**** The Wire (season 1)
*** Star Trek
* Honey West
*** The Shop around the Corner
**** The Prisoner
*** Mutiny on the Bounty
***** Touchez pas au Grisbi (aka Hands off the Loot)
** The Master Touch (aka Un uomo da rispettare)
** The Trouble with Harry

( Read the rest of this entry » ) 

Miss Austen Regrets was surprisingly good, especially if you consider the trickle of not-so-good based-on-jane-austen’s-life movies we’ve gotten in the last few years. Olivia Williams (who was also Jane in the Kate Beckinsale Emma) is a great Austen, and the story is very good. It doesn’t take any simple path of making parallels between Jane and her books, but showing her more as the genuine novelist, worried about being able to write and trying to support her family as best she can. The dialogue is witty and austenesque, but not to the point of being unrealistic, and Jane is drawn as an intelligent, wry, sometimes difficult person — as you’d expect and hope she was.

 

Mickey Pourke Sliders
Penelope Pockets
Slumcorndog Mustardaires
Frosty/Nixonaide
Robert Brownie Junior Mint Brownies
Cate's Caramel Corn
Sean Penne Pasta
Angiepasto
Brad Pitted Olives
Winslet's Gimlets
Wall-e Walla Onion Dip with Veggies

In Bruges has one of the best DVD extras ever: an edit of the entire movie reduced to just the instances of swearing and the word "Bruges" a la the legendary explicit content only edits of NWA (personal favorite: 8 Ball).

I was expecting this movie to just be a good time, and it exceeded expectations on pretty much every front. The over-the-top swearing. The veiled reference to one of my favorite scenes, from Living in Oblivion. Jordan Prentice's delivery of the line "brothels are good". The discussion of the word "alcoves". Thuggish Ralph Fiennes (especially just after seeing him as a gay butler in Bernard and Doris). Thuggish Ralph Fiennes's expletive-laden paean to the fairytale beauties of Bruges. That the story gets dark and doesn't really lighten up.

What I like best aside from the profanity and hilarity though is the movie's moral ambiguity. The movie makes you sort of sympathetic for Colin Farrel and want him to come out okay, and yet he did something very bad. And the movie's thuggish bad guy is, really, the instrument of justice; and you have to admit he obeys his principles. And plus, little people cursing a lot is comedy gold.

For some reason, this picture of Nora reminds me of that picture of Patrick McGoohan.

1928-2009

it's a pretty good time, nothing great, but, you know, do not fuck with gene hackman. he will fuck your shit up.

Lelia Goldoni had roles in a couple episodes of danger man (and various other stuff), one of them as the gun-toting third-world villainess Pilar Lin. rowr.

Really funny, full of great performances. Of course, being a Coen brothers movie, it starts off light and gets much blacker as it goes. There's one moment that takes it beyond goofball hijinks that was just shocking, which rules. And not just anyone can have a scene of utter brutality (it's right near the end) that's a laugh line. I liked pretty much everyone in this. but brad pitt especially -- he's at his best when he turns up the crazy/stupid. tilda swinton does icy cold so well. clooney's jolly not-too-bright philanderer. and of course malkovich provides a wound-up CIA analyst with a very bad temper. but it might be jk simmons and david rasche who make the movie. as CIA higher-ups trying to follow the hijinks, they frame the story and somehow take it to the next level of comedy.

as you may know, I like seven samurai, a lot. I've watched it many many times, going back to my father taking me to see it multiple times when I was a kid. like any old friend, it has all kinds of quirks and things that I love to see, and think about sometimes, and look forward to when I'm watching it. so, what the hell, I wrote them down (spoilers and all).
( more... )

E and I saw La Antena at SIFF last year and, as I said in my review, it was marvelous. E and I have both been itching to see it again ever since. Unfortunately, it hasn't gotten a wider release here and isn't available on DVD in the US. However, I did some googling and found here that the Argentinian DVD has English subtitles. One person recommended this site (and gave some tips for negotiating their site if you don't read Spanish), so I ordered it. It just arrived. I was worried about being able to watch it, since it's supposed to be region 4, but for whatever reason it ran fine on my DVD player. And not only does it have the movie, there's a great "making of" short and some other extras. There's also a torrent out there which works, but I'm glad to have the DVD.

and after watching it again, we still both thought it was great. Again, one of the best films I've seen in a long time.

After having not seen it for 20+ years, E and I rented the first few episodes of Star Blazers last week. I'm going to be accused of sacrilege for this, but it was just awful. Terrible-quality animation, weak storylines, appalling English voice acting, and, worst of all, boringly talky and lacking in action. The villains are laughably ridiculous. The only real pluses were that the Argo (nee Yamoto) and its wave motion gun are still cool, and that Nova is still hot in her skin tight star force uniform with the giant arrow pointing at her junk.

Of course, it all seemed really cool when I was a kid. And the disappointing watching experience resembles what happened when I rewatched Robotech Macross a few years ago. With Robotech, the terrible animation etc was soon overcome by its gripping soap operatic story (Rick! Minmei! Lisa!). But with Star Blazers, I don't really wish to give it more time to see if I become engrossed. For one thing, it's even worse than Robotech, quality-wise, and has less-gripping action sequences. For another, Macross and its story made a big impact on my adolescent self and I still remember much of it; I hardly remembered anything about Star Blazers except its comically bad theme song and its impressive space battleship. So uh, sorry Star Blazers. Next up: Battle of the Planets?

Apparently the producers of the lord of the rings movies are trying to do asimov's foundation books next. NY Mag provides a handy chart as to why this is doomed to failure.

Conflicting spoiler-riffic reviews here and here. I find myself sort of agreeing with both reviews and a lot of the comments (some of the best insight is in the comments, actually), even if they are conflicting. and that's the kind of big, ambitious, flawed movie it was, which is a good thing. (spoilers continue)

( more... )

SIFF describes Sparrow (Man Jeuk) as "A loose and jazzy widescreen triumph with a touch of Cary Grant and Stanley Donen". We are starting to learn that SIFF descriptions are kind of... optimistic. This movie was mostly silly and incoherent. The plot is about a mysterious woman seducing the members of a pickpocket gang into committing a crime for her, and so hints at the joys of a caper movie (oh, I love a good caper movie). And while there is a caper, and some good scenes of petty crime, the central thing about the girl is just kind of incoherent and senseless. The movie keeps hinting at levels of complexity that turn out not to be there, and all kinds of holes in the plot are just ignored. The one way the movie works is as a comedy, and it does have some great laughs, including a lot of physical comedy (in fact, between the comedy and the balletic pickpocketing, this movie is mainly about its physicality). But it takes itself too seriously to get away with being a comedy exactly; for example, the climactic dueling pickpockets scene is played straight, and is too ridiculous to be very compelling. Overall, a not-bad way to pass some time.

Our second SIFF movie was Blood Brothers (Tian Tang Kou), which SIFF described as a "Dazzling gangster movie, set against the glamorous vice den of 1930s Shanghai". Which sounded pretty good. It turned out to be pretty silly. Oh, it was okay for a while, and looked terrific, but it really went over the top goofy at the end, with just a ridiculous excess of pointless shooting and style-over-substance. Now, far be it from me to criticize a movie for style or explosions -- I enjoy both with gusto -- but Blood Brothers just got sort of tediously over-involved. And once a couple people in the theater started snickering, everyone was lost. Sorry. Looked nice though.

E and I got tickets for a few SIFF movies this year. The first was The Wrecking Crew, a documentary about a group of session musicians (called "the wrecking crew") who played the music for some of rock's biggest albums in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I was expecting this movie to be totally awesome, and unfortunately it wasn't. The people were great, the music was great, but somehow the movie itself didn't quite work. I think part of the problem was that it felt too amateurish, due partly to its being directed and narrated by the son of one of the central musicians. His voiceover and viewpoint make the movie a little too hagiographic -- though, to be fair, the movie's subjects are worthy of worship. What disappointed me more was that I felt like we didn't get enough time to appreciate the music and their musicality -- the hits zipped by fast and furious and a lot of the time we didn't get enough of a sense of what these musicians did and why they were so good. By far the best parts of the movie were when bassist Carol Kaye (who is awesome and our new hero) talked about what she played and how she came up with this or that famous bassline. She was great, and hearing her talk about her music (and all her hits) was captivating. With subjects like this, just get out of their way and let them go. So overall it was a good experience, but still a little disappointing; I'd recommend it, especially to any musician.

Uncovered is an utterly pointless movie, a complete waste of time, unless you want to get a good long look at kate beckinsale's boobs. I can't remember what inspired me to netflix it, but it really just was not very good. it wasn't so much awful as just.. what's the point. kate looks very very young, and wears weird unflattering clothes, and everything looks and sounds very early 90s. lots of things in the movie just seem odd and out of place, from the irish chess-playing hippie, to the peculiar bug-eyed inspector, to john wood's creepy turn as kate's guardian. spoiler: and honestly, that john wood ends up being the murderer was both a complete non surprise and completely unexplained. yes, he has a creepy fatherish obsession with kate, but why? it just makes no real sense, and the ending completely fails to surprise, grip, or satisfy. seriously, skip it (not, I'm sure, that you were considering seeing it or had even heard of it); if you're that mad to see kate's boobs, try the internet.

Planet B-boy was awesome. Maybe not a great film or whatever, but A and I saw it this week and could not stop grinning and toe-tapping the whole way through. I basically cannot think of anyone I know I wouldn't recommend this to, so just go see it -- especially since it might go away soon (it's still playing at the Varsity here in Seattle).

It follows five crews going to the annual breakdancing battle of the year in Germany -- one American, one French, one Japanese, and two Korean (one the defending champs from the previous year). We see each team training, here some about their personal stories, and learn a bit about b-boying like the different national styles. But mostly we just see a lot of really good dancers doing awesome moves. at the battle of the year, each crew (18 from various countries, plus the defending champs) does a six-minute show, where they're judged on things like creativity, skill, and synchronization (and yes, there can be a fine line between b-boying and boy band moves). Then the top four teams are chosen and they battle -- dancers from each team alternating in showing off their moves and responding to each other.

If I have one complaint about the movie it's that they didn't let the dancing speak for itself as much as they could have. Both the shows and the battles were sliced up, edited, when they could have just let us see the entire flow. Like, it was hard sometimes to figure out what a battle was really like, and how the back-and-forth went. That's not to say that the background stories weren't worthwhile too; we really enjoyed seeing some of the parents, especially the skeptical ones who came around to being totally proud of their kids' b-boying.

here's some show videos, from the japanese team, ichigeki, korean team, last for one, and defending champs, gamblers.

Somehow I managed to miss hearing about Renaissance (2006) until I came across it somewhere last week and immediately put it on top of my netflix queue. It's set in the Paris of 50 years in the future, animated, in a beautifully stark black/white (almost no gray) style. The story is the sort of futuristic noir you see in Bladerunner and that sort of thing. It's absolutely beautiful, and the imagined future Paris is terrific. Some of the details of the future are terrific too, though there are clear influences from Bladerunner (large speaking billboards, for example), the Matrix (some of the sound design, and one particular action scene), and other classics.

The story is good enough to carry you along, but not great in itself. I won't bother to tell you too much about it, and it's better if you watch the movie without learning too much more (check out the still images on the IMDB page though).

Oh, and by the way, Daniel Craig does one of the main voices in the english-language version (along with Catherine McCormack, Jonathon Pryce, and Ian Holm).