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| gromit |
 Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2016 6:37 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Article with brief capsule summaries (and name actors) in 20 films likely to premiere at Cannes this year.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/30/20-films-prediction-list-cannes-film-festival
Not much appeals to me off the bat.
Except for Jeff Nichols film Loving about the Lovings, an inter-racial couple who sued to overturn Virginia's anti-miscegenation law which forbade their marriage
I like Elle Fanning, but she's in a horror film, Neon Demon.
I might try Woody Allen's Cafe Society if the buzz is good, but I've kind of given up on his films.
Spielberg's BFG and/or Jodie Foster's Money Monster could turn out to be BIG or duds.
A couple others could turn out to be good, though I'm not much of a fan of a number of the directors: Dardennes, Andrea Arnold, Verhoeven, Loach, 21st C Jarmusch, etc. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2016 12:31 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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| Loving is the film Marge's sister made. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2016 1:08 pm |
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I think that was the doc The Loving Story (2011).
Written and directed by Nancy Buirski.
But she's also listed as a producer on Jeff Nichol's Loving (2016). |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2016 5:36 pm |
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| I would go for Woody's movie because of Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2016 11:52 am |
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Picked up:
Mr. Turner
What Happened Miss Simone?
The End of the Tour
Will report back when I get to them ... |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2016 6:47 pm |
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gromit wrote: Picked up:
Mr. Turner
What Happened Miss Simone?
The End of the Tour
Will report back when I get to them ...
Excellent, excellent choices. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2016 8:19 pm |
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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went to see Barbershop: The Next Cut and The Jungle Book. The former is a mess but does take on the problem of gang warfare; the serious themes don't mesh well with the bits of comedy and it's very talky. I don't recommend it.
The Jungle Book is well done, especially when we meet Scarlett Johansson's Kaa, Bill Murray's Baloo, and Christopher Walken's King Louie (here more scary than comic). All three get to sing songs from the animated film. Johansson sings a very nice, haunting version of "Trust in Me" over the closing credits. You know what song Murray sings. It sticks reasonably closely to the 1967 version but is more solidly put together, and really nice to look at. However, it also lacks the bittersweet ending and needs it. I'm not surprised there will be a second movie. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2016 3:27 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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| I'm interested in checking out the Nina Simone doc. I never cared for her singing, don't like her scratchy voice or her phrasing. Also think her style is a bit too theatrical for my taste. And I don't know that much about her activism. So maybe this will get me to reassess or engage or something. |
Last edited by gromit on Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:33 am; edited 1 time in total
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2016 12:29 pm |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2016 7:39 pm |
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Location: Winnipeg: It's a dry cold.
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| yambu, I love Simone's singing as much as you. I Love You, Porgy is a great song sung by Simone! |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:31 am |
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Well, the Simone doc is fairly good.
It covers her early career -- two white women helped raise funds so a little colored girl could get piano lessons and a year and a half at Julliard. And how she always wanted to be a classical pianist.
Her family life. Music. Activism. mental health issues.
There's a fair amount of concert footage and interviews, so we get Nina Simone in her own words. The talking heads are carefully chosen, so we get primarily her daughter, some of her husband, George Wein, her long-time guitarist ( I forget his name), etc. Not too many, and mostly fairly essential. And still Simone herself get the most words in.
Interesting that Simone's country house in Mt. Vernon was next to Malcolm X's home, so Simone's daughter grew up with Betty Shabazz's girls while Nina and Hubby were touring and otherwise busy.
Not only her singing but her personality was rather idiosyncratic, and you can see signs of mental illness or at least stress and strain early.
There are a few instances where they over-state Simone's impact. At one point they intimate that black males were too afraid to write and perform protest songs, and it was up to Simone to do so. As though she was the only one. This is even undercut in the film when Simone sings Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit soon after. But there were black males with protest songs such as Sam Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come, Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, etc (and earlier Big Bill Broonzy's Get Back, and even Louis Armstrong's Black and Blue).
I guess overstating impact and importance of a doc subject is almost to be expected, but I'd rather the artist and art is contextualized rather than just praised.
Maybe my other quibble is I wasn't always sure what year a concert or interview was from, which seemed useful information as change took place quickly in the late 60's and early 70's. I still didn't get any closer to her music. There are brief moments where she comes out with a great phrase or nice moan, but for me these tend to last just for brief seconds here and there. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:54 pm |
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Location: Winnipeg: It's a dry cold.
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I just saw The Jungle Book today. It was very good and had excellent visuals, and wonderful animals etc. I think you should all see it.  |
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Big bang, shmig bang; still doesn't explain how anything starts. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 6:39 am |
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Location: Shanghai
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I didn't get too involved with The End of the Tour.
Maybe it's because I no/knew nothing about David Foster Wallace.
But I think it's more because Jesse Eisenberg is mildly annoying, and it's predominately a film with two characters. I can see why they cast Eisenberg, since his odd combination of nervousness and confidence fits the little brother role he's asked to play here.
But I thought the film was a bit heavy handed in portraying the two writers as rather similar. The most egregious is when Lipsky/Eisenberg not only berates his girlfriend for talking on the phone with Wallace for 30 minutes, but then just tunes her out and hangs up while she's still talking, which up to that point is a behavior we'd more associate with DFW's asocial personality. And later Wallce of course confronts Lipsky for supposedly flirting with his friend/ex-girlfriend. And there are at least two instances where DFW comments on how they are similar. And the finale has Lipsky on his own book tour, just in case you somehow missed the comparisons earlier. Meh.
I get that the tour can be seen as a metaphor for life itself -- a journey where you meet various people, present a public persona, worry about not being true to your real self -- and, while exhausting, is over much too quickly. I also have trouble with how the movies present intelligence. The conversations in this film reminded me of Ex Machina, where there's a similar interaction between a brilliant successful male and a younger slightly uncertain usurper.
Perhaps it's somewhat tough to portray smartness in such a condensed medium as film.
I could see all of the elements in Tour -- intelligent conversations, the male power struggle and mutual respect, and the tour metaphor working much better in a novel than in a film. Otherwise, I wasn't that thrilled with the framing device. Really I'd prefer to see DFW going about his life -- teaching, writing, hanging out with his dogs, dancing, and then say 20 or 30 mins into the film, Lipsky comes along and affects his life. I think that would have been more interesting to me. It's a decent film, but a year form now I doubt I'll remember I saw it, unless this brilliant review sticks in my mind ... |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2016 2:19 am |
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| Really enjoying Mr. Turner. The costumes and set designs are terrific. And the framings/compositions are impressive and frequently look like paintings. Turner himself is presented as rather an odd creature, sort of like a human mole. It's a real feel-like-you're really there picture. The only thing bad is that I didn't realize it was so long and couldn't make it through all of it last night. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 5:27 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Jon Favreau (not the Obama speechwriter, though he's great too, but the film director/actor) is a man of sublime achievements, from his inimitable co-starring turn in Swingers to his self-referential appearances on The Sopranos to his wonderfully weird talk show Dinner for Five to his directorial stints in projects as diverse as Iron Man and Chef. Now he's directed The Jungle Book, which is not really MY kind of movie but is enormous fun. A live-action film like no other that I've seen, it was fllmed entirely in a studio but creates a "jungle" as real as any yet seen on screen. Voiced by Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, and other stellar types, the animals all speak English but look totally real. How this was accomplished I don't even care to know, but it's movie magic at its most magical. |
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