quote:Originally posted by Benny the Ball: hey physic - I haven't seen it yet - I was waiting for it to come onto BBC. So it's worth investing into? I've kind of hit a wall with tele at the moment - I've got about four decent sounding documentaries saved to watch, but have only been watching Sopranos and that's it - Heroes is on the list, as is the 2nd series of Rome.
I'd say so yes, as others have mentioned before it kind of feels like a comic book ported onto television in a way, but done really well. Plenty of little twists to keep you guessing and some great characters.
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quote:Originally posted by Physic: Incidentally if anyone wants to see it and hasn't I've got every episode in avi format.
What resolution ?
Damn me and my full HD TV, I downloaded avil files I'd normally watch and they're so small and crappy resolution wise I can't :-(
Ace looking show though.
Not sure off the top of my head, they're about 350Mb per 45 minute episode if that tells you anything?
ETA: Just checked and they're all all 128-132Kbps, if that's any good at all to you then drop me a mail and I'll be happy to send you off a package of televisual joy..
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28 weeks later is fucking sweet. Way better than I thought it would be. Fast and furious, and spattered with some horrendous set pieces. Shocking and awesome.
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Zodiac: really very good. Has the mark of all good films based on a true story - even though you know how it ends, it still ratchets up the tension. Tip: if you want to be a serial killer, do it across police jurisdictions, and in the 1960s, before fax machines and DNA sampling.
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Whilst bored and stuck in the departures lounge of Gatwick airport I invested in a few DVD's/Blu-Ray discs, and then proceeded to watch all of them when I got home.
Syriana, Written by Steven Gaghan follows the same format as Traffic and is one of those films you have to pay a lot of attention to, with a montage of storylines which all apparently come to a conclusion at the end. Looks good but I need to watch it again paying total attention to it.
The Last King of Scotland is a brilliant portayal of the ogre Idi Amin, superbly played by Forest Whitaker - you really start of liking him, but only later does his paranoia give way to what an eveil bastard he was. Whilst a fictional account it is based on a lot of true facts and gives a solid idea of what this period of Ugandan history was like.
Paul Verhoeven's Zwartboek (Black Book) I'd wanted to see for a while, but picked it up in the UK as my Dutch and German skills may have made me misunderstand a lot of the complex but compelling plot - A young Jewish singer (played brilliantly by Carice van Houten) is embroiled in the Dutch Underground after witnessing the murder of her family, and she becomes torn between her loyalties and a complex affair with a sympathetic German officer. Incredible film that shows the nastier side of some peoples drive during occupation. You can see a lot of similarities between this and Soldaat van Oranje(Soldier of Orange) - Verhoeven's 1977 film about the Dutch Capitulation, but that's to be expected - apparently this film was 20 years in the making, but definately worth the wait.
Saints and Soldiers was the wildcard - never heard of it but a lot of awards and what looked like something I would enjoy sadly was a bit of a dissapointment. A low budget film about 4 US GI's and an English Airman escaping after the Malmedy massacre and their subsequent race to get information from the chance meeting with the pilot to their own lines should have been great, and with the amount of awards I was hoping it would be. However a thin, and sometime implausible plot, added with another Hollywood actor camping up a poor British accent, and the soundtrack stolen from the Medal of Honour Computer game, added with and underlying Mormon preaching of how bad people are just made it a poor film. If you want to see a proper film along these lines, watch To end all wars instead - far more powerful film.
Still was nice to sit and watch a few new films, even if one was dissapointing, but certainly Zwartboek and The Last King of Scotland were excellent, and I shall not leave Syriana on the shelf, as it is surely worth a second gander.
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We watched Look Both Ways, which was great, a very nice Aussie take on life and death and all that stuff in between, such as testicular cancer.
Also watched Sunshine , with Ralph Fiennes doing three generations of a Hungarian family. Very well intentioned, but ultimately a bit empty.
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i spent most of my weekend reading the mists of avalon by marion zimmer bradley. i kind of did this on the orders of My Wife, The Ninja, after our weekend camping in glastonbury where i think she got a bit tired of me asking questions like 'so it wasnt king arthur who burnt the cakes then' and 'is the grail and the chalice the same thing i dont understand' etc. as i have always been entirely antipathetic towards books of the fantasy/ mythic genre and almost relentlessly unpleasant about the kind of frizzy- haired, gadzooksy bumwizards who read them, i wasnt really sure what i would think of the mists of avalon- but i was ready to give it the old college try at the behest of my lovely wife. imagine my surprise then that i should have loved every minute of it, finding myself utterly absorbed from the word go. i loved it! i couldnt put it down! i was transported entirely into another world. my favourite things about the mists of avalon: 1) the fact that i didnt realise that 'merlin' is actually just the title given to the chief priest- y/ wizard- y/ type bloke, and that merlin's real name is actually kevin, b) the fact that many of the characters in this epic tale of britain's golden age of chivalry have names which are now more suited to middle aged, middle english middle managers- names like kevin, gareth, elaine c) literally every time guinevere opened her mouth thinking 'oh shut up, you wanker'. i never would have imagined that guinevere was as much of a wanker as she is portrayed as being in this book. shes unbearably wanky. she does at least have the grace to admit that she enjoys the drunken two's- up with arthur and lancelot, but its only a fleeting thing. most of the time shes wanking on about god and sin and sorcery and chastity and youre like, oh SHUT UP you WANKER d) the fact that guinevere has a drunken twos- up with lancelot and arthur. you cant have a 1000 page historical epic without a liberal dash of the kind of very soft porn that forms the bedrock of the sexual fantasy life of vaguely alienated and socially dysfunctional teenage wiccans everywhere and crikey the mists of avalon does not disappoint- theres incest, lesbainism, and guinevere gets raped in a deserted castle by a big lunk (throughout which you are trying not to think 'good, serves you right', because she is such a wanker). its just generally ace, and im very glad i read it, albeit glad that i read it now and not seventeen years ago, because over the intervening period i am sure i have saved myself a lot of money on incense and books about the goddess and crushed velvet skirts with little mirrors on.
i watched: grizzly man and gangs of new york, both for the third time, both of which im hella glad i saw on the big screen. (are there really people who dont watch films in the cinema any more? what fresh fuckery is this i ask of you.) i know there are a lot of things wrong with gangs of new york- john c. reilly's accent, cameron diaz's... well, cameron diaz, the sort of draggy bit with the elections, the u2 theme tune- but the more i watch it the higher it moves up my favourite films of the last say oh ten years or so list. i really like the way the nasty graphic violence is sort of tempered by more cartoon-y violence. but basically my favourite thing about gangs of new york is the REALLY TALL HATS. i love those hats. and when bill the butcher first appears on the screen, and you think 'wow, thats a really tall hat, a man in a hat like that is gonna fuck your shit up no question', and then he takes off the really tall hat and hes wearing a leather skullcap and youre thinking 'run away! run away! hes going to dead you all until you are quite simply dead, because under the really tall hat is a leather skullcap ohhhh mummy!'... thats pretty much my favourite moment in cinema this decade, bar none that i can think of.
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quote:Originally posted by dance margarita: (are there really people who dont watch films in the cinema any more? what fresh fuckery is this i ask of you.)
No it's OK, you see because if you hold your iPod video really close to your face it's exactly the same.
I really like Gangs of New York, too. It's crazy and a bit unhinged, and gutsy and unusual.
-------------------- Now that you've called me by name? Posts: 2007
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I might have to dig GoNY out and watch that tonight - I bought the DVD and watched it the once some time ago, but might be nice to get re-aquainted with it. I just recall lots of dodgy fighting and dodgier Irish accents.
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oh yes. its generally a film packed to the gills with looks that men would be well- advised to think about adapting for the modern world of today. i wish we lived in a world where it was commonplace for a man to wear a handlebar moustache, huge buggergrips, a paisley weskit and terrifying high- waisted yellow and purple britches.... all accessorised by a cudgel of some sort and maybe some facial scarring. also, im very fond of the bit where theyre all lying around getting wasted on brew and opium and all the women are walking around in their bloomers, and their corsets, but with their tits hanging out. you wouldnt do that if you were sober, would you. theres loads of really dubious fake shagging going on in the background, its great.
quote:Originally posted by Ringo: Are you describing Doctor When?
i suppose the bit up to but not including 'a cudgel and some facial scarring' is doctor when, yes. when you include the cudgel and the scarring, it becomes a description of the bastard offspring of doctor when and lowlevel. oh, the past!
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I watched Doctor Who (vg.8/10) and United 93 and Spun at the weekend.
U93 was technically dazzling and delivered an unrelenting final hour or so, although it was kind of hard to see any wider 'point' that was being made. There's was a bit where the passengers battered one of the hijackers in the head with a fire extinguisher (kind of Irreversible-lite as fire extinguisher batterings go) which was good while it lasted but, in retrospect, seemed to be a rather cynically-confabulated bit of catharsis in a story which otherwise had very little to offer in that direction.
Spun was appallingly bad - I don't really know why I watched it. Basically it was Requiem for a Dream re-made by Nathan Barley. The best thing about it was Mickey Rourke - which is a pretty pass for any film to get into. Oh, and you got to see Mena Suvari taking a dump... and John Leguizano wanking into a sock.
Basically it's the film a lot of people who shouldn't go anywhere near film-making would make, if they were so permitted.
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I saw Spun about 4 years ago (mainly because although you only hear 3 seconds of it on repeat, there is a silverginger 5 song in it). I quite enjoyed it on the whole - its not particularly groundbreaking, but fairly original in a lot of the way it was made. I guess its just a fucked-up film about a fucked-up way of life.
quote:Originally posted by ben: Spun was appallingly bad - I don't really know why I watched it. Basically it was Requiem for a Dream re-made by Nathan Barley.
i enjoyed Spun! Britanny Murphy has the best sweet-naughty smile ever and she always looks so cool. I love her.
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quote:Originally posted by doc d: reading: gimme a clue i'm lacking books at the moment.
The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright = Best general work so far on the run-up to 9-11. A gripping read and likely to broaden the perspective of most readers.
Assassins' Gate - George Packer = Searing reportage of the non-planning and botched execution of the invasion of Iraq, told with increasing haggardness by someone who started out as reluctantly pro-war.
The Revenge of Gaia - James Lovelock = I used to think the whole Gaia thing was a load of old hippie bollocks but Lovelock, in this book, makes it clear why the metaphor is such a powerful device for looking at such a complex and thoroughly inter-related system... and, indeed, how 'we' have irrevocably fucked it up. Never have I read something that has so necessitated the presence of a bottle of whiskey at one's side while reading.
Field Notes from a Catastrophe - Elizabeth Kolbert = More of the same, but from a hard-nosed journalistic perspective: the author travels from the melting ice-sheet of Greenland to the worse-than-useless bureaucracy of Washington DC and explains in detail how climate change impacted on the consciousness (and through the hard statistical data) of scientists working in a wide variety of fields.
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I watched One Hour Photo for the first time last night (bless you Film4, I'm slowly catching up on years of not seeing anything half decent) and I thought it was amazing to look at. Really sterile, which is a style a few films use to good effect, though I can't really think of any other examples at the moment.
* SPOILERS *
Trouble is, I missed a couple of fairly important scenes due to external distractions. Like I missed the bit where he drops off his own photos of the manager's daughter to the developer.
So, without having read anything about the film before, do I take it that the point is that Robin Williams' character was abused as a child and is upset that the perfect family he's kind of adopted for himself is under threat? And at the end he's just put the frighteners on the cheating father but hasn't actually taken any pictures? Maybe that isn't stated and you're just supposed to work it out (which isn't too difficult), but I think I missed something.
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quote:Originally posted by Jimmy Big Nuts: watched Children of men last night. Apart from the slightly heavy Christian allegory and one awfae 'new age' character, I thought it was well weapon. It's about a future where all women are infertile, the world has gone to shit, yet Britain stoically 'soliders on', with the rounding up, torture, imprisonment and slaughter of foreigns being the pre-occupation of the State. Quite devastating, with one of the best sequences I've seen in recent times near the end, as a refugee camp in Bexhill breaks out into some incredibly realistic and intense warfare. Loads of people getting shot and blown up, with some amazing single takes. The jist of the film is super depressing, and the grim, end-of-days London of 2027 is created in such a way as to grind your nose in the state of the current grim, end-of-days London. I came out wondering if Ringo had a point about how awful the place is! Imagine! There's a good central performance from trusty old Clive Owen, and a nice support from Caine, who isn't quite as grating as usual. The only let down is the mother from Darling Buds of May, but to be fair, her character was pretty shonky to begin with.
Anyway, aside from the misery, there's plenty of wry jokes throughout, although these seem to dry up once we enter the refugee camp. Superb series of images as we enter the camp by coach, and out the window we can see a man standing in a cage, wearing a hood, with wires running into his hands, then a cage full of half naked men... It's a perfectly handled 'future as now' world throughout, and there's loads of little things that point towards the current state of affairs.
I wasn't expecting it to be quite as tense or as emotional as it was, so I was suprised and pleased. I did need a couple of drinks to recover, and that's got to be a good thing.
SPOILERs I saw Children of Men last night. I was amazed by the single takes particularly the 12 minute sequence where they are in the car and they get ambushed and have to reverse whilst getting attacked on all sides, and then the motorbike comes up and... fuck me at that point I actually said out loud "How are they doing this? This is amazing". Truly incredible film making. Also the most realistic birth sequence I've ever seen on film. Also I loved the painful getaway sequence where they're trying to jump start the car, and the bit with the flip flops. Anyway can't recommend it enough 9/10.
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you should check out 28 weeks later for more "how did they do that" london based apocalypse fun. It's definitely one for the cinema rather than DVD. I needed a drink after that one too. But don't think of the plot so much as the imagery, the symbolism, and the set pieces. As Louise pointed out, it has a newsreel feel to it. If you can let go and watch it as the blood 'n' guns porn that it is, it's proper boner material.
[ 30.05.2007, 05:35: Message edited by: Jimmy Big Nuts ]
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quote:Originally posted by Jimmy Big Nuts: The Business, starring Danny Fackin Dyer was on last night. Anybody seen this? Insanely bad.
Yes I had the misfortune of sitting through that one. I've forgotten most of it, and after only a few months - just that it was him and his co-star from the Football Factory, and it was in Spain in the 80's. Oh and it was pants.
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depends what you want. most newspapers do good ones. then there are books by people like keith waterhouse and bill bryson which give good advice about writing proper like.
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