Recent Viewing Part IV

Easily in my top 100 films. Just brilliant!

SPECTRE

Saw this last night. Really enjoyed it though the finale felt a bit flat.

Newman's score in context with the film was great though his action music is still meh.

Great to hear John Barry's arrangement of the Bond theme played at the end

A film I really want to see and I'm looking forward to hearing the score too.

The score on that film is something else.

Melancholia? It's over the end credits.

I also agree with you that Sicario is one of the best films I've seen this year, even if, among professionals, the script is a bit controversial. Luckily, what many would perceive as a fault (but the Black List didn't!), Villeneuve treated as a narrative challenge and gave us a piece of dark, relentless tension.

If you want to know what the controversy among professional writers was (it was the second script by an actor, the other one, actually chronologically his first, is in production right now) the fact that [spoiler]the protagonist changes by the third act and is passive. So basically we follow an observer and when the story is to be resolved, we end up following another character, who was participating in the action, but we didn't see his point of view that much before.[/spoiler]

I just saw the final episodes of the first season of STAR WARS Rebels. I take the occasion to announce that IMO this show is fucking awesome!

Volker

The Searchers is great indeed. Among Wayne's strongest performances IMO.

that's something I can't do at all, watch dubbed films. Whether it's in English, French or Japanese, a movie must be watched in the origin of the language. If I don't I keep bothering me to the not in sync lips and mouth.

Same here. In Norway, we only dub children's films for obvious reasons (and even children's films also tend to show the original language versions somewhere). But I can understand that in cases like Germany, it's part of their culture and they're less bothered by it.

Yeah, that's Vader scene on Dagobah almost stops the film dead. I get what they were trying to do with the scene but it's confusing and probably should have been left on the cutting room floor.

-Erik-

Couldn't disagree more. It's one of the best parts of the whole saga -- a rare forray into a more poetic film language. It's certainly THE iconic moment for me from EMPIRE.

Yeah, yeah but what about the electronics in that scene? I think they worked well, they give the confrontation and reveal more eerieness, especially because the sound was completely orchestral up to that point, and from then on too.

I'm with Thor and Martijn here. The scene is crucial and wonderfully foreshadows the climactic conforontation between Luke and Vader in "Jedi".
As to the electronics: Williams carefully - and very effectively - adds synthesized sounds to his orchestral expressions in "Empire" and "Jedi". In the scene in question the electronic sound adds to the eerie otherworldly atmosphere. The tree is a place out of this world and the music reflects that.
Also the "Tree of Evil" is important to show that where there is good there is evil. Dagobah is something like a natural Temple of the Force reflecting both sides. One source of the conflict is the schism of the Jedi, the dark Jedi breaking away and eventually forming the Sith. Thus the Force became unbalanced.
Finally the tree is a great allegory of Luke's internal conflicts.