agreed. it was totally snubbed at Oscar time. instead, the academy would have you believe that Crash was a better movie...

Ralph Fiennes/hokie title/desert setting probably misled voters (who chose not to see it) to think it was another English Patient, which truly is one of the worst Best Picture winners.
Gardener was excellent.

I found "Gardner" to be merely good, not excellent, marred by some poor choices in the direction. I thought it would have been more interesting if we, the audience, didn't find out what Rachel Wiesz' character was uncovering until Ralph Fiennes does. I thought the way the plotline was handled was somewhat exploitive (ironic considering that it addresses exploitation).

Yeah, even though Gardener had a message, it was much less heavy-handed than Crash. Plus the casting in Crash was pretty weak. C'mon Brendan Fraser & Sandra Bullock!

I hope that this was cathartic for Baumbach, because it did fuck-all for me. I can't stand when critics love a movie just because it has well-written characters they haven't seen a thousand times. There needs to be more to a movie than just character definition. (I'd say development, but that would pretend that anyone in this film is either real and/or had a significant arc.) Highbrow NYC nihilsim is still nihilism.

Still, a Baumbach failure is more interesting than most other people's.

In related news, I can't wait for Anna Paquin to outgrow this Lolita-esque ingenue phase she's been treading water with for six or seven years now. It's getting OLD.

I liked this movie, but I was a little creeped out when I remembered this movie:

That's rough.

watched Saw 2 last night. which i guess is okay once you accept that the villian is highly skilled in chemical and mechanical engineering, is a master psychologist, and is also a millionaire.

rich people are evil.

Wow- I never made the connection. That is pretty disturbing.

"Hello...hello again!"

You know, I dig the message, but it left a stronger impression as a love story. I'm not a huge fan of Fiennes's work, but I thought he gave an excellent, sympathetic performance, I really empathized with him. First as an awkward man who feels fortunate enough to meet this woman, then as a complete shlub that's being taken advantage of, then guilt-ridden for not trusting his wife, etc. For the first 30 minutes, I didn't buy them as a couple, but in the end, that seems to be the point - it helps you understand how Fiennes could be so distrustful of his wife, how he would suspect that their marriage is a sham; the rest of the picture seems better for it, when the full extent of their relationship really sinks in.



Not a fan of her work, at least the 'grown-up' stuff. I find her unconvincing and sometimes too self-conscious.

Musical interludes aside, this still seems like last year's best movie to me


but don't watch it if you're trying to quit smoking.

What movie are you talking about?
I'm just getting an IMPAWARDS.COM placeholder.

That post must seem perfectly coherent then.

There, I fixed it.

Yeah, I plan to check that out soon.

oh... oh god... yeah i forgot about this too. ick creepy.


excellent story, cinematography, acting, direction... all of it. all around a great movie.

Agreed. This was pretty fantastic.

why al why????????

y is KRAMER in this movie as well.


why are there so many boys in the movie. duz al like BOYZ???

When that film was in production, I was working at the place that transferred all the dailies to Avid media for editing. It was fun to go to work each day and see what they shot the day before.

Great movie.

I watched "Grizzly Man" again. That "Coyotes" song that's in the credits has been in my head all day.

"Hoooooo-yip!
Hoooooo-yip!
Hooo..."

"Who wants to drink from the firehose?"

There's just one place to go for all your spatula needs.

The Constant Gardener is not a mainstream American film. It's a UK/German production.

"I'm your worst nightmare..."

"DON'T YOU KNOW THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM????"

Excerpt from SOMB movie list:

394 the karate kid
393 28 days later
392 white
391 uhf

Represent.

IMDB shows it premiered first in Hollywood and never in Germany. Epsilon also made Big Mamma's House 2 and Mr & Mrs Smith.

Thanks for the clarification there, fact checker.
It was widely released in the U.S. and received a lot of press. Good enough for me.

This is the first one I've seen all the way through. It wasn't bad. Plenty of funny moments mixed in with the cheap gross out humor.

It also seems to have grossed much more in America than in Britain.

Of course it grossed more in the US, it has 5 times as many people. Some US films have premieres in London, doesn't suddenly make them British films. The Constant Gardender also was nominated for The Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film.

Trainspotting and Amilie also had wide releases and lots of press in the US, are these now American films? I was under the impression that a mainstream Hollywood film was one made in Hollywood by Americans.

any film can become an "american film" all we have to do is wish it to be so

don't you know anything about America?

With a Brazilian director.

Shot primarily in Kenya and The Sudan, although additional exteriors were shot in Canada.

After first opening in the big bad US, significantly opened in The Phillipines, Brazil, Mexico, Israel, Poland, Greece, Finland, Spain, and Argentina before opening in the UK more than two months after the US release.

It's a bit of UN production.

Also a lot of parts set and filmed in London. So yeah I agree it's a mixed job but considering the amount of British input into the film (including the setting, the cast, where the money came from etc.) it's no surprise the BAFTA considered it a British film and rewarded it with 10 nominations.

It's not an American film by any defintion.

I think BAFTA's glad for any quality film that's even tangentially British.

The producers weren't above having people think it was an American film when it came to the Oscars, though, since they chose not to ghetto-ize it by entering it in the Best Foreign Film category.

And if Hollywood didn't make Fiennes and Weisz into familiar entities, no way does this film get this kind of attention and box office.

I think it's more of a British film than anything, and a good one at that--I just don't know what that has to do with anything.

Agree with everything you say but isn't it Best Foreign Language Film?

good call. that explains it.

found it used at gamestop for 5 dollars so i bought it is it any good. i like girls and french girls and french movie syes

Surely we'll never see another movie like this in our lifetime. Now it's all about fart jokes and computer-animated koala bears and monkeys being kicked in the balls and sitcom actors doing "smart" humor that adults will like too (OMG!) and no less than a few dozen different pop-culture references packed into every animated movie that comes out anymore. Now it's all about commercial tie-ins and corporate synergy and opening weekend box-office receipts determining whether there's going to be a sequel and building up franchises and selling merchandise. I mean, it's like let's just forget just trying to tell a story anymore, or using gentle colors or simple animation where there's not "realistic" fire and water and hair/fur/skin effects that directors can congratulate themselves and their CGI crew over when they get around to recording the DVD commentary. I mean, no one wants that anymore, right? They want edgy, sophisticated movies like Hoodwinked or The Wild that both kids and adults will like because of the "subversive" humor that kids "won't get" and all the celebrities that are always a guaranteed part of the experience, because adults really, really fucking care that James Belushi or Andy Dick or Eddy Izzard are doing voices now... yeah, that really makes a difference between whether they'll take their kids out to go see a movie or not. Now they can say "hey, it's okay for me to enjoy this too!"

I read that book in 5th grade. It sucked.

I watched part of the movie, too. I don't remember thinking that it didn't suck.

Nice rant, Undo. Animated movies these days are such crap. It seems like studios are just spitting them out, especially with the computer animated looking stuff. The celebrity voiceover, adults-and-kids-can-enjoy-it formula that was used fairly well in "Antz," "Shrek," "Toy Story," "Ice Age," and "Monsters, Inc." has been milked to death as of late, and that's how every month there's a new animated b-picture like "Shark Tale" or "Madagascar." Even a few years ago, it was pretty special when one of these movies came out, but there's hardly any care put into them anymore. It's all just a bunch of celebrities jibber-jabbering for 90 minutes. Phooey.

You guys are so otm. I miss animation so.

I haven't seen Shark Tale but the trailer remains one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the complete and utter destruction of our culture to date.

Watership Down seems like a heavy book for 5th graders to have to read. I haven't read it yet but I have a copy of it here on my desk. It's almost 500 pages and I see lots of exerpts from Shakespeare in it.

Yo, Dennis Miller--are you eventualy going to make a point about WD?

I think his main points are that "Watership Down" is a likable film because it A.) uses "gentle colors" (the colors don't bleed off the screen and shred his skin off with a rusty bottle opener, as they do in, say, "Brother Bear") and "simple animation" and B.) it doesn't have Jim Belushi, Andy Dick, and Eddie Izzard.

I support both of these causes. But the whole The-Wild-sucks-so-animation-today-sucks theory has to go. Between Miyazaki and the better Pixar stuff we're in a kind of heyday.

I liked Madagascar as long as the penguins were on the screen.

Yeah, that Penguin christmas short was better than the movie itself.

I'm totally down with Pixar. Everytime they choose to release a movie, it ends up towering above all else. I suppose that my post would have led you to believe that I think that "animated movies these days are such crap" mainly because of this portion:



I was mainly talking about the uncomfortable amount of ANIMATED SHIT that is degrading the wonder of animated films:



I read a great article in the New York Times not too long ago where the writer basically said that "'Madagascar," 'Shark Tale,' 'Hoodwinked,' 'Home On The Range,' etc., all suck because there is way too much friggin' dialogue. SHUT THE FUCK UP, MOVIES!" As Undo said, so many of these movies are rooted in the fact that THERE ARE CELEBRITIES DOING VOICEOVERS! WOW! When I think of "Toy Story," I think of the actual movie and then remember that Tom Hanks and Tim Allen did the voices of the two main characters. When I think of "Hoodwinked" or "Shark Tale," all I remember is the movie posters with "JANEANE GAROFALO," "JACK BLACK," and "ANTHONY ANDERSON" in huge, bright letters. The "huge, hanging posters in the movie theater for each individual voiceover actor" thing was done for "Shrek" and "Ice Age," sure, but we didn't see those types of movies that often. Etc, etc, etc.

Of course, that's what I think. Undo probably prefers animation's true high watermark, the flipbook:



I bet he makes his own. I bet they all involve people fucking.

I did one of stick figures fighting in my drivers ed handbook.