My Movie Journal

Is it the new director's cut of "Donnie Darko?" Ebert, for one, likes this movie. It's twisted version of armegeddon is truly a puzzler and requires undivided concentration or it will be completely lost.

The production design recreating the era of "The Sting" is half of the movie and it really deserves to be seen on the big screen. Great vintage rag music soundtrack, too. I have no idea how one could follow the story while reading!

I liked "The Terminal" and, of course, "The Manchurian Candidate" is the grandaddy of all political conspiracy movies. Ditto on TMC -- if one doesn't pay close attention to what is going on, they'll be lost in a fog.

Is that the new "The Italian Job?" The original is a great heist movie and the new one isn't really the same movie at all but very entertaining.

Not sure you'll warm up to "Lost in Translation." It may get lost in translation.

I got lost for sure

People who saw Lost in Translation were said to have loved it, but something gets lost in translation to video. I saw it on dvd only. I thought it was good, but I can imagine that the wide screen probably showed the feeling of isolation better. But then, what do I know?

I loved "Lost in Translation." I did see it in the cinema - hmmm - can't quite see why a big screen would be important...

I do think one is almost always more involved with a movie in the dark of a theater. If there is a crowd reaction it's even more influential than a few people over to watch the movie on a small screen. Even on my 46" hi-def screen it's not completely the same which I really notice on the LOTR films. The sound, however, is a different story. On my home 5.1 Dolby Digital THX system, the sound is very much improved over the theater (for one thing, I can control the dynamic range and the bass boast so it doesn't break one's ear drums).

Lost in Translation--Haven't seen it. Want to.
Donnie Darko-- Went through awe, thinking I was watching something fabulous, to D'oh--lamer than I thought, back to what is this I'm watching? I liked it, but it didn't reach the pinnacle I thought it was headed for...Still, good.
The Terminal--Not too keen on seeing this.
The Manchurian Candidate (not the remake)-- I considered it time well spent.
The Italian Job --A waste of time.

This is fun. Always wanted to be a movie critic. Enjoying everybody else's opinions.

Oh - I think the dvd habit is daft, really - except for films you cannot access in cinema.

The communal experience of cinema - and the uninterrupted, dedicated, nature of it is a huge part of the appeal and the experience.

Comedies and action films this is especially true of, I think - laughing or being excited with a cinema audience is a fantastic experience.

But - given the nature of Lost in Translation, I would have thought it a film less affected by the translation - except that a big screen, and darkness, allows the mood and atmosphere of the film to be better appreciated....

The audience reaction to "Chicago" is a good instance. Just isn't the same experience at home and it was the closest to seeing a musical performed on stage I can think of with the laughs in the right places and the enthusiasm for the production numbers punctuated by applause! When I had a film club going and we actually screened movies in the 70's (before video), it was a comparable experience. I don't think people gather together more than one or two others when playing a DVD at home. There are a few films that lend themselves to a lack of audience like "Woman in the Dunes" which is more like reading a book where the solitude is a plus.

I've tried to view films on the PC but it's really like scanning books instead of actually reading them to do a book report.

Loved the original "Manchurian Candidate". It is one of my alltime favorites. Angela Lansbury was so deliciously evil in that movie. The remake was a huge disappointment.

I loved Lost in Translation ... such a beautiful, entrancing, moving film, magical/sensitive and yet so understated, stylish ... (just to overdo it on the adjectives ...). A real beauty. One of the best I saw this year, in fact.

Watch it only if you're in a patient, already kinda half-absent state for max impact, though. (On an aside, with many of the films you've listed I cant imagine watching them on the TV, even less on the computer ... so much must get lost, both for the sensitive and the action movies. Take The Day After Tomorrow, the only good thing about that movie was the special effects, but those would go totally lost on a small screen. Lost in Translation, in its own way, might also lose much on a small screen.)

He's just brown nosing LW...




<tee>

Oh I see that this angle was just already being discussed by you all ... I'm late again. Yeah, no, I totally see seeing Lost in Translation on big screen as an element of its impact. Because it's the kinda movie you can really, like, submerge yourself in, from the moment he's looking outside from his own panorama hotel view of the city on - and yes, what someone said - the quiet isolation of it - and then the rolling flow into a kind of parallel-reality life for a few days - it's with a large screen that you can more easily transport yourself in such a parallel reality experience as well.

Re: Lightwiz, yeah, Lord of the Rings too, cant imagine seeing it on small screen!

Then again, I remember being in high school and watching movies on BBC2 late at night by myself (or even docs) and also just totally disappearing into them, submerged/mesmerized - so - who knows.

The Terminal I saw too. Enjoyable enough. Fluff, but very sweet - and sweet can sometimes be good for you.

Lash, who, me? That'll be the day ... Light and I dont exactly get along like a house on fire ...

I just always start reading a thread up from where I left off ... it does lately leave me looking pretty foolish responding to stuff that turns out to have long since been covered ... ;-)

I finally went to see The Incredibles tonight ...

I thought it was really pretty. Everything looked very, very cool. Almost like a testament to style, you know - Wallpaper turned into a movie set. It all looked like those websites my German graphic designer used to design in Flash a few years ago, when she just started an agency of their own with a friend - very hip. But in this ironic, retro kind of cool, that perpetually refers to other things, tongue-in-cheek (Bond movies, fifties sci-fi cartoons, etc) - a bit all too meta perhaps. The actual movie, with its own jokes and action scenes and everything, sometimes seemed weighed down a little by all the ironic retro stuff, I felt - I really wonder what it'll look like in ten years. I was in awe because it was all very clever, but perhaps too clever by 'alf?

That said, it was good fun, and really well-made.

We liked the second half better than the first. Trying to figure why, I came up with a kind of analogy. The Incredibles, you know, they have all these superpowers, all this amazingness about them - and then they're forced to live this suburban standard life, and it's just a little awkward sometimes. That was how it was with the first half of this movie too. The movie was so brilliantly made, so dazzling and versatile - and then throughout a long first half, it was mostly forced to use all that visual power to portray - well - rather a boring, narrow suburban life. And that felt a little awkward sometimes, too. All the prettyness and dazzlingness felt much more natural, came much more into their own, once the protagonists actually started doing super things themselves. From then on, it was a most entertaining ride.

The cinema wasnt full, and The Incredibles is already back to just early evening screenings - apparently not doing as well here as in America. Wonder why - perhaps because it kind of straddles genres? For an actual action movie it's rather slow-paced actually, without all too much chair-rocking episodes, while for a kids' movie it oozes too much style. Still, enjoyable enough for everyone tho.

Mosta you already seen it I presume?

nimh-- Teasing about brown-nosing.
Didn't anticipate seeing the Incredibles.

How does the Flight of the Phoenix rate? I loved the first one. Don't want to waste time on a lame remake--but, for some reason I wonder if it might be good...?

The Fockers?

Oceans Twelve?

One of the stars of "Lost In Translation" is the city of Tokyo and the cinematography is exceptional, especially at night. The big screen would intensify the scale of this enormous city. It looked really good on my screen and the sounds of the city from an intimate bar to a noisy city street in 5.1 Dolby Digital established an intriguing atmosphere. I did become lost in Tokyo.

Well, nihm, we don't always disagree and you're as unwilling as I am to mold your opinion to satisfy others. Certainly you've never had any dumb opinions which is more than I can say for some on these boards. Que sera, sera.

I got some of my film education from watching what turned out to be classics when they came out in the theaters, but most of it from the visual panorama of film from one other place, the Fox Venice theater, which used to show double bills of oldies.
Sometimes my ex and I would go four times a week, we just bathed in movies (he was a playwright, moving toward screenwriter) and I just loved movies (I come from a film family with my dad and uncles part of the late-twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties Hollywood.)

So I saw The Third Man, Z, Battle of Chile, Children of Paradise, Moliere, Amarcord, lots of Noir... in full screen whatever, with an audience which was usually as interested as we were. Sometimes that theater just breathed as one.

The Fox was great at pairing stuff...
I wish the dynamics of film showing would make it worthwhile for someone somewhere to do such changing-daily movie events again.

I first saw "The Third Man" at one of the old drive-in theaters, I think the Whittier, and it was drizzling off and on. Talk about nature adding to the atmosphere. Perhaps the drive-in is a comparison to the experience of sitting at home watching a movie. Tried to watch "The Third Man" on a tiny stream image online a few years back. No way.

Seeing The Third Man on a drive-in screen on a drizzly evening sounds just right to me..

I don't buy into screen elitism. There are films whose special effects are clearly appreciable on the small screen, so if another film's special effects can't it's not necessarily the screen's fault.

Anywho, watched The Terminal recently. A cute movie and I liked it.

I also watched Napoleon Dynamite recently. It's an odd film and easily the most awkward I have seen. I liked it a lot.