response 39 of 306:

Jan 3 07:07 UTC 2004

IIRC, there are coming soon a Shrek 2 and Scooby 2.

response 41 of 306:

Jan 3 08:04 UTC 2004

"Bandits," 2001, directed by Barry Levinson, starring Bruce Wills, 
Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett.   Very nicely done bank robbery
romance; can't tell you much more without spoiling the development
of the story.  I think this failed commercially because it was 
marketed as a farce, which it's not; I hadn't realized it was a Barry
Levinson project, which means it's much more of a people story
than a caper story.

It's good to see Bruce Willis in a movie where things 
aren't blowing up all the time.  Leslie and I both recommend this one.

response 43 of 306:

Jan 3 19:15 UTC 2004

She might have been at the dance 8^}. I don't have a specific name
recollection at all from that event, not even the Wellesley student who
was my co-organizer there. I do recall dating a Wellesley student - she
invited me to regular dance there - but also don't recall her name. 
Generally, though, if one didn't have a car, which I didn't, it wasn't
practical to find a regular date at Wellesley (unless *she* had a
car.....). Anway, the joke was that Wellesley students preferred law and
med students, not nerdy engineers. 

response 45 of 306:

Jan 5 22:00 UTC 2004

*THAT* is a true gem!

response 49 of 306:

Jan 6 17:49 UTC 2004

Those League roles took the names but to lesser degrees the personas of
the original characters. I watched most of the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde (with Spencer Tracey, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner) last night.
There Mr. Hyde was truer to the book, and actually more "evil" rather than
just a brute. Likewise Capn Nemo (and his craft) departed significantly
from Verne's, and the original Dorian Grey was more evil and was destroyed
by destroying his own portrait, not just by looking at it. Of course, much
of the current audience would not be familiar with the originals except by
hearsay, so these identity mutilations would not be as noticed by many. 
However I did wonder why they did it for this movie. 

response 51 of 306:

Jan 6 19:48 UTC 2004

Some of us are just disturbed at the ease with which we *can* just 
turn our brains off.  ;)

response 53 of 306:

Jan 6 21:22 UTC 2004

Why don't you ask Alan Moore, the man who wrote the comic book?  Did you know
there was a layover from books to film?

And yes other, it sometimes disturbs me too - but then, it also makes grex
far more enjoyable at times.

response 55 of 306:

Jan 7 01:17 UTC 2004

I didn't know it came from a comic book. Should have guessed. Here is part
of a review from Lights Out Films: 

"The problem with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie adaptation,
is that it takes the comic's expertly crafted plot and twists it into
something that the filmmakers thought would be more consumed by the
illiterate masses. Gone are the subtleties of finely crafted literature,
replaced instead with simple-minded action. And not to wave my nerd flag
too much, but the substitution of characters is really what cripples this
movie. They stick in Tom Sawyer and Dorian Gray as substitutes for
perfectly interesting characters. They switch around the roles, taking
Alan Quartermain (a dottering Connery) and casting him as the lead. They
simply neuter the entire intent of the book, completely changing the plot
and character motivations. Connery's Quatermain is no longer a washed up
heroin addict, the invisible man isn't a sexual deviant with a violent
streak. They add a huge, magical car and make Nemo's ship look like a
cruise liner. 

"The number of mistakes at every single turn astounds me. It's a movie
that it isn't faithful to its subject. It's not so much the cast, they'd
actually be good choices given the right script. Director Stephen
Norrington and his screenwriter are really the ones to blame here. His
idea to do Mr. Hyde as a practical effect, and simply paint the Invisible
Man with obvious grease paint (we can even see patches of pink skin -
that's how lazy this makeup is)  will go down as two big mistake in a
movie filled with mistakes. 

"It's not a movie that's so bad it's good, or jaw-droppingly horrible
(like Scooby-Doo). It's just bad. Gods, this movie had such potential as
in the comic form - an epic and clever literary rumination with streaks of
violence and utter coolness. The reports of distress in the creation of
the movie simply come across here. We see a film without direction,
without subtlety.  It's a simple-minded action film that's an insult to
the source material."

Of course, that's about what I said in 1/10 the number of words.

response 57 of 306:

Jan 7 21:39 UTC 2004

I searched for it on the web and found several copies, all unattributed.  I
guess it's entered the public domain.

response 59 of 306:

Jan 10 03:37 UTC 2004

I found *21 Grams* to be an overacted contrived soap opera
of a movie.  The whole mixed up montage of an editing job
was simply to distract us from the fact nobody said anything
worthwhile.  And what a silly story. 

Want to see this done with class and real memorable content?  See
"In the Bedroom".

response 61 of 306:

Jan 10 07:21 UTC 2004

We watched The Hours this evening on DVD. I enjoyed very much the acting
but was at times confused by the temporal shifts. I then watched the
commentary on the story and the production which helped considerably to
straighten things out. The problem was my superficial familiarity with
(and then forgetfulness about) the life and works of Viginia Woolf. I
would recommend that anyone planning on seeing this movie to at least
first read a brief biography of Woolf and even perhaps the Woolf novel,
Mrs.  Dalloway, from which the author of the novel The Hours (Michael
Cunningham) derived his story.