Just watched The Guard, what a hoot: two cops start shooting at two philosophical drug runners, one says:: "Let's get the **** out of here Clive!" The melancholic other one replies "Are you kidding me! This is better than ****in Christmas!" and starts shooting back. And the celebrator is Archie from Rocknrolla for fans of that movie.

Coherence - Interesting if you go in cold. Don't read anything about it before you watch.

Dredd - Quite enjoyable. Apparently it bombed and they won't make a sequel but I liked it as a low budget, B kind of action movie. It's a shame because i would've liked to see a sequel with more elements of the futuristic city and the satire that was in the comic books.

Dredd is super enjoyable! Lena Headey absolutely crushes in this movie and it's worth watching for her performance alone. The entire ride is fun, and they did a great job by not making Dredd into some invincible superman.

Winter's Tale is something I gave a chance strictly because I like Colin Farrell's work and I couldn't pass up Will Smith as Lucifer. It didn't take too long to find out why this has a 13% rating on RT and a 31 on Metacritic. I'm surprised it's that high on Metacritic. Avoid this one.

Enemy of the State is a 1998 action spy thriller that I just got around to finally watching. Some of the tech references are a little dated, but this is a lot of fun. Will Smith kind of plays himself, but Gene Hackman really owns his role. Things get a little silly at points, but if you are good at suspending your disbelief and can handle a little over-the-top-ness, you'll enjoy it. The overall theme and material was way ahead of its time. What looked like crazy conspiracy stuff back then seems much more realistic 17 years later.

Nightcrawler thought this was brilliant. Jake Gyllenhaal is fast becoming one of my favourite actors.

The guard was pretty good, I don't really remember too much about it as I watched it when I was ill a while ago and then watched In Bruges straight after and really loved that. Brendan Gleeson is fantastic in them both.

Gleeson can flat out act

I checked this out a month or two ago because I couldn't believe it was as bad as critics said. Man, it is really terrible. It actually looks good, but twenty minutes in and you see this is awful and only going to get worse.

I saw this in the theater, so not since I've seen The Conversation, but a cool thing about it is that the Hackman character is basically supposed to be the same character as in The Conversation, 25 years later.

I was surprised I hadn't seen anything about this on Two Plus Two.

I actually auditioned for this, but didn't get either of the two parts for which I submitted. I thought I did a good job (considering I'm not an actor) on my audition for the part of the peeping tom. I also auditioned for the doctor near the end, but that one wasn't very good - the guy who played it was TONS better than me.

I'm a member of a Facebook group for extras in Atlanta. It's a pretty tight community. Most (or at least a lot) of the people in Too Many Cooks are regulars in the extra "scene" and are members of that group. It was one of the rare productions by an established network/company that allowed anyone to submit an audition.

All of the names shown are the actors' real names. The dad, Ken, is the founder of the Facebook group and has been huge in not only keeping people abreast of extra roles, but has also helped a lot of people jumpstart their acting careers. I'm FB friends with William, the Killer in the short - he is very popular in the group and is a really, really nice guy. He has said he is more than happy to be type-cast after this (and he has been).

I saw it probably the day after it aired and was blown away. I could see where it was going right away (well, I didn't see the extremes it would go to), but it really had me when the white family around the dinner table turned African-American. I was totally hooked at that point.

I was a little jealous for a while that I didn't get cast after this thing got popular, but considering I'm not an actor, I got over it. It was fun to actually be allowed to audition. It's been a great thing for a lot of people.

Wow cool story, sounds like you'll have more opportunities in the future.

Taken 3
Liam Neeson apparently killed all the Albanians so this time goes up against evil Russians and it all gets way generic and unremarkable and kinda forgettable. It's actually not outright terrible but just really bog standard meh-ness. It also kinda reminded me of a pilot tv show.

I heard Dredd did really well on blu ray, so hopefully a sequel will ensue in a couple of years due to this. I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway.

Cloud Atlas

What a mess 39 storylines, half of which I didn't care about. I also found using the same actors for multiple storylines to be distracting in some cases.

The inclusion of a storyline which was clearly meant for comedic relief really screwed up the storytelling style as well. When there's old people running around comedically beating up Agent Smith in drag while some superhero is shooting futurustic storm troopers, something is wrong. It didn't help that the superhero blowing up storm troopers was humorous for all the wrong reasons as well.

Overall the movie just didn't work. Too many uninteresting things going on and the storylines felt rushed despite the fact that I was more than ready for the 9 hour movie to be over.

Awful.



The One-Hundred-Year Old Man Who Jumped out of the Window and Disappeared:


Swedish film about a 100 year old man who enjoys blowing things up and decides to run away from his retirement home on his 100th birthday. Starts off fairly interesting but then lost me. It turns into a European Forrest Gump mixed with a Dumb and Dumberesque plot where the heroes continually outstupid the villains. Two hours was too long, but it kept me entertained throughout. The subtitles were not up to par so I'm sure I missed a few jokes, but this was really funny. It was very very dark but funny throughout.

Dlk:

Really cool story. I have done extra work in the past in philly, mostly m night shamalamadingdong films. I have always thought about trying to act more but never went through with it.

It would have been cool for you to be a part of that, but it's also cool that you handle it so maturely. I would be bitter

When you auditioned did you have any idea what it was going to end up being? I think that whole thing is brilliant

Several of the adult swim infomercial series are pretty funny. The book of Christ one had me rolling yesterday.

Winter's Tale is a great novel, and I really enjoyed Cloud Atlas as well. Both films fall far short of the novels, but at least the movie version of Cloud Atlas tries. Winter's Tale just sucks.

I am going to have a write up furthering my thoughts on Birdman as they begin to coalesce in my mind. I already have a pretty good idea of what I want to say to abash the critics who seem to think this movie is merely a gimmick wrapped in wolfs clothing.

this movie is significant beyond a box office receipt... Art. It just does not happen to be readily apparent to the masses.

I don't think anyone had any idea what it was going to be. I could tell it was going to be funny because a) Adult Swim, and b) the instructions on what to do in the video audition for each role were funny. They were all "Do such and such, then turn the camera and smile."

For example, IIRC, there were a couple things I was supposed to do for the peeping tom part. One was act like I was hitting on a girl and failing miserably. I believe the character was called a nerd; I pretended I was at a bar, totally botched a pickup line, and then yelled to the girl that I would catch up with her later as she walked away (nobody else was in the scene - I hope it was obvious what I was doing). I also had to rise up from below camera and pretend I was spying on a girl. Tried to look all nerdy and creepy.

William the Killer has said he also had no idea what the end product was going to be, even though he was one of two main characters. He just went into the studio did things and stood in spots they told him, and that was that.

Realistically, I knew I wasn't going to get a role. Like I said, I'm not an actor, so I probably sucked. Probably didn't help that my video setup is far from professional (though I did my best to make it look acceptable). I didn't think much of it after a while, as it took a year for the thing to air, but when it started getting popular, I did get a little bitter that so many extras got in it and some were getting attention. It's cool, though, and it's been a fun thing for everyone involved.

One thing I've heard (I have a friend who is more in touch with film/tv happenings) is that Cartoon Network/Adult Swim did not anticipate how popular it would be, so they didn't have all their ducks in a row when it came to licensing, merchandise, etc. They apparently asked everyone after the fact to sign a release relinquishing rights to profit off of their appearance, or something to that effect. If they didn't, they can basically forget ever getting in another Cartoon Network production (I don't think the threat was extremely strong, but it existed). Everyone has signed, as far as I know, except for one person. He was nervous about it and was going to sign, but my friend told him not to. The guy was worried that he'll never be able to work for the network again, but my friend asked him, "Had you ever before?"

"No."

"So what do you have to lose? Don't sign."

Cloud Atlas the book was terrific. I actually like the movie, and some of the adaptation choices were terrific. It just falls short of the unified experience the novel offers. I don't know of any way they could have made the adaptation any better, though. Some of the things I don't like about the adaptation, I'm not sure I would have made a different decision. It was a hard book to adapt. One of those rare things I would happily describe as a beautiful failure.

Interesting to hear that you liked the Winter's Tale book. I might check it out. It was certainly acclaimed by critics and the masses alike, but I trust your review more than those pretenders

Cloud Atlas is incredible.

Just saw Too Many Cooks.

Wow,I can't get what passes for entertaining nowadays.

Not gonna bother with the bear one now.


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I also loved Cloud Atlas

I had heard bad things about Cloud Atlas, but I thought it was much better than people said it was.

i also liked cloud atlas and appreciated the ambition at least


whiplash was a great watch. 9/10

I guess that it makes sense that Cloud Atlas must have been a good book if it was made into a film, but I have trouble seeing how. Every single plot line is cliche. I have trouble seeing how adding 6 simple, cliched plots together makes a great book. I also think that the book is linear and not broken up like the film, which I would have thought would draw further attention to this. I actually thought that was what the best film did best: distracted the viewer enough to keep hidden the fact that each plot was a cliche ridden, formulaic mess which any middleschooler could write.

Wealthy aristocrat saves slave, slave later saves aristocrat causing aristocrat to change his world view.

Finds mentor to help him find his fortune, but it turns out mentor is a dick and he had the ability to find his own way all along.

Lone journalist brings down corporation by herself because damnit! that's what her dad would've done

Old man who should just lie down and die fights and overcomes tyranny

Robots can be people too

Second storyline redone in a new setting in case you missed it

Every single one of these would be absolutely awful on its own. The fact that 6 of them are jammed into one movie means none of these cliches can try to accomplish anything new or creative because of the time restraint. If this were just a compilation of six 30 minute short stories I'd find it wholly unimpressive, combining them into one movie and mashing them together didn't impress me either, although it does serve to highlight how each plot is so formulaic that they can be split up this way. I really have trouble seeing how the book could be any less awful, but I might give it a shot sometime.