[Closed] Recent Viewing

Just saw WALL•E this afternoon. Pixar has created yet another masterpiece; this one's definitely some of their best work yet!

Well, the summer season started so everything on TV sucks right now...

When I watch TV I mostly watch Discovery or something, I really like Mike Rowe's Dirty Jobs early in the evening, makes me laugh out loud. Mythbusters are on their 27th re-run but still entertaining when there's nothing else. Then there's the Survivor programmes and we have a DVD recorder which is stull full of shows from this year we didn't see yet (some Medium, Ghost Whisperer, House and Bones. Funny thing about Bones is we recorded them all but haven't watched a single episode yet. We could do a marathon then). But the disc is almost empty, so then we'll move on to movies on DVD I guess.

Good thing about summer is there's more time and opportunity for reading.

Last week I caught the movie Ever After on TV. It had just started, didn't know what movie it was, but I just sat down and kept watching till the end. I thought it was rather entertaining and watching Drew Barrymore is never boring. I thought it was a funny movie. Probably a real chick's movie, but anyway...


Oh, and we have been following a bit of Derek Ogilvie, the medium. He had a show in the first season which I thought wasn't that interesting at the time. Then he came to the Netherlands and did readings with children and dead people and although I'm very skeptical and always careful when it's a television show, I just keep thinking what if he can really do what he says he does...

Also I've noticed now that spirituality is a trend, these kind of shows are getting popular. There was also a show 'the sixth sense' where people who claimed to be a medium had to do all sorts of tests and some stuff was really impressive. Since relatives of the deceased were cooperating and were impressed too that made it all very believable.

Is this trend happening on TV in other countries too? More openness towards the unknown because people are searching for 'something' out there?

Leterrier, not terrier

Tommy, you liked the first WHITE NOISE?

As for Disturbia, i hated it.

Cypher, nice thriller but the dozen twists were a bit forced. My heart still melts when I see Lucy Liu on the screen

I still say Ang Lee's Hulk is quite good.

I particularly enjoyed the literal take on "comic book film" Lee took. That surely is some of the cleverest and most unique editing and visual effects I've seen in any superhero film.

Anyway, so what weirdness have I seen this weekend?

Well I decided not to do any writing this weekend, so since my love life is non-existent, that meant more time for movies than ever!

So I saw:

- THE PLAYER (Robert Altman) - a really fine film, and especially on the screenplay front. Robbin and Scacchi are great leads for this cast - their icy attraction to each other make for some very fine scenes. Thomas Newman gave this film one of his first great scores. The intense scoring of the 'don't tell!' sex scene is the work of someone who has really started to figure out storytelling. (DVD.)

- EARTH (Fothergill / Lindsay) - I thought that this translation of PLANET EARTH to the big screen didn't work as well as DEEP BLUE did as an adaptation of BLUE PLANET. The sequences were fairly much intact from the original series, and the music, unlike DEEP BLUE, didn't show as marked an improvement. (In fact, themes for animals started to get mixed up at one point.) I don't remember the cheetah footage from the series, and this section was certainly the film's highlight. The cheetah and gazelle are played out in such extreme slow motion that it looks more like lovemaking than hunting. (Cinema.)

- UN SECRET (Miller) - This Claude Miller film stars one of the most beautiful women alive. Somehow I've gone through the last few years not knowing about Cecile De France. That's a mistake that has now fortunately been corrected! This film complicates things with a modern story done in black and white, but it doesn't feel like the story needed it. Fine performances all around, good direction. The scenario is familiar, but I was engaged nonetheless. Cecile and the male lead have a very palpable sense of attraction - one scene quite late in the film between the two is staggeringly powerful. Zbigniew Preisner provided the sparing, subtle score - his work is careful and excellent as ever. (Cinema).

- EASTERN PROMISES (Cronenberg) - I have to be honest and say I didn't think this was that good. The awkward contrasts of HISTORY OF VIOLENCE are amplified here. The story doesn't really seem to go anywhere terribly interesting. Viggo Mortensen is the film's most interesting element - but the late twist in his character feels like a bit of an easy way out for the storytellers (even if it does make sense of earlier scenes). Performances are overall quite strong. The same writer's script for DIRTY PRETTY THINGS was much more convincing overall. I will say this: that fight scene is INCREDIBLE.

Don't worry, I'm American and don't usually get them either.

Absolutely not. I love it. But maybe I´m a chick after all, crying about a Burton movie.

Watched a few Blu-rays lately:

Rambo - what on God's green earth was I thinking when I bought this? What a load of tripe. Utterly hideous. Worse than any of the original ones.

Signs - enjoyed this a lot! But the deus ex machina ending is very poor. It strikes me as an even sillier way of being able to kill aliens than the Slim Whitman method in Mars Attacks.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - I thought this was OK. It's very much a children's film and on that level it works fine. I'm sure I'd have loved it had I been 20 years younger. What a huge, huge missed opportunity for a wonderful score though.

The film made me think of War of the Worlds a few times (I know it came out first)!

Yeah, Signs is a spectacular movie, without any doubt! It´s a perfectly crafted masterpiece.

Any opinions on Big Fish?

Agreed. Another totally surprising laugh attack... hell, this movie had a lot of that, didn´t it?

So... since I never saw it... keeping in mind how I usually think about Burton´s fairy tale worlds, would you say I should try Edward or not...?

I said it´s a masterpiece, not his masterpiece.

Beside that, I absolutely think it´s his best movie so far.