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| Befade |
 Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 5:35 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| Bart.........You have changed........I remember the days when Kate Winslet was your ultimate dream girl. There was a lot of sexual heat in this movie..........or maybe you'd prefer something with Gwyneth Paltrow......... |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:39 pm |
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| Gwyneth Paltrow is not much of an actress and she's a clueless nitwit. She's good in the Iron Man movies. |
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| daffy |
| Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:01 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1939
Location: Wall Street
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marantzo wrote: Gwyneth Paltrow is not much of an actress and she's a clueless nitwit. She's good in the Iron Man movies.
She was terrific in Emma and The Talented Mr. Ripley, and near-perfect in Shakespeare In Love. That's all I've seen that I recall, so I come down on the she's-pretty-good side. As for her recent PR gaffe, christ I hope it was taken out of context or misquoted; it's horrifying to think anybody could be that callous. And no kid should have to grow up named "Apple". |
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"I have been known, on occasion, to howl at the moon."
http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/index.html |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 4:27 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Two new somewhat small movies which sound like they have potential:
JOE -- A drama of sin and redemption from David Gordon Green starring Nicolas Cage with a beard.
DRAFT DAY -- An NFL general manager (Kevin Costner) goes through an eventful day in a sports drama from Ivan Reitman.
No idea on them yet, but just opening and both sound potentially worthwhile. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 4:37 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| I am going to be seeing Draft Day almost immediately. I am a Costner fanatic and the word is it's his best starring role in years and years. It's a movie about football, and some of his best performances have been in sports movies--Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Tin Cup. Can. Not. Wait. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 5:18 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Is that a picture of you when you first heard there was a new Costner sports film coming out?
This is the first I've heard of it. I assume it was green-lighted in the wake of Moneyball (?)
The last two football films I can recall were The Blind Side and the Ernie Davis Story, both more on the personal/emotional side of things.
I hope Jennifer Garner is better in this than she was in The Dallas Buyers Club. Unfortunately it sounds like another somewhat unlikely role for her, as a football team sports executive.
Anyway, report back. Hope it's good. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 7:42 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Befade wrote: Bart.........You have changed........I remember the days when Kate Winslet was your ultimate dream girl. There was a lot of sexual heat in this movie..........or maybe you'd prefer something with Gwyneth Paltrow.........
This...."I don't care much for Kate Winslet, but I think Josh Brolin is quite appealing."....was a joke.
GROMIT....
Quote: Two new somewhat small movies which sound like they have potential:
JOE -- A drama of sin and redemption from David Gordon Green starring Nicolas Cage with a beard.
DRAFT DAY -- An NFL general manager (Kevin Costner) goes through an eventful day in a sports drama from Ivan Reitman.
Who is playing the beard?
I heard about Joe and thought: "Rule of Two" w/ "Mud." |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 7:51 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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What I wrote contains my complete knowledge of Joe.
I liked Mud though i thought the ending was weak, and it didn't seem like there'd be much to gain on a second viewing. But after a few years, i'd watch it again. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 2:53 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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I liked Pineapple Express, which is the only previous Gord-Green film I've seen. Completely missed The Sitter. Sounds like another one where chaos is the key to full appreciation.
I miss the days when places like Best Buy and the like had el cheapo bins of stuff like The Sitter just tossed in randomly and you'd paw through it and occasionally find something pretty good. It meant freedom from Net algorithms that rationally determine what you might like and then insulate you in a little culture bubble. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 1:22 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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“A glimmer of civilization in the barbaric slaughterhouse we know as humanity.”
- M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.
In a two stage flashback, we move from a writer’s study in 1985 to faded charms of the eponymous Grand Budapest Hotel under communism in 1968 to the decade preceding the second world war. We are in a fictional country that is probably one of the pieces of the broken Austro-Hungarian Empire. Determinedly ignoring changes that have already occurred and unaware that the world it represents is about to be crushed under the tank tracks of history, the hotel maintains itself in the grand style as befits an outpost of empire. As much of an anachronism as the hotel, is its emperor and chief servant, the charismatic concierge M. Gustave, portrayed with panache and not a little pathos by an excellent Ralph Fiennes and his period moustache. He is at the heart of a story of murder, intrigue, political change, adventure, art and young love.
I am not particularly well-versed in the pictures of the period to be to identify the various references, but one of the conceits of The Grand Budapest Hotel is that it looks and plays like a colourised silent film from the time. I have read that the film could partly be considered as an homage to the German director Ernst Lubitsch. His work often alternated between comedies and historical dramas and for me the film plays like a thirties thriller crossed with an early Ealing comedy, but I suspect that is because both those schools of filmmaking owed something to Herr Lubitsch. Apparently, the story is loosely based on the writings of the contemporary Austrian novelist Stefan Zwieg. Again not knowing his work, I may have suggested that the film owed something to Franz Kafka, who was potentially an influence on Lubitsch, Zwieg and Anderson.
Of course, The Grand Budapest Hotel is very much a Wes Anderson film; a dead-pan comedy, rich in detail and symmetries, with its usual cast of eccentrics and grotesques (played by an impressive array of stars and character actors) made human by an underlying sense of nostalgia and regret. However, for me this film rises above his previous work. As well as being a delight in its own right, it is laden with analogy and movingly sad. I don’t know what was on Anderson’s mind. Maybe like many artists, he just followed his feelings and left others to worry about the meaning for themselves. The faded hotel could be seen as an already weakened Europe about to be ravaged by brutal ideologues. It is perhaps only in looking obliquely at the unmitigated evil into which Europe descended could its civilisation and art continue. It’s the ultimate collaboration. It could also be seen as a reflection of a modern Europe - still a touchstone of culture, but becoming ever less relevant economically. More fundamentally, I think film stands as an acknowledgement that love and our ability to experience the other good things of life like art and company and adventure are finite, often tragically so, and if relishing them takes a degree of resolve and denial and selfishness, so be it. They are what gives are life shape and meaning. Whether to be or not to be depends on the being.
One or two critics have complained that the comedy fell-flat – and for sure there were a few bum-notes and missteps – but did they really consider that was the limit of Wes Anderson’s ambition. I haven’t crossed checked, but I was given to wonder whether they were the same critics who slated “The Counselor” for being too literate or, in other words, it didn’t conform to the current realist concept of what a Hollywood thriller should look like. As though the verisimilitudes they seemingly crave are anything more than the appearance of truth or its substitute. In some ways this almost gives credence to M. Gustave’s determination to preserve what he sees as standards and for Wes Anderson and others to plough their own, literary, iconoclastic furrow.
As I left The Rialto, I chanced beyond a woman sitting near the bar and gazing wistfully into the mid-distance. I assumed that she was with a partner, who was perhaps at the counter buying tickets or refreshments, but her expression and body language didn’t seem to be expressing any anxiety for him to rejoin her any time soon anytime soon. She was younger than me, but of an age to be able to take stock of her life and for life to have shaped her. I looked at her face and its well-chiselled features and imagined her a sought-after beauty in her pomp, yet I was affected by an abiding sense of disappointment. Of course, this feeling was almost certainly erroneous – however empathetic I might regard myself, I’m not a clairvoyant - it was the film playing on my sensibilities. Proper films do that.
****/5 |
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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.
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:56 am |
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Jeremy, thank you for your excellent review of The Grand Budapest Hotel. I've been thinking about reviewing it all week and finding it rather hard to review, even though I really liked this unusual movie, I didn't want to end up writing a review that wasn't fit for how I liked it.
Your review solved my problem. I don't have to write a review, you sewed it up.
****/5 or even ****1/2/5 |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:01 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Didn't like it much at all. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:57 am |
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billyweeds wrote: Didn't like it much at all.
Yeah, I read your comments about it.  When I went to see it I was wondering if I'd have the same reaction as you had. Happily, I didn't. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 10:39 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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Quote: However, for me this film rises above his previous work.
Jeremy: Much enjoyed your review and being made more aware of some of the cultural influences. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 9:02 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Draft Day is pure entertainment and a great showcase for the actors, especially leading man Kevin Costner, marvelous playing the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, who has a lot of stuff to deal with on the title day. One of the more intriguing aspects of the film is a split-screen technique with overlapping portions. It's terrifically show-offy but wonderful to behold and helpful to the storytelling. Ivan Reitman does a great directorial job and all the supporting actors are excellent, particularly Frank Langella and Denis Leary and even Jennifer Garner. But it's my man Kev who holds it all together. He's a genuine star, and egregiously underappreciated.
(Except when he was overappreciated for directing Dances With Wolves.) |
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