Hey now, goths actually have some character! Actually, I've seen Stardust (was never that interested in Coraline), but didn't think much of it. He's written an amazing episode of Doctor Who, this season, so I got into it from that nerdy angle. Come to think of it, there's nothing Goth about American Gods...more like a smorgasbord of mythological characters. Well, you can't work in science and not be a geek so I scored around the 25% mark! Have to admit though, not a fan of Star Trek/Wars but a love of Doctor Who and insane amounts of alternative British Comedy sure does tip the balance!
I want to see this one: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-90Pfde1rM"]Baikonur | Trailer english - YouTube[/ame] I hope it will be screened somewhere near where I live...doubt it though
Just watched The Illusionist, been meaning to watch it for years. I enjoyed it, but SPOILER ALERT [result]I preferred The Prestige because its "twist ending" made a bit more sense. The twist ending in The Illusionist seemed to come out of nowhere, plus it's a little f---ed up that Eisenstein's trickery resulted in Leopold killing himself (even though he was a total douchebag...he was innocent of murder and falsely accused). Also, it irks me, since I know a bit about Austrian history, that the emperor's son was a right-leaning jerk who commits suicide, instead of a left-leaning misunderstood hero figure who commits suicide. Interesting twist, I suppose. The movie wouldn't work any other way[/result] Anyway, I do want to see it again, especially for the acting and cinematography.
I've been forced to watch The Three Musketeers last week [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQd3MwT2fAM"]The Three Musketeers 3D (2011) - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube[/ame] Unfortunately my girlfriend not only has a questionable taste in movies, but also no sense for trailers. She desperately wanted to see this film after watching the trailer, while my immediate reaction was: What a bunch of crap. As it I turned out, I was correct, which even my girlfriend had to acknowledge afterwards. While it vaguely resembles the original story by Alexandre Dumas, it is of course filled with crap like flying warships, explosions, flame throwers, etc. The story is stupid, the characters are stupid, the action sequences are stupid, the dialogs are stupid...all in all a stupid film. The cast is for the most part pretty good, so there was some light, only Orlando Bloom doesn't fit in at all. The film itself is a mixture between an action film, a spy film, a sting film and a fantasy film. It fails on all four levels though, so there really isn't much to recommend. I guess the action sequences and special effects were technically pretty good, but in this day and age, that's pretty much a given. Thankfully, people don't watch movies for their special FX anymore. Also, the film is shot in 3D. I hardly noticed the fact that it was in 3D though, which I guess is a good thing since it just felt natural and didn't take you out of the movie, so at least that part wasn't gimmicky...yeah, I guess this is as much time as I will waste on this movie...just don't watch it!
The latest movie I watched was ENTER THE VOID by Gaspar Noé. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKRxDP--e-Y"]Enter The Void - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube[/ame] I've been wanting to see this film for more than a year now, but I never felt ready. That's because I figured that this is the kind of movie where you need to be in the right mood and which you can't just watch half heartedly. And I was right. It's a much more demanding picture than your average Hollywood production. But then it's also more rewarding. First of all, it's really more an experience than a movie. Usually, I hate it when people say that a film is more about the experience than the story, because it's mostly an excuse for a bad script (e.g. Avatar). Enter the Void is different in that it doesn't even set out to tell a conventional story. The message is not so much in what is happening, but in how the viewer experiences it through Oscar, the main character. The themes the movie touches are very broad. It's about sex, drugs, life and death. The movie is shot in the first person. We either see things directly through Oscar's eyes, or in the flashbacks, we see Oscar from behind and look over his shoulder at what he's experiencing. There is some heavy drug use and the viewer is taken on the trip along with Oscar. There are also some graphic sex and gore scenes. So it's certainly a film for mature audiences only. The story itself is simple: Oscar lives with his sister Linda in Tokyo. They lead a rather sad life, Oscar earns his living as a drug dealer while Linda dances in a strip club. One night, Oscar is shot by the police and dies. His spirit leaves his body and flies through the city, watching what his sister and his friends do. This is interrupted by a series of flashbacks that tell the story of how the two siblings got to where they were. Now for my verdict: I'm still undecided how exactly I'd rate the movie, but I definitely like it overall. I guess I'll have to watch it again in order to get a more definitive opinion. What kinda bothered me was the excessive length. The movie is 2 1/2 hours long, but after 1 1/2 hours the movie is - for all intends and purposes - over. By that point, we've been told the backstory, we've seen the reactions of Oscar's friends to his death and we've experienced what needed to be experienced. The rest is basically an epilogue...a 1 hour epilogue. Had the movie ended there, I'd certainly be a lot more positive about it. Sure, the epilogue has its moments. Especially one scene in which Oscar imagines (?) being resurrected for a short moment is pretty cool, but it could have been moved forward I guess...and/or it could have been used to end the film. Other than that, the epilogue serves two functions. First, it tells us about the lives of Oscar's friends and second, it brings the life/death theme full circle. Telling us more about the lives of Oscar's friends really was unnecessary, since eventually the movie has to end anyway, so we might as well have done with less. As for bringing the theme full circle, again I found it to be unnecessary. First of all, the general way the movie ended was always implied, from the very beginning, albeit somewhat more subtly. We didn't need to literally see it. Secondly (and this one is hard to explain without literally spelling out the ending, but I'll try), the way the ending came about was too "direct". If you really wanted to show it, then it should have come about by Oscar letting go of his existence, by letting destiny, god, the void or whatever take over, rather than by actively finding "a way out". That would have been difficult to visualize, but Gaspar Noé pulled off other difficult visuals with ease in this movie, so he could have done it. Lastly, leaving out the ending would have given the film more ambiguity, which in this case would have been a good thing, I would have liked to be able to interpret the film differently, in fact I would have preferred it. Despite these criticisms, I still liked the movie. It's one extended trip. If you like that kind of film, you should definitely give it a try, despite being somewhat lengthy. Before watching it a second time, I'd put it somewhere in between a 7 and a 9 out of 10. I tend towards the upper end of that range, but I won't give it a 9 out of 10 before watching it again with my criticisms in mind. I've made the experience that the difference between a great and a good film becomes apparent on the second viewing most of the times.
^ It was great. Speaking of different also, Melancholia is worth seeing. Fantastic cinematic experience.
Yeah, that one is on my list as well...I also have Lars von Trier's Antichrist lying around waiting to be watched for at least a year...
That's another essential film to see. Make sure you watch them when you are at your darkest point, makes them much more effective.
I'm always at my darkest point, so no problem... But I really don't get to watch as many movies as I used to and when I do, I often prefer light fare. Here are some movies that I have lying around for months, if not years and that I haven't seen yet: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes Barry Lyndon Citizen Kane The Elephant Man The Grudge Malèna Eyes Wide Shut Goemon Inland Empire Lost Highway Nichts als die Wahrheit Requiem Stranger Than Fiction Super The Fountain The Girlfriend Experience There Will Be Blood Tideland Time Bandits The Hurt Locker And that's just part of it... I guess Goemon and The Grudge are light fare, so they have a good chance of being next in line...Though I also finally want to see The Elephant Man and Melancholia.
Wow, you lucky dog. There are some real gems in there! Inland Empire and Lost Highway are going to be quite a trip! The Fountain and the Girlfriend Experience are two of the most underrated films of the last decade in my opinion, really think you'll enjoy them.
As it so often happens, something got in the way between me and my list of movies that I wanted to see next, namely an HDTV. After holding out for quite some time, I finally got the full HD setup going on. And yeah, it's definitely worth it. I mean it's not like I didn't see it before, but when it's your home, and you're switching back and forth between BR and DVD, there's a massive difference. Probably more so than between DVD and VHS, at least in terms of picture quality. In terms of sound the DVD has already been pretty good and despite loving the HDTV, I still maintain that proper sound is more important for the overall experience than picture quality. So my advise would always be to first upgrade your speaker setup before you get the HD setup. Anyway, so I figured that I needed a couple of Blu Rays to go along with it. So the first two films I watched in HD were ones that I've also wanted to see for some time now and they're actually quite similar: The Social Network [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB95KLmpLR4"]The Social Network Official Trailer -In theatres Oct 1 2010 - YouTube[/ame] Everybody has probably heard of the Facebook movie. At first I thought that it would be crap. I mean why should I watch a movie about Facebook? So I didn't see in when it hit the theaters. But then I heard that David Fincher directed it and then it was nominated for tons of Oscars, winning three. So I figured that I would have to watch it eventually. And yes, it's a great film. It's mostly the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook (or is he?) and his relationships to the people around him. Making a film about characters and their arcs is a hard thing to pull off, but the Social Network pulls it off beautifully. It's very engaging, while not presenting things in a black and white manner. It's almost like a classical Greek drama in that everybody does what he thinks is right, but thereby inevitably wronging others. What's great is that here we have a team-up between a great director and a great writer. The film is based on dialogue and the script manages to keep it interesting. The pacing of the dialogue is always just perfect. It really becomes apparent in the opening sequence where Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend. I've hardly seen better screenwriting than that. By the same token, Fincher makes the most of his script. He has a history of doing that BTW, it's just that he doesn't always have the best material to start with (e.g. Panic Room, where he took a script that was mediocre at best and turned it into something that was very watchable). His attention to detail is mind boggling, for example,he made 99 takes of the opening sequence and then stitched the final sequence together from various sound and film reels, sometimes taking single words from the soundtrack of one take and putting it together with the film sequence of another take. And it simply works perfectly. So in conclusion, if you can remotely enjoy character driven movies that are neither centered around an action, love, or mystery plot, but simply around well written dialogue and perfect direction, then the Social Network is a must see. Plus of course it's somewhat relevant to the time we live in. The second movie was The Aviator [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zikFDK4cuQA"]The Aviator - Trailer - HQ - YouTube[/ame] Another film based on a real historical person. This one is already a couple of years old, but again, I didn't want to see it at first and didn't get around to seeing it once I realized that it was any good...till now. Howard Hughes certainly was an interesting character. Orphaned at a young age, he inherited his father's oil business, but instead of leading that, he went to Hollywood to make movies, fly and build airplanes. And he was successful at all three. Like the Social Network, the Aviator lives off the character of the protagonists, although in this case, this means mostly the main character, Howard Hughes. The Aviator is a very long film, so you need an attention span to watch it, but again, if you have any love for biopics, this one is as good as they get.
So I went to see Skyfall yesterday and I have to say, after all those rave reviews, I'm somewhat disappointed. It was by far the weakest of the Daniel Craig James Bond movies. I mean it had good elements, like the conflicted bad guy, the public hearings or the general theme of a changing world in which Bond is one of the last "old"(-school) guys. But in the end, all those elements didn't save the weak plot. Skyfall is a story of revenge and this is the main problem to begin with. The plan of the bad guy is unnecessarily complex and vulnerable. But then of course MI6 responds with equally stupid countermeasures, so it all works out towards a grand finale. Secondly, it really bothers me when Hollywood movies put a lot of computers and hackers in movies. It's always complete bogus. Skyfall is based on a "hacker" plot, so it's full with this crap. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was one of the few contemporary movies that incorporated a hacker theme in a believable fashion. But Skyfall was simply terrible. Even the Mission Impossible movies have done a much better job and they're already over the top. The Skyfall writers might as well have used magic, it would have amounted to the same thing. I simply couldn't suspend disbelief there, so it completely took me out of the movie. Thirdly, the story was a series of detached plot elements, kind of a bad computer game: Solve Level 2, the skyscraper level and progress to level 3, the asian casino with deadly komodo dragons. I might be overly critical here, after all, that's how James Bond movies work, but still, this time it didn't work for me at all, dunno why exactly. Also, the film was dragged out too much. The first half is boring and drags on for no reason. Yes, they wanted to portray Bond as an aging man who after being severely wounded isn't his old self anymore, I get it. Still they could have progressed faster and they could have cut the entire Skyscraper scene which was completely unnecessary plotwise. At the end of the day, I liked the opening scene, which was a typical action scene for the Daniel Craig movies, I liked the Casino scene which was a typical old school Bond scene, I liked the public hearing which was something new and I liked the finale which was Home Alone for adults (although the fact that there was a finale like this was a failure of the plot IMHO). And while these scenes combined probably make half the movie, the other half really took me out of the "Bond mindset". So my verdict is that Skyfall is a decent flick, but it's not a particularly good Bond movie and I'm not sure if I ever want to see it again, unlike Casino Royale and A Quantum of Solace, which I already watched multiple times. Although there was another cool element about Skyfall that I liked. It marks the end of the James Bond origin story that was started with Casino Royale. By the end of Skyfall, Bond is the cynical agent we know from the previous incarnations, plus we get introduced to Miss Moneypenny. So I guess Bond fans will want to see it, casual viewers might want to go for the latest Mission Impossible movie if they feel like watching an over the top special agent film.
This week, I've seen two more films. Frist, I went to see Anna Karenina First of all, I have to say that I never read the book, so all I have to judge is the move. So let me first start with the technical and the stylistic side of the film. This part is absolutely brilliant. The imagery is gorgeous, but most importantly, the film is set up so that it mostly takes place inside an old Russian theatre as a fancy play. This gives the whole thing a kind of surreal atmosphere. There are lots of clever shots and transitions going from one set to another. For example, when one character runs from an upper class reception that takes place on stage, he walks up the stairs into the woodwork above the stage which represents the streets where poor and miserable people lived. That aspect I really liked a lot. As for the story, this part didn't particularly intrigue me. It was a simplistic love triangle (or maybe rather a love hexagon). Basically, whoever was in love with anybody usually picked the wrong person. Aside from all this lovin', there really isn't anything going on. It's a two hour movie, but it really doesn't have any story to tell. After seeing the film, I did look for some other online reviews, and it appears that this sentiment is shared by many, especially those who know the book. Apparently Tolstoi did indeed fill his massive book with a lot more than a simple love story, that was supposedly just the canvas for him exploring all kinds of issues, like class differences, religion or the meaning of life. Heavy subjects of course, but I think the film still took the cheap route out by simply telling the love story aspect of the book. But worse, I'm not a particular fan of the casting, at least regarding the lead roles. I did mostly like the supporting characters, especially Jude Law was brilliant, but Keira Knightly was meh and Aaron Taylor-Johnson was downright terrible. There was no chemistry between the two, which is kind of a problem when they're supposed to be the loves of each other's lives. Further, Taylor-Johnson's character of Vronsky was supposed to be the dark stranger type, a womanizer, attractive and dangerous, etc. But in the movie he's almost as stiff and boring as Karenina's husband. Karenina on the other hand comes across as selfish but naive and ultimately destroyed by self-pity which drives her into madness. From what I understood reading other reviews, this is quite different from the Karenina of the book who is caught in the net of her social class, forced to play by their rules and ultimately brakes down after trying to not play by these rules anymore. Now, one can try to give the movie somewhat more credit though. The stylistic choices for example may very well be a method to transport some of the other aspects of the book. For example, the fact that this film takes place on stage could be interpreted as a visualization of the class roles. Everybody is simply playing someone else in order to fit in, but when Karenina and Vronsky get together, they go beyond the stage act, visualized for example by them dancing while everybody else sands still on the dance floor, as if time was frozen for them. But then again, that may as well be simply made up on my part. I would have to watch it again in order to come to a clearer picture there, and I'm really not sure I want that. My final verdict is that the movie didn't live up to its potential. If you're totally into love stories, or if your main interest lies in stylistically outstanding films, you'll probably have a good time watching this film. If you're a fan of the book, you may also want to see this film, but don't have too high expectations.
The other movie I went to see was The Hobbit Unlike Anna Karenina, I did read the Hobbit before seeing the movie...multiple times. Though the last time has been quite a while. Of course we all wanted to go back to middle earth after the great Lord of the Rings movies, so it came to nobodies surprise that Warner went back to the Hobbit and financed the project. What did come of a surprise - at least to me - was that they've decided to once again make a trilogy out of the source material. While this was definitely justified in the case of the Lord of the Rings, it sounds a lot like a money making scheme this time around. The Hobbit is a tiny book compared to the Lord of the Rings. So lets get into it. First of all, again there are some interesting facts on the technical side of things. Not only is the Hobbit filmed in 3D, but it also uses a new 48fps rate, compared to the standard 24fps. So we get to see twice as many pictures per second as we're used to. The results are much crisper images and more fluid movements. The reason is that the exposure time on a traditional film image is twice as long as it is here. Everyone who has ever played around with the settings on his camera will know that longer exposure time equals to a slight motion blur, which you don't get here. On the other hand, it is exactly that kind of motion blur that we have come accustomed to when watching movies, it gives them a kind of softness that is typical for film. That's why the Hobbit may put off some people with its new technology, because you don't immediately get into the cinematic mood. It feels more like being present at a live performance. Once I got used to it though, I really liked it. Especially in combination with the 3D images, because you felt more involved than ever before. A second consequence of this technology is that the film is more unforgiving than ever regarding sets. It looks absolutely gorgeous on real locations, but you immediately notice when they were filming on stage. We all know how good the team behind the Hobbit is in creating fantastic worlds, as can be seen with the Lord of the Rings. But a lot of sets looked fake in the Hobbit. Styrofoam caves galore. Still, overall I think this 48fps technology may stick around, though probably not in the mainstream, at least not any time soon. After ll of this, let's finally get to the movie itself. The problem of this movie is of course that everybody expects another Lord of the Rings when the book really was a childrens book. In it, Bilbo and the dwarves basically got into a series of adventures that really weren't related at all and at the end of the book waited a giant dragon and a massive treasure, not a mission to save the world from certain doom. So the stakes are much, much lower and the general tone is much lighter. For the film that's kind of a problem, because people expect another LOTR. And it was addressed. It's only the first move of the trilogy, but it's already clear that the Hobbit trilogy will set up the LOTR. Characters from the LOTR were brought in that aren't found in the book and the feeling of imminent doom that is ever present in the LOTR is at least hinted at. In order to better connect the individual adventures, a greater arc is constructed and the Necromancer, who was only mentioned in passing in the book takes a larger role. He's apparently bringing back the Nazgul and poisoning the land. So I expect the movie trilogy to also tell the story of Sauron's return, though so far there's no mention of him. Also, a fierce Orc leader is introduced who's the arch enemy of the dwarven leader Thorin and who is chasing our heros. While hardcore Tolkien fans may hate this, I think these changes make a lot of sense for the film and the result is a story arc that may well be able to span over three films. Also, due to the size of the book, pretty much everything that has happened in it has been translated onto the screen. So at least that should appease the fans. My final verdict is that this is a great film and everybody should go and see it, just don't go into it expecting another epic like LOTR. It's a children's book after all, even if the film is slightly larger and darker than the book.
Yeah, it was very very meh but I was not disappointed since I expected exactly that. It felt nice to be back in the LOTR "world" and the technical aspect was amazing but the story and fighting scenes were incredibly boring. I doubt I will watch the next part. Going to watch "Rust and Bone tonight. Excited.
One of my all time favorites, but you should be in a similar mood like if you want watching 2001: A Space Odyssey or something. It's a slow movie in the best meaning. Watch it in German!! Life of Pi was also a fantastic movie I watched last week in cinema. Imo good story, nice ending, unbelievable great pictures. Best 3D I've seen to this point.
