Movies

[barton2]

Weezo asks: 

Has anyone seen "Red Tails"

I saw Kate Winslet in "Iris," but that's about it.  Seriously, if you see it, feel free to review it here.  We're a bit understaffed these days.  

Soderberg is kind of uneven, agreed.  Also a fan of The Limey, Traffic (sort of), and Out of Sight.  The Informant! and Kafka were also good.  Never liked his debut piece, SLAV, all that much.  Hated the art film thing he did with David Duchovny, Full Frontal.  Contagion, last year's offering, was good but rather cold and documentarish, never letting us too close to the characters.

[whiskeypriest]

I saw Kate Winslet in "Iris," but that's about it.
 

Speaking of the devil, I see Kate Winslet has just signed on to the new Charlie Kaufman penned musical - yes, musical - along with Catherine Keener, who is the one actress I would most like to play Boggle with.  I had to take a cold shower immediately after reading that.

[harrie]

 Never liked his debut piece, SLAV, all that much.  Hated the art film thing he did with David Duchovny, Full Frontal.  

Is it true they're remaking that with Michael Fassbender?

[jbottle]

has soderbergh ever made a good movie?

I liked Out of Sight okay, even with the oft-discussed plot holes.  Same with The Limey and Traffic, sort of.  But .... yeah, you're right.  Soderbergh was on TMZ last night, where the pap asked him how Haywire did, and he said "it sucked" - so I have to give him points for honesty, a hard commodity to come by out there, I hear.  He was still nice to the pap, wasn't an ass or anything. Nice enough guy, maker of meh movies.  And he's got quite the trophy wife, if I recall correctly.  Hope that counts for something.

I liked "The Limey" and I liked the Peter Gallagher film noir blue one and of course "sex, lies, and videotape" had it's time in the indie sun but which has not aged all that well even though I like Spader in it, which reminds me of the movie Spader made that was really good with Mandy Patankin which is better than any movie that soderbergh has ever made, I think he's primarily more of a cinematographer, but makes cold movies that are sometimes ("Traffic") unintentionally lol bad like he has no sense of story or character even though he could frame it well enough, I think that at least Kubrick knew he was essentially an anylitical cold prick and like in "The Shining" trusted Jack to do what he does while making pretty pictures.  "Out of Sight" wasn't amusing for me and I didn't believe I was watching people that would really kiss each other and it seemed just some pretty star vehicle lean and pretty but sucking the ragged out of raggedy Elmore Leonard characters to the point that they are people who can only exist in film or movies...I think the admission of "star vehicle" worked for the O11+ series precisely because we had actors to watch in a heist movie, but 3KM2G for example is a better movie, John Badham is a better director, and I could with a little IMDB search submit 50 people who have directed better films in the "Soderbergh era" than Soderbergh who has seemingly had a pretty or relatively easy time getting money but I'm sure he would say different.  But hell, I'm a guy who likes "Ticker" better than anything Soderbergh ever made, so wtfdik??

[harrie]

Luis Guzman was pretty raggedy in OoS.  Just sayin', and trying desperately to defend my position. 

Albert Brooks was not raggedy, but possibly my favorite character in the flick.  I haven't read much (any?) E. Leonard but have a couple of his tomes sitting by, waiting for me to finish the current book, so I may be speaking out of turn, however .....  based on the Leonard movies I have seen, I usually find the fringe characters more interesting than the mains.  Whether that's a book thing or a movie thing, I guess I will find out soon enough.

[jbottle]

No, a lot of people like OoS, but I didn't think it was funny, and my favourite non-movie critic movie critic other than my mother always says "it has to be funny," I thought "Basic Instinct" was hilarious but then a a waitress at this little joint who I told it was "good" said "I heard it makes you want to do it in the car on the way home..." and I mean that wasn't my take, she was a little bit of a redneck who I had a fling with because I was the cook and she was the waitress and ran the register, I mean, it was one of those proximity things, bid.

[madupont]

jbottle, I think that I've seen your movie, with you behind the register, etc., recently. Are you a good cook? Anyway, I saw Meryl Streep's,The Iron Lady, yesterday(I call it "her's" because she is obviously in every scene,other than lifted film-stock from past news clips in the manner of that guy from Flint, Michigan who mentioned he has a lot of friends in the business who gladly supply him the necessary clips. Streep does every scene because George Clooney did it so why not ?).

She has Jim Broadbent as the ghost of a husband to play opposite because he is there even when he is not there; and really this is not his best material while I rather enjoyed the eccentrically funny young husband she married because he was a truly inventive actor who immediately started courting her at first meeting.The actor's name is Harry Lloyd and he is far more soigne-handsome than he plays as soigne-awkward when he decides,seated on the angle next to her at dinner that he ought to pick her up as one of his best chances. As a young woman of ambition, she had a degree from Oxford.

This could be a really boring movie, depending on which age group you happen to "fit-in" because, using more video film-clips, it is a top-drawer History lesson for those who weren't paying any attention when the British went through what we have hardly begun to go through  by way of frugality and violence (and, I am very thankful to the former poster of these forums who used to walk around here carrying his bloody Lamp post from South America when it came to discussing the Falklands. He was really fond of Italian films; as was I in a younger persona).

And, harrie! when not being an elderly Mrs. Thatcher, or any of the other personal ages she has been through from beginning to end of this movie, Meryl Streep spends another majority of it looking uncanny more like Faye Dunaway used to rather than looking like herself as a former student of the Yale Drama School. This is quite striking.

Indeed, I was so upset by the overall effectiveness of her many Conservative gaffes(Thatcher's) that I spent last night on a few more replays of Downton Abbey to pick up more particulars of appropriate etiquette without becoming Maggie Smith. We are led to believe that Thatcher made inevitable good use of this to remain acceptable to the most conservative public otherwise not in power.  The contrast in this view of history, with what we've recently seen on tv in Boardwalk Empire re: the Irish revolutionary,is extreme.

[barton2]

Catching up with Michelle Williams, saw "Wendy and Lucy," which is a not bad slice of life -- girl on the road from Muncie, to hypothetical cannery job in Ketchikan,  traveling with pooch in crappy Honda Accord, breaks down in Oregon, depends on the kindness of strangers or deals with the disinterest of strangers, etc.  Like the other Kelly Reichardt film I've seen, "Meek's Crossing," it ends abruptly and you have figure out if she's going to make it to her destination. 

Jbottle, was it when your waitress kept asking for poundcake that you knew the game was on? 

   

[jbottle]

I think I see what you did there...it never got *serious* because she would say "[jbottle] kissed me when I was sitting on the beer cooler yesterday..." to our co-workers when we were closing up...we always let the other cook/mgr. go and would do the book and drink a couple of free beers (stolen/free beer tastes better)...and that happened outside of the workplace too, but she was in college but about 4 yrs. younger than me so I didn't pursue it for long because I knew and she did too that neither of us was interested in anything *serious*--I mean I was but I wasn't a run up the numbers type, which of course I regret now.

[harrie]

Geez, I hate to distract from a good poundcake joke and response, but I came across this - Eleven Actors Who Rocked Sundance - which features some actors who've been written of favorably here.  Sorry, no Kate Winslet, Zooey Deschanel or Ms. Winger.  I hope to catch Robot and Frank, For a Good Time, Call .... and maybe Arbitrage.   Maaayyyybe The Surrogate, if only because of the sacrifices John Hawkes made.


I want to see this rednecky waitress and bottle cook movie, by the way.  You could totally clean up at Sundance next year (for real, not post-party).

[barton2]

Hard to resist a John Hawkes vehicle.  Liked, “My chiropractor was telling me that my organs were migrating."  Bob DeNiro, move over.

I have no idea what "poundcake" means, but it sounded suggestive.  I wasn't a run up the numbers guy, either.  I could regret that, but I'm not sure things could have been any different. 

   

[barton2]

At 74, Frank Langella can do whatever he wants. (He's Frank fucking Langella.) And what he wanted to do, apparently, was to play an aging, forgetful ex-thief who befriends his robot caretaker and turns it into his partner in crime. “You come to a point in your life and your career when all you want to do is [small movies],” says Langella, who spent much of the shoot acting opposite an empty robot suit. “It’s like going back to when you left college and you were willing to do anything and go anywhere." Plus, he adds, “They’re certainly not gonna give me a part that says, 'Mr. Langella now slips into bed with Scarlett Johansson.' That’s not going to happen anymore, unless it’s, 'He slips into bed with Scarlett Johansson and dies.'”

Heh, heh!  Yeah, must see "Robot and Frank."

[harrie]

When I was a teenager, my sister and I stopped in at the Friendly's in Wilton (a dry town - and I mention that because I have to believe that if it wasn't a dry town, he'd have been doing this in a bar, where you're supposed to do stuff like this), where for some reason Langella was holding court with a handful of people in a couple of booths - he essentially took over half the place.  He came off kind of pompous and stuff, like my sister and I three booths away had a hard time conversing, etc.  Now I wish I'd listened instead of trying to tune him out, because he's pretty funny.  That, or age has sharpened his sense of humor.  Either way, I'm there (at Robot and Frank).

[barton2]

Google-mapping Wilton, I was trying to figure out a town in CT being dry, as this is more what you'd find in some remote Methodist-infested county in Kansas, or further south in the Bible Belt.  While meandering, I noticed that Stratford has a state park called American Shakespeare and I was, "huh, why would that be in Stratford...." and then, oh yeah, the coin dropped. 

 

 

[harrie]

I don't know why, Wilton's always been a dry town.  Every once in a while they have a referendum, and so far, they've chosen to stay dry.   Stratford has an old Shakespeare Theater,  which was big at first (in the '50s).  John Houseman was the artistic director, the cast of Julius Caesar, the first production, included Raymond Massey, Christopher Plummer, Roddy McDowall, Jack Palance, and Jerry Stiller (WTF?).  Katharine Hepburn and other large and medium/large names played in later productions for quite a while, and now it's boarded up and  rotting away.  It's like a metaphor for the state.  

Saw The Conspirator and found it not nearly as boring as I thought it would be. Pretty interesting historical drama about Mary Surratt, owner of the boarding house frequented by Confederate spies, JW Booth, etc.  Great performances by Kevin Kline and Robin Penn.  I would have liked it better if the question of Stanton (Kline) possibly being the real conspirator in the Lincoln assassination were explored further; but the movie moved along pretty nicely .... and kind of applied to certain aspects of our legal system today.  Mary Surratt was pushed through the "legal" system; and while I believe she was complicit, if not actively involved, in plots to assassinate/kidnap Lincoln, I do not believe she truly received due process under law.  (IMO, even the guiltiest party deserves a fair trial, and IMO, Mrs. Surratt was shortchanged severely.)