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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 15, 2019 17:56:04 GMT
Beware. There are a few numbers with people singing and dancing in the street.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jun 15, 2019 18:50:52 GMT
I still haven't seen Bohemian Rhapsody...I am wary of any impersonation of our beloved Freddy. In Rocketman I liked the fact that there was no miming, the cast did all the singing altho obviously Elton was heavily involved with the production.
The sex scenes made me a bit uncomfortable, but they were in context and infrequent. To be fair I've never particularly enjoyed sex scenes in any film. Sad but true...
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 15, 2019 19:55:57 GMT
Beware. There are a few numbers with people singing and dancing in the street. I am wary of any impersonation of our beloved Freddy. ... To be fair I've never particularly enjoyed sex scenes in any film. Sad but true... Cheery, I wrote a review of that movie here somewhere, but the pertinent things to me were that the personality depicted did not seem accurate, to me anyway, and that we are so familiar with Mercury's on stage presence that it's impossible to do anything but critique Rami Malek as he goes through the motions. I still think Malek is a good actor, but also think the film was doomed by a shallow script and by the inevitable comparisons between the two men's on stage performances. Malek is an actor and gave it his all, but Freddy Mercury was Freddy Mercury on stage and cannot be duplicated. re: sex scenes -- I agree about feeling uncomfortable. It just seems an odd thing to show onscreen. I feel that way about toothbrushing and barfing onscreen, too. Not that I think sex is icky, but what the three things have in common is that they are (or should be) done in private.
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Post by rikita on Jun 15, 2019 21:20:21 GMT
hm, quite a bit of barfing seems to be done in public, though ... like near bars ...
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 15, 2019 23:11:11 GMT
Oh god, Rikita -- that triggered a long-lost memory of what someone who lived in the French Quarter told me she encountered going on at her front gate during Mardi Gras. It's not something I can say here, or even envision, honestly.
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Post by fumobici on Jun 16, 2019 6:15:32 GMT
Sex scenes however can be important story elements, unlike barfing or toothbrushing, particularly if something funny, moving, horrible, or unusual happens. Sexual encounters can be important emotional waypoints in one's life, or in a portrayal of lives onscreen. When I was twenty, I was probably thinking about sex or getting laid half the time, it would be difficult to honestly portray a young person's life omitting those moments when those desires were fulfilled. Movies that just ignore that part of life in a story where sex would have been emotionally important to the characters to me seem sterile and priggish. Of course, there's also the real possibility of the sex scene being completely gratuitous and not advancing the story narrative too -- then the inclusion can seem prurient and tawdry.
I saw a young lady, obviously a tourist, puking in piazza Santa Trinita in Florence the other night. Lemme tell you, that wasn't advancing my story narrative any.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 16, 2019 6:56:48 GMT
I am told sex scenes are quite relevant in porn films.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jun 16, 2019 9:38:19 GMT
I realise that the sex scenes were important, they weren't the main focus of the film but Elton John's sexuality is an important part of his life. I was just embarrassed. My problem !!
I've never seen a porn movie so I wouldn't know...there were a few 'racy' films made in the 70s that I may have seen...British nonsense no doubt. I did see the Hollywood movie Carnal Knowledge with a hopeful junior doctor when I was about 18...but cant really remember much about it ( and the junior doctor was left at the nurses' home door).
Oh goodness yes! I find barfing in films totally gross. I was a student nurse in my youth and it didnt bother me at all...but once I left nursing it started to affect me.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 16, 2019 14:15:59 GMT
I haven't seen Rocketman, so don't know that the sex scenes are like. And I agree that of course sex scenes can be critical to a movie's story telling. It probably comes down to how much sex there is in the sex scene. Maybe it's time to revive this thread: anyportinastorm.proboards.com/thread/3361/prude
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 16, 2019 15:03:59 GMT
There is very little sex in Rocketman, even though Russia felt a need to remove it from the movie ("promotion of homosexuality"). Nothing graphic, nothing revealing. In fact, it does not even fit my definition of sex in a movie, but then again I live in France.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 16, 2019 15:35:43 GMT
Even less sex can (can't) be seen in the excruciatingly boring movie from Québec Charlotte a du fun ( Charlotte has fun, it seems to me, but perhaps someone from Québec here could say if I am missing any nuance in the meaning. The French-in-France title has been changed to Charlotte a 17 ans (Charlotte is 17), but there is indeed an official Englisn language title: Slut in a Good Way. Sounds like it might be hot stuff, right? Wrong. In ugly black and white (as opposed to the glorious black and white used in some modern movies), Charlotte is dumped by her boyfriend (he's gay) and fucks all of her co-workers in the toy store where she works ("Jouets Dépôt" looks like a poor man's Toy'R'Us back when that chain existed -- actually it still does in France.) The various employees just talk about it in the aisles. They don't seem to actually work, although they will toss a stuffed animal on a shelf from time to time. There is clearly no supervision in the store, because I would have fired them all immediately. They get together for some parties (Halloween, Christmas) but nothing ever happens. I just squirmed waiting for it to end. At least it was subtitled into standard French because these people were talking gibberish. The American trailer actually makes it look interesting just because of colourful graphics. What happened to truth in advertising? Lune de miel was much more interesting, even though the movie has nothing to do with a honeymoon. A secular Jewish couple from Paris goes to Krakow because the wife suddenly feels a need to find their Jewish roots. All of their grandparents were Polish Jews, but that's about it for heritage. One of the uncles has dug up a commemorative ceremony about the slaughter of all of the Jews in one of the grandparents' village 75 years ago. Sounds like fun, right? They leave their baby son with his parents so they can finally have some time alone for three days. The mother doesn't trust the husband's parents at all and leaves a huge list of instructions. Anyway, off to Krakow, which is rainy and cold but also quite beautiful in the historic centre. But the hotel is full of brochures for visiting Auschwitz and the receptionist tries to send them to a concert of traditional Yiddish music. The husband is becoming quite testy. "Is this the Shoah Disneyland?" The next day at the market, it is the wife's turn to get irritated because while she is buying a Polish football jersey for the baby, her husband is having a ball with the "traditional" figurines on sale, all of which seem to be Jews with big hooked noses. Another stand displays yellow stars from historical clothing alongside all sorts of Nazi insignia. The wife melts down in a restaurant, because she finds the dish her husband has ordered (a messy brownish stew) to look horrible, but when her borscht arrives, it is not at all what she wants. "Where are the vegetables? Where is the meat?" It is just an empty soup. The waiter patiently explains "That is the kind of borscht served at home. It is not served in restaurants." (Meanwhile the wife has spoken to her mother-in-law who added ham bits to the mashed potatoes she left for the baby. "But we have never eaten kosher," says the husband, hiding the sausages that he has been eating at the bar. She retorts, "But we're in Poland!" as though that were some sort of dietary justification.) Anyway this movie started out as a ha-ha comedy and just gets more and more serious and depressing. I quite like it when that happens because the majority of French spectators prefer comedies, so I am happy when they are totally tricked into seeing something different. The couple has big communication problems because few people speak French, and neither they nor the locals are all that good in English. It keeps raining, they get lost trying to find the village, etc... One thing that seemed very clear to me was that the director based this movie on quite a few elements of her own life. Brave.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jun 16, 2019 17:20:42 GMT
Just re-watched for the umpteenth time "Damage" with Irons, Binoche and Richardson. Sex in the hands of master director Malle is something else again; the sexual athletics alone are fascinating. My son is in that as an extra. He gets about 5 seconds of fame.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 16, 2019 18:43:24 GMT
re: Lune de miel ~ I was immediately reminded of Francine Prose's story, "Guided Tours of Hell", which you can read here or listen to the author read it here:
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 19, 2019 16:27:38 GMT
Zombi Child is a rather confusing movie about a teenage Haitian girl who goes to an exclusive French boarding school. She makes friends, but one of them is a girl who has been dumped by her boyfriend and wants either revenge or to get him back (hard to tell). The girl is not at all involved in voodoo, but her aunt is... Meanwhile there is also the story of a family member who was zombified in 1962, buried and brought back to life to work in the cane fields. If a zombie eats meat (instead of... what?) it breaks the zombie condition, so he recovers and finds his wife again. Then more confusing things happen. This was actually an official entry at the Cannes film festival. In the final credits, it is indicated that there are still 1000 enslaved zombies in Haiti. Truth? Fiction? Why did I find this so boring?
Meanwhile, I quite liked Tolkien although I didn't know what to expect from the Finnish director of Tom of Finland. Nicholas Hoult becomes more impressive as an actor as he matures (not at all the same kid as in About a Boy or Skins). And even though some considered it to be an easy gimmick, I was thrilled by the little nods to the Peter Jackson movies in some of the imagery.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 19, 2019 18:12:52 GMT
"You Tolkien to me?" - Hobbit de Niro.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 19, 2019 18:50:24 GMT
Actually, the pronunciation of the name is one of the elements of the movie.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 19, 2019 20:58:13 GMT
I don't know whether I want to see that third-generation "survivors" film, but there is indeed a tourist industry around the death and slave-labour camps. Memory is important, but it can be misused.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 19, 2019 21:11:30 GMT
"You Tolkien to me?" - Hobbit de Niro. *snork!* Actually, the pronunciation of the name is one of the elements of the movie. I was shocked when I heard Lily Collins say "Tolekeen" in the intro to the trailer. I've always said Toleken, without really thinking about it. I can hear both pronunciations in the trailer. Which one is correct?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 19, 2019 21:22:46 GMT
That might be a reason to see the movie.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 22, 2019 18:31:50 GMT
I should have added that it is one of the first scenes in the movie, when Tolkien gets sent to a new school. The teacher calls him "Tolkine" and is told by the young student that the correct pronunciation is "Tolkeen". The teacher does not like being corrected, particularly by an arrogant South African.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 22, 2019 18:38:11 GMT
I liked the French movie (filmed in English) The Mustang. In France the title is Nevada, because just a few years ago there was the French movie Mustang (filmed in Turkish), so a differentiation needed to be made. Matthias Schoenhaerts was as impressive as he almost always is, playing a very angry and taciturn convict in the middle of the desert. He learns to control himself by learning to control a wild mustang. There is not really a happy ending. Bruce Dern is excellent, too.
The nuances of the French trailer are a bit different.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 24, 2019 14:33:45 GMT
Yesterday I saw the extremely morose Portuguese movie Colo. A teenage girl breaks up with her boyfriend. Meanwhile her mother is exhausted working two jobs because the father is unemployed and suffering from extreme depression. The electricity gets cut off in the apartment due to unpaid bills. That's all. Today, I was quite pleased with The White Crow (titled Nouréev in France) about Rudolph Nureyev's defection from the Kirov Ballet in Paris in 1961. The movie follows three different time lines -- his childhood (he was born on a train; later his father tried to abandon him in a forest), his early dance career in the Soviet Union, and of course the main meat of the movie -- the trip to Paris that changed his life. The movie is mostly in Russian, as of course it should be but so often isn't. I was quite impressed, although I cannot vouch for his accent, that director Ralph Fiennes played his role entirely in what seemed to be convincing Russian. Naturally, I am extremely vigilant about any movie that purportedly takes place in Paris, and I will give it a B+ for that -- things seen from the bus windows were indeed from 1961. The bridges and monuments were slightly too well illuminated at night (but not as much as they are now, so they did not ignore that reality), and the famous buildings were too clean. I still remember how dirty they used to be, and the difference from the cleaning work did not really become apparent until about 1970. Okay, none of that is important. I was totally sold on the performance of Ukrainian dancer Oleg Ivenko in the title role. Obviously he dances well, but I also thought that he acted well, including in the scenes where he is a temperamental jerk. I was reading the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The critics did not really like the movie -- but each critic had a different reason -- while the public very much liked it.
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Post by bjd on Jun 24, 2019 15:07:31 GMT
Just watched the trailer. Indeed Fiennes seems to speak Russian well, but then again, good actors have an ear for language.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 24, 2019 16:08:42 GMT
Mustang and White Crow both look wonderful. So true about Matthias Schoenhaerts being so impressive, especially when he is given a role he can really inhabit. Oleg Ivenko is astounding in the way that (okay, from what I saw in the trailer) he makes you completely accept him as Nureyev.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 24, 2019 17:13:09 GMT
I actually saw Rudolf Nureyev perform once, outdoors in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre in 1973. Swan Lake with Natalia Makarova, also from the Kirov. It was my first year in Paris, and I think I paid 25 francs for the ticket (that's 3.81 euros in real money). My colleagues thought I was totally crazy to spend such a huge sum of money for just a "show." (My monthly salary at the time was 1200 francs.) I have never forgotten the performance.
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Post by bjd on Jun 24, 2019 18:16:53 GMT
I saw him in Toronto in 1972, where he had staged Sleeping Beauty. As I recall, it was stiff and ornate with heavy costumes. Extremely classical. When Baryshnikov defected in Toronto in 1974, he was a breath of fresh air.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jun 24, 2019 18:33:06 GMT
I never saw Nureyev perform live but remember watching him dance in a Roal Command Performance back in the day....astonishing.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 24, 2019 19:51:00 GMT
And yet, as bjd points out, he was old school -- which is how Nureyev considered people like Nijinski. The world moves on.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 25, 2019 12:57:14 GMT
The Dutch are famous for their tough uncompromising movies, and Dirty God definitely fits into that category. It certainly had me squirming and it doesn't even have a -12 rating, just a warning. It's about a young woman in London who has been horribly disfigured by an acid attack but needs to get on with her life anyway. She has just been released from the hospital and has to wear one of those partial transparent face masks for awhile. Her best friend wants to know if she sleeps with it, too. "Yeah, but in the morning, there is a lot of, well it's not quite pus..." This is one thing we don't have to see, but thinking about it is enough. The mask is abandoned soon enough, but the horrible disfigurement remains, of course -- not just half of her face but also her arm and torso. The hospital doesn't see any point in more plastic surgery. "We've done about all we can, but we'll take another look in 18 months." She goes out with her friend, and other friends. People stare, some make remarks. She gets z job in a call centre. Meanwhile, something important is missing from her life, so she starts using pornographic video chat sites on the internet. First she claims that her webcam is broken but this makes most of the guys disconnect because there they are jerking their penises for the world to see. So she starts showing more and more of herself -- it doesn't turn off all the guys -- until one day her mother walks into her room while she has her fingers in her vagina in front of her laptop. Not only that, one of her video "friends" posts a nude video of her doing all of the same stuff on a website called something like "Disgusting British Sluts." Everybody at the call centre sees it... Enough is enough, so she finds a place that does discount plastic surgery in Morocco. They say they can fix her for £3600. It's off to Marrakech (after stealing the money from her mother's shoplifted clothing boutique that she runs from the family flat), and things start to go downhill... Very courageous movie, but once was enough for me. Maybe it will help some people who see it in video.
It must be mentioned that the scars on the actress are real. She was severely burned as a child.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 26, 2019 12:11:48 GMT
I loved 1, 2 and 3. I did not love Toy Story 4.
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