Movie Tab II

OCD anyone?

And do explain the direction issues with 300.

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http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

OCD? Sorry, don't know what you mean.

300 was poorly directed, as in, when they would shoot a scene, the director would watch it through his view finder and yell "that's the one" when, it wasn't the one. Leonidas was good, for the most part, but a couple of his scenes were stilted and corny, and should have been done again, with pokes and prods from the director on how to make the scene better.

"But, it's an action fantasy film, so why worry about the acting?"

Because I saw LotR, and this thing didn't come close to the magnificence of those films, at all. Visually stunning, and as I said, I was entertained, but...I mean, come on, you were buying some of that dialogue?

"Never retreat, never surrender" x5

Terrible, trite, silly. But, just in places. The film did a lot right, too, hence my 3 boxes of popcorn. Some of the scenes were just sick, and some were breathtakingly beautiful. But the film is flawed, for the reasons I mentioned.

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Why would you blame the director for "trite" dialog? From what I understand, the film is almost a literal adaptation of the comic. Maybe this will help explain the "over the top" bits of macho bs:
"Like the comic book, the adaptation also used the character Dilios as a narrator. Snyder used this narrative technique to show the audience that the surreal "Frank Miller world" of 300 was related from a subjective perspective. By utilizing Dilios' gift of storytelling, Snyder is able to introduce fantasy elements into the film, explaining that "Dilios is a guy who knows how not to wreck a good story with truth." When you take that into consideration, you can view the film as Spartan propaganda...it's a recount of a story told in hopes of creating additional motivation for troops facing battle...

And OCD is obsessive compulsive disorder...you must've seen CoM a dozen times by now...not very healthy...

I know what OCD is silly, wasn't sure what the reference was to! Yeah, I'm sick, deal with it.

The dialog comment was separate from my director issues, and I just threw that on there as an aside. The macho BS didn't really get to me as much as some of the wooden delivery. They should have tried the scene again, in a few places. I would like to visit The Oracle, though...

Lol...yeah, that scene was beautiful...all things considered, I'd say Snyder did a pretty spectacular job of it...if there are any flaws to 300, it's in the original material...

On the other hand, I may have been distracted by all the oiled, chizzled (how do you spell that?) male bodies...

Babel (2006 - Alejandro González Iñárritu)

I liked it a lot. Subtle yet sharp critique of the Western World in general and the USA in particular. And other good stuff too of course....

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Too bad they chose to cast Pitt though...I actually fast forwarded scenes with him...terrible overacting...

Didn't they even ask her why she went alone without backup? I believe that was one of my own gripes I had myself actually. I only have seen it a couple times so fuzzy on them right now. I personally always thought it to be over rated along with her acting in that one. A decent film but not spectacular ground breaking stuff by any means.

I disagree. I'm absolutely no fan of Pitt but this one I think he pulled off nicely.

You jest surely...

I like Pitt. Army of the 12 Monkeys, man!

And...stop calling Piddz Shirley.

Images (Robert Altman) and Deja Vu.

I'll need to see Images again. I started really getting into it after a little while. One of the things I liked especially was all the really meandering (almost hypnotic) shots which would take a really long time focusing on one odd detail and then eventually find some key counterweight (often way off in the distance) that seemed to come from nowhere. I couldn't really follow it all that well. Partly because it's a deliberately hard to follow movie, partly because I kept getting interrupted while watching it, and partly because the audio levels vary so much but I had to watch it with the sound way down because it was late at night.

Deja Vu was decent, actually. Seemingly openended (which is a must for Science Fiction movies of this sort), or at least it left me with a few key questions that I haven't fully be able to work out yet. I enjoyed it and would certainly be willing to watch it again some time.

Glad you liked Images, Lines. I also really liked the way the film was shot. What did you think of the bizarre minimalist score by John Williams? Quite different for him.

Unfortunately I actually had a hard time appreciating the score. Because I was already having trouble following the basic drift of the dialog and narration, I was basically trying my hardest to ignore [with limited success] any noises that would obstruct said dialog and narration. I wouldn't be surprised if I dug the music on reviewing the movie under better circumstances though, I really liked what Williams did for The Long Goodbye.

This stuff is certainly...odd. Not your usual Williams, by any stretch. Really, I would NEVER have listed him as a possibility while I watched the film, and, when i saw his name roll, I did a triple take.

It certainly seemed an excellent fit for the jarring and unpredictable mood changes of the film, if nothing else.

Spiderman 3

The U.S. VS. John Lennon - a great documentary about the attempted deportation of some guy named John Winston Ono Lennon, whoever he was. LOL. But seriously, it was a great film, very entertaining, and I loved seeing the footage of John and Yoko together. It was very clear that they were over the moon for each other, and it was sweet.

The Queen (2006) 3/5

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OCD anyone?

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A Mighty Wind

Only turned up to 5-n-a-half. Improvised beige.

(Liked the colostomy-sales-song at the end tho)

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