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I agree totally but some of the cinematography was amazing as was the cheezy CGI on the bone sword/whip thing :) And plus it had monica belluci. Seriously though, at least it was more ambituous than most american stuff, not that it pulled it all off well but still.
yeah I saw X2 last saturday and spent the rest of the day wondering how they managed to make it so shit :)
I'm not a huge fan of the first one but still thought it was a decent flick apart from halle berry's dodgy african accent and "You know what happens to toad when they get hit by lightning?" line. The 2nd one has some decent action scenes that really dont go on long enough and a killer start with nightcrawler. Apart from that, there's a decent scene with magneto and a whole lot of crap in between. Why do they try and make comic book movies so serious and dramatic when it's clearly not going to work? Just bring on the fights/effects since that's what it's all about. The first one's better focus and shorter running time also helped I think. Spirited Away (most recent)
The Matrix The Addams Family The Addams Family Values Naked Killer Sex and Zen (I and II) Erotic Ghost Story III (for sheer lunacy - flying dwarf monks on fire, anyone?) Bad Taste Meet the Feebles LOTR Terminator I and II Alien Aliens Others I can't think of right now just finished watching apocalypse now, fucking fantastic. Saw the redux version too, anyone else agree that coppola must have been on drugs re-adding those 50 minutes? I mean it's like he's butchering his own movie into a more boring, overlong which ends up distracting rather than enhancing the original.
"Surf or Fight, soldier". you should get hold of the 'making of' documentary, Hearts Of Darkness - one of the most insightful of its kind.
Brotherhood of the wolf was pretty cool, nice coats, i have to say. I had to watch it in french with subtitles though, as the english dubbing on the DVD was pretty damn awful.
Amelie i enjoyed a great deal, it's so quirky, and has a real feel good quality about it, although you have to 'go along with it' to really like it i feel. Jeunet & Caro's first film, Delicatessen is also good. Seven is really interesting, definately worth checking out, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman at their most watchable, and a great performance as ever by Kevin Spacey. Nitin mentioned loads of good films, including Donnie Darko is very smooth, surreal, and with a great soundtrack Mulholland Drive is just great film-making. It'll leave you trying to figuring it out for ages afterwards, after you reach one of the weirdest 'twists' ever near the end. Surreal stuff, and it's even got some lesbian sex! Lynch is great though, you should probably just watch all his films. oh and Clockwork Orange has made me scared of Beethoven fek, a film thread, now i have to post just to preach about asian cinema...
but first off, on the cinema of my homeland, I slightly agree with nitin for amelie, but its still a very nice film, as for brotherhood of wolves, I really liked it, but it does have many flows, but i love good fights, and the atmosphere... anyways, Jeunet and Gans are 2 of the rare french directors i like... gans made crying freeman too if anyone remembers that, was fun =) hmm, another few nice french movies i can remember... La Haine, Doberman (uh...fun?), Man Bites Dog (hehehhe..., its actually from belgium i think, whatever), city of lost children of course... hm, no others come to mind. anyways, as i was saying, lots of cool stuff in asian cinema, i ramble enough about this on #tf... but i will here too. I love most movies from Takashi Miike (audition, ichi the killer, doa...) Hayao Miyazaki (spirited away, totoro, nausica...) and Wong Kar Wai (in the mood for love, chungking express, fallen angel...) and plenty of other cool asian movies that dont get much promotion in our western civilizations, a few i saw in the last few months that were cool... Dolls Infernal Affairs Versus Friend Chinese Oddyssey 2002 Fulltime Killer Hero Avalon Musa hmm... I better stop before i get carried away... oh, and samurai and kung fu movies rock =) fek, a film thread, now i have to post just to preach about asian cinema...
but first off, on the cinema of my homeland, I slightly agree with nitin for amelie, but its still a very nice film, as for brotherhood of wolves, I really liked it, but it does have many flows, but i love good fights, and the atmosphere... anyways, Jeunet and Gans are 2 of the rare french directors i like... gans made crying freeman too if anyone remembers that, was fun =) hmm, another few nice french movies i can remember... La Haine, Doberman (uh...fun?), Man Bites Dog (hehehhe..., its actually from belgium i think, whatever), city of lost children of course... hm, no others come to mind. anyways, as i was saying, lots of cool stuff in asian cinema, i ramble enough about this on #tf... but i will here too. I love most movies from Takashi Miike (audition, ichi the killer, doa...) Hayao Miyazaki (spirited away, totoro, nausica...) and Wong Kar Wai (in the mood for love, chungking express, fallen angel...) and plenty of other cool asian movies that dont get much promotion in our western civilizations, a few i saw in the last few months that were cool... Dolls Infernal Affairs Versus Friend Chinese Oddyssey 2002 Fulltime Killer Hero Avalon Musa hmm... I better stop before i get carried away... oh, and samurai and kung fu movies rock =) kell,
I dont recall seeing that one on the orignal dvd? There's something about the destruction of the kurtz compound with commentary but I havent heard that yet. Is it by chance on the redux dvd? Also, does the heart of darknes commentary explain coppola's reason(s) for the redux version? starbuck, recommend any other lynch movies? I would like to see some of his other stuff but dont know which ones. I thought Mulholland Drive was pretty good (although to be honest the last half an hour sucked IMHO, but the sheer atmosphere and weirdness of the first two hours made me like it) and Lost Highway blew goats. Blue Velvet and Eraserhead both look interesting but which one is more mulhollandish and which one more lost highwayish? Heart Of Darkness is indeed the novella by Joseph Conrad on which Apocalypse Now is based ( recommended reading ).
Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmaker's Apocalypse is a documentary made some years ago by a group of student filmakers. It consists of interviews with Coppola, his wife Eleanor Coppola and some of the actors interpsersed with footage that Eleanor filmed while the movie was being made. It also has her narrating segements from the diary that she kept during the same period. The diary is available as the book Notes On The Making Of Apocalypse Now. Extract: I heard there are some real cadavers in body bags at the Kurtz Compound set. I asked the propman about it; he said, "The script says 'a pile of burning bodies'; it doesn't say a pile of burning dummies." I got the movie in widescreen plus the documenatry and book in a VHS boxed set years ago. I don't know if they appeared in any other form. Eraserhead and Blue Velvet are two very different films, so its quite hard to compare them really. They are both much better than Lost Highway though.
Eraserhead is much older, 1976 i think, with Blue Velvet coming 10 years later. Eraserhead is also much more surreal, in fact it's pretty insane. It unfolds in a free-form, almost poem-like way, so if you're looking for a more conventional movie format, you might prefer Blue Velvet. Blue velvet is still top of my list for cinematography as well, it perfectly suits a film this intense. So basically, it's down to you really, what you prefer...also i'd recommend Dune, though it is a little long, and wild at heart. Anyone else see 8 1/2?
I just have... and O M G!! I'm still glowing. It's almost like there's this vast repository of great cinema that I've never heard of before nitin: I thought Mulholland Drive was pretty good (although to be honest the last half an hour sucked IMHO, Come on, the end was like, the best part. The begining was the setup; the symbolic palette that paints the masterpiece, which is my end. I disagree. Yes the beginning was the setup, but the ending just didnt work for me. There was a lot of hit and miss stuff there.
weird, i saw x2 and thought it was so much better than the first one (disclaimer: this is coming from comic fanboy with a stack of jim lee x-men stashed in a box). like they didnt have to go through the explanation of the x-men ethos and mutant evolution, etc which i think took alot out of the first movie (every interview i read with brian singer said he agreed). but x2 WAS ridiculous amounts of action, with a very well-adapted story from the comics (weapon-x, lady deathstrike, jean grey dieing, etc). the only thing i didnt really like was the fact that a good portion of the middle of the movie was spent in the blackbird jet with their arch enemie(s) they fought from the previous movie, you know, that almost wiped out the population of new york. also just large amounts of wolverine being the best at what he does :)
fair enough, but IMHO the first one was alot more focused and to the point. X2 seemed overlong and juggling way too much in one movie to be effective, well in my books anyway. I was hoping that they had concentrated more on 1 or 2 of those plotlines so that each one didnt look so rushed (specifically pyro's conversion, iceman's family problems and more importantly jean's dilemma were pretty awfully executed) and also it would have allowed for longer action scenes. When I saw nightcrawler's white house attack, I was hoping for more of the same but the few decent action bits were few and far between. IMHO, the wolverine vs deathstrike scenes was too quick and averagely executed when it could have been a mjor highlight.
apocalypse now is awesome. I've seen "the making of" which was quite interesting too "you know why it was so accurate.. because we WERE in the jungle, AND on drugs!"
also read heart of darkness, and some other joseph conrad stuff. all very good. however the redux version is way crappier. A very good film is Dark City, from 1999. You have to hand it to a movie that comes up with a logical, if screwed up, explanation for someone being chased through halls, then out a door out of the side of a building, by a demon baby who bites his hands while he's hanging from a cliff. requiem for a dream and pi are both by the same director, both very good. also, the thing of course and in the mouth of madness are both good as well. fallen with denzel washington is a nice creepy demon movie. and with x2, I thought it was quite good, however, they neglected to include the best character for a second time - gambit. when most people ask 'where was <name of character that was at one time an x-man>, its usually that they were never an actual student at the acadamy, as is the case for gambit (in fact, he also never 'taught' like the others did/do, it would also be weird as in the comics at least he had a thing with rogue who is all young in the comics). as for juggernaut, i dont know if he'll ever appear, he was with the brotherhood but mainly is a solo character (and god knows even if the effects for him were done well, itd be hard to give such a one dimensional character some depth). probably more likely to see cyclops' brother and pheonix/whatever jean grey reincarnation they come up with.
besides, if you think there was too much going on already, what do you think will happen if they add x number of characters to each film? this is the issue with producing comic books that seems to venture into their respective films. btw, i also hated the fact in x2 they never even made a single allusion to the fact that mystique is (supposedly) nightcrawler's mom. would have been so easy to do. (yes, i AM a fanboy) thanks for clearing that up, I never read the comics I just saw some of the cartoons.
I was just mentioning that in terms of me preferring a character like gambit introduced over iceman. Well, hardly ever anyway. The two of note I've seen in the last few years:
Spirited Away - glad to see this got a few mentions =). Wonderful bonkers anime Alice In Wonderland. Stylish, atmospheric, hilarious in parts....and the train journey through the water is the most beautiful and touching scene I've seen... LOTR: FOTR - the best public ambassador for fantasy there has been. Just a really good fantasy film, pity TTT succumbed to the heinous temptations of Hollywoodism. The whole Moria Mines scene is perhaps the best thing I've seen on screen... Other than that I've a few oldies that are favourites: Alien/s/3 (all great in different ways), Delicatessan (very funky and twisted), Falling Down (delightfully cynical and very accurate), Jacob's Ladder (dark and gripping), Remains Of The Day (great study of British repression, nice music), The Matrix (not as cool as it thought it was but still good), Robocop (just cool in lots of ways), Platoon (it just works)...
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