Will this guy ever give it up?

I hear he's working on a new Rambo movie too.

the one

eh.



layer cake

good



the general

best

I've got that on DVD with Steamboat Bill Jr. and a second disk with Chaplin's The Kid and Tillie's Punctured Romance, it cost me under 5 bucks for all 4 movies. Keaton kicks all kind of ass over Chaplin.

A cool thing to note about The General is that they did a ton of research about Civil War battles before filming. The brief battle scenes in the last half of the film look terribly authentic as such.

Watched all three of these in the last two days. I'm writing a film analysis/review paper about all three as an independent study to wrap up my Political Science minor (I'm graduating in two weeks), and naturally, I've put it off til the end of the semester. I guess the upside is that I got to watch Iraq for Sale, which came out recently.

All three are interesting; I probably enjoyed Outfoxed the most, perhaps because I'm a Journalism student.

Aside from getting to watch three interesting documentaries, congratulations on your upcoming graduation!

Thank you, thank you.

I really lucked out on being able to watch those movies and write a paper (and have it count for three credit hours). If I'd taken a class instead (the one I needed wasn't offered this semester), I would have had to attend class and do more work than this. Instead, I saw my advisor, proposed this independent study, then threw in the magic words, "It directly relates to my major and intended career." His eyes lit up and he signed the form. A winner is me.

Finally saw this - it didn't seem like the propaganda film a lot of people claim it is. It's just hard to present the "other view" when one doesn't exist.

Just finished watching Clerks 2 last night. Very good. As someone else said above, Smith fans will love. The "Porch Monkey 4 Life" shirt is the best.

I also just watched "Monster House" this week. This was very good; and in light of "Cars" overall suckiness, it looks like the Pixar monopoly on computer animation may be crumbling down.

I enjoyed it as well. The script was smarter than I thought it would have been--though the timing of some of the "scare" events was a little off. And when the house goes nuts and storms the neighborhood, how come NO ONE comes out of their houses to investigate? (Must have been too scared. )

The lifelike animation on the bobbly-headed characters was a little disconcerting at first, but watching the featurettes on the DVD I discovered that all of the actors contributed digital motion-capture pantomime on a bare stage in addition to their voice acting...some of the same methods that were used to create Gollum in Lord Of the Rings, but on a full-range scale. I also liked how the makers "filmed" it like a real film, with realistic shaky camera movements during hectic scenes.

Fun with Dick & Jane

This was a hoot. I didn't think I'd care so much for it with the set up in the beginning but once it gets going it really had me cracking up.

edit- I'd also add that they thank all the various companies that have commited fraud at which the employees have been burdened with the VP's screwing over the employees. (Enron, MCI, etc) Both myself and several friends of mine who have worked for a number of these outfits that are named in the end credits certainly gave me a whole different feeling about this. I highly recommend it.

Wife and I made a lot of the same observations. My guess is that the scare moments were off on purpose in order to give the flick a little more family appeal (as it was...it was still darker than I anticipated). As for the characters, I didn't like the clay molded look at first, but it really grew on me, and I didn't notice it by the end.

Last night, watched Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift. Was actually pretty good (if you enjoy the F&F franchise). As usual, the only thing worse than the plot was the acting, but these flicks aren't about character development...they're just about cars, car chases and eye candy...and the film excedes at all three. The director manages to fill virtually every scene that isn't a car chase with a bevy of fake titted japanese girls in micro-skirts.

The cars and car chases are phenomenal (although it was a bit odd that one of the main cars was a Mitsubishi Evo, after the same car was used in F&F 2). I also like that the producers always give a nod to American muscle cars.

Anyway, it's not a great movie, but it's not supposed to be. But it does have some fun scenes.

some stupid scenes, especially during the end, but overall more fun to watch than I thought it would be.

Once they got to the military compound, it lost me.

yeah, it had potential until after the dinner scene. It was annoying to see them cop out of an interesting plot but it could have been worse.

How and why did I sleep on this for so long? Maybe I was wary of it because it's 20 years old, but it's every bit as beautiful and amazing as anything else Miyazaki has done since then. This isn't just one of the best animated movies I've ever seen, it's one of the best adventures I've ever seen too. I need to watch this again just to make sure I didn't just imagine it all.




I've read a lot of complaints about this on the board but it wasn't bad at all. Quite a downer but there were 3 or 4 really funny scenes. Between this and Lady in the Water (did anyone else here actually see it?) Paul Giamatti is going to end up get typecasted as the face of whites guy stuck in midlife crisis. Or he could go back to stuff like this:

Dag. I'm a huge fan of the modern stuff (especially Mononoke), but I bought that when it came out on DVD and never watched it. I eventually sold it last year, and still haven't seen it. I should probably Netflix it at some point.

I also bought Nausicaa on DVD after wanting to see it for ages and haven't watched it. It's hard for me to get motivated to watch an anime feature these days, I guess.

from the Project Greenlight series. Not that bad, not that great, pretty funny in parts, but by no means fucking awesome.

Bing!

I was thinking that the music on this 'mockumentary' didn't suck as much I would have expected - turns out it was written by Pete Shelley.

Every time you don't watch Miyazaki God kills a kitten, so just think of that the next time you're not watching this!

Watched "Superman Returns" last night. Wasn't even going to make a post about it because I thought it sucked, but then I checked out rottentomatoes.com, and the reviews were generally positive. I'll admit that I'm a little biased because I really dislike the whole Superman mythology, but I went into the film with an open mind.

First off, I thought Brendan Routh sucked. Way too plastic, and incapable of emotion. He looked like a guy dressing up like Christopher Reeves at a halloween party.

Second, the film suffered the same problem as Lord of the Rings, in that it ended for 30 minutes, and was just too long (although I actually liked LOTR); and the film was just too long in general.

Spacey was good as Lex Luthor, but the film really didn't feature him too much...and his diabolical plan to create more real estate?? That sucked too.

Maybe it's my bias towards the comic (I just can't get into a plot where every conflict basically comes down to superman v. a piece of rock); but I thought the film was pretty bad.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I've enjoyed all of the films in this series despite having mixed feelings about the directors involved in the projects. (Chris Columbus & Mike Newell don't exactly have great track records imho) It's fun to see all the people they cast hamming it up so to speak but this one was kind of by the numbers in a way.

Additionally, I just don't see younger folks sitting through something that runs this long.
At over 2 1/2 hours I was kinda surprised they didn't figure a way to cut this down some more.

Brendan Gleeson made this worth it though.



The Tick (animated series)

I've been revisiting these for the past couple of months. Fox has been re-running these for who knows how long.
I never did get to catch all the episodes when they first aired and I never figured out whether they ever released the entire series again.
I always dug Ben Edlund's character and the whole spoofing of the promenant comic book characters.

Packaging owes something to the Trainspotting look.
Hmm... Pete Shelley.

Funny, that's what many critics said about Superman 1.

Sounds like the story is the problem, then, eh?

Yep. Story sucked. And as for Superman 1, I really wasn't doing a direct comparison. I hadn't seen the flick since I was probably 10; and was never too fond of it after I entered my teen years. Routh just reminded me of a person doing a bad Christopher Reeve impression...but maybe a bad Christopher Reeve impersonation is a good impersonation of Superman (I, II, and III).

I've got Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and the Devil and Daniel Johnston up next.

Very original, entertaining modern day noir movie.
Recommended

Worst movie I have seen in awhile. I felt very sad for Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek being involved in this horribly written, horribly acted, repugnant movie.


Much better than I thought it would be. Surprisingly funny and even heartwarming, but I hope to God they don't make a sequel.

Very, very good.

I liked it a lot, too. In addition to the noir, which was excellent, Brick also has great music/visual editing, and features the actress who is "Claire" on Lost in a far more flattering performance. And just a great, compelling story.

The pilot is arguably the best hour of television ever. Have I said this here before? I've thought it often.

Caught The Origins of AIDS the other night on Sundance. It's fascinating, compelling & infuriating...they seem to have traced the African AIDS epidemic to some sloppy science during the race to produce a polio vaccine.



If you don't have Sundance, the 90-minute streaming video is here.

I found these two characters on an old VHS tape...I needed something to tape the Blackhawks-Wild game...When I found these two on the tape, there was no way I could tape over them...Instead, I watched both movies when I got home tonight...

Overly dramatic. Alot of African films seem that way. This one is no exception. I tried to give it a chance but towards the end I couldn't help but feel gyped. If you like soap opera's or super sappy films then you might like this. Along the same lines as this film "City of God" is by far superior.

You know, the first imressions I had of this show were so-so. Then I noticed I couldn't stop watching this set. By the end of the 1st season, I am now totally hooked. The Venture Brothers rocks.

Should I get Harvey Birdman + Sealab next?

Sealab, definitely. Harvey Birdman...sure, it's good too. I like Brak better though.

Yep, just make sure you stick with earlier seasons of all of the above

I won't say this is riveting, but it's certainly interesting. I've seen + read a few too many of these type of stories in my life to really find anything that occurs here as shocking (even tho it is a bit on the violent side). Definitely worth seeing, tho. Especially for the brutally fascinating scenes which occur around the Myan society. After that, it sorta becomes Run Lola Run meets First Blood.

Mel Gobson's definitely exploring some unusual material for his films. I can't decide if he's onto something big or just revamping the same old stories with foreign cultures + subtitles. At this point in his career, it's probably a little bit of both.

The Lost Room

So far, not so good, but given the good reviews, and the fact that Peter Krause is in this, I'll keep watching the next couple nights and hope that this does not become a series.

But, despite myself, even though I'm not really that intrigued nearly an hour in, and the lame lines of "do you know what the pen can do?" and the clips in the commercial proclaiming, "this comb stops time!" make me feel like this is only going to get more trite as it goes on, I am actually enjoying it as it reminds me of being 10 or 11 and simply loving Stephen King miniseries like Tommyknockers, The Stand, It, and geeking out over early X-Files.

So I am watching the Lost Room, and I kinda have to say that I am digging it.

Not heard of this Lost Room thing until now, but hear this...I declare a moratorium on "people of disparate backgrounds brought together under mysterious circumstances" in any new movies and TV until Lost and/or Heroes is canceled.

Sealab got really bad after Harry Goz died.

Man, I had forgotten how staggeringly well-written this is. Don't miss this if you haven't seen it yet.

I watched Kicking and Screaming a couple months ago and really didn't get into it. Generational gap, maybe? I liked Reality Bites, though my older sister couldn't understand why.

I saw Stranger Than Fiction over the weekend, which was pretty great. Also saw Mission Impossible 3 and Miami Vice on DVD... neither was particularly grand, and Miami Vice was bordering on dull.

And I started watching season one of Battlestar Galactica (finally). Five episodes in -- will watch more tonight.

I'm with your sister on Reality Bites, but I'm thinking the K&S thing is probably more attitudinal than generational. It's hard to get behind Grover's fundamental failure of nerve, especially the first time through.

Chris Eigeman needs to be added to the "Actors/Actresses Who Have Been Roughly the Same Character Their Whole Careers" thread. This is a good thing.

I love Chris Eigeman and absolutely love Kicking and Screaming. I kind of grew up a fan of Reality Bites, watched it repeatedly in high school, but actually being out of college, minus the malaise (I'm in grad school though always think about quitting and weearing pajama tops everyday like Otis even after a year and a half) just find that something rings a lot more true about Kicking and Screaming. A lot of it reminds me of my friends, even if they all work or go to school, they all still cling to being in college.

"Bing....Carnal Monkeys"

And Andyroo, I'm kind of curious what you think is the generational gap between the two movies? They're both only a year apart and seem to be about Gen Xers? Personally, I find Kicking and Screaming a little more timeless as there's no ironic nostaligia about School House Rock, Saturday Night Fever, or the Knack.