I rewatched Magnolia for the first time in a few years. I always liked this movie but had a greated appreciation this latest time around. The narrative, characterization and the soundtrack are just amazing. PSH is a great actor with so much range. Melora Walters is excellent. Tom Cruise, despite all his recent insane antics, does an awesome job. For the first time in his career, mind you Collateral came later, he isn't being Tom Cruise. He IS Frank TJ Mackey. Julianne Moore does her best work. PTA is one of the best filmmakers of his generation. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! If interested in other PTA films...check Hard Eight, Boogie Nights and Punch Drunk Love. great stuff.

Barbarosa ( Schepisi, 1982, Grade: A-)

This gets my vote as one of the best westerns, AND the best fairy tale, the best Willie Nelson and Gary Busey performances, the best Billy D. Wittliff script, the best western unreleased on DVD, etc. I love everything about this film. It's one of the most realistic, hilarious, naturalistic and original films ever made. The only westerns I will CATEGORICALLY say are better are Little Big Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Yeah, that means it's up there with The Wild Bunch, Once Upon A Time in the West, Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven, The Big Country, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, etc. The only westerns I can think of which are almost as underrated are One-Eyed Jacks and The Outlaw Josey Wales. Grade: A- (maybe a little low)

I have seen both "Lord of War" and "Sin City" recently and they were both excellent movies.

Lord of War is one of Cage's better performances in a while and I really like the plot of the movie. There were a couple things that needed to be either expanded upon or removed (Romance seems to be straight out of a box) but other than that it is interesting. 75/100


"Sin City" is insane... Great... 80/100

"Dancer in the Dark" and "Amores Perros" both get a 10/10 in my book. Excellent must-see films.

I'm greatly anticipating "Capote". I met PSH in London over the summer. Interesting guy (Hoffman) and simply brilliant actor. It's getting rave reviews. Strangely enough, my second most anticipated was "Elizabethtown" but I heard it was just dreadful, so we'll see...

I saw Finding Neverland and thought the acting was really good...it's a good movie, but it's definitely for the family friendly set...

I am looking forward to Elizabethtown, despite any reviews. I have heard Cameron has trimmed it down and it's a lot tighter than what people have seen in Toronto. I can't wait for it.

quote:

Originally posted by EccentricSam:
"Dancer in the Dark" and "Amores Perros" both get a 10/10 in my book. Excellent must-see films.

I'm greatly anticipating "Capote". I met PSH in London over the summer. Interesting guy (Hoffman) and simply brilliant actor. It's getting rave reviews. Strangely enough, my second most anticipated was "Elizabethtown" but I heard it was just dreadful, so we'll see...

Man, Lars von Trier needs to eat a few more happy meals! I enjoy his films, but I don't think I have ever laughed during one of them. It's always an emotional event to sit through one of his films.

Besides seeing Howl's Moving Castle (breathtakingly brilliant and visually dazzling) in the theater, I've been catching up with some recently missed films via DVDs.

Almadovar's All about my Mother is a real keeper. I'd previously seen his chinese-puzzle of a film Bad Education and his emotionally wrenching and profoundly shocking Talk to her. I really dig his work and his vision of cinema. Homaga Garcia Lorca
married to homage to the great Fellini.

Another exciting discovery was Fassbinder's Ali:Fear eats the Soul. A perfect gem of a film, flawless performances and a complex script that is as relevant today as when it was filmed. Highly recommended. Ali was filmed in 16 days and "packaged" from start to finish in one month.
The opening scene says it all: outsider/other vs
"the group". The outsider here keeps shifting somewhat as does the outsider. Long shots, stunning frozen action that often has a dreamlike/surrealistic quality, and a superlative scene shot in an open-air restaurant or beer-garden that every student of film should study. Get the Criterion Edition and definitely watch the second disc, chock full of wonderful interviews and insights.

In the Mood for Love: exquisite, timeless, film as High Art--which I've just watched as preparation for seeing 2046. Lighting, costume, camera movement and angels all become art forms, supplementing the script, direction and performances. The essense of the film for me is longing, unrequited longing. A painful emotion, especially for a MALE (MYSELF)==the tension builds and builds but it never culminates. It doesn't even quite implode. It just hangs there, colouring everything. An interesting factoid (that may help to explain some viewer's difficulty with the ending): the director was reshooting and reediting the ending TWO WEEKS!!! before it was to be shown at Cannes.
To qet the film finished he may have slightly compromized on the ending, or combined two scripts
that he'd been been unable to come to a final decision about. Most likely possibility: a new ending got grafted over an old one, and parts of the original ending remain in the final product.
I think that I also read somewhere that he was working without much of a script (dialogue) but I could be totally wrong about that.

Watched the documentary Rock School, which was tedious at times, but overall a nice little film. The festival experience at the end makes the redundancy of some of the earlier scenes forgivable, and begins to show the program in a more positive light overall. Worth a watch.

Also saw Dario Argento's most recent film, The Card-Player, from 2004. The film retains much of the usual Argento style, and has a nice, topical storyline going for it. However, some of the dialogue is way too expository, and the love story aspect was very distracting and unneccesary. The final scene and line of dialogue felt totally irrelevant to me as well. The classic "giallo" horror elements were great though, and some scenes were excellent, especially the fantastic angle of the final death in the film, which was a great payoff!

Saw the remade 'The Longest Yard' overall a decent flick. Nothing special and stayed pretty honest to the original script less the blatant racism of the first one. 60/100

Scarface- Creepy movie that amazed me with the great acting of Al Pacino. Reminds me a lot of GTA vice city! haha

I'll give it 8.5 out of 10

Longest Yard- The first 10 minutes were very funny but rest was ok. Kinda boring at times which is surprising because I ususally always like Adam Sandler movies or sports movies!

I'll give it 5 out of 10

Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005, Grade: B)

This film got dissed for being underdramatic and for Orlando Bloom's alleged underwhelming performance. I have to disagree on both counts. The film walks a fine line between a serious drama with commentary about our current situations and an epic action adventure. Is it too politically correct by trying to be for all sides? I don't think so. That's called diplomacy. The world would be a much better place if diplomacy were utilized more than saber-rattling. The battle scenes deliver the goods in a sort of The War Lord by-way-of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Lord of the Rings-feel. Bloom gives what I think is his best performance.

Dead and Breakfast was an amusing little indie horror comedy. Obviously going for the Shaun Of The Dead market, this film showed lots of promise for the director in the future. Some of the comedy was a tad juvenile, but most of it was solid and the gore was top notch! Rent it!

It's All Gone Pete Tong
Very well made movie, great acting performances, excellent club scenes, poignant comedy, sad realities, overall:a great watch. A vast improvement over the directors previous film, Fubar.

Casshern, at least I think that was the name, but as I bailed on the movie with likely very little time left in it, my memory about it is already clouded! Adaptation of a Japanese manga apparantly, the film started with some promise, but began to get on my nerves increasingly as whole scenes were direct rip-offs of other films, and they failed to adequately explain their plot. I turned it off at an hour and twenty minutes.

Finally watched The Ladykillers. Entertaining film every time Tom Hanks is NOT on the screen! Horrible miscasting, his attempt to fit into the role dragged the rest of the film down along with him, not necessarily his fault, just bad, bad casting. The rest of the movie had lots of the wit I expect from the Coen brothers, but overall my least favourite film of theirs.

I felt some of the same problems with Lemony Snickets A Series Of Unfortunate Events, concerning Jim Carrey's performance. He was trying too hard to fit into the role, and chewed up the scenery far too much in a film with great performances by Meryl Streep and Billy Connolly. I felt some of the deleted stuff with Carrey was superior to his scenes kept in the film! Better than I'd expected though in the end.

Oldboy- If you don't mind reading subtitles and a few kind of gross scenes, it's one of the best movies i've seen in a long time

Wallace & Gromit- pretty funny, a lot of smug British humor

Here are a couple of movies I saw over the weekend:

Doom- I saw it only out of curiosity because I used to play it on the pc and recently played it on the Xbox. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it still was... well bad!

I'll give it 5 out of 10

I Heart Huckabees- Here are some of the things I said to myself while watching the movie:

"Wow I hope I like this movie, it's got some good actors in it (Dustin Hoffman, Mark Wahlberg)"

"Ummmmm wat the hell is going on"

"Haha that was kind of funny, sort of"

"Wow that was gross"

"I have no idea wat the hell is goin on!"

I'll give it 4 out of 10

I saw "Frog-g-g" on dvd last night. Large mutuant frog seeks to reproduce with human women. Kristi Russell carries the film as the sexy EPA investigator. For a campy horror grade-b comedy- 2.3 ribbits out of 5.

I watched Birth over the weekend and was disappointed. I was excited because I absolutely loved Sexy Beast, but I felt it was just a spookier version of one of my fav's from my youth Chances Are. You could see the "twist" coming almost the whole movie. Oh well.

Hi

I am an independent filmmaker and needed to create a decent soundtrack within 2 weeks time. Has anyone used the Smartsound Sonicfire Pro for their productions? Is it as good as what's presented here? Seems to good to be true. Comments appreciated

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Thanks
Supertronik

Jarhead-I heard a lot of mixed reviews about it, (some good, some bad, none in the middle) and I think it was pretty good. I went into it thinking it would be kinda boring and not much would happen, but it definitely exceeded my expectations. Jake Gyllenhaal was pretty good in it and, not surprisingly, Jamie Foxx had a pretty strong performance.

Hootenanny Hoot! (Gene Nelson, 1963, Grade: C)

This is one of the dozens of low-budget films made in the late '50s/early '60s where the musical performers took precedence over the "plot and characters". This film doesn't really have a plot, but TV director Peter Breck is still having problems with his producer ex-wife Ruta Lee. He stumbles across a touring hootenanny show and gets inspired to show them on TV. The acting and dialogue are ludicrous, but at least all the performers are in on the joke.

What makes this film worth watching is the fact that some of the music is a hoot. (I know I give this a legit C, but the music, all by itself, is worth a legit B.) I don't know if you've ever been to a hootenanny, but it's basically a collection of folk/country performers and some dancers who try to get the crowd involved in audience participation. The standout moments include Johnny Cash singing "Frankie and Johnny", Joe and Eddie kickin' out the jams on the gospel scorcher "There's a Meeting Here Tonight", Judy Henske doing a powerful "Wade in the Water", and George Hamilton IV doing a cool Ricky Nelson impression on his hit "Abilene". Also along for the ride are Sheb Wooley, the Brothers Four, Cathie Taylor, Chris Crosby and the Gateway Trio.

Morvern Callar
Samantha Morton stars as a young woman whose boyfriend commits suicide. A very visual film with not much dialogue. It's hard to understand Morvern. (Morton's character) The director Lynne Ramsay doesn't really try to explain Morvern. Because Ramsay isn't trying to win an audience over the film works. I give it 3 out of 4 stars.

Persona
This Ingrid Bergman film was outstanding. A nurse and a patient go out to live in a summer cottage by themselves. The patient is a famous actress played by Liv Ullman who one day just stopped talking. The nurse spends the days talking about herself to her patient. The film reminded me of Mulholland Dr. in its fusion of two characters and its questioning of reality. I give it 3.5/4.