Movies

[jbottle]

I liked "The American"'s '60's Hitchcocky poster with the angles (you'll know which one if you go to imdb), but yeah, it looks like the standard movie where somebody runs around on buildings and rooftops, finds microchips in his cell phone, and may run through a river or double-back along his path impersonating a homeless man as they run right by, etc., a variation on the "building movie," subgenre guns, basically another screenplay written by somebody who wish they had written David Mamet's "Spartan,"

...but with the financial world or double-agents and terrorist cells as the enemy...

As an actor if you don't mind running and shooting at the same time, or helicopters, it seems like fine work, it's been out since yesterday so I should be able to get a read on performance from "thenumbers.com," which posts daily takes, if it did more than $5 on a Wed., I'd be impressed, it's "Rated R" and not your average commercial fare.

Will check competition as well, "Machete" coming soon, don't know if I can talk the sigboth into it though.

[jbottle]

Tobias, who I semi-invented just as I created Nathan Rabin in near entirety through my posts at the NYTFF, did not care for "Machete," despite a semi-glowing review, regretting that a pulp film was less than transcendant.  Fancy Pants, all of them.

[madupont]

There's been something that 's been bothering me about Clooney's latest role,The American.  As I watched the various clips, it reminded me of something else he had done, which was Michael Clayton.  Particularly, the scene in MC where he climbs up the hill (similar to his street/steps up and down in Italy as The American).  But in MC, he has just had his car bombed. It seemed to me that his new cinematographer caught exactly the same shot of or as a closeup portrait of an actor known as George Clooney.  It also resembles, of course, Syriana which was a far more complex film (or maybe not?) perhaps it was merely just more actors in unusual roles to tell a political story that we were forced to know because nobody else was telling us.  However, there is an excuse for the behavior of George, because he is actually playing a real person not just acting and creating a character; so there is something in there, in Syriana of the real history of a CIA man.  Maybe what we are seeing is the degeneration of what was a department careerist, becoming an independent operative in Michael Clayton, who now has taken it one step further and stands for all The American assassins for hire --and that takes me all the way back to Richard Burton coming in From the Cold of a divided Germany.

It is a subtle change, except Matt Damon did it while Robert De Niro spent five years creating a movie about man(played by himself) who invented the CIA.  Back then, you were just a man in a gray flannel suit and a raincoat who wore a hat.  I operated on the theory Matt was playing James Jesus Angleton (who was one of the people whom Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona thinks she is better than).

If George had just stayed married to working for Frank Langella in the days when you had to be married to not give your corporate sponsor a bad name (your boss was the risk taker, not you), it would have been all Good Night, and Good Luck!

[jbottle]

"Machete" did a decent number on Fri. and was #1, hoping for a Best Supporting for Fahey.

[madupont]

I see what you mean:
                                http://video.theweek.com/video/Machete-cast-discusses-immigrat#c=5KPXMC2TW5M4KGSH&t='Machete'%20cast%20discusses%20immigration
http://video.theweek.com/video/Machete-cast-discusses-immigrat#c=5KPXMC2TW5M4KGSH&t='Machete'%20cast%20discusses%20immigration
and two ahead of it is their trailer where you really see what they mean.

Oddly enough, they list Lindsay Lohan. What's Robert De Niro doing in here as a Congressman (looks like he's laughing...) and then there is: Ta Da, sound of trumpets , not exactly flaring but just a presentation: Don Johnson!?! as what, the friendly rancher or the unfriendly rancher? by the clean smiling look he does not look high ....

[madupont]

Ps. a friend of mine pulled this forty years ago or just short or coming out of the Five Points Hooligan's or maybe not, maybe just the Mexican restaurant across the street. I wasn't there to see it but I heard about it because we were a small clan of maybe 3,000-5,000 close friends. When we had a "forum" we did it in person. Usually in the upstair's kitchen next to the Uihlein mansion.  Anybody could drop by and usually did.  On a Sunday afternoon like now, when the Huahaca Wizards had played the Michoacan Warriors in some stoned out touch football in the park (we had our own as we were top of the hill that curved down to Lake Michigan through Lake Park. We arose to the sun rise glow over the water illuminating the  second-floor parlor; although you might get some sleep in the dressing room which had more shadow  because of the closeness of these huge beer-baronical houses of a different century with their carved-wood ceilings. It is probable that a second story man could enter through the alley that separated the garages from the households and throw a line to pull himself up to a window left to ventilate a room heated by a gas fireplace. Our downstairs former butler's parlor had belonged to the gay bartender of the Mason Street Grill where my mother  used to take me to lunch after art-classes as a kid;strictly vegetarian food, wild rice croquettes with dark mushroom sauce although you could indulge more carnivorously in the downstairs bar frequented by the financial district of Water street. It was either that or Watt's tea-room on Cathedral Square).

After Sunday, the week continued in exactly the same way; only lacking football which was reserved for Sunday afternoons.  You would be amazed what you can do in a huddle that nobody would observe happening.

Which accounts for my friend just one of many brothers in his family, cutting loose with a machete.  About what I have no idea. But at Hooligan's one could watch the games on tv, drink way too much bad beer, etc.  That might account for it. Then again, maybe not.

[rantbo]

Machete looked a bit too gleefully blood-soaked for my taste. 

Madu -- you're right, there is a kind of arc that connects the Cloon in Syriana, M. Clayton, and now this quiet euro-style thriller in Italy.  And more generally, we see him do his charming lonely Outsider in all these and the recent Up in the Air as well.  I hope that's not some kind of analog to his actual life off-screen.

Let Me In -- another disrespectful and demeaning dumb-down of a Swedish film that is only two years old.  (Let the Right One In -- a wonderful dark tale)  Why Sweden keeps being targeted, I don't know, but the remakes seem to come right on the heels of the originals.  It's not like a Japanese film, where the original may present inscrutable cultural aspects to a Western audience -- hey, you can almost understand Swedish without subtitties -- knock back a shot of aqvavit and you won't even know the difference.

   

[kidcarter8]

Brittany's last film.

I am thinking I'd better PASS...............remember her for her better work, rather than see something made when apparently she was not in great hold of her own mind.

If anyone does see it please pass on your thoughts.

[madupont]

Machete looked a bit too gleefully blood-soaked for my taste. 

Madu -- you're right, there is a kind of arc that connects the Cloon in Syriana, M. Clayton, and now this quiet euro-style thriller in Italy.  And more generally, we see him do his charming lonely Outsider in all these and the recent Up in the Air as well.  I hope that's not some kind of analog to his actual life off-screen.

Let Me In -- another disrespectful and demeaning dumb-down of a Swedish film that is only two years old.  (Let the Right One In -- a wonderful dark tale)  Why Sweden keeps being targeted, I don't know, but the remakes seem to come right on the heels of the originals.  It's not like a Japanese film, where the original may present inscrutable cultural aspects to a Western audience -- hey, you can almost understand Swedish without subtitties -- knock back a shot of aqvavit and you won't even know the difference.

   

  I think that I saw this, or the Original, the Swedish film -- if it is the one about the commune, sort of?  If so, I thought it was hilarious. I'll grant you this, one "can almost understand", because I have Swedish friends but then, when you least suspect it they do something truly not understandable and you have to chalk it up to some weird sort of Swedish morality unlike the public cliche ever since Ingmar Bergman was turned loose on us.   They are simply not all blonde Playboy Bunnies, but sometimes have a deep sense of morality, particularly if they are brunette and tell you that they are really part Laplander, as well as some Irish in good measure. Besides a couple of them taught me how to milk a goat and and maintain a sterile field to make cheese in a pristine dairy although they could not get me a job in the hospital during the last labor crisis/economic shortage up across from Minnesota. The brunettes know how to weave and make clothes right out of The Virgin Spring in case you are casting a dramatic production. They can weave them out of dog-hair if necessary. 

Will check IMDB later to see if that was the one that had really good character differentiation.

[madupont]

Nope, neither one or three altogether.  What I saw was a merry romp of commune living with the usual confusions after the original fun all centered about a young man with a lot of long hair and a beard getting a little older and deciding to complicate his life by being talked into something different.  Can't recall the title at all (shrug)?

What makes it all worse these days, is that I can't figure out how to operate all the new channels that claim to show you any movie you want but review them so rottenly that you suspect they didn't watch them prior to reviewing them.  Nevertheless, I'll give it a shot because talking to the three dwarfs in the political forum is underwhelming now accompanied by the dark queen in the black wimple who keeps
saying,
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, you know I am  the meanest one of all"
 
(She has to wear it because she put her metal studded dog collar on inside out by accident and then, wouldn't you know it, that was the day her master yanked her chain.)

[carol polk]

Just put her on ignore; your life will immediately be improved.

[madupont]

There are actually only about four posters with whom I care to exchange posts  politically(or, aesthetically) informative, since the other four left! If you know what I mean....   But in real
politic,Sometimes, you have to engage the enemy.

[madupont]

http://www.bvonmovies.com/2010/09/08/diddy-joaquin-phoenix-clip-i-m-still-here/?icid=main%7Chtmlws-bv-n%7Cdl5%7Csec3_lnk3%7C169834

Opens this weekend

[madupont]

http://www.bvonmovies.com/2010/09/10/8-character-poster-tyler-perry-for-colored-girls/?icid=main%7Chtmlws-bv-n%7Cdl5%7Csec3_lnk2%7C169834

November
Risky production(?) of a previous hit show in Manhattan that deals with poetry like it or not (and that more Black women were productive of poetry in the post-Beat time frame  than were other women).

[madupont]

Okay, highly recommended, has anyone seen "The Man from Elysian Fields"?    Who is, of course, Mick Jagger.  I don't know how he does it: make movies in which everybody plays themselves.  Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste....

And this is James Coburn (as the winner of three Pulitzers). One of my favorite actresses: Olivia Williams as his much younger wife. Isn't this story familiar.  (I knew, she looked familiar but had no idea it was the same person whom I'd seen in a British production and whose husband,Paul Bettany, was stolen away from her by her sister as done by Helena Bonham Carter who is always "smashing" in these tempestuous roles not to be outdone or upstaged by their fabulous mother Eleanor Bron.

Olivia has been more recently seen in  Polanski's, The Ghost Writer. Now, here's where things get interesting.

You have to imagine that Mick Jagger might be interested in a woman like Angelica Huston who was once the girlfriend of Jack Nicholson and came home one day to find Roman Polanski in the bedroom....   It is context like this that makes The Man from Elysian Fields work.

Here, Olivia is much slimmer and pampered by an older husband, who gives her anything and everything in the end. As long as she is "willing to settle short, and to put up with his whimsies.  They live in an establishment that I had pegged as The Getty.

Shot in 30 days in L.A., this is a fabulous tale of caution; or lack of it.

But wait a minute, it is really the story of another writer, Andy Garcia, who I have seen do Lorca, when I might rather have seen him do Modigliani (and god knows where I can find that movie, after the fact). He is married to Julianna Margulies, and here is where it gets weird because my mind is telling me: these are New York people transplanted to Los Angeles. How come?  With oral sex.  Honest to god.  In some ways, 2001 was a very good year, despite George Bush and the inevitable results of allowing Republicans to do anything they want to do in the larger  world because their First Families are fabulously wealthy.

It really is a very funny movie about a sad story.  Or, is it?  In many ways, it is a comedy, about the ways of the world, especially one in which Mick Jagger runs an escort service because this is a Samuel Goldwyn film.