Play Time
by Jacques Tati

pretty cool film.
maybe a bit too long, cos after about 20 minutes into the film you sort of get what the whole thing is about, and then it's just a repetition of the main theme, except for the restraunt scene, where it turns into a great comedy.

Oh, man. Play Time is so awesome. One of my favorites. It just looks so fucking good.

Get the other Tati movies on Criterion. Mon Oncle and M. Hulot's Holiday are both boss as hell, especially the latter.

i hope you are all happy now.

American Dad - Season 2

This show is wonderfully twisted in many, many ways.
The first season was OK, got progressively stranger, and now the second is off to a running start.
Love it.

That restaurant scene is pretty much my favorite scene ever in any film.

Couple people told me this was pretty good. I think they were wrong.

OK perhaps everyone was already aware of this but until yesterday I never knew Hillary Clinton was on the board at Wal-mart for six years prior to Bill's presidency. This is even scarier than whatever else may be in this doc.

i get the feeling she was romanced by walmart saving a local (to arkansas) shirt company and a sanyo plant. apparently she was also impressed with their Buy American campaign during this time. supposedly they were selling 55 percent american at this point. most of the testimony in the doc covers a period of time much later than when she was on the board. still...not very impressive.

Saw this over the weekend: Away From Her directed by Sarah Polley



Really beautifully made. How Julie Christie is still getting getting it done (that is, she's a GMILF) is amazing. The screen loves her. For you Bergman lovers out there, the movie has a Bergman feel to it. 9 times out of 10 this movie would have been a maudlin, obvious, tearjerker. This is the rare 1 that goes further.

Soy Cuba

My girlfriend was shown clips of this in a class and, for some reason, I thought it was supposed to be just a piece of soviet propaganda (which is why I watched it). It turns out this is a really beautiful film. A Russian/Cuban production, it is inevitably infused with soviet praise and maligns capitalist americans, but the stories really are heartbreaking and the cinematography is amazing. The only detracting elements are the films portrayals of americans (russians dressed as americans, speaking in incredibly forced accents and spewing the most ridiculous phrasing) and the overdubbing (most of the film is in spanish, dubbed in russian, creating a strange echoing whenever anyone speaks. And in the case of the americans, the russian actors are obviously just mouthing the words with the english dubbed in, which is itself again overdubbed in russian). But the Americans are not very prominent in the film and so don't detract from the beauty of the rest of the film.

Really, a very very stunning film.

have you seen "the cranes are flying"? it's kalatozov's most famous film. it's very very good.

i never saw "my cuba" (is that the translation?), but i was also shown an exerpt from it in my soviet cinema class. the one scene where there's a funeral procession across these very narrow streets. and the camera is following it from the tops/windows of the buildings. it's amazing how they shot it. they put the director in a little basket and he was moving in it from house to house. stepping in and stepping out of the buildings. crazy!

I'd never seen any Kalatozov, but I'll certainly check out "The Cranes Are Flying" after seeing "Soy Cuba" ("I am Cuba," close). The whole film is full of beautiful long tracking shots like that which never get boring. There are a few more in which Kolotozov must have used that basket technique. One shot near the beginning of the film has the camera pan slowly from the top of a hotel, down (at least 10 floors) to a pool, where the camera slips through the people, eventually ending up in the pool water, watching all of the people dive in and playing underwater. One shot, amazing.
While I was watching it, I was wondering how they did those shots, because there is no way they could have used a crane effectively in that way. I never thought of using a basket. Ha!

Never saw or heard any of those films...however if you like those films for the camera work as well as the history, you obviously need to see "Russian Ark" if you have not--one tracking shot for 90 minutes, a history of Russia as seen through the eyes of an unseen narrator through the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Amazing.

I really want to see this but it almost looks/sounds too sad. Is this in wide release?

I think it's in limited release. I think it is at Cantera if you're from Naperville. I saw it at Yorkville. Something of an arthouse film. But I think it's getting a look in some places beacuse the subject matter appeals to the silver haired crowd. It's sad for sure, but it's really more about long relationships than Alzheimers.

Watched Fast Food Nation today with my bro. Cow guts are really gross when they slide down a slime-covered ramp into a bucket full of guts. So is the way cows die. It's sort of bad for my beef addiction

For Boogie Nights, PT Anderson says he blatantly stole a tracking shot that enters a pool.

saw this last night, finally. those two and a half hours went by so quick because this is such a great piece of film making.

doesn't she kinda have a Christina Aguilera thing going on? SG to thread.

Yeah, I just watched that a couple weeks ago.
Those killing floor scenes were pretty hard to take.
I'm still shocked that Linklater had access to shoot there.

Have a falafel today!

Sold. I feel the need to mention Julianne Hough, the Dancing With the Stars Xtina look-alike, er, only reason I watch the show.

Movies, hmm I never post here but I do watch them. My mom keeps telling me to see this Spanish production set in Columbia about the life of a hitwoman. Looks like it's worth a shot (excuse the bad pun).

I know she's good and all but I think Joey deserved it over Apolo.. just further proof that the n-sync crowd is clearly too old.



This sounds like a take on Ferrara's 'Ms. 45'.

RE: Julianne. I don't care if she won or not, as long as she wore those cute outfits (I must have woken up on the lesbian side of my bed today). Joey was alright but no fair! He was a Backstreet Boy.


Had to look it up. This movie sounds hilarious:
POOR Thana. She is raped not once but twice during the first 10 minutes of ''Ms. 45'' and is so distressed that she beans the second rapist with a paperweight. She kills him. She saws him into small pieces. She stashes these in her refrigerator. Some people's snacking habits are not to be believed.

Are all these hitwoman posters so cool?

Monster House

Not bad, not great. Some really intense imagery for a kid's movie, and those were the best parts. Unusual fairy-tale aspect written into the horror story, which I also thought was pretty good. Played out like a pre-teen nightmare, which meant that there were some truly wild effects happening without any of the non-essential neighbors noticing anything that was happening (yeah, [spoiler]like you couldn't hear a house marching + roaring down the street?[/spoiler] LOL). Again - not bad, not great, worth a view. Dunno if I'll ever watch it again, tho.

Saw that a couple of months ago. It was oddly grown-up for something called Monster House. I enjoyed it a lot.

I appreciated Monster House more after learning that all of the actors performed their characters' actions for the "motion capture" process in addition to performing the dialogue. It had to have been a great challenge for all involved.

I just watched Chinatown again, and i didn't realize how long it had been since I had seen it. I totally forgot how it ended. Damn!!

Out 1: Noli Me Tangere


I've just sat through 6 hours of the first 4 chapters of this movie. Fucking epic, somewhat boring, yet very amusing. Tomorrow the final four chapters, and maybe, just maybe the 4 hour condensed version next month.

Nice discussion of these and other great long-takes here

oh! that's pretty cool.
will definitely sit and read through those when i have more free time.
thanks

That's a great little blog. Here's the Soy Cuba rooftop shot I was talking about earlier, the clip they put up in the blog is no longer available. (note: that is not the original music but the shot is all there, although I think the original spent more time in the water before fading out)

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Thomas Dolby: the Sole Inhabitant

exclusively from CDBaby.com

Totally brilliant resource for anyone interested in making electronic music. The interviews are fantastic.

Wow. For some reason, I expected this to be at least mildly entertaining. (Didn't this make SOMB's favorite films of the 70s?). What an mind-numbingly boring, incoherent piece of shit.


God, I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. I got all weepy and everything. Yes, it's pretty standard self-made man, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps ideology--complete with an anti-government rant about how the IRS keeps the little guy down. But, damn, did I feel grateful for how easy my life is during & after watching this.

Nah, man - Mad Max is OK from a historical perspective only. I enjoy it, but it's not nearly as good as its sequel, the Road Warrior. RW has superior everything - from costume design all the way down to the photography (which is actually quite excellent). Trust me.

Plus, it's got this guy:


And skip the 3rd one, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. It's like an '80's music video with a little Lord of the Flies gibberish thrown in the mix. Trust me on that, too.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to see Road Warrior--but I may need a while to recover from the original first.

Not in this thread, fella. Not in this thread.

Did the final 5 hours yesterday afternoon. Like I said, Epic. The final four chapters hardly contained any "rehearsal" footage, therefore, making the film bearable. After being turned off Godard after Tout va bien, I'm ready to get into the new wave of things. The film also gave me new reading material; shit loads of Balzac.

This is hilarious:

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/Details.do?...e_st_166837.xml

Yer still in shock that I watched:



... aren't ya?

Oh, and I just killed some time re-watching:



Office Space - Special Edition With Flair

Stephen Root & Gary Cole are just so awesome.

Helen Mirren was good I suppose. I mean, she looked alot like the queen but to win an Oscar for it?

The movie was okay.

Michael Sheen was so much better in that film.

He played Alfred E. Neumann, right?

Saw 'Chalk'. As far as the conversations I've had with High school teachers this seemed dead on. And it doesn't overstay its welcome like the Christopher Guest mockumentaries often do.

"I am Cuba" would be the translation. Your description makes me want to check it out.

Hot Fuzz was pretty fun. And funny.

Liked the animation in Over the Hedge quite a bit, but resented the tired plot [spoiler](redemption & reformation of lovable ne'erdowell). Also, I worry about kids thinking they can play street hockey with/drop-kick turtles.[/spoiler]

Glorious. I'll admit that it tested my patience, but the payoff was well, well worth it.

Personally, the only one of those mockumentaries that holds up over time is Spinal Tap. All of the others have moments, but you're right - they do overstay their welcome. the Mighty Wind was sooooo disappointing.

Blood Diamond
Pretty entertaining flick. DiCaprio is really good in this. Ending was a little corn ball, but I've got no real complaints.

Amazing performance by Bruno Ganz.

I still find it incredible these movies came from the future director of the Babe movies and Happy Feet. (the way it's weird how Bob Clark, the director of Porky's and that Santa-slasher movie also made A Christmas Story)

George Miller only directed 'Babe: Pig in the City' which has been called his best feature.

Haven't seen this since I was a kid. It hasn't held up well, but it's big fun.

Possibly the best Bond installment since the 70's Roger Moore era.
It relied much less on gadgets and far-fetched stunts, and much more on the characters and storyline.
Recommended.