MOVIES!

White Dog (Fuller)
Retribution (K. Kurosawa)
Le Doulos
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
Life on Earth (Sissako)
Heading South
Xala

RESCREENED dog star man, wedlock house

transformers

Yi-Yi
Ace in the Hole (tomorrow! at last!!)
Barcelona

i saw this weekend:

the sailor who fell from grace with the sea (i want to move to devon and be the fifth-in-command of a secret posh boys club that kills things to make them pure)

broken english (aging parker posey gets fucked up and sleeps around and zoe cassavetes directs)

how hot was Melvil Poupaud?

Live Free or Die Hard (w/tallys of high life) = :D

(i mean, cheeseball, but heckling with pals and beers is fun basically all the time)

melvil isn't really my type, but i get the idea of him being hot, i think. who was the guy in the paris gallery? he was more my type.

beers in Montana cinemas, what ho

(I didn't see it, I like Melvil from other things)

Rescue Dawn
I really liked Christian Bale's characterization, and Herzog's avoidance of any kind of Speilbergisms, plus shambling muppet pal funny sidekick guy. You get a real sense of what Herzog likes about Americans.

Street Fight (documentary about the Newark election of 2002) -

Great as a street-level view of machine politics. The villain - incumbent mayor Sharpe James - is also by far the most entertaining character in the film. Something seems like it's missing in the Cory Booker story - yes, he's a handsome squeaky clean rhodes scholar football player child of civil rights activists reformer who chooses to live in the projects, but how is he raising so much money? Vested interests support James, but what interests want so badly to see James unseated? Not saying Booker isn't genuine, just wondering what the rest of the political picture is.

Best moment:

Little girl: "I just touched Cory Booker, smell my hands!"
Filmmaker: "Smell your hands? Does Cory Booker have a smell?"
little girl: "He smells like...the future."

JW, hint: blaxploitation sucks.

-- Dr Morbius, Tuesday, July 3, 2007 1:36 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

Truck Turner is boring, but Sweet Sweetback is great, and Black Caesar and Superfly are both pretty good from what I remember of them.

La Vie En Rose

It was pretty good. The chronological structure of the film was kinda fucked, as it kept jumping around from the 1930s to the 60s to the 50s, which made it a little hard to follow. It was kinda shoehorned so that the movie ended with her performance of "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien," which was kinda clunky.

The lead performance, though, was stellar -- she looked EXACTLY like Piaf, and really physically embodied the character at each point in her life. This may also be the only bio-pic where the aging make-up was 100% convincing throughout.

My mom saw the new Die Hard and managed to make me not want to see it until it comes on TBS or USA by rambling about it for 10 minutes. ARGH

i watched The Taste of Tea last weekend - it was so great! thanks again to slocki for the tip on that one.

watched music and lyrics last night - pretty cringeworthy at times! drew's 'character' especially, eesh, but seems to tone down as film goes on. hugh grant has toned down his deal, it seems. i don't know, it's kind of fun in the way movies like that are middle-of-the-line 'fun.' makes fun of pop while adoring pop but not being brilliant abt it.

am finally going to watch the fog of war. feel good!

"Life on Earth (Sissako)"

Borrowed 'Bamako' recenty -- anyone else see that?

I really liked Fog of War. #1 best Errol Morris imo.

Naked (David Leigh)

Kind of an irritating, pointless film saved by an excellent performance by David Thewlis. I guess it worked well as a character study of the philosophizing reject/drifter type that I'd guess everyone knows at least one or two of.

It was a bit like watching Reality Bites except less funny and more rapey.

Matewan = awesome. Will Oldham!!(was totally oblivious til creds)

kes
about half of colossal youth
la vie en rose
ratatouille
transformers

yi yi is probably my favorite movie of all time

i've been on a cheap sci-fi kick lately

2010
red planet
one hundred and nights
fred and ginger
henry fool
awakening of the beast
coffin joe

Naked (David Mike Leigh)

Sorry - obviously getting mixed up with David Lean.

Naked is great, and Schindler's List is funnier than Reality Bites.

Yes, it was so Great, so capital "G" Great, and so tiresome.

The Devil Wears Prada - I identitfied completely with Streep the whole time and wondered why the protagonist didn't tell off her boyfriend's double-standards a little harder. Not sure where the "Devil" appears in the tale. I don't think the blond hunk dude was wearing Prada.
Ciao Manhattan - a big letdown after reading Jean Stein's biography. Not sure why the most screen time is devoted to some idiot hick kid. A sad, sad film.

Lolita, the old version with Peter Sellers. Holy shit. Pretty lame ending/beginning but wow, he's the best. James Mason ain't too bad, either.

I kinda feel it goes downhill after Shelly Winters leaves the picture, but I love the showdown between HH and Sellers.

yeah Shelly Winters and James Mason were cast perfectly, exactly as I'd always imagined those characters

the tea dance scene is another great Kubrick set-piece -- it wasn't in the book, was it?

i don't think so, but I'd have to check. i spent a good deal of time trying to remember what was in the book and what wasn't. all i know for sure is that Quilty's role is greatly expanded in the film.

Daisies - watch it, its funny

sexyD OTM re: Devil Wears Prada, fuck the bug-eye ingenue Hathaway, Streep totally wins this movie.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints - there was a good movie in there somewhere but it didn't have much of a story hook. wanting to move to California and your dad doesn't want you to is not all that interesting ... most of the "plot" seems to happen to the other characters while the main protag. just stands by watching. mostly we had fun trainspotting the locations cause it was shot right where we used to live in Astoria (31st & Ditmars)

Hairy Potter

le doulos

i finally saw the Host last night :D

not really scary at all, though, i thought

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
ha ha "sound designer" Mr. Lynch, he play funny joke:
he turn down sound, you turn up sound to hear whisper whisper.
then BANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOUR NEIGHBOR THINK YOU KILLING YOUR WIFE ONNA TUESDAY NIGHT ha ha

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a85/medicinewitch/bob.jpg
I KNOW, IT'S A GOOD ONE!

recently:

ashes of time - fucking kar wai wong sword fighter epic. lots of gender play, some beautiful shots of battle with a huge gang of horse thieves. I only have a 2xVCD version and would like to borrow a DVD version to see if the pic quality is the same1

last night:

talk to her - nice, netflix didn't give away twist

now:
ice station zebra - ROCK HUDSON FIGHTS COMMIES IN GREENLAND YAAAAY
wizards
bad education

I just watched the first hour of Moulin Rouge, a movie that seems to be made for me, but...meh. Visually, it was very nice and shiny, but the music bothers me. The medleys were terrible...so unsatisfying. The equivalent of going through Amazon's 30 second samples for a night. Ooh! "Lady Marmalade" remake! Click. "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Click. "Diamonds are a Girl's Friend." Click-Click. "Smells Like Teen Spirit (Dance Remix)." Click. Girl Talk: the Film It feels like the film needs room to breathe, but instead, it tries to quickly cram a bunch of glittery shit into your mouth.

Ewan's acting sucks, but his voice is pretty nice. Nicole is good. The rest of the cast bothers me. They're playing their parts well, but man, those parts are a bit too obnoxious and over-the-top. More comments to come after second hour.

gummo
halloween

In Vanda's Room
Nights of Cabiria

ashes of time - ... I only have a 2xVCD version and would like to borrow a DVD version to see if the pic quality is the same1

the north american dvd release is shit. one was released in france that looks like half decent: http://fst.omnilounge.co.uk/img/bscap00080.jpg

300 - zzz
Don't Look Now - wow this was really good, 1973 Nicolas Roeg with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland
The Last Detail

Bad Timing

man, Roeg put some Haneke-level horror on the screen for that ending. I can't even imagine being in the audience for that in 1979, really almost could not watch. I know the entire film was building to that conclusion but I just didn't want to accept it

the deleted scenes are interesting. Theresa Russell should have won something for this one.

i finally watched Borat! on the wkend. good for me. it was funnny

am thinking abt seeing this crazy japanese animated movie called Paprika "Based on the serialized novel by Japanese writer Yasutaka Tsutsui, whose futuristic novels are considered to be masterpieces of the
Science Fiction genre"
but press screening is thurs at 10 am and it will prob colour my whole day weird! haha i shld prob go

ooh I missed Paprika in NY, wanted to go but never found time