MOVIES!

anyone seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/user/EarsplitPR#p/f/63/9oWhW4mVctM

um, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oWhW4mVctM

just watched the hunger. catherine deneuve is the classiest vampire ever.

dirty harry

should i go see easy rider

I watched ER for the very first time only last week. It wasn't as bad or as messy as I'd feared it was going to be, but no masterpiece either. Interesting how none of the characters - even the two 'heroes' of the piece - really get along. A lot of barely suppressed antagonism going on. Just a bad mood generally.
This movie is like a Homeric Odyssey across a spoiled John Ford's America with a couple of unlikeable dicks. Hopper and Fonda are best when they have someone to play off, like Luke Askew's glib hippie (Fonda: "Ever thought you could be someone else?" Hippie: "Think I might try Porky Pig"), and Nicholson ("Nik nik nik fuh fuh fuh... INDIANS!"), who it is left to provide the movie some heart, namely his "they talk about individual freedom, but when they see a free individual they get scared" speech.

And Phil Spector! And Toni Basil!

Also watched Bloody Kids (1979), an early work for Stephen Poliakoff and Stephen Frears. I remember very distinctly seeing the first half hour or so when it was shown on TV (1980 or so) when I was quite young, especially a scene where two bloody kids stage a fight where one was to pretend to stab the other, bursting a concealed bag of blood. He ends up (accidentally) stabbing him for real. I was quite shaken by it at the time. What I didn't see was the kid them going on the lam, eventually hooking up with a older ne'r-do-well played by Gary Holton (later Wayne in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet)(and replacing Richard Beckinsale who died during filming).
Problem I had with this is we never get to the bottom of what motivates any of the actions of these characters, especially Holton's going off the rails at the end. Most of it makes little sense, but it works as a time capsule of the period. It captures the listless boredom b'dum-b'dum of a tatty late '70s Britain quite well. And I liked the bit in a caff when Holton points to a table of glum youths and says "look, punks wearing last year's clothes".

crazy heart - was fine I guess, don't really understand why it won oscars but I liked it

i didn't end up seeing easy rider after all

is your new screenname a reference to the director of the feminist fantasy Nekromantic 2?

who me? sounds cool but no, it's a reference to german goalkeeper Hans-Jörg Butt

watched a very bad, very precious movie last night about an aspie electrical engineer who really really likes amy's organic frozen macaroni and cheese, anyway there's a scene where he gets laid off and i recognized his boss as cousin larry from perfect strangers

Everlasting Moments just released on DVD yesterday; it's as wondrous as Armond White claims (for once).

mmmmm, not to me

watched a very bad, very precious movie last night about an aspie electrical engineer who really really likes amy's organic frozen macaroni and cheese, anyway there's a scene where he gets laid off and i recognized his boss as cousin larry from perfect strangers

― del griffith, Wednesday, June 30, 2010 9:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i love this sentence

partial list, last couple of months:

A New Leaf
The Burmese Harp
Everyone Else
Tulpan
Greenberg
DDR/DDR (one of the year's best)
Elena and Her Men (Renoir)
Metropolis
Looking for Eric
You Only Live Once
The Fugitive Kind
The Killer Inside Me
Nero's Guests
Le Amiche (Antonioni)
Out in the Silence
The Old Place (Godard/Mieville)
JLG/JLG
Brothers (blah)
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector

Bigger Than Life
Rolling Thunder
Partner
M (1951 remake)

^^^ All four movies about some pretty crazy fellows.

Z
More
The Rules Of The Game
Over The Edge
The Century Of Self (outstanding)

in the age of wikipedia summaries I'm not sure anyone actually most people would actually need to see a low budget film like Nekromantic 2 anymore. But it's always stayed with me for being so completely depraved and so over-the-top sentimental at the same time

Masillon
Obsessed (with Beyonce and Stringer Bell)

"Service with a Smile" 1934 WB mini-musical, a very early full-process technicolor short about a roadside service station. Colours glow from the screen with radioactive intensity, music is a full-on brass section aural assault, script is corny as can be w/cro-magnon sexual politics, but nevertheless a few proper laughs here & there. Great!

The Hitcher starring Rutger Hauer.
I am liking this, about halfway in.

why the lead suddenly loses his shit and resorts to force and carjacks the cops i can not really get but okay, w/e, i'm gonna roll w it.

paris is burning

irreversible

incredible

eat pray love

i would stab all these people

hahaaaa
i saw The Switch this morning, which is based on a J Eugenides story, so i was hopeful. no stabbing urges but ugh. solid 2.5 stars. i wish that rom-coms wld stop it already with the 'here's what to feel *now*' tinkly-tink piano musical cues. so insulting, to both script (which was doing a decent job) and audience.

I saw ALIENS last night, I'd never seen it before!

WHAT

saw I Am Love. not sure how i felt about it. the cinematography and sets were beautiful, but i didn't care much about any of the characters and there was something hollow about the romance.

People I know were talking about that movie, but I can't get excited about it. I should see more movies like ALIENS. Also lol Bill Paxton in ALIENS

the expendables - everything i was anticipating and more (and less)
excalibur - insane and dope
a prophet - pretty grim in the best possible sense. could have cut a few bits and not missed them, though
the crazies - pretty good, and timothy olyphant is pretty great when he's playing these small-town law enforcement types

Death of a Scoundrel - very impressive 1956 potboiler film about a Czech immigrant who lands in the states and games his way through iffy stock market deals to the top of the heap while moving through women at a surreal rate, as played by George Sanders aka Addison DeWitt from All About Eve -- the characterizations of the women are actually pretty fantastic and the American Dream gone wrong (he finally flies his mom over, she gets into his limo, she says 'Is this yours? Who paid for this?' -- he answers, 'The People!')

Death Watch - it's got a slow ending, but that doesn't explain why no one ever talks about this 1980 SF film about a future in which almost every disease has been eliminated, making any terminal patient an instant celebrity hounded by the media for interviews & coverage -- Romy Schneider says no to the money and heads out of town but has no idea that the charming stranger Harvey Keitel is actually a cameraman who has had his eyes surgically removed and replaced by cameras, making her the unwitting nightly star of a reality TV show filming her decline. Harry Dean Stanton is Harvey's boss, and Max Van Sydow makes it clear the director was aiming for Bergman by the end, I didn't like the ending when I saw it 10 years ago but this time I loved it all the way through

Things to Come - Kind of clunky, silly effects, sure did get it wrong. But inherently amazing to see a film from 1935 showing you the dystopian future WWII (1940-1970), and the unimaginable utopia of 2035

Three Penny Opera - They really tampered & tamed the message of the original opera, but it looks great, it's fast paced, and Lotte Lenya

oh yeah I also saw Inception and liked it

man death watch sounds rad

Mother (Bong Joon-ho) - thumbs up

really want to see that.

MACHETE

I screamed/went 'aaaagh!' at the serious gore more than a few times. It was pretty awesome this movie.

Damned United - really A+ swearing
Ghost Writer - good
The Apartment - good
The Maltese Falcon - good
Kick Ass - dreadful
The Messenger - eli from freaks and geeks was good
Assassination of Jesse James - pretty i guess. casey affleck good.

'good'?

!

'GOOD'!???!

sentence fragments are reserved for not good films

The Apartment is more than good.

yes, i loved it. maybe the best film i have seen this year (incl. maltese falcon, sorry dmac)

two lane blacktop
le samourai
phantasm
life with the dice bag (cheaply made doc about ppl who play d&d, go to gencon etc.)
escape from alcatraz

'vengeance' - johnnie to film w/johnny hallyday, anthony wong, simon yam, lam suet, and some of to's other regulars. not bad i guess but it was a lot like his film 'exiled': a crew of hitman protecting/helping a man out, facing off against a crazed mob boss played by simon yam. it looks amazing, it's not boring, but it feels a little samey.

lol phantasm

i watched 'eat pray love' on the wkend and thought some of it was good/interesting tbh but much of it was hollywood-annoying obv

le samourai is next up on my netflix list! synergy

le samourai been sitting on my hard drive too long

hmm the hallyday character in 'vengeance' was originally supposed to be played by alain delon and the character's name is costello. o_O

Le Samourai is about as awesome as it gets.