Join the crowd nerd...me too :-)
I'm glad that people who have posted like Lightwizard agree with me about foreign movies. But I really wonder about the person who posted that foreign movies follow the same formula as American ones. Have you no eyes and ears, have you no taste?
Okay, "Finding Nemo" may be soggy with sentiment but for many reasons I find it a guilty pleasure and who can resist Ellen as Dorry? Mainly if the youngest members of the familiy friends or our neighbors come over to watch it! One of my favorite animated is still "Three Caballeros," the Disney cartoon travelogue of South America and Mexico which was the first film to combine live action with animation. Very high tech for it's time.
The Japanese animated films like "Spirited Away" and other Hayao Miyazaki films are in their way superior to the American product in that they required a use of one's own imagination. Disney "Imagineering" lays it all out and it can be decidedly flat and dull like many of their recent products. "Watership Down" is a great animation film -- it all looks like moving watercolor paintings and I appreciate far more than many movie critics.
That's why I think topics like proclaiming what is the best movie of all time or best ten or whatever instigates a kind of arrogance that only film critics can and should manage. Of course, as Frank Lloyd Wright said, "One has a choice of honest arrogance or insincere humility. I choose honest arrogance."
This thread is really "My Favorite Film" and that really has to be the film that made an impact on some particular time of one's life. There are threads on the boards regarding films one can see over and over. In that case, this thread is kind of redundant. One suggestion I might make -- check out the front page of the forum for threads that are really identical to the topic one wants to post and post on that thread rather that start another. This one has gotten a lot of hits as these threads are always somewhat popular. However, only one will get featured.
Only one mention of Ben Hur?
Perhaps you should see it again. Each time I've seen it I expected to be bored and each time I wind up glassy eyed and moved.
And no mentions of Braveheart?
I think this is the finest example of character casting I've ever seen. Though not historically accurate, the film had a little of everything and I know few people who've seen it, that only saw it once.
"Braveheart" is a good action adventure film although it inflates historical events way out of proportion. The moral of the story is one has to sacrifice themselves for freedom but I found that a cliche. Although I enjoy watching it (not motivated to watch it again right now), I enjoyed and will watch "Rob Roy" more likely in multiple viewings. Foremost, Liam Neeson is a vastly superior actor to Mel Gibson and Tim Roth is a far more delicious villain than, say, Patrick MacGoohan (I had trouble picking a particular villian as there were so many). I was expecting Oscar Mayer to can MacGoohan's performance the next morning. I think of it as entertaining but like an omelet with too many ingredients. Try adding dill pickles to yours and you would come close.
Somehow my first paragraph got lopped off in agreeing with you, Bill (!), that "Ben Hur" is still the greatest of the Biblical epics -- adjusted for inflation it's still the box office champ of that genre. I'm just waiting for a hi-def broadcast (even letterboxed on the 16.9 ratio TV screens, it would look more like I saw it on the big screen). I wish they would re-release it to, say, IMAX as it was originally filmed in 70MM. If they do the digital transfer off a 70MM print to hi-def DVD, that would be outstanding. Thank gawd, the era of pan-and-scan blurry movies on TV has ended.
One note LW. Braveheart was historically inaccurate, but not inflated...
William Wallace really was such a man, as near as historians can figure. The book of the same name tears it down piece by piece and was quite fascinating.
I'd replace my Ben Hur DVD in a heartbeat for the one you're describing.
It was inflated in its inaccuracies. The book you describe, was it the one that was written to accompany the movie? Read about Wallace in the historic accounts and you'll see what I mean.
Just for starters, Edward I did not die coincidentally at the same time as William Wallace -- a device to inflate the importance of Wallace among other exaggerations. Mel managed to inflate Wallace into a Christ figure and then proceeded to make another movie full of "imaginative devices" to revise and ad to actual Biblical text and historical facts about the real Christ. I always though conservatives were adamantly against historical revisionism (yeah, sure...)
A. I'm not a "conservative", it just seems that way when your own position is left of Hillary Clinton :razz: No, the book was not the movie book
I must have lent it out because it's not on my shelf but I think it was called William Wallace, the man who was Braveheart. It's an adaptation of Blind Harry's earlier work (think what Clavell did for Sun Tzu). I also read another book about the war that included a history of that period as well. The one I'm referring to did a much better job, at being careful to try to separate the factual history from the legend. Of course, considering the period, it's impossible to know how much legend made it into the history
but suffice to say the English scholars were none too kind, compared to their Scottish peers, about Wallace's greatness.
B. There's no record of a girlfriend/wife character, he never met the princess, the battle of Stirling took place on a bridge (brilliantly, btw), DeMornay deserves a ton of the credit, Wallace escaped Fallkirk (where the Bruce never betrayed him) by swimming for his life (while wounded) and there is tons of other inconsistencies.
However, the man was a commoner. He did inspire the commoners from different clans to fight side by side. They did win battles through clever generalship on his part. They did sack York and most importantly, he did scream freedom in total defiance with his final breath after being tortured... and it's quite possible that his memory is what inspired the next generation to finally win their freedom from the English. No, the movie was not historically accurate. But, William Wallace was indeed larger than life (a hell of a lot taller than Mel Gibson, too). There's a reason he's the most celebrated man in the history of Scotland
and that reason was captured in the film. :wink: I guess we just define inflated different. Compared to most American made movie-hero's, I'd say it was close enough.
Since you mention Gibson's height comparison, I guess it could be said that it was deflated.
Boy, you still hate him with a "Passion"... don't you?
There are many other figures in Scottish history that kept the standard high in the fight for freedom from British rule. I don't need to mention them and at least two or three of them were in that period besides William Wallace. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one -- I don't want to go to the length of dissecting the movie as it spoils the fun -- the movie, if anything, is a lot of fun ( perhaps not meant to be taken that seriously when one perceives Gibson's persona). Fictionalized history is nothing new and it's even in novels. It's the artistic integrity that counts. I don't find that Mel's films have enough aesthetic sensibility -- they look good but they are more boiler room than auteur and the bolts and nuts glaringly show up.
Nope, don't hate him. Only often hate what he does. Don't have much respect for his qualities as an actor, and definitely not as a director.
Hey, but I do think his new sitcom "Complete Savages" is very funny except that when he turned the directing chores over (he directed the pilot), it was even better. He appeared as a hammy cop narrator in an instructional film on safe driving last Friday and it really fit into his true persona. If this all seems like a left-handed compliment, I'll keep my right hand behind my back.
I haven't seen his series. Maybe I'll check it out. I agree with you that the passion sucked, but I can't get over the casting in Braveheart. Every character was exactly right. Unparalleled in my book, for such a large, diverse cast to be chosen that well. Just my two cents to the thread's author in hopes of getting it back on track!
I have no critcisms of the casting director -- there were a lot of supporting parts, many of them small, and they were filled admirably. I could say the same thing about "Ben-Hur," "Schindler's List," "All About Eve," "The Third Man," "Gone With the Wind," and on and on. I do have a bit of a problem with actor/directors who cast themselves in the lead. As a matter of fact, Neeson would have been a better choice.
BTW, the casting was by Patsy Pollock who also did most recently "The Hours" and in the past worked with Warren Beatty on "Reds," a film where I also felt although Beatty did an incredible job directing probably shouldn't have been its star.
Gibson didn't want to star in Braveheart. That was a consolation he had to make, to get the movie made at all. I don't remember the exact details, but I watched a making of... about it and that's what they said.
I can imagine the studio wanted to cash in on his star power and make that a condition if they were to give him the money. I don't think no matter what one reads what happens in those closed boardrooms but I don't think Mel was crying over taking the lead. I wonder if the same thing happened with "The Man With No Face?" The point is there are only a few actor/directors who can be in their films and excel in both. Orson Welles, for one.
It remains to be a mystery if another director would have have done as well or even better.
