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| gromit |
 Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 5:13 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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marantzo wrote: What do you think should have been done? An imaginative story about an actual watermark in American history?
The movie stuck to the factual events quite accurately, and portrayed the characters sharply and believable.
You wanted to know more about the others (men) on trial. What was to know. They were Confederates or Confederate sympathizers who took part in the assassination of Lincoln. Or didn't you know that?
By your logic, what was there to know about Mary Suratt -- or didn't you know she'd been given a neck stretching?
My preference would have been more character reveal, less slow A then B happened presentation of the events.
I didn't necessarily care about the other conspirators -- they could have been ignored entirely for all I was concerned (which they almost were) -- but the film tries to get an emotional payoff from their hanging at the end, which imo didn't work because they had been relegated to the margins throughout the film.
I went into some detail about it earlier.
http://www.thirdeyefilm.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=220715#220715
I thought the film was overall clumsy, trite and woefully unsubtle. Really tried my patience with it's plodding approach to the history. Looked nice. I have no problem that others liked it, but am pretty surprised to see it called one of the best films of the year and/or a career high point for Redford as director. Seems that the folks who didn't know the history and were unfamiliar with Mary Suratt's role and sentence were the ones who liked it best. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 7:40 am |
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I thought you liked the scene at the gallows. I guess my memory was bad. The only thing that I thought was overdone in the film was the execution scene. Too drawn out for my taste, and I knew nothing about Mary Suratt except some things I'd read on here before I saw it.
Plodding approach to history? It moved right along for me. Were you in a grumpy mood when you saw it?  |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 8:05 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| I thought the movie was painstaking but not plodding. However, if one were in a let's-get-on-with-it mood then "plodding" might be the reaction. I thought Robin Wright's performance in particular was the very antithesis of "obvious." Her acting was very original and understated. As for it being Redford's directorial peak, that's all opinion, of course, but I would argue that he's made very very few good movies. Ordinary People was excellent, but everything else has been mediocre at best and sometimes far worse. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 8:10 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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| Just to shift a little, I thought there were a few moments in Moneyball -- specifically some weary close-ups -- where Brad Pitt looked a lot like Redford from back in the day. I assumed it was intentional. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 4:56 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Manhattan
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| I noticed those too, Gromit. In fact, I remember the first Redford/Pitt collaboration I saw - don't remember which, I thought the same thing. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 8:11 am |
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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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Saw three films on the flight to Perth.
In Time had enough verve and pace not to be as silly as its premise. Although, the analogy didn't hold-up, the film gave rise to some pertinant questions about the nature of wealth and how we sell our so much of ourselves just to get by, we have nothing left for ourselves and that having nothing can set you free. Part Robin Hood, part Bonnie and Clyde and part Das Kapital, it is a surpise that this ant-American tract got made. Justin Timberlake makes a likeable lead. He seems to occupy a similar place in the firmanent to that in which Will Smith used to twinkle.
Though not up to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's best, Paul was not as bad as some have suggested. I suspect that those who found its low-brow vulgarity funny were less enamoured of its unapologetic atheism and scorn for salt of the earth, God-fearing folk and vice versa. Maybe they need to return to the surer ground of home for their next outing.
Kung Fu Panda 2 was up to my expectations, that is not as good as Kung Fu Panda 1, but not terrible. I found the film lack genuine tension; the ending was a foregone conclusion devoid of surprises |
Last edited by jeremy on Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:04 am; edited 2 times in total
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 9:38 am |
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Location: Black Hills
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Quote: Though not up to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's best, [i]Paul was not as bad as some have suggested...
I liked Paul and the introduction (for me, not being a watcher of SNL) to Kristen Wiig, as the fundie's daughter who is restored to binocularity. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 12:22 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| The Mark of Zorro: The Ur-Zorro, the 1920 film with Douglas Fairbanks and Zorro's first appearance in film. Later Zorros may have had better production values, and Tyrone Power's had much better swordsplay, but I enjoyed this one, with Marguerite De La Motte lovely and good as Lolita, the love interest. (She'd also appear with Fairbanks in The Three Musketeers and The Iron Mask--I think that was the first version of The Man in the Iron Mask as well.) Claire McDowell is here in one of her 350-odd film roles; she's Lolita's mother. I love the expressions on her face when the loathsome captain is moving in on her daughter. There's quite a lot to like in how the film portrays Californian society in the early 19th century, including the Indian servants. (Zorro manages the neat trick of being the champion of both the bluebloods and the Native Americans; it's the oppression of the governor and his military he's fighting.) 7 of 10. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:43 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Quote: An admirer of David Cronenberg, I will go and see A Dangerous Method,
I've been watching some of the BFI Flipside series -- I think the idea is to present lesser known, gritty films. Cult films and low-budget films of interest. So far 25 releases from 1965-80.
Voice-over (1980) was quite good and had a definite Cronenberg vibe to it. Also reminded me of Peeping Tom a bit. The basic storyline is that a radio host has a show presenting Victorian romance a la Jane Austen. Then as his personal life changes, his radio show becomes darker. I found it amusing that the transition stage involved vampires and romance akin to today's Twilight stuff, until he goes fulyl into gothic horror.
Others in the series I've watched the past week or so -- More (1969), about a Euro couple who delve into drugs and Ibiza. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_(1969_film)
And Private Road (1970) explores the generation gap.
All good, and with nice extras, usually short films by the same directors or with the same actors.
Hmm, More is from BFI but isn't listed in the Flipside Series [Edit: because it was a French and German co-production and the story takes place in Ibiza, so not enough Britishness for the Flipside line]. It seems to fit though.
Voice-over would be my rec.
But More was interesting |
Last edited by gromit on Mon Feb 13, 2012 2:15 am; edited 1 time in total
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 7:18 pm |
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Street of Shame (1956) Kenji Mizoguchi's last film is the story of five prostitutes in Dreamland, a brothel in Yoshiwara, Tokyo's red-light district. Despite the title and the tagline, "Men were their prey! Beauty was their lure!" it's really not that lurid, and, until the plot mechanics of a prostitution movie come in towards the end (you know somebody's going to get killed or beaten, another rejected by her family), it's more of a slice-of-life movie where the life happens to be prostitution. There is the woman who's ready to leave for marriage, the aging prostitute supporting her son, the housewife who is selling her body to pay for her husband's medicine, the happy-go-lucky runaway with a taste for fine things, and the beautiful successful mercenary who's always willing to lend the other women money with interest. The last three, played respectively by Michiyo Kogure, Machiko Kyô and Ayako Wakao, are the three most worth watching. I particularly like Machiko Kyô, who you may remember as Lady Wakasa in Ugetsu. And the first four are growing another day older and deeper in debt.
Beautifully and often strikingly filmed and not as heavy-handed as I feared, but it still has an impact. The last scene involves a sixth girl, a young virgin timidly calling out for her first customer and cowering halfway hidden in a doorway; it's a powerful image; one of the great ones in cinema.
One of the background stories in the film is that this way of life may be imminently doomed: there is a bill going through the Diet that will make prostitution illegal. It has been vetoed three times already but just perhaps.
A year after this film came out, the bill became law and brothels became illegal in Japan, although, of course, they still exist. This film supposedly influenced the passage of the bill, so this may be one of those films that changed history.
[Note: the Japanese title translates as "Red Light District," which fits the movie better.] |
Last edited by Syd on Mon Feb 13, 2012 1:11 am; edited 1 time in total
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 12:15 am |
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More comments on Street of Shame:
(1) For some reason composer composer Toshirô Mayuzumi decided to use a theremin (or an instrument that sounds just like a theremin) for much of his instrumentation. This is a lot like nails on chalkboard to me, but there's another big problem: How is a theremin normally used in movies? Right. I kept expecting space aliens or children with glowing eyes to appear in the corridors of the whorehouse. Every time the theremin came in, it took me out of the movie and into 1950s science fiction.
(2) When Mickey's (Machiko Kyô's) father shows up, he's wearing a hat and coat and looks uncannily like James Earl Jones circa 1989. The illusion disappears when he takes off the hat, and probably wouldn't happen at all if the film were in color.
(3) Damn, Machiko Kyô had a hell of a body. Michiyo Kogure and Ayako Wakao are pretty, too. This is with clothes on; there's very little nudity in the film, and what there is is tame.
(4) There are no American actors in the film, which is odd, because one of the reasons the whorehouses were doing a thriving business was the presence of the American occupation force thousands of miles away from home. One of the reasons the whorehouses were shut down was also American influence. They'd been legal in this district for hundreds of years before the occupation. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 5:10 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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More BFI FLipside:
Deep End (1970) was decent but not that successful.
Sort of a coming of age tale with a 15 year old boy getting his first job in a public bath house, and falling hard for his slutty redhead co-worker. Seemed to be trying for the sort of charm that the French and italians were good at with romantic farces. I think the Fellini influence hurt it and didn't mesh well with the grittier aspects. I like what it was trying to do more than what it did.
If you want a good bath house film, with elements of obsession and farce, the Russian film Rusalka, was a pretty quirky charming more recent coming-of-age drama.
I also have Joanna, a film about a prostitute in the FLipside series, but couldn't unearth it last night form my kevyip. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:04 pm |
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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Not sure if this goes here or Couch:
http://coronado.patch.com/articles/ib-woman-sues-claims-she-owns-titanic-rights
Quote: An Imperial Beach woman named Princess Samantha Kennedy claims the script of the movie Titanic unlawfully draws from her unpublished biography and family history, and last week filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures for copyright infringement.
For the alleged infringement she wants all copies of the movie destroyed, and to be awarded all money made by the movie. The second highest grossing film ever, according to IMDB.com, Titanic made $1.8 billion in worldwide box office sales alone after its premiere in 1997.
Kennedy claims her biography was written between 1990 and 1992.
Her sister is Rose, Kate Winslet's character, and her father is Jack, Leonardo DiCaprio's character, she said. Other characters in the movie mimic other members of her family though none were passengers on the ship that sank 100 years ago.
The Princess in her name is because growing up in Memphis, her mother told her she is related to the queen of England.
"They have exploited me. Their actions are willful, willful. I will suffer the rest of my life," she said in a handwritten complaint filed in the United States District Court in San Diego.
"I have not been in a movie theatre since 1995 and recently discovered the infringement. I have hundreds of pages of side-by-side comparisons that a school grader, a child could easily read to see infringement, that I will present to the court. I have proof that Paramount Pictures had access to my work in writing from them," she said.
Kennedy claims she only recently saw the movie on television within the last year.
The complaint also requests a preliminary injunction against the studio benefiting from the movie while the matter is being disputed.
Titanic 3D is expected to premiere April 4.
The movie studio received a copy of Princess' bigoraphy she said when she filed another copyright infringement suit against Paramount in the early 1990s.
Paramount Pictures was contacted for comment but did not respond before this story was published.
Part of Titanic was filmed at studios especially made for the movie just south of the U.S.-Mexico border in Rosarito. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 11:51 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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"princess" - yup
Another Earth
Not really sci-fi, with the other planet sort of a metaphorical backdrop that addresses the concept of the Self and the possible path-not-taken. The plot motion is an emotional journey for Mapother (a composer who loses his wife and child in a car wreck) and Marling (the driver of the other car, who does jail time for her role in the accident), a journey that is rather slow and contemplative, with the feel of a Japanese movie. I expected to like this much less than I did, as the performances of both Marling (who also wrote the script) and Mapother maintained a fairly understated intensity that held me entranced, and unwilling to cast a skeptical eye on the astronomical liberties. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2012 1:12 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I also liked Another Earth.
A relationship/atonement story, with the sci-fi being incidental and providing an odd other layer.
I compared it to Rabbit Hole, but from the perspective of the kid/bad driver.
Watched Szindbád (1971), a famous in Hungary Hungarian film. The film opens with two women sending a dying man back in forth in a horse drawn carriage, with neither wanting to deal with him any longer. Then we get montages of the memories of the dying man.
Basically it's the old Life Flashing Before Our Eyes. So we get snippets of romantic conquests (lots of those), chronology unimportant, memories of meals, of tactile sensations , briefly glimpsed natural beauty (such as flowers opening), etc.
It takes place in the late stages of the Austro-Hunagrian Empire, and that too will prove to be ephemeral, though our Casanova will never know that.
I liked the concept more than the film. I'm not much of a fan of those flat-looking 70's films with bright colors. And often get bored by period films with nice costumes (great hats here). But also the main character is a self-satisfied cad, which he both recognizes and tries to justify. The lead actor has a Mastroianni air to him, and indeed the film reminded me of Fellini -- sort of a Juliet of the Spirits style version of 8.5.
I guess I mostly wished that someone else's life was getting this treatment. Or that this wasn't an early 70's film. It was interesting, but didn't add up or work that well for me. |
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