Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[Gemini Cricket]

Watched The Departed again tonight.
I predict:
Best Picture
Best Director
and
Best Adapted Screenplay.


I love this film.

[Snowflake]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

Watched The Departed again tonight.
I predict:
Best Picture
Best Director
and
Best Adapted Screenplay.


I love this film.

In my netflix queue, coming soon. Still on the big screens in SF, I think I had better see it there, to hell with netflix!

[innerSpaceman]

Best Director, certainly. The "overlooked till now" factor is overwhelming in Scorcese's case. Too bad, because Greengrass pulled off a far better directorial feat.


Peter O'Toole might right the sentimental wave as well.

Ah well, I hardly look to the Oscars to determine the best of anything, and either of the two sentimental votes would be legitimate winners for their current works in any case.

[Not Afraid]

While I still haven't seen King-Scotland, I really want Peter O'Toole to get the golden boy. I predict I will cry if he does.

[Alex]

Gremlins was in the Under $5 bin at some store so I picked it up a few weeks ago.

Many good memories about this movie when I last saw it in 1985 or 1986. I remmeber loving it. It was funny and a little bit scary.

Yet more evidence that I was quite a retarded child. Not that I was wrong to be retarded when I was 11, but I wonder what my parents' excuse was.

[katiesue]

We just got back from Music and Lyrics. Fluffy chick flick. Catchy tunes though. Sadly I may have to buy the album filled with faux pop songs almost all sung by Hugh Grant.

[Alex]

Also saw Letters from Iwo Jima today. It's very well made. It continues to amaze me but Eastwood really may be our best commercial director going today.

That, despite its unique point of view, it really does boil down to a basic "pointlessness of war" storyline and doesn't really probe any original territory. But I really do admire the balls of Eastwood going to whatever honchos he has to go to and saying "I'm going to make a World War II movie, covering the same event I will have just covered in a different movie but from the Japanese point of view and I'm going to do it in Japanese."

I have to wonder if he just did it as an "in your face" to Rob Marshall who said it just wasn't feasible to do Memoirs of a Geisha in Japanese using unknown Japanese actors.

[innerSpaceman]

Well, Ken Watanabe is hardly an unknown actor. And I'm frankly sick of all the ballyhoo about the film being in Japanese. Guess what, so are lots of Japanese films ... and it would have been just beyond stupid to make a gritty war film from the Japanese perspective with the cast speaking English ... in clippped British accents no less.


Letters was a fine film, but stereotypical galore ... whereas the Flags companion piece was, imo, shamefully overlooked - and far more interesting in perspective, story, and storytelling.

[Alex]

Haven't seen flags yet. And the reason Marshall used Chinese actors was because they didn't think there were any Japanese actors with enough face recognition. Yes, Watanabe is somewhat known, but he's also barely in the movie.

And, I'm sorry, but I think it takes some artistic balls to make a movie in a language you don't speak. And I think those are precisely the artistic balls that Rob Marshall lacks (and if the studio insisted, he should have passed or at least insisted on Japanese actors). Why go with clipped British accents when you could go with clipped Chinese accents?

When you say stereotypical, do you mean stereotypical war movie or stereotyping of the Japanese? If the latter I found it more restrained than most and also pretty accurate in attitudes as I hear them second hand through Lani (who's father applied to be a kamikaze pilot). Say what you will, but the circumstances under which Saigo fled Suribachi is not something you'd see in an American war movie.

Haven't seen Flags yet so I have no problem with the thought that it is better than Letters (though you're the first person I know that has seen both that thinks so) and has been overlooked.

Personally, I'm still somewhat burned out on war movies and the reason I saw this one is because it is nominated for best picture (Babel is no longer playing anywhere near me) and because it was the only thing within 25 miles that I haven't seen and have any interest in (at the last minute I almost went to Ghost Rider instead).

I definitely would not put Letters in the top five for the year (The Queen was already on my list of the five that should be in line behind Children of Men and now Letters is back there as well.) Both Scorcese and Greengrass are more deserving for director (and I'm with you that Greengrass should have it, though I'm ok with Scorcese winning).

The screenwriting categories still continue to confuse me. Letters credits source material (the letters of General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe)) and is an original screenplay while Borat is mostly unscripted and is still an adapted screenplay. Anyway, Letters doesn't come out on top for this one, either as I'd give it to Pan's Labyrinth if I had my druthers.

[Stan4dSteph]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Also saw Letters from Iwo Jima today. It's very well made. It continues to amaze me but Eastwood really may be our best commercial director going today.

I was at the mall today, and thought I would check this out, except that it's no longer playing there! I was seriously pissed. Instead they're playing all kinds of worthless ****. I mean, Night at the Museum is still playing! WTF? Asshats.