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| knox |
 Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 11:09 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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I've actually heard LaGrange used too many times in indie films.
Margaret - if you can't tell it in two hours, you can't tell it. I know Tarkovski fans hate me for saying that. My thought are clouded by my bladder. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 11:20 am |
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| The Dark Knight Rises could have been told in an hour and a half and been almost good, but it ran for two and a half hours and told a bunch of stories, from really stupid to sickeningly stretched and mind numbingly boring. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 12:06 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9015
Location: Shanghai
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Film needn't be so rigidly defined.
Some films are best at 10 or 15 minutes.
Some films 3 hours or more.
Mostly when they get that long they get broken into multiple parts. But also unfortunately some smaller ideas/films get stretched and padded out into 80 or 90 minute feature length.
I'm a pretty strong proponent of 90 minute or 100 minute films. And frequently enough fall asleep or turn off a film 5 or 10 minutes til the end, because it's too long.
But the 2.5 hour Margaret didn't seem overly long or bloated to me. It moved well, was interesting and well-paced.
Some people are complaining about the choppy editing.
Though I thought a few abrupt transitions fit in with the main character's subjective state. The extra scenes in the 3 hour version don't sound particularly necessary.
If I had to cut anything from the film, I might excise the mother's love interest played oddly by Jean Reno. It did serve to flesh out the mother as a well-known actress who is kind of lonely and emotionally needy. Also shows that unlike her daughter she's learned to overlook some faults, until Reno crosses a line. And it shows how perhaps they both need a male in their lives but both go about it wrongly.
Actually, I that subplot was fine, I just didn't care for Reno's portrayal much. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 7:56 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 left confused by the trailer to the remake of “Red Dawn”. It wasn’t that found it hard to follow or that I was left unclear about the how and what the film, it was the why I struggled with.
Of course, the reason why any film gets made in Hollywood is because the studio thinks it has a good chance of making a profit. The current wisdom is that remakes, popular adaptations, prequels and sequels and franchise instalments represent the least risk. Indeed, most films coming out of established studios these days seem to fall into one of these categories.
John Milius’s “Red Dawn” (1984) was an absurd and poorly made adolescent fantasy about how Soviet and Cuban invasion of the South-west states of America was repelled by a group of high school students However, with a low budget and respectable box office, it was still a whopping, financial success.
“Red Dawn” was made at about the same time as a slew of films, including “An Officer and a Gentleman”, “Top Gun”, “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2”, “Missing In Action” and “Invasion USA” that reflected a brief confluence of cold war paranoia and a resurgent pride in America and its military during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Without going too deeply into this particular round of America’s culture wars, it is clear that “Red Dawn” caught and rode this nationalistic wave. Its release also coincided with two other linked trends in American cinema, the growing importance of teenage boys as a cinema-going, demographic group and the rise and rise of the action film from B-movie to blockbuster.
However, no longer part of the zeitgeist and shorn of the other factors that turned it into pay dirt for its makers, it is hard to believe that the new “Red Dawn” will reap the same rewards as its predecessor. |
_________________
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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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 9:02 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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Gromit, Billy,
my local video store had the 182 minute cut of Margaret. I will make and send you a copy if you'd like. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 9:19 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: Gromit, Billy,
my local video store had the 182 minute cut of Margaret. I will make and send you a copy if you'd like.
To put it mildly, I would like. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 9:31 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 9:56 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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jeremy wrote: “Red Dawn” was made at about the same time as a slew of films, including “An Officer and a Gentleman”, “Top Gun”, “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2”, “Missing In Action” and “Invasion USA” that reflected a brief confluence of cold war paranoia and a resurgent pride in America and its military during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Without going too deeply into this particular round of America’s culture wars, it is clear that “Red Dawn” caught and rode this nationalistic wave. Its release also coincided with two other linked trends in American cinema, the growing importance of teenage boys as a cinema-going, demographic group and the rise and rise of the action film from B-movie to blockbuster.
However, no longer part of the zeitgeist and shorn of the other factors that turned it into pay dirt for its makers, it is hard to believe that the new “Red Dawn” will reap the same rewards as its predecessor.
There's a lot of rah-rah patriotism out there; the letters-to-the-editor pages are full of angry accusations that flags aren't being flown correctly, Americans are ignorant of their heritage, Obama isn't truly American (various reasons, not just Kenya), etc. Country music is becoming popular even in NYC, with its down-home USA jingoism. It seems to me that 9/11 brought out a lot of cheap patriotism that most people use as an excuse for hating the foreigner (especially Muslims and illegal aliens). So maybe "Red Dawn" will be a blockbuster again--though it worries me a little. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 10:33 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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From the clip I viewed, the invaders now appear to be Asiatic rather than Russian and Hispanic, but surely the rise of China has not (yet) fuelled American paranoia Cold War levels.
In the original Red Dawn, the high school students, who included, Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, fled to the mountains to form a guerilla army to fight the communists. They called themselves ’The Wolverines’. Aware and proud of the film’s influence on a young, impressionable audience, John Milius later boasted, “The Wolverines have grown up and gone to Iraq.”
It is also interesting to note that the studio who produced the film, MGM/UA, actually recruited former Reagan Secretary of State Alexander Haig “to consult with the director and inculcate the appropriate ideological tint.” MGM/UA executive Peter Bart wrote that “Haig took Milius under his wing and suddenly he found himself welcomed into right-wing think tanks.”
Top Gun gave such a boost to the American military’s post-Vietnam image that "Recruitment spiked 400% in the months after Top Gun was released, leading the Navy to set up recruitment tables at theatres upon realizing the movie’s effect." Maybe they suggested that if you joined the navy you’d get to sleep with Kelly McGillis.
I don’t want to take the conspiracy stuff too far, but, post-Iraq, I suspect that the Pentagon would not averse to surge in recruitment. |
_________________
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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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 9:20 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6961
Location: Black Hills
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| Sounds like it's aimed squarely at the Tea Party redneck who is ready to embrace the increased military spending in Paul Ryan's "warfare state" vision. And no doubt the gun nuts will welcome a revisiting of the plucky guerillas meme, soothing those mild anxieties brought on by the recent shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| grace |
| Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 10:23 am |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 3215
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jeremy wrote: In the original Red Dawn, the high school students, who included, Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, fled to the mountains to form a guerilla army to fight the communists. They called themselves ’The Wolverines’. Aware and proud of the film’s influence on a young, impressionable audience, John Milius later boasted, “The Wolverines have grown up and gone to Iraq.”
Related to this by a thread - a friend of mine worked as a PA and extra on Gettysburg. C Thomas Howell was in both Red Dawn and Gettysburg; and when my friend and his group made one of their charges, they yelled "Wolverines" as they came over the hill. Howell was not amused. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2012 4:34 pm |
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Peter Travers, who is a film critic that I've never trusted since the first time I saw all his quotes in the ads for crappy movies, said that The Dark Knight Rises was the best blockbuster of the summer. Every time I see a movie ad and he is one of the cheerleaders, I automatically say, "Oh oh!"  |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2012 7:01 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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A top priority for me right now is "Premium Rush." Partly because it sounds like a great Manhattan flick (although I hate reckless bikers, having been hit by one on Fifth Avenue some years ago), but there's another reason.
One summer morning a couple of years back, I woke up before 6 a.m. thinking someone was throwing a party in my apartment. Lots of people talking and shouting to each other. Turned out there was a pack of movie folk outside setting up their honey wagons, and right under my window (I'm on the second floor) a guy was making omelettes to order on a little grill. The crowd was there all day, and when I asked the doorman if he knew what the movie was, he said Premium Rush. Which meant nothing, of course, but now I know. (I'm on Central Park West, so they must have been filming some of the ride-through-the-park scenes.) |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2012 7:13 pm |
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| The review of a local critic here and a bunch of capsule reviews of Premium Rush I've read said virtually the same thing. The movie goes all over the place and seems to shift back and forth but it moves right along and is quite good with good performances. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2012 7:33 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I had a choice between that and Hope Springs and went with the latter, which was pretty blah. There were times when I thought I was watching the filmed version of the self-help book Carell's character wrote. There are some funny scenes and some touching ones. I especially liked the scene that takes place before a fireplace and the scene that plays opposite the closing credits.
On the other hand, I really liked ParaNorman which is very funny and properly gruesome. Nice voice acting, too. In short, exactly what I was hoping it would be. Only question is why this didn't come out in October. |
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