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| shannon |
 Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 3:35 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 1628
Location: NC
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lshap wrote: Welcome back stranger!
Why, thank you!  |
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| shannon |
| Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 3:37 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 1628
Location: NC
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| More Social Network: The actor who, quite wonderfully, plays the super-humanly-Aryan Winklevoss twins is named "Armie Hammer". This is too good to be true. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 4:54 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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shannon wrote: More Social Network: The actor who, quite wonderfully, plays the super-humanly-Aryan Winklevoss twins is named "Armie Hammer". This is too good to be true.
Not as weird as I suspect you suspect. Because he is the great-grandson of industrialist, art collector, and philanthropist Armand Hammer. |
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| lshap |
| Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 7:04 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 4248
Location: Montreal
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 7:40 pm |
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Armand hammer did buy Arm & Hammer baking soda (or however you spell it) at one point. Don't know if his company still has it.
Hello, shannon. Good to see you.
I liked Inception. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 7:57 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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lshap wrote: The baking soda guy?
No, his father was an early American communist, and apparently named his son after the socialist arm and hammer worker's symbol.
Armand Hammer was an unusual combination of pro-communist, Republican, capitalist. Used to wheel and deal with Lenin in the early Soviet days of post-war poverty. His father and him both led interesting lives. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 10:49 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:02 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: Shannon,
stick around.
I'll double down on that. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:02 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: Shannon,
stick around.
I'll double down on that.
See? I did. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 8:51 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6967
Location: Black Hills
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Nice to see the Domino avatar back in town. Re "I went in flabbergasted that anyone would ever conceive that something as mundane as the founding of Facebook would make good cinema, but I was wrong." That's how I'm approaching it, and I hope I can make the same admission.
Mostly agree that Inception works in the "whoa, cool" mode, except that it seems too clever by half....and that kind of cleverness and parsing of split seconds tend to obscure the characters. And the levels had a kind of sterility that seemed at odds with the human mind -- I guess the opulent and messy grotesqueries of The Cell would be more what I'd expect if I were to take a spade and start digging down into the grey matter.
And, yes, please stick around, Shannon! |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Melody |
| Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 11:46 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 2242
Location: TX
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I was blown away by The Social Network and must confess I'm glad to see I'm in the majority here for a change.
First and foremost, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay will win for Adapted. You can take that to the bank. I don't care what else comes down the pike this year. His Rashomon-style storytelling cleverly raises questions that aren't quite answered, making for interesting post-movie debates if you're so inclined.
Jesse Eisenberg is terrific. I wondered, like Syd, if he had a touch of Asperger's with his mostly flat affect. He may be nominated but he won't win, not with Colin Firth in the race.
Justin Timberlake was a revelation to me, not having seen him in any other dramatic roles. I'm impressed with both his acting chops and the balls it took to portray the guy who destroyed the record store.
I'm usually so caught up in a film that I don't notice the score until a second or third viewing. I noticed this one. You would think one prolonged dissonant chord might be ineffective for a scene. You would be wrong.
Editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall should be nominated also for not only seamlessly weaving three separate POVs into a coherent story, but cutting each scene at just the right moment to prolong the suspense. Director David Fincher probably had something to do with that as well. He's also a lock for an Oscar nomination.
The cinematography is very bleak, even when the locale is sunny California. Fincher's Harvard is dark wood floors, dingy walls, poorly lit beer pong parties. Everyone wears black. The director's motto: subdued in the mood to brood. And it works.
Rooney Mara (the future Lizbeth Salander) has the only substantive female role, and it's tiny. [Insert feminist diatribe.] But really, would it have killed you, Mr. Fincher, to show us just ONE blonde computer science major in a pastel pink sweater set?
4.5 out of 5 stars. Must-see. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 3:43 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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Shannon,
You knew where you stood with the Matrix, it had Keannu Reeves decked out in Armani and boots and Carrie Ann Moss in latex. It existed to be cool not clever. Cleverly, but same sort of clever as in Inception it was also full of carefully packaged wish fulfillment. More critically, one could empathise and fear for the charaters. I really didn't want the disposable members of the team to be dispensed with. But, they did what they had to do and died for their art and the good of the story. The glance that the blonde girl shot her lover when she knew they both had moments to live had more weight than all the carefully wrought and heavy underpinnings in Inception. It is somewhat ironicy that the characters in the much more thoughtful film were so much less engaging. I don't think the clinical Christopher Nolan really does pathos. Not only did I not care what happened to them, but I also felt that they were never under any real threat. The action was all fill until the fairly obvious pay-off. |
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 3:57 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| Whither Carey Mulligan. She's pretty good and, after the success of An Education, Hollywood seems to have taken a shine to her. The same happened to Kelly MacDonald, but now the work seems to be drying up for her. Too plain? Too old to figure in yet another comedy about men who won't grow up. Aren't they just becoming the most tired of Hollywood tropes. Maybe like Samantha Morton before her, Ms Mulligan will just have to wait patiently for those rare parts that don't require a young women to be an object of male desire. |
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 4:09 pm |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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| Seems funny asking if Carey Mulligan (so wanting Never Let Me Go, in which she stars, to be sprung from the prison of "limited release" in the US) is "too plain." She seems qualified to be an object of male desire, IMO. Unless men only desire fashion models or Vegas showgirls. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 4:17 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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Quote: Unless men only desire fashion models or Vegas showgirls.
Maybe I am being unfair by using the metonym of Hollywood in a negative context to be representative of all American film. Amongst others, Ellen Page and Maggie Gyllenhall are just two young actresses who spring to mind as forging intersting careers without fitting the the almost obligatory, prom queen stereotype beloved of teen comedy (which should be rebranded comedy for the FHM generation or men who feel no need to grow up).
And I take your point, none of the women mentioned are hard on the eyes. |
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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