The Up Series

In 1963 a British television network did a 40 minute documentary looking at the lives of fourteen seven-year-olds. The idea was that kids that age at that time would comprise the work force of the year 2000. They called it a "glimpse into Britain's future." Director Michael Apted (Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist, HBO's Rome), a young assistant on the project in 1963 has revisited these same people every seven years since, most recently in 2005 when they were all 49-years-old.

Though the subjects themselves don't seem to fully appreciate it, they are involved in something I can best describe as mesmerizing and important. It is surreal to watch their lives on fast forward. You can't help but draw parallels to your own life and reflect on where you came from and where your life is going. Roger Ebert commented that the series "isn't about their lives, it's about life."

Apted is careful not to go over the top. His questions are very simple: Are you happy? What do you hope for for your children? etc.

This is a time capsule of the contemporary human experience. Watch it.

Go see TMNT. Now.

My second day of the new-movie-each-day vow resulted in me seeing the long-awaited TMNT. It's fabulousamazing.

A few things have changed. The turtles are... skinnier. Spinter's voice sucks. April has become Lara Croft instead of being a TV reporter (sad for me, who always thought it was sweet that she was a journalist). Oh yeah, and she and Casey Jones are living together - not something I expected out of the Ninja Turtles franchise.

TMNT picks up after Turtles III. Leonardo has gone on some kind of leadership enlightenment quest, and the other Turtles have faded somewhat into normal society and no longer fight crime, with the exception of Raphael. April finds Leo while she's on a treasure hunt for a statue some rich wacko will pay big bucks for, and convinces him to come back just as all hell breaks loose, and of course, the Foot reappear.

TMNT is dark and just grown up enough. It retains so much of the amazingness and hilarity that was the cartoon and live-action movies of the late 80s and early 90s (also, the movie is FULL of references to these older installments... awesome). Raphael and Leonardo remain the central characters. The struggle between the two of them is unusually developed and just really done well.

TMNT is packed with stand-alone moments of all moods and genres that are just... fantastic. The soundtrack is great, but contains no Vanilla Ice (Go ninja, go ninja, go!). I loved every second, and I am positive that anyone that grew up with the orginal cartoon/live action movies will, and everyone else will too.

Cowabunga. There, I said it.

Cars, or Disney/Pixar Again Fails to Disappoint

Cars has been on my list for a while to see, and is one selection that is of very poor quality on peekvid.com. I've had it from Netflix for several weeks, and last night I finally watched it. It was about that time that I decided to make it a personal goal to watch one new movie I haven't seen each day this spring break starting with Cars. I have been slacking, big time.

I believe The Incredibles was the last Disney/Pixar movie that I saw, and it was endearing, hilarious, and everything we have come to expect from this collaborative group. I didn't expect as much from Cars, and was pleasantly surprised.

Don't get me wrong, Cars is no Incredibles, but it's very, very good. There were several times when I laughed aloud... alone in my room... and felt like a huge nerd. For example, at one point Lightning McQueen and Mater go tractor-tipping. Hilarious. The story itself was also just plain good. There were more plot threads than in many comparable movies, and each was developed just enough to let them blend effortlessly. Keep up the good work, guys at Disney and Pixar!

Pride and Prejudice - the 2005 version, a.k.a. the Keira Knightley version

So, a certain huge fan of the book and Ms. Austen's literature sat me down to watch Pride and Prejudice, and I was very impressed.

This movie excels in its subtlety. All of the humor comes from subtle visual jokes or subtle insults in polite dialogue. The costumes of the Bennett family look like normal dresses, but as you see the women in different dresses of the same pattern throughout the movie, you better realize their relative poverty.

The casting was impeccable. Seriously, I think Jane Austen might have written Elizabeth Bennett with Keira Knightley in mind. Everything about the movie absolutely beautiful, especially the script, and I would also venture to say that it is one of the best literary adaptations I have seen.

Also, the almost-ending scene where the Elizabeth and Darcy are in a field at sunrise... wow. The light is amazing. To shoot this shot, the director and actors would have to have perfect timing, and shoot it in one or two takes or wait until the next day at sunrise to try again. Put that in with some incredible dialog and the guy and girl finally getting together and you have yourself a scene that's a complete package - which is what this entire movie really is.

Inherit the Wind

I can't remember the last time a movie got me as fired up as this one did. It's based on the play that was based on the Scopes trial in 1925. I'm not sure how close it is to the true story, but the debate is the timeless creationism versus Darwinism. I was mad from the beginning, watching the citizens of this town marching and singing with signs saying, "Down with Darwin," "Deliver us from Evil," and the like. I took a step back and asked myself, "what about this is making me angry?" I don't have a problem with people expressing their religious beliefs and being passionate about those beliefs.

What I hate is the unwillingness to consider both sides of an argument, people who completely shut down and say, "this is the way it is and nothing else is possible." Creationists base their belief on the Bible and its infallibility as God's word... supposedly, meaning, if that were the case, I could live with it, but what occurred to me while watching the movie is that it is not the infallibility of God these people were holding sacred, but their own interpretation of God's word.

The Bible is man's interpretation of God's word. Man is fallible, so how can the interpretation be infallible? The common answer to that is that the authors of the Bible were inspired by God. Again, fair enough, but who decided that they were inspired by God? Other fallible men! The next answer is simply, "that's faith," but that's the same as saying, "I have no idea about anything, I just believe what I've been told to believe my whole life."

Wow. So this is a movie review right? Like I said, this show got me fired up. [We won't even go into the separation of church and state and how a public school could possibly ban topics simply because they conflict with fundamental religious teachings or the culture of hate, not love, that too often comes from zealots].

Anyway, watch this movie. It will get you talking and, hopefully, thinking.


Just to throw everyone for a loop - I DO believe in God and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

13 Tzameti

A friend called and recommended this to me. It was actually already in my Netflix queue, so I moved it to the top and watched it the other night.

It's a French thriller with the subtlety of Hitchcock but with a more modern sense of brutality. It was very interesting yet very simple. I won't say much more as they will be remaking it with an American cast with the same writer/director. Normally, I'd frown on something like this, but with its sub-90 minute runtime, I'm really curious to see what the director can do with a bigger budget and another crack at this idea.

The Faces of Daniel Day-Lewis

I just watched The Unbearable Lightness of Being and it solidified an opinion I've formed over my recent years of movie watching: Daniel Day-Lewis is the best actor ever. His body of work includes more diverse and more complete and more convincing characters than anyone else I can think of. To top it off, he has done so with only 17 movies to his credit over the last 25 years.

It's hard to explain, but Day-Lewis doesn't act - he becomes his characters. The voices and body language he uses from role to role are as distinct as the physical changes he undergoes.

I am extremely excited about his next project There Will Be Blood, an adaptation of an Upton Sinclair novel directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love).

Here's a rundown of the pictures above (left to right):

Convict/IRA member/boxer,yet good guy, Danny Flynn in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer.

Fun loving Gerry Conlon caught in the wrong place at the wrong time in In the Name of the Father.

Prim, proper, and slightly annoying Cecil Vyse in A Room with a View.

The menacing, sadistic, racist, strangely honorable Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in The Gangs of New York. In my opinion the second greatest villain in film history (behind, of course, Darth Vader).

His Oscar winning role as severely disabled artist Christy Brown in My Left Foot.

A bi-sexual layabout in My Beautiful Laundrette.

Troubled father Jack Slavin in The Ballad of Jack and Rose.

Womanizing Czech surgeon Tomas in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

... another pic from The Boxer because I messed up. So I'll mention his one scene in Gandhi as a bigoted bully who attempted to block the sidewalk.

Upstanding gentleman Newland Archer torn between two women in The Age of Innocence.

Bad-ass warrior Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans.

Salem resident John Proctor whose spurning of a young woman ultimately leads to a lot of accusations and some trials you may have heard of.

Pirates 3 Trailer

So, there's a sweet trailer for Pirates 3: At World's End on yahoo.com. In what I must assume is an attempt to thwart YouTube users from posting it, they have generously provided a way to post it on your blog already.

A way that does not take into account the fact that not all blogs are the same layout. The embedded video file is some 600 by 500 pixels, also known as huge. I have a feeling me changing the code would not end well.

Enjoy:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/piratesofthecaribbeanatworldsend.html

Kundun

A very straightforward biopic of the Dalai Lama directed by Martin Scorsese. Quite interesting if you don't know much about Tibet and Buddhism. I preferred Seven Years in Tibet (though it's been awhile since I've seen it). Coincidentally, both were released in 1997.

Yay for the old imdb layout

In case anyone else is dissatisfied with the new reader-unfreindly layout of imdb.com where all you can see is ads, you can for a little while go to your site preferences and change them so the movie and people pages are in the old format.

Thank God.

300

Expectations definitely play a role in how you view a movie. I was fortunate enough to have my outrageous expectations for 300 tempered by reactions like Rebekah's. So I got, more or less, what I was expecting: pure action. Normally, this would not be near enough for me, but it was so spectacularly beautiful that I really enjoyed it.

As fantastic as the story seems, one must remember that, more or less, it really happened. The Spartans WERE that rabid about warfare. 300 Spartans DID lead a Greek force against a 200,000 plus strong Persian force. [A contemporary newspaper article called the stand at the Alamo, a modern day Thermopylae]. Even some of the quotes in the movie are historically recorded.

So, unfortunately, there is no real depth here, but at the same time, it offers many things we have never seen before and is worth seeing because of them. This, along with its brother, Sin City, will likely become visual mile-markers in film history.

Are we kidding, imdb voters?

300 currently has an 8.4 rating on imdb. Are we serious, kids?

The movie was cool, and every visual and sound aspect was amazing, but ultimately the movie is empty of everything except testosterone.

So, I enjoyed watching it, but it doesn't even come close to living up to its hype. Disappointing.

Promises

This is an Oscar nominated documentary interviewing children on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict about what they think of each other. It's not as emotionally engaging as it could have been (perhaps that's why it didn't win the Oscar), but when two Jewish boys visit and play with their counterparts in a Palestinian refugee camp it's hard not to realize how ridiculous all this fighting is.

We in American (i.e. the general population) know far too little about the Middle East, especially considering how involved we like to get over there. It's always the black and white of terrorists bad, democracy good. Keep in mind this country was basically founded by terrorists revolting against an Imperial government. When one side is completely outmatched militarily, they will resort to other means to score "victories." Before I get ridden out of town on a rail, let me point out that I'm a pacifist. I'm just willing to look at a situation with an open mind and recognize that there are very few, if any, evil people, only evil deeds.

This movie gives important insight not just into Israel and Palestine, but also something we can try to apply to all human conflict.

Barton Fink

In true Coen Brothers fashion, Barton Fink is filled with sharp, original characters and a wonderful exercise in the use of the English language. However, neither the plot nor the characters were developed enough for my taste.

Worth a look if you flip by it on TV.

Spider-Man 3 7 minute clip.

Alright, forget going to YouTube. Apparently we are still with Blogger Beta...?

Check this out.

If you haven't already, get yourself over to YouTube and enjoy these seven minutes of wonderfulness, also known as a huge Spiderman 3 trailer.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=su1HZS3nn1U

Danny, in case you read this blog, thanks for pointing me in that direction.

I attempted to enable our blog to post videos, but either Blogger or YouTube is being a jerk and not accepting my username and password, which is incredibly inconvenient.

The Defiant Ones

Using IMDb and Netflix, I am constantly mining for potentially great movies. I struck gold with The Defiant Ones.

Two convicts, one white, one black, chained together escape when the truck escorting them runs off the road and wrecks. Self-preservation forces them to look out for the other guy.

Nominated for nine Academy Awards, this movie was ahead of its time in dealing with race relations and, to a lesser extent, the treatment of criminals. It could have easily failed or been merely average, but with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as the convicts, it soars to unforgettable.

The Science of Sleep

This movie is a piece of work, but very good. It's a about Stepháne, a.k.a. my love Gael García Bernal, who has issues discerning his dreams from reality, and director Michael Gondry does an incredible job implementing this with every aspect of the movie.

Most noticeably, it's in three languages. The movie goes from French to Spanish to English and back again with almost no transition. The movie also goes from dream to reality to halfway in between with little or no padding. It conveyed to the viewer exactly what kind of confusion Stepháne is feeling.

Next, and as demonstrated in the picture, are the sets. A lot of the movie takes place in a room made of what looks like egg cartons (seen above). It's a TV studio, of sorts, with two windows for Stepháne's eyes and cardboard cameras that Stepháne constantly adjusts as he tries to control things in his life. In his dreams, everything is made of arts-and-crafts supplies that Stepháne (appropriately) could have made himself. He is closest to Stephanie, his neighbor, when they are making little craft... things. I don't know what to call them. Anyway, it demonstrates how he is more able to control and shape things in his dream-like state. Maybe that's why he has trouble getting away from it.

The Science of Sleep is not plot based at all, but instead is a complex blend of character development and amazing artistic achievement with the mis-en-scene and screenplay. It is a portrait much more than it is a biography. Watch it with this in mind, and enjoy.

A Quick Note on Krzysztof Kieslowski

The brilliant Polish writer and director ended his career with the spectacular Three Colors trilogy that all students of film should see (the third part earned him an Oscar nomination for best director).

He is perhaps better known, however, for The Decalogue, a Polish TV mini-series where each of the ten parts deals loosely with one of the ten commandments and each protagonist lives in the same Warsaw apartment complex.

All of that is great stuff, but I just unnecessarily watched his A Short Film About Killing which, I found while watching it, is just a slightly longer version of Part 5 of The Decalogue. It would have been as good as his other stuff... if I hadn't already seen it! (i.e. it was good, but I thought was getting new Kieslowski, not recycled Kieslowski). Only watch it if want to substitute it in place while watching The Decalogue. Or just pass all together.

The Illusionist

I watched The Illusionist last night, and it was very, very cool. I really enjoyed everything about it. As seems to be a pattern with movies I have seen lately, there is no analysis to be made. It's a good story with a great ending.

(Don't read this if you haven't seen) That said, the person I was watching the movie with asked me in the middle of the movie if I liked Romeo and Juliet. I was like "huh? yes...?" (end spoilers).

That said, I also am watching The Science of Sleep. That movie is so far a piece of work, but also genius. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I juggle English, French, and Spanish. I didn't think I would be doing that in a movie. It's frying my brain a little.

Stranger than Fiction.

Good show. It barely qualifies as a comedy. I would call it an amusing drama, similar in tone to something like In Good Company.

I really enjoyed the movie while I watching it but, unfortunately, it felt almost pointless in the end. The book being written (as overheard in Emma Thompson's voice over) sounds far more interesting than what we are being shown.

I liked it, soon forgot it, but would definitely watch it again.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

I really liked this movie. For whatever reason, some older movies don't stand up well against time while others do. This is a perfectly timeless movie.

The widowed Mrs. Muir moves to a seaside house still occupied by the ghost of its former master. Their relationship is captivating. This a fairly straightforward movie, but I was completely engrossed by it. A must see.

White Heat

James Cagney as momma's boy gangster Cody Jarrett. While it feels a bit outdated and mechanical, it is still a very well crafted crime movie and worth watching if you stumble across it.

The Oscars!

Well, since Richie used a picture of Marty in his Oscar post, there was really only one thing left for me to do. It's amazing how hard it is a) to find any pictures of Gael at the Oscars b) that I can save. This is pretty much the best there is. Thank goodness for fansites.

The Oscars this year were, I thought one of the best Oscar shows that I've ever seen. The last four awards were a little bit boring because there were no surprises, but really most of it was pretty good. Ellen was a good host and I enjoyed watching her harass Eastwood and Spielberg. Also, the presenters were well-chosen. Tobey and Kirsten with the Spiderman intro. Gael García Bernal. Abigail Breslin and Jaden Smith. Gael García Bernal... yeah. Let's just say that I've got The Science of Sleep sitting on my TV stand (which, actually, is two filing cabinet-like pieces of dorm furniture pushed together) and I'm pretty excited.

Oh -- I almost forgot to mention! Where were Brad and Angelina?!?

Just kidding.