Calantha
Gryffindor Alumni
My name is Luck, this is my song, I happened by when you were gone
Posts: 4,493
|
Post by Calantha on Jan 3, 2004 11:52:44 GMT -5
I just watched The Emperor’s Club . Curious most of all... Has anyone else seen it? I thought the script had a few lacking areas. The meaning, the emotion, it was on the tip of its tongue but it just didn't flow well. It was almost like the meaning was forced in an unusual and slightly uncomfortable manner? The acting was fine, I really enjoyed Kline's character and I thought he did well portraying him. It just lacked the little bit of umph to really take it over the top. I wanted to get into it, I really really did, and at some parts I could, but it didn't take me quite there.
|
|
Calavera Diablos
Ravenclaw Alumni
Draws grown men wearing underpants outside their trousers
Posts: 1,547
|
Post by Calavera Diablos on Jan 21, 2004 14:40:30 GMT -5
So... I know I am a bit behind with the 28 Days Later discusion... but I must say I rather liked the movie... I think it was very artistically done, the story line was awesome and the music was wonderful. I just over all really enjoyed it. I watched it with my dad who basically dogged on how terrible the military was acting (being that he was in the military he would know) going on and on about how "that is the wrong way to turn a corner!" and what not... my dad is a pretty funny guy... lol. But yeah... besides the apparent military tactical mistakes (which I didn't notice) I thought it was great! lol.
I havn't really seen very many movies latly(broke college student, ya know?) I did see this one movie a friend loaned me called "Better Luck Tomorrow" It's about these Asian kids who have this really stereotypical Asian life on the outside(good grades and what not) but they are really like these crime lords. Anyway... the movie is really really odd... and the ending was a bit frightening, but I enjoyed it. Another friend loaned me Bowling for Columbine... I have to say that that movie was so excellent! Brought up a lot of good questions. Made me appreciate old G-Dubb more that I already do... lol. And although the things it discussed (gun violence and what not) was really heavy stuff... they added humor to make it a little lighter and easier to watch. I totally recommend it to anyone that hasn't seen it. *snort* My friend Joanne and I had to go see that together, because we're Korean and the movie was chock full of Korean actors (gasp, the world is coming to an end). I thought the movie was superb in addressing what has been going on in highschools with supposedly well to do students, as well as an attack on subcultures and race issues. I know I always say this, but it had a bitchin' soundtrack too. Sidenote- I got elbowed sharply in the ribs when the protaganist had little notecards and would learn a new word from the dictionary every day because I used to do that. I thought Mystic River was excellent, it really left an impact on you after you left the theatre. The audience I saw the movie with left in complete stunned silence once it had finished. Man, isn't that ex-convict's wife as bad as he is? She's a piece of work... I saw Peter Pan three times just because I liked it so much. I was glad they finally did it right for once, no women, no middle aged actors in disturbing tights! The kid who plays Peter is hilarious thanks to his brilliant facial expressions, he's very talented. Tink was hilarious too, she was more... prone to doing bad things than I had initially expected. I loved the way they did the mermaids! No crayola hair, no seashell bras, they were dark, creepy diviners akin to the witches of Macbeth. I liked the new spin on Wendy, they really focused on the conflict between her rapidly maturing mind and her urge to remain a child and have fun mentally living in a fantasy world with her brothers. Hook was played very well, despite the humor, you get severely creeped out by his borderline love-hate obsession with his rival.
|
|
|
Post by Simply Panda on Jan 23, 2004 13:37:49 GMT -5
ha, ha... I'm 1/2 Korean... and while I was watching it I was like... hey... those people look Korean. and I was quite proud of myself for noticing... just cause I'm getting a lot better at being able to tell... actually nowI don't really make many mistakes... okay... I'm gonna stop with that now.
I saw Peter Pan on Christmas with some friends late at night(after doing the family thing) AND IT WAS SOOO GOOD! lol... It was a lot better then I thought it was going to be. I really didn't have high expectations at all. All of the actors were good though. I loved the guy that played Peter... a friend leaned over to me and was like "Is it wrong that I think he's pretty hot?" lol... being that we are quite a bit older... well... 5 years older. While we were watching a friend of mine dropped a vile of pixie dust(you know, the stuff they sell at hot topic) so we were running around looking for it, but we were really hyper so we were skipping and twirling and all that good stuff to the music(which is wonderfuly by the way, I own the soundtrack). We thought it would have been funny if someone walked in and asked what we were doing and we said "Looking for megan's pixie dust" but alas... no one walked in. Anyway... movie=2 thumbs up!
|
|
Calavera Diablos
Ravenclaw Alumni
Draws grown men wearing underpants outside their trousers
Posts: 1,547
|
Post by Calavera Diablos on Jan 30, 2004 0:18:39 GMT -5
I just saw "21 Grams" with Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro (Franky Four-Finger from "Snatch"!) and it was for lack of a better word, amazing. I can't really talk about the plot without giving everything away, but it does encompass death and connections between people. It's quite depressing and emotionally draining, but the acting is fabulous.
|
|
|
Post by Simply Panda on Jan 30, 2004 13:37:00 GMT -5
I heard "21 grams " was really good... I know a bit about the plot but won't spoil. I do really wanna see it.
|
|
|
Post by En on Jan 30, 2004 14:22:53 GMT -5
I'm a little slow; finally saw Pirates of the Carribbean last night. Ditto what Ko said earlier about there being some cool SFX, and I did really dig the line "Bring me that horizon." The highlights, characterwise, were obviously Capt. Jack Sparrow, and then also Elizabeth's dad during the whole hand-in-the-drawer sequence and, oddly enough, the Commodore, but only at the end.
I really felt for him, because it seems Elizabeth had been underestimating him the whole time -- here she'd been treating him like this horrible domineering freak she had to fend off, then stooped to bribe him with marriage, when in the end he actually cared for her enough to send her along with the man she really wanted. That was honour, and I wish they'd underscored it just a bit more, since so much of the story was about Will Turner learning that honour is a state of mind, not a birthright and not a rigid adherance to British law.
Will made me twitch, but that's just because he was such a boy scout. Soz gang -- I am not a Gryffindor and never will be But I could really dig Jack (Slytherin, no contest), whose blend of randomness and effectiveness impressed me, and Elizabeth (Ravenclaw?) wasn't half bad as leading ladies go (dumping coals from the bedwarmer on that one-eyed pirate? Yeah? And how about that bit where she started coming up with ideas during the big battle? Nice).
The swordfight in the smithy was incredibly sexy. And you know what? I really dug that fierce fighters kept getting knocked cold from behind. So much more realistic than the usual good-guys-always-win blockbuster garbage
|
|
|
Post by KoNeko on Feb 5, 2004 8:44:58 GMT -5
Timeline
This one is probably one of the worst Michael Crichton book-to-movie adaptations I've seen (the others being "Jurassic Park", "JP2/The Lost World", "Congo", "Rising Sun" and "The Adromeda Strain" ). I mean, I'm probably going to be biased in this because I really liked the book (and it's going to be part of the basis for my thesis at uni) but... The film was like, so, so, so badly done.
I think part of the reason was because the film itself would inevitably miss out so much of the essence that made the book good, like the fact that the characters spoke old/14th Century English and French, which they didn't in the film (or basically the whole film would be subtitled) and that they took a LOT of the violence (Michael Crichton was trying to outline how savage living in that time would be, and how brutal warfare was at that time) so... that was pretty disappointing. They stuck with the basic storyline but cut out a lot of relevant information that would otherwise answer a lot of questions left over after the credits rolled.
Anyway, for those of you who don't know, the plot follows a bunch of archeology students working in Southern France on a dig. Their dig is sponsored by a big USA company that has developed some technology to well, basically open a wormhole to their location but in the 1350's. So... they get the leader of their dig, a professor (Billy Connolly- much as I admire him as a comedic actor, I still think the choice was... dubious) to go back there to this time, and then he gets lost there, so they send in a team of academics (Paul Walker being their leader sort of) to go in after him, only things go wrong and they get trapped there for 7 hours on the night that the village they're in gets attacked and burned to the ground...
It had potential. It really, really did.
So- in conclusion, if you want to enjoy this movie, you must 1) want to perve at Paul Walker, 2) not read the book and 3) forgive all the temporal and spatial paradoxes that arise in it that they overcame in the book but didn't in this.
|
|
|
Post by En on Feb 5, 2004 11:57:31 GMT -5
I've only ever seen Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park and Congo, and that is definitely a list in order of goodness... AS was actually a pretty decent sci-fi flick; JP was kind of big and showy but wasn't a bad adaptation (if one accepts that a lot of the science and moral lesson were going to be tossed in favour of some cute family crap)... and Congo was so bad I wouldn't feed it to pigs.
The special effects were crummy, especially compared to contemporary volcano flicks liiiike... Dante's Peak was way better, effectwise. And all the human content got lost in the incredibly bad screenwriting. I mean, the very best part of the book had been the creepy implications about the intelligence and origins of the grey primates, but they almost completely left that out of the film in favour of action scenes that looked like unfinished CGI scraps.
So after that I refused to go see any more Crichton book adaptation flicks because clearly, he was willing to sell his intellectual property to the highest bidder, not the people who would make good films
|
|
|
Post by KoNeko on Feb 5, 2004 23:16:41 GMT -5
Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of Congo either when I saw it... that scene with the big grey hairy people in costumes or whatever was like... so bad.
I'd agree, AS was probably the best, because it was like, the earliest one he did so it was before MC was a sellout. RS was alright as well, but I think that's because when I saw it the whole Japanese culture thing was still really novel. But Timeline? Don't bother. Read the book, it's like 100 times better and doesn't star Paul Walker and Billy Connolly.
|
|
|
Post by Simply Panda on Feb 7, 2004 3:50:55 GMT -5
ha, ha... i liked Congo when I saw it the first time! It scared me! lol... then again, i was only 10 years old!
|
|
|
Post by guinevere on Feb 11, 2004 14:56:06 GMT -5
spouse and I saw MIRACLE Sunday evening and we liked it. of course, we remember the real event and spouse says it is the sporting event that is by far his favourite.. but it was a good one. I liked the fact that the hockey players were hockey players, not actors pretending to be hockey players.--it was exciting and had a fine ending... I*d definitely give this one a thumbs up..two thumbs.
|
|
Natz
Ravenclaw Alumni
Posts: 4,269
|
Post by Natz on Feb 11, 2004 15:14:57 GMT -5
I saw this film a few weeks ago called 'Keeping the faith' I liked some of the ideas in it and i thought that some of the acting was fine. I don't think it made that big of an impression on me because i can't remember the ending
|
|
|
Post by Zicdeh on Feb 11, 2004 18:07:06 GMT -5
I just went to see a LOTR movie marathon....start time 9:30 pm, finish time 6:50 am, 2 minute intermissions! You'd be surprised how much you appreciate LOTR 3 at 5 am, full of popcorn!
|
|
|
Post by KoNeko on Feb 11, 2004 23:11:25 GMT -5
Hehe, Zicdeh, a last year I went to see a HP/LOTR movie marathon so they had the two HP movies and then the two LOTR movies that were out... by the end I was so delerious and yeah, full of soft drink and popcorn that anything could have amused me. ;D
Saw the Last Samurai the other day- finally. Didn't want to see it at first because it looked sort of lame but then I gave it a go because the director (Edward Zwick) had also done Glory, which (minus Matthew Broderick) wasn't too bad. So I went along and saw it, and yeah. I have to say that it's probably one of the more underrated movies of the year, and although I still doubt the historical credibility of the whole plot (er, what the heck was with the ending?!), it was enjoyable. You could sit through it, and then it made me want to take up some sort of knife combat class... () Bring tissues for the last couple of scenes if you decide to get really into the film.
|
|
|
Post by Zicdeh on Feb 12, 2004 0:02:10 GMT -5
Yeah, it was great fun.
Movies to See: Troy. It looks awesome Last Samurai: Wanna see it!
|
|