[Closed] Recent Viewing

Recent viewing?

Just finished watching "Caves" from Planet Earth.



I've always been fascinated by speleology. That had to be one of my absolute favourite episodes so far. I may get married inside Little Geas.

Transformers

Extremely silly but very well-done for what it was. And I think I'm in love with Megan Fox.

She's mine I tell you.

I've seen that too; perfect movie, an exception to the rule.

I have a (young) friend who thinks Megan Fox is all that. I think she'll be nowhere to be found in about 5 or 6 years like so many of the starlets young men slaver over on the net.

I finally watched Quest for Fire last night. Quest is one of those movies I always thought I'd like to see if I were in the right mood to watch such a film. I believed it'd be a little difficult to get involved in a story with no understandable dialog. Boy was I wrong. This film is engrossing from beginning to end and (for the most part) you can follow the storyline quite well, incomprehensible dialog or not. (The only word I grasped the meaning for in the film was 'otra' or 'hotra' which meant 'fire' to the tribe we were following. For some reason it never occurred to me to turn on the subtitles and check...)

The filming and characterization is incredibly well done. The various prehistoric tribes each have their own clear languages, looks and progressions on the evolutionary scale. It's quite amazing how well the actors communicate their feeling, even without recognizable dialogue. It shows how powerful non-verbal communication and voice intonation really is. Of course, the score was an important character as well; as we all know, a good score can highlight emotion better than even the best actor's emoting. While the score didn't jump out at me and scream "Buy ME!" it was magnificent in it's ability to underscore what happened on the screen without being obtrusive in any way. Very, very well done.

After the movie ended, I went back and re-watched with the VO commentary by the actors as I thought this must have been a grueling, yet fascinating film to make. It was. You also find out more about the names of the tribes and characters as well as some plot points that couldn't be very well conveyed without cue cards or dialog. (There is an attack near the end by renegade members of the tribe who are a-questing which wasn't clear to me in my first viewing.) The only concern I had at the end was...how in the heck did they get those sabertooth prosthetics on the lions? This is a very, very good film that I'm sorry I waited so long to watch. (Five out of five on this one. Excellent film.)

I don't think a "masterpiece" and "miracle" are the same thing. I'd call Transformers a Miracle of special effects indeed for all the reasons you mention Steven. The effort and dedication is clearly evident and goes way beyond the call of duty for a hollywood flick.

But a Masterpiece? I think the end result is too confusing to the eye to really be as Masterpiece. Maybe a little fewer moving parts on the Transformers or a slower transformation time would've allowed us to appreciate the intricacies of their mechanisms better. Then again I've only seen the movie once and so perhaps I just need to train my eye to pick up these details. Bought it on DVD ages ago but haven't had time to re-watch it.

I thought the script was hilarious, far from crappy. I love when action movies are side-splitting like that.

Picked up the complet West Wing (154 episodes) for £50 from HMV...who is W Snuffy Whathisname anyway???

The Changeling...not the new Clint Eastwood offering but the old one with George C. Scott....that will scare the crap out of you....andof courese the original Japanese Ring....

Sounds exactly like what I just saw: all over the place, with three, possibly four interesting stories, hopelessly mashed up into a water colour tableau somebody accidentally put the sprinklers on to.
A mess.
Really.
The first 65 minutes are slow, but mildly interesting.
All the rest completely undoes that.

Ugh.

He scored few series, he's quite a popular choice in TV scoring.

Three films this weekend...

- Scott Hicks's documentary about Philip Glass is one of the films of the year for me. Hicks is more known to people here for his dramatic features like Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars and Hearts in Atlantis, but his first craft was documentary making, and he hasn't lost his talent. He could not have picked a more interesting subject, as far as I'm concerned.
- Steve McQueen's film about the Bobby Sands-led hunger strike Hunger. It won't come close to getting any Oscars, but there aren't many drama films this year that balance grim reality with possibilities of cinema so appropriately.
- The documentary Man on Wire. Despite the use of old film musical workhorses by Nyman and Satie, this is an energetic telling of the remarkable story of the French tightrope walker who walked between the North and South Towers of the World Trade Centre.

And in previous weekends...
- Body of Lies (Ridley Scott) - the most interesting character and performance is not one of the two top-billed actors. Mark Strong walks away with this film. Story is ok but overlooks its most interesting dramatic potential to keep Russell and Leo DiC at the centre of the story. Music is like the paint that dries on the average wall - you don't want it to stand out, and indeed, it doesn't fail at that task.
- The New Babylon (Kosintsev) - proof that not all old acclaimed films are good. This film - from a contemporary of Eisenstein and Pudovkin's - is actually pretty poor in the making, full of loose ends and inconsistent technique. And get this: Shostakovitch's music isn't very good either... as film music. It's fine on its own (and the superior artwork if you had to choose btw film and music), but it doesn't give the film what it needed. This was a screening of the film with a live orchestra performing the music.

I think I'll have to see it.....just for the FX