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| Syd |
 Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 11:34 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Poots also will also one of the supporting roles in the 2011 Jane Eyre. The world needs yet another version of Jane Eyre? |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 12:31 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Watched talhotblond** (2009) last night, a pretty captivating documentary of a chatroom gone wrong. It's a somewhat striking choice to make a documentary narrated by a dead person, a la Sunset Blvd, but other than that unusuality, it is a straightforward documentary. Fortunately, the factual story has enough twists and stunningly poor decisions to make it all work.
You can understand why the filmmakers were attracted to this rancid tale of internet relationships. I imagine that they considered making a fictional film based on the case, but decided that reality was more compelling and well-constructed than any fictionalization, and went with a documentary approach. That bit of supposition on my part would help explain the fictionalized narration. Maybe there is a sly play on the nature of identity at work here, but not sure if I see it, or it's there.
The film captures a number of unhealthy trends in our society -- sex, violence, resistance to adulthood, obsessions, and the unbridled freedom of the good old internet. Would make for a good rental. In fact, most of you should just let me handle your Netflix queues for the next few months.
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** = tallhotblond, in case anyone was wondering.
talhotblond was one netizen's handle.
And yes, I made up the word unusuality, but incongruity sounded too formal, oddity too simple. |
Last edited by gromit on Fri May 21, 2010 4:39 am; edited 1 time in total
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 4:25 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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gromit wrote: Watched talhotblond** (2009) last night, a pretty captivating documentary of a chatroom gone wrong. It's a somewhat striking choice to make a documentary narrated by a dead person, a la Sunset Blvd, but other than that unusuality, it is a straightforward documentary. Fortunately, the factual story has enough twists and stunningly poor decisions to make it all work.
You can understand why the filmmakers were attracted to this rancid tale of internet relationships. I imagine that they considered making a fictional film based on the case, but decided that reality was more compelling and well-constructed than any fictionalization, and went with a documentary approach. That bit of supposition on my part would help explain the fictionalized narration. Maybe there is a sly play on the nature of identity at work here, but not sure if I see it, or it's there.
The film captures a number of unhealthy trends in our society -- sex, violence, resistance to adulthood, obsessions, and the unbridled freedom of the good old internet. Would make for a good rental. In fact, most of you should just turn let me handle your Netflix queues for the next few months.
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** = tallhotblond, in case anyone was wondering.
talhotblond was one netizen's handle.
And yes, I made up the word unusuality, but incongruity sounded too formal, oddity too simple.
This movie sounds like something I will love. Onto my Netflix queue it goes. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 4:49 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| "As It Is In Heaven" is a good one. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 5:46 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: "As It Is In Heaven" is a good one.
It's coming up. Gotta be in a non-murder-mystery feel-good mood. This weekend in Woodstock will probably do the trick. I'm looking at a double feature of As It Is in Heaven and Lovely & Amazing. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:30 am |
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Quote: You can understand why the filmmakers were attracted to this rancid tale of internet relationships.
I can understand. I'm pretty sure Marta has me trapped down here so she can sell me to a white slave trader. I think she's having a problem getting more than $1.50 for me. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:51 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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You two would be very good casting for a reenactment of Seance on a Wet Afternoon. You get to play the Richard Attenborough part.
My only quibble with talhotblond is that there were one or two points where I could have used a little more detail, when the narration tells us something in general terms but we only get a small amount of evidence/explanation to back it up. It is a pretty quick 83 minutes, so I would have been on board for an extra 5 - 10 minutes to flesh things out a little.
And just to be clear, I didn't spoil anything, as we learn that the narrator will be offed in the first few minutes, from his own narration.
Just to whet whatever you got, it reminded me of Capturing the Freemans a bit, while the clinical psychologist's enthusiasm reminded me in a way of Grizzly Man's pathologist. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun May 23, 2010 2:53 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Palme d'Or at Cannes goes to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who, I'm not surprised to see, also directed Tropical Malady, a film the second half of which I liked a lot better than the first. Ebert describes Uncle Boonmee as "hypnotic," which sounds to me like Weerasethakul's playing to his strength. |
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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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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 12:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Foreign movie Oscar winner from Argentina The Secret in Their Eyes is an over long murder mystery which is well made and takes its duty to entertain us very seriously but has some real flaws and is unconvincing.
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 3:49 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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You liked it better than I did.
I gave it a mini-review a couple months back.
Unconvincing is a good word, but not strong enough.
I'd add very or thoroughly unconvincing, both in plot and structure. The title conceit is one of the worst plot contrivances I've run across in quite some time.
I've seen the other foreign film nominees (except for the Israeli one), and have no idea how Secret...Eyes won.
Try White Ribbon, which is excellent.
Have people here seen White Ribbon?
Powerful film. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 4:26 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| I walked out of White Ribbon. Pretentious sludge. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 5:12 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: I walked out of White Ribbon. Pretentious sludge.
Not surprising to me. Haneke is a piece of human sludge. I base this on his auteurship (twice) of the life-denying Funny Games. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 7:18 am |
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| The only Haneke film I've seen is Cache, and I liked it. I've read a number of reviews of White Ribbon, pretty well all of them were positive, but none of them gave me even a sliver of desire to see it, which was good because it was in German with Spanish subtitles here. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 9:36 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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I very much disliked the two previous Haneke's I saw.
Thought they were awful and exploitative and boring all at the same time.
White Ribbon is a different thing altogether.
I'd originally intended to skip it, but the reviews changed my mind.
Forget about Haneke's ugly past.
Watch it with an open mind.
It has a lot of Bergman to it, think Winter Light.
Very good neo-Bergman I might add, though perhaps not for the Facebook and video crowd.
I should probably add that it has a rather conventional narrative structure and narration, great looking b&w cinematography and very strong ensemble acting.
Some have compared White Ribbon to Clouzot's Le Corbeu.
Maybe many here will prefer the violence, pace and scope of A Prophet, but I thought The White Ribbon was the superior and more artful film.
In any case The Secret of Their Eyes is rather silly soap opera-ish crime drama, and shouldn't even be in the convo. I'd rec passing on that; it's not badly made, just badly written, and some might enjoy it. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 2:22 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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| Cache was good, but I did not care for The Piano Teacher. |
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