Last Movie You Watched

[kishnevi]

Speaking of KR, he seems to be the star of a new film about the 47 Ronin (title, imaginatively, 47 Ronin), which is apparently bad enough that's it not being pre-released to critics.

I saw a quick ad for this 47 Ronin this morning on cable.

CGI effects,  reference to a global catastrophe, at least one CGI monster, and a second of Keanu speaking,  and absolutely no reference to the actual story of the 47 Ronin.  I'm guessing they borrowed the phrase because it made a cute title, or something.

At any rate,  this movie may rate a few choice (Japanese) expletives.

[SonicMan46]

Just received some Blu-ray movies (all DVD replacements in my current collection) from Amazon - first one up for the night:

Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) w/ Richard Carlson & Julia Adams - I was a boy in the '50s and those Sci-Fi films are still some of my favorites despite the sometimes corny special effects - the suspense & drama in the scenes often trump the ridiculous CGI violence in current movies of similar genre; BUT, I must admit that one main attraction for an 'ole' man is still looking @ Julia in her bathing costumes!    Dave

 

[stingo]

Rare Exports

[asin]B005D82VM4[/asin]

and

Tchaikovsky Cherevichki (The Tsarina's Slippers)
Francesca Zambella, director
Royal Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Royal Ballet
Alexander Polianichko, conductor

[asin]B0041UG68A[/asin]

[Karl Henning]

A Charlie Brown Christmas

No, not particularly original of me.

[Bogey]

A Charlie Brown Christmas

No, not particularly original of me.

A standard.

[George]

[Bogey]

Made me aware of Dickens and loved it as a kiddo.

[George]

Made me aware of Dickens and loved it as a kiddo.

I was disappointed that there wasn't more "Magoo" moments in it.

Up next:

[Karl Henning]

. . . Plus, we have our every time this year screening of "The Jerk".

A couple of days late, but the three of us just watched this together, and it was a hit.

Made me aware of Dickens and loved it as a kiddo.

Big favorite of my brother's, who went on to earn a doctorate in Dickens.

[Bogey]

I kind of remember that....kind of serious once it got going....correct?  Just the start of him wandering into the part was MaGoo like?

[George]

I kind of remember that....kind of serious once it got going....correct?  Just the start of him wandering into the part was MaGoo like?

Right, with a LOT of singing.

[Bogey]

The key to the retell of any good Dickens story is retelling it the way it was written....or as close as possible.

[Bogey]

Speaking of Dickens......

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,5870.2160.html

[Bogey]

Watched Great Expectations the other night .. Do see it if you haven't already.

Thanks for the lead, James.  Do not own that one, but will check it out.  I need to read the book first....actually saving that one for the 2014 summer.  As soon as I do, then I will follow up with a watch of the one you posted.  What made it stand out?

[Karl Henning]

Another of our Christmas rituals: the 1951 A Christmas Carol (a/k/a Scrooge) with Alastair Sim.

[Bogey]

Another of our Christmas rituals: the 1951 A Christmas Carol (a/k/a Scrooge) with Alastair Sim.

Probably the best film version out there.

[Octave]

Another of our Christmas rituals: the 1951 A Christmas Carol (a/k/a Scrooge) with Alastair Sim.

I did that, too, and for the first time!  Sim was great, but the cartoonish glee at rebirth was the best....completely infectious.

Not unrelated, I just saw THE WORLD'S END (Edgar Wright, 2013).


My least favorite Wright movie, but still entertaining and unless I missed the most 'serious' matter in the previous films (I spotted at least some of it), this one seemed the most remarkably, riskily melancholy, to the point where real apocalypse (following apocalypses [alt. def.] of youth and of adult life) actually seemed like an appended happy/upbeat ending.  It was a lot of fun seeing Nick Frost get to be kind of a hard-driving bad-ass for once.
Also fantastic and fitting that hip Wright would be sort of ahead of the Nineties-revival curve but only in the service of a critique of crippling nostalgia.  The latter is icing on the cake....I am just beyond ready for the Eighties fixation to end.

[Octave]

OFFSIDE (Jafar Panahi, 2006)

I meant to post about this last July, but I forgot.  It's a great film.  A bunch of young Iranian woman disguise themselves as men in order to sneak into a big World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain.  (They have to disguise themselves because they aren't allowed in the stadium.)  I have no interest at all in footy (my loss, I know), but half (but onyl half) of the point of the movie is that we never get inside the stadium, or barely (and terrifyingly) do we get into the stadium.  The affective structure of the film has that transcendent quality that I identify with, say, Rossellini's VIAGGIO IN ITALIA, though there's probably not many other similarities.  Maybe the mixture of documentary and fictional narrative (apparently OFFSIDE was actually shot at/during that match).  The ending has an emotional glow and throb that I can't reduce to a simple matter of plot, or character, or acting, or manipulative music.  It feels like the movie is flowing out into the world.

I don't think it's necessary to know about Panahi's imprisoned and persecuted situation in Iran or his wildly dogged resistance to the political-religious restrictions placed upon him (before and after the arrests began), in order for this particular movie to seem like a beautiful, energetic, musical movement of thought, gaining intensity and gravity as it moves towards apotheosis.  That biographical dimension seems inextricable from his similarly-structured THIS IS NOT A FILM (made under house arrest and smuggled out of Iran on a flash drive, apparently), though I still feel uncertain, uneasy about that last one. 

In the meantime, I can offer the highest recommendations of OFFSIDE and CRIMSON GOLD; not just those, but those for starters.

[Karl Henning]

I did that, too, and for the first time!  Sim was great, but the cartoonish glee at rebirth was the best....completely infectious.

I don't deserve to be so happy. But I can't help it. I just can't help it.

[Fëanor]

THE GODFATHER: Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather (1972) is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that he should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible. After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels.

THE GODFATHER PART II: This brilliant companion piece to the original The Godfather continues the saga of two generations of successive power within the Corleone family. Coppola tells two stories in Part II: the roots and rise of a young Don Vito, played with uncanny ability by Robert De Niro, and the ascension of Michael (Al Pacino) as the new Don. Reassembling many of the talents who helped make The Godfather, Coppola has produced a movie of staggering magnitude and vision, and undeniably the best sequel ever made. Robert De Niro won an Oscar®; the film received six Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 1974.

The Godfather: Part III wasn't a bad film by any means, paling only in comparison to Godfathers I and II.  There was a certain charm in seeing the older Al Pacino and Diane Keaton completing the story of their younger film characters.