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| whiskeypriest |
 Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 3:01 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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grace wrote: I thought the Dunkirk scene in Atonement was memorable, but I hated it (for obvious reasons). The movie overall - I felt very let down at the end, very much like "So.... this is it?" |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 3:02 pm |
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Location: Houston
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| I really enjoyed the movie of Forum, but I too was probably no more than 14 when I saw it. Have no idea how it would hold up now. |
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| grace |
| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 3:23 pm |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
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whiskeypriest wrote: grace wrote: I thought the Dunkirk scene in Atonement was memorable, but I hated it (for obvious reasons). The movie overall - I felt very let down at the end, very much like "So.... this is it?" I thought it screamed, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm a tracking shot!"
I agree; in my book memorable does not always equal good. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 4:54 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| I too caught most of "Forum" on TV, and wondered why I enjoyed it so much as a teenager. Maybe because it was so different from other musicals I'd seen, maybe because of Zero Mostel, maybe because the end credits were fun. But it's true, nowadays it looks rather faded. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 4:58 pm |
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Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Lester took all those great comic actora and treated them like extras in a music video, then put the whole thing through a 1960s Cuisinart. Horrible. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:05 pm |
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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billyweeds wrote: Lester took all those great comic actora and treated them like extras in a music video, then put the whole thing through a 1960s Cuisinart. Horrible. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:37 pm |
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| I saw parts pf it on TCM a month or so ago and I was entertained. I saw it when it came out and I liked it. Didn't love it, but liked it. I probably liked it because I liked all the actors who played the parts. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 6:05 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Was Blanchett terrible in "Hanna" or was the part calling for her to be cold and lacking humanity? I can see it both ways -- picked the latter, enjoyed the result. Sure, I can see that this was a walk on Cruella de Vil St. for Blanchette, not a career milestone, but the film is really Ronan's, so I didn't care. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 6:33 pm |
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| The role for Blanchett in Hanna was certainly not a Blanchett role. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 5:17 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Watched a few South American films lately.
I previously mentioned the 2010 documentary by Patricio Guzman Nostalgia de la Luz, about astronomy and disappeared persons in the Atacama Desert of Chile.
Araya is a 1959 documentary on the lives of Venezuelans on the Araya Peninsula. The choices are to work in the salt marshes or to fish. The salt pyramids are enormous mounds. We follow the salt workers as they dredge up the salt from the seabed, wash it, dry it, wheelbarrow it around -- then finally get paid for each basket of salt they dump on to the salt mountains. The narration is a bit overdone, especially as reading the subtitles distracted from watching the rhythms of the work.
The film's conceit is that this day in the life of the salt workers -- whole families, with boys washing the salt and piling it in mounds to dry; women dumping it in bags they sew shut -- has been the same for over 400 years. The Spanish discovered the place in 1500 and started an international salt trade from there. Despite the presentation of timelessness, the filmmakers had to hurry, as mechanism (and huge dump trucks) were just arriving -- which forms the climax of the film.
This was directed by a young woman Margot Benacerraf, who went on to become an early promoter of Venezuelan film and film studies. She founded the Ven. Nacional Film Library in 1966. The best known Venezuelan director, Román Chalbaud, only released his first film two years earlier in 1957. And Venezuelan film seems to date back to the early 40's (?)
http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/List_of_Venezuelan_films
Araya was shown at Cannes in 1959, where it shared the International Critics Prize with Alain Renais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour. The disc nicely includes her first short film Reveron (1952), a 30 minute film on the interesting Venezuelan painter, Armando Reverón. It also has a couple of documentaries about the doc Araya and on Benacerraf, who is 85 and still active.
Well, that was longer than I planned.
The other film Altiplano was interesting but heavy-handed in a Carsh/Syriana manner. While the white people are a mix of good and bad, the natives are portrayed as noble, dignified, in harmony with nature, and full of mysterious and wonderful rituals. There are some wonderful shots of some rituals, often involving interesting masks. But the film really wants to portray a strong and brave native woman. And the storyline has clunky moments of political and cultural intent.
It was made by Belgians and if you go to their site and read their statement you can see how their intent and ideals undermine making a good film. A typical passage:
Quote: We believe in a respectful dialogue between cultures, which is linked to an introspective dialogue with our respective pasts. Altiplano offers the possibility of rediscovering values and attitudes towards life that were buried long ago in European spiritual patrimony.
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Quote: Both history and non-western cultures remind us again and again that rationality cannot be the dominant approach to life. They warn us that this ongoing process of demystification may lead to destructive forms of anti-humanism. Spiritual cinema reminds the viewer of the healing power of wonder; it suggests the need for synthesis over analysis; it honours the complexity of our world; it evokes the sacred ...
Altiplano is a large region, the second highest large plateau in the world, after the Tibetan Plateau. Spread through Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. The film takes place in Peru, near the Atacama Desert which Guzman's documentary also captures.
There were some beautiful moments in Altiplano, especially the initial scene in South America. You can see the influence of Parajanov. The film is best showing rituals and spaces, and much clunkier dealing with people and dialogue. I also thought the opening back story was unnecessary and clumsy. The insistence on a strong humanitarian message and glorifying the hard peasant life was a bit of a turnoff. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 5:38 pm |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 5:50 pm |
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| Yeah, if their statement replaced "rationality" with "materialism," or maybe "corporate culture," I'd be more inclined to listen. But I can't see the Enlightenment as anti-human or sui generis destructive of pastoral/tribal roots and all that. Sounds like a film to be taken with a grain of... |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 12:18 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins (2010) is a samurai drama, somewhat contrived, but full of action. It is set in the dying days of the Shogun system of rule and is loosely based on historical events.
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 12:18 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Has anyone seen "Contagion"? Apparently it didn't last very long in the theaters. I just ran across an old New Yorker review of two books about the Black Death, and it struck me that many of the elements that were in play in the early 1300s are similar to aspects of our current condition. (There was even a period of global warming in the 1200s that led to better crops, increased population, and larger cities, but then the weather turned chilly again and left Europe struggling.) The ships that brought the fleabitten rats from Asia to Europe (and other places) were the major transportation of their day, and the concept of a killer germ spreading to thousands of people in a matter of hours is certainly believable today. I'm rather glad I didn't see "Contagion." |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 12:29 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Both the Weedster and I commented on it. It's good, in an almost documentary way, gives you something to think about (and an urge to find the nearest Purel dispenser, perhaps), but it keeps an emotional distance from all the major characters -- which made it disappear quickly in the rearview mirror for me. That, and the way it underused Kate Winslet and then let her die in a sad and obscure sort of way. |
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