---<<<< AT THE MOVIES >>>>---

Sep 24 13:35 UTC 1998

This is the movie review item.  It doesn't matter if you saw
it at the theatre, through you VCR, or on television.  If 
you'd care to share your opinion just join in.

response 2 of 146:

Sep 24 19:36 UTC 1998

I finally saw "Fire Walk With Me" the Twin Peaks movie...
My god...I think if you watch that and "Lost Highway" one after the
other your brain will simply explode! 

Very very cool...

response 4 of 146:

Sep 25 04:14 UTC 1998

Seeing FWWM in the theater was one of the times when I really felt awful
about paying $6.50 (or whatever it was) for a ticket.  I thought it was
dreadful.

response 6 of 146:

Sep 25 13:23 UTC 1998

I'd seen and enjoyed the entire Twin Peaks series before seeing FWWM, but I
still couldn't deal.  I thought about it afterward and decided that what I
really liked about Twin Peaks was the humor in it, but there was absolutely
no humor at all in the movie.  I noticed that while David Lynch and Mark
Frost co-produced the series, Lynch did the molvie by himself.  I wonder if
perhaps the humor was all coming from Frost.

response 8 of 146:

Sep 25 22:01 UTC 1998

I saw "Rounders'-- sort of a remake of "The Hustler" with Matt Damon as Paul
Newman and the game being poker instead of pool.  I found it fascinating
because I used to play in a regular weekly poker game for years.  Wish that
movie would've come out a few years back.

Damon is a law school student/poker hustler who loses his life savings on one
hand of poker to a devious Russian, and retires, only to be forced into playing
again months later at the behest of a loser friend in need (Edward Norton)  

So what do you think?  Does Damon get the big rematch with the devious Russian
to win back his mafia savings?  Well if you ever saw the "Hustler" (a *great*
movie btw) you know the answer already.   ***  (three stars)

response 10 of 146:

Sep 26 08:32 UTC 1998

  I saw Woodstock-3 days of Peace and Love tonight and I was very impressed
at the way the crowd was behaving, that is, civilized. The music was awesome.
I enjoyed seeing Ritchie Havens, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Stills Nash and Young,
The Who, and a lot of others. The movie is powerful. The images of people
interacting with the music and one another.
  Martin Scorsese was an assistant director, and editor of the film, and I
think he did an excellent job of editing. This is a must see.
(Of course, I recorded it.)

response 12 of 146:

Sep 26 16:39 UTC 1998

  The big documentary-- It lasted 4 hours.

response 14 of 146:

Sep 27 06:54 UTC 1998

  It rocked. I loved it, and I will save it to show to my nephews and 
children when I have them. I think every person should see Woodstock, just
to show them that 3 million or so people can gather in one place for 3 days
and have a great time. Schindler's List is another of those films, to show
them how 1 man can make a difference, and that they should strive to be that
one man or woman.

response 16 of 146:

Sep 27 12:30 UTC 1998

I saw 'The Fifth Element' on Friday.  It is one of the few movies that i can
watch more than once.  I really enjoyed it.

response 18 of 146:

Sep 27 16:05 UTC 1998

Letterman had a top 10 list about Things Learned From Woodstock. The only two
I can remember are "Not everyone looks good naked" and "If you have three days
to fill, you can probably find room for Sha Na Na".
 
I actually have not seen "Schindler's List". And I'm not sure if I want to.
 
Before you all start raiding my apartment, looking for armbands and Zyklon,
let me explain.
 
At the time "Schindler's List" came out, one of my film genres classes covered
"Evil". While, for the most part it covered works of fiction ("Boyz N The
Hood", "Apocalypse Now") we had an especially indepth examination of "Shoah".
 
"Shoah" is a documentary by Claude Lanzmann, in which he speaks to Holocaust
survivors (one of whom spared his own life by acting in complicity with the
Nazis), unrepentant former Nazis, and the people of the towns with
concentration camps, who knew what was going on, but chose not to do anything
about it.
 
When I was through with this unit, although I was heartened to know the human
spirit could survive such atrocities, it also profoundly saddened me to
realize that this same human spirit could do these things in the first place,
and I really didn't want to see anything more about the Holocaust for a while
after that.

And now, I think the film I would go back to is still "Shoah", rather than
"Schindler's List". I'm not saying that Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes,
et al aren't capable of telling their story well. But when I watch a
recreation like this, no matter how painstakingly researched, no matter how
sincere everyone involved is, I still know fully well that this is a work of
art. It's a construction. 
 
No matter how well they tell someone else's story, it's still exactly that:
someone else's story. And that can't touch me nearly as much as someone, in
his own words, telling me what's in his heart.

(For example, a few of the interviews are in English, most are German, and
there's some more in other languages. When I had to read subtitles to
understand the interviews, I didn't feel the impact as strongly as I did for
the English and German scenes. Simply knowing there was another layer
distancing me and the people on the screen was enough to remove me.)

response 20 of 146:

Oct 2 02:15 UTC 1998

Agora 15 <-> Cinema 23

response 22 of 146:

Oct 6 21:08 UTC 1998

"What Dreams May Come" is an extraordinary movie.  Not all scenes worked. 
The philosophy is right out of a hemp haze.  But it takes so many risks it
is forgiven the lapses.  See it for the sets, the cinematography, the
computer generated art, and the opening scenes of Hell. 

response 24 of 146:

Oct 9 16:36 UTC 1998

Actually, I did mostly see What Dreams May Come for the backgrounds, and that
aspect I give an A+ to.