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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 11, 2019 19:51:59 GMT
Arte was showing Goodbye Lenin again tonight. Impossible not to watch.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 11, 2019 20:00:07 GMT
My problem with Withnail and I (besides the title, which is irritating in some way I can't put my finger on) is that I disliked the two principals so much that I couldn't stand to look at them.
I think I could imagine a remake of Irina Palm in another country and culture, but Marianne Faithfull made the character so completely her own that I can't imagine recasting that part.
I get the point about quintessentially English or French movies, but would have trouble pinpointing some, possibly because I lack of sufficient cinematic background. For English, I'd have to say anything with Rita Tushingham by default, maybe Alfie, but think both Blow Up and Sunday, Bloody Sunday could be reworked for another time and place. I agree with Mark about Billy Liar, but think some of the others on his list are specifically English because they're addressing socioeconomic issues of a bygone era in England, although I could be argued out of this viewpoint.
I don't know the films in Huckle's list, although I did see the Hollywood remake of The Return of Martin Guerre. For a quintessentially French movie, the one that comes immediately to mind is not Amélie, but Les amants du Pont-Neuf, although I'd also have to say Jules et Jim, even though it's probably too old to be included in this discussion.
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 12, 2019 8:13:59 GMT
French film - Inspector Clouseau Small screen - Allo 'Allo!
They are French, no?
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Post by bjd on Aug 12, 2019 8:55:10 GMT
The Pink Panther was an American movie with no French people in it.
I remembered Blow-Up from years ago but when we found it on DVD and showed it to our kids about 15 years ago, they couldn't believe that it had been so popular. It's true that it aged very badly and seemed totally pretentious. But another British movie of the period that I remember liking a lot was Morgan. Did you mean Georgie Girl, Mark?
I find many "French" films tend to be about people talking about their relationships, adultery, family problems. With the occasional comedy like Amélie Poulain or La Cité de la Peur.
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 12, 2019 13:22:28 GMT
French film - Inspector Clouseau Small screen - Allo 'Allo! They are French, no? I shall say this only once. Oui.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 12, 2019 14:34:43 GMT
I've been in love with Fabrice Luchini forever who is also spectacular in Moliere. I spent an evening with Fabrice Luchini and André Dussollier in a café many years ago. I had been Dussollier's English teacher, and he invited me to a number of his plays. On that particular evening, he had also invited Fabrice Luchini, who was still struggling with his career, if you can imagine that, full of doubt and looking for guidance. We spent several hours in a café next to the Olympia (the play had been at the Théâtre de l'Athénée around the corner), and I admit that what fascinated me the most was the fact the Luchini saw me as his equal, since I was a mysterious friend of André Dussollier and therefore was of importance. Ha ha, all of that is long gone. They have both gone on to receive numerous acting awards. Dussollier has 3 César awards (French equivalent of the Oscars) and one Molière as best actor (French equivalent of the Tony awards). 10 César nominations for Luchini but only one win, four Molière nominations but only an honorary Molière as a consolation prize. But Luchini is in the Grévin wax museum in Paris, not Dussollier.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 12, 2019 15:25:25 GMT
As I continue to suffer through August boredom, in honour of our semantic board Where Words Collide, I watched the 1951 movie Where Worlds Collide which I do not recall having ever seen in the past. Frankly, I prefer Melancholia by Lars von Trier, but it is the same subject. It is discovered that Earth is going to be destroyed in a planetary collision, something which is often discovered more or less at the last minute. I think it was 8 months ahead of time in this movie. Actually, it is that planet's moon that is going to destroy Earth -- the other planet will survive as it passes by. So, we are with the scientists who have decided that if they build a rocket really really fast, they can fly 40 people and some livestock to the other planet, which just might be capable of sustaining life. Sure, why not? This requires lots of money. Two nice millionaires give their fortunes for the project, but it is still not enough money. They have to appeal to the selfish millionaire in a wheelchair for the rest of the money. Uh-oh, problems. Zap forward -- rocket takes off at the last moment, wheelchair guy gets left behind accidentally on purpose. Oops. They reach the other planet with not a drop of fuel left. The 40 people are more or less sitting in lawn chairs with seat belts, which must have saved plenty of money. When they arrive, hooray, let's all rush outside. The guy in charge says "we need to test the atmosphere first!" but to this one of the people very logically answers "Who cares? We don't have any choice no matter what." The atmosphere is wonderful and the landscape is even better than in The Wizard of Oz, except that the matte painting in The Wizard of Oz was much more realistic. The young couple will live happily ever after and the little boy who managed to bring his dog now also has puppies. Yay!
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Post by bjd on Aug 12, 2019 17:56:52 GMT
Amazing -- it was always the same guy doing the announcements for those movies.
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Post by rikita on Aug 16, 2019 8:57:23 GMT
a. and i watched a movie from my childhood and movie version of my favourite astrid lindgren book yesterday - ronja the robber's daughter. will post the trailer in german, as that is the language we watched it in (and i couldn't find a good trailer in swedish or english) ...
and some music from the movie:
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 16, 2019 18:08:06 GMT
I watched the season finale (season 3) of Handmaid's Tale last night. It was absolutely, thrillingly excellent and suspenseful, also extremely moving in parts. Yes, there were elements of Holocaust stories and of Uncle Tom's Cabin, but of course that is perfectly appropriate to the theme of the show.
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Post by rikita on Aug 21, 2019 20:16:49 GMT
we returned to bibi blocksberg and watched one of the movies about her (but without tina and the horses) - "bibi blocksberg und das geheimnis der blauen eulen" (bibi blocksberg and the secret of the blue owls) - that movie is a bit older and i thought it was nicer than the bibi and tina movies, like, more child appropriate and less silly (or just silly in a way that is normal for children's movies) ... the music reminded a lot of harry potter, as were some of the shots of her riding a broom in front of a castle - i guess they might have done so on purpose, in the hope of making the movie more popular ...
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Post by Kimby on Aug 26, 2019 14:51:59 GMT
Just watched Burning (P?ing), a South Korean drama that at 148 minutes is more leisurely paced than many films today, allowing time for the viewer to experience insights into the lives of young South Koreans. www.imdb.com/title/tt7282468/The three main characters are: The son of a bad-tempered farmer who is going to prison, so the son moves back to the village farm to take care of the remaining livestock An enigmatic young lady who grew up in the same village but lives in a one room apartment in a bigger city and asks the young man to look after her cat while she goes to Africa on a humanitarian mission The charming, handsome and mysteriously-wealthy young man she meets while stranded at the Nairobi airport for three days, who insinuates himself into the two leads’ lives and seems at the root of the problems that develop in the 2nd half of the movie. I found the tension and unexplained outcome very similar in feel to the film The Vanishing (the original, not the Americanized version). www.imdb.com/title/tt0096163/I liked Burning, but wasn’t ready for it to end as the end credits rolled.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 26, 2019 16:41:33 GMT
Yes, the ending of Burning was rather unexpected. One thing I liked was being able to hear the North Korean loudspeakers in the distance. That aspect reminded me of the German film Circle of Deceit where the wall between the East and the West was omnipresent without being mentioned specifically.
I went to see a Korean film yesterday -- Kimby, you should like The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil.
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Post by Kimby on Aug 26, 2019 17:07:09 GMT
Did you agree with my comparison to The Vanishing?
Thanks for the tip.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 26, 2019 17:56:04 GMT
I'm not sure if I saw The Vanishing. I generally know the French titles of these movies and have not looked up the English title on IMdB yet.
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Post by Kimby on Aug 26, 2019 19:40:05 GMT
It’s the story of the young woman who goes missing at a rest stop/ gas station, and her boyfriend who makes contact with her abductor, trying to find out what happened to her. 1988.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 5, 2019 15:48:33 GMT
Did you agree with my comparison to The Vanishing? I definitely never saw that movie.
Meanwhile, today I watched Savage Grace, another movie about which I knew nothing, but when I looked it up I was not surprised because it was never released in France, even though it premiered at the Cannes festival (must not have been well received). However, I was able to get a DVD for one euro (another bad sign). It stars Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne and Hugh Dancy. It is based on a true story about the Baekeland family (Bakelite plastic fortune), a bunch of wealthy degenerates flitting around Europe in the 1960's and 70's until the bloody outcome. It isn't really a stinker after all but certainly not all that well done. It held my prurient interest with no problem.
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Post by rikita on Sept 5, 2019 20:27:38 GMT
little while ago we watched the first bibi blocksberg movie, again not a great movie maybe, but nice enough and a good children movie, liked the story better than the second one (that i mention above) - an evil witch is trying to take away bibi's witch powers:
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Post by rikita on Sept 5, 2019 20:31:52 GMT
and today, we watched "hände weg von mississippi" (hands off mississippi) - based on a book (a girl and her grandma buy a horse from the nephew of their recently deceased neighbour, but suddenly the nephew wants the horse back and apparently it is somehow connected to his uncle's will) ... the story is of course a bit different than the book, and the movie is a lot sillier, but still a nice movie. same director as the bibi and tina movies, but better made i thought, to a lot of the funny parts seem geared more at adults than at children (like all the weird people in the village) ...
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Post by Kimby on Sept 8, 2019 3:05:37 GMT
We accidentally watched a Russian superhero movie called GUARDIANS.
Mr. Kimby keeps a list of films he wants to see based on reviews he reads, but I usually know nothing but the film’s name when I request it from the library. I think what we actually WANTED to watch is a TV series called The Guardians.
The default audio setting is (poorly) dubbed English, but it was so laughably bad we figured it couldn’t be worse in Russian with subtitles, and that was a big improvement.
It’s a fairly typical superhero movie, and neither of us is a big fan of action flicks. (We both doze off during fight scenes and car chases.). But we stuck with it.
I found it interesting and a little creepy that there were several scenes reminiscent of 9/11, with planes crashing into skyscrapers and collapsing tall buildings. The villains and heroes seemed a bit “off” by American standards.
Not a wasted 88 minutes. (How’s that for a ringing endorsement?)
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 8, 2019 3:29:32 GMT
Yes, Russian disaster movies are even more enthusiastic than Japanese ones.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 9, 2019 19:34:02 GMT
I watched It - part 1 tonight in preparation of It - part 2 which is still a week or two away from the big screen here.
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Post by Kimby on Sept 9, 2019 19:59:53 GMT
We have recently watched two cult-classic films that we’d somehow missed the first time around: BOOGIE NIGHTS with Mark Wahlberg as a new young porn film star and the Coen brothers’ THE BIG LEBOWSKY with Jeff Bridges as a slacker who gets mixed up in a kidnapping drama involving a gold-digging wife of a millionaire who shares his name. Plus there is bowling. Lots of it. And an endearing cameo as The Stranger by Sam Elliott.
I think maybe we should watch more old films and let some of the new ones ripen for awhile.
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Post by rikita on Sept 10, 2019 11:05:23 GMT
watched a children's movie without a., as she is still a bit small for that one, i think. main reason i watched it was because in spring during our cave tour we also visited a cave where parts of it were filmed, so i was curious. it's about a group of three friends who find a treasure map made by a kid who disappeared many years earlier. while they go look for the treasure, some other kids who are their "enemies" follow them ...
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Post by Kimby on Sept 10, 2019 20:04:11 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 10, 2019 20:07:03 GMT
I actually didn't like that one. I thought it was foul just for the thrill of being foul.
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Post by Kimby on Sept 10, 2019 23:07:39 GMT
Kimby said: I found the tension and unexplained outcome (of Burning) very similar in feel to the film The Vanishing (the original 1988 film, not the Americanized version). www.imdb.com/title/tt0096163/ Did you agree with my comparison to The Vanishing? I definitely never saw that movie. I can’t believe you didn’t see it. You should look for it. It’s the story of the young woman who goes missing at a rest stop/ gas station, and her boyfriend who makes contact with her abductor, trying to find out what happened to her.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 14, 2019 17:06:04 GMT
Last night I saw the French (but made in America) movie In the Electric Mist again, starring Tommy Lee Jones. I found it fascinating on the big screen and just as fascinating the first time I saw it on the small screen and still fascinating this time. It was never released on the big screen in the United States. A reduced version came out in the US in DVD. I suppose that one of the most shocking things regarding American release was probably the use of the word "nigger" very often. It takes place in southern Louisiana and some of the dialogue goes like this:
Police detective T.L. Jones: "What kind of work did he do?" Other person: "He just did nigger work."
This kind of speech is extremely painful to American ears so I do understand how hesitant anybody would have been who actually wanted to earn money from this movie. For non-native English speakers, such things are not as bad. People know "oh, they're speaking derogatively" but that is part of normal life in lots of places in the world.
Anyway, that's beside the point. What I find interesting about the movie is that Tommy Lee Jones has mystical experiences out in the swamps, because he encounters Confederate soldiers at night while having hallucinations, and they are very interesting people. It should be pointed out that the bad guys put LSD in his Dr. Pepper at one point, so it is quite normal to hallucinate.
I wonder what American audiences would have really thought about this movie if they ever had a chance to see it. Tommy Lee Jones is great in it, as is nasty John Goodman.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 14, 2019 21:53:41 GMT
The full title of the book from which that movie was made is In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead. Either knowing that or being a fan of James Lee Burke's books (which I used to be) would likely be something that would prepare audiences for the dialogue. I looked up the film just now and am kind of shocked that it didn't show in movie houses in the US, especially considering how many big names are in it & how popular James Lee Burke's books are.
I read the book a long time ago and vaguely remember the Confederate soldiers, but not the drug aspect. I think I'm going to have to see the movie.
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Post by Kimby on Oct 14, 2019 22:32:24 GMT
I didn’t see the movie but did read the book, back when I avidly read each of his books as soon as they were available in paperback. (I liked the Dave Robicheau stories better than the Billy Bob Holiday stories. Don’t remember if Electric Mist was either.)
(James Lee Burke lived up the road from me outside Missoula, Montana, for several years before he bought his spread outside Lolo, 20 miles south of here. Another favorite author, David James Duncan - THE RIVER WHY - also lives near Lolo, or did. Haven’t heard much about him lately.)
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