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| yambu |
 Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:01 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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I had a ghostly encounter in my arly twenties. I was absolutely ripped at the time, so that may have had something to do with it.
I don't believe those who say they've seen ghosts, even though they may believe they have. I'm bored just thinking about it. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:47 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Back to the Deborah Kerr thread!
Joe--You're right about Donna Reed equaling Kerr for incompetence in FHTE, but Reed actually won the Oscar. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:56 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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marantzo wrote: It's sort of fun travelling in the unreal. Why are women more susceptible to this nonsense than men?
Really? Heard of a guy named Conan Doyle? My impression is that when men go off the rails, they really take off across the cornfield. You didn't see Virginia Woolf obsessing over fairies, did you? |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:57 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| YES! Back to Deborah Kerr! |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 5:00 pm |
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billyweeds wrote: Back to the Deborah Kerr thread!
Joe--You're right about Donna Reed equaling Kerr for incompetence in FHTE, but Reed actually won the Oscar.
I thought Donna Reed's prostitute was as convincing as John Goodman would be playing a ballet dancer. Kerr more convincing as someone who Lancaster would like to screw. In other words Reed outdid Kerr. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 6:33 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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I was reading a thread on Japaenese anime, which included discussion of the films of Miyizaki. The following is an angry respopnse to a poster who suggested that japanese animation was second-rate compared with its American cousin.
Quote: … friends-stylee, "gimme five" scenarios and mock street, faux trendy, sub-basement dog shit, Woody Allen wisecracking, together with an obsession on numbskull realism ( as in the shots, the angles, the Hollywood copy-cat editing)… This is not animation; it's just a very drawn out, wisecrack-infested series of buddy movies with telegraphed verbal ping-pong. A cynical trip through consumer-product or "cultural" reference land. The over-praised Shrek has deteriorated into primary-coloured, frat-boy dog shit. If you melted down Adam Sandler, Crystal and Jon Stewart and injected them up the arse of Will Ferrell - you would get a US animation script writer. "Way to go !"
Although I would not go quite as far as the writer, I must admit that I have some sympathy for his stance. |
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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 6:46 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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marantzo wrote:
I thought Donna Reed's prostitute was as convincing as John Goodman would be playing a ballet dancer.
LOL. |
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| Shane |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:06 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1168
Location: Chicago
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marantzo wrote: It's sort of fun travelling in the unreal. Why are women more susceptible to this nonsense than men? Men aren't any smarter apparently. Maybe it goes back to our culture when women were at home cooking and cleaning while men were at work somewhere with lots of other men. Being at home alone cleaning and cooking etc. would tend to give a pleasant opening to fantasies. I think England is the mecca of these kind of fantasies. Ghosts, psychics, fairies, gnomes, séances, you name it. I'm talking about the western hemisphere of course. Other parts of the world have their own goofy beliefs.
Gary now I know why I missed it here!! you always were so funny, so cock sure of yourself that anything or anyone who ran afoul was in danger of your rapier like tongue. Well my friend hone it up because I have seen the unexplained more than once and experienced with others. So you can whittle away at me and all I can say is 'that's the way it was' sorry if I can't give answers. You will just have to understand that there is more than in your head my friend. |
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| Shane |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:16 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Chicago
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| I believe my favorite future 'travel' film has to be The Jacket. It is the closest thing to reality that I can say from personal experience. |
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| Shane |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:17 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1168
Location: Chicago
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| Go with that one Gary. |
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I'd like to continue the argument we were having before. What was it about? |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:30 pm |
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| The brain can do many things. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:05 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of it's own (bound up with it's tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingrediant) in legends of other lands. There were the Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic Scandinavian and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerfull as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with the English; and it does not replace what I felt missing. For one thing it's `faerie` is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherant and repetitive. For another and more important thing it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.
For the best part of a decade Harry Potter has been the jewel in Warner Brothers’ financial crown, a bonus securing potion, a recession proofing charm, the accountants’ stone. The studio paid two million dollars for limited rights to the first four books. With the take at the box office alone now exceeding five billion dollars, this seems quite the bargain. However, as other attempts to mimic the success of J K Rowling’s creation have shown this could not be taken as a given – wasn’t the Lemony Snickets film, a franchise that never was, actually billed as the next Harry Potter.
Almost uniquely amongst authors, due to the unprecedented success of the books, Rowling was able to insist on retaining a degree of control: she sold the rights to film the stories, but not the characters, which precluded Warner Bros. from developing their own story-lines. She also negotiated other caveats including the casting of British actors. It was as a result of these constraints that Steven Spielberg, who wanted to film the series as a cartoon with Harry Potter voiced by Haley Joel Osment decided not to direct. How would Warner bros. balance sheet look today if Spielberg had got his way? J K Rowling, bless her, wanted Terry Gilliam to direct, but Warner Bros. having to find a hundred million dollars or so to finance the film decided to entrust the enterprise to one of their own, Christopher Columbus. Having successfully delivered The Young Sherlock Holmes, a film that had similar challenges and a number of interesting parallels to the first Harry Potter, he was deemed a safe pair of hands. As it turned out, he also had a plodding set of feet. In fairness, and to wring a bit more life out of the metaphor, Chris Columbus managed to do more than not drop the ball. He marshalled a team that set the tone for cinema’s most successful franchise. It was in the first two films helmed by Chris Columbus that the sets, locations and high production values were established. And it was under his stewardship that the three child actors required to carry the films were found and nurtured. In what was to become one of a signature of the series, these young actors were carefully allowed to grow from under the protective cloaks of an auroric array of British thespian talent. They carry the latest film themselves.
I remember enjoying The Philosophers Stone and the less good The Chamber Of Secrets. but it was only with the third instalment, The Prisoner Of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, that it became clear how conservative and pedestrian the first two films had been, what a ‘good’ director could achieve, and the potential for the series to become part of cinema history for reasons other than being a commercial juggernaut. Kudos to Warner Brothers for trusting their precious baby to a Mexican, who, though a proven filmmaker had never handled a project of this size. It would also have been fair to question whether he would have a natural appreciation of the elements of English culture that permeate Harry Potter. But I guess there were other people on hand to worry about those details, and Cuarón produced the lyrical, universal most pared, but complete film of the series. The subsequent films have not quite lived up to the promise of The Prisoner Of Azkaban, but regardless, and at least partially due to the way the source material developed, the series has continued to mature along with its young protagonists.
Roger Ebert amongst others have criticised the later instalments as lacking the charm and sense of wonder of the first films, but not only do I welcome the darker tone, this is also in keeping with source material. It was not David Yates who turned the series into a grim battle of good and evil, and the struggle for meaning within the teenage mind, but J K Rowling. The alternative to Harry’s bildungsroman would have been a Groundhog Day nightmare of school feasts and magical japes.
I saw Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 1 or, as officially marketed, HP7 on Saturday. Director David Yates is another safe pair of hands. However, though he might not quite have Alfonso Cuarón’s story-telling and cinematic flair, he is no hack either.
The decision to split the final book into two films has been generally viewed as a cynical, commercial ploy by Warner Bros. It way may well be, but I also think the story warranted the greater attention to detail this allows. J K Rowlings’ later books are densely plotted and trying to accommodate all the twists and turns would have resulted in a less nuanced and flatter film. As is often the case with the first part of split stories, HP7 was somewhat unsatisfying, the cinematic equivlent of being called away from your meal having just cut into the juiciest of steaks. It is now nicely poised for the mother of all denouements, cheese dessert and coffee. . |
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:23 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Excellent analysis of the Harry Potter series. I was disappointed by the previous film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," because it just hit the high points of the long and involved novel, and clipping the final book into two films is far better than trying to trim it down to the same time constraints. I love the characters so much that I'm going to miss them enormously after the final movie has come and gone. Maybe I'll start reading the books again from the beginning.... |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 10:11 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12940
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I thought the third and fourth movies were excellent examples of how to adapt a novel, but they ran into trouble with Order of the Phoenix because it's a more densely plotted novel (and rather unpleasant). I liked the sixth one, but I think they cut out too much of Tom Riddle, Jr.'s past. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 6:22 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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