Tag Archives: movies

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Shutter Island: Take Two

Boy am I glad I watched Shutter Island again. The first viewing, last Thursday, in a terribly inebriated state, resulted in me seeing about 15 minutes of the movie while falling asleep and generally having no idea what the hell was going on. Add to this the not so stellar reviews it’s been getting and I was well within my rights to give it a miss, but the pride I have misplaced in my unofficial movie reviewer role got the better of me.

Firstly, what’s with all the negativity surrounding it?! Scorsese might have bitten off more than he could chew with that ending and the amount of information that was crammed into it, but god damn the journey there was enjoyable. The score was just perfect, with those heavy, jarring violins so beautifully capturing the mood [apparently it sounds Hitchcockian, like Vertigo], and then there’s the imagery.

Every second of that first dream sequence was to die for, and seems so far removed from what I’ve seen of Scorsese. I absolutely loved all the war flashbacks and Ward C scene with Jackie Earle Haley, with an oh-so-creepy Michelle Williams towards the end of the movie. I don’t know if I even need to mention DiCaprio, but good lord he totally owns the movie, churning out another spellbinding performance. Can anyone else really pull this kind of role off?

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A Single Man [the movie, not me]

Movie course day 3, and we are back on the road to awesome, with A Single Man.

Every single frame of this movie was so meticulously and beautifully shot, and knowing this was Tom Ford’s directorial debut made it all the more impressive; I guess that’s what happens when a fashion designer directs. Some people thought it was overkill [too many close ups, too much color saturation], but I loved every second of it!

Add to this the large dose of dark humor and a wonderfully depressing cast and story, and you have yourself a great movie.

Oh, I should probably mention what the movie is actually about, but I might as well let Tom Ford do that.

“It is a deeply spiritual story, of one day in the life of a man who cannot see his future. It is a universal tale of coming to terms with the isolation that we all feel, and of the importance of living in the present and understanding that the small things in life are really the big things in life.”

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The Wolfman

Movie course day two, and I sure as hell didn’t think we’d see The Wolfman. I can see Andrew Urban’s reasoning in giving us a completely different experience to Precious, but this was disappointing.

Biggest gripe, didn’t think there was a solid enough reason that Del Toro’s character became afflicted with the curse in the first place. I feel this has to happen for these types of movies to work, and the redemption angle wasn’t the greatest either.

The gore… Totally unnecessary
and laughable for the most part. I am shit scared in even the weakest horror movies and I found myself laughing in this. And the horror genre “expert” who tried to justify werewolves decapitating people must’ve been smoking something.

If this is supposed to be in the upper echelon of werewolf movies, bring on better made vampire movies please. Mythology wise, they kick so much more ass.

UPDATE:

Almost forgot, every time the CG transformation happened, all I remembered was The Hulk; looked exactly the same.

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Voice-overs

I saw Adaptation today, and found this quote, addressed to a screenplay seminar class regarding voice-overs, pretty darn hilarious.

…and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.

Clearly Kaufman doesn’t take himself too seriously, but then, all I could think of Dexter, and the huge role it plays in that show as a story-telling device. As much as Michael C. Hall can act, it sure has made getting into the mind of a morally ambiguous serial killer a lot easier, and I’m not sure on what level the show would work without it.

And on the topic of serial killers, another choice quote from the movie…

Charlie Kaufman: The only idea more overused than serial killers is multiple personality. On top of that, you explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person. See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this.

Donald Kaufman: Mom called it “psychologically taut”.

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New man-director crush: Darren Aronofsky

I had a Darren Aronofsky marathon today, which resulted in a few things.

Requiem for a Dream is now my favourite movie. Ever. Perfect in every single way, and shot like I’ve never seen anything shot before.

Then I watched Pi, and I’ve now had the scene below on repeat for a while. In three minutes, it tackles some *big* issues in such an elegant, simple manner, and explains obsession so well.

I ended the marathon with The Fountain, and relatively speaking, it was a disappointment. I think I got used to his style, and liked it so much that I just wanted more of the same, but his leap into into time jumping, sci-fi romance was very different – not that I didn’t still enjoy the heck out of it.

Also, screw you and your copyright blergh YouTube, not allowing me to embed the video above. I had to instead d/l it as an mp4, and then email it to Posterous, which in a matter of minutes transcoded it into Flash and threw it in its player; Posterous++

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2009: The year in movies

I only had one real goal this year; to watch a 100 movies at the cinemas. Sadly [sadder than the fact that that was my one real goal of the year [and year before too]], I’m stuck on 99, and I don’t know if I’m going to squeeze in a screening of The Lovely Bones tomorrow.

w00t! Scratch all that. I found a ticket stub for a Japanese Film Festival movie I missed that wasn’t in the IMDB database / my IMDB list [and people shake their head when I mention that I collect all my movie ticket stubs – this has saved me from another year of pain and guilt!]

Anyway, here’s the list, ranked, without explanation, as always [the list was completed 2 hours after I wrote this…I really need to do it as a dynamic, weekly list next year].

  1. Okuribito [Departures]
  2. Up
  3. Avatar
  4. Revolutionary Road
  5. Der Baader Meinhof Komplex [The Baader Meinhof Complex]
  6. Beautiful Kate
  7. Star Trek
  8. I Love You, Man
  9. The Girlfriend Experience
  10. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

  11. The Cove
  12. District 9
  13. Balibo
  14. Whatever Works
  15. This Is It
  16. Samson and Delilah
  17. Changeling
  18. Inglourious Basterds
  19. Doubt
  20. The Informant!
  21. A Serious Man
  22. Låt Den Rätte Komma In [Let The Right One In]
  23. Los abrazos rotos [Broken Embraces]
  24. The Wrestler
  25. Sunshine Cleaning
  26. Gran Torino
  27. The Reader
  28. Disgrace
  29. Moon
  30. It Might Get Loud
  31. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
  32. Seppun [The Kiss]
  33. Che: Part One
  34. Che: Part Two
  35. (500) Days of Summer
  36. Julie & Julia
  37. Genova
  38. Drag Me to Hell
  39. Funny People
  40. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  41. Brüno
  42. An Education
  43. Whip It
  44. Mary and Max
  45. The September Issue
  46. Hansamu sûtsu [The Handsome Suit]
  47. Coraline
  48. State of Play
  49. Yes Man
  50. Anvil! The Story of Anvil

  51. Watchmen
  52. Amreeka
  53. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
  54. Adam
  55. Fast & Furious
  56. Paper Heart
  57. Mao’s Last Dancer
  58. Rachel Getting Married
  59. The Boys Are Back
  60. Sherlock Holmes
  61. The Invention of Lying
  62. Is Anybody There?
  63. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
  64. Milk
  65. Ghost Town
  66. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
  67. The Soloist
  68. Synecdoche, New York
  69. Gomorra [Gomorrah]
  70. Chi Bi [Red Cliff]
  71. Role Models
  72. 9

  73. Duplicity
  74. Terminator Salvation
  75. Gravity’s Clowns
  76. Seven Pounds
  77. Gururi No Koto [All Around Us]
  78. A Christmas Carol
  79. Monsters vs Aliens
  80. Flammen & Citronen [Flame + Citron]
  81. Angels & Demons
  82. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  83. Bronson
  84. Year One
  85. Blindness
  86. Surrogates
  87. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
  88. Valkyrie
  89. Transporter 3
  90. The International
  91. Séraphine
  92. Zombieland
  93. Gake no ue no Ponyo [Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea]
  94. Public Enemies
  95. Where the Wild Things Are
  96. The Hangover
  97. Capitalism: A Love Story

  98. Push
  99. Kei hei hup [Metallic Attraction: Kungfu Cyborg]
  100. 2012 [I seriously stand by my tweet on this. Just, please stop, Mr. Emmerich]

Ok, a line of analysis… #1 – #50 are all pretty darn good and worthy of a second viewing. #73 onwards is where I go from like to dislike, and #98, #99 and #100; I do not wish the type of punishment I endured during them upon anyone.

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All things Avatar

A collection of all things Avatar that I’ve come across / found interesting. Feel free to throw anything else in the comments…

James Cameron’s Avatar Movie Performance Capture Featurette

A video showing how the “performance capture” was done for Avatar.

@massawyrm’s Avatar movie review

This review pretty much sums up my thoughts verbatim

Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg

Free Love Forum takes you behind the scenes of the revolutionary new bootleg of the revolutionary new movie. Hilarious stuff!

Please mount my hot blue alien

Analysing why James Cameron really made Avatar – alien porn!

“When we would draw Neytiri and she had fins on her back and gills and all kinds of weird protuberances and so on in odd places, the question was, well, would you want to do her? No? OK, let’s back off from that.” – James Cameron

The Data-Crunching Power Behind Avatar 

A look at some of the high-density server and networking gear inside the Weta Digital data center used to render the animation for Avatar.

“A final copy of Avatar equated to 17.28 gigabytes per minute of storage.”

UPDATE:

James Cameron’s Avatar screenplay

Fox recently released all 152 pages of James Cameron’s Avatar screenplay online as a PDF

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