Both expensive chick flicks with a disaster as a background. The special effects and production design are excellent in both films -- the story in "Titanic" holds up better than the 40's war romance triangle of PH. I'd really rather watch "Tora! Tora! Tora!" or "A Night to Remember" (even though on a big screen, "Titanic" is spectacular in its last 45 minutes and very accurate according to Ballard to the actual sinking).
One that was successful with audiences but didn't fare to well with critics was "Towering Inferno." I always called it "Glowering Inferno."
Oops, sorry Roberta. I was having an exchange with JL Nobody (same avatar as yours) elsewhere and slipped up!
LW -- Good question about movie musicals. Off hand I can't think of one I've liked (though it's been a long time since I've seen one and may come back at you with a title!). I always loved musicals on stage. But mostly I don't have a taste for Hollywood movies, at least not the big ones. IMO, there are independently made American films which knock the Hollywood stuff off the screen, though, so this isn't an anti-American-film statement! But the big commercial films seem to me to be miles wide and millimeters deep and they always seem sort of embarrassing. Which is why the notion of the "cringe" seemed so apt as a way of describing some reactions to films.
The problem undoubtedly is that it takes a really terrific Hollywood film to compete with really terrific films made independently, not to mention books and plays. I remember when I was a kid just Going To The Movies was fun, but that ended when I was in college...
Here's something I find interesting -- maybe others here will too. I live in a farming-ranching county in central Texas. The main town is attractive and therefore touristy and increasingly populated by people from Houston and Dallas -- better restaurants, good shopping, and -- ohmygosh, just recently, a Blockbuster. Amazing! But the Blockbuster carried mainly popular commercial movies, lots of videos for kids, nothing of enormous interest. For about the first week. Then demand (I guess) made them realize that people want more. So there are rapidly increasing shelves of foreign films. More than one copy each of independent films. Lots of good old forties Hollywood stuff. And the people who are renting them (from what I can see waiting to check out) are not effete, Prius or BMW-driving outlanders, but just plain everybody. Oh, and of course lots of Spanish language films.
I'd be really curious to know what people are watching on TV these days -- and what they've stopped watching...
There's the top musicals which IMO "Chicago" belongs alongside:
Singin' in the Rain
The Bandwagon
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Gigi
My Fair Lady
Oliver!
Cabaret
Moulin Rouge
Carousel
Of course, all the old Astaire/Rodgers and especially "Swingtime."
There's no hit Hollywood musical I can think of that I don't admire but "A Chorus Line" was a dismal failure, both box office and critically, singlehandedly putting the final nail in the coffin of musical films for over a decade.
My TV fare this week? The last episode of the HBO series "Carnivale," "Oklahoma" with Hugh Jackman on PBS, any documentary on HDTV that I haven't seen. On DVD, I'm going to watch "Finding Nemo" for the second time -- there's a movement to nominate Ellen Degeneres for the voice (!) of the forgetful fish Dorry for an Oscar.
I think you have issue with what is referred to as popcorn movies. Those are movies that you just go to escape and be entertained with not real message or substance attached to them that will stick with you. I just went through the cycle of watching all the Kurosawa on DVD for probably the fifth or sixth time in my life. Now that's moviemaking of the highest calibre. Even his slight films are better than what Hollywood cranks out. I do have some enthusiasm for the films coming out this year. "Seabiscuit" was superb storytelling and exciting even if one isn't equestriam minded, the new Eastwood film "Mystic River" is on my list to see and several others -- more than last year. I also just rewatched "Monster's Ball" and Hally Barry did deserve the Oscar -- Billy Bob Thorton's performance was magnificently underplayed. I bought his change from his father's instillment of racism to his new awakening empathy towards blacks.
Bare in mind, there are also pretentious movies that presume to have an important message and fall flat on their faces. Usually they don't get much box office and the critics rip them apart so they really don't belong here.
I'd go with Singin' in the Rain, LW -- but I also think our different tastes may reflect the fact that we're in totally different generations!
Don't have regular TV but worked it so's I could get just the movie channels with no commercials. Lots of crud, but also interesting stuff now and then. Love the HBO productions.
As a "production" (the music, the acting)I enjoyed Chicago, but the underlying cynicism of the plot outraged me, so I run both ways on it. Not that the events it portrays are not common, but I don't think they should be celebrated.
"Four Wedding and A Funeral" and "Nine Months" came off as a bit too dry and deliberate for me.
"Chicago" like "Cabaret" has a gritty realism that is not far from the truth. The unctuous attorney in the real life story was even worse than what Gere portrays on screen. It's a farcical but dark look at our legal system, politics, the prison system and the media not just of the 1920's in that American city which is built on swampland and with a very checkered past. What can one say about a city that boasted of the World's Fair on one hand and the reputation for the largest, most stinking and depressing slums in the entire world since Rome?
The mirror only has one reflection.
(Ever read Sinclair Lewis' "The Jungle?"
Lightwizard wrote:(Ever read Sinclair Lewis' "The Jungle?"
Totally unreadable! A classic of American social commentary, but still unreadable.
I agree once is enough. It is rather stomach churning.
BTW, not only was "Chicago" based on a true murder case, it was offered as a stage play, then a silent movie, then two talkies including the Ginger Rodgers. There are some fascinating headlines and newspaper stories most likely in the old Tribunes that tell the whole tale. The Rodgers film is played more for laughs with Adolph Menjou as the attorney Gere played in the 2002 film. It's title "Roxie Hart" for the lead character:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035272/combined
I like "The Truman Show" with Jim Carrey.
Chicago was not historical analysis, but it was social commentary, an approving celebration of the cult of celebrity, and that is what bothered me.
"Silence of the Lambs" was totally disgusting - just an over-hyped horror movie, in my opinion. I have never been able to watch Anthony Hopkins in anything since then.
I felt like Elaine in Seinfeld (as edgarblythe mentioned) when I was watching "Scent of a Woman". When the main character was considering suicide, I was thinking "just do it - get it over with, you no-good, rotten ...."
I didn't interpret "Chicago" the same way -- in fact the true story went about the same way. Celebrity in fact bore an influence on the court and the jury -- it was exaggerated for the humor, albeit a rather sardonic humor. Is it any different today? I think not. Better check out the the latest news. Scott Peterson is liable to get acquitted just on being made into a celebrity by the media.
Okay, onward and downward:
Here's mine.
"The Sixth Sense" with its clever idea but the execution of all that angst and anquish was like feeling better after one had just pounded themselves on the head with a hammer and then stopped.
"Broken" with its ambiguos metaphysical claptrap -- it was just plain drudgery trying to get through that film. Bad sci-fi and eccentric direction make for a very mediocre movie.
"Signs" with its lackluster, self-conscious performance by Mr. Gibson and hocus-pocus metaphor that the minions of the Devil are aliens!
Blech.
(When they finally showed the aliens in the last film, I just began laughing).
LW is clearly not a fan of a certain director....personally, my pet peeves are with anything directed by David Lynch.
