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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 17, 2019 16:22:29 GMT
Is the other young man the protagonist's brother, friend or lover? He is just a friend. He and his girlfriend live in the flat on the next floor of where the Israeli guy has spent his first night -- and been robbed of everything he owns. The young couple is filthy rich and while the Israeli is not quite a toy, he is the subject of casual amusement at first.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 20, 2019 17:16:35 GMT
So, I saw Us today. It is as creepy as promised. Keep your scissors in a safe place and don't let the bunny rabbits out of their cages.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 27, 2019 19:44:50 GMT
Dumbo did nothing for me. It is obviously stunning visually, but the characters were not alive. I did find it quite interesting that for a Disney movie, the biggest scene was the total destruction of an amusement park that looked very much like Disneyland (or at least Disneyland Paris which was built in a partially steampunk style -- I felt as though I recognised the whole place.). I liked the Eva Green character.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 27, 2019 22:30:10 GMT
I think Tim Burton is way over-rated.
Did they botox the little girl's face so that she remains completely expressionless?
Maybe at least the current crop of children watching this will realize how completely evil it is to keep wild animals as slaves for our amusement.
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Post by questa on Mar 27, 2019 23:23:28 GMT
Bixa, I think the current generation is way ahead of their elders in recognising and doing something about the problems. My grand daughter has asked each birthday since she was 7, for money and old blankets, food etc for RSPCA instead of gifts for herself. There are lots of young people in the various animal rescue or conservation organisations too.
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Post by rikita on Mar 28, 2019 0:15:29 GMT
hm well, agnes asked if she could have a pet rabbit, today, and didn't really want to listen to my pondering if we could really keep a rabbit in an appropriate way ... she was quite convinced it'd be happy being her rabbit (i have no plans to get a rabbit or other animal anytime soon, though) ...
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Post by bjd on Mar 28, 2019 6:47:20 GMT
Rikita, don't give in. Rabbits are not good house or apartment pets. It's cruel to keep them in cages all the time (and smelly), but if you let them run around, they chew things up, like wiring.
I heard unfavourable reviews of Dumbo on the radio.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 28, 2019 16:55:22 GMT
agnes asked if she could have a pet rabbit, today I once had neighbors who'd kept a pet rabbit in the house. The wife told me that it was really playful, but that it liked to chew. (I think it has something to do with keeping their front teeth in check). Anyway, the main thing it liked to chew was the insulation material on the electric cables. They repeatedly had to rewire lamps, etc. & the bunny often had frizzled whiskers from zapping itself on an electric wire.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 28, 2019 17:02:19 GMT
I quite liked the Argentinian film Mi Mejor Amigo, simply because it developed its story gently without any major dramatic incidents. Usually movies about teenagers seem to need some of major crisis, but this was simply about two totally different guys (one super nice and well behaved and one from a horrible drug home) gradually learning to appreciate each other. Even though it ends on an ambiguous note, at least there is no definitive thing to shut off the future.
On the other hand, the Finnish movie A Moment in the Reeds was much less subtle. It's about the son of a Finnish business man who return to Finland from Paris to help fix up the holiday lake house before it is sold. The widowed father has also asked the employment agency for a worker and is quite horrified when the person doesn't even speak Finnish -- it is a Syrian refugee. He is actually an architect, but when you are a refugee, you have to take any work that comes your way. It turned out to be a very sluggish love story between the two young men. I understand that the movie industry has a century of catching up to go on LGBT stories, but frankly I am feeling on overdose these days. And while I am not quite feeling an overdose of the new obligatory refugee/migrant characters yet because they add quite a bit of important information about their lives and their countries, I think that we are not too far from reaching the saturation point. But I am still learning things, particularly after seeing the Syrian documentary that I talked about yesterday. I never thought of Syria as having Grindr type apps under the bombs, but hey, I guess that sex will always be more important than war.
One major similarity with the other movie was that the ending was just as ambiguous as in the first one. It is something I have always liked, because I prefer to imagine my own ending most of the time.
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Post by rikita on Mar 29, 2019 9:17:40 GMT
Rikita, don't give in. Rabbits are not good house or apartment pets. It's cruel to keep them in cages all the time (and smelly), but if you let them run around, they chew things up, like wiring. yeah, i agree - i think for now it's just something she talks about (and pretends that she is getting a black rabbit today), but if she insists, i will have to explain these things to her, because i wouldn't want a rabbit for those reasons. And our apartment is small and chaotic and would be very difficult to pet-proof ... if we had a garden where we could have an outdoors fenced area, it might be a different matter. as it is, i am not sure i like the idea of pets in the city - we always had cats, but they all spent a lot of time in the garden and surroundings. she'd also like a dog when she gets older (currently has her mind set on a chihuahua, for some reason), but i am not sure i have the time and energy needed to care for it properly ...
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Post by questa on Mar 29, 2019 10:05:37 GMT
You could probably manage a hamster or guinea pig...best to get 2 females. They don't mind being caged and can run around out of the cage under supervision. Can be carried around on kids shoulders and love being patted and cuddled. Two keep each other company and happy. They have different personalities and come in many colours.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 29, 2019 11:14:57 GMT
Styx is a rather upsetting Austrian movie about an urgent care doctor who decides to take time off and sail from Gibraltar to Ascension. Unfortunately, she encounters a sinking fishing trawler full of migrants. There are more than a hundred of them and it would be completely impossible for them to get on her boat. She radioes for assistance, but assistance is far away, and the passing cargo ships have strict instructions to ignore such situations or else they lose their jobs.
Will there be an impossible rescue at the last minute? No, in the situation of the migrants, nothing impossible ever happens.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2019 22:03:03 GMT
In spite of my LGBT overload earlier in the week, I finally got around to seeing Boy Erased today. If I had not known in advance that things turn out well in the end, I might have abstained, but I do like what I have seen of Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea, Ben is Back...). And in spite of what a lot of the critics say, I love seeing Nicole Kidman in her horrifying "wig" roles, just because I find it interesting to see how outrageous she will be each time. Anyway, the movie was all right, but I was impatient for the inevitable rebellion. I just wanted to slap the shit out of all of those people, but that was of course the point of the movie. The only problem is that people who need to see this movie would never see it in a million years. I always like closing credits when they show real photographs of the real people on whose lives the movie was based. I have to admit that Nicole's wig was quite understated compared to the real person. And Russell Crowe probably could have put on a few more kilos to resemble his real character.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 31, 2019 16:12:29 GMT
I don't know what got into me but today I saw King of Thieves with Michael Caine, Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay and a multitude of other old Brits. I was really impatient for them all to be arrested, as I knew they would, since it is a true story.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 31, 2019 18:39:54 GMT
Yesterday our daughter had invited friends and suggested we go to the movie. We went to see ´ qu'est-ce qu'on a (encore) fait au bon Dieu'. A sequel to same title without the ´encoré. Rather disappointing albeit the end of the movie finds a way to get some smiles and some laughs. A film better suited to be watched in your own sofa. Too bad. Good actors some good ideas but no spark.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 31, 2019 21:26:16 GMT
It might be fun to watch with people from the different ethnicities satirised, including "pur-porc" French of a certain age and standing. I never saw the first one, although as you say there are good actors involved it all seemed very formulaic.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 3, 2019 13:33:13 GMT
Shazam! is pretty silly, but that's actually quite refreshing compared to all of the super hero movies that take themselves seriously. Unfortunately, it still felt the need to have a 2h12 running time, and that was completely unnecessary. And something about Zachary Levi has always made my skin crawl.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 4, 2019 14:09:28 GMT
Tel Aviv on Fire is a really excellent Palestinian comedy. It is not at all about terrorist attacks on the Israeli capital because the fire in question is the fire of passion. It revolves around a Palestinian soap opera set in 1967 just before the 6-Day War. In the soap, there is a beautiful Palestinian spy (Lubna Azabal) who is in love with both a freedom fighting Palestinian leader and an Israeli general. Anyway, the movie is about poor Salam, who doesn't have any movie or TV experience, but he has been hired to help the actors because he is the only person who speaks Hebrew perfectly, and the Hebrew dialogue needs a lot of work. Little by little, he becomes more involved in the script writing. But he has to deal with two people -- his uncle who is the producer of the soap and also an Israeli military supervisor at the border checkpoint that he has to go through twice a day between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Their wives are fans of the soap, and they say they see it "accidentally" from time to time as well. Both Palestinians and Israelis are fans of the show. The Israelis find it antisemitic "but so romantic!" The show is filmed an a daily basis and the plot can shift unexpectedly (just like in Tootsie). The Palestinians put a lot of pressure on Salam to make sure that the star marries the Palestinian. Meanwhile the Israeli checkpoint guy insists the she choose the Israeli general (and he is holding Salam's identity card hostage). Salam is really between a rock and a hard place...
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 5, 2019 22:02:19 GMT
Coincidentally, the other day a friend of mine was urging me for the second time to watch any Israeli tv drama, comedy, or soap. She claims they are all well-done and compelling.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 6, 2019 0:24:59 GMT
Some people I know from those parts say that this is another facet to the tragedy, as Israelis and Palestinians are so very similar in many ways. I was travelling to Ottawa with (another) middle-aged lady, Palestinan. He son was in med school there and she was pretty much the same as the proverbial protective Jewish mother, and as well-educated as modern ones.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 6, 2019 10:35:31 GMT
If you want to get a raging dinner party debate going, just send everybody to see the German movie Alles ist gut (All is Good, but the more appropriate French title is As though nothing had happened). It's about a couple of 30-something publishers who have just gone bankrupt. There is tension, because it's just the two of them to empty out their offices and probably sell their house. But life goes on anyway -- this is just a minor incident in the course of one's life. The woman, Janne, goes to a reunion (business school or something) and everybody gets totally wasted. And she gets raped by Martin, the son-in-law of her new boss. She is a bit annoyed and he is totally aghast at what he did. And life goes on anyway... concerts, bowling parties, office routine. Janne is a bit distraught, but the rape is only one element of it. Martin keeps asking her if there's anything he can do. He seems like a nice man, but what on earth can a rapist do to make his victim feel better? She didn't go to the police or anything, because she felt just as responsible for the situation since she was so drunk. She discovers that she is pregnant and there is no way of knowing if the father is Martin or her almost ex-companion Piet. So she deals with the problem in a sensible manner, but it doesn't really improve her psychological state. Everybody is cracking up slowly but surely -- Janne, Martin, Piet, the new boss, Janne's mother... all for various personal reasons. But life goes on.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 9, 2019 5:17:44 GMT
Captive State is the worst movie I have seen this year, but unfortunately the year is still young. I did not understand the plot and therefore was mystified by why anybody was doing what they were doing. And they weren't doing much. It's supposed to be about a rebellion against aliens who took over the planet 9 years ago. You hardly ever seen an alien due to the extremely low budget. They look like a cross between the Cookie Monster and a lychee. It is set in the dirtiest back alleys and parking structures of Chicago, and they are not photogenic at all. I almost walked out several times (and that's saying something for me) and was sorry that I didn't.
mid90s was much more interesting and also rather a surprise, considering it was directed by Jonah Hill. It's about trashy skaterboys and looks like a collaboration between Larry Clark, Gus Van Sant and Harmony Korine. The skaterboys were so trashy that all I could do was hope that they were really actors and not just playing out their real lives.
On a lighter note, I enjoyed the romantic dramedy Mon Inconnue (English title: Love at Second Sight). It's about a successful young writer who has been neglecting his wife, who was an aspiring classical musician who set aside her career to support him at the beginning. He wakes up one morning in an alternate reality to discover that he is a total unknown who has never published anything. The woman whom he loves is a successful musician who doesn't even know him. As per the convention of this genre, he spends the entire movie trying to get back to his other life and is convinced that the only way to do it is to get the musician to fall in love with him. He has a best friend from childhood who thinks he may have suffered from a head injury of something to have such crazy ideas, but he is a close enough friend to help him in his insane schemes...
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 9, 2019 19:07:07 GMT
Even though it isn't great art, I very much enjoyed the Cuban movie Sergio & Sergei. It is poetic and tender. It is about an electronic repairman, just barely surviving like everybody else in Cuba in the 1990's, who enters into contact with the solitary cosmonaut left in the Mir space station. He went to university in Moscow and was eking out a living teaching Russian, but suddenly nobody in Cuba is interested in learning it anymore. The Soviet Union is in its death throes and it looks like they might abandon the guy. Meanwhile, Cuba still believes in communism and it looks like the Soviet Union might abandon Cuba. The Cuban authorities are nevertheless not the least bit happy about someone in Cuba talking to someone "outside" without permission, and on top of that, the protagonist also has contact with an American (Ron Perlman) although they spend most of their time in friendly political argument.
Reading more about the movie, I thought it was interesting that both actors (protagonist and cosmonaut) had to learn Russian just to make this movie.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 9, 2019 22:36:23 GMT
That looks wonderful!
And yeah about learning Russian. I wonder how much they had to learn -- enough to pronounce their lines correctly, or enough to know what they were saying.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 9, 2019 23:59:05 GMT
That sounds like fun! And that little girl is just simply adorable. This is about what they called the "Special period"?
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Post by bjd on Apr 10, 2019 5:47:16 GMT
I would really like to see that too.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 10, 2019 17:37:29 GMT
As far as I am concerned, Blanche comme neige is Anne Fontaine's worst movie ever, although she is generally an excellent director. It is a modern take on the Snow White fairy tale, with Lou de Laâge as Snow White and Isabelle Huppert as the evil stepmother. No dwarves, but Snow White encounters seven men in the mountains. She only sleeps with 4 of them, and one of the others is a priest (which is of course meaningless these days in terms of sexual possibilities), but it was really boring. The plot went nowhere, and I just wanted Isabelle Huppert to come back and finish the work as quickly as possible. She never got Lou to eat the poisoned apple (an innocent squirrel died instead), but at least she threw her out of the car and over a cliff. Even that wasn't enough, dammit!
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 12, 2019 14:11:02 GMT
Tanguy le Retour is the follow-up to a major French success from 17 years ago. The first Tanguy was about an adult son (named Tanguy) who returns to the nest at age 27 to the horror of his parents. The whole movie revolves around their evil plans to get rid of him. Ha ha, you're supposed to laugh because it's a comedy. I didn't like it. And so in the new movie, Tanguy is back at age 44 along with his 16 year old daughter. He has been living in China all this time, but his wife walked out on him for another man. And so the movie is about trying to get rid of him again. Ha ha ha. Interestingly enough, about a quarter of the movie is in Chinese, which makes me think that the first one might have been a hit in China. Anyway, I didn't like any more than the first one. You may wonder why I went to see it. It's because I used to be the English teacher of the actor who plays the father, André Dussollier.
Luckily I also go to see movies that are of my inferior intellectual level and which do not shock my fragile level of innocence, so I saw The Kid Who Would Be King. It's about a 12 year old schoolboy who has to take over King Arthur's job. I enjoyed it. The cheesy special effects were not overused.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 12, 2019 16:10:49 GMT
Oh ~ I would LOVE to see The Kid Who Would be King! The special effects in the trailer do look a little Harryhausen-ish, but so what -- the movie looks thoroughly entertaining. I'm not sure, but I think the guy playing young Merlin (Angus Imrie) is "Creepy Stepson" in Fleabag.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 12, 2019 16:18:41 GMT
Yes, he played in Fleabag.
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