Return of the RECENT VIEWING
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- Matt Wilson
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
No comments, John?
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Matt Wilson wrote:No comments, John?
For the first time, Bonnie and Clyde didn't stand up and Penn's pretensions and stylisms stood out. For example, the scene filmed entirely in quiet where Bonnie and Clyde attempt to make love.
Mutiny on the Bounty was great - all the characters were clearly defined, and Gable and Laughton are fabulous in it. The one drawback was Franchot Tone's constant optimism with little cynicism. An obvious apprentice to Gable's Christian, he seems to blindly accept the mutiny and ramifications without any compunctions. He could've been a better mirror or conscience for Gable.
But it was Gable and Laughton at their heights.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Marcel Ophuls's Hotel Terminus---The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
I had no idea about Marcel Ophuls, I thought the Sorrow and the Pity was a joke in a Woody Allen movie. Holy shit this made my month. I've been extremely busy, so I've only been able to watch it in half hour chunks (and it's over 4 hours long) I think a lot about how I would act in a true crisis or a situation that really tested my principles. In a lot of ways, I live with a niggling feeling that I've taken an easy way out in my career in exchange for stability and comfort---I think about it all the time and wonder. I'm no WWII scholar, but war (and particularly WWII) provides an interesting prism for me to look at how regular people behaved and what choices they made in what are for our times extraordinary circumstances. At some point in the last 5 or 10 years, I suddenly started feeling less like a young guy and was able to really relate to these people who have seen some actual shit as adults and are now looking back on it from decades later. This picture was sort of a documentary/essay, which is the sort of thing I really like. Ophuls (who is darkly hilarious himself) follows the tracks of Barbie and people on his periphery throughout his life, interviewing a wide variety of people from Germany to France to America to Bolivia and back to France and his eventual trial. It isn't really about him, and it's fascinating to see a wide variety of people talk about their interactions or connections with him. The former SS guys, members of the French Resistance, people he tortured, American Intelligence officers who worked with him after the war, people who knew him in Bolivia and reporters, his defense lawyer (Verges on the thumbnail was what got me to watch this). They all come from complex places and everyone has their own justifications to make for themselves and it's obvious that people are grappling with their history and their life when they talk about it, all of them coming from radically different perspectives. I found it totally fascinating and engrossing. That's my kind of shit. All four and a half hours. I can't wait to watch The Sorrow and the Pity.
I had no idea about Marcel Ophuls, I thought the Sorrow and the Pity was a joke in a Woody Allen movie. Holy shit this made my month. I've been extremely busy, so I've only been able to watch it in half hour chunks (and it's over 4 hours long) I think a lot about how I would act in a true crisis or a situation that really tested my principles. In a lot of ways, I live with a niggling feeling that I've taken an easy way out in my career in exchange for stability and comfort---I think about it all the time and wonder. I'm no WWII scholar, but war (and particularly WWII) provides an interesting prism for me to look at how regular people behaved and what choices they made in what are for our times extraordinary circumstances. At some point in the last 5 or 10 years, I suddenly started feeling less like a young guy and was able to really relate to these people who have seen some actual shit as adults and are now looking back on it from decades later. This picture was sort of a documentary/essay, which is the sort of thing I really like. Ophuls (who is darkly hilarious himself) follows the tracks of Barbie and people on his periphery throughout his life, interviewing a wide variety of people from Germany to France to America to Bolivia and back to France and his eventual trial. It isn't really about him, and it's fascinating to see a wide variety of people talk about their interactions or connections with him. The former SS guys, members of the French Resistance, people he tortured, American Intelligence officers who worked with him after the war, people who knew him in Bolivia and reporters, his defense lawyer (Verges on the thumbnail was what got me to watch this). They all come from complex places and everyone has their own justifications to make for themselves and it's obvious that people are grappling with their history and their life when they talk about it, all of them coming from radically different perspectives. I found it totally fascinating and engrossing. That's my kind of shit. All four and a half hours. I can't wait to watch The Sorrow and the Pity.
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Still Baron wrote:Marcel Ophuls's Hotel Terminus---The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
I had no idea about Marcel Ophuls, I thought the Sorrow and the Pity was a joke in a Woody Allen movie. Holy shit this made my month. I've been extremely busy, so I've only been able to watch it in half hour chunks (and it's over 4 hours long) I think a lot about how I would act in a true crisis or a situation that really tested my principles. In a lot of ways, I live with a niggling feeling that I've taken an easy way out in my career in exchange for stability and comfort---I think about it all the time and wonder. I'm no WWII scholar, but war (and particularly WWII) provides an interesting prism for me to look at how regular people behaved and what choices they made in what are for our times extraordinary circumstances. At some point in the last 5 or 10 years, I suddenly started feeling less like a young guy and was able to really relate to these people who have seen some actual shit as adults and are now looking back on it from decades later. This picture was sort of a documentary/essay, which is the sort of thing I really like. Ophuls (who is darkly hilarious himself) follows the tracks of Barbie and people on his periphery throughout his life, interviewing a wide variety of people from Germany to France to America to Bolivia and back to France and his eventual trial. It isn't really about him, and it's fascinating to see a wide variety of people talk about their interactions or connections with him. The former SS guys, members of the French Resistance, people he tortured, American Intelligence officers who worked with him after the war, people who knew him in Bolivia and reporters, his defense lawyer (Verges on the thumbnail was what got me to watch this). They all come from complex places and everyone has their own justifications to make for themselves and it's obvious that people are grappling with their history and their life when they talk about it, all of them coming from radically different perspectives. I found it totally fascinating and engrossing. That's my kind of shit. All four and a half hours. I can't wait to watch The Sorrow and the Pity.
I've seen it. It's pretty compelling.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Yeah, it won an Academy Award for best documentary or some such. I guess I wasn't into Nazi war criminals and notorious defense lawyers when I was 14!
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.
- Matt Wilson
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
T-Men
The first collaboration between Anthony Mann and photographer John Alton, and a classic noir from 1947. Mann would go on to helm many James Stewart westerns but he first made his mark with noir like this and Raw Deal. I'd never seen this before and loved every minute.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
This is basically In the Loop but set in the soviet-era and with way more atrocities. Recommended.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
A Fish Called Wanda
Practically as funny as the Python films, though for different reasons. The screenplay is excellent, Kline kills, and the entire cast is ace. I can watch it over and over again...
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
I'd never seen this one before. Pretty good, but a bit of a rehash of Casablanca.
Walter Brennan steals the show, in my opinion.
GoogaMooga wrote: The further away from home you go, the greater the risk of getting stuck there.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
This seems to have gathered more positive reviews than M Night Shalamar films normally get, and I don't know why. I think it may be because instead of a twist, we get a bit where the twist should've been, but he couldn't think of one. Really, I'm not even sure James McAvoy's performance is that special, and his interchanging between personalities is ok, but it's all a bit hammy. He's got the chops, but the cliched nature of the personalities means he doesn't have a lot of subtlety to work with. Not good.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Matt Wilson wrote:
A Fish Called Wanda
Practically as funny as the Python films, though for different reasons. The screenplay is excellent, Kline kills, and the entire cast is ace. I can watch it over and over again...
I watched Cleese on John Bishop's chat show last night, and he talked about how he always considered himself a writer more than a performer. He was very proud to get the AA and BAFTA nominations for best screenplay for this one.
And I just found out that Palin went on to found the London Centre for Stammering Children after a group of stutterers confronted him regarding the sensitivity with which he dealt with Ken's handicap in this film.
I should watch it again - it's such a wonderful film.
Matt 'interesting' Wilson wrote:So I went from looking at the "I'm a Man" riff, to showing how the rave up was popular for awhile.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Didn't Palins Dad have a really bad stammer?
Griff wrote:The notion that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong vocal proponent of antisemitism, would stand in front of an antisemitic mural and commend it is utterly preposterous.
Copehead wrote:a right wing cretin like Berger....bleating about racism
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Matt 'interesting' Wilson wrote:So I went from looking at the "I'm a Man" riff, to showing how the rave up was popular for awhile.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
I think this received mixed reviews, but I thought it was quite good, presenting a convincing, if not exactly believable world (it is a zombie movie after all). While the characters are types, they're fleshed out to be more than just walking depictions of ideas, so that they generate sufficient empathy to keep the viewer engaged. Nothing earth-shatteringly novel here, but plenty to enjoy.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Snarfyguy wrote:
I think this received mixed reviews, but I thought it was quite good, presenting a convincing, if not exactly believable world (it is a zombie movie after all). While the characters are types, they're fleshed out to be more than just walking depictions of ideas, so that they generate sufficient empathy to keep the viewer engaged. Nothing earth-shatteringly novel here, but plenty to enjoy.
I really enjoyed that one. What I liked about it was that it treated zombies not as the horror bad guys but simply as something that nature has unleashed through circumstances. It reminded me a bit of I Am Legend (the novel) in that way.
Terrific performance by the little girl too.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Darkness_Fish wrote:
This seems to have gathered more positive reviews than M Night Shalamar films normally get, and I don't know why. I think it may be because instead of a twist, we get a bit where the twist should've been, but he couldn't think of one. Really, I'm not even sure James McAvoy's performance is that special, and his interchanging between personalities is ok, but it's all a bit hammy. He's got the chops, but the cliched nature of the personalities means he doesn't have a lot of subtlety to work with. Not good.
It's pretty rubbish, isn't it? There was a lot of talk about McAvoy's performance being brilliant when it came out but I agree with you. He chews on the scenery. It doesn't help that the depiction of split personalities is cliched and very movie-like rather than subtle and realistic so I put the blame entirely on Shyamalan's writing rather than McAvoy's lack of acting chops which he clearly has in other films.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Bicycle Thieves
A great, simple, profound movie fully deserving of its reputation.
A great, simple, profound movie fully deserving of its reputation.
Griff wrote:The notion that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong vocal proponent of antisemitism, would stand in front of an antisemitic mural and commend it is utterly preposterous.
Copehead wrote:a right wing cretin like Berger....bleating about racism
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
Goat Boy wrote:Bicycle Thieves
A great, simple, profound movie fully deserving of its reputation.
One of the greatest films ever.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING
I thought so.
It's such a simple story too but it says a lot. The climax is heartbreaking (the shot of Brunos poor face). The little things too, like Bruno dusting off the old mans hat as if to try and restore some of his dignity.
It's such a simple story too but it says a lot. The climax is heartbreaking (the shot of Brunos poor face). The little things too, like Bruno dusting off the old mans hat as if to try and restore some of his dignity.
Griff wrote:The notion that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong vocal proponent of antisemitism, would stand in front of an antisemitic mural and commend it is utterly preposterous.
Copehead wrote:a right wing cretin like Berger....bleating about racism