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| bartist |
 Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2015 12:57 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6948
Location: Black Hills
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Thanks for reminding of Khartoum, gromit. Saw it when young, should see it again.
Finally saw Antichrist and I can now say with certainty that when a Dane suffers clinical depression, he should not make a movie. The wikipedia entry, which talks about Von Trier's depressive episode while making the film is far more interesting than the film itself. The sickening violence and self-mutilation is so far beyond what is necessary to tell any story, and feels like the director is simply trying to abuse the viewer (misery loves company?). I've never set any specific "rules" as to what I do or don't want to see in a film, but I'm pretty sure I do not want to ever see Willem Dafoe have a hole drilled in his leg or his testicles crushed or his penis ejaculating blood or Charlotte Gainsborough chopping off her clitoris.
Roger Ebert called the lead actors "brave" to take on these roles and, while I can't disagree, I'm not sure that this bravery yields the viewers any real understanding of the characters or generates anything worth watching. It is a tale told by a depressed idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2015 1:04 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6948
Location: Black Hills
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Syd wrote: I've never seen Coal Miner's Daughter, but I remember Beverly d'Angelo surprising me with how good a singer she was in Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will. I could see her making a good Patsy Cline.
Never heard of this. Sounds like a fun ensemble comedy. Will check it out. She sings beautifully as PC, but is hampered by the fact that it would be impossible to really sing like PC. Without lipsynching, that is. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2015 1:05 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| I finally saw "The Lady from Shanghai" last night on TCM. In spite of my fondness for Orson Welles and the fame of the "mirror sequence," somehow I had never gotten around to watching it. And I found it a bit disappointing. So many holes in the plot, so many unlikely occurrences. But it was still worth seeing, and of course, that mirror sequence is terrific. It was a night devoted to the cinematographer, Charles Lawton Jr., and that was his most celebrated achievement. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:41 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Ahlaam is a 2004 Iraqi film.
Amazing that they were able to film in the wake of the invasion.
The director and three crew members were kidnapped and thought they were going to be killed (guns pointed at them. bags placed over their heads), until another militia kidnapped them and handed them over to the US authorities who threw them in a maximum security prison for 4 days. The director is a young Iraqi exile who was living in Holland, and finally was able to get Dutch help.
The film follows three people who have their lives semi-ruined by Saddam and then finally trashed by the American invasion. Two of them -- a soldier who witnesses his best friend killed by a bomb and woman whose husband is kidnapped on their wedding day -- wind up as patients in a mental hospital. The other is a young doctor who ends up working there and takes charge when the asylum is bombed and the patients mostly wander away.
It's a fairly harrowing film, and the use of handheld cam and harsh light -- overused these days in many films -- actually fits the theme and conditions well. It seems they had no shortage of bombed out buildings to use and the chaos of the Baghdad streets is sad and effective. Ahlaam is the name of the almost-bride, and apparently the name means "dream" in Arabic.
The cast is good and despite the low-budget almost all of it works pretty well. Filming in war-torn Iraq makes for a powerful film.
This was Iraq's submission to the Oscars.
The extra on the disc about making the film and holding the screening in Iraq (in 2007 I believe) provide good, useful context for the film. It's also sad to see the director in 2007 using Syria as an operating base and talking about how safe and peaceful Damascus is, comparing it to pre-war Baghdad.
As for Iraq and Iraqis, we really fucked over those folks -- and it's still unclear why. They are still enduring freedom there ... |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:47 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| The 2009 Mike Judge comedy Extract is absolutely hilarious. It went completely under my radar, and I can't understand why, with a cast including Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, and Mila Kunis. Bateman has never been better if as good, and Kunis has never been hotter or more natural. Affleck has long hair and a laid-back stoned attitude which he wears well. Wiig is a bit wasted but she's still Wiig. It's a semi-plotless satire of middle-class torpor and there are so many laughs I lost count. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:01 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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I tried to tell ya, bro.
Glad it turned up on your radar! |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:32 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: I tried to tell ya, bro.
Glad it turned up on your radar!
Just read your review, dude. You definitely did not make it sound as good as it is, but all is forgiven since it did in fact turn up on my radar. Just kidding. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 10:32 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: AZ
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| Bart........I'd almost forgotten about Antichrist. No, it wasn't a pleasant film. But my impression was that when a relationship sours.......particularly if their child dies while they're making love and being neglectful of the child........well they're going to hit some kind of bottom. I saw the film as basically hate for a spouse that goes unchallenged and to devastating lengths.........unlike that Michael Douglas film which was more of a comedy. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 11:06 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12894
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billyweeds wrote: The 2009 Mike Judge comedy Extract is absolutely hilarious. It went completely under my radar, and I can't understand why, with a cast including Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, and Mila Kunis. Bateman has never been better if as good, and Kunis has never been hotter or more natural. Affleck has long hair and a laid-back stoned attitude which he wears well. Wiig is a bit wasted but she's still Wiig. It's a semi-plotless satire of middle-class torpor and there are so many laughs I lost count.
Wiig and Kunis will get me there. J. K. Simmons is in it, too. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 8:48 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi).
This sort of left me befuddled.
A depressed pizza delivery man has a bunch of extended and random encounters, then makes the mistake of trying to rob a jewelry store.
Not really sure what it added up to, or why we needed to see so many pointless scenes. Kind of like an Iranian Jarmusch film. I blame Kiarostami who wrote the screenplay and tends to drag out the banal. |
Last edited by gromit on Sat Apr 02, 2016 11:56 am; edited 1 time in total
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 9:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Syd wrote: billyweeds wrote: The 2009 Mike Judge comedy Extract is absolutely hilarious. It went completely under my radar, and I can't understand why, with a cast including Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, and Mila Kunis. Bateman has never been better if as good, and Kunis has never been hotter or more natural. Affleck has long hair and a laid-back stoned attitude which he wears well. Wiig is a bit wasted but she's still Wiig. It's a semi-plotless satire of middle-class torpor and there are so many laughs I lost count.
Wiig and Kunis will get me there. J. K. Simmons is in it, too.
And Simmons is very funny in it. Without Bateman, however, it would not work. I'm not his biggest fan, but here he is pluperfect. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 10:53 am |
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Location: Black Hills
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Befade wrote: ... But my impression was that when a relationship sours.......particularly if their child dies while they're making love and being neglectful of the child...they're going to hit some kind of bottom. I saw the film as basically hate for a spouse that goes unchallenged and to devastating lengths.........unlike that Michael Douglas film which was more of a comedy.
Yes, a bit more of a comedy. 
I have no doubt VT was trying to expose the emotional core of the situation. The opening premise bothered me - who has a child's room with an unscreened casement window that doesn't latch well, on an upper storey? They could have simply been sleeping and the same thing would happen. Just silly. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 1:47 pm |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
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Location: St. Louis
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"more of a comedy" to compare WotR with Antichrist is instantly my number one film understatement of the year.
I could only take the thing as surreal. The first half, before people starting attacking genitals and such, wasn't too bad, and the contrast in how the man and woman grieved was illuminating. There was zero plausibility of course....no therapist would take his wife as a patient....the unbarred window thing....so I had consider it a visit to archetypal dream place. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 10:03 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: AZ
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Actually one of the most harrowing things I saw in the summer of '64 when I lived in NYC was exactly that. A two year old boy was clinging to the outside window frame of his third story apartment yelling "I can't hold on."
I watched a man below open his jacket and try to catch the falling boy. A crowd gathered below. It took an ambulance one hour to get there. The boy didn't make it. This happened in the middle of the day. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 5:16 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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| I liked the way that opening scene from Anti-Christ was filmed -- then progressively hated the whole rest of the film. |
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