I thought Shaolin Soccer was much funnier than Kung Fu Hustle. (Although I had to look past some of the unfunny, puerile humor in it.) And there’s a lot of hilarious anime.
Tropic Thunder, and it’s not even close. It even has Tom Cruise’s great performance of his career.
However, I’m surprised that no one here has mentioned Wall-E.
It would be more interesting to ask about 2007, which was a great year for comedy. In that year we had Juno, Superbad, Knocked Up, Hairspray, The Simpsons, Ratatouille, Enchanted, The Darjeeling Limited, Hot Fuzz, among others. (I’m not saying these were all great. Just listing some of the notable comedies.)
I like what Jared wrote. The end of the movie is deeply disturbing. Yes, the protagonist gets killed, but our generic storytelling sensibility tells us that is okay because he sort of deserved it, and maybe the cop will catch the bad guy after all. Our more sophisticated storytelling sensibility tells us that the bad guy might even get away (since that makes for a less cheesy story). But we are not mentally prepared for the murder of Llewelyn’s wife. If you are properly absorbed in the story (see below) at that point, you cannot help but feel completely outraged by that act. And then the car crash afterward just pours salt in the wound.
An aside: For me, what a movie is “about” is only a small part (or sometimes no part) of what makes a movie great. What impressed me about No Country for Old Men was the unbearable level of tension and suspense. My wife and I were literally squirming in our seats, squeezing each other’s hands. (It was a bit like when I first saw Aliens.) Any fool can make an ending where evil triumphs over good and old guys wax poetic, but such an ending is only interesting and unsettling if the viewer is invested in the story. Coens rule.
I am completely shocked that The Wire has been mentioned by only one person, and that person hasn’t seen even seen it.
Although I’ve only seen Season 1 of Mad Men, I’m confident that it’s the best show on TV right now. However, being the best show on TV right now still makes it vastly inferior to The Wire.
Never thought about it, but you’re right. She was good in Phantom, very good in Mystic River, perfectly tolerable in The Day After Tomorrow (a great achievement), and she does have a certain screen charisma that goes beyond her good looks. Lousy agent?
I’ll defend Clerks in the sense that the humor was very fresh and edgy at the time. Whether you liked it or not, at least it was unique. Now it’s a different story, so it’s hard to see what was special about it. I happened to channel surf into Clerks one day recently, and I couldn’t watch more than 5 minutes of it.
Back in the day, I thought Chasing Amy was a masterpiece. Although I haven’t seen it in a decade and I’ll back off the “masterpiece” label, I still think it’s pretty good. It’s a ridiculous raunchy comedy that actually manages to say something meaningful about the interplay between romantic relationships, friendship, sexual experience, sexual preference, and the fragile male ego. (I concede that many people say that it says no such thing.)
Oh no, you just gave me unpleasant flashbacks of watching Meet Joe Black.
It might be up for debate whether Pitt is a good actor (imho, he’s pretty decent), but come on—you can’t put him in the same league as Keanu. That’s just not fair.
Btw, actors (unlike directors) should be judged more by their best work than their worst work, since even some of the deities of acting have appeared in some craptastic movies. So I can forgive Pitt for Meet Joe Black. (Ack, more flashbacks!) Finally, if my memory is functioning properly, I think he was pretty good in Kalifornia as a white trash psychopath.
1. Aliens. This is perhaps the perfect action movie. I think that even the second time I saw it, I still wanted to pee myself. “Game over, man! Game over!”
2. The Fifth Element. Because Boron is awesome.
3. Akira. Because a great action movie is even better when it makes no fucking sense. “TETSUOOO!!!” “KANEDAAA!!!”
4. The Matrix. Even before those awful sequels came out, I always thought it was silly that people found The Matrix to be thought-provoking. To me it was always just a mindless action movie. My theory is that people desperately want to see ridiculous action sequences, but they do need to be a offered a small bone of “believability.” That, my friends, is the genius of The Matrix. “I know kung fu.” That about sums it up. (If you doubt that The Matrix is best appreciated as a dumb action flick, recall Trinity’s cheesy line: “Dodge this.”)
5. Fist of Legend. Because Jet Li is pretty awesome.
List of top action movies that possibly break Fredo’s rules: Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings trilogy, A History of Violence, Children of Men, Minority Report. All have a lot of action, but they all have too much other stuff going on, too, i.e. not pure action.
And for the special category of action comedy, I’ll go with Kung Fu Hustle and Big Trouble in Little China.
Regarding T2: I also once thought this was the greatest action movie of all time, but it came on TV the other day, and I thought to myself, “This is actually kind of boring now.” I’m not sure why. I, too, loved Speed, Die Hard, Bird on a Wire, Lethal Weapon, anything with Arnold, etc. when I was growing up, but I don’t think I could make myself watch these movies now, even though I do still like modern action movies (like superhero movies, Bourne, Bond).
P.S. The Rock was good. So were the Bad Boys movies, to a lesser degree.
This is an outdated sentiment. Thanks primarily to HBO, we’ve entered an era when TV shows can be every bit as worthy as films. It’s just a different format—one that actually works better for telling certain kinds of stories. The right thing to say is, “Life is far too short to waste on television commercials.”
“But the way I see it is, why bother watching Tarantino mash all these idea together when I can just watch the real thing? Nowadays you don’t have to work in an independent video rental store to have access to all the old exploitation and B-movies that Tarantino gets 100% of his ideas from.”
Because most people don’t want to see those movies, because they are bad. Some people here might have truly omnivorous appetites for movies, but I, for one, have no interest in watching crappy B-movies. One of QT’s real talents might be his understanding of how to extract the good ideas from the morass of movie mediocrity. That’s fine with me.
Also, I noticed that some say that QT is for immature teenagers. I’d be curious to see if there really is a generation gap on The Auteurs between the QT lovers and the QT haters, specifically how he fares with the under-30 crowd vs the over-50 crowd.
General comment about acting: Shouldn’t we assess actors based on their best work and mostly ignore their worst work?
Reasoning: With a bad enough script and a bad enough director, even a great actor can give a terrible performance. (Insert your favorite example here.) This sort of performance reflects poor judgment in choosing projects, not bad acting. On the other hand, although a great director can certainly make an actor look better by bringing out the best possible performance, the actor’s ability still puts a ceiling on what the director can accomplish.
I never read the comic, and I wasn’t interested in seeing the movie because the director seemed to be a hack. And the reviews were poor.
BUT I saw it on an international flight and was very pleasantly surprised. It didn’t change my life or anything, but I will defend the movie on two grounds.
1) I enjoyed the visual style.
2) The story and the characters were interesting.
Considering that the book is so widely admired, I’m sure I can’t be alone in my assessment in point 2. Even if the story is condensed, it’s still the same basic story, which is pretty cool. I also thought that the opening sequence was pretty cool.
I agree that the soundtrack was terrible. Possibly the most cliched soundtrack I’ve ever heard. It was as if every song was being chosen for a movie trailer rather than an actual movie.
By the way, maybe I’m dim-witted, but I didn’t notice anything fishy about Ozymandias, probably because he seemed like a minor character for a long time. I guess that was sort of a clue.
P.S. I think it’s interesting how long flights force us to watch movies we were avoiding or had little interest in. So you’re either pleasantly surprised or end up with an unsurprisingly horrible experience (usually the latter).
Putting aside the issue of whether this movie is good or not, I have a question about the movie itself and the director’s intent. I had a discussion (rather than an argument) with a friend over whether the movie portrays one sister as the good sister and the other as the bad sister, or whether it tries to draw a moral equivalence between the two sisters.
Bolo, you’re essentially saying: If you aren’t going to give the black characters important roles, then you shouldn’t have black characters at all.
A friend of mine called the wedding a “multicultural liberal fantasy.” His gripe was that, yes, biracial weddings, Asian friends, Indian outfits, British accents, etc. may be typical in modern liberal America, but the wedding was sort of a “perfect storm” of multiculturalism. I agree with that in the sense that the setting of the movie is highly unusual. Some commenters here have noted that they live in highly multiethnic neighborhoods, etc., but that is a far cry from having a wedding like Rachel’s.
BUT just because it’s a fantasy for some does not mean that it can’t be a reality for others. I can easily believe that for a very small portion of the population, weddings really are like that. The setting of the movie may be rare, but it feels authentic to me, and I doubt it was invented out of thin air. To complain about the movie’s unusual setting would be like complaining about a movie that takes place on a Native American reservation, which is also unusual.
Incidentally, I thought that the way the movie captured the wedding events was the best thing about it—better than the main story. And I agree with everything Dan Bayer said.
Mike, I’m not going to argue with you since I’m trying to say that the wedding in the movie is entirely plausible. I guess I’m either with you or against you???
Anyway, I never said it “took much” to have a “multicultural wedding,” but it does take more than just some guests of different races to have a wedding that resembles Rachel’s. I’m merely acknowledging to those I disagree with that the wedding is a bit unusual. Unusual in the sense that only a tiny fraction of American weddings resemble Rachel’s. If Rachel’s wedding was perfectly common, then people wouldn’t be complaining about it, now would they? The complaints may be invalid, but they do come from somewhere.
I have no idea why Duplicity was completely ignored by everyone on earth. If it weren’t for a 12-hour plane ride, I would never have received the unexpected treat that was Duplicity. Starting with the slo-mo fight sequence during the opening credits, I was hooked.
Does anyone else suspect that Ricky Gervais secretly thinks that the American Office is crap? From watching Extras, you can see exactly what Gervais hates about conventional crappy sitcoms, and the American Office is guilty of many of these sins. Steve Carrell plays the unbelievable, unrealistic idiotic clown, a classic staple of just about every crappy sitcom in history. He even has a catchphrase! I think that when I saw him drive his car into a body of water following his GPS, I just said to myself: This. Is. Not. Funny. I will never watch this again.
The UK Office has characters who could pass for real people, while the US Office has caricatures. Caricatures can be funny sometimes, but they’re not as interesting as characters. I don’t hate the US Office. I just think it’s horribly overrated. And yes, it’s still probably one the Top 5 sitcoms on air right now, but that’s like being one of the 5 tallest midgets in New York. (Wait, are there even 5 sitcoms still on the air?)
The entire premise of this thread is pure nonsense. First of all, you’re talking about “devout Christians” rather than “Christians.” Second, if you made an actual list of movie characters who appear to be devout Christians, only a minority would be classified as negative stereotypes. Without even breaking a sweat, here’s a list of movies that include devout Christian characters who are neither negative stereotypes nor martyrs:
Doubt
Gran Torino
Saving Private Ryan
Minority Report
Ben Button
Dead Man Walking
Contact
All of the “Oh God” movies
Sister Act 1 and 2
@Dimitris: The quality of the films I listed is irrelevant. My point is that in a typical sample of movies that have Christians in them, very few portray them as “negative stereotypes.” But never mind, since this thread is no longer about that, if it ever was. It’s now about absolutely nothing, like most other threads with 100+ comments.
If international flights are hell, then in-flight movies are the ice cream that is served in hell. You’re still in hell, but you’re damn happy to have the ice cream.
I find the concept of watching movies on planes to be really interesting, because it’s the place where you watch films that you wouldn’t pick for yourself. This means that you watch some of the worst movies you’ve seen, but you also have a chance to see something unexpectedly good. I’m happy that I was “forced” to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Duplicity, Shattered Glass, and The Watchmen. In the first case, I was totally shocked by how much I loved it. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. On the other hand, some of the worst movies I’ve ever endured were because of a plane: Changing Lanes, Monster-in-Law, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Envy, Kicking and Screaming (Ferrell). It’s interesting how it’s possible to remember hating a movie without remembering anything about the movie itself.
Although I’m an outsider to this event, I have a minor suggestion:
If the tiebreakers do come down to individual vote counts, shouldn’t it be based on percentages of votes cast rather than total votes? That seems far more logical.
I’m sure I will be flamed for this, but I don’t understand what’s so great about technicolor. Why be so sentimental about a piece of outmoded technology? This is not meant to be a knock against technicolor films. If today’s technology were available to the directors of the 30s and 40s, with money no object, how many films would have been shot in technicolor? Perhaps only a handful in which a look of artificiality was especially desirable (e.g. Wizard of Oz). Again, historically, technicolor films may have been great achievements in visual style, but they were achievements borne out of limitations. Personally, if I had to choose a film to gobble up with my eyes, I’d choose Zhang Yimou over any technicolor classic. (Flame away.)
My basic point is that this “supernatural” look of technicolor is, in many cases, sort of an undesirable side effect. The best use of technicolor is when the director turns this weakness into a strength. But even for a very appealing technicolor film, I still look at it and think to myself, “I wonder what this would have looked like with the use of modern technology.” This is the reason I bring up Zhang Yimou—not to say that he’s better than the old guys, but to point out that technicolor is an inferior piece of technology (for most purposes).
I actually like the analogy with painting, except that I happen to be talking about advances in technology, whereas with painting Joe Arthaus was talking about advances in technique. This brings me to an interesting (tangentially related) question: When discussing greatness in art, do we care more about the greatness of the creator, or the greatness of the finished product? These can be very different because each artist/auteur builds on the work of others, so it’s entirely feasible that “inferior” filmmakers can create superior works.
For example: The first filmmaker to use a certain technique or idea may lay claim to creativity and innovation, but perhaps the fifth filmmaker to do it does it better. Fifty years later, I may watch both of those films, not knowing who was first but knowing which film I think is superior. Should the piece of information that one person copied (or heck, even STOLE) the work of another have any bearing on the artistic merit of the finished products? (Although I fear the possible firestorm, I will dare to mention a certain QT. This thread isn’t so popular, so maybe I can get away with it.)
1. Tropic Thunder
2. Taxi to the Dark Side
3. Vicky Christina Barcelona
4. WALL-E
5. Slumdog Millionaire
6. Gran Torino
7. Hellyboy II: The Golden Army
8. The Dark Knight
9. Iron Man
10. In Bruges
I swear I’m not actually a comic book fanboy. It’s just that 2008 was kind of a crappy year for movies. Only my top 2 or 3 are really “5 star” movies in my book. And where’s the love for Taxi to the Dark Side? Still looking forward to Up the Yangtze, The Counterfeiters, Gomorra, Paranoid Park, and perhaps Pineapple Express.
Special Award for Most Overrated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Worst Movie Seen By Me: Role Models (actually, just the first 20 minutes)
Looking for Asian Comedy almost 3 years ago
I thought Shaolin Soccer was much funnier than Kung Fu Hustle. (Although I had to look past some of the unfunny, puerile humor in it.) And there’s a lot of hilarious anime.
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greatest comedy of 2008. almost 3 years ago
“Everybody knows you never go full retard.”
Tropic Thunder, and it’s not even close. It even has Tom Cruise’s great performance of his career.
However, I’m surprised that no one here has mentioned Wall-E.
It would be more interesting to ask about 2007, which was a great year for comedy. In that year we had Juno, Superbad, Knocked Up, Hairspray, The Simpsons, Ratatouille, Enchanted, The Darjeeling Limited, Hot Fuzz, among others. (I’m not saying these were all great. Just listing some of the notable comedies.)
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What is No Country actually about? almost 3 years ago
I like what Jared wrote. The end of the movie is deeply disturbing. Yes, the protagonist gets killed, but our generic storytelling sensibility tells us that is okay because he sort of deserved it, and maybe the cop will catch the bad guy after all. Our more sophisticated storytelling sensibility tells us that the bad guy might even get away (since that makes for a less cheesy story). But we are not mentally prepared for the murder of Llewelyn’s wife. If you are properly absorbed in the story (see below) at that point, you cannot help but feel completely outraged by that act. And then the car crash afterward just pours salt in the wound.
An aside: For me, what a movie is “about” is only a small part (or sometimes no part) of what makes a movie great. What impressed me about No Country for Old Men was the unbearable level of tension and suspense. My wife and I were literally squirming in our seats, squeezing each other’s hands. (It was a bit like when I first saw Aliens.) Any fool can make an ending where evil triumphs over good and old guys wax poetic, but such an ending is only interesting and unsettling if the viewer is invested in the story. Coens rule.
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Movie to put on if you're trying to "score" almost 3 years ago
A Clockwork Orange
Schindler’s List
Requiem for a Dream
Baby Geniuses 2
Citizen Kane
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When Did Woody Allen Jump The Shark? When Did He Come Back? almost 3 years ago
People who liked Scoop = Woody Allen zealots
(I count myself as being in that group.)
It’s possible that you can replace “Scoop” with “Small Time Crooks.”
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MAD MEN: THE BEST SHOW ON T.V almost 3 years ago
I am completely shocked that The Wire has been mentioned by only one person, and that person hasn’t seen even seen it.
Although I’ve only seen Season 1 of Mad Men, I’m confident that it’s the best show on TV right now. However, being the best show on TV right now still makes it vastly inferior to The Wire.
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Let's talk about Emmy Rossum almost 3 years ago
Never thought about it, but you’re right. She was good in Phantom, very good in Mystic River, perfectly tolerable in The Day After Tomorrow (a great achievement), and she does have a certain screen charisma that goes beyond her good looks. Lousy agent?
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Hatred for smith almost 3 years ago
I’ll defend Clerks in the sense that the humor was very fresh and edgy at the time. Whether you liked it or not, at least it was unique. Now it’s a different story, so it’s hard to see what was special about it. I happened to channel surf into Clerks one day recently, and I couldn’t watch more than 5 minutes of it.
Back in the day, I thought Chasing Amy was a masterpiece. Although I haven’t seen it in a decade and I’ll back off the “masterpiece” label, I still think it’s pretty good. It’s a ridiculous raunchy comedy that actually manages to say something meaningful about the interplay between romantic relationships, friendship, sexual experience, sexual preference, and the fragile male ego. (I concede that many people say that it says no such thing.)
Finally, Jersey Girl really wasn’t that bad.
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Is Brad Pitt a good actor? almost 3 years ago
Oh no, you just gave me unpleasant flashbacks of watching Meet Joe Black.
It might be up for debate whether Pitt is a good actor (imho, he’s pretty decent), but come on—you can’t put him in the same league as Keanu. That’s just not fair.
Btw, actors (unlike directors) should be judged more by their best work than their worst work, since even some of the deities of acting have appeared in some craptastic movies. So I can forgive Pitt for Meet Joe Black. (Ack, more flashbacks!) Finally, if my memory is functioning properly, I think he was pretty good in Kalifornia as a white trash psychopath.
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Top Five Action Films and Why almost 3 years ago
1. Aliens. This is perhaps the perfect action movie. I think that even the second time I saw it, I still wanted to pee myself. “Game over, man! Game over!”
2. The Fifth Element. Because Boron is awesome.
3. Akira. Because a great action movie is even better when it makes no fucking sense. “TETSUOOO!!!” “KANEDAAA!!!”
4. The Matrix. Even before those awful sequels came out, I always thought it was silly that people found The Matrix to be thought-provoking. To me it was always just a mindless action movie. My theory is that people desperately want to see ridiculous action sequences, but they do need to be a offered a small bone of “believability.” That, my friends, is the genius of The Matrix. “I know kung fu.” That about sums it up. (If you doubt that The Matrix is best appreciated as a dumb action flick, recall Trinity’s cheesy line: “Dodge this.”)
5. Fist of Legend. Because Jet Li is pretty awesome.
List of top action movies that possibly break Fredo’s rules: Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings trilogy, A History of Violence, Children of Men, Minority Report. All have a lot of action, but they all have too much other stuff going on, too, i.e. not pure action.
And for the special category of action comedy, I’ll go with Kung Fu Hustle and Big Trouble in Little China.
Regarding T2: I also once thought this was the greatest action movie of all time, but it came on TV the other day, and I thought to myself, “This is actually kind of boring now.” I’m not sure why. I, too, loved Speed, Die Hard, Bird on a Wire, Lethal Weapon, anything with Arnold, etc. when I was growing up, but I don’t think I could make myself watch these movies now, even though I do still like modern action movies (like superhero movies, Bourne, Bond).
P.S. The Rock was good. So were the Bad Boys movies, to a lesser degree.
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MAD MEN: THE BEST SHOW ON T.V almost 3 years ago
“Life is far too short to waste on television.”
This is an outdated sentiment. Thanks primarily to HBO, we’ve entered an era when TV shows can be every bit as worthy as films. It’s just a different format—one that actually works better for telling certain kinds of stories. The right thing to say is, “Life is far too short to waste on television commercials.”
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Tarantino...yay or nay? And why? almost 3 years ago
“But the way I see it is, why bother watching Tarantino mash all these idea together when I can just watch the real thing? Nowadays you don’t have to work in an independent video rental store to have access to all the old exploitation and B-movies that Tarantino gets 100% of his ideas from.”
Because most people don’t want to see those movies, because they are bad. Some people here might have truly omnivorous appetites for movies, but I, for one, have no interest in watching crappy B-movies. One of QT’s real talents might be his understanding of how to extract the good ideas from the morass of movie mediocrity. That’s fine with me.
Also, I noticed that some say that QT is for immature teenagers. I’d be curious to see if there really is a generation gap on The Auteurs between the QT lovers and the QT haters, specifically how he fares with the under-30 crowd vs the over-50 crowd.
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Is Brad Pitt a good actor? almost 3 years ago
General comment about acting: Shouldn’t we assess actors based on their best work and mostly ignore their worst work?
Reasoning: With a bad enough script and a bad enough director, even a great actor can give a terrible performance. (Insert your favorite example here.) This sort of performance reflects poor judgment in choosing projects, not bad acting. On the other hand, although a great director can certainly make an actor look better by bringing out the best possible performance, the actor’s ability still puts a ceiling on what the director can accomplish.
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Watchmen Appreciation Thread almost 3 years ago
I never read the comic, and I wasn’t interested in seeing the movie because the director seemed to be a hack. And the reviews were poor.
BUT I saw it on an international flight and was very pleasantly surprised. It didn’t change my life or anything, but I will defend the movie on two grounds.
1) I enjoyed the visual style.
2) The story and the characters were interesting.
Considering that the book is so widely admired, I’m sure I can’t be alone in my assessment in point 2. Even if the story is condensed, it’s still the same basic story, which is pretty cool. I also thought that the opening sequence was pretty cool.
I agree that the soundtrack was terrible. Possibly the most cliched soundtrack I’ve ever heard. It was as if every song was being chosen for a movie trailer rather than an actual movie.
By the way, maybe I’m dim-witted, but I didn’t notice anything fishy about Ozymandias, probably because he seemed like a minor character for a long time. I guess that was sort of a clue.
P.S. I think it’s interesting how long flights force us to watch movies we were avoiding or had little interest in. So you’re either pleasantly surprised or end up with an unsurprisingly horrible experience (usually the latter).
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The Best Films in the History of Ever almost 3 years ago
As long as we’re on the subject of which Jurassic Park was the worst, I present
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JfDizINz7g
The defense rests, your honor.
(Actually, the scene where the trailer is falling off a cliff was an okay action set piece.)
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Can we talk about Rachel Getting Married? almost 3 years ago
Putting aside the issue of whether this movie is good or not, I have a question about the movie itself and the director’s intent. I had a discussion (rather than an argument) with a friend over whether the movie portrays one sister as the good sister and the other as the bad sister, or whether it tries to draw a moral equivalence between the two sisters.
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Can we talk about Rachel Getting Married? almost 3 years ago
Bolo, you’re essentially saying: If you aren’t going to give the black characters important roles, then you shouldn’t have black characters at all.
A friend of mine called the wedding a “multicultural liberal fantasy.” His gripe was that, yes, biracial weddings, Asian friends, Indian outfits, British accents, etc. may be typical in modern liberal America, but the wedding was sort of a “perfect storm” of multiculturalism. I agree with that in the sense that the setting of the movie is highly unusual. Some commenters here have noted that they live in highly multiethnic neighborhoods, etc., but that is a far cry from having a wedding like Rachel’s.
BUT just because it’s a fantasy for some does not mean that it can’t be a reality for others. I can easily believe that for a very small portion of the population, weddings really are like that. The setting of the movie may be rare, but it feels authentic to me, and I doubt it was invented out of thin air. To complain about the movie’s unusual setting would be like complaining about a movie that takes place on a Native American reservation, which is also unusual.
Incidentally, I thought that the way the movie captured the wedding events was the best thing about it—better than the main story. And I agree with everything Dan Bayer said.
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Can we talk about Rachel Getting Married? almost 3 years ago
Mike, I’m not going to argue with you since I’m trying to say that the wedding in the movie is entirely plausible. I guess I’m either with you or against you???
Anyway, I never said it “took much” to have a “multicultural wedding,” but it does take more than just some guests of different races to have a wedding that resembles Rachel’s. I’m merely acknowledging to those I disagree with that the wedding is a bit unusual. Unusual in the sense that only a tiny fraction of American weddings resemble Rachel’s. If Rachel’s wedding was perfectly common, then people wouldn’t be complaining about it, now would they? The complaints may be invalid, but they do come from somewhere.
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Can we talk about Rachel Getting Married? almost 3 years ago
Oops! Sorry, Mike. I was being a moron.
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Is 3D the future? almost 3 years ago
This thread would be more interesting if it popped off the screen.
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The Many Wonders of Tony Gilroy almost 3 years ago
I have no idea why Duplicity was completely ignored by everyone on earth. If it weren’t for a 12-hour plane ride, I would never have received the unexpected treat that was Duplicity. Starting with the slo-mo fight sequence during the opening credits, I was hooked.
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The office over 2 years ago
Does anyone else suspect that Ricky Gervais secretly thinks that the American Office is crap? From watching Extras, you can see exactly what Gervais hates about conventional crappy sitcoms, and the American Office is guilty of many of these sins. Steve Carrell plays the unbelievable, unrealistic idiotic clown, a classic staple of just about every crappy sitcom in history. He even has a catchphrase! I think that when I saw him drive his car into a body of water following his GPS, I just said to myself: This. Is. Not. Funny. I will never watch this again.
The UK Office has characters who could pass for real people, while the US Office has caricatures. Caricatures can be funny sometimes, but they’re not as interesting as characters. I don’t hate the US Office. I just think it’s horribly overrated. And yes, it’s still probably one the Top 5 sitcoms on air right now, but that’s like being one of the 5 tallest midgets in New York. (Wait, are there even 5 sitcoms still on the air?)
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Is it even possible Where the Wild Things Are won't be at least very good? over 2 years ago
I’m sure people already know about this, but there’s a nice article about this movie in the NYT Mag.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06jonze-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
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Movies Have No Love for Christians over 2 years ago
The entire premise of this thread is pure nonsense. First of all, you’re talking about “devout Christians” rather than “Christians.” Second, if you made an actual list of movie characters who appear to be devout Christians, only a minority would be classified as negative stereotypes. Without even breaking a sweat, here’s a list of movies that include devout Christian characters who are neither negative stereotypes nor martyrs:
Doubt
Gran Torino
Saving Private Ryan
Minority Report
Ben Button
Dead Man Walking
Contact
All of the “Oh God” movies
Sister Act 1 and 2
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Movies Have No Love for Christians over 2 years ago
@Dimitris: The quality of the films I listed is irrelevant. My point is that in a typical sample of movies that have Christians in them, very few portray them as “negative stereotypes.” But never mind, since this thread is no longer about that, if it ever was. It’s now about absolutely nothing, like most other threads with 100+ comments.
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Can you watch a movie on a plane? over 2 years ago
If international flights are hell, then in-flight movies are the ice cream that is served in hell. You’re still in hell, but you’re damn happy to have the ice cream.
I find the concept of watching movies on planes to be really interesting, because it’s the place where you watch films that you wouldn’t pick for yourself. This means that you watch some of the worst movies you’ve seen, but you also have a chance to see something unexpectedly good. I’m happy that I was “forced” to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Duplicity, Shattered Glass, and The Watchmen. In the first case, I was totally shocked by how much I loved it. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. On the other hand, some of the worst movies I’ve ever endured were because of a plane: Changing Lanes, Monster-in-Law, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Envy, Kicking and Screaming (Ferrell). It’s interesting how it’s possible to remember hating a movie without remembering anything about the movie itself.
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WORLD CUP RESULTS AND STATISTICS (after first set of 16 matches) over 2 years ago
Although I’m an outsider to this event, I have a minor suggestion:
If the tiebreakers do come down to individual vote counts, shouldn’t it be based on percentages of votes cast rather than total votes? That seems far more logical.
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Forties Technicolor over 2 years ago
I’m sure I will be flamed for this, but I don’t understand what’s so great about technicolor. Why be so sentimental about a piece of outmoded technology? This is not meant to be a knock against technicolor films. If today’s technology were available to the directors of the 30s and 40s, with money no object, how many films would have been shot in technicolor? Perhaps only a handful in which a look of artificiality was especially desirable (e.g. Wizard of Oz). Again, historically, technicolor films may have been great achievements in visual style, but they were achievements borne out of limitations. Personally, if I had to choose a film to gobble up with my eyes, I’d choose Zhang Yimou over any technicolor classic. (Flame away.)
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Forties Technicolor over 2 years ago
My basic point is that this “supernatural” look of technicolor is, in many cases, sort of an undesirable side effect. The best use of technicolor is when the director turns this weakness into a strength. But even for a very appealing technicolor film, I still look at it and think to myself, “I wonder what this would have looked like with the use of modern technology.” This is the reason I bring up Zhang Yimou—not to say that he’s better than the old guys, but to point out that technicolor is an inferior piece of technology (for most purposes).
I actually like the analogy with painting, except that I happen to be talking about advances in technology, whereas with painting Joe Arthaus was talking about advances in technique. This brings me to an interesting (tangentially related) question: When discussing greatness in art, do we care more about the greatness of the creator, or the greatness of the finished product? These can be very different because each artist/auteur builds on the work of others, so it’s entirely feasible that “inferior” filmmakers can create superior works.
For example: The first filmmaker to use a certain technique or idea may lay claim to creativity and innovation, but perhaps the fifth filmmaker to do it does it better. Fifty years later, I may watch both of those films, not knowing who was first but knowing which film I think is superior. Should the piece of information that one person copied (or heck, even STOLE) the work of another have any bearing on the artistic merit of the finished products? (Although I fear the possible firestorm, I will dare to mention a certain QT. This thread isn’t so popular, so maybe I can get away with it.)
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Top Ten Films of 2008 over 2 years ago
1. Tropic Thunder
2. Taxi to the Dark Side
3. Vicky Christina Barcelona
4. WALL-E
5. Slumdog Millionaire
6. Gran Torino
7. Hellyboy II: The Golden Army
8. The Dark Knight
9. Iron Man
10. In Bruges
I swear I’m not actually a comic book fanboy. It’s just that 2008 was kind of a crappy year for movies. Only my top 2 or 3 are really “5 star” movies in my book. And where’s the love for Taxi to the Dark Side? Still looking forward to Up the Yangtze, The Counterfeiters, Gomorra, Paranoid Park, and perhaps Pineapple Express.
Special Award for Most Overrated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Worst Movie Seen By Me: Role Models (actually, just the first 20 minutes)
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