Chic, IL What Movie Did you last see?

New Batman trailer

 

Iron Man (or Fe Man as I like to call him) was awesome. I'd be really surprised so see a better movie this year.

 

Hulk smash box-office.

Listen for the music at the very end.

 

Like most everyone else, Iron Man.

Wow, just wow. I can't say how much I enjoyed it and want to see it again soon.

 

It is on!!!

 

If I may, I need to geek out for a few hours...

 

The Bank Job - If you're a Jason Stratham action fan, you'll surely be disappointed, because if there's one thing this movie doesn't have..it's action (OK, there is about 60 seconds of it). However, if you want to see an intriguing "bank job" film....you'll probably be disappointed too. The 2/3rds is spent setting everything up and pretty much nothing really of interest happens. The last third isn't half bad and even gets kind of entertaining, but doesn't stop the movie from being about 45 mintutes too long. The shots are slick and the acting is all that bad. If you're really bored, check it out.

D'

 

"Iron Man" was a lot of fun, mostly for all the expected reasons. About halfway through, I got the same kinda feeling as when I watched "There Will Be Blood": both movies are pretty good films overall, but strong and very entertaining central performances raise them up a grade or two.

"Gimme a scotch, I'm starving."

 

The Bucket List - Well shot, Nicholson & Freeman are always entertaining to watch. However, the movie itself, despite a cool premise, was pretty uneventful and full of overused movie-making cliche's. I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying most of it is a "road movie". But despite their travels, there's no adventure...just pretty shots of exotic places. Not bad, but not notable either.

D'

 

[image=http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/funny-pictures-bucket-list-walrus.jpg]

 

"I Could Never Be Your Woman", some doomed-to-direct-DVD flick from a few years ago starring Michelle Pheiffer (sp?) and Paul Rudd. Amy "Fast Times" Heckerling wrote and directed it, and it's very good overall, though she clearly had a lot of points to make (women in the workplace, the image of youth in America, the festering valley of puss that is Hollywood, etc), and some scenes end with characters simply making speeches instead of actually, y'know, acting out the issues.

Worth renting, but I kinda wish they'd made another draft and tried to dramatize a little more instead of just preach.

It's kinda contrary to the spirit of the film, but I still gotta say that Ms Pfeiffer looks even better in this than she did in "Stardust", which is saying something.

Also, the ever-great Fred Willard shows up and uses the word "crunk."

 

I really really really really Want to Believe.

 

Watched the Burton adaptation of Sweeney Todd last night and after having such an excellent production last December I am left wanting. I'm sure Springer can spout off some bullcrap Hollywood reasons for the changes from the play but it doesn't jive with me. And the casting of Depp and Boham-Carter seems more in line with some recent scientific attitudes - just because they can doesn't mean they should.

Do yourself a favor and catch a live production of this somewhere. I don't care where, it's bound to be better than the film version.

 

So what was actually wrong with it besides not being as good as the dinner-theater version you saw?

D'

 

Oh, wow, you really zinged me there. Proved without a doubt we's ain't got no culture out here.

For starters, I feel that the exclusion of the chorus leaves the audience hanging a bit. Yeah, sure, anyone going to see this is going to know something about the story, but it felt like Burton wanted to avoid this feeling too much like a "musical" and took out all the chorus numbers for this purpose alone, not because it made sense story-wise. Those numbers add to the story and atmosphere, and I feel it lessens the production to remove them. A fly-over of a black & white CGI London doesn't really inform us as to what's going on.

The music was too loud. And before I get "So turn it down, idiot!" and "If it's too loud, you're too old!", what I mean is that the instruments walked all over the lyrics and there were several places that I simply could not hear or understand what was being sung. The songs in "Sweeney" are more than just dressing, they are telling the story. There is extremely little spoken word. If I can't hear what they are singing, I am missing the story.

Burton put his good buddies Johnny and Helena in the main roles, seemingly without stopping to consider if they could pull it off. Depp was passable in his role, but he still lacked some of the fire I think should have been there. He had anger alright, but never stepped over into rage that he should have. He played the role in a very BMW way; very precisely engineered, very well done, but also very clinical. He needed more Ferarri, more fire and passion.

And Helena Bonham-Carter was just wrong. Mrs. Lovett is morbid, to be sure, and more than a little crazy, but she is also funny. Things may be crap and the one light at the end of the tunnel might just be chopping up humans and putting them into pies, but she's generally happy. Well, maybe not happy, but certainly not the morose and depressing wannabe emo-chick that was in this movie. Where's the fun, where's the humor?

And that is a general complaint of mine regarding the whole piece. Yes, "Sweeney Todd" is about murder and revenge, but there are also some genuinely funny moments, and it's the juxtaposition of the macabre and the humorous that makes it all palatable. Some of the best lines come from the chorus, whose exclusion we have already noted. But even in "Have a little priest" the line that ALWAYS gets the laughs is about the solider and do we want the general "with or without his privates". Why take that one line out? In fact that whole song, normally a favorite and the one people idly sing to themselves for the next week was more bloodthirsty and mean instead of being two quasi-normal people trying to justify random murder cannibalism for profit, even if they are only justifying it to themselves.

The flashback scene in the beginning ("there was a barber and his wife"), made possible by the medium of film, ended up stealing one of the major punches of the story. I can see the thought process, too, of why it was included. It makes sense, "Hey, we're not on a stage, we can do a whole flashback thingy, it'll be great." But the first time we see the beggar woman, even though they keep her face mostly in shadow, the gig is up. Even my girlfriend's 15 year old son commented, "His wife isn't dead, she's right there!" We're not supposed to see that, we're supposed to wait until he's in the bake house, standing over her corpse, realizing at the same time the character does that he's just cut the throat of the woman he loved, the one thing that might have prevented him from being OK with deceit, murder, and cannibalism. In that moment, the enormity of how WRONG everything that he has done comes crashing down on him, followed closely by the realization that it all could have been avoided, but it's too late now, we're all pretty much **** . All of that is neutered and made less relevant because you can see it coming a mile away.

Finally, choppi

 

No, I didn't like it very much either for similar reasons. I was just wondering why you didn't.


D'
"You uncultured swine!"

 

Now you know, and knowing's half the battle.

Goooo JOE!

 

Wow.

 

That video at the end was awesome.

 

I probably should have made an NSFW, thanks the the snippet from the original "Bad Lieutenant." That scene seems even crazier when taken out of context.

If anyone hasn't seen the original, it's really something incredible. I dunno if I'd call it "enjoyable", but there's a level of intensity/emotion/pain running through it that turns its sleazy subject matter into a film about morality, forgiveness, guilt... all that fun Catholic B.S. Make sure (as the article says) you see the NC-17 version; the R cut essentially castrates the film and Keitel's performance (in more ways than one.)

"I have forgiven them."

 

Confetti - A pizz-poor crap-azz attempt at a mockumentary. Despite having Martin Freeman (The [real] Office) and Jessica Stevenson (Spaced), it was pretty horrible and unfunny. It was supposedly fully improvisational, which would have been great were they exceptional improv actors like the ones in Christopher Guest's camp.
The premise is a contest by a wedding magazine to have "The Most Original Wedding"...without giving anything you don't learn in the first 3 minutes...the contestants are: "Musical Theater", "Tennis" and "Au Natural"....hilarity fails to ensue.

D'
"MARTIN FREEMAN FOR BILBO!!"

 

Yeah, Iron Man was righteous. Fun, smart summer flick. Downey is a monster.

I'm wrapping up Justice League: New Frontier and it was good stuff. I've never gotten the overwhelming fanboy lust for the actual comic book series; the story just seems way too disjointed for me and for a book about superheroes in the swingin' sixties, there's not enough superheroics or true swinging.

The movie condenses the story and eliminates a lot of the fanboy wankery to make it a leaner, meaner machine. As such, it's a big improvement. The trims also makes it so that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman seem to have more balanced roles compared to Hal Jordan and Wally West, which is nice.

 

Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Cinema Cannibals:
Well, it wasn't "bad" per-se...it was just the most unoriginal and weakest movie in all respects compared to its predecessors. I mean I'm trying to think of one segment of it that isn't directly ripped from previous Indy flicks and bits from X-Files, Predator, Stargate or any other movie where the aliens blast off out of the Earth at the end of the movie.

Though it wasn't as bad as the Prequels, it did have a couple horrendous moments...i.e. the stupid Spiderman/Tarzan scene with LaBeouf. The ant scene was some in-your-face-CGI as well. A complete waste of the talent of Jim Broadbent and John Hurt. John Hurt's character served no purpose what-so-ever...at least nothing that Indy couldn't have figured out himself. Cate Blanchett, (one of my favorite actresses) was pretty terrible and unconvincing as a villain.

For myself, my prediction that the real pleasure from this movie would be what Spielberg did to bring some of it alive and Ford's delivery (though sadly, nothing really quotable said). It was still fun to watch, some of the chases were fun....but needed more explosions.

D'

 

Was Sallah in it?

No Sallah = fail. Want proof? Temple of Doom.