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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 12:54 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| SPOILER ALERT (but not really) for BARTIST: Cricket gets a sorta bad rap in MDA. But in a funny, affectionate way. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 10:26 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Read somewhere where some "critic" called Godzilla the best movie of its kind since Jaws. Very stupid statement. Jaws was an all-time classic, and Godzilla is not even as good as the original black-and-white non-CGI cheapo version starring Raymond Burr. The special effects in the new movie are fine and the movie is well-produced, but this does not translate to suspense, thrills, or even basic entertainment. Most of the acting by the name cast is so bland and underwater that Bryan Cranston, by simply attempting to create some kind of a character, appears to be hamming it up. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 6:31 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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Million Dollar Arm seems to be getting only so-so reviews, and I don't the the sense of it that Hamm has proved himself a full-fledged movie star yet. I think, Billy, your man crush might be showing a bit too conspicuously.
I guess a Jaws comparison is inevitable for Godzilla for obvious reasons, but reviews I've read have simply claimed it's an enjoyable movie and a huge improvement over the lame 90's version. Kinda hope I get to check it out this weekend (last weekend I ducked the crowds for Captain America: the Winter Soldier, which was okay but not worth more of a review than this parenthetical statement: okay plot, Chris Evens sexy, things went boom). |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 7:52 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Have to admit I have more than a little revulsion at these films which depict various American landmarks in ruins.
White House Down sounded totally offensive and the Godzilla promo with the Statue of Liberty in tatters rankles. I guess Americans are willing to be entertained by seeing famous pieces of their country in ruins as 9/11 fades in memory. But I won't be watching such.
And I'm no gung-ho patriot. I mostly think of US soldiers as more akin to killers and oppressors than heroes and the brave running to right chaos, as one military ad has it.
(hmm, the firefox spellchecker doesn't include gung-ho, and suggested I try bunghole instead. Uh, thanks firefox ... Maybe it should be two words and non-hyphenated?)
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As for cricket and baseball, Babe Ruth went on an off-season world tour during the height of his fame (probably around when he had a better year than Hoover), and in India was introduced to cricket. Reportedly he had a good deal of trouble trying to bat like a cricketer, so switched to baseball style swings and started clouting the ball all over the place. One famous Indian cricketer of the day wished that Ruth could stay and he'd have more time to teach Ruth to play cricket. Thought he would be good at it. Ruth most have had excellent hand-eye coordination.
Well, not sure if my India story is true.
But quick searches of Ruth and cricket show that he played some in London in 1935 (well past his prime) and had trouble using a cricket stance but clouted the ball using more of a baseball stance. Adding India to the search didn't turn up anything else. I searched rather briefly though. |
Last edited by gromit on Fri May 23, 2014 8:05 am; edited 1 time in total
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 7:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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So...the original Planet of the Apes really gets to you, too?
It's kinda hard to believe in a disaster movie if not much disastrous befalls the country it takes place in. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 8:10 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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P of the A makes clever use of the Statue of Liberty. Also, the message is basically: appreciate and don't fuck up the good thing you have. And there is also a distancing effect since the action of the film takes place in the future.
But I think things are different in our post 9/11, post-terrorism in the US world. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 8:17 am |
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Location: Houston
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| I wish we lived in a post-terrorist world, but we do not, therefore the terror of our own country getting severely attacked continues to play into current movies because the possibility is still hovering in our heads, just as the fear of communist or Nazi takeover played into movies/comics/pulps of their era. To not have movies where the White House or whatever stands a chance of being wiped off the planet would really suggest we're living with our heads in the sand. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 8:53 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Joe--By now you should have realized you can't trust critics. Don't trust the critics who damn Million Dollar Arm with faint praise because it's from Disney and is a feel-good movie which doesn't jibe with their trendoid cynicism, and don't trust the ones who overpraise Godzilla.
My "man crush" on Jon Hamm is based not on his looks, btw, which are (in the words of one critic) "ridiculously attractive," but on his very real talent. Some people doubt his movie-star future because he doesn't carry the weight of a George Clooney. May be true, but his excellence in MDA is still very much in evidence. As it is, and always has been, in Mad Men and as guest host of SNL. Hamm is pretty awesome. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 9:55 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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When I see buildings crushed or otherwise brought down in movies, I tend to see things symbolically, so I'm not usually repelled by that. Monuments and buildings tend to stand for certain ideals and traditions, but those are living things we carry within ourselves. This is often the point made, often rather tritely, in many demolition-based films.
The symbol is not the thing symbolized; the map is not the territory. And so it goes. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 10:59 am |
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billyweeds wrote: Joe--By now you should have realized you can't trust critics. Don't trust the critics who damn Million Dollar Arm with faint praise because it's from Disney and is a feel-good movie which doesn't jibe with their trendoid cynicism, and don't trust the ones who overpraise Godzilla.
My "man crush" on Jon Hamm is based not on his looks, btw, which are (in the words of one critic) "ridiculously attractive," but on his very real talent. Some people doubt his movie-star future because he doesn't carry the weight of a George Clooney. May be true, but his excellence in MDA is still very much in evidence. As it is, and always has been, in Mad Men and as guest host of SNL. Hamm is pretty awesome.
It looks like a generic uplift picture, which I really have no interest in. I think Hamm is talented, but less so than you do. I think he was perfectly cast in Mad Men. Personally, when you say "his talent" I think you mean "his charisma." But obviously I'm not inside your head. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 1:13 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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| Of course there are countless ways to show destruction without showing the White House obliterated or the Statue of Liberty left in tatters. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 10:43 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
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Location: St. Louis
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| Well, you could show an attack on the Aetna Life Insurance building, but I've observed that filmmakers like the dramatic. They like to arouse the viewer's emotions by presenting well-known targets that in some way represent the heart of the Republic. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 12:21 pm |
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knox wrote: Well, you could show an attack on the Aetna Life Insurance building, but I've observed that filmmakers like the dramatic. They like to arouse the viewer's emotions by presenting well-known targets that in some way represent the heart of the Republic.
You can also destroy the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hollywood letters, and the Space Needle. Too late to destroy Big Butter Jesus, but the replacement, Lux Mundi, is fair game for nuclear-powered monsters. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 8:54 pm |
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X-Men: Days of Future Past is quite good, and RFK Stadium is one of the victims. Pretty clever, but it reminds me of the bridge relocation in X-Men 3. Some of the future X-Men were unfamiliar to me. The portal maker is Blink, and this is the first of five X-Men movies she's signed for, which means this series is going on forever.
My favorite addition is Evan Peters as Quicksilver, who is just fun. There's one very chaotic scene that had the audience laughing. (Interestingly, in the scene during the credits of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you see him and his sister, the Scarlet Witch. In the Avengers universe, he's played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and the Witch by Elizabeth Olsen, but I don't know who plays Godzilla.) |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 9:25 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Then I saw The Railway Man, because sometimes you just have to see a movie you know absolutely nothing about (except the poster). This starts off with a meet cute on a train between a rather scruffy Eric Lomax (Colin Firth), and a very pretty brunette Patti Wallace (Nicole Kidman, who should wear her hair that way more often). It develops that she is a nurse, and he's a writer and railway enthusiast. A sweet romance ensues,he gets less scruffy, they get married, while a group of his friends provides support. A nice, sweet film, then he wakes up screaming at night from his memories of torture by the Japanese during World War II
Patti realizes her husband is very disturbed indeed, especially when she comes across a notebook with Eric's drawings of Japanese atrocities. Since Eric doesn't want to share his memories, she goes to Eric's friend Finlay (John Stellan Skarsgård) who tells her about how he and Eric were taken prisoners of war during the fall of Singapore and were recruited as slave labor to build a railroad across Burma. (The Bridge on the River Kwai is mentioned at one point.) The British had once planned to build this railroad, but had concluded that the sufferings of the workers would be too inhumane for the benefits. The Japanese have no such qualms. Eric (Jeremy Irvine) builds a receiver to pick up Allied broadcasts; Japanese officer Takashe Nagase (Tanroh Ishida) mistakes it for a transmitter, and leads the torture of Eric to find out what he's revealed.
These war scenes are brutal, and it's understandable why Eric doesn't want to share them. But then fate gives him a chance to resolve his anger.
Based on a true and remarkable (and harrowing) story. The actors are all good. This is Kidman's best in a long time, Firth is his usual fine self, and the supporting cast is excellent. In addition to Eric, Finlay and Nagase are played by two actors, one for World War II, the other a couple of decades later. |
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