Here is Part 1

Spice World


I'm not kidding, it was on TV, and my little girl insisted. It was actually pretty fun in a sub-Help/Beatles kind of way. Forgot how much fun the Spice Girls could be

1. The Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA has reignited my love of theater-going. Just an excellent experience. The staff is nice, the theaters are gorgeous and clean, the price is right, the concessions are superior, and the crowds are civilized. http://www.coolidge.org/

2. 500 Days of Summer is a great date movie with some very solid jokes and solid visual gags.

Last night--The Five Obstructions by Lars von Trier.

The director takes the director of the short film "The Perfect Human" and has him remake it five times, each with a different set of obstacles, grouped together to form an "obstruction."

The original film, made in 1967, is a Danish short film that von Trier holds in especially high regard, and so, he set out to aid the Director, Jorgen Leth, to revisit it.

It seems, by the end, that von Trier's actual motive is somewhat different than originally claimed.

It's a good watch, if for no other reason than to see the interaction between the two artists, each of whom is accomplished in his own right, but one of whom is actually the other's mentor and idol.

This is for people who are interested in aesthetics and other general questions about art in general and film in particular.

Just watched Boy A and absolutely loved it. Not sure if any of the actors are well known or not, but I had never seen them before. They were absolutely incredible. The story was the best that I've watched in quite awhile, and I thought the directing was great. The questions this films raises are pretty intriguing and the way they're raised are well thought out and not done in a overly cliche way which I think would be an easy trap to fall into. Highly recommend this movie.

I watched a few newer type releases on on-demand in the past week.

Doubt - Really really good! Gripping story and absolutely fantastic performances from Hoffman, Streep and Adams. 4 stars!

Cadillac Records - Interesting and entertaining and a bit of (hollywoodised I'm sure) history. Very enjoyable watch. 3 stars.

Syndoche NY - Basically unwatchable. Boring, confusing and bizzare. I made it about 45 minutes in before I HAD to turn it off. I'm surprised I lasted that long with it. 0 stars.

The Mist - Standard horror mystery type of deal. Entertaining enough but one veiwing is more than enough. This is what I turned to when I had to get away from Synoche. 2 stars.

I watched the latest Harry Potter on Sunday... loved it, but I'm so sucked into that series like some little kid, I can't help it.

I also caught Showdown in Little Tokyo on Encore recently, it was great for a cheesy karate flick. I dig those though.

Oh, and I finally broke down and watched the first Spiderman. Didn't care for it really, and am gonna skip the other two.

rewatched Minority Report last night after noticing it on the tube and not wanting to just watch a part of it the other night. I quite liked it, moreso than when I first saw it.

DB,

What made you think that Spice World was the best way to start thread the second?

3 nights in a row, 3 Jodorowsky movies. this time it was Santa Sangre. pretty freaking weird but it wasn't quite as out there as Holy Mountain. i liked Holy Mountain better, but that really doesn't say much since i have no idea what any of these movies are about. i just love every individual scene of every movie

Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - RomCom but a good one

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers - A pretty ridiculous concept for a movie, then add on the fact that it's a musical. Not really my genre of choice, but it was good for what it was. The barn raising dance off was pretty impressive.

Being There - The shtick of people interpreting what he said as something much more intelligent or placing it in a different context didn't hold my attention for the full two hours. I also probably would have disliked the ending more if I hadn't been tuning out towards the end.

Two Lovers was very good, I hope Phoenix's retirement was some bizarre stunt.

I noticed some discussion on Cache at the end of the last thread. I just stumbled upon this roundtable discussion of the movie on youtube--I haven't watched it yet and didn't care much for the movie in general but I imagine this would be interesting.

From that same channel I did listen to this roundtable discussion of psychoanalysis in movies/tv and it was quite good.

Fighting, Dito Montiels new film. It honestly wasnt as bad as the critics will claim. Some decent guilty-pleasure fun.

Chocolate, by Pratcha Pinkaew and starring Yamin Vismitananda

Very fun Thai martial arts movie about an autistic girl who can memorize and put into play martial arts moves just by watching them. She and her inept brother go out to collect debts they find in an old account book of their hospitalized mother in order to pay for her medicine. If I'm getting the story right, the lead actress was supposedly already a black belt in tae kwon do, but studied another five years to do the moves in this movie.

It was worth it. Her moves are heavily Thai-influenced, fitting for a Thai movie and not something we Americans have seen as often as Chinese or Japanese styled moves, so they still have something exotic about them. The fight scenes are full of multiple-hit combos, often fluidly combining odd combinations like elbows and kicks against two attackers as if that were something so likely to happen in real life that one might dedicatedly practice it every single day. The result, especially as the movie progresses and the fighting techniques seem to increase in complexity to keep showing us more we haven't seen, is an increasingly pleasing visual novelty.

The plot is slight, the motivations uncomplicated, and the Oscars could not have been forthcoming. But the set pieces, including a bloody fight in a large meat processing plant; ice house; and best of all from rooftop to rooftop, swinging from sign to sign and balcony railing to railing like an urban Tarzan meets Bruce Lee movie, are anywhere from well done to spectacular, and some had me on the edge of my seat and grimacing at what it must have been like to be a stunt man on the film. (Watch the endcredits for some wince-inducing documentation.)

Highly recommended, especially if you are a fan of Tony Jaa/Ongbak and the new Thai presence in action movies. You may not love the characters or story, but the monster action finale is impossible not to love and it's great to see a woman invested with the power to kick butt in a story. Nobody does that any better than it has been done in Chocolate.

Just watched "Say Anything" and I've gotta say, John Cusack has a way of playing roles that I identify with maybe more than any other characters in film. Aside from His characers in Say Anything and High Fidelity I think the only other character Ive ever seen in film that I really truly felt could be me to some degree is probobly Polly in Lost and Delirious, though to a lesser extreme. Some true character realism in all of those films

Definitely a very good film with very solid performances. And it reminded and brought home for people a great song too. What's not to like?

Agree with John Cusack and relating to characters - bizarrely, though, I probably most related to him in Grosse Point Blank. His feelings of uncertainty about direction in life, love, etc when you're somehow a very unusual person - not so much the being a professional killer.
Love the film, though.

District 9 - after all the hype it delievers for me, the protagonist is an arse but you feel sorry for him and at last a fim which has large parts of faux documentry is decent.

The Hurt Locker - Kathren Bigalow is just a solid possibly great filmaker and some parts of this really got too me.

I have been really lax on my film and T.V. watching but I really want to see Moon by Duncan Jones (formally Zowie Bowie) it has a almost singular performance by Sam Rockwell who I really rate and looks the buisness.

Ditto for Boy A. It's a must watch.

I could really use some suggestions on what to watch, everytime i go to the vid store and walk the new-release walk i never like anything, the "older" movies section is huge, and i usually rent something from that. But it's too big to browse endlessly, if i could get a few movies worth watching that'd be great!

I just watched the movie "primer" the other day, not the ****ty new one, the original from 1981. It was a great movie, i highly recommend it.

I watched A clockwork orange last night, i liked it a lot. i was really impressed with the plot line and end to the movie.

Edit: I grew up not being allowed to watch most any movies or tv. pg-13 was off limits, so just in the last few years, i've really discovered movies that i like. Beyond things like "star wars" and indiana jones, many of the apparent "classics" i've never watched, and i'm interested in watching all the greats

It's often fun to sort of watch a theme, like movies with a favorite actor, or of a certain style or subject matter. If you want to look up Steve McQueen movies, for instance, you can go to IMDB.com and do a search, the same on Netflix. On Netflix you can also do a search on genres and get a list of suggests that way. I like watching according to some sort of a plan like this sometimes, because I start to build up a little knowledge here and there about film that way instead of it all being so random and disconnected, and never feeling like you're learning anything. You might like to try doing that.

If you were restricted from watching any morally challlenging movies growing up, you might want to look up the film noir or gangster dramas. With a careful eye you see a lot of repressed feelings and anger sneaking out of films in times when many things simply weren't discussed in public. It gives you an interesting slant on where we came from.

I Am Legend
I quite liked it and for most of the film I thought it was going to be really epic, but I was left rather underwhelmed by the ending. I thought the whole attack on the house scene was a bit lame and cliché. Anyone who's read the book, is that true to the original story? I really felt there was an opportunity to do something a little more clever with it.

I agree.
I also didn't like the CGI used in the movie. The mutants/zombies looked fake. Makeup would have been a better choice, like they used in 'Dawn of the Dead', or simply higher quality CGI. They used a lot of CGI in the Resident Evil movies and things looked far more realistic.

The Man From Earth...all takes place in 1 room and is just dialogue...but it was very interesting