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Post by Kimby on Jul 23, 2022 23:38:38 GMT
We watched LICORICE PIZZA last week and I’ve already forgotten just about everything about it. Looking at the IMDB summary, it comes back to me, but I find it hard to believe it was a best picture nominee for the Academy Awards. Sweet little story about a precocious young man and a (slightly) older woman set in 1973. www.imdb.com/title/tt11271038/
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 24, 2022 3:33:22 GMT
Since that was the same time I was living in Los Angeles, I can attest that every detail was 1000% authentic, which is certainly what impressed the Hollywood film industry. What I found even more impressive was the fact that the director is too young to have soaked up that period.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Aug 5, 2022 17:47:22 GMT
Watched thistoday. Not for the claustrophobic
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 5, 2022 18:17:06 GMT
The real story was already claustrophobic. I don't understand why they are all speaking English, even the kids. Does this improve the story?
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Aug 8, 2022 18:32:47 GMT
A couple of the boys and a few officials speak a bit of English but most of the cast speak Thai. The English, Australian and American cast speak English.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 15, 2022 14:48:54 GMT
After seeing it on the big screen, I watched Encanto on cable again yesterday. I find that Disney product enchanting but at the same time grotesquely manipulative with all of the moral lessons that it serves up.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 16, 2022 23:23:27 GMT
Last night I sat down to watch the new HBO documentary, The Princess, wondering if I'd sit through the whole thing. (Yes, I did.)
First of all, this is a remarkable feat of editing, since every single second of it is made up of archival footage, but it comes together to tell a cohesive story. Second, rather remarkably, no one is either sanctified or demonized. We see what we see and draw our own conclusions.
That said, many of us watching this production were adults in the time period covered, so vividly remember the whole circus whether or not we deliberately paid attention. I remember camping out on the living room floor to watch the wedding on our crappy b&w portable tv. And hearing on tv sixteen years and one month later the news of her probably fatal car crash. Someone whose life played out in the media becomes part of our own mental scrapbook, part of the stage dressing of our lives. Considering that Diana died twenty-five years ago this month, I have to wonder if younger people see or respond to this documentary the same way I did. It would be interesting to know.
That said, I was still shocked at the sheer volume, relentlessness and downright ferocity of the media coverage then, especially in the UK. There is no narrator nor over-voice in the documentary, but the footage speaks volumes. You'll probably catch yourself flinching and wanting to duck from all those lenses.
The sense of fatalism while watching is a little difficult emotionally -- after all, we know how this ends. And the bad jerky tourist-taken bit of video at the beginning simultaneously knocks you off guard and sets you up for all that follows. Even people who are sick of the subject will want to watch this documentary just to admire the craft involved in making it.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 28, 2022 13:05:48 GMT
Starting this week, the cheap channels have begun their incredible routine of showing about 3 Christmas movies in a row all afternoon (and I'm talking about at least 5 different cable channels). I never knew so much of this cheap shit had ever been made. However, one channel was showing Soylent Green again this afternoon, in which I was an extra 51 years ago for the princely sum of $1.65 an hour. Skipped university lectures for a few days to go to MGM studios in Culver City. So I paused on that channel just long enough to see that the years have not been kind to me.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 28, 2022 14:47:49 GMT
I've never seen Soylent Green but since you still don't have any wrinkles, I can only imagine that you were a pretty young thing.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 28, 2022 15:55:22 GMT
Ooh. We will have to watch it again now K! Do you have any stills from Solyent Green? Which scenes are you in? Are you an angry mob?
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 28, 2022 16:32:51 GMT
Yes, I am in the riot and just miss getting scooped up by the dump trucks.
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Post by Kimby on Oct 30, 2022 4:04:46 GMT
We watched a film called CODA that starred Patrick Stewart as a concert pianist struggling with stage fright. Katie Holmes plays the young journalist who becomes his muse.
It was well done, but not Best Picture material, so I visited IMDb and realized that we’d watched the WRONG CODA! The Academy Award winner of the same title was about children of deaf parents. So Coda remains “on our list”.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 30, 2022 4:21:38 GMT
It is quite worth seeing, almost as good as the French original La famille Bélier.
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Post by Kimby on Nov 3, 2022 3:57:23 GMT
Another Academy award nominee, FLEE. www.imdb.com/title/tt8430054/The story of an Afghan refugee who flees to Denmark as a teenager coming to terms with his attraction to men, which isn’t acceptable in his home country. An animated film.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 3, 2022 4:55:13 GMT
... one channel was showing Soylent Green again this afternoon, in which I was an extra 51 years ago for the princely sum of $1.65 an hour. Skipped university lectures for a few days to go to MGM studios in Culver City. phantomofthebacklots.com/2022/03/29/tuesday-is-soylent-green-day/I never knew that Soylent Green was set in 2022.
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 3, 2022 5:50:24 GMT
Pretty good sleuthing. One thing that drove me crazy watching part of the movie the other day was the green tint on everything.
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Post by Kimby on Nov 5, 2022 1:24:02 GMT
We maintain a list of movies (and TV series) that got good reviews so that we know what to borrow from the library when they finally are released on DVD. Sometimes I get fooled by a film with the same title as the one I intended to borrow. THE NEST has been on our list awhile, and there are (at least) THREE films with that title. One about gangs, one a horror flick about a teddy bear infested with brain sucking ants, and the third was a family drama, starring Jude Law. We watched that one and it was pretty good. Set in a large, rundown English manor, I kept expecting it to become a horror film, and there was a lot of suspense, but no real horror. Carrie Coon who played the wife was exceptionally good. www.imdb.com/title/tt8338762/
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Post by tod2 on Nov 5, 2022 10:04:45 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 13, 2022 15:03:24 GMT
I watched Gummo again. I had forgotten how much that movie profoundly shocks me.
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Post by tod2 on Nov 14, 2022 16:55:52 GMT
Started watching Bodyguard on Netflix. Never thought Mrs, Durrell could be so sex mad.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2022 19:23:47 GMT
I watched The Wolf of Snow Hollow yesterday. It is sort of a comedy horror movie. The new police chief is a recovering alcoholid and a parallel is made about the self loathing of falling of the wagon and the self loathing of what might be a werewolf after giving into its urges.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 8, 2022 15:17:17 GMT
I did my best to avoid Top Gun: Maverick for months and months. I am allergic to Tom Cruise. I am allergic to testosterone movies. I am allergic to totally ridiculous plots. All of that just for a start. Add to that boys playing with aircraft worth millions and sometimes crashing them, no big deal, the head boy being exempt from wearing a motorcycle helmet, and everything wrapped up in patriotism. Well, no thank you.
But trapped on an airplane for 12 hours and having seen most of the 40 or so movies on principal offer, I broke down and tortured myself. I hated the movie every bit as much as I thought I would.
Luckily, I will have the opportunity to examine the other offers (classic movies, festival movies, childrens' movies...) on the way home. Or maybe it will even be possible to sleep.
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Post by lugg on Dec 8, 2022 19:19:01 GMT
Not seen it , dont have any intention - I am more interested in where you were travelling . Certain clues in some recent posts ...Singapore
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 14, 2022 6:23:55 GMT
I don't sit down and watch movies all that often, but did so both last night and tonight. Both were worthy pieces. Last night's was The Wonder, which I'd been wanting to see. It is beautifully filmed, with a measured pace that slowly tightens the suspense over how things will turn out and superb, brilliantly disciplined acting throughout. The one thing about the movie that I didn't understand was the deliberate flaunting of movie-making reality at the beginning and end of the story, which I found annoyingly intrusive and unnecessary. Tonight I watched the 2018 Colette, with Keira Knightly. Really, she's probably the reason I've avoided it thus far. I don't know why she irritates me so much, because she is not at all a bad actress. I guess it's because I can never make up my mind about whether it's adenoids that cause the poor girl to mouth-breathe, or if keeping her mouth open all the time is an insanely annoying affectation she has. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Knightly's Colette is consistently compelling. The cinematography is lush and perfectly in keeping with the French aesthetic of the time period. At one point there is a quick shot of men redoing a floor in an old house. I immediately flashed on this painting, which I saw in the Musée d'Orsay in 2018. That made me even more aware that the Impressionist style and palette had been subtly and effectively used throughout this very entertaining bio-pic.
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Post by breeze on Dec 14, 2022 11:10:51 GMT
bixa, are you speaking of the Raboteurs de parquet? I didn't know this painting until I watched one of the clips from a series called A musée vous, A musée moi on the channel Arte. Each short video in the series starts with a well-known painting and fades into a moment in the life of the subjects. That's a really dull description of some very clever and amusing videos.
My French is not good enough to catch fast spoken French, but this particular one has subtitles which helped me. Even though they are in French.I could get the gist.
The Arte website doesn't let you watch its videos (though I think you are slick enough to make it work) but lesser mortals have to go to youtube.
The ones with Mona Lisa are my favorites.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 14, 2022 14:46:47 GMT
That's it, Breeze. If you click on the words "this painting" in my post, it will open in a new tab & you can compare it to the still picture in your video. (which I'm now off to watch)
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Post by Kimby on Dec 15, 2022 3:27:02 GMT
We (re)watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night. Still a good movie.
I’m partial to films with twists of time. I love the story of The Time Traveler’s Wife, though the film doesn’t live up to the book. Benjamin Button’s relationship with Daisy over the years reminds me of the relationship between the time traveler and the young girl he meets and later marries. Both couples had timing issues.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 25, 2022 3:43:23 GMT
I just finished watching The Banshees of Inisherin. Whew! Having just watched another fairly gothic Irish drama (The Wonder), my initial take-away was that it's lucky my Irish ancestors were starving to death & all back when, so they left Ireland & went to Canada. The acting and the casting (the faces!) are superb, as are the flashes of humor. What I did after I watched the film, which I should have done before, was to read a little bit about the Irish Civil War. Even though it has no concrete bearing on the plot, knowing something about it meant I could see how it informed the theme of the movie in a sense. The bad thing that happened while I was watching was that I finally figured out who Colin Farrell -- whom I absolutely love -- reminds me of.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 25, 2022 4:09:57 GMT
I'll be seeing that movie in a couple of days when it is released in France.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 25, 2022 4:31:59 GMT
The scenery alone should be astounding on the big screen.
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