Tales from Cinematic Motions

[morgan]

I actually liked The Nanny Diaries.  So kill me.  Eh.  I SAW IT IN THE THEATER.

[hannah]

I watched Lianna. For some reason I remember discussing wanting to watch it with either adf or girl, but maybe I'm pulling an adf with that memory.

I've seen not too many Sayles, even though boy oh boy do I love David Strathairn, so I figured I'd start here because it was filmed in Hoboken in 1982 or so! Pretty awesome, I thought, just watching it for things I recognized, and hilarious knowing that the place the asshole husband wants tenure at is Stevens Institute of Technology...and that's the swimming pool I used to go to when I was tiny...and that's a park now surrounded by condos...etc. The movie itself was exactly what I expected it be, kind of hammy and overwritten but nicely detailed, etc. Good for my hometown, is all.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

i don't even listen to say anything.

This conversation is over already, but believe me when I say: you should, Andrew.

[Andrew_TSKS]

hah, i've been really scared away by what i've read. maybe i'll check them out sometime.

[girl]

I watched Lianna. For some reason I remember discussing wanting to watch it with either adf or girl, but maybe I'm pulling an adf with that memory.

Hmm. . . I don't remember this, but that in no way means it didn't happen.

Stray Dog, a Kurosawa from 1949 about a young policeman who's trying to retrieve his stolen gun. To be honest, I was only sort of paying attention because I was really tired and sometimes forget that I don't speak Japanese, therefore actually need to read the subtitles. I think it was good, though, so I'm gonna watch it again.

[milesofsparks]

just saw the golden compass.  did anyone else see it yet?

[jebreject]

we were going to go tonight but i really ought to pack 'cause tomorrow i'm taking the bus to meet up with my brother to drive down to see my grandma

was it good?

[milesofsparks]

there were some things I wish they had done differently, for sure, and some disappointments, but overall it was entertaining and well styled.

[elpollodiablo]

My lady saw it. She's also reading the series right now.

[milesofsparks]

I can't imagine having any idea at all what's going on without having read the books.  my main complaint was that they didn't take the time to show some basic stuff.  I know it's impossible to fit everything in, but they didn't even do a very good job showing the relationship between people and deamons, for one thing.  or really who the characters are at all. 

but still enjoyable.

[jebreject]

Even after reading a few (good-to-really-good) reviews, I have zero faith in it being good. That said, we're going to see it on Wednesday after I get back from visiting my grandmother.

[silentsigh89]

I read the books when I was young. Young enough to forget most of the plot!

I only remembered polar bears and that I wanted to light it on fire after it ended because I hate lyra so much. (I was a Roger girl, you see)

and I still understood what was going on completely! I was with my boyfriend who never read the books and still enjoyed it.

So! Ten points. It was great to watch.

[milesofsparks]

yeah, listen to silentsigh.  she's probably more right than me.  it is full of action and adventure, so there's that.  and the f/x are good and all.

[The_Tourist]

saw atonement yesterday. i didn't think i would like it (my girlfriend wanted to see it), but it was actually really good. i was expecting something sort of dry, but it was actually really interesting stylistically.

afterwards there was a q&a with the director and james mcavoy showed up too, so that was pretty cool.

[Andrew_TSKS]

the daemons aren't really explained in the book either. you pick up their whole deal from context clues, as i remember.

i'll probably see the movie when it hits the 2 dollar theater.

last night, right before bed, i watched a documentary called "wild man blues", about woody allen taking a jazz band on tour in europe in 1996. it was one of those documentaries with no real narrative and a really loose structure, so that it was intermittently interesting and tedious. the parts with woody allen and band playing traditional new orleans jazz were good, and there were some interesting and insightful interview segments (though these weren't conducted by the filmmakers--they merely filmed woody doing press), but there were also some only vaguely interesting "woody and soon-yi eat breakfast" type  scenes. i was hoping to learn a bit more about woody and soon-yi's relationship (the promotional info kind of led me to believe that i would) but it didn't happen, really. still a half-decent documentary, but not as good as i hoped it would be.

[auto-da-fey]

I like Wild Man Blues somewhat more than you, but that's still a pretty fair assessment. I don't know a single biographical thing about director Barbara Kopple, but I do wonder if making Harlan County USA took some kind of psychic toll on her that led her away from ever revisiting its raw depiction of the gaping fault lines in American society--looking at her credits on IMDB, I don't see anything that ever came close to that again, though I do sorta want to see that Dixie Chicks documentary. Maybe I can watch it with my mom when I head back to Minnesota in a few weeks.

[Andrew_TSKS]

oh dude, i forgot about that dixie chicks documentary! thanks for reminding me. i'm gonna add it to my netflix queue RIGHT NOW.

and fuck it, i'm gonna add "harlan county usa" also. i need to see that if everything i hear about it is any indication.

[auto-da-fey]

and fuck it, i'm gonna add "harlan county usa" also. i need to see that if everything i hear about it is any indication.

Don't go in expecting to have your soul transformed or anything--I think building anything up too heavily just leads to anticlimactic disappointment. But if I had to improvise a top-ten documentary list off the top of my head, that would definitely be on it, and I think you'll appreciate it too.

[Andrew_TSKS]

hey, you say she's never gone back to anything that soul-crushing--what about "american dream", from 1984? it just showed me that on the "other movies you might enjoy" list, and it looks like it could be on the same sort of level.

[auto-da-fey]

Yeah, that might've been a lazy assessment on my part, since I just sort of dismissed anything I didn't know as something that I would know were it worthy of my knowing, which is a pretty terrible strategy in regard to anything.

[heather marie]

I kinda liked the Dixie Chicks documentary. I mean, I think it could've been a lot more, but I definitely respected them a lot more after watching them.

[monkeypants]

hey, you say she's never gone back to anything that soul-crushing--what about "american dream", from 1984? it just showed me that on the "other movies you might enjoy" list, and it looks like it could be on the same sort of level.

"American Dream" is excellent, Andrew.  I'd recommend that to anyone.  I also liked the Dixie Chicks doc, and totally agree with Heather Marie's comment. 

Last night I watched "The Machinist" which I got from the library.  Maybe a bit gimmicky in a "Usual Suspects" kind of way, but I thought it was good fun and effectively creepy.  Christian Bale's emaciated form is absolutely painful to view, though.

[morgan]

I watched August Rush yesterday.  Has anyone else seen this?  For the first ten or fifteen minutes, I was thinking in my head, oh man, this movie is going to be BAD.  But then it wasn't.  I ended up liking it a lot, actually.  It was poignant and absolutely beautiful in some parts, and very fairy tale-ish. 

I also saw Beowulf.  I didn't particularly like the CGI characters, and when I walked out, I was wondering if I was going crazy because I didn't remember most of what happened in the movie happening in the original story.  Came back to read the IMDB boards about it (hah. hah.) and it turns out I wasn't going crazy!  I wouldn't even call that "taking liberties" with the story. 

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

M - Most of the words I have to describe to this movie are abstract superlatives.  Fantastic.  Amazing.  Haunting.  God.  I've never seen a Fritz Lang film before, but I am moved to see all of them now.  Just the way he framed shots, the way he used really long stretches of silence during action, (slight spoiler ahead, though it's early in the movie) the way he represents a child's death with an empty plate and a balloon caught in electrical wires.

The Third Man - The last shot is the greatest thing ever put to film.

[difficult]

Yeah, M is stunning.He never did anything remotely as powerful, in my opinion. There's great physical filmmaking in many of the silent films, but also some really woolly thinking too, and first 2  Dr Mabuse films, Die Nibelungen, Spione are all worth saying (Metropolis is pretty annoying, I think) - but it took sound to really nail his world down in M. The first sound film masterpiece too.

Then he went to America, made some great films in very different ways - Scarlet Street, Fury, the Big Heat - much less the high prestige world of the German films, these often function best when they're tight, grim little noir films, that capture his increasingly pessimistic worldview.

So many of the best noir films, of course, were made by German directors fleeing Europe...