heh with time off to study for exams, I thought I'd do something constructive.

anyway, saw Ghost World, Insomnia, North by Northwest, Road to Perdition & the royal tenenbaums.

Ghost world is very good, nothing fresh but quite funny and well made. Steve Buscemi's character is a real hoot.

Hats off to Chris Nolan on his remake of Insomnia, apart from the weaker hollywood ending, I actually prefer this version somewhat. It's a lot more stylish, and although Pacino isnt as good as Skarsgard (though it's his best work in years, probably since Heat), the ensemble does better work IMHO. If only they'd kept the ending, it would have been a classic even if it's a remake.

North by Northwest is entertaining, no doubt about it but I dont think it's a top 100 movie as it is so often listed as. The plot is stupid, some of the dialogue between grant and eva marie saint is particularly cringeworthy and IMHO grnat hams it up a fair bit. Still worth a watch as Hitchcock pulls his strings nicely and makes a pretty good movie out of it.

Royal Tenenbaums is adored by many people but I dont like it, in fact I turned it off after about an hour. It's just not funny and there's not much else to like about it.

Road to Perdition was disappointing, probably because I was expecting way too much. I remember a thread about it on Qmap where it was being priased greatly which built my hopes up along with quite a few positive reviews I'd read. It's downright disappointing though, weak story, hanks was miscast (he doesnt do a bad job by any means but a better suited actor could have made more of it) and the overdosing of sentimentality was hard to take.

But, two things made me watch the entire movie and still like it enought o get the DVD. Firstly, it is hands down the most beautifully crafted visual film I've seen in a while. Every shot is very particular (especially with light and shadow usage), the graphic novel feel is perfectly recreated and the scene in the rain at the end with water dripping off the trenchcoats is fucking awesome. Secondly, jude law was good again but like his turn in AI, the film could have done with more of him.

Next up - deer hunter, chinatown, birthday girl and The Ring. 

Yah nitin, Road to Perdition was very disappointing. The atmosphere of the movie was quite ok but it was so damn predictable...

Hmm, WATCH MORE ASIAN MOVIES! 

like what?

I've been meaning to watch spirited away but havent got around to it. Dont know much about asian stuff, I watch quite a few indian movies though. Most of them suck to be honest, they come up with something decent once or twice a year usually. If anyone's remotely interested the movie Company from 2002 is pretty damn good.

Anyway what's good asian stuff? 

I have exams monday and tuesday but have a six day break before my next one and I intended to catch some more flicks. All recent releases at teh shop look like garbage, so I was probably going to get oldish stuff I havent seen. Here's some I was going to consider and pick from, any recommendations out of these :

jfk
psycho
vertigo
boogie nights
the game
the man who wasnt there
beetlejucie
big lebowski
midnight run
a simple plan
the thing 

Of all those, I've only seen The Game and The Thing. I enjoyed both so I recommend them, but all the other movies you listed seem to be quite famous, so you probably couldn't go wrong by just picking one depending on what mood you're in. 

Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!

Some of the others are cool too, though take JFK with a pinch of salt - I don't rate Oliver Stone very highly. 

Uh, there's lots of good asian stuff, for a very comprehensive list I suggest you ask Bal ;)...

To get you started I can suggest:

Legend of Ginko I and II
Audition (and other movies by Takeshi Miike)
Brother (and other movies by Takeshi Kitano) 

From your list I would recommend:

Big Lebowski
The Game


I would warn you against:

Boogie Nights 

Nekojiro-so

City of God (Cicade de deus)

Surviving the Game (with ICE T)


booyeh! 

I rather enjoyed Mister Vampire myself. Delightfully silly. 

Im a very cinematic & visual person, sometimes if a film has enough cool stuff going on visually I can enjoy it even if the story / characters etc are total shite. So without further ado, my favourites are :

The Matrix
Hard Boiled
The Killer
The Replacement Killers
Aliens SE
Abyss SE
Terminator 2
The Thing
Saving Private Ryan
Gladiator
Memento
Fight Club
Star Wars Trilogy

What usually captures my imagination the most is awesome gunplay scenes, which John Woo does so well in his films. The Warehouse and hospital scenes in hard boiled are simply the best gunplay/action scenes in any movie ever imo. His cinematic stylised way of showing it to the audience is also brilliant, with his trademark slow motion sequences and the sheer damage that all the weapons do to the environment it creates a really powerful driving scene thats totally sweet. Most films have gunplay scenes that dont actually have any impact at all, people just shoot guns at each other and thats it, and bullets just seem to ping off stuff and you never really feel the impact of any of them but Woo (and the wochawski's too) loves to turn the sets to rubble, everything seems to explode and sparks fly and stuff gets ripped up, and all the flying debris combined with the slow motion effect looks spectacular. One shot in hard boiled just sticks in my memory, where the guy jumps through the abandoned car just as someone shoots it with this massive shotgun, the camera pans from a headon perpective across the front of the car as the guy dives through it and you see all the debris and sparks coming after him. I dunno why but that one shot is so frikkin sweet :)

Shit dude this must be my longest post ever. Im off to bed to recover :) 

The Warehouse and hospital scenes in hard boiled are simply the best gunplay/action scenes in any movie ever imo.

Gotta agree. What I liked most about the gunplay in Hard Boiled is, what I think you may also be describing, the realism with which it is treated. The scenes are cool, but as I said to my mate who I was watching the movie with, in Hollywood action flicks the guns are treated more like fashion accessories. Whereas in HB, they are undoubtedly tools for killing people with. It's a great lack of the 'fetishism' that western media tends to apply to guns. 

Can't...not...post...

Here we go, with some faves I've seen of late:

The Holy Mountain. An incredibly fucked-up, nonetheless fun as hell to watch movie. It's written and directed by Alexandro Jodowrosky, who collaborated with my hero Moebius on Le Incal, and later on a series of short stories called Cat's Eye (not to be confused with that Stephen King compilation flick with Drew Barrymore). To be honest, there's not much of a story to it, but it's great fun to just look at.

Versus. Ryuhei Kitamura's live-action anime. This thing is non-stop in your face double-Magnum flesh-eating fury, and it sucks you in from the very beginning.

Dead Or Alive, Dead Or Alive 2, Audition, Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q, Happiness of the Katakuris. Er, anything by Takashi Miike. Don't think for a second that any of these films have much of anything to do with each other (even DOA and DOA2). Miike is quite simply astounding, and NEVER does what you would expect. GO watch these films now, with no preconceptions, and you'll be suprised with what you find.

From Beyond. More correctly "H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond", this is the dusty gem that came right after the Re-Animator and before the other HPL films cooked up by Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna.
This thing is deliciously fucked, full of freaky latex monsters, funky purple lighting, and wicked performances by Jeffrey Combs, Linnea Quigley and one of my fave zombie-killers, Ken Foree.

Battle Royale. Fukusaku's incredibly dark and action-filled movie about Japanese schoolkids being forced to eradicate each other on a deserted island. Some of the scenes are simply amazing (my fave being how in a few minutes a gaggle of best-friend schoolgirls go from being almost too pleasant to wanting to kill each other outright), and if you're into action or black satire, you'll love this one.

Anyways, that's all I'll post for now -- mebbe more later. 

Long and boring. Don't see it. 

nothing good in it all? 

Hulk does punch a dog in the penis. But it's not worth the price of admission. 

fair enough pushplay.

I dont know how many of you collect dvd's but I've bought quite a few recently due to shops having sales from overstocking etc and was wondering if anyone had suggestions to add to my current list which is here : http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=nitin

I've tried to keep a reasonable balance between fun mainstream stuff and other more intelligent stuff. And yes, it's mainly hollywood stuff.

I almost certainly plan on including the following at some stage but what about anything else :

-exorcist
-adaptation
-big lebowski
-edward scissorhands
-full metal jacket
-midnight run
-the thing
-trainspotting 

Maybe...

Die Hard 3
Dark City
This Is Spinaltap
Wallstreet
Boiler Room

That's all I can think of. I have an easier time looking at a list of movies and saying which I like than comming up with title off the top of my head. 

I'll take a look at those, the only one I've seen is dark city which is quite good. 

You saw Die Hard 1 but not 3? You really missed out. 

Hay, I LIKED Hulk! It was a cool drama as well as the standard comic-book thrill-ride. And the ILM stuff was a lot better than most have made it out to be, too. I'd like to see a sequel, with Hulk taking on the Thing, or something cool like dat. 

I think the problem with the movie is that you can't identify with the protagonist. Bruce is so quite and reserved that you don't get a good feel for who he is as a character, and the Hulk barely says Jack-all. When the Hulk is on screen you want to feel his rage and his energy, but it just doesn't come across. And you could walk in after the first 45 minutes of the movie and the movie will still make the same amount of sense. That much of a movie shouldn't be irrelevant. 

He's SUPPOSED to be like that -- all bottled up and repressed. That's part of the Magic Hulk Formula, after all. Besides, I think Eric Bana did a great job with what he'd been handed. And as for the Hulk, he does had some rage moments, but yah Ang Lee chose to show more of Bruce beneath the green skin, humanize him to a greater degree than had been done before. Altho, he does kick a great deal of mutant poodle and helicopter butt in the movie ;) 

You can still delve into the mind of repressed characters. Usually involving metaphors. A couple of stuffed toys don't cut it. 

So then what, make more room for psychoanalyzing Banner and eliminating scenes of Hulk bashing and smashing -- not to mention Jennifer Connelly screentime? C'MON. Go watch Five Easy Pieces or something...