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bartist
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:30 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
I had heard of Hunger Games, but just barely - it does sound like teen trash, one of those things that magnifies the rigors of adolescence by means of fantasy. HG, and The Deep Blue Sea, a romantic drama starring Rachel Weisz, both open tomorrow. Guess which one opens on four screens here. People in my demographic clearly aren't flocking to movies.

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marantzo
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:43 am Reply with quote
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I looked up tomorrow's film schedule here and Hunger Games is opening all over the place. Like I said, all the schlock opens here right away and the best movies take a long time to get here. I guess the youngsters in both Americas are pretty well the same as far as taste goes.
shannon
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:57 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1628 Location: NC
billyweeds wrote:
marantzo wrote:
Drive, possible SPOILER: I think he was heading down to Mexico at the end. I also think there might be a sequel. He was definitely a man of few words and of mystery.


SPOILER FOR Drive

The ending was like a rewrite of Shane. There will only be a sequel if the Driver lives. That was seriously in doubt at the fadeout.


The director has said he plans on making a series of films about The Driver, that he considers The Driver sort of a superhero or some such. But who knows whether or not he's serious.
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shannon
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:59 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1628 Location: NC
I read the Hunger Games books. (It took me maybe 6 hours total to read all 3 of them, since they're written for 14-year-olds and all.) They're not bad, for what they are. They're leagues beyond Twilight and a maybe one league below Harry Potter. And they're really, really violent, considering who they're written for. I will watch the movie, sure.
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Syd
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:04 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
bartist wrote:
I had heard of Hunger Games, but just barely - it does sound like teen trash, one of those things that magnifies the rigors of adolescence by means of fantasy. HG, and The Deep Blue Sea, a romantic drama starring Rachel Weisz, both open tomorrow. Guess which one opens on four screens here. People in my demographic clearly aren't flocking to movies.


I gather Rachel Weisz doesn't get eaten by a mutant shark in this one.

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bartist
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 3:46 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
You gather correctly. Sounds like one of those Rattigan things where everyone is very restrained and. if they were being eaten by an intelligent shark, would just say, "I'm not terribly happy about this." I haven't seen Deep Blue Sea (the one sans the "The") - is it any good?

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billyweeds
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:02 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
bartist wrote:
You gather correctly. Sounds like one of those Rattigan things where everyone is very restrained and. if they were being eaten by an intelligent shark, would just say, "I'm not terribly happy about this." I haven't seen Deep Blue Sea (the one sans the "The") - is it any good?


It's generally pretty entertaining, and has one fantastic scene. You will know which one I mean when you see it.
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whiskeypriest
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:19 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
The youtube video of Samuel L. Jackson's "Nature can be lethal, but it doesn't hold a candle to man" speech gets linked to a lot in certain circles (i.e., imdb) and it is hilarious. Though I do not think that is what the people making the movie intended.

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marantzo
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:02 pm Reply with quote
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It was hilarious and I think the people who made it did mean for it to be startling black humour, which it certainly was. I enjoyed that movie.

Only The Deep Blue Sea that I saw was the 1955 film with Vivien Leigh. It was a downer for sure. I saw it when it came out and at that age I found it rather trying. I think I still would.
billyweeds
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:09 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
The black humor is definitely deliberate. That, of course, is the great scene I was referring to--and unfortunately it's probably been spoiled for bart as a result of our chat here. But any Google search spoils it too. The scene is a classic; the rest of the movie is not worthy of it, but it's still quite a bit of trashy fun.
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billyweeds
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:30 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
I am shocked and seriously delighted by the discovery that the new The Deep Blue Sea is a remake of the Vivien Leigh movie based on the play by Terence Rattigan. I had no idea this property was considered viable after all these years. I never saw the original movie or the play, but the received wisdom has always been that they were sort of meh. The new movie is getting almost across-the-board screaming raves. What a turnaround for Rattigan.
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marantzo
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:36 am Reply with quote
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Actually, Billy, I didn't think it was a remake, and I thought you were kidding around until I looked it up.

I think Rachael Weisz is a very nice person, but I never cared much for any of her performances.

Apparently the stage production in England (when it was current) was a big hit but on Broadway it was a dud.
bartist
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:23 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
No spoiler taken - had forgotten - I saw part of DBS on cable some years ago, where SLJ gives his speech and is then eaten. Probably won't bother to see the rest of it.

Have been relying on the library plus bricks & mortar video store. Looked into Netflix, but they now double the base price if you want the DVD mailing (which is all I would use, being off-grid at home). 8$ is okay for streaming if you have the net at home, but I don't want to pay 16$ for 3-4 DVD a month, by mail.

Look forward to THE DBS, and I'm a Weisz admirer, but have to wait - it's limited release in the U.S.

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inlareviewer
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:19 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS
Just To Keep In Touch Dept.:

Consumer warning: Run-on sentences, idiosyncratic whimsy and parenthetical thinking up ahead.

At last, and I do mean, last, I managed to rifle through so many unread back posts, and would that there was time/energy/need to respond to everyone's snappy, snippy, hilarious and insightful thoughts, ripostes and observations. Alas, there isn't, for me, anyhoo, not to mention I'm not as retentive as I was even a year ago, so I'd undoubtedly end up agreeing with Joe about something befade said, only it would actually something bartist replied to what Syd said, or the trail of bread crumbs that used to lead to lshap, etc. Which, as Mammy reminds us always, t'ain't fittin'...
Anyhey, must nonetheless give a shout-out to Marc, congratulations, dude, way to go, woohoo, hoorah, hopla, and my regards to dear Mirgun. And also inform billyweeds that I'm with the ever-lovely and insightful Dolores on film violence, the exceptions (and there are some, but not many, that's why they're exceptions) proving that taste, and I can't even remember what film mention from the House of Weeds I reference -- one way or another, the toll shows, but, as usual, I digress. And everyone else, howdy, consider yourself sincerely and gratefully acknowledged (because, like all fellow 99 Per Centers of the global population, my cognitive hen's teeth could not be scarcer at present. Actually, they're hen's dentures, but we press on).

Do want to take a page from marantzo's book, though, and comment, without having seen it on The Deep Blue Sea, a play this theatre dweller has never exactly found top-drawer Rattigan -- unlike, oh, The Winslow Boy, even Separate Tables, for all its commercial-skewed sentiment and gimmickry, and, absolutely, The Browning Version -- despite my distaste for remakes, if The Magic Wand Theory could arrange for Stephen Daldry to direct a David Hare or Peter Morgan-adapted screenplay redux of that, with, say, Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas and Hugh Grant as Crocker-Harris, Millie and I Forget Adulterous Colleague's Name, respectively, Carey Mulligan and Dominic Cooper as the in-coming new couple, Sir Derek as the old headmaster, one or another of those astonishing new Brit kids that have turned up since Freddie Highmore hit puberty as the key student -- well, I'd not only pay to see it, I'd try to snag a craft services job just to see 'em shooting it). Still, re: Deep Blue Sea, I recall that received opine from very old Broadway veteran colleagues assures me that Margaret Sullavan in the original NY staging elevated and illuminated the whole, and have always had an ambivalent fascination with the lumpy and needlessly Cinemascopic 50s film, without remotely loving it (except, ironically enough, Vivien, perhaps her last truly excellent film characterization). Am also a Rachel Weisz admirer, she slew me in The Constant Gardener and The Shape of Things -- but am somewhat doubtful as to how credible a dame d'uncertain age she is yet. She certainly has the potential for the requisite mix of masked vulnerability and bitter inner conflict, yet she's also (last time I saw her picture) still a shade healthy/beautiful to be truly faded/desperate/grasping, which is the best chance that property has of being coruscating. I forget who is playing the lover she's losing, so cannot comment on him (never cared for Kenneth More in the old movie, no disrespect, but didn't believe Vivien's character would ever have had to settle for him in the first place). Still, it sounds like they've actually tried to give Hester more of the POV, so will undoubtedly see it, later rather than sooner, since I can think of scores of plays-to-films/plays not yet filmed from that same era that have more reason/need/rationale to be filmed, let alone refilmed.

And, plowing on, must respectfully but emphatically disagree that The Iron Lady is dreck. Dreck, or, rather, the element the word indicates, has pungency, impact, reaction, texture, fertilization potential, process demonstrated, nutritional after-effects, the essence of digestives, and so forth, no matter how stinky, raunchy or unsanitary it appears. Whereas, even with a not-in-itself bad idea for a screenplay from Abi Morgan (unfortunately the idea got developed, not the actual screenplay) and an "At least she's trying to cut/zoom/cross-fade/close-up/pan/insert-basic-film-term here" sophomore effort from Phyllida Lloyd (to call it an improvement over her freshman effort is akin to noting that George W. Bush's second term found him more at ease being the oligarchy's puppet than in his first one), Margaret Thatcher Remembers What And How She Wants To And Is Able To, All While Talking To Her Dead Husband, Listening To Bellini and Rodgers and Hammerstein, Belittling Her Daughter, Regretting Her Parents And Griping About Milk Prices is, barring one immortal ingredient, too bland and blah to even qualify as dreck. More like speck. However, that one immortal ingredient is (surprise, surprise), Mrs. Gummer, who, literally, like many a Star Actress before her and since, yanks the whole woebegone vehicle up to Her Jawdropping Level of Sheer Art in the Later-Life Hepburn Plane/Heir To Geraldine Page Tier she's officially entered -- Dustin Hoffman's long-ago prediction that she'd become the Eleanor Roosevelt of Acting seems more prescient by the day. If one watches The Ironing Loud-ey with the realization that Her Merylity is seamlessly playing every remembered version of Thatcher from within the addled Maggie T. perspective, while outside observing those variants at the same time -- as the senile/selective memory of the aged actually does, as noted from first-hand/up-close observation of more than one elder in my life -- while managing to avoid a hackneyed, faux-authoritative BioPic Performance, and technically subsuming herself to makeup, accent, environment, behavioral specifics, as opposed to exhibiting same, as she's been described as doing for decades, it becomes unmistably One Of Her Greatest Performances, impressionistic and representational and creative and literally incapable of having been given by virtually any peer. Just. Try. To. Look. Away. Indeed, after assessing all five Prima Donnas that made the Racso cut (over Kirsten and Charlize and Jessica, oh my!), I asked myself: Self, what's most difficult and virtuosic -- playing the perceived soul of a best seller about race relations where the plot does all the work for you and you use about 40 per cent of what you got; playing an eternal cinema icon with deliberate under-imitation and yeoman but inescapable self-identification that never lets the viewer forget you're you and not she; dropping all make-up, strapping in your boobies, and letting your facial, vocal, physical and gestural expressions go all Novocaine-ic in a minimalist performance that doesn't exactly grab and evaporates minutes after its over; making a credible blow-for-blow/Kohl-for-Kohl replication of the printed descriptives of an inscrutable, mercurial heroine of an international smash trilogy of books, unfortunately preceded by another, less replicative, more internally acute actress; or being impossible to look away from or be clearly personally located in an act of near-transubstantiation in a mediocre but serviceable vehicle, all the while giving every single actress in the business an object lesson in how to play real and stylized and abstracted and specific and transformative and oblique and evocative and pathetic and imposing and preternatural, all at once? The Only Reason To Sit Through It, and Transcendant Reason Enough. Can't wait for her to take her turn at Elizabeth I, or Hillary Rodham Clinton, or, why, Eleanor Roosevelt, let alone the impending August: Osage County (next Oscar nomination, count on it) and the only thing I disagreed with in her typically glowing acceptance speech was her self-deprecating "I'll never be up here again." Poppycock. Wait and see: The Streep will end up with enough Oscars to support a coffee table, and maybe an ottoman, and still have one to let Mamie practice acceptance speeches with. SASSY is sated, but only for now -- let the Grande Dame Games begin, again.

And then there's A Separation, which I believe somebody or other around here posted about ever so long ago, way before the deluge began, can't imagine who it could have been, probably one of them lurkers (insert tongue-in-cheek emoticon here)... It remains firmly wedged between Melancholia on one side, the (finally seen in February) Weekend on the other, as 2011 Film That Most Inexorably And Subjectively Grabbed My Psyche, For, Like, Ever. Personally, I thought the ending exactly right. What more could there be to show us? Would it not have diminished the preceding impact if we'd learned Daughter's choice? And if it was learned, surely, even by implication, that would have conventionalized the whole acute, incredibly immediate, sensationally enacted labyrinth that led up to it, and prohibited the viewer from deciding for him/herself. If Melancholia was Film For The Ages In Spite Of Itself And Myself, And I'm Still Reeling All This While Later entry, Weekend Unassuming Verite And Why Does It Feel Familiar, Oh, Yeah, Right, That's What My Life Once Resembled fave, Briefs Encounter for the Now, Separation was/is An Instant Classic, Nailbiting, Unpredictable, Groundbreaking Leap Forward For Artists And Country Of Origin And The Medium Itself. Not since Renoir, not since mid-period Hitch, not since One Potato, Two Potato, not since... well, Another Year, at the very least. Only Beginners , for Quirky, Self-Delineated But Inescapable Parallels To Distant And Recent Traumas (And One Of The Year's Two Best Canine Actors), The Artist for Initial Immersive Enchantment Yielding Repeat Visits And Increased Charm Rewards (And The Other Of The Year's Best Canine Actors), and The Descendants for Payne Helps Clooney Breakout And Embrace Potential Soapy/Snarky Narrative To Mine Deeply Affecting Gold approached those three for what they did to me. Well, and Midnight in Paris, just because, frankly, it's Good Woody (and Wilson), and Win Win, just because, frankly, it's Good McCarthy (and Giamatti). The Furrbawl calls, time to chop up some Friskies. Happy cinematics, ev'rybuddy.

inla out

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Befade
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 10:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ
Quote:
The Deep Blue Sea, a romantic drama starring Rachel Weisz


Bart.........I read the NYTimes article about it and I'll definitely see it. It has a plot that resembles the one of a French film called Leaving that I streamed on Netflix. Kristin Scott Thomas is in the role of the comfortable wife who gives up everything to be with a lower class lover. As with most French films, it does not follow the course of the English drama. I enjoy seeing KST in French films........

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