MOVIES MOVIES MOVIES! ACK!

[ellaguru]

Blood Simple was a movie that really stuck the landing for me. Throughout watching it, I thought it was fine but not stellar, but the craziness of the final scene - and especially that nobody on the screen has any idea what's going on or why - put it over the top into the great little movie category.

I *think* that was my first Cohen Brothers, although it might have been Barton Fink.

[peacocks]

I also thought it was beautiful and interesting to look at. The final scene is excellent.

[davy]

I've lately been thinking about revisiting the Star Wars prequels, which I think I've only seen once.  I think I'm gonna skip I altogether, and watch Episode II tonight.  I remember hating it (though not with the unreal loathing I had for Episode I), but finding III surprisingly good.

I didn't mind I half as much as most people did, but I remember being just bored fucking stiff with II.

I remember it having higher highs and lower lows than Ep. I.

III is easily the best of them, but gahhhh, I dunno if I can go back.

In related news, I've just started watching the original trilogy with Finn (his first time). We'll finish A New Hope tonight 

[peacocks]

In orchestra we are playing a Tribute to John Williams and the Star Wars theme is the first section. The first run through last night revealed that the entire horn section have had it memorized for quite some time. At one point the conductor said to one french horn "___ there's not a crescendo there, pull it back a bit" and the french horn said "Watch the movie, there's a crescendo lolololololol." neeeerrrrrdddssssss.

[Greg Nog]

In related news, I've just started watching the original trilogy with Finn (his first time). We'll finish A New Hope tonight

Neat!

I watched III last night, and enjoyed it much much more than II.  This recent rewatching was somewhat spurred on by this post about "The Machete Order" -- IV, V, II, III, VI -- but I'm now kind of wondering if II is even a necessary part of that.  Maybe just IV, V, III, VI. 

[davy]

Hmmm...I like that. I'm gonna do it. Perks of parenting.

YOU'LL WATCH THEM IN THE ORDER I TELL YOU TO WATCH THEM.

AND NO, YOU CAN'T WATCH THAT ONE AT ALL.

[jebreject]

So it looks like Topher Grace took the machete order and machete-d it further, editing the three prequel films into one single 85 minute movie that is, according to film blogger Peter Sciretta, "probably the best possible edit of the Star Wars prequels given the footage released and available."

http://www.slashfilm.com/topher-grace-edited-star-wars-prequels-85minute-movie/

[Greg Nog]

Looking forward to Disney's fresh youth-centered spin on the Burroughs classic!

[Trousers and Pat]

oh man
*I mean, yesss

[auto-da-fey]

holy shit, has anyone else seen We Need to Talk About Kevin? I'm too inebriated to give a substantive post on it right now, but it was the most astonishingly anti-natal film since Isabelle Adjani and that alien in Possession thirty years ago. Swinton remains an unstoppable force, and if there were an Oscar for casting, whoever found those two actors playing Kevin should win it in spades. The first 15 minutes play in a state of delirium, and then the thing never really settles down into anything resembling conventional narrative--the most impressionistic mainstream film this side of Tree of Life.

I dunno, upon further reflection I may devcelop critiques, but having just seen it followed by dinner drinks and maudlin discussion about family trauma, I think it was pretty fucking amazing.

edit: not recommended for parents, any more than Blue Valentine is for peeps in new reltionships.

[Babar]

Oh yeah, WNtTAK is fantastic. That. Fucking. Kid. I love him! Sure, I recommend it for parents. The kid is so insanely evil that I don't think it will hit too close to home for any of the parents here, if anything it will make them appreciate their own kids more. Appreciate the fact that their own kids are not spawns of pure evil in a material world.

[G.C.R]

the intermittent Jacques Tourneur binge I've been on this year keeps on giving. I saw one of his westerns, Stars in My Crown, the other night. Like Canyon Passage, which I raved about a little while ago, it's a quiet film that probably sounds fairly dull on paper: in this one the narrator relates memories of his childhood growing up in a small western town. In some ways only the setting and themes make it a Western - there's not a single gun fired, from memory, and while there are heroes in it I guess, there is little heroism.
Mostly the central child (played by a ten-year-old Dean Stockwell) observes his adoptive father, a preacher, do the work of being a good man that the town relies on. Basically it is a town of good people, but sometimes kids get typhoid; sometimes freed slaves own land that local capitalists want to mine and said capitalists start setting fire to crosses; sometimes doctors don't have respect for church work; sometimes the preacher's best friend is the best, kindest man but he just won't come to church. It's a film about community and about the work of being a good christian - and how that's a hard task when you're dealing with the real, human flaws and fallibilities of yourself and the people around you.
It's really pretty great.

[auto-da-fey]

Sure, I recommend it for parents. The kid is so insanely evil that I don't think it will hit too close to home for any of the parents here, if anything it will make them appreciate their own kids more. Appreciate the fact that their own kids are not spawns of pure evil in a material world.

fair enough; I was thinking more recent parents of newborns. and I mean, obviously anyone who's created a person can withstand a movie, but I can't help thinking it would probably be more unsettling under those circumstances than, say, to a lifelong nonbreeder--not necessarily the evil part so much as the ambivalence toward one's offspring that's largely unspeakable within our culture.

in any case, a real doozy. M's main critique was that it privatized the development of a sociopathic personality by largely cutting it off from its larger social context. I didn't share that complaint (it certainly gestured toward the isolation and sterility of the affluent suburb), but I didn't have much ground to stand on in refuting it because that was basically my exact charge against Margin Call, which we saw recently and I thought entirely--and problematically--divorced its story from political economy, reducing it to a pointless procedural thriller about a bunch of uninteresting assholes.

anyway, Grace, I am pretty jealous about the Tourneur binge.

[elpollodiablo]

We also loved We Need to Talk About Kevin. I don't really go for the psychological thrillers so much, but the cast is incredible.

[auto-da-fey]

anyone know anything about this Mumia documentary?

prob gonna go tonight on grounds of a) I'm an I-House member so it's free, and b) local interest, but still kind of on the fence, perhaps on account of the suspiciously "fair and balanced" approach that finds space for an asshole like David Horowitz (to be fair, I also don't give a fuck what Ed Asner or Danny Glover have to say).

[auto-da-fey]

okay, a second ago that link wasn't working. maybe this:

[auto-da-fey]

well, I went. it's pretty good, if weirdly uncritical toward the Philly police and problematically selective in its narrativization of 1970s political violence.

there's a Q&A going on right now, with people from MOVE and what I think are the New Black Panthers (!!!) screaming at an NAACP guy, it's pretty intense.

[dieblucasdie]

Most of what I know about that situation was gleaned from RATM lyrics in the 90s, so maybe a more "balanced" approach would be instructive

[elpollodiablo]

Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me--that was about apartheid, right?

[jm]

WOW WOW whuca WOW WOW whuca whuca whuca

[auto-da-fey]

Most of what I know about that situation was gleaned from RATM lyrics in the 90s, so maybe a more "balanced" approach would be instructive

yeah, I agree, but it's a tricky one--the more I think it through, the more critical I am of the film, since it really elides the distinction between a balanced approach to the killing of the cop (which Mumia probably did, and is handled quite fairly IMO), and to the racist criminal injustice system that certainly denied him a fair trial at the structural level and maaaaaaaaybe at the procedural level (which is glossed over too much--which led to things last night like a tiny 80 year old lady walking up to the director and shouting that he'd reap what he had sown). I am a bit skeptical of the centrality of Mumia to the death penalty abolition movement (whose goals I 100% support, of course), but this film's interrogation of how he obtained that role is pretty lacking--I'm still not entirely clear on it.

[elpollodiablo]

The TV we bought in December has all of these baked-in streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, but I'd never really checked out Vudu until now. It's got tons of old stuff! I have to watch Patriot Games for this seminar on national security fictions, and they've got it in HD for $4. That right thurr is a smart model; I will gladly cough that up for HD instant access viewing simply because it'd be that much more of a pain in the ass to go download it.

[elpollodiablo]

This movie is the worst, btw

[dieblucasdie]

It's no Sum of All Fears

[mountmccabe]

This movie is the worst, btw

I hated how they changed the ending and the chronology, too.