RoR: Forum

Alec:
>allow me to reintroduce some depth by mentioning a few of my non-obvious Hitchcock favorites..

"Notorious".

- Daniel

Post 41

Sunday, June 26, 2005 - 6:39am

Then there's that other Aussie film, 'Sirens' - with Ellie MacPherson no less.......

Post 42

Sunday, June 26, 2005 - 7:09am

...and Sam Neil and Hugh Grant just before he broke into Hollywood...

Post 43

Sunday, June 26, 2005 - 9:41am

You know it's funny how I can't recall either the plot or any dialogue from Sirens.
My mind must have been focusing on something else in the movie... (whatever could that have been)
Do either of you two suffer from the same problem?

Harking back to Peter's rules I'm just wanting to understand what err grabbed you about the film in the first 10 minutes...
:-)

Post 44

Sunday, June 26, 2005 - 10:44am

There was a young minister (Hugh Grant) with his plain wife (Tara Fitzgerald), a painter (Sam Neil) with three alluring models (sirens)... Does that ring a bell?

Movie wise, I was and still am an Englophile. Aussies also included. Have seen all Hugh Grant's pre-Hollywood movies.

Another fun movie I like to recommend is "Impromptu" Staring Hugh Grant as Chopin, Judy Davis as George Sand, Julian Sands as Liszt, Bernadette Peters as Liszt's mistress Countess something, Mandy Patinkin as George Sand's former lover some poet, and a whole bunch of other fun characters. Very eccentric and entertaining. Beautiful music and cinematography.

Post 45

Sunday, June 26, 2005 - 4:11pm

Hong,

If you liked Impromptu (which I haven't seen, but it sounds right up my alley) you may like Amadeus .
It is a fantastic movie about the life and times of Mozart. The Amazon reviewers can do a better job then I can. Suffice to say it deserved its "Best Picture" Oscar (one of 8 it won in 1984).

Post 46

Sunday, June 26, 2005 - 6:58pm

Robert W - as an artist, was of course more interested in the aesthetics than anything else in the movie, tho that included the witty ascerbic statements Lindsay said regarding religion and sexuality... :-)

Post 47

Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 3:30am

Newsflash: The new 'War of the Worlds'. WOW. My flabber is well and truly gasted. Don't miss it.

- Daniel

Post 48

Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 5:25am

Daniel,

I will see it on the power of your recommendation, though Ebert didn't like it too much.

Laj.

Post 49

Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 7:32am

I was a bit unimpressed with War of the Worlds too. It's not bad, just not great. I did like Dakota Fanning in it though. I hope that girl continues to have a real acting career when she gets older.

Sarah

Post 50

Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 1:35pm

Sarah:
>I was a bit unimpressed with War of the Worlds too. It's not bad, just not great. I did like Dakota Fanning in it though. I hope that girl continues to have a real acting career when she gets older.

Totally agree with you about Dakota Fanning. She's fantastic in it. And Spiellberg handles Cruise's ego as well as it's possible to do. He gets the contractually obligatory scene where someone proclaims that Cruise is 'the best fighter pilot/lawyer/barman/racedriver/forklift operator around, it's just a shame about your attitude" out of the way much less painfully than usual, as he does with the equally obligatory Tom-takes-his-shirt-off scene, a formality that is as risible as it was with Stallone. Big star politics aside, Spielberg then gets down to business in what I think is one of the most serious films of his career. His theme is war seen from a human scale, war as not just evil, but as the comprehensive destruction of human cosmology. It is war as a vast, lysergic annihilation. In this sense, its closest relative is not any of the idiot sci-fi we've been trained to expect since Lucas, but is the bad, bad acid of Coppola's "Apocalypse Now". (In fact anyone who's ever experienced a bad pyschedelic knows how just as in war, you desperately attempt to retain your sanity as everything you know is ripped to shreds around you, and also how absolutely impossible escape is...). Yet Speilberg's movie packs the emotional punch that Coppola's more intellectual exercise missed. His marvellous small opening scenes with the family - probably his best since 'Poltergeist' - only emphasise just how radical war's alternative reality is; how you can walk out your front door one day into the utterly unthinkable.

By way of contrast with Spielberg's truly awesome vision, we also had the trailer to Jackson's "King Kong" on beforehand. I suppose it's unfair to judge too early, but this looks like simply more juvenile eyecandy, except with a few Filmboy flourishes for credibility ie: it looks like expensive self indulgent crap - a sequel to some of the cheap self-indulgent crap from his early career like "Meet The Feebles" or "Forgotten Silver". I liked LOR, but this looks dreadful.

- Daniel

Post 51

Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 2:38pm

Hi Laj,

It's tragic. What we're seeing here is just more of the radical dumbing down of standards in contemporary film criticism. How about this from Ebert's review:

Roger Ebert::"...The thing is, we never believe the tripods and their invasion are practical...."

How's that again?! Not 'practical' enough? Gee, I guess we can eliminate the complete works of Alfred Hitchcock, Fellini, Bunuel, De Palma, Scorcese,Truffaut, Renoir, Vigo, Welles, the Cohens et al from the film canon then in favour of more 'practical' visions. God knows who he'd have in mind - probably Sidney Lumet.

The bottom line of his criticism is that a) Spielberg is not jolly or uplifting enough and b) the particular Martians invading aren't very 'practical' (did he stop to wonder why anyone might think the whole theme of Mars invading *would* be credible? And if so, that there might possibly be *another theme* one could use such a plot as a metaphor for?). In other words, Ebert's critical standards are approximately those of Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons. If a movie isn't 'geeky fun' it is a failure. Has there ever been a clearer example of the failure of adult imagination in modern criticism?

Compare and contrast this with his attitude to the abysmal third Star Wars movie:

Roger Ebert:'...the Force is in a jollier mood this time, and "Revenge of the Sith" is a great entertainment."

Yes, all it takes to be a critically approved movie these days is to be 'jolly', and 'entertaining' (interestingly, ROTS is *neither* - Ebert is just dutifully reciting his script) Welcome to our 21st Century critical discourse, and despair.

- Daniel

(Edited by Daniel Barnes
on 6/30, 4:51pm)

Post 52

Thursday, June 30, 2005 - 4:58pm

I just got back from War of the Worlds. Damn! What a blast! Wait until you see this--or that!

--Brant

Post 53

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 12:00am

Brant, just got back from it as well, and I thought War of the Worlds was one of the most disturbing, horrible movies conceivable, with a paper-thin plot to boot. I'll post a more in-depth analysis in another forum thread.

Post 54

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 1:59pm

Hey, Andrew, how'd you like that train?

--Brant

Post 55

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 4:28pm

It suppose it was some neat eye-candy, definitely one of the best CGI shots in the film. And I have to give it some credit on that level--if the technique and graphics hadn't been as good as they were, I'd have walked out.

Post 56

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 8:48pm

Andrew, we can analyze this film out of existence. It just scared the shit out of me the way no movie has done since The Creature from the Black Lagoon which I watched a great deal of from the Rialto theater (Tucson) lobby in the late 1950s. I had a hard time with the flying saucer black and white movie they showed one evening at the YMCA too. I walked out twice, each time snagging the cord on the 16 mm projector pulling the plug out of the wall pissing off the other kids watching it.

--Brant

still in Tucson (after deviations)

PS: No, I stayed in my seat this time.

(Edited by Brant Gaede on 7/01, 8:50pm)

Post 57

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 8:56pm

Just curious -- those who have seen TWOTW: how does it stand up in comparison to two other recent alien invasion flicks, Independence Day and Signs?

REB

Post 58

Friday, July 1, 2005 - 11:21pm

Roger writes;
>Just curious -- those who have seen TWOTW: how does it stand up in comparison to two other recent alien invasion flicks, Independence Day and Signs?

Hi Roger

To my mind far, far superior to both. I thought 'Independence Day' was not just dumb, but very cynically so. 'Signs' had its moments - actually just the birthday party scene - but was basically a light thriller, and a Spielberg homage to boot. Basically, if you look at Spielberg's sci fi, there's a level of both sophistication and emotion you're just not getting anywhere near in the above. For example, "Minority Report' is one of the few times I've seen the moral implications of free will vs determinism addressed down the multiplex...;-) Ditto with "A.I.", which made a marvellous case for the uniqueness of the human experience in the universe by underlining our regrettable tendency to squander it. Now, with WOTW, he's made a film about what happens when our ordinary realities are suddenly smashed beyond all recognition. Sure, Sept 11 is there, but it is equally applicable to Bosnia, Chechnya, and perhaps one terrible day in the future somewhere you and I might live. 'Independence Day' it ain't....;-)

- Daniel

Post 59

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 12:06am