Miscellaneous Movie Musings - Page 158

innerSpaceman · 01-18-2007, 09:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

]This bit in the New Yorker well captures many of the things about Borat responsible for my ambiguousness on it.

Your ambiguousness?!?!?!?

I didn't see anything in that story to suggest ambiguity ... but rather only complete loathing and contempt for this film, and plenty of reason to never give the filmmakers one red cent of my money.

Alex · 01-18-2007, 10:04 PM

Yes, I was simultaneously amused and appalled. Maybe conflictedness would have been a better word.

Alex · 01-19-2007, 05:02 PM

Saw The Last King of Scotland, starring Forrest Whittaker as Idi Amin (and winning him the Golden Globe the other night).

It is a powerful performance by Whittaker. I've said in the past the actors playing real people start out at something of a disadvantage for me, but it helps that other than pictures I have absolutely no idea how Amin sounds when he talked, how he walked, or anything else about him.

But still, I handicap him a bit for it compared to other great performances last year where the actor had to create the character out of whole cloth.

It is a very interesting story. The post-colonial '60s and '70s are just generally interesting times, historically speaking, and the repercussions continue with us to this day.

But, for me, the films fatal flaw is something I mentioned when discussing Blood Diamond. That is the tendency to require that the problems of Africa be filtered through white eyes. It is inherited from the novel on which it is based, but the movie's protagonist is a fictional character (a Scottish doctor who serendipitously falls into Amin's favor) set among real events (though seemingly time compressed).

In the end, per the movie (which opens with the "based on real events" title) it is this white doctor who eventually escapes Uganda to reveal to the world what a horrible man Amin was (as opposed to the eccentric buffoon most thought him). This is something of a slap in the face to Henry Kyemba, Amin's black health minister who managed to defect and did all the revealing in his 1977 book A State of Blood.

I finally went to see the movie based on a strong recommendation from a friend. I've now talked a bit more with him and he had no idea that the main character is entirely fictional. He assumed that the movie was based on the man's memoir, not an award winning piece of fiction.

Finally, I have another gripe about the main character. He is presented as too much of a rube, beguiled by Amin's charm and completely unaware of the atrocities until sudden revelation and escape. So not only do we filter the story through the eyes of a white observer but we make him pure as well (pure through naivety rather than goodness, but nonetheless). To the extent that there was a real "Nicholas Garrigan" it was a white British military officer who gained Amin's trust and was much more complicit in the atrocities.

So, my final conclusion is: powerfully acted, slightly morally bankrupt, and victim to certain ugly tendencies in the Western view of Africa (it only matters if white people are involved).

Bornieo: Fully Loaded · 01-24-2007, 12:05 AM

Well, I saw DREAMGIRLS tonight.

I really liked it - didn't love it. I thought Hudson did a nice job. I just wasn't a fan of the music. And I love the Mowtown sound and all the music from that era. This just felt like 2 white guys wrote it. There was very little soul in the music and I was a bit dissapointed in that. I think it was a bit too jumpy. Seems like it took place in the span of 20 years, I would say. I think the progression from what they were to what they became was just very spaztic.

Wasn't a big fan of Eddie Murphy in this. I see where he went, but I just kept seeing "Buddy Love" from the Nutty Professor films. But, I will say, and someone mentioned this on the radio, there is a scene where he's "finished" and he breaks out the coke - everyone in the room leaves and he just gives this very honest look to the CC character. IT was just a great look and I'm sure that's the scene we'll see on Oscar night.

Dreamgirls gets 7 bornieo's out of 10

innerSpaceman · 01-24-2007, 08:43 PM

Oddly enough, the movie I've been musing on lately is War of the Worlds

I'm one of the twelve people on earth who actually like Steven Spielberg's version. I've heard many people complain they didn't like his take on the story. Personally, I thought the change from 50's scientist concerned about his new girlfriend to everyday citizen concerned about his young daughter was brilliant. That scientist stuff went out a long time ago, and it's not cool to portray gals as so helpless nowadays.

But besides that, I've heard complaints about the scenarios played out in the Spielberg film ... and I've wondered how much of that stuff was from the book, never having read it. The book has a reputation for being snoresville, so the next best thing would be the infamous 1930's Orson Welles radio broadcast that caused a public panic. Well, it just so happens the broadcast is a DVD extra on the recent release of the George Pal War of the Worlds. It was surprising to me in many ways.

First off, the segment that imitates a radio broadcast of Martian attack is less than 30 minutes long! A whole lot of people had to have tuned in 2 minutes late (to miss the announcement of fiction) and gone to the bathroom at the 15-minute mark (when there was a 2nd such announcement) and freaked out so much by minute 28 that they turned off the radio. Because after that point, the show shifts gears completely and becomes practically a monologue by Welles of a diary of one of the lone survivors. Unlike the radio broadcast portion, the much longer diary section is not in real time. Welles speaks of doing one thing one day, and two minutes later he's talking about a week later.

Frankly, this section is so boring, I couldn't listen to all of it. But in the parts I did hear, I gathered that much of what Speilberg chose as scenarios for the film were, in fact, either based on the original book or on the Mercury Players radio teleplay. There were the tripods crossing the Hudson river while refugees panicked boarding a ferry. There was the crazed dude in the abandoned house who spoke just about every line of Tim Robbins dialogue. Other scenarios - such as the suspenseful probe and Martian encounters in the abandoned house, and the world-gone-mad mob scene with our protagonists dragged from their cars - are right out of the earlier George Pal movie.

I think Spielberg's film ultimately has a great pedigree of influence from all the previous versions of War of the Worlds, and for that I admire it even more than I did as simply a great alien-invasion movie.

Anyway, sorry for a completely irrelevant post ... but that's the film I happen to be musing on.

Alex · 01-24-2007, 09:30 PM

The Orson Welles version of the isn't particularly close to the book either.

Personally, I love the book and had never heard it describes as snoozeville (it is pretty tight and moves along pretty well). It's well worth a read, particularly keeping in mind when it was written.

I actually liked the Spielberg version too, for a conversion into an action movie. My only two major problems are:

1) His son lives. That was just stupid.
2) The ending, like the rest of the movie needs to be updated. When the book was written, germ theory was still relatively new and it was easy to imagine it as a cutting edge issue that would be overlooked by an invading species. That just isn't true any more; I understand the meaning that the means of their defeat is supposed to have but it is no longer appropriate unless they also don't update the rest of the story.

It is kind of like if a similar story had been written shortly after the development of radio technology and so it was cool at the time that we defeated them because the aliens were unaware that broadcast communication was possible. Then in 2006 we made a movie where everything except this was updated. In 1900 aliens that don't know about germs is a reasonable and clever ending; in 2000 they're just stupid aliends.

Otherwise it was an intense movie. But read the book, it isn't as bad as you've heard.

innerSpaceman · 01-24-2007, 09:53 PM

I totally agree about the dumbness of the germ thing in this day and age, but it's one of those elements - I think - that if you leave out or change till it's unrecognizable, you're simply not telling "War of the Worlds."

I would have liked there to have been some gobbledeegook rationalization how a technologically advanced civilization could have overlooked some area of infectious danger ... but I suppose such convoluted exposition would have slowed the ending to a crawl.

Perhaps Tim Burton did it best by having mortality result from hearing the Indian Love Call. There's no way the Martians could have anticipated that!

Alex · 01-24-2007, 10:15 PM

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what the solution would be that wouldn't completely pervert it, it'd still have to be something relativley passive on our part; our victory can only be serendipitous. The TV show just said "screw it" and used the set up and then went in a new direction.

But facing that, my view is you either just leave it on the table until you figure out how to get around it (as they tried to do with the equally silly plot point from the original that the invaders were from Mars) or you go back to basics and do the book and keep everything grounded in a thoroughly Victorian sensibility.

Of course, it is the modern-day stupidity of the conclusion to War of the Worlds that provides the humor of Mars Attacks!

innerSpaceman · 01-24-2007, 10:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

...the equally silly plot point from the original that the invaders were from Mars

Hahahaha, in the radio show, astronomers see the Martians launching from Mars minutes before they reach the Earth!!

Alex · 01-24-2007, 10:26 PM

My movie viewing this weeks so far has been Moonstruck and The Big Easy.

I'd just like to say that movies in the '80s sucked.

Having somehow seen several early Nicolas Cage movies recently it truly is bizarre to me that Cage's "early career" isn't now known as his "career." I understand that the movie is meant to be operatic, particularly Cage's character, but it was just painful to watch. That said, it has two great scenes. One in the restaurant between Olympia Dukakis and John Mahoney and the other between Dukakis and Danny Aiello (who was really pleasant in this movie).

I'm pretty sure that in another couple weeks I won't remember that I even watched The Big Easy it was so forgettable. All I'll remember is what I already remembered about the movie. The best man at my first wedding tells that he learned about finger****ing from this movie and when he tried it for the first time (before actually having sex) it was quite a shock to him to learn what it felt like.

01-18-2007, 10:04 PM	#1572
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	Yes, I was simultaneously amused and appalled. Maybe conflictedness would have been a better word.
	Submit to Quotes

01-19-2007, 05:02 PM	#1573
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	Saw The Last King of Scotland, starring Forrest Whittaker as Idi Amin (and winning him the Golden Globe the other night). It is a powerful performance by Whittaker. I've said in the past the actors playing real people start out at something of a disadvantage for me, but it helps that other than pictures I have absolutely no idea how Amin sounds when he talked, how he walked, or anything else about him. But still, I handicap him a bit for it compared to other great performances last year where the actor had to create the character out of whole cloth. It is a very interesting story. The post-colonial '60s and '70s are just generally interesting times, historically speaking, and the repercussions continue with us to this day. But, for me, the films fatal flaw is something I mentioned when discussing Blood Diamond. That is the tendency to require that the problems of Africa be filtered through white eyes. It is inherited from the novel on which it is based, but the movie's protagonist is a fictional character (a Scottish doctor who serendipitously falls into Amin's favor) set among real events (though seemingly time compressed). In the end, per the movie (which opens with the "based on real events" title) it is this white doctor who eventually escapes Uganda to reveal to the world what a horrible man Amin was (as opposed to the eccentric buffoon most thought him). This is something of a slap in the face to Henry Kyemba, Amin's black health minister who managed to defect and did all the revealing in his 1977 book A State of Blood. I finally went to see the movie based on a strong recommendation from a friend. I've now talked a bit more with him and he had no idea that the main character is entirely fictional. He assumed that the movie was based on the man's memoir, not an award winning piece of fiction. Finally, I have another gripe about the main character. He is presented as too much of a rube, beguiled by Amin's charm and completely unaware of the atrocities until sudden revelation and escape. So not only do we filter the story through the eyes of a white observer but we make him pure as well (pure through naivety rather than goodness, but nonetheless). To the extent that there was a real "Nicholas Garrigan" it was a white British military officer who gained Amin's trust and was much more complicit in the atrocities. So, my final conclusion is: powerfully acted, slightly morally bankrupt, and victim to certain ugly tendencies in the Western view of Africa (it only matters if white people are involved).
	Submit to Quotes

01-24-2007, 12:05 AM	#1574
Bornieo: Fully Loaded Lego Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Disneyland, USA Posts: 3,704	Well, I saw DREAMGIRLS tonight. I really liked it - didn't love it. I thought Hudson did a nice job. I just wasn't a fan of the music. And I love the Mowtown sound and all the music from that era. This just felt like 2 white guys wrote it. There was very little soul in the music and I was a bit dissapointed in that. I think it was a bit too jumpy. Seems like it took place in the span of 20 years, I would say. I think the progression from what they were to what they became was just very spaztic. Wasn't a big fan of Eddie Murphy in this. I see where he went, but I just kept seeing "Buddy Love" from the Nutty Professor films. But, I will say, and someone mentioned this on the radio, there is a scene where he's "finished" and he breaks out the coke - everyone in the room leaves and he just gives this very honest look to the CC character. IT was just a great look and I'm sure that's the scene we'll see on Oscar night. Dreamgirls gets 7 bornieo's out of 10
	Submit to Quotes

01-24-2007, 08:43 PM	#1575
innerSpaceman Kink of Swank Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Inner Space Posts: 13,075	Oddly enough, the movie I've been musing on lately is War of the Worlds I'm one of the twelve people on earth who actually like Steven Spielberg's version. I've heard many people complain they didn't like his take on the story. Personally, I thought the change from 50's scientist concerned about his new girlfriend to everyday citizen concerned about his young daughter was brilliant. That scientist stuff went out a long time ago, and it's not cool to portray gals as so helpless nowadays. But besides that, I've heard complaints about the scenarios played out in the Spielberg film ... and I've wondered how much of that stuff was from the book, never having read it. The book has a reputation for being snoresville, so the next best thing would be the infamous 1930's Orson Welles radio broadcast that caused a public panic. Well, it just so happens the broadcast is a DVD extra on the recent release of the George Pal War of the Worlds. It was surprising to me in many ways. First off, the segment that imitates a radio broadcast of Martian attack is less than 30 minutes long! A whole lot of people had to have tuned in 2 minutes late (to miss the announcement of fiction) and gone to the bathroom at the 15-minute mark (when there was a 2nd such announcement) and freaked out so much by minute 28 that they turned off the radio. Because after that point, the show shifts gears completely and becomes practically a monologue by Welles of a diary of one of the lone survivors. Unlike the radio broadcast portion, the much longer diary section is not in real time. Welles speaks of doing one thing one day, and two minutes later he's talking about a week later. Frankly, this section is so boring, I couldn't listen to all of it. But in the parts I did hear, I gathered that much of what Speilberg chose as scenarios for the film were, in fact, either based on the original book or on the Mercury Players radio teleplay. There were the tripods crossing the Hudson river while refugees panicked boarding a ferry. There was the crazed dude in the abandoned house who spoke just about every line of Tim Robbins dialogue. Other scenarios - such as the suspenseful probe and Martian encounters in the abandoned house, and the world-gone-mad mob scene with our protagonists dragged from their cars - are right out of the earlier George Pal movie. I think Spielberg's film ultimately has a great pedigree of influence from all the previous versions of War of the Worlds, and for that I admire it even more than I did as simply a great alien-invasion movie. Anyway, sorry for a completely irrelevant post ... but that's the film I happen to be musing on.
	Submit to Quotes

01-24-2007, 09:30 PM	#1576
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	The Orson Welles version of the isn't particularly close to the book either. Personally, I love the book and had never heard it describes as snoozeville (it is pretty tight and moves along pretty well). It's well worth a read, particularly keeping in mind when it was written. I actually liked the Spielberg version too, for a conversion into an action movie. My only two major problems are: 1) His son lives. That was just stupid. 2) The ending, like the rest of the movie needs to be updated. When the book was written, germ theory was still relatively new and it was easy to imagine it as a cutting edge issue that would be overlooked by an invading species. That just isn't true any more; I understand the meaning that the means of their defeat is supposed to have but it is no longer appropriate unless they also don't update the rest of the story. It is kind of like if a similar story had been written shortly after the development of radio technology and so it was cool at the time that we defeated them because the aliens were unaware that broadcast communication was possible. Then in 2006 we made a movie where everything except this was updated. In 1900 aliens that don't know about germs is a reasonable and clever ending; in 2000 they're just stupid aliends. Otherwise it was an intense movie. But read the book, it isn't as bad as you've heard.
	Submit to Quotes

01-24-2007, 09:53 PM	#1577
innerSpaceman Kink of Swank Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Inner Space Posts: 13,075	I totally agree about the dumbness of the germ thing in this day and age, but it's one of those elements - I think - that if you leave out or change till it's unrecognizable, you're simply not telling "War of the Worlds." I would have liked there to have been some gobbledeegook rationalization how a technologically advanced civilization could have overlooked some area of infectious danger ... but I suppose such convoluted exposition would have slowed the ending to a crawl. Perhaps Tim Burton did it best by having mortality result from hearing the Indian Love Call. There's no way the Martians could have anticipated that!
	Submit to Quotes

01-24-2007, 10:15 PM	#1578
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what the solution would be that wouldn't completely pervert it, it'd still have to be something relativley passive on our part; our victory can only be serendipitous. The TV show just said "screw it" and used the set up and then went in a new direction. But facing that, my view is you either just leave it on the table until you figure out how to get around it (as they tried to do with the equally silly plot point from the original that the invaders were from Mars) or you go back to basics and do the book and keep everything grounded in a thoroughly Victorian sensibility. Of course, it is the modern-day stupidity of the conclusion to War of the Worlds that provides the humor of Mars Attacks!
	Submit to Quotes

01-24-2007, 10:26 PM	#1580
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	My movie viewing this weeks so far has been Moonstruck and The Big Easy. I'd just like to say that movies in the '80s sucked. Having somehow seen several early Nicolas Cage movies recently it truly is bizarre to me that Cage's "early career" isn't now known as his "career." I understand that the movie is meant to be operatic, particularly Cage's character, but it was just painful to watch. That said, it has two great scenes. One in the restaurant between Olympia Dukakis and John Mahoney and the other between Dukakis and Danny Aiello (who was really pleasant in this movie). I'm pretty sure that in another couple weeks I won't remember that I even watched The Big Easy it was so forgettable. All I'll remember is what I already remembered about the movie. The best man at my first wedding tells that he learned about finger***ing from this movie and when he tried it for the first time (before actually having sex) it was quite a shock to him to learn what it felt* like.
	Submit to Quotes