movies we have seen, books we have read, music we listen to
a place to share recommendations (or unrecommendations) of movies, books, and music among friends.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Sam Weir Lives!
I can't believe I haven't heard of this until now! I'm a total failure at keeping up with Freaks and Geeks alums who are not Martin Starr. My only problem is with the music in the trailer, I don't get why its a good idea to recycle songs that were prominent in other movie trailers. Despite that annoying but also quite minor point, this looks great and I'll probably watch the trailer a couple dozen times before the film is finally released.
Why I couldn't remember the title: In spanish, it can either read "july begins in july" or "julio begins in july" (it's the latter).
I initially rented it because it's chilean and briefly features one of the regulars of TV Chile's wonderful telenovelas. But it's also wonderfully mesmerizing. I felt as though it had two parts, almost split along its two hour running time. The first forty minutes, although not filmed exactly from the point of view of the 15 year old protagonist, still have the feel of being told through the eyes of an adolescent: the way that you wait for the world to resolve itself from the sinister haze of looming adulthood and reveal what's right and wrong. The second half is more solid and comical, until it moves into a little melodrama. I found it very satisfying.
Seven Up!/7 Plus Seven- I've wanted to see these films for a while. This is a series of films that follows a group of British children starting at age seven and films the children every subsequent seven years. The films are a mix of observational footage and interviews with the children. Questions range from asking the children what they think about their schools and the opposite sex to issues such as poverty and race. My favorite thing about the films were how seriously the children took the questions and how thoughtful some of their answers were.
War Dance-One of the best documentaries I've seen in a while. Of course it's sad: the first half of the film is children in northern Uganda telling their stories of living in a area riddled with conflict and dealing with the death or disappearance of family members. But interlaced with these stories is the story of these children preparing for a national music and dance competition. The second half of the film is the competition itself with wonderful performances by the children. I watch a ton of documentaries and often times style and beauty are sacrificed in order to place the focus on the story being told. War Dance, however, is a gorgeous piece of cinema that blends story and style to relate emotions in a way that is not often seen in nonfiction films. The cinematography is stunning, quite possibly the best I've seen in a recent documentary. The film does a wonderful job of conveying both the terror of the civil war in Uganda and the hope and exuberance within the students' music and dance. Here's an extended trailer:
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders: I caught part of this in a motel during a road trip a couple of years ago. I have always meant to track it down, but haven't until now. I love bad movies and Merlin's Shop is the perfect blend of outrageousness and hilarity making it one of the most watchable bad movies ever. For me the MST3K commentary is pretty hit or miss, it was decent for this film, but I could easily watch this without the MST3K guys. It's that bad/good.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada: I'm not the biggest Tommy Lee Jones fan but this was pretty good. I'm surprised by how much I have been enjoying the recent resurgence of the western, a genre that formally was at the bottom of my list. Oh, and I totally had a crush on the living Melquiades, but not so much when he was dead.
The Orphanage: A few creepy moments, a better than average horror movie storyline, and a really terrifying scene of a party with children and adults in animal masks. The ending was kind of sappy and the way the story was told felt disjointed. I did sleep through parts of it so I can't say I fully liked or disliked it. It was intriguing that I would watch it again to form a more complete opinion and to be creeped out by the party scene.
I just wanted to inform y'inz about this feature of CLP, the book log. Considering that the site is so hard to navigate that I could only find that link by searching for "book log", I don't recommended defecting from goodreads just yet to use it, but I guess it's good for keeping track of what books are in-system that you'd like to read.
Mutual Appreciation-kind of unbearable. I can take films that have very little plot and I can enjoy movies that consist mostly of people talking, even if they aren't talking about anything terribly fascinating as long as it is relatable, but this was just a mess. Basically it's pretentious hipster New Yorkers reveling in how awesome they think New York is. If the characters were supposed to be unlikable and the purpose of the film was to present the obnoxious trend of twenty and thirty something hipsters flocking to NYC, then it succeeded, but I did not enjoy it and would not recommend it.
Gandhi-I watched this the day after I watched Mutual Appreciation and talk about a contrast! I can do long epic biopics if the subject matter is compelling and Gandhi's story certainly is (on the other hand, Lawrence of Arabia made me want to gouge my eyeballs out!) I can't believe that it's taken me so long to see this, and actually it also shocked me how little I knew about Gandhi prior to watching this. I think I would have to see it again to judge it's merit as a well made film, but I feel like when the story is so powerful, its most effective to keep the telling of it simple.
Trouble in Paradise-enjoyable classic about two thieves who fall in love and the wealthy and beautiful perfume executive who comes between them. The two leading ladies, Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis were gorgeous and a pleasure to watch but I had a hard time seeing what was so charming and irresistible about Herbert Marshall as the "dashing" Gaston.
I also rewatched There Will Be Blood, which just gets better every time I see it, and No Country for Old Men. The actual experience of watching both of these films in the theater was drastically different from watching them at home. Hopefully I'll have the chance to see them both in a theater again some day.
_01.jpg)
The two leading ladies, Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis were gorgeous and a pleasure to watch but I had a hard time seeing what was so charming and irresistible about Herbert Marshall as the "dashing" Gaston. 