MOVIES you watched this week? (DVD)

[iamnotafraid]

I just "watched" the WATCHMEN.

I didn't realize the Blue Djinn from TV's "I Dream Of Jeanie"
would be walking around the whole movie with his root hanging out.
I guess things have changed since the 60's.

(I hope somebody gets that)

Another 2 3/4 hours I need back.

[desertangel]

To Kill a Mockingbird
"I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I'm still sheriff of Maycomb County. And Bob
Ewell fell on his knife. Good night, sir. "

Double Indemnity
.... it was odd to watch Chip and Ernie's dad confessing to murder, beads of sweat
dripping down his forehead.

[mylittledemon]

Originally Posted by iamnotafraid

I just "watched" the WATCHMEN.

Another 2 3/4 hours I need back.

Read the graphic novel instead. Much better.


Saw DRAG ME TO HELL today. Creeped me out.

[iamnotafraid]

After a good run of bad luck, I had to see a classic:

Cary Grant's Mr. Lucky

[desertangel]

Last Week's Movie:
"You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'" ... hmmm, when I was younger, my mother used to say I was like a fart in a hot skillet... but I don't suppose the two are anywhere near the same. Anyhow, excellent movie... Liz and Paul were sooo very hawt back then.

This Week's Movie:
Dial M for Murder. I enjoyed this Hitchcock film, but not nearly as much as The Birds. I could watch Tippi and the crows a hundred thousand times and never tire of it. Anyone ever take one of those college classes on the study of Hitchcock? I've been tempted but fear I may end up disliking his movies after dissecting them to the enth degree.

[brysondt]

Originally Posted by mylittledemon

Read the graphic novel instead. Much better.


Saw DRAG ME TO HELL today. Creeped me out.

Did you not think that movie was stupid as hell??? haha. I don't know--I went to the theater to see it when it came out, and I was expecting it to be super scary, but it turned out to be weird and funny. Did you not find that part funny when the old lady attacked the girl in the car and she was slobbering? lol.

K--maybe I am twisted, but it was funny to me.

[Dodfather]

Originally Posted by desertangel

Last Week's Movie:
"You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'" ... hmmm, when I was younger, my mother used to say I was like a fart in a hot skillet... but I don't suppose the two are anywhere near the same. Anyhow, excellent movie... Liz and Paul were sooo very hawt back then.

This Week's Movie:
Dial M for Murder. I enjoyed this Hitchcock film, but not nearly as much as The Birds. I could watch Tippi and the crows a hundred thousand times and never tire of it. Anyone ever take one of those college classes on the study of Hitchcock? I've been tempted but fear I may end up disliking his movies after dissecting them to the enth degree.

It depends on the movie and your approach to it. I've taught several of those types of classes, although I prefer to use Rear Window for teaching. Having studied film for years (just finishing phD right now) Hitchcock is often a great way to introduce students to film studies after giving them an introduction via more current stuff. Psycho is of course always used too.

There are several ways to approch it. Either you just discuss the techincal elements, camera movement, framing etc, and how they contribute to the film... or you talk more about the history of the film and studio industry at that point, or Hitchcock's repeated use of the same techniques and how his work can be identified...or you can get into a major discussion about "proper" film theory and psychoanalysis etc (which was very in vogue in the 50s and 60s). That's the stuff that can turn a lot of people off though, for very good reason! Of course the best way is to consider all these at the same time and focus on one or two of them...

If you seriously do want to study him then pm me and I will happily answer any questions you may have and provide you with a watching/vieiwing list and give you some notes on the key films - it will get you ahead in whatever couirse you take! Of course if you're just after general information and noa qualification or anything then I can just discuss them with you via pm if you want and save you taking a course at all.

Sorry, that made me sound abit full of myself there!

[iamnotafraid]

I bought a couple of DVD's.

Neil Diamond "Hot August Night NYC".
People seem to either love or hate Neil, but at 68 years
old the guy still sells out Madison Square Garden for four
nights. It's a great DVD. It sounds and looks great.

Coraline. I like these weird movies. I thought it
might be a little more scary, but it was still worth watching.
The sound was amazing, and so was the picture.

I guess if I mixed the two DVD's together I would get Sweet Coraline.

[mylittledemon]

Originally Posted by iamnotafraid

I guess if I mixed the two DVD's together I would get Sweet Coraline.

sweeeeeeeet coraliiiine....
Baa baaa bAAAAA!



Coraline was a great movie.

[iamnotafraid]

Since insomnia was my best friend this morning I tried watching
Duplicity. I wasn't able to make it through. Boring! I'll
try watching the second half some other time, when I feel like
being bored again.

[David]

Originally Posted by iamnotafraid

Since insomnia was my best friend this morning I tried watching
Duplicity. I wasn't able to make it through. Boring! I'll
try watching the second half some other time, when I feel like
being bored again.

I'm right now on a Burns & Allen kick -- watched "Here Comes Cookie" & "Six of a Kind" -- Dada masterpieces. I laughed so hard I farted a bunch of times.

[wheart]

Midnight Cowboy, made in 1969. An extraordinary film. Dustin Hoffman's performance is beyond amazing. A very sad story but still very uplifting.

[wheart]

Originally Posted by mylittledemon

Read the graphic novel instead. Much better.


Saw DRAG ME TO HELL today. Creeped me out.

what a great title. I"m a horror freak so I may need to investigate this one. The creepier the better!

[LikeAWillow]

Originally Posted by wheart

Midnight Cowboy, made in 1969. An extraordinary film. Dustin Hoffman's performance is beyond amazing. A very sad story but still very uplifting.

My roommate was assigned to watch that movie for one of her American Studies classes last semester and became obsessed with it.

I saw the Pursuit of Happyness last night and thought it was wonderful (although it made me an emotional trainwreck.)

[TrueFaith77]

Originally Posted by TrueFaith77

I just watched the new John Boorman movie: The Tiger's Tail. Relegated to a straight-to-DVD release, it is the best film by this GIANT of filmmaking in over a decade (and I was moved by the cathartic In My Country). If it weren't so wise and elegant, I'd say it exhibits the youthful inventiveness of his Catch Us If You Can (yes, greater than A Hard Day's Night), while updating his complicated, humane view of Capitalism in Where the Heart Is (post-Reagan, pre-Clinton, it went unheeded) to the Obama era. Its insights into the human eternal adrift in the political-economic present couldn't be more urgently needed. Deep, mysterious, fun, funny, The Tiger's Tail swirls with intellectual romance and primal emotions, from its teeming traffic-jam opening to its final boat-trip punchline.

It joins Julian Hernandez's Raging Sun, Raging Sky and Andre Techine's The Girl On The Train as the best new movies I've seen this year -- all (thus far) unreleased theatrically in the United States.

Just felt I should re-post the above, especially as I now learn that Apres Luis has just been released straight to DVD. A Gael Morel film: straight-to-dvd!?!? This is officially a cinema crisis. SERIOUSLY: SEE THE TIGER'S TAIL!

Meanwhile, I caught up on some movies this weekend. Saw David R. Ellis' The Final Destination 3D, which was stupid and ludicrous. . . especially after the soulful Final Destination 3 by James Wong. Ellis is, officially, a hack who is nothing without Larry Cohen (screenwriter of Cellular). Ellis tries to get all racial here but he conflates critiquing racism with class bias, and Black perserverence with Black pathology (a ludicrous characterization) -- and deflates--buries--these matters with unimaginative shocks.

Also watched Watchmen. Unlike Ellis, director Zack Snyder is no hack. His mastery of cgi made visionary the fascist abstractions of 300; but here Snyder gets Fascism--and, more importantly, comic books--all wrong by taking too seriously the graphic novel's pseudo-intellectual approach to comic book mythology. It's better than The Dark Knight (of course) but it also shows us from whence The Dark Knight sprang.

The DVD of the remake of Black Christmas: well-cast (Andrea Martin! Mary Elizabeth Winstead!!) and well-made (by Glen Morgan), but this unpleasant movie's sick Christmas twist (warding off evil spirits in the righteous climax confuses paganism with Christianity. . . or does it?) seemed removed from the real-world anxiety that grounded Morgan's previous horror remake, Willard, via the uncanny--unforgettable--use of Michael Jackson's "Ben".

For more on MJ, Willard, and "Ben," check out Armond White's new book KEEP MOVING: THE MICHAEL JACKSON CHRONICLES.