Author |
Message |
|
knox |
Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2022 3:35 pm |
|
|
Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
|
|
Back to top |
|
gromit |
Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:54 pm |
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
|
Apparently in real life the bear found a large package of cocaine tossed out of a plane, ate a bunch and simply died.
As for multiverses, Ive been enjoying the Rick & Morty animated tv show. Best episodes are usually when there are multiple Ricks and Mortys, many of whom get killed off. Which is unsettling since the viewer has gotten to know Rick and Morty. It streams for free on Adult Swim right on these here internets. https://www.adultswim.com/streams/rick-and-morty |
_________________ Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
Back to top |
|
bartist |
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2022 11:29 am |
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
The recent Norwegian film "Troll" is one of those cheesy but fun romps in fantasy-meets-modern-world that barely needs subtitles. WYSIWYG, as they say. Oslo's take on Godzilla, with the usual ecological message. We also get to visit the Hall of the Mountain King, which the end crawl soundtrack scores in the obvious way. But they do resist a blitz-grieg of Grieg. |
_________________ He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
Back to top |
|
Syd |
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2022 10:33 pm |
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12914
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
Well, the choice was between the sequels to Avatar and Puss in Boots so you can guess which I chose to see first.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a sequel spinoff from the Shrek Movies, and even though this comes out 11 years after the first, that still beats out the Shrek series, which has been trying to come out with Shrek 5 since 2010. "The Last Wish" concerns a falling star whose landing site is a mystery but can grant a wish to whoever finds it. [Note: in the Shrek universe wishing on a shooting star has real potency--but any number of people can wish on the shooting star. I'm positive the writers realized that from the beginning.]
Puss in Boots has been swashbuckling for a long time and has accumulated several deaths--eight in fact--so when he has to face Death (who strongly resembles the Big Bad Wolf with sickles to claim lives), for the first time since he stood up his fiancee, he has to face genuine fear. So he gives up his identity and goes to a cat sanctuary--read crazy cat lady house--until bounty hunters find him. The bounty hunters being three bears and a woman named Goldie (They bonded.) He manages to hide through that, but he also learns about the falling star, and that a scroll leading to the location has come into the possession of Big Jack Horner. (He's eaten a lot of plums.)
Horner, by the way, is the one true villain in the piece. He's greedy, ruthless, and doesn't give a damn about those who die in his service. He also has a bag
of holding for eldritch weapons including a cicada who acts as his conscience (which Jack lacks). Goldilocks and the Bears are nemeses and rivals, but also sympathetic.
Oh yes, and Puss is accompanied by Kitty Softpaws (who has trust issues, if you remember, because her beloved masters had her declawed) and a chihuahua who disguised himself as a cat at the cat sanctuary, is relentlessly optimistic, and is annoying to his companions.
I don't consider this to be a great movie, but it's a lot of fun and has a lot of laughs. The scroll that provides the map to the destination is a hoot. Antonio Banderas was born to play Puss in Boots, and Salma Hayek (now billed as Salma Hayek Pinault) is Kitty Softpaws. There's no need for a third movie, but I'd be fine if they did one. |
Last edited by Syd on Sun Jul 09, 2023 12:13 pm; edited 2 times in total _________________ I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
|
Back to top |
|
bartist |
Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2022 12:19 pm |
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
Glass Onion, the standalone sequel to Knives Out, is an enjoyable satiric poke at the billionaire ego, as Ed Norton delivers amoral kookiness channeling a Zuckerbergian fool who eventually gets what he deserves. The end has a small problem of character/legal logic, which is nothing fatal to a fun romp in celebrity shallowness, but which I might mention later when it doesn't spoiler the thread. Kate Hudson drolly channels her famous mother, which will be noticed only by audience members of a certain age. Daniel Craig is, once again, a shot of southern comfort with his Foghorn Leghorn/Sherlock Holmes hybrid. (Reportedly, Craig based his accent and delivery on the historian Shelby Foote) There are showbiz celebrity jokes which may or may not be actual in-jokes - why Jared Leto for the alcoholic kombucha tea?
(a bit more commentary on the film may be viewed here:
http://forums.escapefromelba.com/index.php?topic=29.540
) |
_________________ He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
Back to top |
|
bartist |
Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2023 12:45 pm |
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
Harry Melling who so limberly played the limbless thespian in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, plays E A Poe, in his student days at West Point in The Pale Blue Eye.
I wanted to like this more - the historical backdrop, the somber wintry setting and gloomy interiors, snatches of poetry and romantic passion from the budding bard, the mysterious and macabre aspects of the deaths young Poe helps investigate - all the makings of great period psychodrama. But somehow it loses coherence, tosses in a plot twist that is more "written" than convincing, and has Christian Bale (among others) speaking lines that seem too modern for 1830 and treading on social boundaries in various anachronistic ways. (Also hard to envision a marriage of Toby Jones and Gillian Anderson yielding tall children, but that's a casting nitpick) |
_________________ He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
Back to top |
|
bartist |
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2023 6:23 pm |
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
An excerpt from Anthony Lane's review of White Noise, the latest Noah Baumbach flick and IMO his least successful. Though like Lane I appreciated the end credits.
Quote: If, like me, you enjoy watching smoothly choreographed sequences of people weaving in and out of rooms, chattering and snacking, or rallying one another to the TV (“Hurry up, plane-crash footage!”), then the everyday crackle and hum of “White Noise” will be enough.
But this is DeLillo, so we must brace ourselves for narratives—or, at any rate, for occurrences that are so dense with the gaseous air of conspiracy that you can barely breathe. Hence the pills that Babette takes, in secret, or the “Airborne Toxic Event” that shrouds the landscape and causes the townsfolk, including the Gladneys, to evacuate. Baumbach, too, is taking flight, away from his regular zones of operation and into Spielberg country, where the highways seize up in mass panic, beneath a storm cloud as loomingly vast as a spaceship. And, all the while, everyone converses in fluent DeLillo: “Maybe there’s no death as we know it, just documents changing hands.” What husband has ever said that to his wife? On the page, the fact that the characters sound like the author somehow deepens the ominous charm of the spell that he casts. Onscreen, it’s too weird for words.... |
_________________ He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
Back to top |
|
gromit |
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2023 3:03 am |
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
|
During college days, circa 1986, an old high school friend was hyping DeLillo. So I tried reading White Noise ... and hated hate hated it. The writing style was off-putting and atrocious. I rarely don't finish a book or film, but cut out on that pretty early (perhaps 50 pages or less). I was a big reader then, but that really clashed with my preferences. Each sentence was jagged and abrasive. Never tried another DeLillo. Not likely to watch the film either... |
_________________ Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
Back to top |
|
bartist |
Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:33 pm |
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
Yeah I never found DeLillo my cuppa tea. The film just magnified the problems I found in his prose, so it disappointed me as I was nursing the hope that film would actually make an improvement.
Started watching the Oscar noms. AQ on the WF was hard to watch. Excellent adaptation of Remarque but deeply sad and grim. Which is to be commended in an anti-war film. To watch is to mourn the monumental waste of young lives. Futility heaped upon futility.
Looking forward to Banshees of Inisherin, which reunited Gleeson and Farrell with Martin McDonagh.
I think this may be more serious a drama than In Bruges, though I expect there will be tragicomic elements given this is a McDonagh script. No word on possible midgets. |
_________________ He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
Back to top |
|
Syd |
Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2023 12:17 am |
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12914
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
I went to see "The Fabelmans" today and greatly enjoyed it. The first half is mostly fun as our teenage hero Sam falls in love with filmmaking, learns to edit, enlists his friends to act and generally learns to be a filmmaking multiple threat (Spielberg based it on his own childhood, though it's fictionalized). Then at the middle, he discovers that film records a lot more than a director intends and the film gets much more emotional, including antisemitic attacks and intrafamily tensions.
The outstanding performance is Michelle Williams as Sam's mother and supporter; she had the makings of a world-class concert pianist and understands how her son is drawn to the arts. She's far better than Michelle Yeoh in "Everything Everywhere All at Once," though Michelle Yeoh is excellent in many other films. I understand Andrea Riseborough is also outstanding in "To Leslie."
Judd Hirsch is also present as a great-uncle whose acting ambitions wound up with him in carnivals. It's a nice performance but I'm not convinced he's one of the five best of the year.
I have my doubts about this film's chances for best picture at the Oscars, but I could see it winning a third directing Oscar for Spielberg. |
_________________ I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
|
Back to top |
|
bartist |
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2023 1:47 pm |
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
Planning to see Fabelmans next. You had me at Michelle Wms.
Meanwhile...
The Banshees of Inisherin is an exceedingly dark existential tragicomedy that may leave you pondering the life of the thinking and creative person in remote rural places. And the Aran Islands, in 1923, are pretty remote. The story has the feel of allegory, but Gleeson, Farrell, and the whole ensemble do a fine job of making it seem quite real. Perhaps I should say that prospective viewers may not want to watch BoI if they are struggling with any personal blues. There is much despair to be seen. And if you're expecting an actual external banshee, you will be disappointed.
I can't say yet if this is McDonagh's best film to date, but this is the sort of film that has to haunt you for a while before you've really absorbed it. |
_________________ He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
Back to top |
|
Befade |
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:59 pm |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
|
I got interested in White Noise because of Adam Driver. I read the book first because Noah Baumbach thought it was so great. I’d never read DeLillo. I endured the book a lot more easily than the movie. To me there was little connection. The movie was jarring, loud, a jumble. The book had a humor that was not typical: the head of Hitler Studies at a college? Three or four marriages and children between the two of them. They’re constant discussions with the children. Nutso. Sorry Adam and Noah. |
_________________ Lost in my own private I dunno. |
|
Back to top |
|
Befade |
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2023 10:00 pm |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
|
I recommend Living with Bill Nighy. |
_________________ Lost in my own private I dunno. |
|
Back to top |
|
bartist |
Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2023 12:21 pm |
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
I think I would need to go on a few dates first. |
_________________ He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
Back to top |
|
Befade |
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2023 1:12 am |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
|
🥹 |
_________________ Lost in my own private I dunno. |
|
Back to top |
|
|