A+

Don't recall some of the characters names very well but I will give this one a bit of a try with the actors' names.

Steve McQueen (one of the greats)
James Garner
Charles Bronson
James Coburn
Richard Attenborough (played one of my favorite characters ever)
David McCallum
and the blind guy,
Donald Pleasence...

A piece of music from koyaanisqatsi was used in the Watchmen movie. It's during the backstory to Dr. Manhattan. Mediocre movie but those scenes were really cool.

First teaser for GTA4 used a song from Koyaan as well as the style:



I saw the movie again recently and thought it was okay.

In the first South Park Christmas episode, they hire Philip Glass to score a secular holiday play. Episode is available free online, here's just the audio:

the year of Scott?

the real "Reggio"...



the quintessential "life out of balance" scene from the movie where man tries to use reason and intelligence to break thru to godhood...

Downhill Racer Gene Hackman is the coach of the US ski team. Robert Redford is a talented and difficult skiier trying to make his mark.

The reviews of this are pretty positive and it was up for several awards but I just didnt like it. The action scenes were fine but became repetitive and the rest of the plot just fell flat for me. There wasnt anything to hate really, it was just bland.

sounds like the 70's... (1969)

Hail, Caesar! came on HBO last night. I'm not sure what point it was trying to make, if any. Entertaining enough that I was intrigued and kept watching throughout, but at the end, I didn't get it.

I recorded that also, have not watched it but I did re-watch The Martian that came on after it and that is a good movie.

I dug it, also watched it again last night on HBO. Just a fun ode to old Hollywood and the studio system...the guy who is going to be young Han Solo guy was so good.

That looks terrible. I'm not interested in Prometheus 2.0.

At least prometheus had amazing trailers. Trailers that were way better than the movie itself.





And even the standard Prometheus trailer was exciting and reused the "space alarm" editing motif that was used in the original Alien trailer.

If Covenant is on Prometheus level I'd be happy and it looks like it will at least emulate that. Mind you I am a sucker for any Alien canon.

La La Land

I could not have loved this film more. Like all great musicals, it is simultaneously completely fake and the most real film of the year. I smiled from the first to the last frame.

Grade: A

It looks like "Covenant" is the name of the ship or mission because the captain is wearing a uniform that says "Covenant/weylan-yutani"

I didn't care for it at all either. Some of these late '60s/early '70s rebel/anti-hero movies really annoy me.

More fun to name their nicknames based around their specialities:

Steve McQueen = Cooler king
James Garner = Scrounger
Charles Bronson = Tunnel king
James Coburn = ?
Richard Attenborough = Big X
David McCallum = ?
and the blind guy,
Donald Pleasence = Forger

Great chemistry between all the cast, but particularly Garner and Pleasence.

I think like most people I was disappointed with Prometheus on first viewing, but I've warmed to it over time.

Best Boy Documentary of a ******ed (more on this later) 52 year old man living with his elderly parents.

This was a pretty simple documentary, just snippets of the life of the family while they attempt to transition Philly to a suitable living situation out of the home. There wasn't any interviewing of the mother and father about how they think and feel about things as you might see in more recent documentaries.

But my interpretation was that the father was completely beaten down by life. The mother put on a happy face much of the time but she seemed so deeply sad to me. I suspect that both sort of had their lives sucked out of them by having to take care of Philly 24/7.

I also suspect that either there just wasn't a good infrastructure in place for men like him to be successful while he got older. They mentioned that at one place he was beaten by the staff. It was interesting, to me at least, how they diagnosed him. They simply labeled him (and others in the movie) as ******ed. It wasn't a dirty word at all, it was simply the term they used. I suspect that he was also autistic but I'm not sure that was something that received the focus it does now.

I won't reveal much more. I found it both incredibly sad and uplifting at the same time. It certainly illustrated how tough life decisions can be.

Straight out of Compton was easily the best movie of the year. This coming of age teens against the world of business is a legal thriller far better than any Tom Cruise spy bulls crap. A young high school poet named “O'shea” is briefly held hostage on a bus by a local business man. He's just the “flyest poet you ever met” and is happily dreaming up a utopian fantasy world in his notebook. Owing much to Micheal Douglass's portrayal of a world weary office warrior who goes on a rampage, OG Two Tone boards the bus and gives a motivational seminar to a group of academic go-getters on a school bus. His topic: the power of symbols in the world. How there are some symbols, that by their existence summon evil into the world.Pretty deep stuff in the first five minutes of the film.
Tone speaks in metaphors. He points out that all you need to do is ask the wrong people the wrong questions and suddenly you are a on a bus with a gun toting crazy (in the days before there were TSA/CSI operatives on every school bus in the counry. This was of course before we had ISIS business academies winning the city school bus contract through a charter school they opened in LA after the riots. At this time in LA's history when they were throwing money at any initiative with “peace” in the title....
Tone's take on the power of symbology cuts straight to the heart of modern societies ill's, where a drive into any modern city shows who the corporate gangs are that have power in the area. Atlanta's Cola Cabal, Jacksonvilles “Buschman of the Kill-a-Harry”,sorceror's mice holding down a world in fla and a kingdom in ahaheim. The local sports extortionists. Insurance and banking bandits. All showing their gang colors like OG two tone did on the bus in front of young O'shea. A kid who was so impressed he wrote pages of gang glorifying songs because they were his muse. A self taught word “artist” whose poetry was “right out de front door” The climax of the movie is the court case where they eviscerate the system by saying, “we've got AK's from russia and Cocaine from Colombia” and we ain't even got passports”
O'shea learns contract law from the epitome of evil, played with sinister satanic fury by Paul Giamotti. This is a portrait of pure evil. Every word and gesture out of this serpents mouth is a lie, with note perfect industry jargon. Poor O'shea is talking to the great lord of darkness in the flesh, a record industry pedophile satanist. You can tell he is a pedo by the fleece tracksuit he wears when we are introduced to his character. The power of symbols again, thanks for the heads up Two tone! The devil here promises Eric “EZ mother****ing E” Wright that he can “get him in the door” of the first gate of hell. They hatch a plan to steal all of the songs of the underage and legally vulnerable O'shea. A note here, EZ E does a much better job of acting than the winner of the award this year who didn't have many more than 50 words of dialog. Count them He won an oscar for letting a bear jump in him, dramatically shooting snot out of his nose and breathing heavy and walking around in the snow naked, that was all. He didn't say a word for almost two straight hours. He did show his naked ass which was the acting that the academy likes the most. Another symbol. Yellowstone was the star of this movie, not LDC.
Another symbol that 2tone warns you is coming is during the many arrests of billionaire Dr. Dre who clearly had editorial control of his story due to his massive cash infusion and producer's credits. He made sure he got most of the great lines. He's the one that starts “ruthless”, not EasyE. He's the brains behind Deathrow and the voice of integrity as he breaks up the party. He comes of very jesus like, so I found it very interesting that the subtext of the arrests had him breathing heavy and snortin like Leonard DeCaprio in Yellow stone as a policeman is between his legs. It looked like gay porn for god's sake, but it made the cut, despite his billions, because that's his thing. What did the dude say on the Howard Show about it? It is in there for a reason. Movies cost money, what else can the motivation be...Thanks for the heads up 2-tone. It made the movie less about how great billionaire creative geniuses are and more about the said reality about fame and riches.

Got my annual reminder of how good Elf is. GOAT Christmas comedy IMO.

https://youtu.be/EkwdYSn3Uws

Agree, and Stone and Gosling are so freaking good in it. Both deserve Oscar noms although I suspect only Stone will get one.

Definitely the feel-good movie of the year. My only complaint, and it's really nitpicking, was lack of another "show-stopper" type number near the end, to rival the fantastic opening number.

Also watched Assassination of Jesse James, based primarily on the good reviews in this forum. Agreed, great movie. Cinematography by Deakins was incredible - especially the train heist scene... the way that sequence was shot was a thing of beauty. Affleck and Pitt both give fantastic performances. 8/10.

I also thought is was terrific, Gosling's "singing" notwithstanding. He is a true movie star; I don't think the younger Clooney or Pitt could have pulled this off like he did. He's also a better actor than either of them. I'm not ashamed to admit I cried during Stone's audition.

And as an Angelino, boy did our town look great! We do have important architecture and culture here. You have to look for it because we're so big and spread out, but it's here.

I highly recommend this.