafoe-wise.
He's great playing what I consider a very controversial role in The Boondock Saints. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:31 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Joe Vitus wrote: ...somewhere along the way I've aquired a distaste for Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Word, word, word. Me too, and I can't quite figure out why. Hoffman has become for me the new Robin Williams. But why? Help me decipher this mystery. |
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| Trish |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 1:00 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 2438
Location: Massachusetts
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oh shush!!! don't EVER compare PSH to Robin Williams (and I even like RW but understand the hate)  |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 2:12 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Trish wrote: oh shush!!! don't EVER compare PSH to Robin Williams (and I even like RW but understand the hate)
Well, you're right. Hoffman is nowhere near Williams, but I'm getting OD'd on PSH and can't quite understand why since I haven't seen everything he's done. He just seems to be everywhere at once and everyone says he's the greatest living actor or something. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 2:39 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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Billy,
I know what you mean about Hoffman. I think it's a case of too much of a good thing. PSH is always interesting in smaller roles (Magnolia, Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, Almost Famous, Cold Mountain). But the more time he spends on camera, the less compelling he becomes. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:05 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| I think that's it. I was not absolutely knocked out by his Capote (in fact I preferred Toby Jones in Infamous), nor other leads he's had. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 5:33 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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Why doesn't he just give us a written?
My first impression of the new Coen Bros movie, A Serious Man....
The plot is simple. It is the story of a man who finds himself utterly unprepared for his midterm exam. He has studied his teacher's stories, but not the reality behind them: he was unaware that there was going to be math involved, even though the whole point of the stories is to illustrate the math - it's the math that really matters. He was also under the impression that it was going to be open book.
In his desperation, he tries to crib from the exams of his fellow students, only to discover they don't have any of the answers either. Or if they do, their blue book contains nothing but indecipherable gibberish. He's afraid that failing the exam will cause his scholarship to be revoked. Finally, with it all falling apart on him, he turns to brazen cheating, and gets caught. And discovers that, while consequences may not necessarily have actions, actions most definitely have consequences.
Or perhaps not; perhaps that's too easy of a metaphor. What A Serious Man is, besides being one of the handful of best movies of the decade, is an examination of a world where, if God is present, he sure the Hell isn't showing himself to us; he left on sabbatical before the exam and the proctors he left behind can do no more than point to the parking lot.
I seem to have returned to my perhaps inappropriate metaphor. But then, I'm still turning it over in my mind. Perhaps it is better just to point out a few of the many, many joys the movie contains: typically sparkling dialogue - it is the Coens - tremendous performances, especially by Michael Stuhlbarg, perfectly drawn and cast minor characters, a great shaggy dog (their best since Lebowski which was shaggy dog from first to last) that wanders into the middle of the movie and stays on the edge of the consciousness like it might, finally, actually mean something... maybe. An ending that is perfect for all those people who thought the resolution to No Country for Old Men was too pat, predictable and neatly wrapped up. And, oddly enough, a beginning that is its equal.
And perhaps maybe, just maybe, it gives us the answer to the whole damn thing - an answer given to us by, of all people, Mike Yanagita. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 5:50 pm |
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| Also, A Serious Man ends with a nice joke for them what stay and read the credits. Nice to leave the movie with a smile. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 5:57 pm |
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| I wonder if it will ever come here. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:15 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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whiskeypriest wrote: Also, A Serious Man ends with a nice joke for them what stay and read the credits. Nice to leave the movie with a smile.
Can't recall this, though I thought the movie was 2009's best thus far, an incredible feat since this was the best movie year (IMO) in at least the last ten. |
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