Kael is only a "philistine" because she disagrees with lazarus.
Shouldn't we all be used to his tirades by now?
Kael is only a "philistine" because she disagrees with lazarus.
Shouldn't we all be used to his tirades by now?
Except for the removal of the Queen Alien bursting out of Ripley's chest at the end. I always felt that was the shot that made Alien³, that really drove home the necessity of Ripley's sacrifice to rid the universe of the Alien threat and the poignancy of the tragedy of Ripley as a character.Originally Posted by Artimus
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION - INOCA 2012
So I finally saw Gloria last night. Is it just me, or is Oscar's Best Actress lineup in 1980 one of the best they've ever had. Not a bad bunch in the group, and while I don't know if I'd nominate them all, they certainly would all land in my top twelve, and at the moment (sans seeing many other films from that year) I might actually nominate all of them (but then there is Deneuve and The Last Metro).
Anyways...Rowlands was superb. I love her though, I mean...she's amazing, like always. She reminded me of Bette Davis a lot in Gloria, like if Tilda Swinton's Julia had been made with Bette Davis going in and out of Baby Jane mode. In fact, I saw a lot of Julia comparisons in that film, which shocked me a little. Still, her tough as nails performance was beautifully tempered by some real emotional arcs, and she nailed them all.
That lineup though...
Spacek, Rowlands, Burstyn, Moore...even Hawn (in her Julia Roberts/Erin Brockovich role) was
I think the rest of the stuff waaaaay outweighs it, though.
Has anyone here seen Trust? It was directed by David Schwimmer with Clive Owen and Catherine Keener. I did not love the movie but damn, the final scene with Owen and the daughter left me sobbing. I've always liked him but I thought this performance was tremendous, even when the screenplay betrays his character a bit, all visions and anger. Keener is reliable as always but she doesn't get much to play while the girl is magnetic and should become a star.
Translated from lazarus-speak "Kael sucks because she likes things I don't like and dislikes things I like". THIS IS STUPID.
Pop trash is awesome. European art films CAN be awesome, but their batting average is overestimated. I haven't read much Kael, but for some reason I've read a lot about her, and she sounds like a fairly honest, intelligent observer who knew herself, which is really about the best thing you can say of a critic. I feel like the art of criticism is or should be about experiencing art and then coming to terms with your feelings about it. Also, American pop trash is often way more subversive and interesting than given credit for. Like, there's this one movie called Across 110th Street I found at the library that was labeled as blaxploitation, which seemed to mark it as trash. But it's actually a really interesting, if not entirely successful look at race relations and police corruption in 70's New York. An attitude here that increasingly bothers me is that young people here (and I'm pretty sure there's maybe only a handful of ADers at most over the age of 45) have become old and set in their ways prematurely. We should all be explorers of all kinds of cinema, while we still have the chance. Never turn your brain off, but also never shut it in. Never think that only austere foreign arthouse productions explicitly about meaningful things are the only type of films with value. Or in general, "serious" films.
This weekend was about couple of Isabelle Huppert films.
Special Treatment from 2010. Heavy-handed, superficial and dull look at creating moral and functional equivalence between prostitution and psychoanalysis. An aging, educated hooker reevaluates her life and crosses path with a psychiatrist who is also going through a phase of marital and professional unease. Through their interaction it tries to make a sort of meta-argument in favor of the basic idea. Somehow the characters are unrealistic, situations obvious and clichéd (even the humor is stale) and don’t give any new insight about the proposed theory. It is like a Hollywood feel-good movie trying to be an art-house high-brow effort. Huppert who is great as usual also seems disinterested.[spoiler]By the way, what's up with that sexual orgy scene and the case of cardinal's hat?[/spoiler]
Hidden Love from 2007. Tries to look at a risky, intriguing and disturbing idea of lack of maternal love and how much of it we assume, taken for granted and demanded from the parents and existence of point of views 'contrary' to that. The result is a waste of a possibly very good movie. The problem might've been the source material which was perhaps un-filmable from the get-go but I think the director followed the book too faithfully and things that might have worked in the book (surrealistic and uncertain nature of the complex problem) come of as stagey, unimaginative and disjointed (poor narrative.) The ending was just unconvincing and made no sense at all. For me it negated the whole movie. Huppert (the mother) is ideally cast here and this is sort of a role right up her alley. Melanie Laurent (the daughter) is up for the challenge [spoiler]the confrontation near the end with Huppert is in fact, I think one of the best part of the whole movie.[/spoiler] Having said that, Greta Scacchi (doctor treating the mother) gives one of the worst performances I have seen in a while coming from a production of this type (it was a bit surprising.)
The last shot of every Hitchcock film:
http://dialmformovies.tumblr.com/
How cool is that. Thanks. Some of the shots don't seem to be the last shot of a film given how non-conclusive and active they seem (something you would not expect from a final shot.)
Last edited by haqyunus; 05-07-2012 at 06:42 PM.
Very cool! I love the matte paintings in Marnie so much. The final shots of The Birds and The Trouble with Harry are very fitting, intriguing images.
And this reminds me that I'm going to have Frenzy on my PVR soon! Looking forward to checking that one out.
The one for The Birds is so wonderful.
I'm surprised at how un-iconic (almost random) most of the other ones are.
Neverending Story was my most, absolute favourite movie as a kid, and I have probably watched it more times than any other film. I cherish it infinitely.
But it is not a truly great film, when seen as an adult, and it indeed banalizes and reduces Ende’s book, which is fascinating. It’s nevertheless a good, nearly very good adventures flick, but not a great one.
If done nowadays, an adaptation of Ende’s book would have been done with the due respect, the one they nowadays have with lesser literary kid fantasies, and it could result in a great movie. In Peterson’s film the imagery is too Disney-fied or Spielberg-ized and it’s less suggestive and atmospheric than what Ende describes (which resembles more the illustrations the book used to have). It also becomes a simple hero story, a moving one, and one filled with magic and sense of awe, yes, but too… literal and devoid of the poetry and complexities of the book.
And the second half of the book is not unfilmable at all. It was only too demanding for 8 years-old kids, which is what the movie seemed to be oriented to, instead of the 12 years old onwards (including adults) that were reading Ende’s book.
Exactly, that what I was trying to say too.
Critic Mike D'Angelo tweeted his ballot for the 2012 Sight & Sound poll. More accurately, he listed the directors, but then subsequently revealed specific films. He doesn't specify which Hawks (I'm guessing Only Angels Have Wings), and he doesn't give the order, but they are: Allen's Manhattan, the Coens' Blood Simple, Cukor's A Star is Born, Egoyan's Exotica, Kubrick's 2001, Renoir's A Day in the Country, Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes, Tscherkassky's Outer Space and Wilder's Double Indemnity.
The boldest inclusion is Outer Space (1999), an experimental 10-minute short by the great Austrian avant-garde filmmaker that you can watch here:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTarJ0Op7W8"]Outer Space - YouTube[/ame]
I do wonder whether the fact that S&S is reaching out to include a "younger" generation of critics will alter the results significantly from previous decades. Though Kane has obviously weathered fifty years' worth of critics.
I thought Tscherkassky was a household name by now. He's like the Kubrick of experimental film these days. Maya who?
Most of the Hitchcock final shots do seem random, out of context, but after having seen Psycho a few times over the past month, I think that its last shot is pretty great.
The last shot of every Kubrick and Coen bros. film are there as well.
I was watching clips of Thoroughly Modern Millie on YouTube today and remembered that Carol Channing received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance (and won the Golden Globe). The same year, Mildred Natwick was nominated for recreating her stage performance, playing Jane Fonda's fussy mother. I'm guessing these were career nominations or something?
That ghost just won't stop raping Barbara Hershey.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION - INOCA 2012
LOL, Potiche (Ozon, 2011) was so wonderful/terrible. Karin Viard was MVP, but special notices also go out to La Deneuve's wigs. A nice little piece of sweet nothing.
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