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| gromit |
 Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 7:54 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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billyweeds wrote: gromit wrote: Is the Cybill Shepherd-Elliott Gould remake of The Lady Vanishes (1979) worth bothering with?
Forgot it even existed. The word was horrible on its release.
The dvd surprised me.
I never knew it existed.
I believe Angela Lansbury plays the title character. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 7:35 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Saw Talhotblond. It's creepy, disgusting, and compulsively watchable. By rights, it should lead to a new category of crime punishable by jail time. It joins Dear Zachary and Murder on a Sunday Morning in the just-behind-TheThinBlueLine list of true crime docs. Probably nothing in this genre will ever match TTBL, which is one of my favorite movies in any category.
Before anyone cites The Staircase, it's great but it's not a movie. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 8:42 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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gromit wrote: billyweeds wrote: gromit wrote: Is the Cybill Shepherd-Elliott Gould remake of The Lady Vanishes (1979) worth bothering with?
Forgot it even existed. The word was horrible on its release.
The dvd surprised me.
I never knew it existed.
I believe Angela Lansbury plays the title character.
If I ever hear a good word about it, it will be the first time I've ever heard a good word about it. |
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-Topher |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 8:51 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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billyweeds wrote: Saw Talhotblond. It's creepy, disgusting, and compulsively watchable. By rights, it should lead to a new category of crime punishable by jail time. It joins Dear Zachary and Murder on a Sunday Morning in the just-behind-TheThinBlueLine list of true crime docs. Probably nothing in this genre will ever match TTBL, which is one of my favorite movies in any category.
THB packs a punch, doesn't it?
I've never heard of Dear Zachary: -- hopefully it will turn up here. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 9:12 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6963
Location: Black Hills
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| I like your new video, Marc. I didn't have functioning headphones on this PC, so will re-watch again later with the sound, which may or may not render it less enigmatic. You make me think of Cronenberg's famous remark about how we know the world through the body. The visual part stronlgy renders the body as portal to hermetic mysteries. Cool. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 4:13 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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Quote: Before anyone cites The Staircase, it's great but it's not a movie.
OH NO! Now we have to have a discussion of what a movie is. (I suppose followed by What Is Art?
FEMME FATALE:
I had seen this when it came out and had a memory of liking it. I thought it had an exciting beginning at Cannes and Rebecca RS was a stunning beauty.
Reviewing it.........I've changed my mind. Rebecca RS does not hold up as an actress and DePalma has her playing so many looks and personalities that the end result is just confusion. The plot goes here there and everywhere. A bit of split-screen adds a bit of tension. Antonio Bandaras was the most stable element of the production. Wonderful long, black hair and an affected performance as a gay it guy in search of a disc in Romijn's hotel room. The score sounded like Bernard Hermann.......will have to check if he did it. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 4:38 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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I finally caught up with Purple Noon the other night, and I have to say I was disappointed. In fact, the reduction of Patricia Highsmith's idiosyncratic creation into this generic movie would probably be frowned upon if it were American rather than French. Yes, I liked Alain Delon quite a lot as Ripley, and there were some fun tense moments in the last third. But come on, when you take out the homoerotic content and make Ripley in love with the heroine, when you cut out the first third of the story and wreck the ending, then we're dealing with the sort of generic defanged adaptation people decry when it comes out of Hollywood.
I'm going to rent the other just to make sure, but in terms of what I remember, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a much better movie. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 5:01 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Joe--I don't know how good a print you saw, but I do know that Purple Noon owes as much to its seductive cinematography as it does to Delon or Clement. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 6:09 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| I thought the colors looked bad, overbright and untrue to color tones (at one point, the water looks purple). But it was filmed in the notoriously unstable Eastman process, and it may be that they couldn't do the restoration on the DVD (the rerelease through Scorsese) that other Eastman-filmed pics have obtained. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 8:51 pm |
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Location: Houston
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Just re-watched Mr. Ripley and all I can say is...it's a draw. While I like the sociopathology and the dark humor of this movie much better,still it errs to its detriment on the side of length just as Purple Noon errs to its detriment on the side of brevity. Purple Noon races ridulously past plot, leaving big gaps (who are those ballet people, anyway?), but Mr. Ripley goes farther into the detals of the plot than is necessary. If Purple Noon looks garish, Ripley doesn't get any more points for looking bland--like every other movie made these days.
The cast of Ripley is generally superior, though, especially Gweneth Paltrow. I called her a great actress when I first reviewed it on the Times site, and someone critized that. Well, maybe she isn't a great actress, but this is a great performance, absolutely perfect, not one note wrong. I think I'm even more empressed by it this time than I was the first time around. I think Matt Damon is superb as Ripley. He captures the outsider status, the nebbish nobodyness of him, which ain't exaclty easy if you'r Matt Damon. Philip Seymour Hoffmann is spectacular as Freddie Miles (I've known men like this over and over in my life; Hoffmann nails it). Cate Blanchett seems to literally step out of the 1950's. If there's any weak link it's likely Jude Law, clearly British in diction despite being an American character, and one that doesn't remotely match up with his parents in any way (if they'd had a scene together, you'd never believe they were related).
Ultimately, I can't say rate one version above the other. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:19 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Manhattan
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I can't get into a in-depth analysis of The Talented Mr. Ripley tonight, especially in comparison to a film I've never seen, Joe. I'll just say it was the film that made me realize that Matt Damon had real acting chops.
Interesting that you thought it was Cate Blanchett that stepped out of the 50's. I thought it was Gweneth Paltrow. But I love this film and as such, I loved the casting. And, even though you make a good point about Jude Law's accent, it never bothered me. I guess I kind of thought of it as a typical upper class accent. Perhaps belonging to one who'd spent a lot of time in Europe.
Betsy,
I guess we have different tastes regarding Femme Fatale. I see it as Brian dePalma's masterpiece, that is if he has one. But I've seen it too many times to count, and each time I love it even more. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 7:36 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| I guess I have to see Femme Fatale again. I'm crazy about it and thought it was royally screwed by the critical community, which reacted more like Betsy than Marj and me. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 7:57 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog is a lot of fun.
Seems like something Joe would absolutely love, and in billy's wheelhouse as well.
Good stuff.
NP Harris does a really good job, and when he is trying to look mean as Doctor Horrible often reminded me of Chef Ramsey.
F-U-N.
The dvd also had some good video submissions by regular dorks. The extra with interviews of the Evil League of Evil was a bit thin though. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 8:15 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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gromit wrote: Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog is a lot of fun.
Seems like something Joe would absolutely love, and in billy's wheelhouse as well.
LOL. Joe turned me on to it a few months back, and yes, it's definitely in my wheelhouse. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 9:41 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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Marj wrote:
Interesting that you thought it was Cate Blanchett that stepped out of the 50's. I thought it was Gweneth Paltrow. But I love this film and as such, I loved the casting.
It's the way Blanchett moves and holds herself. She seemed like the 50's concept of a trying-to-be-independent woman, the kind of person Kay Thompson might play, if you know what I mean. Which I think is a harder type to recreate. Or was until Mad Men came along, perhaps. Though I'm not disagreeing with you about Paltrow.
Hard for me to remember, but Ripley might have been the first time I recognized Damon's talent, too.
I'm a little surprised you haven't seen Purple Noon, not because it's something I consider a must-see, but just because it's a famous foreign film, and it's a little easier to catch up on those than the barrels of stuff that come out of our country. |
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