Last Movie You Watched

[George]

Drive lives up to the hype.  This movie was awesome!!   Ryan Gosling is quickly becoming one of my fav actors.  And Albert Brooks playing a baddie... and doing a great job of it?!   My only complaint is that Hendricks should not have received top billing since she had a minor part.  I think I have a new favorite movie of 2011 now!!

Gosling is da man!

[Bogey]

Anyone seen Page Eight? I was thinking of picking this up, but not sure if it worth it.
[asin]B005DJ7AYC[/asin]

Definitley worth the watch, but a shame they did not continue it somehow.

[Bogey]

The Public Enemy (1931)



I am currently reading and want to do an overview of some of the films that Zanuck had influence over:



I am at the early 30's of Zanuck's carrer.  Right now he is with Warner Brothers and is serving as what we would eventually call the role of a producer.  One of the talking films that he had influence over was The Public Enemy (he also should be credited with the production of 'Little Caesar' around this time and the discovery of Edward G. Robinson).  It was one of the earliest gangster movies from Warner Brothers that hit the mark and sent James Cagney (who Zanuck also claims to have discovered) soaring.

An interesting piece of trivia that I read was that Jimmy Cagney was slated to play the role of the friend Matt in the movie and James Woods would take the role of Tom Powers.  Zanuck flipped them on a hunch and the rest is history.

Either or, this read has definitely helped me see how powerful producers can be and in Zanuck's case, how some can shape the direction of the film in its final product.

[lisa needs braces]

Looks interesting, I've put it at the top of my queue.  And in the process accidentally discovered A Place of Execution on watch instantly... I've read the novel, can't wait to see the miniseries.

Saw A Place of Execution the other day. Quite good.

Reminded me of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in multiple ways.

[George]

Drive lives up to the hype.  This movie was awesome!!   Ryan Gosling is quickly becoming one of my fav actors. 

"Men want to be him. Women want to sleep with him. Bisexuals want to watch." 

(paraphrased from this week's 30 Rock)

[SonicMan46]

Well, continuing to replace some of my DVDs w/ BDs:
 
Maltese Falcon (1941) w/ Bogart & Astor, among some other greats!  Check HERE for comments on the AV transfer.

Master & Commander (2003) w/ Russel Crowe; this one is REALLY an improvement over my older DVD! Comments HERE -

Star Trek IV: Voyage Home (1986) w/ the usual suspects! My favorite of these 6 films w/ the original gang - have no others but would consider 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn' - pleased w/ all of these replacements! 

   

[Todd]

Morpheus and friends take on pandemic.  Pandemic wins.  Pretty good.

[DavidW]

So weird I just watched that today too.  I liked it but felt that they should have focused on a smaller group of characters.

[George]

This was GREAT!!

[drogulus]

     Take Shelter

     Michael Shannon plays a man who has horrifying nightmares about an apocalyptic storm, sometimes while he's awake.

     

     

     I was going to make an obvious comparison to another film then decided that would be a spoiler.

     I just finished watching so I might not maintain my current opinion. It's very good, and Shannon and Chastain are splendid in the lead roles. The film might be a little slow and run a little long. Nevertheless, it's a powerful work.

[lisa needs braces]

^Michael Shannon is a rising star, or maybe he's already arrived judging from his imdb page. He'll play General Zod in the next Superman film. First saw him in "Shotgun Stories" which was good.

As for recent viewings, another netflix instant watch discovery: the period drama North & South based on a work by a female Victorian author which was serialized in one of Dicken's magazines.



It's a brooding and somber 4-hour series. Great cinematography (very bleak and gritty) and the music is impeccable.The main theme:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn7cQZ0FO7A

It's a labor vs management story and a romance. Highly recommended if you like period dramas. 

[Cato]

We saw Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close yesterday: a manipulative and ultimately unbelievable movie.

I have not read the book, but many things rang false.  The main character is supposedly 9-years old and suffering a mild autism called Asperger's Syndrome, "although tests were not definitive." 

This is meant to show us that the kid is eccentric and highly intelligent.  Fine, however, I would like to inform the people behind the movie, and maybe the author of the book, that no 9-year old, even a genius 9-year old, has the vocabulary or emotional sophistication of this kid.  Having worked as a teacher for many years with all sorts of children, including child geniuses, I did not buy this for a second.

On top of this, we have a parallelism between the Islamic terrorist attacks of September 11th and the Dresden bombing of World War II, a parallelism symbolized in a character, the boy's paternal grandfather, known at first as "The Renter."  He is said to be suffering from selective mutism as part of his trauma from experiencing the fire-bombing of Dresden.

Perhaps the book explains this, but many questions arise: we are told that the grandfather abandoned his wife and son (Tom Hanks, father of the main character) because he could not handle the stress.  But how exactly does a traumatized mute attract a woman to marry him to begin with?  Was he married before the bombing?  How old then is the Tom Hanks character supposed to be?  He would need to be nearly 60, if born say c. 1943.  But if that is true, how does he emigrate to America and start a jewelry store, which would depend on customer relationships?! And iIf he abandoned his son in childhood, why does the family jewelry store say "Thomas Schell and Son"   If the Tom Hanks character majored in biochemistry in college  (!), why did he take over the family business to become a very small-time jeweler???  We are only told he does this "to support his family."  (A biochemist would make less than a jeweler running a tiny hole-in-the wall shop?)  And who was running the business?  His mother?

Why does the grandmother keep the presence of her ex-husband a secret from the grandson?  (And from her daughter-in-law?  Does the Sandra Bullock character know who he is?   The grandfather becomes acquainted with the boy, but has no desire to see the woman his son married?  And where was the grandmother - at 3 A.M.! - when the boy first meets his grandfather?  We are told only that she is "Out".

This is just one small set of things that I found sloppy: if you throw in a detail about a character, it should make sense!  It should not cause you to question the whole premise.  An 80-year old woman "out" alone in New York City at 3 A.M. I find highly unusual!

[Karl Henning]

Nice review, thanks, Cato!

Thread duty . . . this weekend past:

"Candidate for Crime" from season 3 of Columbo

"The Rotters" from the last season of The Avengers

"A Word a Day" from season 1 of The Dick van Dyke Show

Some more "Upsidaisium" episodes from Rocky & Bullwinkle

Jn Cleese in How to Irritate People

[Lethevich]

Blackadder series 1.

I had seen bits and pieces from the later ones, but never paid proper attention, so when I get to those they will be new to me as well. I will be disappointed to see the character change after this series, though, because I was under the impression that when it was described by the creator as "undeveloped" it would be a bit bad, but it's great, just in a different way. The pointy shoes are amazing.

[Karl Henning]

Aye, great fun, Sara!

[Cato]

Nice review, thanks, Cato!

No problem!  I should mention a few more jarring notes in Extremely Loud: we are told that the boy genius has panic attacks when confronted with strangers and with loud noises (hence the title). 

And yet, shaking a tambourine cures these fears so that he can roam NYC and confront 200 strangers on an impossible quest!!!  Psychiatrists everywhere will be intrigued by this miracle cure!   0:)

(The tambourine is possibly meant to be a reference to Pip, the Cabin Boy accompanying Ahab on his impossible quest to find Moby Dick.)

And we also have a shocking scene where the boy says he hates his mother, and wants her dead instead of his beloved father, and we have no idea why he is so emotionally distant from her: Asperger's kids are usually somewhat aloof from everyone.  So what has happened here, that the father is accepted but the mother rejected?  No clue!

To be sure, there are some nice scenes, and some powerful ones, and the actors do what they can: the child actor even becomes Al Pacino in And Justice For All at one point.      

Some more "Upsidaisium" episodes from Rocky & Bullwinkle

Now there is a classic for the ages!     Great fun stuff!

[Karl Henning]

And yet, shaking a tambourine cures these fears so that he can roam NYC and confront 200 strangers on an impossible quest!!!

Ah, the magic of Mama Cass!

[Karl Henning]

Now there is a classic for the ages!     Great fun stuff!

Boris Badenov: Allow me to introduce myself: Mojave Max, G.O.P.

Rocky: "G.O.P."?

Boris: Grizzled Old Prospector

[Todd]

Finished the third season of TPB.  Good, good stuff.

[SonicMan46]

Susan & I are Woody Allen fans and the other day we were shopping @ Costco (hard to beat their wine prices although the selection of better ones is limited) and looking at the Blu-ray selections, two of my favorites were there for just $9.99 each, so had to make a purchase:

Annie Hall (1977) w/ the lovely Diane Keaton; Oscar for best movie of that year; we were married just 7 years @ that time and had/have a mix marriage, i.e. Jewish-Catholic, so could really relate to much in this film; Blu-ray transfer is clean and improved although not a spectacular difference!

Manhattan (1979) w/ Diane Keaton & Mariel Hemingway; beautiful scenery of NYC in B&W - have not watched this BD version yet, but the comments on the transfer discussed HERE are enticing -