24 frames per second: new movie thread

[Mike24]

this thread needs more low-brow.  i'm leaving for WALL-E right now, and will be back with a full report (sans spoilers of course).

in what world is pixar low-brow?

well, relative the the previous page.

I thought WALL-E was pretty good.  sometimes it was a little heavy on the cutsey-wutsey and not heavy enough on the funny but still charming enough to pull it off.  The lack of dialogue was kinda refreshing at the beginning and then i found myself really not giving a shit about the whole, moralizing, humanity sub-plot.

did anyone other than greg and i see kung-fu panda?  it was great, people!

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

Wall-E is fucking excellent, really.  I'd probably place it just after The Incredibles and Ratatouille in my Pixar list.

[jebreject]

what the fuck is wall-e

i know wall-e

i tried watching a things tonight but didnt go we wll

[edison]

I have a Godzilla-sized boner for Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, which opens in Chicago this weekend and looks to be the culmination of his work thus far. I'm going to try to see it at least three or four times this weekend because he is my favorite thing in the universe.

Pretty much agreed on all counts (OK, he's not my favorite thing in the universe, but Careful might be), except the movie's not out here, so I'm looking forward to your report.

[rockmeamadeus]

I saw Kung Fu Panda!!! It was great!!! Jack Black was perfect in that role, and when Jackie Chan showed up I cracked the hell up. It was genuinely funny, and quite enjoyable.

[elpollodiablo]

Albert Brooks is the motherfucking man

[hannah]

Albert Brooks is the motherfucking man

Which film did you watch? I love 'im

[elpollodiablo]

I'm just saying in general and in response to milly's invectives, though my go-to mental image of him will always be from Taxi Driver

[hannah]

Whoa, I totally missed milly's rants. Boo! Long live Real Life and Lost in America!

[elpollodiablo]

Dude did you see Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World? Pretty bad.

[hannah]

I didn't, but I'm going to give it a chance at some point. Nothing can be as rotten as The Muse.

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah I think I saw about ten minutes of that on Comedy Central once

[auto-da-fey]

I'm kind of in awe in that Gregg Araki followed up Mysterious Skin with a movie whose title credit reads as  without the glasses, but he did. And it's pretty awful at first, until you realize--or maybe rationalize--that it's a rare stoner film that actually seems to have been made by a truly stoned cast and crew--while it's obvious the people behind, say, half Baked or harold & Kumar know their way around a bong, those films were made with at least a modicum of clarity and professionalism; Smiley Face, as it's also known, runs on randomly, with scenes dragged out well past the edit-point, but somehow it all hangs together and turns out to be fun. Anna Faris definitely helps--I'd never really liked her before, but she won me over here.

I'm probably the only person in the universe to watch this without smoking up, though. I'm certain it benefits from the firing of a spliff.

[coldforge]

I couldn't make it through. I found it so unremittingly painful; I hated everybody in it because of what they were doing to me.

[auto-da-fey]

Then you missed the scene--not just uninspired, but perhaps literally anti-inspired--where she meets a factory boss named herbert Spencer while she's carrying the original Communist Manifesto. Which is to say, I don't disagree with that post, really; as I think I've probably noted before, there sees to be an element of masochism in some of my film preferences, and Smiley Face caters to that quite well. So maybe my statement of its being "fun" should be qualified. Though I'm still pretty convinced it would be fun while high.

[coldforge]

actually, you know what? I DID make it through. I had forgotten that after turning it off in disgust I later finished the thing out of spite. It did not redeem itself in my eyes.

[rockmeamadeus]

it's NOT fun high, man, it's just stupid and confusing.

[Greg Nog]

I tried watching Smiley Face when I was high, but I found myself seriously saddened and worried about the girl losing her bed, and I turned it off in a panic.  I have not tried watching it again.

Anyway, I saw Wall-E last night, and my take on it was almost exactly like Mike24's, above.  My favorite parts were really just Wall-E's simple routines at the beginning of the movie, sorting the little treasures he finds, hanging out with a cockroach, watching TV, sunning himself.  Between Wall-E, I Am Legend, and Cast Away, I think what I've learned is that I love watching the daily routines of loners.

[dumbfish]

Well, come on over, then. Bring your camera.

[Greg Nog]

Oh, sweet!  Now he's eating Mini-Wheats!  This is awesome!

[girl]

Dude did you see Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World? Pretty bad.

I like that one, too. The humor in it is more subtle, and mostly involves Brooks being completely oblivious to what's going on around him. Also, I really love the line where he's telling his daughter about the snow globe he bought her of the Taj Mahal. I'm just glad I'm not the only one who likes him here. Also, I really love Defending Your Life and he's just great in Broadcast News.

[guanajuato]

I didn't, but I'm going to give it a chance at some point. Nothing can be as rotten as The Muse.

nothing

[jebreject]

I watched You May Need a Murderer tonight, that Low documentary. I'd downloaded it when someone (I think Nick Ink but I'm not sure) posted it a while ago, but I hate watching things on the computer, so I'd never gotten around to it until tonight, when Frank brought over the DVD. Anyway, it was a quiet, beautiful thing. And I don't really know what else to say other than that. Mimi seems to have a great sadness in her eyes.

[guanajuato]

I watched You May Need a Murderer tonight, that Low documentary. I'd downloaded it when someone (I think Nick Ink but I'm not sure) posted it a while ago, but I hate watching things on the computer, so I'd never gotten around to it until tonight, when Frank brought over the DVD. Anyway, it was a quiet, beautiful thing. And I don't really know what else to say other than that. Mimi seems to have a great sadness in her eyes.

if you have a dvd burner and your dvd player plays dvd-rw's you can use convertxtodvd to turn those downloaded avi's into playable dvds. i use the same dvd-rw over and over.

[jebreject]

no, yeah, i do that all the time, and because of the dvd player i have, i don't need to do any kind of converting, either. it's how i watch bsg, or weeds, or whatever. but the low docu was some weird format, and anyway the dvd has like an extra half-hour of footage.