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| Marc |
 Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 8:17 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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| Apocalypto is epic in every way and a masterpiece. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 8:20 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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Johnnie To's Election is quite good, though a bit hard to follow unless you know
a fair amount about the idiosyncrasies of Asian gangsterism. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 9:50 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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I'll check it out. Started to watch Election and yes, it's a bit abstruse. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 11:54 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Which Way Home was nominated for Best Documentary Oscar in 2009. The director, Rebecca Cammisa, got a Fulbright Scholarship award to go to Mexico and make this movie about Honduran and Mexican children, 13 or 14 years old (some only 9), who travel on their own on roofs of freight trains to try to enter the US illegally in order to be with their parents who are working in the US, or to work so as to be able to send money to their mothers back home. Beautifully made and heartbreaking.
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2011 10:11 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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Apocalypto was a singularly brilliant film by an underestimated filmmaker.
Despite my best efforts, I can never quite totally divorce the artist from the work, and it remains a shame that like Polanski and Allen, Gibson has pissed all over his own legacy. |
_________________
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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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2011 10:52 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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jeremy wrote: like Polanski and Allen...
...and Riefenstahl. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 7:36 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| I think it's really unfair to put any of those directors in the same category as Riefenstahl. Maybe, very slightly, Gibson, in as much as his aims with Passion and Apocalypto are propagandistic. But the ramifications of his movies cannot be compared to the ramifications of hers. |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
-Topher |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:04 am |
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I don't think Woody Allen did a damn thing to deserve any serious condemnation. He had relations with someone who was of age and not his daughter or his step daughter because he and Mia were not married or even living together. Not very classy that he was playing around with her before breaking up with Mia, even though she's a loony and ended up slandering him with a disgusting lie.
The women of the world seem to all be greatly offended by his actions. That's their right of course but I don't think any less of him because of it. And from all I have read or heard, Sun Yi and he are very happily married and if you believe Sun Yi, Mia was not a nice person. I believe her.
No, the directors mentioned don't deserve to be put in the same class as Leni, though Mel has done some things that could be called Leni Lite.  |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:10 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6961
Location: Black Hills
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| Jesus fucking Christ. Ask yourself this, Gary -- your daughter is 18 years old and someone [whatever Allen's advanced age was at that time] comes courting. What is your response? Shrug and say "how odd, the women of the world seem to all be greatly offended..." GMAFB |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 9:03 am |
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Bart, She's 18 and I would talk to her about going out with a much older guy. If I didn't like her attitude about it, I could tell her to get herself someplace else to live. If the guy was a scumbag, I'd be very upset and tell my daughter to stop being stupid, but if he seemed like a nice guy I'd have to put up with it.
By the way, I have a daughter, though she is 46 now. She was at RISD when she was 18 and beyond so I wasn't a factor in her love life.
I'm not sure why you are so sensitive about this. I think Sun Yi is more stable and grown up than Mia. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 9:40 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Oh I'm not "sensitive" -- but the question isn't as hypothetical to me as it is to you. Maybe you do understand why "the women of the world" and maybe some of the men might be offended by an older guy with money and power poaching on the freshman class. I don't judge Soon Yi, maybe she was exceptionally grown up, but that age spread often comes with a certain inequality of power and ability to make life decisions. And you say she wasn't his stepdaughter at the time, but hadn't she been his stepdaughter? It just didn't smell right to me.
Think of me as Dan Hedaya in "Clueless" (father of Ms. Silverstone).  |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 9:44 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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The name, btw, is Soon-Yi. (Note the hyphen and the spelling.) And, yes, by my own up-close-and-personal observation, she and Woody are still going strong.
Woody was wildly inappropriate in his actions, and Mia was justified in trashing him, no matter how loony she may herself be. However, he did not commit anything like incest. He was just a total scumbag. Which does not change the fact that he's a major talent.
Riefenstahl's (probable) Nazism makes her far more reprehensible than either Gibson or Allen. But her filmmaking talent was even more impressive than theirs. She ranks IMO among the top five filmmakers of all time. Olympia is great beyond description, and even Triumph of the Will, despite its disgusting subject matter, is a brilliantly made film. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 10:16 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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I've got to go with Billy on this. However I still cannot bring myself to watch any of Mel Gibson's films - and I know he has become a film maker of note.
I think sometimes, one has to go with their gut. And mine removes me from his films for at least the foreseeable future. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 10:53 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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Love Bart's Clueless reference.
The whole Woody Allen scandal has gotten confused. To clarify: it wasn't his dating an 18 year old that was the problem. It was that Farrow supposedly (and I've no reason to think she's lying or cuckoo) found dirty pictures of Soon-Yi taken by Allen when Soon-Yi was 16. Thus they'd been cheating on her, and her daughter (who was betraying her) was underage. And there was no way to determine when the affair began. Farrow also charged Allen with sexually abused their son. The court's findings on that were inconclusive, but he was restricted from seeing the kid except with a court appointed supervisor.
I think it's quite possible Allen did/does have a thing for kids, as his movies are riddled with references to such acts (there's hardly a movie from the 70's where he doesn't make a joke about child molestation). But I don't think any of his movie are propaganda for child abuse, and I think they are far too important as documents of their time and clear-sighted commentaries on (then) contemporary life to be tarnished by whatever sickness he may suffer from. |
_________________
You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
-Topher |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 10:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Good post, Joe.
Now for something you and I don't agree on.
Saw Up the Down Staircase for the umpteenth time and the waterworks were turned on yet again. For me it's a six-Kleenex flick, smiling and/or laughing and/or applauding through the tears all the time. The "Tale of Two Cities" scene, the Ruth White monologue ("18 to six"), and the last two minutes of the movie are particularly sob-inducing. |
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