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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 8:13 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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marantzo wrote: Of the films that Billy gave a bad or lukewarm comment, I agree with the one's I also saw. Interstellar is a movie that I looked forward to. When I saw it, I liked it up to a point and then the mishmash and length took a big dive! Inception was a movie that I didn't hate but wasn't anything to write home about. But there is the same creator of both those films. A creator who can't make a movie that has good scenes all the way through and doesn't throw out the dreck which would cut at least a half hour less.
In both those films I found a lot of visuals that liked, but that wasn't enough.
Now the Galaxy movie was really enjoyable. I'd tell anyone to see it.
Now I'm waiting for Billy to not like it. (I think he did or will like it.)
What is the "Galaxy movie"? Gotta tell me. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:46 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Guardians of the Galaxy?
Have heard good things about it. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 12:53 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| Oh, of course. Yes, I did like it. Very enjoyable, though forgettable in the extreme. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 12:30 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Visiting kids in the big city (relatively) and time for 1 movie - it's down to Big Eyes or The Imitation Game. Given the streak of technophilia in the Bartons, looks like Turing may win. Big Eyes looks more interesting as a drama, though.
Happy boxing day, Canada. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 12:59 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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I'm getting more and more interested in seeing Big Eyes as I read more about it.
Tried watching Inherent Vice. OMG. As bad as it gets. It was called "stoned" in a positive review by a critic I admire. Stoned it may be, but not as pleasurable as that might sound. Incoherent and inchoate and totaly non-entertaining. Paul Thomas Anderson gets worse and worse. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 3:01 pm |
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Joined: 30 Oct 2014
Posts: 278
Location: Winnipeg: It's a dry cold.
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Glad you saw Guardians of the Galaxy, Billy.
High Anxiety was on TCM last night and I decided to see it again. Surprise, surprise, I never saw it before. It was fun. Apparently, Mel went to Hitchcock to ask him if he could make the film. He was using a number of Hitchcock movies. Hitchcock was very happy for Brooks to make the movie and he even gave him a joke and Brooks put it in the movie, but I didn't know what joke was Hitchcock's.
The Corner Gas movie opened here a few weeks ago and then went to TV. It was just as good as the series. When my son and I played golf here last summer, one of the guys who joined us was one of the guys who made the movie. I wonder is it will goes down to the States, |
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Big bang, shmig bang; still doesn't explain how anything starts. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 3:06 pm |
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Joined: 30 Oct 2014
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Location: Winnipeg: It's a dry cold.
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| Bartist, thanks for the Happy Boxing Day comment. England also has Boxing Day. |
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Big bang, shmig bang; still doesn't explain how anything starts. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 3:23 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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billyweeds wrote: I'm getting more and more interested in seeing Big Eyes as I read more about it.
Tried watching Inherent Vice. OMG. As bad as it gets. It was called "stoned" in a positive review by a critic I admire. Stoned it may be, but not as pleasurable as that might sound. Incoherent and inchoate and totaly non-entertaining. Paul Thomas Anderson gets worse and worse. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 3:24 pm |
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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marantzo wrote: Bartist, thanks for the Happy Boxing Day comment. England also has Boxing Day. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 6:32 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| Gary--I also saw High Anxiety for the very first time this year, and like you I liked it a lot. One of my favorite Mel Brooks films, as it turned out. I was expecting a by-the-numbers parody of Hitchcock movies, but instead it was a funny story on its own. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 8:02 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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Caught Into the Woods yesterday. My thoughts on the basic material, for the record. Into the Woods is second-tier Sondheim. A couple of heartbreakingly beautiful songs, a lot of quite enjoyable light-hearted songs, and almost nothing he hadn't done over and over, better, in earlier shows. The witch's acerbic take-down of everyone else set to a bitter waltz? "Could I Leave You?" from Follies. Cinderella's daffy patter song of indecision? "Getting Married Today" from Company. The title song leitmotif serving to connect the threads of the story? "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" and "Merrily We Roll Along." Life choices that don't work out, but don't regret them because we're human? Sunday in the Park with George. There's just not much new there, and nothing challenging. And the use of the giantess to make a comment about (then) nuclear war (and now, I guess, terrorism) is too simplistic a moral lesson for someone like Sondheim and his collaborators. It's a good show. An enjoyable show. Even a touching show. It's just not a great show.
As for the movie: I think it's a really well-done adaption with it's fair share of problems, some related to adapting a stage piece, some just choices the movie itself makes in terms of casting or dealing with plot-points.
The big problems: James Cordon is a terrific Baker but a tone-deaf singer and should have been dubbed; we don't see Cinderella at the ball, so we have no idea what's making her run--is she just intimidated, does she not like being an object under examination, does she want to be pursued rather than the pursuer, does she sense the Prince's shallow nature, all of this, none of this? The Mysterious Man character is totally shredded, and one of the most poignant songs Sondheim ever wrote ("No More") is lost. Portions of the most poignant song he ever wrote ("You Are Not Alone") are cut.
There are somewhat minor problems: Anna Kendrick is a great choice for Cinderella, but she downplays the daffy neurotic nature of the character--which she could easily do an amazing job with--and doesn't look a whit different or unrecognizable in ashes vs. ballgown: how did her step-family not recognize her? The movie wants its princes to be both jokes and genuinely what the jokes punctuate, and the split desire doesn't quite work out. Why does Jack speak like the Artful Dodger? Johny Depp can't sing, either, and "Hello Little Girl" is a soft-shoe number begging for some choreography. The problem with Jack's and Little Red Riding Hood's songs describing offstage action hasn't been very well solved. If the witch can appear and disappear in such tremendously magical ways, why on earth does she make Rapunzel grow her hair so long to serve as a ladder to climb? Probably the movie should end with the surviving characters back in the well-lit fairy tale world rather than the dark woods, for the sake of symmetry.
But the vast majority of the movie works so incredibly welly done. So swift-moving, infectious, funny and touching. Emily Blunt is the emotional core of the movie, and she's a perfect heroine for musical comedy. She and James Cordon are a perfect (imperfect, read: human) couple. There's no flat-out wrong casting, anywhere. The material translates very well to the screen without seeming stagey. I sat in my seat in something like complete bliss throughout most of the movie.
billyweeds wrote: The original Broadway cast's performance is occasionally available on Netflix and is far more entertaining, with performances by Joanna Gleason and Bernadette Peters in the two leading female roles that far outshine the perfectly okay work of Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep, respectively, in the movie.
While I agree with Billy's preference for both these actresses in relation to the movie's cast, though I think Blunt does a job far better than "perfectly okay" (I keep asking myself where is Joanna Gleason these days? She so talented and she seems to have just disappeared), it is Bernadette Peters who could have convincingly played her part in this movie, and I wonder why she wasn't cast. Box office appeal?
As for some of his other comments in his review, I don't agree that the movie is too stagey to make a good adaption, nor do I agree about the visuals in the woods. Sondheim's lyrics are very stylized but that only makes them inappropriate for one kind of movie, not for movies as a form. I definitely don't agree that the filmed stage play is more entertaining to watch, though I would say that of the filmed performance of Sweeney Todd. I'm glad a record of the Broadway Into the Woods exists, though. Wish they'd filmed the London production, too, which was supposed to be darker and in some ways superior. *sigh* |
Last edited by Joe Vitus on Fri Dec 26, 2014 8:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 8:33 pm |
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I enjoyed it. I noticed that the female singers are all good, but the male singers all had problems. The Prince and Rapunzel story is dropped in the second half, as is the second version of "Agony." "Agony" got laughs from the audience, which didn't happen either time I saw it on stage. (But Cinderella's prince does get the great line, "I was raised to be charming, not sincere.) I wasn't really sold on Lilla Crawford until she did "I Know Things Now."
Alan Cumming was considered for the role of the Wolf, and I really wish he'd gotten it. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 8:39 pm |
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Location: Houston
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Well, "Agony" should get laughs. It's a comic song.
You're right about the men vs. the women. Is there a thought that musicals are "unmanly" and so rough-hewn voices save the performances masculinity somehow?
The alternate plotline for Rapunzel and the Prince kinda makes sense. I get why Disney would have trepidation with the stage version, as I assume they did with Cinderella's father still being alive and basically ignoring her in favor of his new family. The loss of the "Agony" reprise hurts a little because it makes it so clear that these men are always about the chase. While I miss the first act finale and the second act opening, these were the only cuts in the score I perfectly understood. Both are way too stagey to work on film. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2014 12:52 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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I guess the Witch can't defy gravity.
I really like The Imitation Game. It's well acted from top to bottom, especially by Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, but also Charles Dance and Mark Strong, and the breaking of the Enigma Code, and Turing's later persecution for homosexuality, make for a strong story line. Although the movie doesn't really indicate it, Commander Denniston (Charles Dance) was a genuine wartime hero.
I didn't realize until I was talking to Leigh's granddaughter that Benedict Cumberbatch has become a major teenage heartthrob. He certainly should be up for Best Actor at the Oscars (I think he should win, but the competition's strong). One of the major contestants played Stephen Hawking, a role Cumberbatch played back in 2004.
The theater was absolutely packed for this film, which I find really promising. I hope it turns into a big hit. |
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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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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2014 1:09 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| One thing struck me odd. When they get the clue that leads to the final breaking of the Enigma code, everybody rushes to Christopher, including Joan Clarke, and nobody seems surprised that she is there, although pretty much all she's done to that point has been a secret between her and Turing. |
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