My Movie Journal

Hmmm... saw it in a cool theater in Vancouver with stadium seating...and I was rapt with attention throughout...I think it's one of those love-it-or-ho-hum flicks.

Saw Serpico last night,,,forgot how Pacino can elevate a middlin movie...

Watching the commentary tracks for Guffman and Mighty Wind was probably at least as funny as the films. Who knew that picking the right toupee could be so critical in the development of a role? There was some discussion in the commentary track that Mighty Wind was perhaps more serious and emotional than some of the regular audience for their films would like. <shrug> I was in a mood to laugh, and these films filled that gap for me.

The ensemble. <nods> Watching Spinal Tap again after seeing A Mighty Wind is interesting. Before and after, or more correctly, after and before.

I watched This is Spinal Tap recently. I liked it a little, the menu of the DVD was the best part of the whole thing.

I learned about those eggs, or whatever they're properly called, from you. Thanks, Craven.

My pleasure.

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I watched Dr. Strangelove again with my grandmother this weekend.

My opinion was the same as when I saw it long ago:

Peter Sellers' performance is amazing and there are some absolute jewels in there "no fighting in the war room".

But I still think it was too slow and too drawn out.

I also think it may be a bit of a period piece and the nuclear boogeyman was middleaged and balding by the time I came around, so for my tastes the movie was too long by at least half.

Whatever you do, Craven. Do NOT watch Open Water. That movie was the most depressing thing that I have ever seen.

Dammit Letty, you know that's just going to make me curious.

Craven, It was based on a true story. I wanted to throw the damn CD up against the wall.

Not a movie I'm seeking out but, damn, it is intriguing.

Mr. Wizard. I didn't really seek it out. I just wondered about it, and wanted to see if it were just another shark movie.

'Open Water' filmmakers survive tsunami


"Open Water" filmmakers Chris Kentis and Laura Lau have survived the tsunami that ripped through their hotel at Phuket in Thailand.

Kentis told The Associated Press that he escaped to his hotel room where he found his relatives.

Lau was trapped with their seven-year-old daughter, Sabrina in an internet cafe within the building. They managed to escape with other tourists from the café's balcony using a bamboo ladder.

The couple's movie, "Open Water", featured two scuba divers who were left out at sea in shark-infested waters.

Kentis and Lau are reportedly devastated by the past week's tragic events but are happy their fates did not mirror their highly acclaimed feature film.

Just saw a wonderful film:

Link to "Dirty, Pretty Things"

It concerns the plight of 2 illegal immigrants, living in London. It is played with such sensitivity and grace. A must see!

A great film, Phoenix. Stephen Frears also directed "My Beautiful Launderette," "High Fidelity" and "The Grifters." This one really gets into its characters and reveals a lot about human nature.

Well.................I had never seen the BBC triology, "House of Cards".

Link to "House of Cards"

Apparently a BBC mini-series, the story is told in three discs, 4 episodes each, so that each segment takes almost an hour. I had received the first two from Blockbuster Online (the third is coming this week), and I could not stay away from it.

Ian Richardson is so deliciously evil, as he engages his audiences with his asides, winks and nods. It is a story of a man who will do anything to rise to the top of the political heap in England, and I mean ANYTHING.

The story is fascinating, the dialogue sophisticated and witty. I found it so fascinating that after watching the first disc (3 hours) I decided to see the second immediately afterwards. The story is very involving, and a bit on the addictive side!

My daughter told me about Open Water. I wonder if that's been done before...you know...the ending.

I guess it has, but I don't remember an instance.

I don't think I can watch it. Has anyone else, other than Letty?

I saw White Castle with my daughter---forced to try all kinds of movies I wouldn't on my own-- But, it was good for silly laughs, and I am operating at a deficit in that area, so it worked out well. Neil Patrick Harris....I'll never think of him the same way...heh.

Saw "...Spotless Mind." I was well on my way to loving it--but when they were running through memories, I started to think of it as more of a stroking for that damn Charlie Kaufman, than as a movie.

That damn Charlie Kaufman.

I am incredibly jealous and indignant at his "Hey, look at me! I'm revolutionizing everything" showmanship! So, I spent the last quarter of the movie bitterly obsessed with him.

I probably need to see it again.

(LW will know re Charlie. So as not to be coy, he wrote it--and Being John Malkovitch--and Adaptation (I so loved!!). Anyway, he's doing things no one else has done (IMO), I consider him incredibly fabulous, and I can't divorce his success or machinations from movies, now. And, I'm terribly jealous of him. In another life, I was supposed to be him.)

Well, I rented The Village (same guy who did The Sixth Sense), and I must say that Joaquin Phoenix seemed bored with his role. Frankly, I'm not certain if I liked it or not. Also rented Paparazzi which was a real cliff hanger. Good movie, and although I don't necessarily support revenge type movies, I found myself gratified with the entire thing. Strange that I thought of River Phoenix and Princess Diana when I watched it. I'm certain that was the intent, however.

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is worth watching again just for the script -- in fact, it's even engrossing just reading the script as they stand on their own. He writes scripts to make great movies, not to make big box office. They aren't big budget so they do make money. One can also tell that the actors are really inspired.

I saw two movies this week with a striking audience reaction, it was funny.

Earlier in the week I saw Before Sunset, after all, a fair and enjoyable enough movie. The audience reaction was that when the end titles came, an instant murmur erupted, like everybody sputtered something at the same time to each other - mostly because it was another open ending and everybody just went to each other, like, OK now we still don't know!, or, but are they going to?, or - you know, some such spontaneous protest that was in fact mostly just an expression of having been pleasantly entertained. And then everyone erupted in little agitated conversations about something or other in the movie. Logical, cause well - here's two characters our age (audience mostly in the late twenties to early fourties), and their whole drama was played out on a, you know - I mean, love of their life time and all that, but still those two people could pretty much have been any of us (hence all the giggles and guilty-recognition LOLs). It was a very little movie, with a scope roughly correspondent to that of any of our lives, which was exactly what the audience was looking for I guess.

Anyway, it was cute, there were little things in to pick up on or laugh about and otherwise it wasnt really all that memorable, or it would have to turn out one of those small movies that seem unremarkable but you still remember it ten years later anyway.

The interesting differences with Before Sunrise, the prequel of nine years ago with the same Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, were mostly about how their interaction had changed. Nine years ago, the French girl had still been (way I remember it) a bit - well, the one the American guy was trying to awe and woo, which he did with endless, interesting-sounding anecdotes and twenty-something "deep" philosophizing, in which she then would partake. This time it was she who was obviously doing the talking, with him mostly listening and gazing at her in either amusement or adoration.

Some reviewer noted about the movie that one way in which you could see they were now nine years older was how their interest had narrowed. Back then, when the two, having just met in a train, walked around Vienna together for the night, they wandered around and looked here and there and noted this interesting alleyway, met that interesting person on their way. They were self-abosorbed enough (especially the American guy), but also still eager to discover all kinds of things. Now they were in Paris, but apart from the one anecdote about the Notre Dame and the quick hop on a boat you wouldnt have much known it - they didnt spent it much attention apart from the cursory "oh, this looks kinda interesting" before turning to each other again.

The other thing that struck me was how the two had actually become more like each other. The previous movie was also a bit of a play on stereotypes, she the typical French girl (very girlie, kinda arty, bit the "European, likes to philosophize" type), and he the stereotyped American student-abroad type. (The Portuguese girl I saw the movie with and I had a lot of fun about that when we saw it, exchange students ourselves at the time, especially about how the guy never stopped talking in the movie. Like, they'd be at the river in the night and it's a moonlit poetic scene, and instead of falling silent and gaze at it a bit he would just keep on talking, articulate and witty and er, tiresome, impressing her with this and with that ... <grins>. I dunno, you have to have experienced the difference between American and European exchange students to see how it was funny I guess - but it was just so typical.)

Anyway, this time no more so. Basically, they were now both like that. As I whispered to A. during the movie: Oh my God - it's the same like last time - except this time, they're both annoying like hell!

And that they were.

Not that the - you know, I saw Before Sunrise at an odd time - and of course, the whole - meeting the perfect girl but deliberately keeping it, you know, a passing-by thing and going home afterwards - only to, x years later, realise that it had been a defining moment and things have simply never really ever become OK again since - doesnt resonate somewhere or nothing

Second movie goes in a post of its own. Definitely better, too.

OK, so tonight we saw another movie, and again the audience reaction was striking, but totally opposite. We saw Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles (English title - lemme look that up - A Very Long Engagement), the new film by the guy who did Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain. It just opened here.

I read somewhere that because of the continent-storming overwhelming success of Amelie, the director was pretty much given a carte blanche to do whatever he wanted for his next movie - and boy, did he take it! A very ambitious project he made it, a grand, romantic/tragic larger-than-life historic movie set in/after WW1. The most beautiful shots, filmed and bestowed with sets and props of an imposing grandeur - aerial shots of steam trains whistling through waving fields and everything. The narrative itself has some of the quaint, cutely magical logic of Amelie, but mostly reaches beyond that to be something deeply moving, impressive, sweeping.

Was it? Judging on the audience reaction, yes. The cinema was sold out, but the end of the movie had the audience hushed, moved, holding hands and almost everyone just remained seated into way through the end titles, then sorta quietly shuffled out.

It was quite a wager, cause the director didnt exactly make it easy for himself. The storyline recounts the love of a little boy and girl - she a beautiful girl who has trouble walking, a dreamy type, he almost angelically cheerful and optimistic, who become fated lovers and then separatated as he is sent to the deafening, senseless horror of the WW1 trenches. The big question in the movie is, did he really die? She doesn't believe it (enter cute Amelie magic superstitions, same actress), and enlists the help of colorful allies to find out the truth.

This means the story is told us as a kind of classic whodunnit, including an eccentric detective, an avenging angel, successive mix-ups of identities, government cover-ups and mysterious trails, all kind of recounted in the conventions of an episode of Detective Poirot or Miss Marple. All that even though the essence of her quest is not at all of the logical whodunnit type (dissect the crime and figure out each person's place and motive), but the ununderstandable, by definition illogical horror of war (and a particular senseless one at that). Its an odd kind of dissonance - really ingenuous, actually, too, as a way to tell the story, but the risk is that it all sometimes becomes very intricate - perhaps all too contrived. Kinda top-heavy. Perhaps because of that I was for a long time more awed than actually moved. But I think he pulls it off in the end.

Whats well-done is that throughout the movie, its not at all clear whether the end will be good or bad - will her search bring a romantic, magical Amelie-type happy end, or will it turn out to have been her way to come round to accepting what happened? For example, in one of the many beautifully-found images, once all seems lost, she's carried through the fields where the trenches had been on a man's shoulders, with the three others crossing them around her, and someone says, you're like an Indian princess on an elephant, and she answers, yes on a hunt: "la grande chasse au chagrin" (say, "my great hunt for my sadness"). Its full of eloquence like that. I'm guessing (I didnt see that movie), its kinda like an English Patient-type film - but with more emphasis on the grim and the uncomfortable worked into the romantic grandeur of the story. (The war scenes are really - the stuff you'd want to make the warmongerers here watch, a lot of times.)

I liked it, was impressed. Not as fresh and surprising and offbeat as Amelie. And definitely teetering at times on the edge of all too contrived or dramatic. But I think they pulled it off. And the ending's fitting too.

Hmm, usually I find the IMDB comments section pretty useless, but for Long Dimanche they've got a good selection, both the raving reviews on page 1 and the more sceptical ones on page 2.