2013-01-28, 15:22 | Link #1141 |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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I watched the movie version of John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Solidier, Spy a week or two ago, and I must say that despite some excellent performances, the script was a muddled mess. I haven't re-read the novel in quite some time, but I re-watched the 1979 BBC version with Alec Guinness in the role of Smiley. A seven-part mini-series gave Guinness the opportunity to develop a subtle and complex personification of a subtle and complex character. Gary Oldman does a fine job in the role, but there just wasn't enough time to recount this intricate story in a two-hour film. As one example, Smiley's pivotal meeting with Jim Prideaux occupies nearly an entire episode of the mini-series, while getting just a few minutes of screen time in the movie version.
I'd put Guinness's work in Tinker, Tailor on a par with his performances in Bridge over the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, and Lawrence of Arabia. For younger audiences who know him only as Obi-wan Kenobi, please avail yourselves of the opportunity to see this master of the English stage and cinema in some of his other fine roles Here's is his IMDB entry for reference.
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2013-01-28, 15:44 | Link #1142 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: East Cupcake
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^Never go from Star Wars to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. That is just awful advice. . You'll end up driving more people away than toward Guinness.
Better to start with some intermediate affair. The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit are great places to start to experience the wonder and joy that is Sir Alec Guinness' long and fruitful career. Last edited by james0246; 2013-01-28 at 17:20. |
2013-01-28, 15:49 | Link #1143 |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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Personally I'd start with Bridge on the River Kwai. The "Ealing" comedies are funny, but I prefer watching Guinness in dramatic roles. Everyone is upstaged by O'Toole in Lawrence, but Guinness's sly Arab monarch is another great and subtle performance.
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2013-01-28, 16:55 | Link #1144 |
Sekiroad-Idols Sing Twice
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Mega Shark VS Crocosaurus
The main attraction wasn't as awesome as the title and let's say nothing about the characters or story. I think when you realize the titular monsters are inconsistent in size as the plot demands that there's no point in creating any sense of scale. The Saltwater Crocodile VS Great White Shark episode on Animal Face-Off was better than this. A low-budget film to be sure but there's been better money-constrained works. At least I laughed.
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2013-02-17, 12:04 | Link #1147 |
Sekiroad-Idols Sing Twice
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Monsters (2010 film)
This monster flick is different from most of its ilk in that the human characters are the stars of the show and are worth caring for; I think when you realize that you want Andrew and Samantha to make it back home instead of seeing a land octopus destroy things that director Gareth Edwards created a film where the monsters actually feel like monsters and not glorified action stars. The movie does have some plot-induced stupidity regarding the way our protagonists travel and the writing seems to convey mixed messages about the aliens being a natural force of nature, an invasive species, and homesick but the film isn't about them; it's about our characters. I'm not going to call this movie anything more than good but overall it knows what it's doing.
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2013-04-03, 22:20 | Link #1152 |
Banned
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Age: 40
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Watched Olympus Has Fallen yesterday.
For someone like me who watched several action movies in my lifetime, I'd give it a 7.9. The scenario is not the most original, but the quality of the action scenes, the intensity of several scenes, the effort put by director Antoine Fuqua (who also directed Training Day, Shooter, King Arthur and the excellent Tears of the Sun) in making this thing look real, and the solid play by the actors helped a lot gathering my interest in this. In the end, I had my big share of fun. |
2013-04-08, 09:39 | Link #1154 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: East Cupcake
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Evil Dead (2013) - What a strange film. In terms of remakes, Evil Dead is a complete success. It manages to step nicely into the shoes left by the original film, while also branching (pun intended?) off in it's own unique directions. The core story is the same (five 20-somethings go off to the woods, encounter an evil magical book, then demons start showing up), but the subtle nuances added to the film help to suspend the audiences disbelief as increasingly crazy shit happens yet no one decides to leave.
The remake focuses on Mia (Jane Levy), a troubled young women with a strong addiction to cocaine whom, with the help of friends and family, retreats to an old cabin in the woods in order to go cold turkey. The suspension of disbelief is established when Mia, for various reasons, is possessed, but no one believes anything weird is actually going on because many of her symptoms are similar to patients going through withdrawal (or at least that is what one of the friend, a nurse, tells us early on). This is a nice set-up since it allows crazy behaviour and tension to mount without insulting the audience's intelligence too much. (There's also some nice character set-up along the way, but this information (concerning Mia and her brother's relationship, or their mother's abnormal death/life) is never delved in deeply enough to actually matter.) And when things really do turn pear-shape, that's when escape becomes physically impossible. What follows is a nice bit of gore and some fun sequences, but the horror is minimal and the suspense is almost non-existent (strangely enough, the television premier of Hannibal, which I saw the night before, was far more horrifying and even gory than Evil Dead - just goes to show that gore only is horrifying in relation to it's realism). Their are some nice moments (seeing Jane Levy in full Deadite makeup is quite scary, and there are at least 2 scenes of brutal bodily harm that are a little cringe inducing), but overall the film seems very rote with almost habitual movement between one gory scene to the next. The finale is still a hoot, though. I think the biggest failing of the film is it's unerring respect for the original. While it is nice to see lots of little details that only fans of the original movies would understand, ultimately the remake never truly escapes the shadow of the original, instead it seems to enjoy simply being a remake. There is some nice direction and good gore, and while the characters are a little too generic the acting is still above average. The film is definitely worth seeing, and I would be interested to see how the uninitiated react to the film (the audience I saw it with were clearly all knowledgeable of the original as well as the many rip-offs). 80/100. --- The Croods - Spoiler for slight film spoilers...:
The Croods is an absolutely beautiful new film from the rapidly dominating animation studios of Dreamworks (as Pixar slowly destroys it's good will by producing boring and trite stories that can only interest 5-year-olds, Dreamworks, Sony and a few other animation studios are quickly rising in to fill the very noticeable performance gap). Colours explode and wash the screen with luscious hues and images that are as otherworldly as they are beautiful. And while the story itself is somewhat juvenile, the acting is quite good and the direction and editing fairly tight. Their are some hiccups and a totally unnecesary ending, but otherwise this is a damn fun film. 78/100. Last edited by james0246; 2013-04-08 at 10:23. |
2013-04-08, 10:08 | Link #1155 |
Black Steel Knight
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Indonesia
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I just watched Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (the one with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in it). It’s a braindead movie. Silly to its core. It doesn’t help that most of the dialogues and the jokes are really awful and forced, especially the lines delivered by Michael Caine’s adventurer-gramps character. Ugh. Still, this movie was never meant to be taken seriously and I had fun watching our rag-tag group being chased by a variety of giant animals. Some scenes manage to generate a chuckle or two from me. Plus, the run-time is short and the visual FX is pretty to look at. At least the Journey movie series aren’t as bad as Spy Kids series.
Btw, Captain Nemo’s Nautilus submarine looks pretty lame in this movie. Is Nautilus supposed to look that lame in Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island novel? (I only read 20,000 League & Center of the Earth)
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2013-04-08, 10:41 | Link #1156 |
Hail the power of Fujoshi
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: hahahahahahahahaha
Age: 35
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Watched "To Catch A Thief" (1955). While I enjoy the cat and mouse game, I don't quite like the pairing of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. I couldn't feel the chemistry between them, it feels rather forced, perhaps partly due to the their age gap. Anyway, this does not hinder me from enjoying another of Alfred Hitchcock's classics.
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2013-04-08, 15:19 | Link #1157 | |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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Quote:
Grant is better in North by Northwest, though perhaps that is as much because it is a better film overall. (I still think his performance opposite the young Katherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story is one of his finest, and she is, of course, "yar.") Kelly is less regal, but no less lovely, opposite James Stewart in Rear Window, one of my favorite Hitchcock films. Stewart was considerably older than her as well, but somehow they made for a more believeable couple than Grant and Kelly. For many people, though, I suspect that scissors scene in Dial M for Murder may forever be the one that persists in our memories of Princess Grace. By the way, in honor of the passing of Annette Funicello, I'll just mention that I discovered today that Hulu carries her film, Beach Party, with Frankie Avalon. She wears a two-piece bathing suit that exposes only a bit of midriff, while most of the other girls sport fairly skimpy bikinis. There are a variety of stories about Annette's choice of bathing suit. The Times obituary today said that she agreed when Walt Disney asked that she not expose her navel, but I've heard other versions that indicated Walt didn't want her to wear a two-piece suit at all and capitulated only when Annette promised to wear the relatively modest number she sports in the film. Most boys were probably less interested in Annette's navel than in another part of her anatomy prominently displayed on the cover of the VHS videotape box for the film. The Times obituary writer slyly made reference to Annette's busty figure when he wrote, "Young males enjoyed watching her blossom into womanhood, while females liked her because she was sweet, forthright and plain nice." Yes, she did "blossom" during her years on the Mickey Mouse Club.
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2013-04-10, 22:11 | Link #1159 | |
zutto soba ni ite ne
Join Date: Feb 2013
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Agree, Koyuki would have been better instead of that chinese girl. It's a pain to see chinese girl playing geisha role. It was like , what !? Geishas are imported from China ? boo!
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2013-04-11, 03:23 | Link #1160 | |
Hail the power of Fujoshi
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: hahahahahahahahaha
Age: 35
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Really too bad. I first saw her in Engine with KimuTaku, and since then I have watched a few of her other dramas. As a female myself, can't say I don't envy her look and body, lol. |
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live-action, movie, movies |
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