| Author |
Message |
|
| mo_flixx |
 Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 4:40 pm |
 |
|
|
Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
|
THE CONFORMIST is also coming to Sta. Fe. It will open this coming Friday.
I would imagine it will be opening in other art theaters, and I'd think this would mean a restored DVD release is in the works. |
|
|
| Back to top |
 
|
| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 4:57 pm |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
|
| I hope it is, too. It was @ the American Museum of Moving Images and I missed every screening. *sigh* |
_________________
It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 12:06 pm |
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
I've been catching up with movies for the Blanche nominations.
Junebug: This is a delightful movie with fine performances by all the major characters. Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) runs a gallery in Chicago which specializes in folk art by eccentric, mostly mentally challenged artists. There she meets George (Alessandro Nivola) from North Carolina, they fall in lust with each other at first sight and are married within a week. (This is shown in a few quick cuts, fiendishly scored to Syreeta Wright's "Harmour Love." I haven't been able to get the tune out of my head for a week.)
When Madeleine gets a hot tip on a folk artist in North Carolina not far from her husband's home town, they decide to double with a visit to his family, who George has not seen in years, and Madeleine has not met. The artist specializes in Civil War motifs with lots of genitals, quotations handwritten around the heads of generals, and slaves with faces of the white people he knows since he doesn't know any black people. (James Berardinelli didn't find him plausible, but the artist reminded me of Henry Darger and I wondered if he had a 15,000 page novel stashed in his bedroom.)
Madeleine and George stay with his family while she's trying to close a deal. Living at home are George's parents, his younger brother Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie) and Johnny's wife Ashley (Amy Adams). George's mother (Celia Weston) is cautious, his father (Scott Wilson) distantly friendly and Johnny surly and hostile. Ashley, however, takes to Madeleine at first sight and wants to know everything about her. Ashley is also nine months pregnant and could pop at any minute. If the child is a boy, they'll name him Johnny, if a girl Johnni and in any case, she'll nickname it Junebug.
Johnny and Ashley were married in their junior year in high school and he dropped out and now works in a storeroom stocking porcelain. He's a lot friendlier and outgoing at work. At home he generally only speaks a few words at a time. George was always the favorite son, he can do no wrong, and now he comes home with a beautiful, intelligent, cosmopolitan wife who seems to Johnny to be excessively friendly. In other words, George has even trumped his wife.
Johnny and Ashley seem hopelessly mismatched, but you see another side to Johnny when he desperately tries to tape a television show on meerkats because he knows Ashley will love it.
Amy Adams will probably win an Oscar for playing Ashley, and deserves it, but I think Embeth Davidtz is also very good as Madeleine, so anxious to make a good impression on her in-laws and having her friendly gestures misunderstood. I did think she would have stood up more firmly to George in the last scene. |
_________________
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! |
|
| Back to top |
 
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 12:49 pm |
|
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
This was a good year for documentaries. I saw March of the Penguins when it first came out in theatres and Mad Hot Ballroom when it first came out on DVD. I haven't seen Grizzly Man yet. (Treadwell seems like somebody I couldn't stand to spend two hours with, and I'm not sure I want to see a movie about someone who gets eaten by a bear.) Deep Blue and Magnificent Desolation look like astounding IMAX films which I haven't had a chance to see yet. Deep Blue won't be coming out on DVD until April and looks stunning.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a thorough and absorbing study of the Enron scandal, which had its roots back in the eighties with an accounting technique called "Mark to Market" whereby estimated future profits can be treated as if they were actual earnings. If this sounds dubious and dangerous, you see why Enronomics has entered the national vocabulary. Enron executive Kenneth Lay was one of the forces pushing deregulation of the energy industry in the eighties and put his company in a position to take advantage of that. Enron got more into the energy redistribution business, and gambled on the future of the natural gas industry. Eventually, however, Enron became less and less about producing anything tangible, and more about keeping their stock price artificially inflated. Some of their efforts, such as building power plants in India, were especially disastrous. They overlooked that they were providing energy at a price more than India could pay. Finally, Bethany McLean got suspicious and started asking questions such as "Is Enron's stock overpriced" and "How does Enron make its money." The answer to the first question is yes, and the second is, it didn't. Enron was losing money hand over fist and spent its last few years trying to cover this fact up to keep the stock prices up. Finally, an ill-considered attempt to enter the broadband industry and Enron's deliberate engineering of power shortages in California began the crash that destroyed the company, with the coup de grace being a whistleblower who exposed Enron's fraudulent use of dummy corporations.
What is amazing is how all the mechanisms which should prevent a disaster like this happening helped contribute to the disaster. Enron was praised by Fortune six years in a row as the most innovative company in America, including the same year the company imploded. Many of its dubious practices were endorsed by the Security and Exchange Commission. The accounting firm Arthur Andersen assisted in the fraud.
I can't help but make a connection between Enron's practices and the economic practices of the county as a whole. Remember back in the 2000 elections when the candidates were talking about using projected surpluses as an occasion for massive tax cuts. (Gore at least hedged his bets; Bush kept on with the tax cuts even after the surpluses had failed to materialize.) This was an example of mark-to-market on a national scale. |
_________________
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! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 1:15 pm |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
|
| Grizzly Man has been excluded from Oscar consideration because of some funny rules they have for the Documentary category. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 1:20 pm |
|
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is the other remarkable bird documentary of 2005 and is equally worthy of your attention. This is the story of Mark Bittner, a semi-employed man who dedicated at least three years of his life feeding, caring for, and documenting a flock of forty-five feral parrots in San Francisco. The birds were mostly Red-masked Parakeets (known in the pet trade as Cherry-headed Conures), with one Blue-headed Conure who Bittner named Connor. The flock was originally probably birds captured in South America and either were released or escaped pets. In any case, the parrots bred when they came to America and a good part of the flock have now lived all their lives in the wild. Their primary natural enemies here are cats and hawks, not to mention humans.
San Francisco is much more tolerant of its parrot flocks than some other cities. Some cities cull their numbers or exterminate them as a nuisance. Some bird lovers want to exterminate them because they are an introduced species. Although these parrots don't seem to be a problem on the scale of, say, starlings or nutria, they do compete with native birds for food.
Mark Bittner comes across as a sane, intelligent and lovable person with a healthy outlook on his friends. His landlords were unusually tolerant, allowing him to live for three years in a rundown cottage on their property without paying rent. Hopefully he made enough money from his book and this movie to pay them back. |
_________________
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! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 1:22 pm |
|
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
Quote: Ghulam
Grizzly Man has been excluded from Oscar consideration because of some funny rules they have for the Documentary category.
Fortunately, the Blanches don't put up with that nonsense. |
_________________
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! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:16 pm |
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
|
Other top documentaries from 2005:
- Born Into Brothels
- Inside Deep Throat
- Murderball
There was a flock of wild parrots at the University of Chicago. Seemed to have adapted well. Would build these crazy-looking extended nests. Never became movie stars though.
What's the deal with Griz Man at the 'scars? |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Melody |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:20 pm |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 2242
Location: TX
|
| Syd, insightful review of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. One of the reasons the Arthur Andersen accounting firm never raised an eyebrow about Enron's mark-to-market accounting b.s. is because they were getting paid $1 million a month from Enron. That kind of money buys a lot of "I didn't see nothin'." |
_________________
My heart told my head: This time, no. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:21 pm |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
|
Syd wrote: Quote: Ghulam
Grizzly Man has been excluded from Oscar consideration because of some funny rules they have for the Documentary category.
Fortunately, the Blanches don't put up with that nonsense.
Yes. Of course, if the rules exclude films whose subjects consume the people who are studying them, MOTP is fortunate that the footage where the hungry penguins rend the filmmakers limb from limb and consume them ended up on the cutting room floor. |
_________________
"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
Isaacism, 2009 |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:31 pm |
|
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
| I was thinking Born into Brothels might not be eligible because it's not on the list of 2005 films, but it's not on the list of 2004 films, either. Apparently its release for our purposes would be by March 2005, which is when the reviews on IMdb start. |
_________________
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! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:35 pm |
|
|
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
|
Nancy wrote: Yes. Of course, if the rules exclude films whose subjects consume the people who are studying them, MOTP is fortunate that the footage where the hungry penguins rend the filmmakers limb from limb and consume them ended up on the cutting room floor.
Oh - I thought I saw some of that in the closing credits... |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:36 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:38 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
|
| Nancy, if man eats bear, the movie qualifies. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:39 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
|
lady wakasa wrote: Nancy wrote: Yes. Of course, if the rules exclude films whose subjects consume the people who are studying them, MOTP is fortunate that the footage where the hungry penguins rend the filmmakers limb from limb and consume them ended up on the cutting room floor.
Oh - I thought I saw some of that in the closing credits...
I missed that. I'll have to watch it again, then.  |
_________________
"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
Isaacism, 2009 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
