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Syd
Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2017 9:55 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12934 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Watching Whip It, the first (and only feature film) directed by Drew Barrymore, starring Ellen Page (Babe Ruthless), Kristen Wiig, Zoe Bell (the stuntwoman/actress on the hood in Death Proof), and Eve, all of whom make up for the fact that (1) it also has Jimmy Fallon (in a very minor role) and (2) Juliette Lewis (a villain whom I hope gets pasted since she's ruined my experience in several movies) and (3) it's about roller derby, which is why it bombed at the box office, and why I've been avoiding it for years, but my love for Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore trumped my resistance.

And, of course, I like it. It also has Andrew Wilson as the coach of the worst team in the league, and when he discovers his team has not studied Play #3, goes to the opposing team, bribes them to run it, and his own team winds up flat on their asses. Then he asks his team if they want him to sell play #4, and Drew whines "no."

The film bombed, unfortunately, (perhaps because it came out in 2009, when roller derby was in a revival that ended before the movie came out, and because it's about roller derby--and because you don't believe Ellen Page, who is five feet tall* at most and weighs about 90 pounds could be a roller derby star till you see the movie) because Drew Barrymore is a good director, despite choosing odd subject matter, ably directed a talented cast, and was content to have a low profile among the stars, mostly content to be comic relief. I'd like to see her direct more films. This one is funny, sweet, and to my astonishment I recommend it.

*Her official height is 5 ft 1 and I don't believe it.

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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: Fri Jul 21, 2017 11:08 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai
I recall thinking it was okay, had some charm and moments, but also was a bit of a missed opportunity since it had some good elements. Don't recall what my correctives were.

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gromit
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2017 2:25 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai
Been watching some 50's noirs online.
Dementia (1953) is pretty impressive.
It's a silent film, depicting a haunted night as a disturbed woman has strange encounters during a night out on the seedy side. It's really fairly avant garde, employing a lot of noir shadows and expressionistic lighting. Quite inventive at times. The musical score by George Anthiel is great, as is the jazz by Shorty Rogers and his Giants.

The film was released in 1955 as Daughter of Horror with a rather over-the-top occasional voice-over narration by Ed MacMahon, as it was felt that as a silent film it might be too hard for audiences to follow. That's what I watched online, but I think I'd rather start with the original silent version, Dementia. It clocks in at just 55 minutes, and is something of a low-budget masterpiece.

https://archive.org/details/DementiaDaughterOfHorror1955#

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whiskeypriest
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 8:04 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
Watched The Single Greatest Movie in the History of Man yesterday, on Netflix, where it is currently streaming. Although as great as I remember it being, one caveat: All that cacophony of indecipherable German flowing around Holly during the movie that, like the tilted and canted camera angles, adds to Holly's and your sense of dislocation and disorientation? Subtitled. Bad move. Harry trapped in the sewer hearing voices echoing from the tunnels is not rendered more effective by your knowledge that they are saying "He's over there!" "Check that tunnel!" "Do you see him?"

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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?
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bartist
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 9:22 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6964 Location: Black Hills
Heh! The last time I watched, the DVD forced the same option on me and I remember not liking the effect. And it's so obvious that they are saying stuff like that, anyway. I mean, what, are we going to mistakenly think they are discussing Hegelian synthesis or the best way to grill bratwurst?

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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.
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Syd
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2017 2:03 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12934 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
I was at a movie night tonight, and the movies were The Court Jester, which is one of my favorite movies, and a pleasure to watch among several people who hadn't seen it since childhood and forgotten how funny it is, and D.E.B.S., which I'd never seen and isn't going to be a favorite, but I do like how it turned out to be unexpected, in that the team is facing a criminal mastermind named Lucy Diamond, who they shadow in search of criminal activity with a female Russian agent, when it is actually a blind date. Soon afterward, one of the D.E.B.S., Amy, encounters Lucy in a shootout, and they realize how stupid it is to have each other at gunpoint when they are both really hot. So the movie is centered around a lesbian romance.

Silly, not really good but with some good laughs. I like Jordana Brewster as Lucy. None of the stars of this film seem to have gone one to major stardom, although Michael Clarke Duncan and Holland Taylor are in supporting roles.

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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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carrobin
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2017 11:00 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Catching various TV bits interspersed with news today, I was watching a "Columbo" with Patrick McGoohan as an uptight military schoolmaster (the killer, of course) and started wondering what Trump's generals really think of him--the rich boy who skated away from Vietnam on his heel spurs and has no discernible discipline (or ethics or morals). And in today's episode of "Person of Interest," there was that might-have-been scene in which Root is working for Grier, and she labels a hesitant politician "bad code." Which immediately made me think of the POTUS, of course--though I'm sure he'd love Samaritan, just give him the bill to sign.
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bartist
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 12:13 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6964 Location: Black Hills
XD

Bad code. Perfect.

Yes, Trump wants a system of government that makes the world safe for....Trump.

As a Python fan, I also am reminded of the many useful thoughts on political theory advanced in the Holy Grail movie (making this post germane to topic, yay):

Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. [/quote]

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bartist
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 12:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6964 Location: Black Hills
"Grail" is actually not a bad double feature with "The Court Jester." Thanks, Syd, you've inspired our next film night. I don't think I've seen it since childhood.

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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.
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Syd
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 2:46 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12934 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
bartist wrote:
"Grail" is actually not a bad double feature with "The Court Jester." Thanks, Syd, you've inspired our next film night. I don't think I've seen it since childhood.


We were talking about the two films together after watching "Jester."

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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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carrobin
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 3:08 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Cartoon in this week's "New Yorker":
Two medieval guys are looking at a stone with a sword stuck in it. "Whoever pulls it out becomes King of Britain, but Phil licked the handle, so..."

(And by the way, if anyone can explain the cartoon on page 20, please let me know.)
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yambu
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 4:53 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
carrobin wrote:
....(And by the way, if anyone can explain the cartoon on page 20, please let me know.)
After fifty years of subscribing to the NYer, finally someone asks me to interpret a comic panel.

No, I'm sorry, I don't know what it means.

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carrobin
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:04 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
I'm guessing it's just a surreal ironic New York nightmare--best I can do. I don't know enough people these days to ask.
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gromit
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2017 7:52 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai
haven't watched too mnay films lately.
keep getting into bedlate and just watching a Simpsons episode or two before I doze off.

last week I watched Marooned. Sort of the Interstellar of its day. A orbiting space ship runs into trouble and there's a scramble to figure out how to save them. There are many cheesy special effects, I guess the best they could/were willing to do in 1969. I kept wondering why Gregory Peck was the mission control head, and then realized it was a tip that this wasn't some hippy-dippy ambiguous 60's space drama or Vietnam Era cynicism, but rather a solid heroic technical type of space film where the gov't works hard and does a good job, two astronauts take rather heroic actions, etc. It's the kind of serious space drama that could have been made ten years earlier (it all takes place in some vague near-future). Gregory Peck = integrity and all-americaness.

I got a kick out of how the film shows the vast difficulties of sending a rescue mission up to the seemingly doomed spacecraft, but then when the rescue ship gets there, the Russkies beat them to it, having been in the neighborhood and just popped by for some oxygen cocktails. I'm mocking, but really the fact that the Russians, who were never even mentioned as being up in orbit, get there first, rather deflates the whole mystique of overcoming impossible odds that the US rescue mission is supposed to represent. They could have papered this over/set this up with a brief scene considering asking the Russians for help but ruling it out due to Cold War hostility. Then when the Russians come to help, it would be a dramatic moment and underscore the specialness of space and the stakes at hand.

The film itself is overlong with some scenes not going anywhere. And the characterizations of the 3 astronauts is weak. One is all nervous and ready to go to pieces and makes bad/dangerous decisions. I did like the wives and the role they were given, but that was fairly brief.
Anyway, a decent if overlong and somewhat stodgy film.

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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.
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bartist
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:30 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6964 Location: Black Hills
Is that the one where Gene Hackman volunteers to toss himself out the airlock because "I'm using up all the oxygen anyway." ? I recall seeing it about the time I'd learned about yoga, and thinking it was too bad they couldn't use yoga breathing techniques to conserve oxygen. Probably would have killed what little drama the flick offered.

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