94 new of 284 responses total.
Ack.. I'm on the fence about Chris Tucker. I half think he's annoying :) But I thought he was great in The Fifth Element. I need to see Rush Hour 2 though, for Jackie's sake. :) ..
After watching the end of the movie mentioned above, I watched the beginning of his "Police Story." Decided not to stay up to watch all of it, but what I saw was fun. (I bugged out just after his girlfriend took off on the motorcycle.)
We watcheD Wild Things on DVD saturday afternoon - matt dillon, kevin bacon, neve (?) campbell, and denise richards. It was marginally interesting, certainly I enjoyed the scenes involving denise richards naked and making out with ms. campbell. =) Yesterday, we saw Planet of the Apes. I enjoyed it. Doesn't really bother me that it was a long way from the original movie. The ending had me a little confused though. How the hell did THAT happen?
Watched "Center Stage" yesterday - cute ballet movie. The guy who played Cooper was a hottie - and it was fun watching Ilia Kulik act.
Wild Things> I saw that back in the theater, and it didn't make a sou of sense. But I agree that it was mildly interesting.
(Sunny- and just how many Jet Li movies have you seen? The vast majority (that I've seen) don't involve sped up action sequences <grumbles about people not being allowed to diss Jet Li> Don't get me wrong, I love Jackie Chan- he's funny, but Jet has that cute little boy look going for him) Haven't seen Rush Hour II yet, but it's on my 'Must See' list (which is very short).
Re #196: Jet Li... cute little boy, eh? Cute little boy who looks like he's about to completely ruin your next few months in a few seconds. :) First time I'd heard of him was with Black Mask. Need to see a lot more of him. Ever see his little "I am Sci-Fi" commercial on the Sci Fi channel? Splitting atoms with his bare fist, wheee!
Re #197- Leslie- most of his movies are in Chinese (and dubbed. :( ) like Black Mask. Let's see, what else does he have... The Defender (also known as Bodyguard From Beijing), Fist of Legend, The Enforcer, Once Upon a Time in China (I, II and III), Meltdown, Swordmaster (I and II) and several more. <grins> I've seen all the ones listed save for Once Upon a Time in China III and Swordmaster I. Oh yeah, he plays a bad guy in Leathal Weapon IV.
Wasn't he alsoo in Romeo Must Die?
Yupyup. ut that was after (?) Black Mask and an American release, so I wasn't counting it. (Own it though...)
Ok - we saw "Billy Elliot" last night, for lack of anything else to watch - it was a great movie - but I felt like I needed a bottle of prozac after it.
PLANET OF THE APES-- What was the point of it? It didnt expand or re-think the original. Mark Wahlberg was a weak lead. The ending was really corny. (note: I saw this while in Bangkok-- the theaters over there have E-Z boy recliners instead of regular seats, that lean all the way back. And they encourage you/expect you to take off your shoes. It was a bit like watching a movie in one's livingroom. And they served booze at the concession stand. You havent had the cineplex movie-going experience until you watch a movie in a theater in a lazy boy recliner in your bare feet sipping a Singapore Sling! Of course it is easy to fall asleep!)
I would think so, Richard! :-) Haven't seen any movies lately. Ah well.
There were a few theaters in Chicago with liquor licences. I don't think any of them had recliners, though.
You know, if I'd gone all the way to Bangkok to see Planet of the Apes, I imagine I'd be disappointed, too. Ween't they showing it more locally, richard?
Quo Vadid in Westland has/had a liquor licence.
Watched Disney's "The Kid" on DVD last night... I found it fairly enjoyable, albiet corny (all non-animated Disney flicks tend to be corny)
Does anyone remember those educational Disney films? I remember watching some Disney film in 6th grade about female adolescent development. It was of no help at all, and the sound was so bad it was like a McDonald's drive through speaker. Very corny too.
I remember the ones with Jiminy Cricket....
We saw SONGCATCHER tonight at the Michigan. The folks who are interested in old songs or folk songs should probably see it; it's holding at the Michigan for most of the next week. What else has Janet McTeer done?
What is it about?
#209> Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land is a classic, though... I should try finding that on tape/dvd.
oh yeah, i remember that one.
resp:211 :: SONGCATCHER is set in the earliest 20th century. Janet McTeer quits her musicology teaching job after she's passed over for a promotion. She goes to stay with her sister, who is a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Appalachia, and she discovers that the local people have a song tradition which has preserved a sizable number of old British Isles ballads. Janet McTeer's character sets out to collect and publish the songs; she encounters a mixed reaction from the community, and she also gets pulled into a number of local dramas involving love and business.
Ken - Janet McTeer was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for "Tumbleweeds".
_Shrek_ was mostly reviewed in Spring 2001 agora, but I finally saw it last night (I had been searching for Castaway, but it isn't being screened locally). _Shrek_ is a computer animation tour-de-fore, but one gets used to that pretty quickly. The story itself is totally conventional although with some contemporary humor. What did disturb me, however, is the stereotyping of beauty and ugliness, which confirms in young viewers minds that anorexic hotties are "beautiful", and dumpy broads are "ugly". Of course, it was nice that the dumpy broad could find true love...but don't forget that even the ogre fell in love with the anorexic hottie. So, to amuse myself further, as well as to consider the implications of the stereotyping, I reviewed the movie in my mind but with the interchange of the anorexic hottie and dumpy broad. Would this have been convincing? It would mean that the height-challenged king would have had to select the dumpy broad over the two other anorexic hotties. Of course, the ogre would have more quickly appreciated the fine points of the dumpy broad - clearly a member of his own genotype. He would probably have kissed her sooner (with the fortunate consequence of shortening the movie), but could he have then found happiness with a permanently anorexic hottie? I don't think the audience would have approved.
I've wondered if this is the etymology of the title in the first place, but I can't seem to bring myself to go see Shrek on that basis of the German "Schrechlich" (spelling), which means "terrible." I suppose the point might be that the Ogre is a Horror, but I dunno, it just feel like the movie reviewing itself in the title, and I can't get that out of my mind.
Leslie and I caught what was probably the last local screening of
"Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" last night. In general it was a disappointment,
because the raw material was there for a movie at least as entertaining
as a middling quality James Bond movie. Angelina Jolie makes a
pretty good action hero, and a lot of the visuals are pretty good.
They did a halfway decent job with the moral ambiguity of Lara's
opportunistic boyfriend Alex West, and we liked Lara's assistants,
the geeky technical expert and the butler.
But the movie needed better writing, and too much of it betrayed
its videogame origins. There was far too much of "Insert Tab A into
Slot B" ("The clock goes here! No, it goes here!!") and too many
of the action scenes, instead of being exciting, went on at great
repetitive length.
Another writing failure: the movie makes a point of delivering
the geeky tech guy to Venice, and then to the final confrontation
in Iceland -- or Siberia, it's never really explained which --
but he has nothing to do at the end of the movie -- nothing
really to do at all after the Illuminati stage the raid on
Lara's mansion.
Top action scene was probably the attack of the Cambodian
stone temple guards, who of course come to life when the
treasure they're guarding is stolen.
I'd love to see a sequel with these characters, written by real
screenwriters, with little to no input from the videogame people.
I should warn people that my reaction is more positive than
Leslie's; she was really bored in the first half of the movie and
thought about walking out.
Re #217: Schrech itself, in German, means terror, fright, horror, etc.
re #217 and 219: And you're both spelling it wrong. "Schrecklich" or "Schreck" are the correct spellings, respectively. I too am less than enthused about seeing the movie because of the German associations of the title (intentional or not).
Any film that ryhmes with "Drek" should be suspect.
Re #229: thanks for correction - I even looked it up myself last night, but someone threw me off today by mispelling it.... 8^}
Actually, it's called Shrek for exactly that reason. :) I did like the fact that when she turned at the end, and was bitching that she wasn't beautiful, he told her that she was. :)
Silvia and I went to see Planet of the Apes this evening. I was a bit hesitant because Mary Remmers so roundly panned it, but it was actually pretty good. The deus ex machina (chimp ex machina) was a bit hokey, but I liked the ending.
What was that ending about? He obviously hadn't gone back in time so it must have been forward. And if forward were they suggesting the apes built Washington D.C. exactly as humans would have had humans been dominant? Almost exactly.
My guess is that the ending is something of a joke.
Which is?
The "back on Earth" part.
Oh, you what the joke itself is? Dunno. Maybe it's another reference to the original?
I think that there must have been a discussion like this somewhere
during the production of "Planet of the Apes".
Director: Hey, what's with this ending, dude? Like how does it
get tied to the rest of the plot? Did he, like go back
in time or way forward?
Producer: Right, the screenwriter is working on that one, right, dude?
Screenwriter: Er, sure, but the movie is due in the theaters in about
two weeks and we're done shooting and I can't seem to make
any of what we've got bridge the plot to that ending.
Producer: Yeah, but it's a great ending. Maybe nobody will ask about it.
I mean, we've given 'em great costumes and makeup, that should
be plenty.
Screenwriter: Plenty. Besides, it's a revisualization, right? Doesn't
that mean the plot isn't our problem?
Director: Whatever. When do I get paid?
I have a different take on it, of course. "Alternate universes" are a common idea in science fiction. In going back through the storm, he didn't end up in the universe he left, but rather an alternate. I may be reading too much into it, but I think the idea is that he should have stayed where he was. He leapt from the frying pan into the fire.
I think the best comment I've seen is that the ending was a deliberate attempt to screw up a sequel.
Your alternate universe would have included the same alpha ape and also the same architects responsible for our universe's national monuments? Nay, I see this as "if we dazzle 'em with costumes the plot won't matter". I'd rather a good plot.
You obviously never read comic books, Mary. In the Superman comics, for example, they had a Bizarro universe that every once in a while the regular Superman would go and visit. It resembled our universe very closely, but with the Bizarro twist. It's in that light, that I interpreted the ending.
I seroupsly thouhgt that AI lacked the influence from Kubrick that it could have had. It was obviously a SPielberg flick. Also, there were several times they could have ended the movie, but didn't. After a while it just seemed to drag on and on and on and on. I liked how the aliens were portrated and I enjoyed the performance by Jude Law. All in all, I wouldn't rate it more than an "okay".
You are right, Dan, I didn't read comic books. And I'm glad you like the movie.
When you get down to it, it's still an illogical ending, but it's the sort of illogical ending that has a long tradition behind it in sci-fi writing. Maybe that's why they thought they could get away with it.
235 i went bald watching AI. somehow, though, i think it's worth suggesting that the aliens at the end weren't aliens at all, but were the future descendants of supersupertoys. i'm not suggesting this just to explain the scholastic british accents on the suckers. the deus ex machina alien/robot says something about the first one, the original, or some business that suggests they're descendant beneficiaries of "the genius of the human race", not visitors.
I thought it was obvious that the "aliens" were extremely advanced robots.
That was the implication I was aware of as well.
several people have told me they thought they were aliens. one person was vehement about it. when first introduced to them, i thought they were aliens, too. i thought AI would've been better if it ended with the camera pulling away from david (was that his name?) underwater, praying to the blue fairy, implicatively forever.
I just got back from the Sneak Preview of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" It was WONDERFUL! Completely wonderful. If you liked Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and/or Dogma, you'll love this one. Picking out and finding the cameos by former actors and people Kevin Smith just likes is fun too. I could have stuck around for "The Others" but I didn't want to see it. They could have picked a better movie to follow.
Leslie and I just got back from "The Closet," at the Michigan Theater for the next few days. Daniel Autiel is a shlub who is about to lose his job; to keep from being fired, he starts to pretend he's gay. Gerard Depardieu is an overly macho office manager, and Thierry Lhermitte starts to manipulate the situation. (Ack, I haven't seen Thierry Lhermitte in a film since "My New Partner," 15 years ago.) arabella and krj give it two thumbs up, and the audience was quite responsive. Should appeal to people who miss the imported French films which used to flow into American theaters. (Like us.)
I took my 5 year old son and 14 year old niece to see "Princess Diaries" yesterday. I thought it was a real nice movie; a Cinderella story comparable to "Pretty Woman". In fact, they have practically the same plot. I won't be giving much away if I tell you "Princess Diaries" is about an unpopular high school girl who finds out by surprise she's the crown princess and heir apparent of a European country. Julie Andrews plays her grandmother, the queen, and does a pretty good job.
I kinda want to see it. My roomie said that ht e book was really good.
I thought it would sorta be like "My Fair Lady", but in this case the pupil becomes the teacher.
Osmosis Jones - D Live action and cartoons try for gross-out humor as Bill Murray's immune system fights an infectious disease. The organ related advertising humor is clever and just about the only risible element in the movie. I paid matinee prices and felt cheated. It's not worth renting either. The only backward compliment is that it isn't seriously offensive.
We almost went to see it, but I didn't really want to, and thankfully American Pie II wasn't sold out. I don't expect to see Osmosis Jones even if it comes to the dollar theater.
Saw "Rush Hour 2" last night. Enjoyable, comparable to the first one (although I think I liked this one better).
I want to go see that movie... maybe one of these days I'll be able to afford it... or I'll wait till it's at the Village Theater...
I got Batman-- the Movie on DVD on sale-- now this isnt the one with those phoney baloney Batmans like Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Val Kilmer .etc. This is the movie with the REAL Batman and Robin..Adam West and Burt Ward! Yes, that campy sixties tv series Batman, same Bat Time same Bat channel, was once so popular that they made a big screen movie from it. Arch supercriminals The Joker (Caesar Romero), The Penguin (Burgess Meridith), Catwoman (Lee Merriweather) and The Riddler (Frank Gorshin) have united to take over the world. They have a new supeweapon that turns humans into dust! Will the caped crusaders be able to save the world yet once again? This movie is one of those hilarious camp, so bad its good, classics. A pure parody of comic books and superheroes. The DVD comes with an alternate track of Adam West and Burt Ward doing commentary. And its in BatWidescreen with a Batdocumentary. No great piece of cinematic art but still a lot of fun
Went and saw "The Fast and the Furious" at the discount theatre. Not bad, although pretty much a car subculture version of "Point Break". Certainly worth my $2.
I am looking forward to having the two TV Movies, Babylon 5: The Gathering and Babylon5:In the Beginning come out on DVD in early December.
Scott, is that the one with the immortal line, "Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb"?
I'm not sure why you're asking me instead of Tim, but yes, the original Batman does have that line.
'cause I can't read response headers. :/ When I scrolled back, the response about the Batman movie was linked (in my mind, at least) with your name instead of Richard's.
Oh man, you should DEFINATLY appologize for that one!! I like Batman the Movie because of the "Shark Repellant" on the utility belt... :)
"The Deep End" is a tight little psychological thriller told in soft tones. I liked it a lot. Highly recommended.
I can't wait for the 5 disk set of "The Godfather" (I can't wait to see what's in it all) - it's coming out in November.
Godfather #1 was more than enough for me.
Is it possible for an intelligent, creative director with a good track record to make an utterly stupid, boring, waste- of-time film? Yes! See John Carpenter's "Ghosts of Mars" for a current example.
A lot of films will be coming out in the next few months. The ones that got written and started when a pending writters strike looked like it was on the horizon. Maybe a few directors and producers we have not heard of before can do a good job with one of them. Finding that 1 in a hundred will be hard.
yo 261 what has john carpenter done to impress you as an intelligent, creative director? except 'people under the stairs', that was a jam back in the diz-ay.
Illoking forward to "Big Trouble", which is coming out on the 21st, with Tim Allen, Omar Epps, Stanley Tucci, Jeanenne Garafollo, and a howt of others. For those of you who are not familiar with the book "Big Trouble", it was the first fiction book written by Dave Barry. The book was highly amusing. :)
Saw "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back". Extremely funny, although a fair amount of the laughs come from jokes referencing the other movies in the "series" (Clerks, Mall Rats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma). However, a lot of other funny stuff as well, including the expected Star Wars parody bit.
Put a whole new meaning on "Good Will Hunting".
Saw "Hannibal" on DVD - Jeeezus!!! The ending just pissed me off - and the alternative ending? Pissed me off more. I wish they had kept to the book - far more intriguing. Although Gary Oldman was awesome.
Megan - thanks for the word on "Big Trouble", as I hadn't heard about the film. I'm about 1/3 way through the book and am enjoying it. Reminds me of B-grade Donald Westlake, which is pretty damn good. Anybody seen "Rat Race", and how would that stand as a Donald Westlake story? Or against its clear film model, "It's a Mad(4) World"?
Re #268: Reviews have not been good, but that doesn't always mean much...I'd be curious to hear from someone who's seen it, too.
267: I'm curious about the DVD alternative ending. Personally, I agree. I think if they had added more of the book into it, like more flashbacks of Hannibal's childhood, The sister, etc...I thought it would do much better. It was okay up until then. The florence stuff was very good.
Let me know if you want the alternate ending - trust me - it was a HUGE let down.
The short versions (in retrospect, not very): Shrek (B) Am I the only person on the earth who thinks Mike Meyers' accent sucks? On the plus side, I'm happy to see that less stylized, more realistic animation is back. CTHD (A) 1. Flying on hidden wires is as much a part of the martial arts genre as nameless villains who can't shoot a defenseless, still target in plain sight from pointblank range is part of the action movie genre. Shrug. 2. The genius of this movie, as far as I'm concerned, lay in how much an integral part of the movie the fights were. Most martial arts movies are like porn movies; the "plot" is a thin facade meant to provide some feeble explanation for the action sequences. Not so here; the fight sequences continue to tell the story. There's plot, characterization, and even *acting* involved as a part of the fights themselves. I'd be hard put to defend this without going into detailed specifics, but as at least an amateur student of the genre, it's the *realism* of the fight sequences that makes this movie a standout. seamlessly integrated into the movie as a whole. Consider a typical fight scene in a Jackie Chan movie. Hero gets beat up badly for a while by enemies who seemingly overmatch him utterly, then somehow finds within himself untapped reserves of something or other, and is then able to ignore his massive injuries and kick ass
Oops, that final paragraph was from an earlier draft of that response, and should be ignored. :) And before I forget, I'd like to mention that American Pie II (B-) wins this year's Cruelty to Musical Instruments award.
Hmmm... that accidental last paragraph would an ideal addition to a Hulk Hogan analysis. ;)
For whomever is reading Big Trouble right now: When you get done, run right out and buy the book "Gas, Sewer, Electric: THe Public Works Trilogy"...it's kind of got the same styling and craziness to it. Author is Matt Ruff....Big Trouble reminded me of it. :)
Which one came first?
#272: I don't think it's at all fair to compare CTHD to Jackie Chan. That's like comparing Copland to Police Academy: Jackie Chan's movie make little pretense of being anything other than silly (with a few exceptions), while CTHD was clearly meant to be a serious drama. (You posted, so you can recant, but you can't tell us to just ignore it. ;} )
I (didn't actually intend to, but I did) threw out Jackie Chan as an example of classic martial arts movie fight scenes. More or less the same can be said about anyone from Bruce Lee to Van Damme to Sho Kosugi to... Martial arts movies have always been about the fights, and the plot is largely secondary. Martial arts movie fights don't usually try to depict what would actually happen if the characters depicted got in a fight, they depict an idealized fight scene from the fight choreographer's imagination. So instead of "How would Jackie Chan's character handle a fight in which he was faced with these particular bad guys", the scene that gets choreographed is "What would be the most entertaining fight scene to watch", followed closely by "Okay, what characters do we have that we can plug into these predefined roles in the fight". The characters' objectives are simple: incapacitate (or kill) your enemies. What each character does at a given moment in time, and whether or not it works, is not determined by the character's skill, but by the dramatic formula of the fight. And so we find that it's almost always the case that the hero gets the crap beat out of him for most of the fight, not because his enemies actually have the skill to do this, but because it's supposedly more dramatic that way. CTHD does all of this quite differently. Not once in the movie does a character, any character, get beat up by someone who shouldn't be able to do so. Instead, in every fight, we can clearly see who is a better fighter than who, and in every case I can think of, that assessment agrees with what you'd think based on is known of the characters in question. Dramatic tension is provided by giving the combatants *different objectives*, other than just beating each other up. Consider the movie's first fight sequence, between Michelle Yeoh's character (whose name I can't remember) and the thief, whose identity we don't know yet. Yeoh's character is quickly seen to be the superior fighter, yet her task is much more difficult, since the thief would clearly rather flee than fight it out. Also, you notice that Yeoh's character seems to be going out of her way not to injure the thief -- almost as if she knows something we don't. :) Still, even given her more difficult objective, she seems to be succeeding (and hence winning the fight), until the intervention of a mysterious third party attacks from concealment, allowing the thief to flee. The *first fight* has more dramatic complexity and truth to the characterization and plot than the last ten martial arts movies I've seen put together, and it just gets better from there.
re:275 The title is "Sewer, Gas, Electric" etc. I would definitely second the recommendation, and supplement it with the author's first book, "Fool on the Hill," which is an immensely engaging modern day fairy tale/fantasy set on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and in the slums of New York City.
Syl: Sewer et al came first by several years. But Dave Berry is enough of his own guy that I'm sure that he wasn't trying to copy it. They both have the same sort of odd style of writing...kind of a skewed look at reality.
Good explanation, Greg.
I must have seen a different movie than everyone else. It SAID Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on the box, and when I put the movie in, it had the right credits and the right actors, but damn if people keep describing a different movie than what I saw. I saw, for instance, a thief who couldn't get away by running and so just started flying. I saw a series of fights that, to me, seemed even more plagued by the Batman Syndrome than anything in Jackie Chan. And, again, since you missed the first analogy, compaing CTHD to Jackie Chan is like comparing Eyes Wide Shut to Ginger Lynn's Night Out... and, in each pair, I know I'd rather watch the entertaining mindless fluff than the haute couture nonsense that thinks way too much of itself. [I just made up "The Batman Syndrome," but I think it's a good term... Batman and Robin would be trapped by some completely inescapable deathtrap, and because of some item that for some unexplained reason Batman had decided to put on his utility belt THAT DAY, they managed to escape AND get the bad guys who had easily overpowered them just fifteen minutes previous.]
#272 - I dinna mind Meyers' accent in Shrek: I thought it a rather decent imitation of Bob Hoskins. More perplexing to me was the unctious french accent given Robin Hood. (I don't know the actor.)
I didn't mind the accents at all.....they kind of made the whole thing more ridiculous and fun. :)
You have several choices: