Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[mousepod]

It's out today. It's playing at Arclight, The Grove and The Landmark. Online ticketing isn't available for any of these theaters (through Fandango, at least), but we'd love to go tonight.

Anyone else?

(oh... and no LSD from/for me, thanks.)

[LSPoorEeyorick]

mememememe!

But I don't know how long it'll take me to get home from Santa Monica.

And: you can buy the tickets direct from Arclight. I'd vote to go there (love it!)

[mousepod]

Well, the Arclight is the closest of the three to us - so that works for me. What time should we shoot for?

We're going to see it at the Arclight at 8:05 tonight... so if anyone is in the neighborhood...

[Babette]

My friend bought the Universe soundtrack today and we were listening to it after school. Eddie Izard singing Mr. Kite is great!

[innerSpaceman]

I HATE the Arclight.

1. Reserved seating means that, unless you get tickets all together, you cannot go to a movie with friends. That sucks right hard right there, and is 93% of the reason I hate that place.

2. Even being the most expensive theater in Los Angeles, they still don't include the price of parking with your ticket. And so, even with the validation, you then have to wait in a Looooooong line after your film to pre-pay your parking fees, or wait forever to get out of the lot (or both).

3. The bait-and-switch they pulled on me tonight. I bought tickets for 3:10 to Yuma in the Cinerama Dome. Much as I hate the entire Arclight experience, I loves me the great theater that is the Cinerama Dome. But when I arrive, the Dome is closed for a private event, and they want me to see the movie I paid $14 for in some anonymous black box theater of theirs. Er, not. Refund, please.


It will a be a loooong time before I go to the Arclight again. That place sucks.

[Not Afraid]

You should''ve just joined the others at that Beatles film.

[xharryb]

So did people actually go to the Taymor film? How was it? It's the kind of thing I'll have to go to another town to find at a small artsy type theater, so I'm wondering if it's worth the effort or I should just wait for the DVD.

[€uroMeinke]

I'm not as big a Beatles fan as most around here, but I thought it was a great piece. I really enjoyed some of the dance/animation/effects numbers and also like the coy allusions to the real Beatles story. I enjoyed how she captured an era. I grew up in the 60's and really dug the metaphorical nostalgia.

[mousepod]

I agree with €uro - very enjoyable.

As a Beatles fan and a frequent apologist for the musical genre (even when it doesn't deserve it), I think that Taymor used the Beatles music perfectly (see my rant elsewhere on CdS's Love to see when it's not used right), and the characters, as portrayed by a mostly unknown (by me) cast were sympathetic. While the structure is similar to something like RENT, I found this much more appealing.

I'd gladly see it again.

[Alex]

I just stumbled into reading the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest last week (somehow I've never read it before) and it got me to thinking about the process of literary to film adaptation.

So I've decided on a little project wherein I'll compare the great films with the materials they are based on. We'll see how long that lasts and I've decided to use the AFI 100 films list as a guide (simply because they had it presented in an easy format and it is a list of good movies even if not a perfect list of the best).

So, from the top 20, in the next year I hope to cover:

The Godfather by Mario Puzo (Novel)

Everbody Comes to Rick's (Play) by Joan Alison and Murray Barnett - the basis for Casablanca

Raging Bull: My Story (Autobiography) by Jake LaMotta

Gone with the Wind (Novel) by Margaret Mitchell

Schindler's List (Novel) by Thomas Keneally

Cold Sweat: From Among the Dead (Novel) by Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayrand, translated from the French D'entre les Morts and the basis for Vertigo

The Wizard of Oz (Novel) by Frank L. Baum

The Searchers (Novel) by Alan Le May

Psycho (Novel) by Robert Bloch

2001: A Space Odyssey (Novel) by Arthur C. Clarke

The Graduate (Novel) by Charles Webb

The Great Locomotive Chase (Autobiography) by William Pittinger and the basis for The General

A series of articles in the New York Sun by Malcolm Johnson that were the basis for On the Waterfront

The Greatest Gift (short story) by Philip Van Doren Stern and the basis for It's a Wonderful Life



The only one I've read is 2001 and the only one I dread reading is Gone with the Wind so if I stick to it, it should be interesting. I will, of course, follow the reading with a viewing (and I've already seen all of these movies).