Munich
El Crimen Ferpecto
Vertigo

Repeat
POINT BREAK.

man, i really didnt not care for munich, how many
shots do we get of husbands and wives frollicking, how many
little unsubtle hints do we get about americas role in helping
terrorists. AND the world trade center in the final shot!
give me a break. Cut 45 minutes of overly melodramatic
scenes and tell John Williams to sit this one out, and maybe
this could have been a great movie. But, for now this is the
second time Senior Spelbergo has let me down this year.

Its not that i disagree with this movie in anyway. I just
feel it is a subtle as a train wreck. It starts with that middle
eastern bad guy chant theme... the one team america
ripped on so well, and from there its off running its
a horribly melodramatic movie filled with very manipulative
tricks, and to top this off the violence is just to realistic,
no punches pulled. In no way is this movie tactful.
If it didnt rely on trying to make the audience emotional, then maybe
in a purely subjective movie i would approve, but as it is now,
its over the top; excessive.

you and dad vs. mom and me.

Squid and the whale
Grizzly man
Walmart: the high cost of low prices
Rear Window

and a crap load of Law and order,
my parents breath that stuff.

oh.
squid and the whale is a top 10 list
winner, so good!

birth'n

birth
to live or die in LA
800 bullets
Brothers
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

lots of stuff to watch, not much time to watch it.
sad.

revolution is the opium of the intellectual

l'argent
o lucky man (thanks trey!)
samurai rebellion
a man escaped
ive heard the mermaids sing
magnificent ambersons (crappy 89 minute spanish cut)
dont look now

repeat:
batman begins

Konga.

So... King Kong is really fun.
really really fun, like snow fight
fun, or ultimate frisbee fun.

its not perfect, its kind of long
and leaves alot of loose story lines
and after the second act cancels out
almost all the charaters minus the
heavys. (you have no clue what
happens to the built up characters
from the ship)
none of that matters, because
some of the set pieces and CGI
is fricken amazing. I would not take
kids to the stuff. its pretty violent
and harsh. (kong breaks a T-Rex's
jaw in half, snashes it down into the
ground and then begins to toy with
its limp hanging on by a thread
face) THATS F'd UP!!!
However, its goodtimes.

Today i revisited "The Story of a Cheat"
its really good. You can pinpoint how
influential it was to truffeaut and junet.
(influential is a nice way of putting it,
they fricken stole whole scenes and ideas)

I also cracked opn the 60's samurai
classic set from criterion, Started it with
"Sword of the Beast" it was pretty good,
short, (84 minutes) beautifully shot, the
transfer looks amazing, very rich low
contrast B&W, pretty fabulous. Its kind
of westernish- story dealing with gold
prospectors, corrupt law enforcement,
thug filled gangs, and the one man who
stood up to them all.
it sounds pretty formulaic but its pretty
rad, i dont remember samurai movies where
the fights are always happening on the run.
It seems a movie which focus so much on honor,
features a main character always on the run,
that seems funny for some reasson. It makes
sense, but its just funny, its so non-standoffish
its non-cinematic but amazingly cinematic at
the sametime. That probably makes no sense,
but neither does the amount of attention i have
given this one small part of the movie.

Point is, Give it a watch.

I also DL'd Masters of Horror
at the suggestion of team Trechal.
Dammit.
The Argento one scared the crap out
of me, i wached it at 2am, needing to
wake at 6am. The gore alone creeped
me out. and im oddly grossed out by
watching Sex with monster faced
girls; odd.
Joe Dantes was so awesome!!!
the fnal image of zombies on the
march is so awesome i was crying.
All around great ep.
Tobe Hoopers was kind of eh' it had some good
production design, some nice camera work in places
but the overall story was pretty lame. Plus how many
movies use that same looking goth/rock looking
night club. with the whole starwars cantina editing:
Whoa that girl has a tattoo, holy cow that dudes
has a nose ring and hes drinking something green
this is so hardcore!!!! dumb.
and billy corgan did the music. also dumb.

off to bed
hopefully i will finish the 60's samurai box set
by next post. i need to watch more stuff.

a bit of sad news.
i tried to watch this Chris Marker
Doc called "A Grin without a Cat"
it conquered me. Its the first movie in
a while i had to hive up on.

no es bueno.

Narnia...

I had convinced myself for the past two weeks that i had no want to see that narnia movie all the kids are talking about. The previews and WOM (word of mouth) had made it out to be really bland and mediocre, and seeing that it was directed by the dude who directed shrek (he looks like eric stoltz from 'mask')i had no faith in it.
So, somehow last night myself and a bunch of old work friends went to see the Narnia. To sum it up, it was bland. Not bad, Not good. just kind of wonky, oddly paced, and claustrophobic, OH! and unintentionally HILARIOUS!!! there were so many times where i busted up laughing, usually at really emotional moments, when characters were crying, or there was lots of drama. Oh my god, it was so funny.
there's a scene where the bratty kid gets stabbed by a dwarf, which on its own is kind of funny, but when the dwarf gets shot by an arrow right afterwards, ITS FRICKEN GANG BUSTERS!!! i was hurting. And it was so bad because everybody is crying over this seemingly dead character, and im crying from laughter, and the drama of the situation just makes it so much funnier. i was snorting. Plus, you cant take a movie with talking beavers seriously, even when said beavers are dressed in chainmill its so funny. (there's this shot where the winter queen freezes a fox, and its all dramatic, and stuff but the look of the fox is so funny, its like when someone takes a picture of you with food in your mouth... and your jumping... and
constipated... and thinking about whether or not you left the oven on. everytime they cut back to this frozen in midair fox, i had to laugh... A lot.)

The movie has a bunch of problems, first, it suffers from the same problem the first harry potter did, medium shots and close ups. its a supposed to be epic, but you didn't really get that idea till the end fight, and that's pretty much like 9 effects shots. They cut allot of stuff. after santa claus visits the kids and gives them weapons, it cuts to the kids running, and a really tense dramatic score, and then WOLVES! WTF!?!? no transition just a huge jump in story and drama. not to mention Aslan's voice sounds like liam neeson narrating a car commercial. there is no integration between audio and animation, it looks like a lion is lip sinking. theres nothing about his voice which makes him seem physical, even when the actors are talking to them it sounds like they are talking to some dude in a booth. Plus Aslan looks like ass. If hes in sunlight they make him look out of focus to hide shoddy CGI, he looks fine in the night scenes or in flatlight, but if there's a highlight on him, he was crap. Theres a ton of little problems. If your not a fan, wait for it to come on TV.

I finally saw Shogun Assassin
its very good? maybe? i don't know.
I liked it as a violent samurai movie,
but Cub's Narration made it seem
like a better movie. Its strange.
I don't know what to think.
Its fun, but theres really something
about the Cub talking about his fathers actions
it creepy, and oddly emotional.
Its just strange.

Facets has thier warehouse sale. A bunch of oddities
on VHS and some good DVDs. The VHS movies were all 1.95-2.95
while most DVDs remained above 10.00
so i just grabbed odd VHS tapes.
I grabbed a Documentary on K records, The Stuntman, and
some 60's western revenge movie called "hot spur" i think
thats going to be an odd time.

anyways...

Steven Soderbergh is a very handsom man...

the original title had something more to do with Soderbergh being
cinema's wet towel, or an assault on Woody Allen's nostalgia.
the above seems more fitting tonally with the rest of the blog.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/soderbergh.html

That guy.
such a smart guy
i wrote him a haiku

Steven Soderbergh
such a multi format cad
makes me cry money

ummm that might need some work,
but more importantly "Bubble" comes
out in january; online, in theaters, and
on digital versatile disc(s).
Unseen, im picking it up on DVD
to support this unique distribution
concept...
(its not really a new concept, national lampoons did the same
thing last year but they are not nearly as cool as the S.S Soderbergh,
so there!)
any who, im curious.

anywho.
tonight was Disc 2 of
-Until the End of the World
its still pretty good, its oddly
comical and subtly absurd i don't
follow why all the male characters are
playing lemmings with Solveig Dommartin.
maybe it will makes sense now that the
world hasth ended. The science of the film
is kind of odd. its a weird blend of memory
and technology, the tangible with the non-tangible,
theres all these pointers to how humans obtain information
i don't get it... yet. theres still 2.5hrs left.
i think its denouncing our reliance on technology,
and humanities need for communal bonds.
but that could be crap. i dont know.
its a long movie.
i bought a new can of coffee for it.
anywho.

im going to sleep.

i still love you broken ladder.

Another busy week ahead of me, and it looks like i
will be short a director to focus on, If last week was a four
film sampler of Clouzot, then this week will probably
be a sampling of Nicholas Roeg... plus a bunch of
odd ducks.
-Godard Shorts Volume 2 (Meeting Woody Allen)
-Chips Endings (5M2L chips hour long montage,
i couldnt handle anymore then 5 minutes, i am weak)
-The Man Who Fell To Earth (now that solves the mystery of
what david bowies penis looks like.)
- Until the End of the World (first of 4 discs im diving
into the 5hr directors cut DVD bootleg all week, color me
impressed with the first 100 minutes.)

in other movie related news "handbrake" is an amazingly handy
piece of software, it will change my dvd backup life for the better.
it rips dvds into mpeg4's of any size you want/need/love
and it looks pretty great! turn those dvds into VCDs or iPod video ready resolution.
goodtimes.

at a crawl...

Wages of Fear (one of the most suspenseful movies ive ever seen)
Quai des Orfevres (beautifully shot let down)
the story of a cheat (interesting i dont know what to think yet)
Blast of Silence (cassavette's like noir, unintentionally funny)
40 yr old virgin (3rd viewing: a genuinely great comedy.)
Wedding Crashers (eh, crap)
(double feature at the brew and view)

Good Night, and Good Luck...

Ive only seen 2 movies in the past week,
Leather Boys
Good Night, and Good Luck

I'd be more angry about this situation,
but, Good Night and Good Luck:

IS ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR.

i just wrote a huge 12 year old girl
styled gush on this, but it was pointless
it was just restating how perfect of a
movie going experience this was for me.

MOST HIGHLY REC'D!!!