Last Movie You Watched

[Karl Henning]

Heck, much less work than creating your own character, anyway 

[North Star]

Not a bad trip, this one. (no musicians, very little music, but plenty of hippies)

[mc ukrneal]

Hi Neal - Susan loved watching this animated film w/ me - I seem to be enjoying these more that 'real' movies recently - love the way that the face of the the old guy looked a lot like his voice (i.e. Ed Asner) - a recommendation!  Dave

Hi Dave! Some of them are quite good, especially the Pixar. One of those films I was surprised to like was Wall-E. It is another beautifully done movie.

[Wakefield]

Also watched The Conjuring I suppose its the best of the bunch of spooky posession horrors over the last 5 years or so.  Others will disagree.

If you like the genre you could consider the TV series American Horror Story (available on Netflix). It's truly a disturbing release.

A week ago, I noticed that one of the protagonists of The Conjuring (Vera Farmiga) is sister of one of the protagonists of American Horror Story ((Taissa Farmiga), even when Taissa is a teenager and Vera is in her 40s. Just a coincidence? I don't believe. 



 

[SonicMan46]

Last night, streamed Oblivion (2013) w/ Tom Cruise & Morgan Freeman - boring for me; Cruise seems to have fallen into this 'futuristic'  phase of making movies, one after the other seems to lose my interest (I'm sure others may feel differently - don't know?) - if possible I'd give this a 2+* rating on Amazon - don't buy w/o seeing first at a rental price - Dave

[North Star]

YÔJINBÔ (1961)
Kurosawa

Mifune
Nakadai

Inspired by Dashiell Hammett's novel The Glass Key, in turn inspiring Leone to make an almost scene-for-scene copy with A Fistful of Dollars - Kurosawa sued and got 15% of the profits, more money than he made with any of the films he produced. Apparently Leone was just delighted, since Kurosawa wrote to him sth like 'It's a fine movie, but it's my movie'
Anyone reading ought to have seen at least one of these movies, so I won't yammer on about the plot. Excellent music by Masaru Sato.

[Octave]

Kurosawa sued and got 15% of the profits, more money than he made with any of the films he produced. Apparently Leone was just delighted, since Kurosawa wrote to him sth like 'It's a fine movie, but it's my movie'
[...]Excellent music by Masaru Sato[/url].

Wow, I never knew about that suit and AK-sensei's leveraged percentage.  Thanks for those stills.  Mifune was a great comic/manic actor.  Actually several kinds of great actor.
I agree about the Sato score; I remember it making great blatty elephantine use of saxophones.

[George]

Bob's Burger's - Season One

[AnthonyAthletic]

If you like the genre you could consider the TV series American Horror Story (available on Netflix). It's truly a disturbing release.

A week ago, I noticed that one of the protagonists of The Conjuring (Vera Farmiga) is sister of one of the protagonists of American Horror Story ((Taissa Farmiga), even when Taissa is a teenager and Vera is in her 40s. Just a coincidence? I don't believe. 

Yeah, American Horror Story is a great watch, seen the first and second stories "Murder House" & "Asylum"...exceedingly good.  Spotted the resemblance of Taissa Farmiga and her 21 year older sister Vera Farmiga (of The Conjuring and indeed Mrs Bates from Bates Motel...enjoyed that too)....More Norman than Normal!!  Story three of AHS "Coven" is shaping up nicely, throw in Kathy Bates from the good old witch trials and you've got a winner.  Shame no Zachary Quinto this season as he was very good in the first two.

Ever heard more chilling music for a TV show as American Horror Story....

I liked all of those movies too, excepting White House Down, I haven't seen that.  I saw Olympus Has Fallen.  I was inspired to read the Vince Flynn novel Transfer of Power.

I'm especially glad to see another fan of Pacific Rim.  That movie was awesome.  I agree on the Conjuring, but think that Insidious, Sinister and the Woman in Black were pretty scary as well.

White House Down has some great FX, not a bad story either.  Much more of a feel good movie as you go with the flow and work out who and why.

I haven't seen Sinister (that's one I haven't heard of), but have Woman in Black on DVD (not got around to watching that yet).  So Charlie Jax Teller ain't got real tattoos...chicken s*** LOL    I could just see him inside the kick ass Robot with 'Redwood Original Sons of Anarchy' on his ass.  Another great and fave show.  Have to laugh at Ron Perlman popping up again with Charlie Hunnam...Hannibal Chow    Great stuff!!

[DavidW]

I love American Horror Story as well!

[North Star]

Wow, I never knew about that suit and AK-sensei's leveraged percentage.  Thanks for those stills.  Mifune was a great comic/manic actor.  Actually several kinds of great actor.
I agree about the Sato score; I remember it making great blatty elephantine use of saxophones.

Yes, Mifune was a great actor, and quite versatile actually. So is Nakadai, though. This was a very interesting video of him talking about RAN.

[HenselFlaeder]

Mario Bava's Black Sabbath was on tv. Bava's cinematography is wonderfully colorful and atmospheric. The shot of the dead lady's grimaced face is still pretty effective. I do love those dead grimaces. Remember the bulging eyes of Touch of Evil? What are some other famous dead grimaces?

[Drasko]

What are some other famous dead grimaces?

Les Diaboliques

Excellent music by Masaru Sato.

Masaru Sato wrote similarly catchy music for Shinoda's Buraikan. Saxophone again.

http://www.youtube.com/v/nhswvg0SQnU

[Brian]

Bob's Burger's - Season One

How is this? A couple people have told me to watch it, and my ex was crazy about it.

[Parsifal]

I just realized the Lena Headley, Cercei from Game of Thrones, is the same actress that played the lead in Aberdeen, a film I enjoyed a lot.  It is too bad that the character of Cercei must be blond (for plot reasons) since Lena Headley looks better with her natural dark hair.

[asin]B000060MU8[/asin]

[Drasko]

Speaking of Shinoda ... Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees



Great Robert Mitchum once wisely said (in fake Jamaican accent):
From a logical point of view always marry a woman uglier than you
If Shinoda's protagonist heeded Mitchums advice his life would have been much easier.

[George]

How is this? A couple people have told me to watch it, and my ex was crazy about it.

It's AWESOME!! The "kids" (played by adults) are hilarious! Give it a shot. 

[Octave]

Speaking of Shinoda ... Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees
Great Robert Mitchum once wisely said (in fake Jamaican accent):
From a logical point of view always marry a woman uglier than you
If Shinoda's protagonist heeded Mitchums advice his life would have been much easier.

Thanks for that Mitchum chuckle; I can hear his drawl, reading that.  I saw that Shinoda picture (BLOSSOMING) not long ago and it was chilling.  It's weird how incredibly fake-looking severed limbs can be so evocative, or how a sense of threat can escape those limitations and freak the viewer, and/or just me, out.  Maybe it was just the hopelessness and darkness of the story itself; certainly on the surface it's tame by the violence/FX standards even of its own day.  It gave me goosebumps.  I don't remember thinking it was a masterpiece, but I'll be damned if I can shake its spell.
I remember a truly great slo-mo passage towards the end, with falling blossoms and (implied?) descent of madness on the world.  Makes me shiver even thinking about it.  Shinoda!

Unrelated, or not:


THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (George Stevens, 1959)
I'd been actively avoiding this for years because I just thought some things I should keep sacred; my recent George Stevens trip led me to check it out, and I loved it.  It's a heartbreaker in so many ways, and maybe the riskiest thing about it is its use of almost-runaway melodrama to heighten the feelings that would be present even without war and persecution.  Cf. the scene shown above with the young lovers makign discoveries amidst all that laundry.  It was the kitsch I was afraid of while I avoided this picture, but I came away from it thinking it had actually taken a path of greater resistance using some of those materials.  I do think it's a very fine picture.
The family huddled around a makeshift radio barely crackling out some Beethoven (in two different scenes?) was moving and ambiguous; also the shaking apart of the world during the bombing....very powerful.

Is there such a thing as reverse (retroactive) typecasting?  I kept wanting to scream at Anne Frank, "Get away from that boy!  He ain't no good!"  It was very distracting.  (And the young Beymer was great in DAF.)

[Octave]

THE HOUSE IS BLACK (Forough Farrokhzad, 1962)
Available at Ubuweb, though their copy of this does not look quite as good as the one I saw broadcast by Turner Classic Movies recently.  In both cases it is a pity that the English subtitles look so terrible...white on white, indistinct, routinely illegible against the brilliant whites of the photography.  And the spoken texts are so important to making the film what it is, apparently drawing from the Quran, Tanakh, and Farrokhzad's own poetry.  Still quite stirring.  Farrokhzad apparently edited the film herself, and the montages are rough and experimental in at least a couple senses: they create impressions between the images, and they feel like the director is learning on the job.  My impression, seeing this for the second time, is that this experimentation was exciting, not tedious or self-serving.  Nonetheless, aspects of it seemed like a halfway point between, say, Maya Deren's ecstatic amateurism and student films.
I really wish she'd had the opportunity to make more films.

[Brian]

Just watched this beauty:

[asin]B007N5YJWK[/asin]

Poor Mr. Memory!

Lot of fun, this movie, and the extra interview with Alfred Hitchcock contains his very amusing retelling of how he became a director - he was such an imperious assistant director that his superiors told him he was on his own.