Random Movie Thoughts Thread

[Tomb1]

The Strays on Netflix... I liked it. i did not realize the genre of this movie until the end but it worked

 

[Totenkindly]

SAG Awards 2023: See the Full Winners List!

Everything Everywhere All At Once, The White Lotus and Abbott Elementary won big at the 29th Screen Actors Guild Awards, which were broadcast live the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles

www.yahoo.com

For the SAG: EEAAO seems to be the big winner tonight, plus Brendan Fraser. Even Jamie Lee Curtis pulled in Best Supporting Actress.

I'm kinda expecting EEAAO for Oscar Best Picture, Fraser for Best Actor, but.... still not sure between Yeoh and Blanchett for Best Actress. Honestly, both are great; their roles are just so different, it's difficult to compare. I think it might be Yeoh's to lose, though -- she's riding on a lot of goodwill right now.

 

[Totenkindly]

I don't understand this trilogy.

 

[Totenkindly]

James Cameron is certainly no stranger to the Academy Awards. The highest-grossing movie Titanic won a slew at the 70th Academy Awards, landing wins for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. Not to mention, Avatar got those same nominations twelve years later but lost Best Picture to The Hurt Locker. Now, in an interview with Time, the Oscar-winning director shares his honest thoughts on how he’s been feeling about the Academy’s choices for Best Picture winners lately.

How do you compare Tár to Avatar? How do you judge which one is better? It’s ludicrous on its face. I think it’s a bit elitist in a way that at least they shouldn’t be mystified as their audience numbers go down. It’s been a long time since a crowd pleaser won for Best Picture. From experience, it’s better to win than not win. It’s better to be nominated than not nominated, no matter how much you want intellectually to argue the whole thing away.

Uh, dude? How about just last year, with CODA? It certainly wasn't close to the best-made picture released.

It's not like there wasn't other stuff Avatar would have lost to at the Oscars that year either (which included Inglorious Basterds, Up, and Up in the Air as fellow noms).

He got All The Money, that's a pretty sweet consolation prize.

 

[Totenkindly]

 

[The Cat]

View attachment 28471

Fozzy bear giving the here comes the bad guy monologue. This movie needs to exist.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I got up to the dance sequence in Spielberg's version but will wait to comment. It's interesting to see the "modernized" version, which has its pro's and con's.

The scene at the dance was a lot cooler in the original movie. I liked the abstract shapes and colors. The new version didn't really have anything like that which made it special. I just felt like the old movie popped more.

I watched it with my aunts who grew up in a working class neighborhood, and they thought the gangs seemed more authentic in the original film, also. For example they pointed out that they would have carried cigarettes in their pockets or something like that, and it does seem weird to me that teenage gangs in the 60s aren't shown smoking.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Diamonds are Forever is an odd film in the Bond series. It doesn't really slot well with the other Conneries; tonally, it fits better with Live and Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun (also odd films that don't really slot well with other Roger Moores). All three are equally dark and absurd. The plots involve mundane (by Bond standards) plots and the films are very much of their time. While humor is found in all of the Bonds, it tends to be a bit darker and more tongue-in-cheek in these films--Bond is witty as ever, but also verges on sadism and comes across more as true antihero than in any of the other films, in my opinion. He usually displays at least some sense of morality in the films, but here, he can barely be bothered to care and almost seems to take a pleasure in others' pain.

I like how these three films in particular juxtapose really silly, absurd elements (i.e. a Louisiana sheriff on vacation in Southeast Asia, moon buggy chases, obvious villain disguises) with dark and gritty stories about hitmen, diamond smugglers, drug lords, etc. Aside from the Craigs, Daltons and early Conneries, they feel closest to the tone of the Fleming novels. Hamilton wasn't the greatest of the Bond directors, but he brought a unique style to the series that was never replicated, although John Glen's films came close at times (difference being that Glen's films were more grounded and Bond usually shows more empathy and concern for others' suffering). Even Hamilton's Goldfinger feels apart from the other Connery Bonds, although tonally it doesn't fit as well with these three.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Roger Moore just comes across as a straight-up bully and pig in his first couple of Bond films. Feels like he was just trying to out-Connery Connery. Not a good look for him. It took him a bit to really own the role.

 

[Totenkindly]

Well, I'm not beyond blaming the directing for some of the problem. So much of the early film at least is inert, and only some of the battle scenes at the end are compelling or interesting.

But it's also kind of a conceptual issue with the writing, it's all kind of one-note, cliche, and uncompelling -- like, why was this what we got? I will agree with him that the stuff with Kang was the best part of the film, but that could also be due to Majors' acting. So I think he got part of it right, but he should be looking at it as a chance to improve.

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ Writer ‘Surprised’ by Terrible Reviews: ‘I Was in a Low Spot’ and ‘Really Sad About It’

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” screenwriter Jeff Loveness was tasked with creating the most ambitious “Ant-Man” movie yet and introducing the MCU’s new Thanos-sized villain, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). The results have been somewhat disastrous. Not only is “Quantumania” one of the...

www.yahoo.com

 

[Totenkindly]

For some reason, I was reminded of this scene:

"You and I have unfinished business. And not a goddamn fucking thing you've done in the subsequent four years, including getting knocked up, is gonna change that."

when I saw this article today:

Elizabeth Holmes has 2nd child as prison sentence looms

Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is citing her recently born child as another reason she should be allowed to delay the start of a more than 11-year prison sentence while her lawyers appeal her conviction for duping investors about the capabilities of her failed company's blood-testing...

www.yahoo.com

yeah, my mind is broken from all my cinema years

 

[Totenkindly]

Oscar odds update: Austin Butler and Brendan Fraser neck-and-neck for Best Actor after they split BAFTA and SAG

Austin Butler (“Elvis”) surprised us by winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. As a result, most of the Expert journalists we surveyed thought Butler would win the SAG Award too, but we were surprised again, this time by Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”), who had been the front-runner for much of...

www.yahoo.com

Not really sure how this will go, vote-wise.

The issue is that I think Brendan Fraser has a lot of the goodwill and people just want to see him win.

However, Oscar voters have obsessively been enamoured with actors who perfectly emulate prior celebrities, in these kinds of biopics -- as if acting is just about how closely you can emulate another person's behaviors on screen. I think it's an impressive skill but doesn't necessarily mean an award performance.

 

[The Cat]

Oscar odds update: Austin Butler and Brendan Fraser neck-and-neck for Best Actor after they split BAFTA and SAG

Austin Butler (“Elvis”) surprised us by winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. As a result, most of the Expert journalists we surveyed thought Butler would win the SAG Award too, but we were surprised again, this time by Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”), who had been the front-runner for much of...

www.yahoo.com

Not really sure how this will go, vote-wise.

The issue is that I think Brendan Fraser has a lot of the goodwill and people just want to see him win.

However, Oscar voters have obsessively been enamoured with actors who perfectly emulate prior celebrities, in these kinds of biopics -- as if acting is just about how closely you can emulate another person's behaviors on screen. I think it's an impressive skill but doesn't necessarily mean an award performance.

it also sort of tries to force there into being no more timeless classics, just varying degrees of mimicry.

 

[Totenkindly]

Tom Sizemore, 'Saving Private Ryan' star, dead at 61

Tom Sizemore, an actor known for his work in hit films like "Saving Private Ryan," "Natural Born Killers" and "Heat," has died, his representative Charles Lago confirmed to CNN on Friday.

amp.cnn.com

 

[Totenkindly]

“Hang in There Joan”: Recognising Joan Cusack

School of Rock (2003) When her younger brother John was awarded a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012, Joan Cusack was the one who presented it to him. Her speech started with a comedic bit …

screen-queens.com

 

[Totenkindly]

Finished Babylon today (streaming free on Paramount +).

It's an odd counterpoint to La La Land for me -- a film where I felt like the top talent was not vocally up to the task and the movie got a little old, but I really liked the last 20 minutes. Here, everyone was really up to the task and I really enjoyed the individual arcs and vignettes / set pieces... then felt like the film dropped the ball in the last 3-5 minutes trying to justify itself or be sentimental.

At three hours, the film is too long, but I'm not sure yet what I'd cut. I get that the whole thing is about excess and glam, so... I can endure the long length since the individual parts are pretty great, but I couldn't watch it all in one sitting.

The opening setup + party takes literally 30-35 minutes, and it's almost like a movie in itself. It's fabulous, jaw-dropping, incredible, raunchy -- and the artistic promise of that first party carries on through the film, I think the music and set production are the best parts of this film (which ain't surprising, when I see what nominations it has). it was as entrancing as any of the musical numbers from Whiplash. (Side note that Chazelle knows how to film music numbers and bands.) But it's like a camera whirling through the party capturing all the spectacle and craziness and insanity and plenty. It's just nuts.

The film itself is really about the claw to the top in silent pics, the wobbly transition to sound pics, and how people's stars rise and fall based on that. Realistically from an actor's POV, it's a huge change. Physical actors were in; now you need something more, and you need to be able to vocally act in a way that is not grating.

As I said, the thing that rang false to me is the last few minutes with Manny's retrospective (and future projection into) film. I would have really liked it if the film had ended more quietly after the black and white images of his memories were superimposed across Singing in the Rain. The film felt like it needed more of a bittersweet ending, not a happy ending tacked onto a film that might have been somewhat unfocused but certainly was focused on justifying film. I think that was a strong juxtaposition -- the sanitized image audiences see that sometimes is sentimental typically has a lurid underbelly where some people's lives are left in ruin, and that's just how it is. And it would have dovetailed nicely with Jean Smart's speech to Pitt about how everyone dies but you're immortalized forever in film.... your life sucks so that people who never knew you can experience something grand. (Smart is great btw -- she's so effortless in embodying her character, even if she only has a minor role.)

So I'm kinda like "WOW WHAT A FILM" and kinda like "DAMN WAY TO DROP THAT BALL" + "DAMN THAT WAS LONG, i want to watch it again but don't feel like sitting through 3 hours"

The individual scenes in this film are pretty stellar. The film again is also really really funny. I was laughing a ton throughout.

Thematically:

Felt like a film about mortality to me. The Elinor St. John speech really sums it up. The silent film stars' time is passing, and everyone's time will eventually pass as public sentiment and the zeitgeist changes over time. How do you deal with that and the inevitable fall from grace? She tells Conrad it's not even anything he's done, although of course some stars can contribute to their own decline; it is just what happens. No one is necessarily to blame.

So we really watch how people respond to this mortality:

• St. John survives until her demise, watching generations of stars fade around her.
• Conrad comes to terms quietly but also no longer wants to hang on and live in that obscurity, so he ends things on his own terms. There's a sad melancholy to him.
• Manny tries to lay claim to that passion and make it last, but it doesn't work and he takes on a quiet life to survive, in its normalcy.
• Nellie LaRoy dances off into the dark rather than taking her happy-but-normal ending with Manny and ends alone in a hotel room.
• Lady Fay Zhu (along with St. John) is also a survivor; when her time is on the wall, she accepts it and moves on, even leaving the country to go somewhere she is wanted.
• Sidney Palmer, despite clawing his way to the top, decides some things are beneath his dignity and chooses to live -- obscure but content.
• Of course there are also a number of actual deaths during the film, related to all the craziness of the Hollywood scene.

 

[ceecee]

I'm curious if we are going to see a glut of anti-Nazi movies, given the rise of neo-fascists and fash adjacent groups worldwide. Not that killing Nazis is ever unpopular in movies (or anywhere else) but movies about the last days of WWII tend have Americans or US military as the protagonist. Not Finnish farmers.

 

[Totenkindly]

Bob Odenkirk Confirms Role in The Room Remake

Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk will lead a remake of The Room: "I had a BLAST."

movieweb.com

 

[The Cat]

Bob Odenkirk Confirms Role in The Room Remake

Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk will lead a remake of The Room: "I had a BLAST."

movieweb.com

Im really glad Bob Odenkirk is getting more serious roles Im glad he's having more success with them than Jim Carrey and Will Farrell did. I love when comedic actors get to play against type cast.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This had better hurry up and get done. I am so impatient.