Leaving Las Vegas

Great love story. And Nicolas Cage can really act, who knew..

The reason people are so surprised of his dive into **** is cause he used to be very good!

and he lives in Las Vegas

Really excited to see your film, especially with Dom's acclaim. Congratulations.

Thanks, Dom. That means a lot. As Jay and I have said in the past: we'll probably never have an easier time raising money for a film than we did with BRF.

Holy ****! An "A-" from Clovis? My life is complete. Thanks for watching and taking the time to write such a thoughtful review.

Saw The Bling Ring last night. Wow, how can someone so talented make something so uninteresting? I'd already heard mediocre things about it, so I wasn't too excited to see it, but it was the only movie playing at the right time, so I gave it a go. I figured: at least it will look good. It did not. I was actually pretty shocked by how bad the photography looked, and there was nothing inspired about the direction behind any sequences. There is a story (of sorts) but it contains no dramatic conflict and no suspense whatsoever. The stakes are pretty low (even if/when they get caught, it's not like they're going to jail for life or something). I never got to know any of the characters, so I really could have cared less about what happened to them. There was literally no point to keep watching to the end. To Die For and Spring Breakers are far superior movies that handle similar content/themes. I really feel like Coppola must have been on a serious Gus Van Sant kick when she made this. She even blatantly ripped off the same "interview with the accused" flash-forward technique used in To Die For. Stylistically, it felt like she was trying to imitate Van Sant's later works ("Elephant", "Paranoid Park") where he takes less experienced actors/non-actors and uses their "bad acting" (for lack of a better word) to create this strange impressionistic-naturalism (best way to describe it) that gives his worlds this really odd atmosphere. The mistake in The Bling Ring IMO is Coppola mixes unknown, inexperienced actors (the two leads) with well-known, highly experienced ones like Leslie Mann Emma Waston -- who seemed to think this was a broad satirical comedy. The resulting tone is unbalanced. Spring Breakers totally owns The Bling Ring in all other style categories -- the photography, production design, music etc were all way cooler. It's strange because fashion photographer Sophia Coppola usually has such a handle on all things hip and cutting edge. The Bling Ring felt dated by a couple of years. It almost felt like a wannabe version of a Sophia Coppola film...

After this and Somewhere, my expectations for the next Coppola film are incredibly low. I hope she picks a story with some real teeth, and concentrates more on sucking the audience into the narrative, and less on everything else.

I feel like there is a shelf where a longer, director's cut is stored, with the opening scene being 15 minutes of him driving in a circle.

Dang, I was excited to see this, but now I guess I'll just wait till it's streaming somewhere.

Herzog's lates doc, Happy People, about trappers in Siberia who live off the land, is absolutely fascinating. I wouldn't be surprised if, in fifty years, Herzog will be better know as a documentary filmmaker.

I had the option of seeing Pacific Rim or Fast and Furious 6. I snap chose F&F. I regret nothing. Can't wait for F&F7.

I tried watching a Herzog movie and sort of shrugged, but his documentaries fascinate me endlessly.

I don't think you can make a bad choice there.

I hope you didn't shrug at Aquirre or Fitzcaraldo.

Which has better drifting?

Very well played.

Re: Pacific Rim, I thought it was just okay. Like Clovis said, you already know every plot point even if you haven't seen it. I'm not expecting some avante garde blockbuster monster movie (although I expected something a little bit different from Del Toro), but it would be nice if there were a few surprises. A few gripes:

Rewatched A Field in England. I feel the same about it, which surprised me, I thought a second watch would be polarizing.

I like it though. I also realised it shares a lot of the vices and virtues of Valhalla Rising.

A small group of men, in odd circumstances, visions, and explosive violence.

Watched Bet Raise Fold

Very good. I've studied some movie making and done some short movies myself and I gotta say the pacing, the visuals, the story telling are very well made. I was honestly a bit surprised on how well paced and well told it was. Also since I used to be one of those poker players it tugged on my emotions a lot as well. I felt a sincere attachment to the people grinding and trying to make it.

It as also awesome as hell to see my friend Martin ballin it up. His apartment reminds me of those huge studio apartments every character in 80s movies seemed to live in. Amazing! I could Clovis it up and write so much here but I am just gonna leave it at that.

As a ending note I can agree with Dom and Clovis that Martin can seem a bit weird if you don't know about his persona. He is the legendary "Magicninja" on the forums. He is a great excentric and he basically started tethering of poker a few years back and going from basically nothing into a music career. They could have found some more angle to show what a great excentric genius he is but I am afraid it would pull him out of the mainstream market of interest

Rating: A

He isn't? I always think of him as mainly a documentary maker but maybe thats just because I have seen more of them than his features.

Thanks, ohead! Just to add to this: Martin's character actually did have more of an arc (like Danielle and Tony) in shooting. His story was about using online poker as a jumping off point to start a music career. He had just formed his band when we first started shooting with him and we actually captured the week building up to their first live show. Ultimately though, the storyline was just too tangential and disconnected from the online poker industry story. Also, it just felt like too much narrative -- too many subplots to follow -- so we had to cut it back. It's a shame because there's so much more to Martin than what you see in the final cut, but that's the way things work out sometimes. We hope to release a short film (like a mini-FROM BUSTO TO ROBUSTO) utilizing the the deleted scenes about Martin and his music as part of the bonus features. So if you ordered the special edition, you'll (hopefully) see that in August...

That sounds great!

I think Dom was being a smartass. Herzog is mostly a documentary filmmaker.

Over the years of film watching I have grew fond of short films. Anyone have a good website for watching short films?

I have only heard others talk about it, apparently there are lots of great shorts on youtube and vimeo. I've heard Oscar nominated shorts are there too.

Before Midnight was excellent