Oh shit. :(























:evil:

Moon was my favorite genre movie of 2009. I thought it blew District 9 out of the water.

Is 'the hurt locker' worth buying

Bought 'The Hurt Locker' hearing its a must own....

I also heard Moon was good but its in my netflix que

Hurt Locker is really good.

I've got moon in my queue as well.

Watched them both. Both very good.

Just forget that you know the moon has 1/6th gravity of the earth. Apparently that wasn't in the budget.

Watched Dune last night to see what all the outrage was about. Really liked it. Much better than the book.

Not falling for this crap, either.

Although you should be slapped for saying this even in jest. :grr:

I've got to see Hurt Locker
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Okay, this was a joke. But my first post was honest.

What were you expecting from Tarantino - Saving Private Ryan?

Well, it did meet my expectations.

I take it you don't really like his films?

I never really liked Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. I thought Kill Bill was pretty cool, as pure fantasy fluff. Never saw his other two.

I can't really differentiate why I liked Kill Bill but hated this one. The revenge is there, the flashy violence is there, the borrowed music is there, etc. I suppose it's more because of my own changing thoughts on art, rather than something Tarantino has done. But I do think it being a historical movie, dealing with the Holocaust, World War II, Nazis, Jews, American soldiers, had a lot to do with it, as well.

I think his "talent" for writing dialogue is completely unwarranted. Royale with cheese, tipping, good milk. It's pointless. When you strip away his fanboy enthusiasm for movies, you get nothing. "Paying homage" to previous movies is the curtain of Tarantino.

Tarantino is like Seinfeld meets Scorsese. It's not going to be high minded, but it will entertain the shit out of you.

Except Inglorious Basterds IS high-minded. It may be the most intellectual movie to come out in 2009.

The "Paying homage" element was a bit much in the first Kill Bill but I still feel that Tarantino is on the best writers of dialogue in quite a while. The dialogue of the scenes in the basement and the cafe were outstanding.

Why?

I actually haven't seen it yet. I was on my way out the door to catch the 10:30 showing one night when my tyke got out of bed with a tummy ache. I hate leaving my wife to deal with that sort of thing alone, so I stuck around and got him back to sleep.

I'm looking forward to seeing it at home when it's out.

You're in luck, I guess.

I'm saving my shit until it is confirmed that the film is being used in the discussion group for some week. In a general sense, though, the two major themes I see Inglorious Basterds discussing are 1.) The power of Movies and 2.) Propaganda.

Well, hopefully that thing picks up for godssakes.

I know! There hasn't even been a vote for the 2nd discussion movie.

It's on DVD already? They're not wasting any time these days.

Ferris Buller to be remade?
http://movies.msn.com/movies/article...1447&GT1=28101

:facepalm:

I'm sure it's been mentioned in here but I watched Up In The Air and thought it was remarkably good. I heard it's a front runner for best picture and I wouldn't be at all surprised. The handling of the whole crappy economy/layoffs was handled with just the right touch, well directed IMHO.

I can't imagine why. :D

For the love of god why....? Damn you Hollywood. Why do! :cuss: Why do you have to ruin a perfectly good thing.


Agreed. I thought it was quite good as well. I didn't really expect much less considering it was from the creators of "Juno" and "Thankyou For Smoking". Both of those were strong flicks as well.

Sooo Halloween 2 came out on DVD last night, rented it....holy ****, where to even begin with this shitfest.

I was thoroughly disappointed with RZ's Halloween but I wanted to give H2 a chance...wish I wouldn't have. A beyond convoluted plot with stupid sidebars that make no sense, plotholes galore, gore and violence that was so over the top it was cheesy, paper thin characters, and a lot of scenes that had me either scratching my head or saying mumbling WTF as I watched it.

Zombie just doesn't get it...never has, never will. He doesn't get what made the original Halloween movies so great and why the characters of Michael, Loomis, etc. were awesome and how they integrated so well together.

I won't even go into what Zombie did to the Loomis character...pathetic and ridiculous.

I will say this, Brad Douriff is the man and will always be the man...he's the only redeemable item from this waste of celluloid.

Hopefully Zombie and more importantly the Akkad's stay the hell away from the Halloween franchise.

Ugh.

(500) Days of Summer? More like "(500) Things Stolen From the Hit CBS Sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother.'"

Watched The Hurt Locker. That shit was good.

Tonight, I got...

Julie & Julia
Wolverine
The Soloist

I wanted to stab Zoey Deschenal (sp?) to death with a grapefruit spoon just watching that trailer.

A recently watched movie.

Paranormal Activity - What. A. Turd. Sandwich. 2 hours of my life wasted, yep thats the review.

God I hope not. That's a classic. Aren't they planning on remaking War Games too?

I really enjoyed Julie & Julia.

Yeah, that was my reaction through the whole film. Her character is not sane.

It won the Critics Choice Best Picture.

Great flick. Just watched it last night. Deserves all the accolades.

Anybody seen Book of Eli yet? It looks interesting, but has got mixed reviews.

I saw "Rachel Getting Married" tonight.

I'd ignored it, because it sounded like a "chick flick". But Reaper loved it, so I was intrigued.

It's certainly not for the masses... but it was fantastic. Hathaway has some acting chops.

hi5! It is so good, and my estimation of it has gone up with repeated viewings.

I wonder if it's the Juno-ification of female leads.

Yes, it's nice to have an acerbic female to play off of, but don't make them caricatures.

What came from Netflix today? Why, a new Blu-ray of my favorite movie of 2009 -- In the Loop

I recently watched an indy film called "Adam". Love story about a guy who has Asperger's syndrome.

It's alright. Nothing spectacular. 6/10.

Watched a documentary called Stolen about the Gardner art theft in Boston in 1990. Less informative than a Wiki article and the cinematography was awful (impressive, given that they only really needed to use standard close shots).

3/10.

For real. There wasn't an attempt made at making her character seem like a complete human being. I felt in turns annoyed at her petulance and worried that I was only being given a single, biased view at a woman who had to be more than what I was shown.

I think I may have already said this in this very thread, but Juno strikes me as how someone with no social skills would write about someone who they think would be witty.

Even worse is that such banal witticisms are wrapped up in a script that celebrates social conservatism.

And here I thought that running teary-eyed from Planned Parenthood and getting together with your 16 year old baby daddy that you only hooked up with once before was iconoclastic.

It is iconoclastic if you subscribe to the idea that Bible Belt morals are spit upon and mocked from up high as so many believe so as to delude themselves into a false, smug sense of victimhood.

Dude you're a ****ing riot! ROFL

Sad but so true! :D

Watched "Pan's Labyrinth" the other night off of the Planet's recommend. Very good movie!

I filled my Netflix que from the "Best movies of the decade thread".

Damn good idea, sir.

Yeah I get those every now and then.

Fantastic movie. Definitely in my Top 5 of the decade.

This is the real source of your negativity. You and Hamas should try to get past your political biases when you watch movies. It's probably harder for you guys than it is for conservatives who have no choice but to accept that most hollywood fare is steeped in leftist politics, but that's no excuse. Juno wasn't a right wing Michael Moore hit piece, afterall.

I can review a film objectively and subjectively. Subjectively I detest the film; I think it is damaging. The film paints over the desperation, the poverty, the nearly-inevitable bad parenting, and the regret of teen parenthood a glossy sheen made of clever quips and references to pop culture that predates the protagonist by like 20 years. It isn't a healthy thing.

I can be objective too; I follow that old line of Ebert's: "It's not what a movie is about, it is how a movie is about." Biases against social conservatism aside, the characters here are poor. Because they are poorly written. In Diablo Cody's zeal to create the most whip-smart script ever written she forgot that characters are supposed to be well-rounded, real people. These characters sound "scripted" all of the time. Moreover there isn't any depth. Our girl Juno, once she leaves the clinic, has gone as far emotionally as she ever will even though there is a lot of movie left. The soundtrack is grating, so much so that I'd like to put this sentence here in the objective paragraph. On the plus side, it is competently directed. I would truly hate to see how a lesser director would have treated this terrible piece of writing known as the Juno screenplay.

The Hangover was alright. The first half hour was really funny. Then it just kind of went stale. Bringing in Mike Tyson, a tiger waking up in the back of the car, the exaggerated Asian, etc. were either not funny or something already done multiple times or better.

It was light-hearted fiction, not a documentary about teen-age parenthood. Do the ubiquitous examples of casual sex without apparent concern for consequences in movies, both serious and comedic alike, cause you concern for the social damage they might be causing or is it all ok because that's what's "real"?

Funny that, of all critics, you quote Ebert since he gave Juno a glowing review, calling the screenplay "uncommonly intelligent". After three viewings, Ebert concludes that the "film has no wrong scenes and no extra scenes, and flows like running water". I also agree with Ebert's positive review of the soundtrack. I thought it fit the movie perfectly and set it apart from so many other movies of it's genre that tend to be filled with more mainstream pop music.

Anyway, you're entitled to your own opinion of course, but it seems pretty coincidental to me that your extreme negativity happens to coincide with your perception that the movie "celebrates social conservatism".

You're right. It is coincidental.

As for your first paragraph, if art is to say anything substantive then it should talk about issues with honesty. Juno wants to be light-hearted and positive with respect to teen pregnancy but it does so without being honest. I don't think that it is impossible to make a positive case for a teen keeping a child even if the numerous negative factors are weighed. Juno doesn't bother to weigh them, it obfuscates them with shallowness and more-mainstream-than-you-realize indie-pop.

Again, IMO, the worst part of Juno isn't the political message, it's the completely ridiculous screenplay. Human beings don't interact like that, ever.

I feel the same. It is a poor film, imo, because of how poorly the characters are written and developed.

FWIW, patteeu, there are plenty of films with overt Right Wing messages that I thoroughly enjoy.

The Rambo quadrilogy, for one.

I have a boner for 80's action movies. The extreme right propaganda factor makes them deliciously enjoyable. I enjoy 24 an awful lot. There's a small part of me that takes undeniable relish in a single individual busting though the beuracracy of an unbelievably inept government in order to kill and torture his way to victory.

Entertainment is replete with situations where the very STRENGTH of the 'screenplay' is that they're scripting people who are interacting in an unrealistic way. Wes Anderson and Amy Sherman-Pallidino live off that fact.

The art of it is creating a world where you are INTERESTED in how these particular people are interacting. And I think you shortchange the 'art' of the creation of those situations in Juno where people might not be performing cinema verite, but they are interacting in worlds that spark your imagination and resonate nontheless.

The obvious follow up to further explore the space patteau has hypothesized, though, is to ask you and Reaper's opinion of 'Knocked Up.'

Good grief, it's not supposed to be a docu-drama. Nobody ever really acts like the Joker from TDK and nobody fights like Jackie Chan in real life either.

Edit: I just saw that you liked Rambo. I hate to burst your bubble, but...

That's a very good question, and one I almost addressed earlier. I remember someone writing a review when it first came out, claiming that no career oriented woman like Heigl would ever go through with that pregnancy. I agree, but I also think that you have to look at the genres that these particular films play in.

Obviously, Knocked Up does the same kind of skirting of the issue, as the only counterveiling voice comes from Jonah Hill's character, and he's treated as monstrous. That said, the marginalization of his views doesn't really bother me, because that film is only operating as a comedy that morphs into a chick flick at the 100 minute mark (just like all other Apatow movies). Knocked Up isn't subversive, it isn't trying to be. Most of the time, it's just trying to be a funny vehicle for its stars and for the director's wife.

Juno postulates itself as having a deeper societal message. It broaches these subjects head on with scenes that clearly have an intentional message on the audience (visiting the clinic), not just the flippant remarks of a ne'erdoell stoner.

Both treat pregnancy as a part of the mise en scene, which is reductive, but IMO, Juno's transgressions are worse for the genre it attempts to place itself in.

YMMV.

Those films aren't set up as character studies.

Meh. Sounds like a rationalization to me.

I doubt that the filmmakers were trying to suggest that real people interact in the same ways the Juno characters do. I think it's both odd and unfair to hold them to that standard.

Well, I ****ing hate Wes Anderson since The Royal Tenenbaums. I hate that quirky-for-quirkys-sake thing he's fallen into. (I haven't seen The Fantastic Mr. Fox so I can't comment on it).

Knocked Up was, similarly to Juno, a right wing movie (and obviously so, though curiously afraid to say the word "abortion"). I think it is a funnier film than Juno despite having many of the same problems with characters who speak only in pop-culture references. At least Knocked Up's characters talk about pop culture in the ways that I do with my friends -- easily, casually, with humor. Juno's lines felt so damn scripted, so artificial. Helping to save Knocked Up is the checks-and-balances so sorely lacking from Juno -- represented by Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd. That relationship shows the inevitable doom that will befall many relationships. Having even a glimpse of that other side of the fence, where the grass is brown, helps the film feel more authentic and honest.

Have you ever seen Gilmore Girls?

If so I wouldn't mind your assessment, seeing as it is 'the perfect storm' of what it seems your own 'quirks' are.

It's simultaneously very liberal AND very conservative, and thrives on unrealistic, but very witty and entertaining scripting, precisely because it's unrealistic, yet aspirant and resonant.

Nope. I've never seen it.

Gilmore Girls sounds like a play script when they deliver the lines. Like, bap- bap-bap-bap-bap, if that makes any sense. Not the way people speak in real life. Too quick, too witty, too sharp. Sort of like a Mamet play. For whatever reason, that syle of writing seems to be fine when it's done for the stage, but when I see it on TV or film it doesn't work. I don't really know why.

I'm much the same way. On stage, the actors are organically creating this new world directly in front of an audience. There is at all times a knowing and feeling of the artiface of the stage, even if it is just in the very back of the mind. That's why the stage can get away with fantastical shit that film never can with any credibility.
Film can take an audience different places and on top of that is less immidiate (the film not being shot and broadcast in front of a live audience). With the intimacy and precise control of the camera often comes an expectation of honesty.

If you could just quickly watch the 7 seasons and give your opinion. ;)

j/k, so you know it's a drama about a mother daughter team in small town NE. It's conservative in the sense that the mom not only gave birth to her daughter as a teen but, rejected by her old-money parents for her sin [for the effect it had on the Ivy League track they pictured for her, not for religious reasons], strikes out on her own working at an inn and living with her daughter in a closet at said inn.

But the story takes up when the daughter is a teen, they have a home and the mom is the inn's manager [bootstraps]. They are in the process of reconciliation the mother's parents because the daughter is gifted and desires to attend a prestigious private prep school the parents [and her mom] are legacy [though the mom is a disgraced legacy].

OTOH, it's quite liberal in a 'it takes a village' sense, as the town is one big family who meet regularly in the town square to come to consensus on how issues of the day will be addressed collectively. There are no town failures, but a series of town projects that just need a helping hand or a few shifts as bushboy at the local diner. Also, the mother/daughter relationship is all adult and cosmospolitan, with the sex lives on mom and daughter discussed the 'right' way.

What's quirky and unrealistic, yet aspirant and resonant revolves around the 'banter' between mom and daughter, which is Sturges-esque in it's pop and sends viewer to Wikipedia with regularity [see, Miller, Dennis]. Kind of assumes that the two have devoted their entire existence to watching and rewatching every pop culture touchstone ever and reading every important work of literature ever, while they also put in the work to be an inn manager and child prodigy, respectively.

What sparked my interest in your exposure is the juxtaposition of your opinions herein, and your love of discussions of music and literature, which I think you would eat up.

to kind of give a generalized flavor, they'd show someone acting quirky in a particular way, and the mom would roll her eyes at the daughter and say 'who does he think he is Blah diddle blah-blah?' And if you read the cliff notes of the book in which Blah diddle blah-blah was a character, he indeed acted with the same quirks as that character in that situation.

Or the daughter would come home from hijinks at school and whine 'mom I've got a real flippity floop situation going on,' and indeed the hijinks at school mirror the plot of the obscure French novel flippity floop.

How is the Garner-Bateman marriage different?

Juno apparently needed a woman whose life was ruined or at least made uncomfortable by choosing not to have an abortion for redemption. Showing a less than perfect marriage doesn't cover the right territory.

The marriage in Knocked Up was at least balanced a little. Both characters had their faults. From what I remember of Juno, Jennifer Garner's character was pretty much depicted as the fun-sucker who wouldn't let Bateman, like, rock out and stuff. Bateman's character didn't seem to have faults. I could be wrong; it isn't like their characters or performances were good enough to make an impression.

Yeah, I guess if you don't count infidelity (or at least an openness to it), dishonesty, and sexual interest in an underaged girl faults, you've got the Bateman character nailed.