Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
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It was on before the apparently controversial Pirates 2 when I seed it. Strangely, I knew who it was, even though I have never seen a Steven Seagal film.
quote:Originally posted by Jack Vincennes: He's actually too lazy to even punch a guy any more, instead just kicking cans of petrol at people then slouching away.
lol! More Steven Seagal/Jabba the Hutt stories please.
Saw this on Saturday night, after Good Night and Goood Luck, and where that film was smart, tight and intelligent, Munich was tired, flabby and stupid. It seems incredible that this was nominated for Best Picture last year, although I suppose given that it has this is a SERIOUS and WORTHY film written through it like a stick of rock, I suppose it's not suprising. The last time I saw a movie that was striving so hard to be SERIOUS and yet managed to be so CRAP was Crash, which actually won the Oscar.
So. Munich. What really unravels this film - where the directing and acting are at least adequate - is the terrible script. It's got horrible self-reflexive moments in it like Eric Bana's wife saying "I'm not the hero's nice wife," which sounds like a line from the synopsis rather than a piece of actual dialogue. That sort of thing might work in Scream, but it's stupid in a movie claiming to be a fictionalisation of real events.
The crummy script infects the whole movie, dragging it way, way down into the muck. "I knew guys like you in the army," one guy tells Eric Bana, "You'll do anything as long as you can do it running, the only thing you fear is stillness." It's typical of the film, spelling out meaningless descriptions of characters in place of actually demonstrating and developing them.
It also suffers from those awful, false moments of exposition made popular in 80s action movies, where two characters will exchange information, which they both already know, for the benefit of the audience. That shit may be forgivable in something like The Rock when they're discussing John Mason being locked up for 20 years, but when Bana's wife tells Eric Bana the story of his own childhood (which, presumably, he must have already told her at some point) it doesn't feel like he has a history, it just feels like the scriptwriter was told "Can we put in something about his fatherless childhood?" So you have his wife say "You grew up without a father," and rather than go "Yes. I know." Bana responds as though, like the audience, this is a fresh perspective on his character.
The direction of the film seeks to re-create the seventies spy genre, which again doesn't seem appropriate. This - surely? - isn't a Kill Bill style 'film-about-films'? It's like it's a trick for the sake of it, aping the cinematic lexicon of The French Connection et al, may be neat style device, but it doesn't make sense in a film that's about true events in the seventies, rather than about its cinema.
Other problems arise in the repetitive nature of the movie. Find terrorist. Blow up terrorist. Repeat. The movie tries to instil some blockbuster dynamics in these sequences by having innocent bystanders wander in and out of the line of fire. However, it's a hollow device - none of these points of tension ever impact onto the plot or theme of the film: the hits always eventually go over OK. So there's ultimately no point to these extended riffs, but like so many things in Munich, they're there anyway.
What else? A few people talk about how Spielberg refuses to take sides, shows both points of view, yadda yadda yadda. I suppose that's true, but before you embark on this three hour journey into tedium, it's worth noting that the level of debate in the film is roughly equivalent to one of those 'issue driven' episode of Hollyoaks. So you'll have a character who thinks one thing, one who thinks another, and then they'll take it in turns to speak at each other. It's not exactly using cinema to the fullest extent of its capabilities.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: The last time I saw a movie that was striving so hard to be SERIOUS and yet managed to be so CRAP was Crash, which actually won the Oscar.
Didn't you post a really quite positive review of Crash here some time ago Thorn? Have you changed your mind?
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Yeah, I think before I was trying to stir up a debate about it so I could rally my thoughts on it, but the more I thought about the film it dawned on me that it was really bad. I agree with your comment that it was Hollywood's impression of an intelligent film. I think the reason for my lapse in judgement was that prior to seeing it I'd overdosed on blockbusters and so it maybe seemed smarter than it was. Plus some of the camerawork reminded me of Traffic, which may have made me think 'Mmm! Traffic!' and contributed to my over-estimation of Crash. Apologies for misstep. My current opinion is "Crash?!? Gash more like! loL!" (actually I quite like gash.)
Actually even when I was saying it was 'good', I didn't seem particularly impressed with it.
quote: What was the deal with every single character being a racist? It was like a joke: "How many racists does it take to drive home a point?".
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I watched Wolf Creek on t'telly. it was aces. really brutal and quite funny. there were two negatves about the film: based on true events was pointless, especially at the end. and it needed to be more rapey really.
i think benway wrote about it in his horrozine. did you like wolf creek benders?
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I'm pretty certain this film wanted to be a grime version of Larry Clark's Kids, and I would certainly have preferred that film's confrontational nihilism to the insipid melodrama on offer here.
Tragically Kidulthood comes over like a product of the Children's Film Workshop, but with suitably 'urban' quantities of implausible sex, drugs, and violence, all with Streets' tracks inappropriately slapped over them. Plus it's got Ricky from Dr Who in it. Innit.
Ya unnerstan wha um sayin?
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On the subject of films with terrible titles, I watched Lucky Number Sleven on Sunday.
It's okish. It's well shot and edited, it looks very good for a film of what seemed to me to be quite limited financial resources, and the supporting cast of quality character actors do solid work.
Unfortunately despite the quality presentation the story ends up ringing a bit hollow, due to the convoluted twisty script that wishes it was The Usual Suspects while being more transparent than the average episode of Scooby Doo.
[ 01.08.2006, 11:02: Message edited by: Boy Racer ]
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watching: dave chappelle's block party at the cube microplex. and i love the place, dont get me wrong, its the very best volunteer run indie cinema in the whole of bristol, and the home- made cola as featured in the guardian is tasty as and its always full of mopey indie fringe people with nice blouses on, and if you volunteer there they give you free curry... but the sound was absolute gash throughout last night's double bill, all distorted on the bass and horn section. i am *very* very sensitive to this, and was unable to watch all of 'awesome i fucking shot that' because it was just like, ech, the doof- doof- register made me want to scratch my brain and wince. it is quite important when you are watching films about hip- hop that the bass is not actually painful to listen to. it is therefore a marker of how very enjoyable dave chappelles block party actually is that i stayed for the whole thing; its mondo hair- stand- up exciting to watch, i laughed throughout and felt that my woefully out of touch sorry white arse had been very satisfactorily educated about What Is Good Now in the world of modern hip- hop music and also about dave chappelle, of whom i was only peripherally aware, mainly because i often get him confused with that gay who made the terrible hennes advert. all said i would award dave chappelle's block party TWO THUMBS UP AND ONE YA BASTA!
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this weekend I saw Halloween 3: Season of the witch, The King of Comedy, and Ed Gein. Of the three, The King of Comedy was the best, and Gein was the worst. I've not seen TKoC before, and was really impressed with the way the tension built, and how the film gently moved between reality and nightmare. At first I thought it was going to be straight, or at least, straighter than Scorcese's other new york comedy, "after hours". But no. De Niro was superb (but he is, after all, a very good actor as well as a love-er-ly perschwan), and Bernhardt as well was wicked, and I'm suprised that she hasn't really made as big as she could do.
Did anybody else see it? At the end, was that all fantasy, or real? Or was it saying that actually, it didn't matter, because to act, to perform and appear on stage, is to live in fantasy anyway? Either way, a great film: Heartbreaking and funny, with the frustration of the main character's journey being brilliantly released as real eye watering warmth. And my eyes don't often water.
Also - Midnight Run was on afterwards! But I watched Ed Gein because I saw midnight run only a few weeks ago. Ed Gein wasn't very good. Slow and slack. A dreary b movie.
Halloween 3, while being the most illogical and hole-filled film ever, was still fun. Sil-ver Shamrock! I didn't realise that the main bad guy was 'the old man' from robocop.
I also watched Ghibli's Porco Rosso last week on the new fangled FilmFour channel. Very good, but then, that was to be expected.
At the moment in my pile, I've got Shisenjiyou no Aria, Straw Dogs, and Graveyard of Honour. Don't expect any reviews or even mentions of these films again. What would be the point?
FILM ATTACK! with steven m
For the record, The Pig Fucking Movie is pretty dour, difficult film. The version I watched was a divx rip from a copied video, so for the most part it looked like what you might see if you closed your eyes and pushed your eyeballs a bit. Just a swirl of colours with occasional rorschach style images that disappear the second you're aware of them. Mostly it was a naked guy wandering around a farm, with lots of shots of chickens, and a smattering of the eponymous pig fucking. If I was giving a Sunday Times style one word summary, it would be 'Impenetrable', even if the starring sow was quite the opposite.
And I also watched August Underground's Mordum - the self styled 'most disturbing film ever made'. This would be true if the most disturbing thing you could imagine is a load of pissed up naked gothy teenagers screaming, crying, vomiting, covered in blood, pretending to be serial killers. Just your average teen party really. It's all very shouty. Nothing shocking. It would probably make good visuals for a club, like, playing in the tv screens at a goth night. It's all filmed with camcorders, is very shaky and poorly lit, and features quite a bit of gory sfx, and some transgressions thereof, such as a dude fucking the belly of a chick after she's been gutted, and the rape of a dead child in a bathtub. Perhaps the standout moment is where they get these two chicks and they're naked in the basement, and tied up next to each other, hunched over on the floor, and then a bad chick comes along and vomits all over them. That was a visceral moment. More so than the sequences of exposed viscera. I was unmoved by the film for the most part, although it was consistent enough in style and tone to draw me in to their world, even if it was too am dram to be disturbing.
really, I haven't said anything that you couldn't read off imdb. I don't know why I even bothered to write all that out. Some memory of times past maybe.
I'm going to cleanse my pallet with The Third Man soon, which is playing at the NFT. I did go to see it at the weekend, but arrived too late, so I ate a crepe instead.
[ 14.08.2006, 10:33: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
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I watched Harrison Ford in Frantic the other night and it actually made me go out and buy a Grace Jones record for the first time ever. Can you imagine that? An 80s recording. Well, it sounded quite good on the Frantic soundtrack, and it's good as background music when you're working. Someone on another forum described her voice as "fashion-statement vocals" which is very true, but the music's actually quite good.
I got this one by-the-way, which is the Compass Point stuff with Sly and Robbie.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: Also - Midnight Run was on afterwards!
I love Midnight Run. Every single line is a gem.
Fave bits: When he steals Alonso's badge and does that cop-like turnaround in the street. When Moscone pulls the money he owes Jack out of his awful socks. Serrano's jumper. When the two goons start shadow boxing on the phone to Serrano. All the ace swears. When Jack goes to see his ex-wife and daughter. Beautifully played scene, which ends with Jack carefully placing the Duke's coat tail inside the car before closing the door. I reckon it was unscripted, but it's a lovely touch. When Jack is on the phone to Moscone and threatens to kill the Duke and throw him in a ditch, then immediately shakes his head to the Duke to reassure him. The bit in Red's bar. Yahpett Koto's face throughout it. And when he steals Marvin's fags. And the whole shades thing. Oh, loads of other bits as well.
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i watched six degrees of seperation starring will smith the other day. it was far more intelligent and interesting than i thought it'd be. and not a comedy - in fact it's tragic. really enjoyed it.
also tried to watch ed gein but gacve up after aout ten minutes. boring.
oh! jarhead. fantastic. especially the blanched desertscapes. a great movie though a bit too first half of full metal jacket at times (which i guess is intentional, but still).
benway!!! i haven't had a drop of booze IN SE7EN DAYS1111
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tell you waht doesnt fucking help - your friends looking at you in disbelief. not that i'd give up booze, but that anyone would. they buy me drinks which i then refuse. they don't get it. *****.
why can't i have friends that meet up in cafes? oh i do except all the fucking cafes serve booze too. would you like a shot in your americano, sir? fuckers, all *****, all of them.
oh and i've been well mardy to my superhot new flatmate. wooo me! AND
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Oh, and The History Of Light Entertainment was on in the background the other evening. This episode was about comedians. Mostly dull, as one one expect, but the section on Ben Elton was brilliant. First they showed some really, really drab examples of his stand-up style, basically accused him of blatantly ripping off Alexei Sayle, then there was a suggestion that he might have sold-out. Cut to Mark Steele. "I don't really go with this theory about Ben Elton selling-out... I think he was always fucking shit!"
It was said with such excellent venom that I LOLed proper. When he said, "I don't really go with this theory about Ben Elton selling-out..." I thought he was going to give us an anecdote which proved that Ben Elton was actually the funniest bloke in the world.
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